 Welcome everybody to the NPA. Thanks for a great community dinner. Everybody from the community dinner. Team, thank you. We have a great agenda tonight. Wanted to go over our ground rules. Listen to others speaking. Respect the agenda and process. Share your opinion politely. Treat people respectfully. We'll go around and introduce ourselves. This is the ground rules, introductions and announcements. Part of the agenda. So introduce yourself and the ward you're from. Jeff Clark, ward 4 and steering committee. Linda Deladuca, ward 7 steering committee. Bob Hooper, state representative, ward 4. Gino Sullivan, state representative, ward 7. Hi, Jenna Donnell, ward 4 steering committee. For somewhat obvious reasons, I'm going to be stepping back for a little bit from the NPA steering committee, but it's been really great working with you and I'll see you again soon with a new one. Hi, Brian Williams, ward 7. Eric Winston Curtis Avenue. Miya Kozeki, ward 7. Molly Mordek, ward 7. Amy Bilowski branch, ward 7. Linda Mordek, ward 7. Anzheko, ward 4. Kaffee Hakel, ward 4. David Driscoll, ward 4 steering committee. Albaluchi, ward 7. Monica Ivancic, ward 7, school commissioner. Martin Gulec, ward 4, school commissioner. Michelle Clark, ward 4. Carol Hoody, ward 4 and state representative. Kendra Sowers, ward 4 and north district school commissioner. Karina Driscoll, ward 4. Travis Bragg, ward 7. Keenan Christensen, ward 7. Sheryl O'Donnell, ward 4. Jeff O'Donnell, ward 4. Stephen Hamlin, ward 7. Carmen George, ward 7. Lychee Vanacella Constantino, ward 7. Matt Herbert, ward 7. Ali Jiang, of Dement, ward 7. Jackie Schultz, ward 4. Nancy Ellis, ward 4. Russell Ellis, ward 4. Sal Milichamp, ward 4. Bekarber, ward 4. Tony Reddington, Pine Street Coalition, member of the Ward 2-3 steering committee. Ward 2. Great, did we get everybody? Her announcements. I wanted to let everybody know that on the agenda, you can get to the agenda on the CEDA website, from Burlington's city website, and the agendas are located there. If you'd like us to consider something to present for the next NPA, there's a link on that as well. Request to present at the NPA. There's a link right on the agenda website. So feel free to go there. And as Jenna mentioned, we're looking for steering committee members as well, if you're considering joining the steering committee. So come on and join. Any other announcements for anybody? And we don't have a December meeting. We're going right to January. Hi, I'm Keenan again. I just wanted to let folks know, as many folks already know, that every month before the NPA, except for next month, because there is no NPA, we're doing our community dinner. It starts at 5.30, goes till 6.30. It's free, so feel free to come and join free mail with your neighbors and friends. If you're interested in getting involved, we have a sign-up sheet in the back, and we'd love to have you. I did want to remind folks that tomorrow night is our New North End Book Group. We're meeting at Simple Roots from 6 to 8, and this month we read The Power. And if you come tomorrow night, you can help us choose our next book. Thank you. No other announcements. We'll go right into elected officials. If you all want to come up to the table. Everybody could do a two-minute update, and then we will go to questions from the group. Thank you very much. And I think I will start by saying thank you to the people of both Word 7 and Word 4 for bringing us together around to break bread, like they say. I think this is exactly to say that the New North End is changing. This is a great, wonderful example. But I want to thank those people. We have Travis, Carmen, Karina, Abbey, so many people. Thank you very much for doing this. This is great. Please give them a round of applause. Yeah. Yeah, so many behind the scenes. You know, some people are still cleaning up. Yeah. So yeah, in the city of Burlington, there are so many great things happening. And it's about all ballot items. That's what the council is working on. So we have one. That's about the non-citizen voting. There will be one about rank voting. There will be several ones. So the Charity Change Committee is very busy. As you probably know also, the hole on the ground will no longer be a hole on the ground anymore, soon. Let's hope so. Because we received a great presentation, but actually the size of the building is going down to 10 stories. And the parking around 300 parking will still be there. Yes. We also have the new roundabout that will be on Shelburne Road, you know, between Lockheed Street around that area. So the council, yes, did, I think, Tony Redington here is very happy about it. So it costs about $7 million. And what's good about it, it is the state and the federal government that will pay entirely about it. So I think that's a great, great wonderful thing. It will make Burlington more welcoming, you know, and it will reduce accidents. But the council currently are just considering a couple of options as to how do we mitigate during the construction that will take about two years. And there are some businesses there and we're working with them in making sure that their businesses will keep on running. That's true. Yeah, there are several. But I think this one is very important and it's about Franklin Square. Many people here don't go there. But as you probably know, it has been forgotten for years, over 10 years between the city and Burlington Housing Authority. But under the leadership, our leadership, you know, the city took it back up and now the city is working with Burlington Housing Authority for the city to own now that street. We're talking about making it better snow removal and all of that. So for now, I can stop on that. I'm Carol Odie and I represent one of the two reps from District 6-1, which is a far new north end. So tonight I thought I'd fill you in about what's happening at UVM. UVM's Board of Trustees has 25 members. Two are appointed by the governors. Excuse me, three are appointed by the governor. Nine are self-perpetuating. Two are students, one undergrad and one grad. The governor and the president serve Exoficio on the board. And then the 150 state representatives and 30 state senators vote for nine legislative trustees. And last winter I ran to be one of the nine legislative trustees and I won. I've been serving since the late winter. So at our last board meeting we visited Innovation Hall, which is a new place where the sciences are taught, among other things. And we went to two different classrooms and one was a large classroom where physics is taught. And after the lesson is taught by the professor, the students sit together at tables and the professors, the professor goes around to the students and when there's a problem that they're having, that they're having trouble solving, then the professor makes notes on a, like an iPad type thing and then it's projected on screens all around the room so the kids can see what their fellow students are having trouble with and they can learn better. And I know this works because we have a wonderful teacher, many wonderful teachers in our school system and one of them is Mr. Trombley, Norm Trombley who teaches math at the high school and when I was on the school board I visited many classrooms and one of them was his and he teaches math the exact same way as that. He teaches a short lesson in algebra, for example and then the kids start their homework and then as they are, you know, when I was in school I would have trouble with my homework as soon as I think, well, yeah, that looks good and then I'd go home and try to do the math and I got stuck. And so Mr. Trombley knew that and he knows that and he has the kids start their homework right in class and then when they're having trouble he stops everybody and he goes up to the board and he has one or two students go and show their work so that they can learn the math. So and another thing that's happening there is chemistry is something where a lot of kids were dropping out of chemistry after taking Chem 1 at UVM and so a new professor who is the new chair of the department who actually lives on Staniford Road he aligned the curriculum with what's happening in the labs so that the kids would learn a subject matter like reduction oxidation which is when things rust and then they do the experiment that had to do with that topic in their lab. As a result, kids are understanding chemistry better and instead of only about 200 kids going from Chemistry 1 to Chemistry 2 now 750 kids are going from Chemistry 1 to Chemistry 2. So that's a little of what I've observed and I look forward to bringing more information from you about UVM when my time is up. Hi, I'm Bob Hooper. I sit in 6-1 with Carol. I am in the middle of sort of writing something up on course form so I'll just hit the top from the top and you can read it there. In the middle of starting to type it, my space bar went so Best Buy Now has my laptop for a couple of weeks. In the two minutes, I've been meeting on F-35 concerns. We met with the airport recently. We also met with the National Guard. A lot of information was transferred from the domain of this is what's going on to this is what people think is going on and this is what we can do. This is what we can't do. It's a pretty complicated process that's pretty far down the road I think as far as change. Another thing that has come on my radar is the Living Well, what used to be Champlain Valley Agency on Aging with them a couple of days ago on their programs, very worthwhile. Some of you might have seen on Facebook a little thing about the convention of