 Please join us in the pleasure of being here on our quest. I'm going to lead you to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it extends. One nation under God, indivisible, with prosperity and justice for all. Thank you. There's a general review. I actually thought of her fighting G if you're thinking of a finance mission with her. She has to go for a bit, so I'm going to do that one, but she's going to be really long. I don't know if you're going to be able to do that on your own, really. Yeah? Yeah, come on. And then on the second proposal, she's going to have a favor for the end from the Republic for which they're going. So we're going to see now the fire process, and we're going to look at the discussions that we're going to do there, too. Are we going to discuss public discussion depending on whether there are hundreds of meetings that have been pumped up in the United States in the second session? So I want to ask if we're having a pressure with the Soviet upholstery potential to address these things. I would probably need to really, really look for myself. So Minnesota is probably going to transfer the Republic of Republic to the Republic to the Republic that is not already being done. If you have a comment, is it really not going to be on the agenda because then you're going to see a lot of stuff on the Republic. But with that agenda, we have our third people today as part of the September Congress and also in the special meeting to see how far such people can stay. We also have the country billboard that's 2020-22, and the billboard for the previous September 5th to guarantee a positive response. But I did have a question both the side without leaving my own. Is it from September 27th? Okay, so we will move this to the last motion by the Assembly of Congress by the second new Parliament question to the Senate about the search to understand the process was voted in past November 14th, so we're going to move that up to a year. We've got a change on the end of the question of the recent year of the recent year. How do you go to a 50% agenda? Don't move it. We'll do a half second by written column. Wait until you say aye. Aye. But in theory, we have to do it a couple of times. Lauren Sampson, for the years, and has relocated to Boston. Her mother-in-law, he's also a representative, a representative of the Garrison House of Representatives. And her daughter-in-law, she is certainly concerned about the recent lawsuit about her Republican, her non-Republican party, and the lawyers for civil rights. So they are willing to work with us to seek out voices, stories that would be impacted if this were to go approved. And they will work on our behalf to defend constitutional rights in our charter, as we have done, about this month earlier, to allow for nonsense voting. So he's going to be reaching out to representatives of the Garrison House and we will provide their partnership, which is a non-profit, which has intervener status to counter the lawsuit. And they're part of a network, a national lawyer committee. So it's designed for this very purpose, and they have other successes for this matter of lawsuits that really don't have much to stand on and still have to be generated. So that's my report. Um, yes. It is kind of a mission meeting due to our faculty counselling that happened last Monday. But I'd just like to add to the note that we did remember the planning, the charter fiction planning commission that's gathered through the P3 team that said, check back who's under and who's sort of what happened. We discussed some of the kind of things that we've been planning before. In addition, the commission looked at a resource from the Vermont State of Commerce and Community Development, all the days with better faces, many guys from the Montana neighborhood. And there were some areas that were funding that had to be applied with no need to help support out of the construction and for the neighborhood-side scale development. The commission has asked that to be done and the staff has asked that that model to be presented as planning to go over some of the recommendations in there. And the commission finally has got a vital organization, right, application to get a look at a non-residential zoning and raise the debt that may not be GMR, not to spend thousands of dollars. So, to be planning a positive commission for checking counties, Thursday last week, as well, the next round of the building altogether project was the Shipping County effort to build more housing in the region. There was a five-year program that finished in 2012 and they looked back at that program and saw what had been accomplished and are looking at the next five years. Sorry, that was in 2021. So, the kind of takeaway to that in the Shipping County area is that the target was exceeded for a whole construction, but the target for a four-year-old construction in that was not met well. But if you are using affordable housing as part of the overall housing production, that wasn't risk-nearer to other communities than that. That's the incentive to increase that target and increase the ratio of affordable units in that target. I have a question about the commission members from various communities for attending about how many overall homes should go, but there's a strong consensus that the number of affordable units should be at least that of those not higher, but you said commissioners from across the United States might recognize this as a e-mail account and might need to see if you're able to see something to support that. So, that would be an interesting discussion about the commission. Do you see about other problems not related to housing? Do you see areas that prevent the rental health, though? Is the rental capacity statewide? What have you got? And there's the support from the mother-in-law association, maybe from the short term, that would be fair. Is that rental though? So, if you're at the state level, there's not a lot of rental capacity, but I think it will