 to start. Should we test the mic or something? No. Good evening. My name is Dr. Alfred Schireld and welcome to the Board Six MPA meeting. I'm here with fellow members Matt Grady, Nelson Martel, and Michelle Rantz. Tonight we're going to start off with Vermont State voter redistricting. We're going to start that portion off with two minutes from Karen Paul. That's going to describe the different voting districts. Covering Ward Six is Karen with us. Also going to speak on is Kesher Hinsdale, Tiff Lumillie, Gabrielle Stebbins, and Rama. So in Karen's absence, do we want to start and move forward or do we want to wait a couple minutes for Karen? I bet Tiff could describe the voting districts for us. Tiff, I can't I can't see who's available. Well, I've looked at so many different maps actually over the last several weeks. Those submitted by the lab and those submitted by in a presentation to the Board of Civil Authority. And as I understand it, at present the lab map would, I'm so sorry about my dog, the lab maps would divide five, six into two different districts. One would be kind of the traditional south end. It would actually divide this five sisters up at the point of Caroline and that would go up the hill and Ward Five would follow Pine Street in a kind of a narrow corridor down Pine Street and six would would go north, I mean sorry, east from Pine Street up the hill. Gabrielle, am I right? Actually I see that Karen is now with us. So I'm in but I'm not sure if Karen was pairing for this. I'm not sure. Are you are you asking me a question or I'm sorry, I apologize. I'm a few I'm a couple of minutes late. Okay, we'd like you to talk to us a little take a couple minutes and describe the different voting districts. I'll cover in word six. I'm just maybe a little recap of what we just heard. No, well, if it's already been if you if our if you've already gone over it, I don't I don't need to in the interest of time. I'm happy to but sounds to me like it's so tip. Did you cover I mean word six? I mean word six is on you know has the I don't think I don't know that it's really that unusual. I think a lot of words in the city are in this situation where we have part of six six six five and I think six three which is Kurt McCormick and Jill Kowinsky. There are about 150 or so people in word six that are part of six three. And it's a you know I mean when we have in November every two years in November when we have to vote on that we've got three tabulators sitting in word six on and one of them doesn't get a lot of use literally about a hundred and fifty votes. So you know I I mean you know I don't know that this will be addressed but I I mean in an ideal world I think it would be great if we could eliminate a little bit of that you know for a variety of reasons. But that will be up to you know the court of civil authority the city and the state work very differently. The city when we have redistricting that then goes to the voters. In the case of the statewide it's a completely different mechanism and the board of civil authority which is made up of the city council and the mayor will discuss this at the meeting at our meeting next week on Monday the 8th. But it will it's my understanding is and I we only do this once every ten years but my understanding is it hasn't changed it simply us giving our input. Okay okay very good. So we're going to hear from the other panelists if they could give us a couple minutes on their thoughts current thoughts and updates on the subject. Kasia do you want to go next? Sure yeah so first of all happy Diwali I'm sneaking some Indian snacks here from one of my Nepali friends and it's nice to be with all of you. I was I was looking at Karen I couldn't remember Karen if you were there for last redistricting you know so I feel like I'm kind of serving as a backstop because I happened to also be in the house when we did redistricting last time and it helps to have been for once it's very emotional it's very messy and I think the big difference that I would highlight it helped to get to this by the end in Ward 5 when we talked about it is the prop the timeline is truncated the timeline's a little shorter than it was before because we had a lot of national conflict over the census data and it shortened the time period because look at these maps and census tracks and feel confident that what we were looking at was not going to change or going to be challenged in some way and so what that means is you know there had been a more open discussion you know process around what this the city and just that city district and Ward boundaries would look like doesn't help that we have city districts and where it's a now house district and then I don't want to complicate things further but this is the first time in history that Chittenden County is going to be broken up into several different Senate districts and so that's also what I'm here to take feedback on and talk about is that the leg of the Senate set in motion and the whole legislature had to vote but you know before Tiff Gabrielle and I got there in the last legislative biennium they said in motion a process to say there could be no more than two Senate districts in Chittenden County or essentially no more than two people no they didn't say no more than two people representing them you know kind of districts of two and three people essentially so you know some of us are looking at that as maybe a two-seat district a two-seat district and three-seat district and that's all assuming that the rest of my colleagues in the Senate can understand and appreciate that Chittenden County deserves a seven Senate seat for the census changes the population growth this time has not been as significant in Burlington as some folks may remember Burlington gained a 10th house seat in 2010 census process and the process that ensued for the next two years and folks may or may not remember Bill Sorrell as the Attorney General had to come in and say to the legislature if you do not get Burlington it's 10 seat we will be out of constitutional compliance you can only have a sort of 10% deviation total and you know as you can appreciate not everyone in Vermont wanted to give Burlington a 10 seat and it means collapsing a district somewhere else the places that have lost population for both House and Senate consideration are Rutland Windsor and the Northeast Kingdom and so you know this is a big deal to possibly give a new Senate seat to Chittenden County and to break up Chittenden County at the same time I actually think you probably couldn't get the seven seat unless we were also breaking up Chittenden County because I think people will see it at less as less of a Chittenden County block threat and more southern Chittenden County eastern Chittenden County western Chittenden County so I'm not confusing folks because we definitely I think Rama do clean up on there is a city process and as Karen said there's a house process then there's a Senate process and we usually let the house do most of its own work on its boundaries we'll still take input on the Senate districts because it has a lot to do with people's feelings about when they might run for Senate you know what what makes sense we also have some key principles one person one vote keep keeping some of the boundaries intact so you know while the Commission likes to make smaller and smaller districts because they feel like it's good for third parties and democracy and things like that we get it and at the same time at some point you know we are constitutional charges also to help keep towns neighborhoods and in some cases counties somewhat intact and not break this into such small units that we all can't find common ground so you know it's it's a very complicated process where we're balancing town neighborhood characteristics whole counties and the idea of one person one vote ten years ago we talked about trying to make the city boundaries and the house boundaries line up a bit more that still becomes a political and emotional question but I'd certainly be happy to to dig into that I don't think it would significantly impact sitting counselors or legislators except probably in the new north end because the new north end on one hand breaks up right down North Avenue and on the other hand breaks up halfway halfway up North Avenue the other direction if that makes sense they they look very different when you look at the city and the and the house break down so that's kind of been one of the challenges to looking at a bigger alignment between house and city districts well thank you well thank you because of time Gabrielle would you like to jump up and talk sure okay yeah I mean all three of the speakers before me have done a great job sort of laying out the complexity of this you know that the principle of one person one vote if you zoom out and you think you know I live in southern Burlington and if I want to really