states that I'm hearing from people about and I think all legislators are. It's a weird thing where under Article 5 of the Constitution people were trying to get the states to basically take back a lot of power. The weird thing about it is you're hearing one proposal from people on the left and their proposal from people on the right. Personally after doing some investigation I think it's the people that are really anti-Federal government that are driving both groups to try to ask for something that either one of them are going to be happy with. One care is something that's on our radar because it's a member of the State Employees Insurance Group. They just had a little realisation from Blue Cross Blue Shield that they were transferring everybody into it kind of without anybody's knowledge. It's something that's really sort of puzzling at this point. Last year the auditor's office wanted to look at it and couldn't. So it's on my radar is something that we should probably be looking at as supposedly costing us less but nobody at this point is really able to explain to me how. So you can eye on Front Courts Forum. I'll try to put something up there soon. Hi there. I'm Geno Sullivan. I am State Rep for 6-2 which is the old and new North End. So a couple of projects that are now coming back up to the floor. John Gallacchi from South Burlington and I are working on recovery home legislation in the General Housing and Military Affairs Committee. This is something I've been doing. I've had this bill on the wall for maybe four years and I think we've got consensus. The two parts of the bill. It's about recovery homes. In the opioid crisis we have a real need for sober homes and recovery homes. And two challenges. Technically you can cite a recovery home in a residential area but it doesn't actually specifically say that in the legislation. So what happens is recovery home wants to or a sober house well it comes in and says okay I'd like to open up an establishment and then there's immediately a zoning challenge which then just costs a bunch of money for the lawyers to go and argue and eventually it comes out that yes you can have this it's perfectly zoned. So what we've done is basically we're putting in new language in the legislation and there shouldn't be too much problem with that just making it very very clear so that challenge we can save that money. The bigger challenge is eviction and it is a challenge because when you're going into a recovery situation you have people who are on suboxone, you have people who are not on suboxone, you've got people who are no medical, medically assisted treatment. So within that construct they all sign a pledge to maintain their therapy whatever that may be and if they violate that pledge then they have to be out of that community. That's understood within the therapeutic community. The challenge is how do you write that up in landlord-tenant language so it doesn't then affect all of the years of work on landlord-tenant that we have and that and threading that needle is turning, that's what's been on the wall for four years. I think we've come to some agreement with all of the parties and I know we'll get the zoning through this year. I'm not sure we're still talking among ourselves as to whether we can get that language on the actual, if you violate the terms, eviction because you can't keep someone in a situation if they're out of sync with the recovery home and if they're violating their requirements and they're there for 30 days, that will be completely, it will not be helpful for the rest of the other tenants. So we're sorting that out. The other thorny thing we're doing in general housing and military affairs is two things. One, I've always worked on the issue about keeping the women and our national guards safe and we have a report that comes every year on sexual assault, harassment and general annoying behavior. It's really not enough. We've always known we needed something more and this year we got through an agreement, a gender report that really talked about the difference in gender. Yes, it's binary male-female at this point but it clearly points out why women in the national guard last about, they last about one rotation and then they get out of the guard because it's not conducive for them to have the military career they want. And that gender report really shows that so the first thing we've got is the gender report was a negotiation from last year. This year we're going to make it a mandatory within the... within the report. And the other thing, and this is going to be a tougher one and I'm hoping we can get convinced people, but the legislature hires the adjunct in general which means that the legislature is responsible for the safety of every single guard member we have in the state. That means every... and particularly every single female guard member. And I might remind you that last year when we had an expose in Vermont Digger we found out that the environment was so bloody bad that even the beloved chaplain was a predator. So let's be clear, the women who are volunteering for the guard need better safety and we need to get it for them. So what we're going to do is there's a position we want to put in the adjunct general's office but it would pay for by the state dealing with gender diversity. Thank you. Monica Ivancic, ward seven. And I wanted to let you know that, and most of you already know, that on Wednesday, November 6th, we got notice from our superintendent, Yawa Bain, that as of end of this fiscal year he will be stepping down as our superintendent. He was... his original contract went for another year but we got this notice and I'd like to share with you a statement that the board had prepared. The Burlington board of school commissioners thanks superintendent O'Bank for his many accomplishments in serving the Burlington community during his five-year tenure. Under his leadership, the district's finances are stronger than they have been in many years. Our student voice is robust and engaged. Our district's commitment to an equitable and diverse workforce is steadfast. A 21st century 10-year capital improvement plan was created and initiated and the re-envisioning of our high school and tech center is moving forward. The Burlington school district is poised for a future success thanks in part to his leadership. The board respects superintendent O'Bank's desire for new challenges and looks forward to his continued executive leadership for the remainder of this school year. The Burlington school board is prepared to immediately engage in a thorough nationwide search for our next superintendent and is committed to ensuring a smooth transition for our district. And I'll likely, my co-commissioners here, they are the chairs of the superintendent search committee. They will share more with you about that search. Carol brought up a math feature at the high school. I wanted to mention a different math feature at the high school, Mr. Amowa, who is African and he uses song to teach kids math until the kids get reinforced the math by singing with him about it, which is kind of cool. Another thing that's going on in the high school tomorrow, the next day and Saturday, is a musical play called You're in Town. And I was told that it's not for elementary school kids, but middle and high school kids and older are okay to go. The plays are at 7 p.m. Thursday, Friday, Saturday, $5 for students and seniors and $10 for adults. I'm Kendra Sowers, school commissioner in North District. I want to talk a little bit about the BHS-BTC re-envisioning project that is still underway. We are getting some new designs and with the new designs we're looking at the costs associated with it. I wanted to invite you all. There's a meeting tomorrow night at 5.30 in the BHS Cafe where you can actually see all the schematics, meet with the project manager. They're going to give you a lot of details you can ask any questions. So it's a really great way of finding information out about the project. This happens every month. And you can always find information about that meeting on our BSD-BT website. I'm not sure about December though, so just check when that is. I also want to talk about its budget season. And so we are meeting with a lot of stakeholders. Last night we had information at our public board meeting from principals, what they're needing in the variety of schools. We also want to hear from you all. So there's a link online on the website as well for your feedback. If you have thoughts about, you know, programs that you would like to see added. If you want to have ideas of what you think that we could take away or any innovative ideas, we'd love to hear them. So please give us your feedback. And also on that website, just go to the website. There's this new video that was shown last night at the board meeting, which is really cool. It's a wonderful overview of our schools. It really shows the diversity. It shows a lot of the teachers that have been discussed tonight. It shows some of the innovative programming like the city and lake semester that we're now offering. So I'd love for you all to look at it, invite you to look at it, and see all the great things that we're doing in our schools. The last thing I want to talk about is there's a French immersion community meeting Tuesday, December 3rd, also on our website. There's a joint venture with the French Embassy and our schools, which is kind of cool. There's a grant. It's really just an initial meeting to see the interest in the community. The grant also is looking for community people who want to be certified