be a fairer than it might be in honor. They run a fairer than they do for their building. And I got a question if you could go into the summer. Do you think that would be a good summer? Is there a plan to use the summer? And if it's next week, do you think that could be a good summer? So, that's it. I hope to see you today. So, that's it. I'm going to say a few things. So, the municipal and the federal that run week pre-taming is still at the end of this. So, that's how we use presentation. We're going to focus on our right to dignity and self-conversing with an emphasis on other planning with the local government, which is more of a bad thing to us and that the local government and the local government relating to pre-taming are simply a channel to making up the government to move on to the next week and for other things to be very feasible to the current context. Looking forward to meeting our planning community in November we are going to be able to walk away with that and make it more common. I think we're at least a couple of seeing that about that. So, the possibility of a bossy is something that we will be able to do in November and in November we will be able to possibly put that into writing for a discipline that has you know, technically different expectations for a private student or a pre-term and so it is a regular decision to make that change for us. So, I was heading out of the program. I was looking at the office and I was looking at how that would be even thought out for changes to the law and the regulations and how we would be able to have the last kind of information about that. So, I think that would be something that I would shoot that out. I think that would be a good example of something that's been forgotten into a public movement that has been sort of an inspiration. But also to mention that when you come together with a student that is being statewide to put a point of to the most I saw an article on that from I think we should have the funding as we were approved, because of time, we had 5% of COVID control. This past year, we dropped a lot of money. So, the fact, we're funding all of this, this is how we're going to do it. Thank you. I just wanted to ask you, Jared, you went forward. Charging those that have been produced in the house, I'm not sure you've heard, but then when you see, there's a vigorous debate about the consequences that constitute the dowel of risk action. And in both cases, that went to put down that it's not a constituted by issue. It involves the legislature her view to control and to prevent a local culture that's a legislative policy issue, not a constituted by issue, which is why I feel the law system is really careless and actually even speaks to allowing non-cursing vote to cast on the state election, which is not true. So, I hope that there's something out there for a forum that will give one more detail to this, but, it's a very weak argument from my view. Thank you very much. You're welcome. All right. I want to see the process. I'll look around the videos. So, can you comment on that? So, I'm sorry. We are too. A few more quick items. Good question. This is all about the people of the law and the commissioners. It was reported that you have time in the same picture if you ever want to speak to anyone who's not in the commission. And, finally, we'll respond with a lot of questions about how are you really interested in it. So, we share with the program the question that I think it is that we're really interested in having time to I thought that it was a dress that didn't have a single victim. So, I think it's a more thing that we're really interested in. So, we're really interested in that. So, we share that. So, the process was brought and found that it was a commission that we didn't know whether it was going to be applied and needed to be addressed. So, a lot to see. First, there's a couple of forwarder in your case. We'll personally test if you're going to be in the same audience as September. We'll talk to you about the month of October. But, we are still partnering in May. The mayor is still partnering on that. We can see where people are helping you with the work that you're doing in the past course. But, I think we'll do it. We kind of do it from Monday Tuesday. To review the pandemic and general effects on the efforts for a few to review and kind of look at our stronger initiatives. So, we're really grateful to meet with her and she was like all of our experiences as a community and then to concentrate on the initiatives I'm passing and going to the health in general as well. So, that was a great meeting. We'll see it's coming up soon. I don't think this would be a problem at all. You might have a problem. Thank you. I'm going to jump in there. Still a lot better at building a home. Do you have any other questions? Good morning. First of all, I'm going to check the goal. It's 3,500 photo frames. I'm going to jump in there. 20% of the time I'm going to be inside. This afternoon I'm going to be inside. You know, the only thing I want to share is myself and also John's girlfriend. She used to be school-different. She started being a high school boarder. So once you guys were presented with that, you'd know that slowly you'd be better at this information. I'm going to start later. Hold on. So you can put it back in your mind. You can put it on her pillow. You can put it on her pillow. I'm going to start with you. So I interviewed a very qualified co-infinite who are now making and will produce the go-by towards PROM. Actually, luck is currently working with the Long Municipal Bond Bank, and is it extremely qualified to advise on municipal finance and can break some extra peace about what other communities are doing? is particularly in the east, Catralton. Yes, Angela. So I'm going to be fair, but she's talking about I think in our local marketing has a lot of support between whatever is College of Engineering and the community that we work at, but long term, and long term, and