push something as a as a constituent not as a state rep but as a constituent I could go to six senators and say this is critically important to me and that is like a fit of of the Senate so I one person could have you know that much sway with I also say it's 10 out of the 11 committees Chittenden County senators around 10 out of the 11 committees well so that that much sway when you compare it to someone who might live in the Northeast Kingdom and only have one senator I that's the that's the part of the one person one vote that I think is really really important but I also think to what Keisha was saying frankly in order to make good law and good policy and good ordinances it's important to have different voices different constituents and to the degree that we get smaller and smaller and smaller we have less and less of that perhaps natural difference of opinion amongst our constituents and for me that means that it makes it much easier to end up with the political process in which perhaps you know one state rep this says well this is what my constituents say and this the other state rep says and this is what mine say and instead of really understanding that as much as Vermont is and as diverse as some other states we are you know 650,000 people with different views different inputs and different perspectives and to the degree that we get smaller and smaller and smaller that that requirement that your elected official has to balance different constituents feedback becomes a little bit more narrow and I think that that's that's a challenge I also think personally for me one of the things that actually all three of us were represented Lume and Senator Rum Hensdale and myself we had a UVM student work on a report about how do you make the state house more diverse and one of them she did was look at what makes the citizen legislature and how many states have part-time legislatures compared to full-time and what is you know who can really serve and for me a really very different from the city perspective at the state house if you look at how many people in the state house you know are retired and don't have young children it makes sense why there are so many folks from that part of life because you it's a part-time job you you are expected to show up to a lot of different things which you want to because that's why you ran but you know and the pay I mean if you're a single parent with three kids you're not running in the state house you're not running like that's just not an opportunity so for me the redistricting piece relates a little bit to also what is what is the overall makeup what should the overall makeup of our state legislature be and yeah I just it's it's interesting because it's so nerdy and detailed but so core and critical to the process and the outcome thank you thank you Tiff will you be terribly upset if I jumped down to Ramna because of time Rama and then if we have time after oh say is that having led a nonprofit I am I have I had to be very determined on partisan so this is a you know now I'm taking a crash course in and try to understand what are the arguments for against single-member districts and so I'm I'm doing my homework I think Gabrielle and Kisha both expressed pretty well the the range of thoughts about that so I'm happy to answer any questions that people have it via email or phone at some point but alright I'm done you will thank you all Rama so my name is Rama coach Lakota I am on the ad hoc committee that was set up to gather input from the community for this is specifically by the city redistricting so this is about the wars and districts that are contribute to City Council and also the school board we do not actually our committee is not actually deciding what boundaries are going to work like we're just tasked with gathering inputs that input will be put into reports it goes to the City Council and the City Council will digest that report and create a budget a charter a charter amendment that is people will vote on next November of November 2022 and if that's approved then it will go to the folks in Montpelier who will actually make change to the Burlington City Charter so it's a long process we're right just the beginning of it we've had one meeting to source and input from the community there are only two more they're confusingly close to Miller Center by the two different Miller centers one is going to be at the Miller Center in the new north end and the and that is on November 17 and then there's going to be one on the late December 6 at the Miller Center which is the one that's part of Champlain College which is just across the street from the Department of Public Works on Lakeside and we're also I mean the people on the committee including me we're also listening information from the community any way we can get it I'm asking people to email me there's also the survey that's coming out the we can be getting together to put that together sometime in the next couple weeks I think and that survey will be coming out to hopefully be in the community paper and things we're considering changes in the boundary lines there has to be some changes in the boundary lines just because the population has shifted a little bit so Ward 6 is now bigger than it's allowed to be because all the words are to be within 10% of each other in population and we're bigger than we're supposed to be so that's going to cause some changes for Ward 6 in particular but also for larger issues how many districts do we want how many words do we want do we still want to have words and districts we want an even odd number of counselors we won't have any at-large representatives so feel free to email me with any thoughts on this my email address I sent out a couple front porch forum posts with my email address in it it's just my first name my last name at gmail.com I know that's a hard email address but sorry my name and if you have any questions or thoughts definitely reach out and I'll be glad to transmit your input to the committee you know when we get together to put together a report thank you perfect thank you Rama so we're going to go to public forum and we've discussed that if we have time and if nobody speaks up at public forum we're going to go back and continue where we were so I'm not seeing any hands in public forum and I see and I see Karen Paul Dale we have a I didn't hear you Nelson thank you I wasn't sure that you would call that me thank you so I actually just have a question but I thought that I could use the public forum time to just ask the question so Rama laid out the timing and process for the city council works but I didn't really understand what the timing and process is for the state house either for the senate or for the house seats and it would be great to hear a little bit about that thank you it will run to the bitter end of session from my experience as folks may know we you know usually serve in the legislature from January to May I imagine given that it is an election year and also people have to file as candidates in a big election year we can't really draw out the session or the redistricting process because people need some sense of certainty if they want to run for a senate in Chippin County or even city council at work town government so you know it's it's likely to be moving toward conclusion and just a little bit of final negotiating and wrangling by April and May and often you will have a good sense of the house map first we will both do our work at the same time but the house originates the redistricting map their process has a lot more moving pieces with 150 members and they send it to us where the big change will be which you know where do we make a smaller senate district potentially in the northeast kingdom or you know somewhere else I'm just sort of spitballing here and that boundary will change and then my hope is that while we'll have you know more than one Chippin County senate district I know Burlington might not care but we'll be able to bring Huntington back in for example you know that will keep Chippin County intact so there is some new challenge in the senate map and that will take the second half of the session but the whole thing should be approved by May not going away thank you Karen Paul thanks so much I just wanted to just add on with what with what Rama had said on to answer your question case I was here in 2010 and part of the reason that I wrote the resolution on read on the redistricting process was to try to avoid some of the unfortunate just delays and and dealing with a very convoluted process the last time we were in the same boat that I think you were in that there were citizens who four years into redistricting were saying we're going to sue the city if you don't get a redistricting a map that is one person you know that is that is fair and so it took us five years and it should not take five years so part of what Rama is doing which