in that program. The funds are provided through that grant. So if you would like to just hear more about it or are interested in the program, please come. It's at Hunt. It's at 6 p.m. again on December 3rd. Thank you. Hi, I'm Martín Guilagour for School Commissioner. I'm going to bookend our discussion. Ali thanked the dinner committee, and I want to thank the steering committee for all you do for the MPA. You guys work hard and do a great job. Thank you. I don't have too much else to add, except that we are going into budget season, and some of you may know that we were hoping to negotiate a multi-year teacher's contract this year, but that is not going to happen because the Vermont NEA and the VSBA are kind of in a bind right now in terms of negotiating health care costs. So it is now in the hands of an arbitrator, and we will find out what his decision is on December 15th, and at that point we will be able to hopefully work on a multi-year contract, but it remains to be seen. We're kind of waiting on what comes at that meeting and his decision. Thank you so much for listening to us, and I guess are we taking questions? Hey, Kendra, what were you... I'm interested in the French. Can you talk a little bit about what the people would do? I don't know if I would fit in that, but our family is really interested in French culture and French language. Yeah, it's really... I mean, it's the initial meeting about it, so we don't know a ton of details, but it was to gauge the interest in an immersion program. I believe at the middle school level, which is why it's being at Hunt, but we're also needing community members to engage in that. So they want to know... they want to know what the interest level is in the community, and they want to know if there's any community members who are interested in becoming certified through that program. So we're trying to find out what the agenda items and the goals specifically are for the meeting, and I will hope to post that on Front Porch Forum to let you guys know more details, but please reserve the date. For the school commissioners, what you read tonight, is that part of a settlement with the superintendent? The statement you read and the resignation of the superintendent of schools, is that part of some kind of a settlement? You can't say, right? No, that wasn't a settlement. That was just a board statement. Was there a settlement with him? Oh, oh, is there a settlement? No. No, not at this juncture. No. He's going to finish off this year and get paid through this year, and then... Right. No settlement, no agreement. Right. Thank you. Sorry, that was a media statement that was given after the resignation from the board. Hey, Ali, you mentioned the roundabout where on Shelburne Road is the roundabout. Is it near King Street? I mean, is it near King Street? Yes. Because you know that... I'm curious why that project got picked, if you could talk a little bit about it, because the accident rate there is really almost non-existent, even though it's poorly designed. So I'm just curious how it got the federal funding. I mean, I think it's through the Vermont V-trans, the Vermont Transportation, and the city basically has not a lot to do about it. And I think it is this type of thing that they would want to see improved. And I think the benefits are more for the city of Burlington. And most of the time, many of these projects are paid by the city. And I think for this specific one, it is really to prevent from fatalities to happen, because it could happen anytime. It's also designed in a way that the underground of that roundabout, the current roundabout, is so messy. It's old, and I think we have a chance right here to get a new one, an upgraded one. And maybe Tony can speak more about it later. Would you do a presentation? Yes, so you stay tuned. Tony will talk about it in detail today, right? Perfect. Any other questions for the elected officials? I think we need questions. Otherwise, we'll just talk. This is also city questions, also for Ali. I'm wondering if the city council has addressed Vermont Trans plan to add an additional rail line in front of one main street, and whether or not the city council or the current administration can apply any pressure to, or plan to apply any pressure to try to find an alternative area to do that. Thank you for that question, and I think it's one of the biggest issues the city is currently dealing with. Personally, the city and VTRAN, we are working in making sure if there are all the alternative. Instead of our waterfront, how about Essex or how about Centalba? And also we are working in making sure that the VTRAN, even if they have two tracks, they won't be able to build trains on our waterfront for environmental issues, for quality of life issues, for access issues, for our bike lane, for many, many, many things. And I think what is good about this in my own perspective, this is only me. We brag about climate change. We brag about being a progressive city. We brag about all of this. But personally, I do think this would be great for the city. Think about it. How many of us go to New York through other areas, through New York? Taking the train in, how do you call it? The capital of New York. It's not New York City. Albany, all the way, driving three hours. That's one. Think about also the economic gain that the city of Burlington could have if we have a stop there. Think about how easy it would be for the economy, for tourists to come here, for tourists to stop, for tourists to visit. But I think there are good sizes about it. But the downsize is just the quality of life issue that this might have on residents, small portion of residents. It would be. And the second thing is also our bike lane will be removed. Even though the bike lane is on the federal in the federal lane, we did work with them to have it, to have access to it. But I personally do think if I was a mayor, I would push to have it. This is personally just me. While we work on making sure it won't affect people that much. To me, economically, it's good. Environmentally, it's perfect. That's just me. So that's one of the things that we are looking for. And I think that's a great question. You can stop here, but there may not be an overnight. Maybe the federal Interestingly, I was at the ward 2, because I represent ward 2 and 3 also. And at the ward 2 and 3 NPA, the other evening Kurt was there who's chair of transportation. He said that as far as the overnight is concerned, the absolute goal is to get up to St. Alvin's. So their state plan is to fix that rail up to St. Alvin's and that's where the overnight is going to be. And the other issue that he did highlight is the reason why they need that extra rail is because Vermont rail they move their operations or make accommodations. So there's some pushback that could be occurring on that one too. But the overnight in the long run within 12 months, not five years down the road, but my understanding was within 12 months they would actually be overnight against St. Alvin's. Hi, Ali. I just wanted to ask so in regards to hearing from the business community around city hall park and its design and the progress it's going, have you heard anything from the business community in regards to kind of the impact of the project and how long it's going on? Personally, no. But I think when we were debating this issue the business community, most of them almost 95, 97 percent was in favor to have this newly designed $6 million park. I am pretty sure the effects of having the park currently as it is due to construction will certainly have some effect. But the good thing also having this park construction currently going on at least there is no homeless people experiencing homelessness hanging out there. And I think it brings some type of level of safety especially now it is getting darker earlier and the park no one is hanging out around there. But I do personally think it's a great thing for the city. I agree with that. I'm also speaking between tongues because I'm also representing the Burlington farmers market just knowing that we've heard there's a huge impact on those businesses in regards to not us being present and everything else. But also we are as the farmers market are also deeply impacted because we don't see the design fitting for us to be coming back. And so that's one of the things we want to bring up is that that's at stake right now for us in terms of a return to 2021. Yeah. So I think that's a great question. And I think when we were really having this debate the farmers market expressed they knew that even maybe when the park is over it's designed they might not come back there. There is a possibility. And I think we're looking into Memorial Auditorial. There is something also that the city is working on and soon we will be having a presentation about it. Yeah. Yes. But I think I like also the current place where it is on Pine Street personally. Thank you everybody. Thank you elected officials. Great part that you guys can all be here. We appreciate it. Yeah. You guys are staying and we're going to start a discussion about the state budget. So we brought we got visual aids because numbers are boring but I think fascinating in my own little way. So what we're going to do is we have two charts and our job is in 20 minutes or less to basically explain the state budget. So what we've done is Bob is going to talk about dollars in. I'm going to talk about dollars out and this first pie chart where our 6.1 budget. So this is a complicated thing and 15 minutes is like a breath. Process wise this is where the money sort of goes how it gets to this point legislative process wise is a lot of people think governor puts a budget together but the governor puts a budget proposal together and it comes to the committees in the house and the senate to fund it to reallocate it decide where your money is going to be spent. Tremendous amount of pressure on those things one thing I'd like to say at the beginning is there are a couple committees in the house one's ways and means they decide where the money is going to come from what get taxed and how much that sort of thing the other is appropriations which decides where it's going to go and if you ever sit in the house you see these people disappearing all the time as they go back to their committee room and eat lunch do everything it's an all encompassing task they're going to start meeting next week everybody else is not going to start until January 7th but that's that's kind of the work that goes into this as we go around the horn here federal funds come in a lot of that is match money match to a lot of the general fund stuff state taxes that you pay sales tax your property tax education directed funding over here special funds are there are a lot of them and they don't really make up that much of the budget in total transportation money which is often directed back to transportation projects although some of it now has been redirected out of the transportation fund to other places that's sort of how the pie is initially set up I contacted the chair of the appropriations committee and asked her what kind of pressures are going to be on the budget this year and she sent me two pages of these are things that are going to be considered just because of stuff that we're thinking about minimum wage it's like okay everybody's minimum wage go up to 15 bucks you probably heard last year that the roll out of that is it's going to severely impact Medicaid funding because a lot of the projects that we fund are based upon how much people are paid when they are providing the services that we're offering so there's so many dominoes all when we make one choice over here that rolls on to something else that although Jean loves the numbers I think she'll even have a challenge of getting it all together in 10 minutes that's true okay so this is where the money goes and I'm going to sit down and I'm going to cheat so the point I want to make here this is our budget and going through you're looking at your natural resources and transportation debt and pay act the labor cost your education which is 28% of our budget that's the very long all pre-K to 12 education all the education expenses that's the lion that is 20% of our total budget now resources, corrections and Medicaid and what Bob was talking about was with the advent of a $15 minimum wage as that happens our Medicaid costs start going up we lose Medicaid protection is police fire after police and then we have the small and the very general government so when you look at all of this the governor is saying he's concerned about $30 million shortfall he's asking all his departments to come in at a lower I believe it's a 20% a 20% lower budget now we've got a 1.38 rate of inflation right now so we're in a low inflation situation however every single one of these budgets is impacted by cost of living increases planned pay raises which are negotiated with the union and all of the other additional costs that come in every year so even though when you hear the governor is asking for a 20% reduction in budget you're really looking at 25 to 26% by the time you factor in both inflation and all of the other inflationary factors built into a budget Professor that's $1 out of every 4 25% seems like a mystery number but when we talk about money that comes from the state to fix our roads and bridges and yada yada yada that's a significant cut that he's proposing so those are the challenge and you can see there aren't a lot of moving parts to this budget there really aren't and when you start digging into Medicaid or start digging into education we're not talking about a budget with vast amounts of fat in it this is a pretty lean budget and it's been a pretty lean budget for years the key to this is and it's the hardest answer is economic development we need more people here we need more taxes we need more businesses here and we need a better business environment a better business environment is not that we is one where we have hands-on learning for small business 45% of all of our businesses in the state of Vermont have 4 employees are under what would be ideal is a more aggressive commerce department that puts on classes and works closely with those small businesses bookkeeping employment services how do they train all of the kind of training dollars workforce development for small businesses for all of the things we need to do with this economy because we're not going to cut our way out of this budget and on December 4 where the three of us your state reps will be down in the legislature that's when the joint fiscal office will give us their estimate of what's going on with the economy the state economists will give us an overview of what's going on and joint fiscal will run through every single budget and what the strains are and we'll be able to report back to you with that report in the January meeting and that will make sure we get it to you online because it really is a printed report and it's really thorough but it lays out the groundwork of what the challenges are yeah so I guess we're up to the questions although I'll emphasize what Jean said most of the things that you make sure the cheerleaders didn't come back most of the things that you see in that pie graph that we had are not discretionary there are things that basically have to be paid every year so she's 100% right, the margin of things that can be pushed and shoved around is relatively small and to further emphasize the point that Jean made we're working on the implementation of the Vermont Secure Green Mountains Secure Retirement Plan which is a plan that allows small employers to offer their employees retirement benefits through a plan that we cooked up under federal regulation and we just got numbers the other day I think close to 97% of the employers in Vermont have 50 or less employees so we're really talking a state that thrives on business only 11% of the working population of Vermont has what we would consider adequate retirement planning 11% so that's Medicare that's Medicaid that's all of the all of the costs of helping people in their old age on a fixed income with not enough money so all of these things are important and they're just challenging and the other thing we would talk about earlier too is the changes, the federal changes I won't go into it but there's a thread of pardon me hold on one second it just explained briefly and this is just scary this is a very this is a real and present thing so in addition to being on the steering committee my day job is at Hunger Free Vermont and Representative O'Silvan and I before this we're talking about some of the various threats that are coming from the Trump administration obviously at Hunger Free Vermont we're very concerned about the threats to Three Squares Vermont which is our state SNAP or food stamps program there have been three threats at the federal level in the last 12 months and what's interesting is a lot of these threats have actually tried to put through the farm bill Congress rejected them and now they're trying a different way to try to change the rules Representative Hoover was just saying I'm trying to change his policy two of these threats have been to eligibility for Three Squares Vermont the one that is really concerned about trying not to jump too far into the process of this but it would affect 26,000 well about 68% of all households that are on Three Squares Vermont right now would see their benefits cut and it's tied to the state does a really good job of making sure that Vermonters can meet their high heating costs as we all experience this week in addition to making sure that you can actually afford food and so it's a really cruel timing for the rollout that says even more cruel in addition to the 68% of households that would be affected by a cut 80% of households that have an older Vermonter or a person with a disability would see a cut and what Representative O'Sullivan was talking about this would result in 26 million dollars in federal funds being removed from the Vermont economy that's not counting the multiplier effect of people going out and spending money at the local retailers 26 million is right there so this is a huge potential threat to the funding for the state as well and I'm hoping I'm summarized what you wanted perfect because what's going to happen with that is we're not going to thank you we should but honestly it that means we're going to have the state of Vermont is not going to let our people starve we'll end up making that money in the budget Eric Bunson I'd like some clarification on your statements with regards to the proposed $15 minimum wage from what you were saying it sounded like you were saying the $15 an hour minimum wage was too expensive for the state and I'd like some clarification on that or maybe I just misunderstood you no I don't think that I mean drive two miles from here up to McDonald's and you're finding people are offering 13 I think even 14 at one point dollars for people to come in I won't say what but there is a roll out because when we pay take your Howard mental health services through Medicaid to provide service to an affected population if we raise