I think was a first of all the resolution that created the redistricting process was unanimous so we're starting at a good spot because everyone agreed to the process on Rama and eight and seven other others are ward represent representatives and they are people that have never served in an elective office so this is a very just a group of citizens who are gathering input and they're all going about it in different ways and this is your opportunity the voters the residents of the city this is your opportunity to state your preference for how you feel and how you want to be represented on the city level and Rama's already spelled out what the options are but I I just wanted to you know just wanted to speak and say that this is really important and you know this is your this is really your your opportunity to have your voice heard the the report that Rama mentioned will come to the city council we will use that report to then move forward and give direction to an independent mapping specialist that we have all agreed to and that person will draw the map hopefully there will only be one of them and we will then be taking that and putting that into words that will then go in a charter change so we're hopeful that this will be done by April and we'll be very much looking to the legislature to in in in this in the when you reconvene unless you have a special session but if you read when you reconvene in 2023 to hopefully pass whatever redistricting map we agree to and pass it quickly enough so that we can hopefully implement that in the next year because obviously a charter change has to go through you and to the governor so and I just want to also just publicly say Rama you have done an amazing job thank you so so much and I hope everyone will feel that they can reach out to Rama and give their preferences and what their desire is to see in a redistricting map thank you so Karen are you still there yeah so Rama spoke about um you know Ward 6 being 10 percent over what what does that mean I mean what does that mean for us in Ward 6 I I don't know that he said 10% over I think he said it's 10% but we are we are out of line with the other words of the city I don't know that it's necessarily 10 he actually probably would know more about that and I would because he's been much more in the weeds on this but what that effectively means is that um you know we're probably going to see Ward 6 redrawn on you know years ago when I first ran on Ward 6 included the Redstone campus now it doesn't include the Redstone campus we added Ward 8 there's talk about do we need Ward 8 do people want to representatives do we want to go back to the system that we had prior to 2015 do we want to eliminate districts districts were absolutely a compromise to get to seven votes on the council that was the reason for districts on some people like them some people don't but again this is your chance to state that preference and have your voice heard and I hope that we will hear from a lot of people and we have about two minutes left so if anybody else wants to comment or ask a question so we have a lot of interaction possible here for the city redistricting I kind of get the feeling that citizens really don't have much they can say about the state or if I have that wrong I just don't know how individual citizen can really make much of an input to the state process what do you what do you all think about that I mean it would generally be through your city counselors and the mayor I was recounting that in Ward 5 when we were we have a sliver of Burlington that is in the Winooski district and we actually I have been there for a couple years Chris Pearson had been there before we were the two legislators here we really wanted to pull that sliver back in because it's very confusing and complicated for those those neighborhoods and you there were two housing complexes one you know mixed income and one affordable housing complex right on the river and we thought that those are very discreet and we could you know make that the piece that helps Winooski be whole right because they had to take something from Burlington for it to work mayor kiss disagreed with us you know for better or worse like it wasn't that emotional for me it was for those neighbors who really felt like kind of left behind on that side of the river but you know mayor kiss disagreed he thought that would discriminate against the low-income housing complex there and so he thought that it was it was bipartisan on our side Chris Pearson and I agreed but mayor kiss fought that and that was you know that ultimately you know was what happened was what mayor kiss had proposed so you know the the city does have the ability to make its own separate arguments from the legislators and potentially have those carry the day so the BCA your city counselors and your mayor do you have you know the ability to disagree with legislators and have the larger legislative body listen to that I'm putting a plug back in for giving that neighborhood back to Burlington when you ski has grown so maybe there's a chance we don't have to have the same bargain this time around but you know it's little things like that that can be you know a big fight frankly between the city and your state officials and again as people have noted you know at the end of the day then it happens and a lot of people never knew what the boundaries were before they changed you know so it's we really appreciate people like Rama and others being so engaged it gets very emotional for a very short period of time and then afterwards we ten years later we sort of do this all over again in between a lot of people have no idea that we ever had such a big fight about these things that's my experience a decade later that's interesting thank you very much so that ends our public forum time next up for at seven o'clock we have Brian Pine is Brian with us thanks so much and thank you thank you all for for your input sorry we have another meeting thank you okay well thank you all right well there we are I will get into my present my presentation very brief Brian Pine the director of the community and economic development office in the city of Burlington tonight you all one of the items on your agenda and I was asked by your steering committee to provide an update on city place Burlington what I'd like to just start with I'll use that term city place Burlington or just city place it includes the developer Devin Wood, Don Sinex and his team but also the local partners who you may all have heard about Scott Ireland Dave Farrington and Al Sinekal so I think it's good starting point to just point out and note that city place Burlington is a private development project on private property it also includes a public portion which is the public improvements which are primarily the reconnection of our downtown streets and sidewalks on both St. Paul and Pine Street the city place Burlington group and has entire control over the property with the exception of the public right-of-way which I can talk about in just a few minutes about how that has developed and worked out according to plan so the development is really theirs to to commence construction to secure financing to both begin and complete it's really up to them to to build the project I think folks have have often somewhat conflated that the city's role here and thought that the city is more actively involved in the actual development of the project and in September 2020 not going to go back too far but I'm just going to point out that the city filed suit in September of 2020 to compel the developers to meet their obligations under an agreement that we refer to as the development agreement this issue was resolved through mediation in February of 21 and the council adopted something called the amended and restated development agreement which took that original development agreement and added some more provisions and some protections honestly for the city and for the public we did that in May of 2021 just before that month or so a couple months before the development review board issued a zoning permit in early March a couple weeks after that permit was issued a group known as a hundred bank LLC which is really redstone filed suit and they filed suit for a couple reasons few reasons breach of an easement agreement and property damages and in doing so they filed an appeal of that zoning permit that the city had just issued a few weeks previously the city then broke her in a mediation involving all three parties that would be City Place Burlington a hundred Bank Street and the city as a party and that was settled through mediation over a few days in mid-July so all lawsuits at that point were resolved there was nothing standing in the way of the project it has its local permit it doesn't have active 50 because the state has a program or a preference for priority projects and priority projects which are residential