the minimum wage that they're going to be paying the state needs to be aware that there's going to be a pass through the wage back to the grant that we're paying them so the point is that when you make a change to something here there's a domino over here that's going to fall that you also have to take into consideration so raising a wage a buck you look out in the community and say well that's not going to affect the state that's going to affect private employers it's not because we also are an employer through other parties so there's costs that are a little bit not at the same time which is all true that that has the effect of employers and state funding that also means that any dollar that's paid to a worker the people who are working the minimum wage are not saving this money it's going right back into the economy so it's never a simple yes or no if you look at the macro of it it makes sense to raise our minimum wage so that we can have a survivable economy I've said for a while I think the minimum wage argument is an economic stimulus package particularly for small businesses because you know if you're walking into the shortstop down here somebody's going to buy this, that and the other thing because they all of a sudden have money in their pocket and that gets rolled around in the economy two or three times it's a good time so I have a finishing comment and then a question actually for you as well so like Representative O'Sullivan said the state is fighting hard against that proposal but the way that all of us can help fight it I'll make sure that goes out on front porch form as well it's a huge impact for Vermont so it's really important it actually would hurt Vermont the most in the country which is really crazy too so we're really hoping we can get as many comments opposing it as possible now for a more selfish reason you had mentioned the minimum wage another thing that was up in the legislative session last year was the paid family and medical need that would again have some budget implications any ideas on how that looks for the session they're both going to hit the floor of the house in January the governor is softening on his stance and had said the current one is he had the voluntary private plan and he's still holding on to the concept of voluntary but now he's saying well maybe we could start in voluntary and then make it required so if you're seeing some movement my understanding from leadership is that they'll both be teed up almost instantaneously and we are hoping we will have a veto proof majority on both of them thanks very much thank you both and now we will go to the coalition seeking redesign of Champlain Parkway Bunny Reddington and Steve Goodkind anyway for those that are still awake out there this won't be a presentation of just the design of Southern Connection we've got something much more important to talk about that's happened in the last what happened a month ago but it's just been announced recently as all of us know the Southern Connection product's been around for a long time and you've heard recently it's the window out to be going to be built real soon it's all going well Tony and I are part of a group called the Pine Street Coalition challenging not that there shouldn't be a project but this particular project is not the product that the city should be building in fact when I was Public Works Director the city fought for three years against this specific project the biggest problem being it takes care of traffic down in the home Flint Avenue area but then it takes it all up through Pine Street Maple Street King Street neighborhood it's always been a no-no for the project federal government forces upon us that's the roof we at the last it really is the last minute thing challenged the final decision to put the product out to bid we filed papers in federal court we listed about five different reasons why the project had problems one of them was something that we had tried to argue back when I was Public Works Director it's something called environmental justice what environmental justice says is you don't build a project that disproportionately impacts low-income and minority neighborhoods and the project never had that problem in the past because it always went around those neighborhoods but the current design goes go right through it through that Pine Maple Street area anyway we heard from the Justice Department that they thought that their stuff was in good shape except they did agree surprisingly with our claim about environmental justice they said yes you're right that hasn't been looked at so they asked us to put our suit aside and let them go back and see what they can come up with and see what kind of environmental justice issues it might be they asked for 90 days 90 days went by their attorney for Department of Justice called our attorney and said we need more time we're going to file papers and ask you for more time we're all for that the longer it takes to build the wrong thing the better we ask for more time we'll send you the paperwork we sent over the paperwork our attorney faxed it or emailed it to me and Tony didn't read it because she was doing something else she thought she knew what it said so I said okay I'll read it on page 4 was what I think the most astounding statement and maybe the most important thing that's happened in this other connector in 10 years what it said was on October 11th 2019 the Federal Highway Administration and the Vermont Department of Transportation would be trans filed a notice in the Federal Register that the Record of Decision this is a document that certifies this project and authorizes it to be built the Record of Decision from 2010 has been rescinded that means this project has nothing now to talk about it going forward and going forward in this fashion is gone and it's something we didn't even quite expect but I think it opens up a great opportunity now to get the right project built we can now go back hopefully and if the city will cooperate and get a project that does good we should need some traffic release leave in that area but not a project that does the bad things going through the wetlands and going through the neighborhood so it's a blessing in disguise I think the mayor really has to wake up about this and realize this is what we want but we can get the project that we want and the project that we've always supported and not have to do something we don't want only later to have to do another project to fix that so that's something the news has been slow to pick up on it I think CX might have had something last night but you're probably hearing this most people will be hearing this for the first time but no matter what you hear this project lacks a Record of Decision which means it lacks everything to move forward not a dollar is allowed to be spent now and I think the public work director said everything's fine it's going to go forward soon that's just so much malarkey not going anywhere fast in this form as far as we can tell hopefully it's going to come out as a much better project we're not nimbies, we're not saying no project but a project that goes through that neighborhood as far as I'm concerned is off the table should be off the table the city as I said argued against this project years ago so it isn't like this is something we're thinking of the city's official position to be against this but they've gone along with the building because they thought they had no choice and one thing this also seems to allow now is, and you've heard the mayor say this if you don't go ahead with the project we could have to pay the money back millions of dollars that have been spent developing the project I don't think that was probably going to happen but let's say it was with this new development the project is going to go back hopefully if you look that again the city asked it to go back it's because the Department of Justice said it had to go back so we're probably free of that worry about having to pay any money back we're doing a new design to me this is the best of all worlds under the circumstances and I think a lot of people feel that way and a lot of people will be relieved by this even in his heart of hearts I think the mayor might even be relieved by it because he was going to be doing something which even he knew was not really a good thing he had come up with another project in the future I don't have to do that anymore so that's nothing more exciting than looking at the design or thinking about what ideas there are there's plenty of good ideas out there they'll hopefully get vetted as this goes through another process but I think there's real hope now we're going to get a good project where the needs need to be met we'll get them the project was going to do harm it won't be a project in there anymore I think we'll all be proud of that as hard as you are thank you Steve Tony Reddington first I'll just mention that we have three pieces of literature on the back table this is some comments on that were submitted on environmental justice by citizens and individuals pick up a copy on the back table this is an overall you know explanation of some key issues of the parkway for example on the front page here you notice there's a separate walk and bike facility and a road there is not a single inch of sidewalk in the $47 million expenditure there's not a single inch of separate bikeway and that's a real concern obviously the walk bike council why they supported and have supported our plan street group since we began four years ago about 200 people and we've been at this for four years and finally we'll talk about the ground briefly and by the way roundabout conversions are supported by ARP, AAA GEICO primarily because they reduce serious fatal injuries by about 90% okay the roundabout down at the what the community calls down the south end they call this the intersection of death so there is a real concern both Steve and I were at ward 6 during a presentation last month on the roundabout the reason it costs $9 million and because roundabouts are expensive to build the fact is there's 37,000 feet of utilities under that particular intersection and if you're going to work on the intersection you really need to be one and done in terms of getting all the utilities sorted out so the key reason the particular project is a safety project under federal highway legislation and it was our senator Jeffords who put the word roundabout for the first time in federal statute it's on a list of safety safety projects that you can be funded at 100% so it's very ironic that the first I think first roundabout that's being constructed in Vermont is using those Jeffords monies that Jeffords provision that was put in statute in 2005 and actually Governor Scott was part of just had some input with the senator at that time okay so if this project this particular roundabout at the King Street at the King Street School Christ the King Street School and Sheldon's Sheldon Road, St. Paul and South Willard that would be about the fourth highest crash location according to the agency of transportation in the state of Vermont Burlington has 20 intersections 19 of them are signalized that have average 1.5 injuries a year this particular intersection is not on the list why because they've taken that out because they've got to build the roundabout okay there'll be an opportunity for questions but I think that gives the reason why that project's being done and the you can put in a mini roundabout which is we don't go into detail here for about $15 $75,000 so they'd all the cost of this particular one is I'll call it a little unusual little high if you look at the so the environmental document that was rescinded on October 11th it's 340 pages it's all available to you on the DPW website you can go and read all the certain sections but it dates back to the early about the 2002 345 period the census that they used is 2000 we've got a census and we've got one coming up this next year the traffic data is totally out of date if you read this particular document there is I think the word safety there's 10 times in 340 pages there's no discussion of safety there's no discussion whatsoever of climate change what we call now the climate emergency not a paragraph yet we have one of the most advanced climate action plants here in the city another way to look at this is this document which we found in the case of environmental justice is so out of date that and this one item alone is enough to get it kicked out of kicked back to take another examination it looks like our best estimate is it's going to be in January that they say the federal people say we're going to come back and to the court because we are in U.S. District Court right now they may ask they say that we'll tell you the court then whether we want another three months and we found a court case on D-Day the 6th of June we may not even get a chance to sit down and discuss a schedule for this challenge to this very document that got pulled last month until next June we have we want to see a quality project a street that people can love in which this generation has a chance to sit down and participate the original purpose and need for this project was to move cars basically from the interstate to downtown I-189 to downtown that makes no sense today what needs to be done is a street that serves the needs of the neighborhood rather than needs of getting from the interstate to downtown so I guess to summarize we've been at this about four years we firmly believe that the two things that are missing in this project in addition to environmental justice there's no provision for people who walk and bike to have a safe pathway whether you're going to school or you're going to work you should have a separate bikeway like here in the north avenue plan the plan up here basically is the model for the for the parkway there'll be protected bike lanes not these painted lines but you have some protected bike lane throughout the corridor and secondly safe around about the key intersections stop here and take some questions would you mention on north and south Wenuski Avenue slightly I don't think people are aware that live out here the impact that may have on them is they want to go downtown I've been following this fairly closely because I live on north Wenuski Avenue basically the proposal is to have some type of protected bike lanes from top to bottom and there's a network on the part of the city to take parking away from entirely one side from the other side at where the health center is all the way down to Howard Street at the bottom that's going to run into a really huge opposition of the hearing that was held last week I do not know how this is going to work out I'm primarily concerned about that there should be some kind of bike facilities that benefit and help businesses that may be on the sidewalk level rather than the street level and secondly at the intersections I almost got killed at Pearl and north Wenuski a guy diving to make coming down north Wenuski's hanging a left to go up to the hill and dives in just as the red lights coming on we need to do something to make our intersections safe Pearl is one of the crash 20 intersections that has more than one injury a year so I think that there's an understanding that we need to make improvements to Wenuski Avenue all I can suggest is you can follow this there will be more another public meeting another draft report hope that you'll I would ask that some of your representatives of those concerned about transportation of your HAA a little bit comes to mind and some others that are active Griffin is another one and encourage them to get back to you and to monitor this process this this project has been obviously in the works for decades and I guess I'm really confused as to the actual goal you say it used to be to move traffic from 89 to downtown it doesn't appear at least for you guys is an opinion that that's what's needed or wanted now I don't understand what the purpose of this road is you're using words like bicycles and pedestrians and this was supposed to be a road to move cars maybe talk to us about your vision of what this crazy thing is supposed to do because it doesn't sound like it has anything to do with the original intention and it sounds like you're proposing just a road you're you're on the right track when the road was first proposed it looked like an interstate an extension of the interstate all the way up to battery street isolated from pine street it's changed and that's part of the problem the road through the barge canal was probably not buildable what's happened is now the road that was built for cars now is being directed into a neighborhood that's the problem and there's ways around most of that but that's not what the federal government wanted to allow us to do now we may have an opening to go back and look at alternatives don't go through the neighborhood and still move cars but doesn't disproportionately affect the neighborhood just as a very simple example there'll be relief there'll be traffic on Flynn and home avenues their traffic will decrease by about 79% on pine street it will increase by 37% so the low income neighborhood gets a significant increase the non-low income neighborhood gets a significant decrease that would be the exact opposite of the definition of environmental justice so the project's running into a problem because it really was designed for cars and so there's ways around that if the city will be flexible and it might turn out that we don't even need that roadway in the northern part of the project my view would be it would end at Flynn Avenue that would be it everything that happens from Flynn Avenue north is mostly negative things it deals with wetlands deals with hazardous waste and deals with neighborhood issues just forget it call it a day that's my personal view now I don't call the shots there to be a process to go through but that would probably be a project to do just about as much good as it could do and do as least harm it to do and just have to realize you're not going to push traffic through a neighborhood in this day and age there's laws against it so that's the way things a couple of other quick things the traffic's actually declined since 2000 on both Shelban Road north of Flynn and also it's declined on Pine Street whereas large increases are projected so part of that purpose and need it isn't as strong as it was and secondly since the roadway couldn't go through directly to the batteries because of that and that's because of the Superfund site and the routing had to go now through existing streets that's another reason why we should draw back and redraft and that's we're talking about the community attitude and Steve was I think at the same meeting I was when they brought up the self in plan BTV almost unanimous opposition to that time to the parkway that was three years ago there's no real support for it down there what is the street that you bring up behind you in the picture that's Pine Street right at Maple you could put one of those in there a couple of weeks it's a mini roundabout and it would go from roughly 5 or 6 excuse me it's about 8 or 10 minute wait right now