that include an affordable housing component in a designated downtown up to a certain number of units but this is within that limit our exempt from active 50 so active 50 is not a factor here a couple key milestones that were reached this summer and a couple more recently in August the city negotiated and approved what's called a license agreement which really just allows the developer to construct things that protrude into the public right away think of like bay windows and underground stormwater tanks and things called area ways which are really just ways enclosures that get you access to the lower levels of a building so maybe a door that's accessed through the sidewalk for instance would be an example of an area way those were all approved through license agreement a stormwater memorandum of understanding between the city and the developer that really provides a pretty high level of benefit in terms of retention and treatment of stormwater onsite which lots of most downtown development hasn't done that so this is really kind of a best practice and a bit of a trend setter that MOU is now executed the developer is legally bound to build the streets and sidewalks either as part of its project or separately if the project does not restart on time and I'll go through the schedule which defines what on time means but just think of the end of 22 as the drop dead date that's sort of a an important date to think about as December 31st 2022 so the schedule going forward from here is roughly along the lines of a end of 21 there must be a design submitted and approved for the public improvements that's be the streets and the curves and the sidewalks and the street trees and all of that there must be a contract for construction by the end of the first quarter so in other words by the end of March of 22 that construction contract must be for at least 50 million the city wanted it to be significant enough it may not be the entire project but it will be a substantial portion of the project will be under construction by then and the TIF package needs to be approved in TIF bonds issued by the end of the second quarter of 22 so the end of June of 22 again the outside construction date for the whole construction project to commence is the end of December 2022 just over a year from now failure to meet these deadlines has the potential to trigger certain legal actions that are spelled out in the the ARTA the amended and restated development agreement but I won't go into what those are we hope that doesn't happen but you have to plan hope for the best and plan for the worst City Place Burlington is currently seeking financing in the marketplace and they hope to begin construction in this coming spring but again as I stated at the beginning that is really that's their piece of work and that's on their timeline and we don't really have too much visibility into how that part is going so that sort of sums up where City Place Burlington is at right now open for questions what's that go ahead Dale I see your I see your hand thank you hi Brian thanks for that update could you just say you know I know you said you don't have a lot of visibility into the state of the financing but it seems like in many ways that's been the hold up all along and so what reason do we have to think that there's any better chance of the project actually happening this time well I think actually the some of the hurdles that I talked about were significant hurdles the legal hurdles as you know can pretty much kill any project so those hurdles and there was initially an affirmative appeal that was that was not dismissed but was withdrawn by the Cullins and so that no longer stands in the way so it's you know this is a difficult time to finance project because of the cost of construction and the supply chain issues but there's there's pretty strong confidence that Burlington's market conditions are favorable enough and strong enough to support a redevelopment project even of this scale so I think that that is our hope is that you know we still we still have a big of housing vacancy referential housing of well below 1% the values that were expressed you know the reappraisal was significant in the sense that it property values in Burlington have both kept up and exceeded everyone's expectations so that those types of indicators and and others are we think are positive but I really don't have a whole lot more to report on the status of the financing because again that's the responsibility of the developer thank you and Brian this is Matt I could just ask it's only 60 days till your first milestone finished design is what exists now suffice for that or does there have to be some modification you don't know about or what's the story yeah the public improvements piece are pretty far that's pretty far along so that I think we're we're very close to that being completed in that that deadline being met okay great thank you sure but I thought that the three local investors partnered with Donson X to make this project happen that that was an injection of viability for the project I'm surprised then that we're back at a financing hurdle can you comment on that well I think the I don't know the exact breakdown of ownership interest but I think it's somewhere in the neighborhood of 70% still in the hands of of Devinwood and the members of that LLC so I think they're still driving the project it's really theirs you know primarily although the local partners bring a important local dynamic to the project into that partnership you know they have lots of local roots they have local presence in terms of having built projects and having been through permitting and building processes here so we have I think what we have with the local partners in the project is a again a local aspect of the project that increases their chances of going to coming to fruition and going along as planned but whether be involved with local partners by itself is not a guarantee thanks I think when when Dave Farrington last spoke here and you answered a lot of the things Brian he said it was really tough to finance a process a project when you had lawsuits pending so last time he was here he felt pretty comfortable that once this ended that the financing would be a lot easier so and in your statement say that it's ended so I would I would think that it would be a little bit easier but like you say it's right now when material costs finding some projects is really really hard so I was a little surprised by the if I got the timeline right we go from March 22nd to December 22nd for a project this big I think that's a pretty tight timeline that you know do I have my timelines right did I get that right yeah the construction start date is the end of 22 so yeah I mean we'd be when you refer to March that's essentially a you know that's like that's a contract needs to be executed for at least 50 million in construction development costs so that's that's that milestone in by the end of March of 2022 so Brian as director of CEDO what is your confidence level for this group bringing their project to completion well I'd say the the time is really the enemy of getting projects done and so what the more time to pass is that the conditions change and a lot of the assumptions are somewhat challenged and sort of ground tested and however one would argue that the pandemic has changed the market so much so that if the project had gone ahead as originally envisioned with a significant I think it was over 200,000 square feet of office space there would be a serious problem in our downtown with a building that essentially could not necessarily remain fully occupied and so in some ways you know the redesign of redeveloped plan now with with residential is is a bit of a blessing in disguise the fact that it was delayed for that long I think again the market fundamentals here are incredibly strong the housing market as anyone will tell you who's in the development business every unit that gets built is the demand for that unit is an article today about the Doug Getty project on Pine Street and he got hundreds of applicants for 50 new partners literally hundreds of qualified people so the demand is there and I think that's probably the most important thing the market is strong capital is incredibly cheap interest rates are really low I think that the conditions are pretty good for seeing this project move along thanks well thank you Brian thank you for your time tonight and well we'll certainly have you back as a prog you know as the project gains steam and gets going thank you so next up on the agenda is bio retention systems rain gardens in Ward 6 and presenting tonight is James Charard Burlington DPW stormwater program coordinator James yeah you see there he is welcome welcome and share my screen was that a success yes yeah be here tonight thanks for having me then my name is James Charard on the stormwater program