every afternoon and it would drop to around 30 to 40 seconds this was done by an engineer who'd developed the first roundabout in Vermont it's AARP's report following a 3-day workshop in 2014 and that is a service, that particular design service for all vehicles we can do this next week I thought one of the original reasons we were doing this thing was the traffic on Flynn Avenue with the trucks so in any redesign wouldn't we still want to have something just funnel those trucks the road to nowhere, finish it and the road to nowhere will go just the industrial parkway that's where they're going and then that's it historically the project would always there was always a possibility the project could have built in segments the road to nowhere could have been a stand alone project but for political reasons to go way back in the project's history we decided that those that wanted all of it said we'll not finish any of it until we can get it all and they sort of are holding everybody hostage not finishing the road to nowhere and the theory was if they did that that would probably take the pressure off building the rest of the road and that sort of stuck but there's no reason there's no reason why the road could not be to nowhere built put a street back where Briggs and Batchel there have been torn up in their gravel now there's nothing stopping that from happening except the will to actually do it and that's it we're hoping something like that might come of it and then the rest of it don't do anything until you have a better solution than they're proposing to do right now all right, thank you both we're going to stick with our agenda and Matt is coming up now to see an update on resource rate what all the people who left don't know is you're all getting discounts on your water bill I wish I could hand out a lot of city microphones you have to be right on top so my name is I am the different head for your water resources utilities your water wastewater stormwater utilities and I know we're all excited to get to the debate so I'm going to try to go as quickly as possible but still speak intelligibly intelligibly and take time for questions so bear with me go ahead so first of all I just want to make sure everybody knows where your money goes when you pay your water sewer stormwater bill what are you actually paying for we're going to talk about that and our increased capital investments and then talk about why it is that we're embarking upon this rate and affordability study this is the initial effort to just tell you about the options that we are considering we're not proposing anything nothing's being voted on this is just hey this is what we're doing for the next couple months and want to make sure that everybody here and the people who already left come to the next level of meetings and then we'll talk about the project schedule so at its basic basic level we believe that access to clean water is a human right human believes it I believe it, my people believe it and that's comprised of two things first of all we need to make sure that our stuff works our pipes work, our wastewater treatment plants work our drinking water treatment plants work but sometimes when we start to look at how much money that costs because our water is still rather cheap it can start to butt up against the affordability of services our current water is not that expensive it's probably on the higher side of Vermont and it's not much higher when you look across the nation we're pretty normal but as we start envisioning where we might go if we're really going to take care of our aging infrastructure we might have an affordability problem next slide not everybody knows this but water resources like BED, Burlington Electric is an enterprise fund it's entirely a separate fund we don't receive any taxpayer dollars in fact some of our money goes towards funding other parts of the general fund we do receive some services from them every dollar you pay on the water side has to stay in the water bucket wastewater so on and so forth we provide the three services to all of Burlington residents and we do sell a small amount of wholesale water to Colchester and that's a leftover from the 70s and 80s when we actually provided water to South Burlington, Manuski and other parts of Colchester which now are served by the Champlain Water District next slide so the water enterprise fund obviously it provides drinking water we have our own drinking water treatment plant in between the Moran plant and the Coast Guard we withdraw from Lake Champlain which is a very clean drinking water source and we treat and pump that up to the rest of the city comparatively speaking sorry I saw somebody shake their head comparatively speaking to the other source waters that the rest of the nation has to withdraw from we are in a very good position it doesn't mean we don't have problems the other piece that water provides which people don't always think about is fire protection so we have enough pumping capacity and we have sufficient pipe capacity that we can make sure that the hydrants and the sprinkler systems in large buildings have enough fire flow that if a really huge hydrant would be able to put enough fire enough water on the fire which results in improved insurance ratings next slide I do have copies of the presentation because I know we are going fast there is a lot of asset stuff on there that some of you may be interested in on the wastewater side we have often talked about it as wastewater sewage icky what it is and what we do is really water recovery you are taking clean drinking water in your toilet putting things in it it is our job to strip the dirty stuff out and try to get it as close back to good clean water before we discharge it back to the lake which again is our source water we are a one water organization it is really cool that I am able to think about storm water wastewater and drinking water because it is all the same thing getting recycled over and over again our wastewater treatment plant also does because we have a combined sewer system in some parts of the city where there is one pipe for sewer and storm water even though it doesn't always work perfectly and I will acknowledge that 2018 was not a great year when it does work we treat millions and millions and millions of gallons of storm water that if it was in a separate system like a lot of the city it would go straight to the lake with all of its dirty pollutants which leads us to next slide storm water which is the relatively speaking the baby of the three waters for a long time people thought storm water is just rain water no big deal it is clean you can look at the roadways whether it is the summer or after the winter or the spring in particular there is a lot of pollutants on the roads and that all gets washed off so even though storm water at its face is not a dirty on a queue level as wastewater it does create a load over time it generates a lot of pollutants and gets that to our water bodies and that is something that we work day in and day out to either prevent those pollutants from getting in and then on the combined sewer side we work really hard to just keep the storm water out of that pipe storm water does not want to be in the pipe it wants to be either in the ground reconnected back to its hydrologic cycle or captured in trees and evaporated off and we are always trying to figure out how to let the water be what the water wants to be which is those sorts of things next slide so I said a big part of our job is making sure we are taking care of our infrastructure and you can see for a long time FY 13 we were spending some amount on capital investment but not nearly enough and starting in about FY 17 that is when we had the support of Burlington voters the water bond and we started to really start fixing our water pipes and then starting in this year FY 20 with the support of the wastewater the clean water resiliency plan bond we are starting to tackle some of our wastewater aging infrastructure issues and as well as get started on some combined sewer stuff now we try to keep all these costs down we apply for every grant we can we actually have a million dollar grant to tackle combined sewer storm water but nonetheless those costs plus our ever increasing operation and maintenance costs does mean that we have had modest rate increases for many of the past years with the exception of 2015 that brings us to your current bill who here knows what they pay for water sewer storm 40 bucks so pretty average but not in that kind of way about just under 50 bucks a month is your typical single family residence which uses about 400 cubic feet which is about 3000 gallons if you look at the EPA website this is way below what the nation uses so we are already doing good we are doing pretty well we are pretty similarly to what the rest of the region sort of a crunchy sensitive New England city does based on what our consultant has said but nonetheless as I said we did have last year 4.6% rate increase and when I start looking out at what I'm going to need in the next five years and part of this process is to really do that financial planning I can't say that we're not going to need these incremental modest rate increases particularly since there was a 10 year period in the 90s where we had no rate increases and I'm not even sure how anything got done that's a whole other story so the council Chippen and I were certainly had been talking about this and then the council certainly agreed every time I go to them for a rate increase oh thank you every time I would go to them with a rate