coordinator here the city of Burlington I'm going to talk about the bio retention system which recently installed in Ward 6 I was asked to give about a 10 minute presentation and I think we're going to be able to hit that tonight quick presentation outline give folks on this at this meeting a little run down on the running to the sewer system some of our integrated planning the grant funding that was utilized for this project talk about why we cited the Ward 6 locations where we did talks you about buyer attention what that is we have some construction photos from the systems that were chosen to be placed here and we can talk a little bit about the data that's being gathered to look at what these systems are doing for the city and open up for Q&A so I'm not sure if you can see my cursor here on the screen if not we can't looking over to the left here we have a purple area right in the middle of the city and then a small triangle purple below that there's another dots purple around there what that is indicating is the combined sewer system that contributes to the main plant so the area the city where we constructed the systems this purple triangle that contributes to the main plant and also contributes to the pine barge combined sewer overflow we'll see that triangle again later on today in this presentation but it'll be read next time you know running through some of the attributes of the city that you were aware of you know we're surrounded by the lake and the Winnieski River those are the locations where our overflows eventually discharged to while we historically get about three four inches of rain unfortunately climate change is trending in less frequent more intense events not ideal for managing stormwater and our combined sewer systems obviously depending where you are in the city you might have you know clay soils and high ledge or really great soil sand soils for infiltration we'll talk a little bit about that as well how that influence our decision-making you know about 30% of the city about 37% of the city's impervious area is sewer and 26% of that is treated through that combined sewer system that's all to say in those percentages that a lot of the city has to deal with realities combined sewer if you have a fax many of you already probably know we have three separate ways to start treating plants we have five combined sewer overflow locations although there are only two or three that are really all that active anymore which is an improvement from years ago when they were about 12 we've been around for a while we have a hundred-year-old system that was inherited from our predecessors and we're still trying to manage that and again a lot of infrastructure three thousand catch basins about them victory on a separate storm was this one of the combined system and well over a hundred outfalls in the city basically separate storm sewer that's our sewer system which is the MS for it basically means that we have to be pretty permitting requirements from both the state and feds that's important with regards to the integrated planning of the city's partner I'll talk about that a little bit next but the fact that we're in this for community and we have the particular complications of where a combined sewer system on the image on the right here that has the overflow and going around there are a lot of different permitting requirements that we need to tackle a lot of complex issues and they they tie into the integrated planning effort and again to the systems that we recently installed I'm not going to read everything here there's two really big takeaways integrated planning was started about 2012 it's an alternative permitting procedure that the EPA has allowed Burlington to contribute in and basically what that means is Burlington has wastewater requirements or water requirements various water resources requirements instead of dealing with each permit individually which is likely more costly they're allowing us to do a holistic approach like everything on the umbrella of integrated planning and try to meet all of our water quality goals in one fell swoop looking down to the types of water water regulations that we have I highlighted that bullet number four because one of the key components is addressing the lines or overflows so these are metrics that we need to tackle for our permitting requirements and the systems that again we're building more six this past year directly address that need I provided the link at the bottom of this particular slide happy to share this presentation also a few Google city Burlington integrated planning you can find a website dedicated to that with more detail information this project is really quite impressive we the city applied for about 1.25 million in state grant with zero percent match that means free money we actually ended up being awarded about a million of that and that is supporting this project so city staff were lucky enough to receive that from the state and that's that's really kind of incredible because that's a million dollars we're spending towards managing our CSO's that we don't have to fund internally a little bit about the two separate phases phase one the staff and projects they helped me some of the performance metrics for this grant which we're building at least 12 systems and treating 15 of previous acres and this happened alone we built 15 separate systems treating a little over six acres the next phase is going to be moving to the older than we're going to focus more on subsurface storage in that area because the soils the sands there are really supportive of sort of technology not so much in the south end excuse me and we're going to be treating about another eight or so acres up there of impervious through that process still under the same grant funding that was utilized for these projects remember I mentioned that triangle that we saw earlier they're having red now you know whenever we're citing a stormwater treatment system within the city and there are dozens and dozens throughout the city we need to think about where we're setting up overwhelmingly we want to focus on areas that have combined sewer systems because those are the ones we're trying to reduce our stormwater inflow into and then combined sewer systems that contribute to an active sewer overflow these red areas meet both those criteria specifically for the overflowed I'm large enough which is the single active overflow we have in the city right now so we're talking about geographically why we cited these systems where we did we have a very limited geographic area that can actually reduce the load to this particular CSO and you're looking at them now and then mostly done the geographical area of sort of parsley we put it on you know public private public parcels are limited and actually have any in this area that could utilize private parcels have a lot of issues including long-term ownership and maintenance so they're not really candidates usually leaves are right away throughout the city right away is include like sidewalks green bumps roadways in this neighborhood that the systems recited overwhelmingly it was not driving rain and we implemented something coming bump out to put these systems in a little bit of this no more kind of internal internal nomenclature traffic coming bump out sometimes these bump outs are made for traffic coming measures and we implement storm or management practices in there as a secondary benefit it's the other way around here you need to implement storm water controls and dealing with some traffic coming what is one of the secondary benefits I just spent a lot of time in this slide if someone wants to channel the side about the details of these fire attention systems I'm happy to I won't dig into too much big picture buyer attention provides two separate benefits versus water quality when you filter runoff through buyer attention systems they have buyer attention soil media it's a very porous support of infiltration infiltration would runoff passes do that it pulls out things like phosphorus which is really important for relation with phosphorus TBL and sediments and metals and hydrocarbons so it's a quality aspect which is really important for this particular area though we're really interested in quantity mitigation and what these systems do is help us help us both infiltrate runoff so it's out of the system entirely and detain runoff like make plate both those things help us reduce the potential for CSOs the difference between these two you can sort of see you can always the player if that's something you can see on your screen but on top these type A systems they have chambers and you'll see pictures of them shortly that allow for a level or water to get in there and be stored in there and then infiltrate it's basically a big void space for all that water to get into and these systems were cited on standard soils the better soils in these neighborhoods the system on the bottom is very similar still has infiltration capabilities but not quite as much these will probably detain more water and slow it down to mention the system where this system is on top will likely infiltrate a lot more and take that runoff out of the network entirely now I'm going to show you some pictures of it so type A first these are the systems of chambers little more design a lot more engineering a little more complex to build as you can see we're sort of navigating around some subsurface utilities that we found here but sort of left to right we excavate you can see the really nice sandy soils in this particular area put a subbasic gravel put in the treatment system the subsurface system rather and in the picture on the far right it's just you get to look down the pipe it's an empty pipe during the storm that will fill the water and some sediments that will fall out further along in construction this is all the same system we begin to fill it up with gravel with the curving in the biotention soil radius underneath this piece stone mulch and then eventually you get the final product should I mention earlier this is on we're about south and you know really nice we'll jump on to the type B systems so on south prospects you can we excavate that gravel is just for the current you go to the middle picture we're actually putting gravel and wrapping it in a blanket this is where the water will go and it's stored and detained on the farm right here this is a dry down pipe it's perforated it'll help they catch base in here at the end actually dry down over time and add a little more storage volume than a system as we keep going around they wrap that stone up with a blanket we fill it up with biotention soil media and piece stone mulch then we plant it those are the systems those are the two types of stone all throughout the neighborhood they obviously have various sizes and shapes but those two systems those two types of systems you'll be installed throughout the neighborhood and lastly that Nelson asked that we touch on this briefly and it will be somewhat brief we do monitor all of our combined sewer overflows locations we actually didn't discover the pine large kind of a line which is the one that this category contributes to in 2015 so those red lines show that we have about five plus years of data we don't good 2021 data i'm coming in yet been analyzed yet but those five years of data are what we have to compare for the eventual impact of systems like these and future systems that we have with works to install these areas but we'll just like to make one note about the changing climate and the weather patterns we're experiencing Burlington I live in Burlington I know if you all have experienced this maybe driving from the old north end of the south end or the new north end to the old north end but you might be driving in an incredibly tense intense storm and then you'll just drive out of it we're experiencing light reverse throughout the city and because we do have ways of tracking and monitoring these different overflows it's interesting to see how light reverse that hits in just the wrong spot the wrong time I triggered overflow we're similar like reverse just farther north in the city where there's less combined systems they don't have any impact on at all these microbursts and these storms are coming actually greater intensity intensity is that over time inches per hour we're unfortunately getting fewer storms but more intense storms which means they dump more rainwater out in that smaller period of time which is actually the worst case scenario those are the hardest ones to handle in about another five years we'll have another five years of data to compare to what we know about the pine bar to canal currently and hopefully we can start to see positive trends and with that record speed I believe happy to take any questions from the group so James I just want to comment on the job that irons did constructing these um they did a phenomenal job they were very professional they they in my opinion they just did an amazing job in installing these and I just want to commend the effort of the city and in irons and working together and taking our neighborhood and can consideration while doing this they did an excellent job thank you we worked with um sd irons on that they did a really good job um those the same folks worked here the whole time I got to know them pretty well but those are kind words and we'll pass them along thank you Dale I think you have your hand up and go ahead thank you and thanks James for that presentation um so uh one of these um by a retention mom that's right in front of my house and I am uh thrilled to be um part of this project and and part of the solution I really do hope that it makes a difference I have one question though that that it's just troubled me through this whole thing and I wonder James if you would go back to the maps that show the area that was in purple in the first map and red in the second map because what just has never made any sense to me so the the section of south crossbeck street that goes between the northern red area and the southern red area which I believe includes that um one way or one most street section um and then continues down just south of where Crescent intersects any time there's a big downpour there is water flooding down that one way section and so I I don't really understand how the point concluded that that's not contributing to the area in red when water comes from elsewhere into the area that's in red you know it flows onto my street and flows down crossbeck parkway so I'm really curious as to why there wasn't anything done there and why that doesn't show up in red in this map that's a really good question um and that's something that we were aware of a lot of the neighborhood made us aware of that particular shoe and chair pictures and video we tasked our engineering team that did the design here and the watershed analysis to determine what happens to that runoff their determination was the vast majority of not all of that runoff actually ends up in Anglesbury Brook as opposed to within our combined sewer system so utilizing the best data we had on hand focusing on the areas we were positive ended up in the combined sewer as opposed to the ones that appeared to our best modeling and um and surveys of the area to end up in tributaries that contribute to Anglesbury Brook that was that decision making so so the fact that Anglesbury Brook then feeds into the lake I guess it's not going through the sewer system so it might be degrading the quality of water in the lake but not part of the CSO problem is that the idea it doesn't come to the best of our knowledge it does not contribute to the pine bar to combine sewer overflow issue which to reiterate what overflows are I'm not sure if I talked about it specifically in the presentation overflows of the mixing of sanitary when we flush waste and storm runoff so that is a more paramount concern and more heavily regulated concern than areas that have significant runoff issues that may transport just sediment as opposed to any sort of sanitary waste that may have been a longer way of saying yes that really helps thank you for that explanation so Jim if you don't have any data like have there been any big storms or you have some idea what happened with the uh the results here I understand how you want to get like a year of data or two years to really say but I'm just wondering if there's any data you can share we have been continuing to gather data it takes some time to process that data qaqc it look at it interpret it understand it we also need to pair it with things like tipping buckets we currently only want to be bucket my understanding of the main waste water planning we're trying to figure out ways to expand that precipitation network with that said it takes a little time to hold together data we do have some data that combines for overflows and storms that have passed through this area but we're just not prepared to really review it and quantify any potential effects yet I think I think the real takeaway is it will take a number of years to get the data that will hopefully show the trend line that we want to see within that time we hope to implement further controls that will help reduce overflows in this area and and lastly and this is the answer that I hate giving because it sounds like a cop out but with our changing weather patterns it's more more difficult to understand when and where combines or overflow will happen and what type of storms may hit us I guess I'm sitting all that with some expectations setting if for some reason these these microbursts continue to hit really intent for really brief periods of time we may get more overflows if that doesn't happen we may see a really exciting trend downwards the one thing I can tell you with a hundred percent certainty