increase they started to become more concerned about the supportability piece and so we ended up doing an RFP and hiring one of the top water resources rate consultants in the country to really help us look at this process to make sure we're doing the financial planning to make sure we're recovering all of the costs we need to and that we're doing it in an equitable way a residential rate payer may not be the same as a commercial rate payer that residential person needs that essential access to water whereas one could say commercial folks it's kind of part of your business commodity and you might be able to handle that cost in a different way we also want to make sure that even if we look at our rate structure we'll talk specifically about how we may change our rate structure there's also going to be those folks who are ready and in the future even with adjustments to our rate may still be paying a huge portion of their annual income just to get access to this essential amount of water and so we need to have wraparound programs folks who may already qualify for some other income-based program who may be able to show proof of that and maybe get an additional discount if it all works out so some of the things that we're looking at on the recovering costs that we have a due there's a number of different charges that we don't currently charge for that we're looking at that would primarily impact commercial entities and or new construction for instance fire protection charges those sprinkler systems that I talked about it costs us money to have the ability to pump right now people with the sprinkler system other than the fire department charges them a fee they don't get charged anything for that sprinkler system we're looking at whether or not that's possible the thing we may be looking at changing within the rate structure is if anybody ever looks closely at their BED bill or Vermont gas bill there's that customer charge or the access charge which has nothing to do with how much you use we don't have that however we have lots of fixed costs just like those folks so we're probably looking at doing some sort of fixed charge that even if somebody doesn't use water we're still recouping our costs the big piece and I think this is the piece that I'm hearing most people get excited about is our rate structure from one where everybody gets charged the exact same amount doesn't matter how much you're using to a tiered rate which is right here so if you think about that and other tiered rates that initial lifeline amount of water that initial lifeline amount of water the part that everybody needs maybe we charge a smaller amount for that and if you're able and you want to use and take a 30 minute shower have at it more revenue for me and my system but we're going to charge you more same thing with irrigation water maybe not the irrigation in the farm fields because that's growing food but irrigation for golf courses or lawns I don't have a value judgment it's totally fine if you want to green grass but maybe you're going to pay a little more for that because that's not life water if you will and then that last bit as I said the low income customers how can we leverage other programs we don't have economists but there's enough other programs out there that I think we could leverage to help get people into a discount program when they need it I'm almost to my last life what I wanted to say is I want everybody to stick with us and it's probably going to be a multi phase approach I don't want us to get stuck on what the affordability program in this first iteration doesn't do for instance we don't yet know how and I'm fairly certain from the conferences everybody has a hard time with this the renters how do you reach renters because a lot of times you're not paying the water bill directly if you are paying the water bill directly a lot of these affordability programs would help you but if you're somebody who rents and the water is part of the rent there's not a good way you're called a hard to reach customer we're not stopping we're going to keep trying to figure out how to do that whether it's through conservation programs and rolling landlords it's not going to be perfect and we don't want the enemy of the good to be perfect and like that very tight schedule we're trying to get decisions from the city council by April 2020 we're trying to go to the city council as well as stakeholders would be invited in February of 2020 with options we're going to be trying to come back to the MPA so you guys can really see if your bill could look like this it could look like this what do you guys think we've messed it up we're hoping for and then coming back to the board of finance city council to actually get them to codify and say yep that's the right structure we want and with that I will see questions they have four minutes but maybe nobody really wants to hear their opening statements it's all the same thing you want to see the battle of the debate later on okay first off thanks for coming and the breakdown of the process and what you're looking at it's very informative the one part that I was hoping to hear a little more about is all this investment the money, I mean we saw the graph the amount they were planning on spending in 2020 to reinvest and basically fix some of the problems we have with our wastewater plant and other areas where's the best place to get that information on the details of or you could just say hey I feel real confident that we're going to be able to address the problems that we've had in the past with what's been put out in the lake through this investment because I think that's how we got the vote I think that's how we got the approval is that people saw hey there's obviously a problem here everybody knows we need to invest the money yeah I actually don't know if we have a great place because it's been a bit of a whirlwind we are underway we are underway with some huge projects the disinfection system and the computerized control those were the chief things that failed in 2018 so those designs are underway and hopefully going to be implemented next year ideally before the summer season the funding source that we're using from the state is not the fastest funding source lots of hoops to jump through so it hasn't gone as fast as I would like on the combined sewer overflow piece the one million dollar grant there's six projects under design right now that will be implemented next year and another six the following year and every year we do combined sewer projects but you're right we don't have I have it in my head like a map a cool map of the city that says hey this is where all your money's going we have some I can send you something that starts to approximate it but that is a good plan that we need to we need to do a better job of selling that I'm thanking everybody for the awesome support that we got I think that was the reason I got approved too and is there a way to have the stormwater go out before the sewerage goes out into the lake so one thing that comes up a lot is sewer separation so the problem is having pardon it's not separated it's not separated in all parts of the city I have a map back there a large portion of the middle of the city and the south end is still combined you guys do have actually right over there is your combined sewer overflow at the end of GAISO so there are small portions of the new north end that are still combined the new north end did benefit it benefited from the sewer separation of the 1990s and that a large portion of the new north end is not combined anymore however that stormwater now before it was going through the plant a lot of the time it just goes straight to the lake and the river we're having to go back as part of the lake Champlain and figure out how to treat the stormwater that we took out of the wastewater it's complicated and mostly we're relying on trying to slow the stormwater down so that it can get to the plant and get to that good treatment but even this the GAISO CSO it used to go off all the time thousands of gallons and in the Halloween storm it did have a discharge but it was 4,000 gallons minuscule compared to what it used to be because of some projects we did where we took the roof water off of actually Hunt and CP Smith we did disconnect roof water because roof water is clean so we do use sewer separation in places where it makes sense but not generally when it's receiving road, gunky runoff in my opinion and I can stay, I have to pack up so I can also answer people's questions one on one very much changing topics but I'm really excited by the affordability programs is there anywhere else in the country that does this or is Firlington leading the way yet again? No we're probably not leading the way I think we're leading the way for Vermont as far as I can tell but Philly Philly actually has the most comprehensive affordability program which we would never be able to administer where they lock in your they lock in your billing rate as a percentage of your income if you're income burdened it's coming up more and more because all water utilities are in this like oh crap we have all this infrastructure and now we have to replace it so I think we'll see it more and more and I think we may even see it in Vermont more as people start to realize that their stuff is getting older and older and starting to break like it does here and I do, like I said, if anybody wants copies of their presentation I've got it there it's also online. Thank you very much and if you can help put the chairs on the racks we'd appreciate it thanks for coming everybody