and it's both common sense but I think important to say is what we're doing cannot hurt it can only help how well we can quantify what our limited monitoring network like the amount it helps we'll see in time um but the fact is we built we captured over six acres of imperties here we're treating it we're slowing it down we're infiltrating it all those things are helping if we will hopefully be able to tell in time exactly how much okay I understand thank you oh go ahead Michelle James um so I understand you don't have the data you can't really gauge performance at this point but for the individual bio retention systems have you observed them and can you just say empirically what how you see them performing even if you can't determine what the downflow effect is like on site do you have any sense of how they're performing yeah being new systems without much fine sediments there to potentially clog or slow down their infiltration rates they're doing really well I would say my number one takeaway is by both having some residents thank you residents send videos of the systems near their homes um during big storms and the site business we've been able to do during storms we're getting a better idea of where systems are perfectly able to handle all of the runoff we're seeing and areas where frankly we could put in more systems for larger systems because in some of the storms they experienced the summer they got inundated which means totally full couldn't drain anymore the bath thumbs full specifically south prospect um you know down there there's three systems somewhat approximate to each other and two of those get full I mean full and that's good in a sense that all that runoff is being directed that to that particular area is now having an outlet and a way to both slow down and infiltrate but it also means that there's more there than we can handle in that spot there's a couple other systems I believe I want to say on south I've never seen full like that so they're completely handling everything that we're throwing at them with this short period of time since they've been completed I think those are my primary takeaways right James I just also want to echo what uh Joel said which is there was construction uh very close to my home and I thought that crews were they were admirable and their hard work it was really really hot sometimes it was pouring rain and they were incredibly resilient and um I think did a great job thank you and they they reported a number of instances where people delivered popsicles to them so we appreciate that that was my actually they really appreciated that well thank you um we're out of time on the subject and you know hopefully we'll see you again for an update in the spring thank you all it's a pleasure to be here which may be a technical challenge there you go you're good thank you um so and we still don't have our other guests yeah so I don't see the next next guest is Brian Sheena and then we had Dan Hale after that and I don't see either of them in attendance speak up if you're here under a different name maybe okay okay okay so um request for crossing guards yes ready for crossing guards yes okay so my name is uh oh yes sorry my name is Jeff Padgett I'm the division director for parking and traffic at DPW and I just here tonight do give a plug for the need for crossing guards we have a desperate need and we've had to sort of traditionally had a hard time filling positions anyway and now it's particularly bad we have 33 locations throughout the city where we post crossing guards right now we've got about 15 people in those slots so we really like to get some more folks out so we want to get the word out that there are slots available um and just give a quick rundown of what it is to be a crossing guard there's basically uh it's two shifts today so in the morning from 7 30 to 8 20 and the afternoon from 2 35 to 3 20 so basically when the kids are going to school and when they're coming home except for Wednesdays Wednesdays is early early release day that's 1 40 to 2 20 so you get paid 34 dollars 35 cents a day 171 dollars a week that's if there's 10 shifts a week you're right about a week obviously at the school's not in and there's no no crossing guards we supply clothing safety clothing and it's not at all maybe do some training for you and there's a background check necessary so but it's pretty fun it's a pretty fun gig for the right person to be out there with the kids every morning and every afternoon help them get across the streets safely and if anybody works from organization that might have people that are available at those times still work flexible you know you don't have to work both shifts we could take you on just mornings or just afternoons or just three days a week we we want to build these spots so there's any groups that want to do sort of an adopt the crosswalk or anything like that we'd be willing to work with people to put groups that the organizations to figure out the ways that i don't get these positions so anyway so that's my pitch i don't know if you guys have any questions or Jeff we just want to let you know we'll post your flyer in our minutes and on the website so you know it'll be available that's great we i haven't said great we're also that's great thanks a lot yeah we're gonna try to get around all the mpa's over the next about four weeks six weeks whatever just start pushing them we're out we got advertised you know um north man news we got advertised on the radio you know and so we're surely just trying to build it out so i'd appreciate it and take it so jeff when i worked for the barlington school district at times there was conversations about both both departments working together um on crossing guards this has been a problem for a long time and and i just i wondered if if there's any of those conversations that continue or any any yeah we've reached out to them a number of times and they have their own staffing challenges yeah um and those are busy times of the day for them too because they're trying to get all the kids in and kids out and uh you know the sort of a perfect person for this would be like a para educator type um but they're busy with the kids on the school property at that time so yeah they just they are having staffing challenges just like we are so yeah we've explored it for sure so jeff did you say how people can get in touch sorry i didn't say that so best is that you know dan pilt he's the uh traffic manager uh he actually manages the crossing guards all of the signs and the lines and the signals um and the snowman line so he's got he he manages a lot so for his email is d hill d h i l l pat burlington vt.com and he'd be more than happy to watch the process okay well thank you jeff oh go ahead thanks for it thanks for the time and uh thank you i will sign off then let's have any more questions thank you great thanks thanks jeff our last guest are we are we good yep okay um so next up is a pre-application meeting to review residential conversation of south union street commercial space and it's rachel and serena for nari and they're the applicant that's us welcome hi thank you so much um we are sisters rachel and serena we're uh both residents of the city born eight more one thank you for having us um we are exploring the possibility right now of converting a property at uh 251 south 251 253 south union into um residential and so we've come to gather neighbor neighbors feedback i'm going to share my screen and am i sharing so confused now she uh well says you started but it's a black screen i'm getting a advanced sharing options i'm not sure what that has to do with me but it expert is taking a look it says i'm sharing maybe maybe stop sharing and try again it says it's sharing you are screen sharing and you guys don't see anything it's uh it says you started screen sharing but it's a blank screen black it's all black okay one more second let me try one more time i practiced guys before we came on um let's see if this one works and it's good there you go okay it's very good that's what you're seeing but i can't see it so i can't even move through it i don't guys i'm sorry oh there we go okay um so this is 251 253 south union um these are you know views of the existing building um so the portions of the house were built in 1848 um and are on the national historic register in the lower left hand corner is um a map of the site which is almost an acre um and goes back to the property that that comes in from uh woody's south woody's so its current use is as a multi-story law office which is non-conforming of the city um the city wants to see residential above the street level in this area um and so we are proposing um to convert this non-conforming commercial property for conforming uh rent and so basically protecting all of the historic facade all being through architectural elements and updating it toward what we hope to be decarbonized rental housing that's going to kind of take serious respects but but at least from the very beginning an effort to make it um electrify um we're looking into solar options etc um and because of being a non-conforming property um we're also allowed to add additional historic footage um when we convert to residential and so um as you can kind of see down at the bottom um we have 8 000 square feet in that building um it's a very large building um and uh that allows us to add about approximately another 2 000 square feet um we're looking at a total of around 10 apartments mostly one in two bedrooms will be participating in the inclusionary program um so a whole portion of those units will be for lower and moderate households and and the rent is capped and um if anyone has any questions about that I assume some of you are probably wondering um the site um as you can see here is quite large and already has an enormous amount of parking the parking um can you see my mask um yeah yeah uh the the parking on to the north of the building is actually deeded to this building as well so um there's already a lot of existing parking um but we'll be doing bicycle storage and um hoping to improve the landscaping and the gardens and thinking about some of these issues it was great to hear tonight about the rain gardens and thinking about storm water and all that so um that's pretty what we have going on um to give you guys a little more information the proposed addition will be connected by a covered walkway so the existing building is on your right um and this is what it looks like in a in a rough plan um and that will show you kind of the the way that the parking excuse me will look um if we can move forward in this bank the existing elevations um so the building lot um as all kind of the lots on that side of south union look uh drops kind of dramatically from the street level um so uh the the picture on the top is the north elevation which is only believable from the property just north of us which is professional offices and uh the picture on the bottom is the existing west elevation um which has a lot of uh decks and railways and sort of porches that need to be all need to be kind of leave on in any case um the proposed elevations look this way you can see that from the back of the building there won't really be any large difference in the way that it looks um and then from the north side um you would be able to see this addition if you were kind of down on the ground behind the building but um it's not it's not really visible from the street because of um because of that steep rock from the street level um and then a bunch of uh trees that we don't see in this in this picture but are kind of in front of the bay we know that's up there at the top um so the city um you know asks potential developers to check in with neighbors um about their concerns about this kind of development um and this kind of zoning change uh the city you know from what we the conversation we have with the zoning um are really excited to see residential development here rather than commercial they're hoping to move that way I guess in this quarter on south union and in terms of impacts and mitigation we're talking about entirely interior work being done next year and the possibility of doing some prefabricated addition at the end of next year maybe even uh early 2020 because we have an acre our intention is to stage everything from below the house and therefore do not anticipate having impact on street parking um anything for traffic so that's kind of where right now it's it's still really in the sketch phase and that's why we're you know hoping to hear from any neighbors who have thoughts about this building particular um you know residential residential conversion um for concerns about uh about the impact of I don't know if anyone has any questions so we'll be happy to do I have I think one are are you two young ladies the owners of this property we are the prospective owners of this property we have a signed produce and sale agreement and a lot of um uh good intention with the settlers and it looks like we will be buying the property but um we are just waiting for as anyone who's involved with real estate maybe where appraisals are packed up about two or three times the length of as usual so we thought by this time we would be the owners of this property but we are we are still waiting for the appraisal to end so and and you're the developers too and you have a development sorry and you're the developers too yeah I'm sorry I'm so not understanding are you the developers or I guess you're wondering yeah I'm only asking because I'm really impressed I'm really impressed with the project we are the developers um we are an LLC um it's also we're in partnership with our families um but but we it is our fans it's our good we broke in Burlington we broke in four five um and both are uh have a couple of buildings small landlords and decided um we're interested in the idea of building something more interesting and exciting um than this is really impressive I have a question we have a question from from the audience yeah I'm a neighbor of yours so um we can talk about that I'm the adjacent property on the north side oh great yeah how you doing I'm Bob Myers Bob Myers Bob Myers wonderful to meet you nice to meet both of you um I am concerned about the right of way that you've been talking about uh so that will be a concern that I'll have as this goes forward yeah and sure so yeah that's really you know I think um you know so far what I see you know I know that that's a fair amount of land so it's fine that it works within the city you know again my concern is the impact on my property my parking and drive right so great thank you thank you so much for bringing that up um we'd love to talk to you um and certainly want to to move forward in a way that respects um that deeded that um deeded access and um figure out a plan that works for everyone because as you as you mentioned there's a lot of land and ways that it could be organized to make sure that um that everyone comes out of this really happy so great thank you yeah is the property currently occupied as a law office um sort of uh they have uh downsides that we've been with for the last few years and um it's been law offices for about a hundred years um and the partners had an arrangement where they bought it and sold it to each other as the partnership changed um and so the remaining kind of two partners who've been working out of this building during um during the pandemic have decided that they don't need to be they don't need offices and they certainly don't need this building this 8 000 square foot building so um so there's still two partners who are kind of coming into the office and using it and so it's not it's not truly it okay thanks yeah i'll ask another question which is um when do you hope to begin construction i know you're waiting for the sale to go through what was your desired start date for construction uh we are hoping to we're hoping to begin construction in mid january late january at the latest um we'd really like to get um some of the building habitable as soon as possible so you know it's it's it's really beautiful inside um and so we're we're trying to just work with the existing architecture which has been altered dramatically over the years by law firm there's just you know they broke it up into offices so um so it's sort of reestablishing the zones that were kind of there originally um and then adding kitchens wait did you say january or what year by 8 22 are you gonna work would be that's when work would begin on the inside but the the picture you saw that happened in the ditch in that would probably start for another year our idea about that is probably to do a prefabricated addition so it would be kind of dropped on site and so they wouldn't again would not be a lot of like external uh external work at the site for being a lot of interior will there be any owner occupation on this site it's a good question we're not thinking right now but we both we both lived nearby and think it's quite beautiful so um we we've talked about it we're both quite inspired by uh by the history of the building so um we hear from the partners that there's some lovely late views from from the from the back in the winter well thank you um so it sounds like maybe that's it or yeah yeah um if anyone talks to other neighbors for any questions um uh the mpa committee has a contact information and we would be happy uh more than happy to talk to anyone so um please don't hesitate to reach out and and bob will be touched with you thank you very much thank you nice meeting yeah for the next meet you all thanks have a good night thank you i i guess that's the end of our guests for the evening and thank you everybody for listening and we'll see you next time thank you i guess like just between