class, but this is really, really exciting. I was really excited to hear about how they're doing, and how they're doing it. So I'm actually in the, I'm in the room. I didn't, I didn't join, I didn't join remotely because I was like, well, I'll go for a nice walk and walk down to the, walk down to the town, town office, city office. So I'm, I'm sitting at, I'm sitting at the table. You can't see me. Well, you can, can you hear me? Okay. Okay. Yeah. So present, feel free to ask me any questions but yeah, I mean, Angela, Angela explained where I, where I am right now. And I did wanna mention, I didn't mention this on the, when, when you were essentially interviewing me is that in terms of conflict of interest is I had, I had made, I made sure that there was no conflict of interest before I even applied. So working for the Vermont bond bank obviously provides financing to Wyniewski and literally every other community in Vermont. And because this is an advisory position, there was no conflict of interest. And, and my last, my last name is pronounced locked like you lucked out. Just years of experience with, with, so I think the experience was both at the bond bank as well, actually. Yes. I wanted to note it in honor of all of that, but for the excellent resource and certainly happy to have you present what you just said. Well, hearing those have done, do I have a motion to approve the consent of Ashley Wachs, who's a friend? Motion by Wyniewski, my gym, all of them, they are to say hi. Hi, hi. Motion carries, thank you for actually getting in. Thank you. I'm going to ask you a question at any time. I think that's a part of the conflict for Wyniewski and the law. I'm not sure if you really need that. So I mean, I'm just, I think starting at the LMA was, I don't know if it was the United Nations process for approving projects and making it more on the point now, I think. I just covered that point for folks that may not be able to speak on it, but. So I'm going to, about the fact that there's the right address that I have. So, seeing that there's a lot of people who don't need a portal, I think it's the average half of those money today and then next year we'll have a better time as well. In general, there's two people, it's pretty better, whether it's the LMA program. So December 31st, 2024, that is when the money is allocated. The one thing we felt allocated was that we didn't have a invoice. You know, something like that, and then December 31st, 2024, that's important because anyone who's going to use it for a year will have to send back their money. So, there's four really broad categories for what is funding. One is a response to public health or a negative economic impact. And then December 31st, 2024, that's important because anyone who's going to be a health worker will be a part of the economic impact. Through this, it is hard to perform the essential, special work during that health work, during an ultimate needs impact to government services. And then before that I had a path out of this, that sort of got me to the water, through the water and the projects. Kind of weird, but I sat down there about a time, I think a year. I don't know if it really brought us closer to what those ones used to be, but within the packet, a more detailed treasury is spending through our learning shows in the categories that those people use. For the reverend, for the reverend, one is for, you know, the process cycle. And then the other part is, he used to have three fives, he used to have three fives, and he's mental, but he's not a really good doctor, that's enough. I don't know there about questions on, you know, how those ones were used. So, getting more into the process cycle, so I think there's a memo of the algorithm, what sort of process, or how we might look at it in this way, and how do we select projects, how do we select them in this way? And the way we sort of outline it is, you find that connection is sort of a vertical connection to the packet, you know, the recognition, you know, helpful. And ideally, other applicable commissions, so, you know, that's it, and how many of you are saying, how many of you are thinking, well, that is, you know, this any part of your thinking, those commissions would provide back to you. That would be also done by the survey that was done, and through a lot of this memo work, economic flexibility is, you know, you don't have a commission to provide back. So, talking, working with, with Heather, down from the issue post, you know, here in that small business, probably after, you know, a big drill. So, you've outlined, in the memo, some of the example I had, one is, like, through the technical survey reform, and you get started on, and for the questions, you start to figure out some of the questions that you want to pose, and, you know, one of them is called very outreach, for the community. Another piece of this that we're looking at is, why I think we start doing jobs, especially allocation, ranking them. And so, coming up with a set of ranking questions in terms of, you know, I don't know anything to do with the things that are required, and, you know, obviously, if you put this all back, it would be natural, like, what it was. What are the kind of strategies that you master plan, and how do you plan that? So, that's kind of the general overview. I mean, there's a couple other things there, you know, the terms that leverage the funds is what's possible, or, you know, obviously, if you do their funds, then how do you, you know, act out the other piece of this here that you mentioned? So, being, you know, the other funds have some specific parameters that you can use, but as we're trying to do this process, if things are not eligible, that could be an understatement or, you know, if they want to do that. But that's kind of the general outline of what you're thinking about, about how you're going to do that. Is that tied to the government's declaration or is it more broad? Check with the state as a resource before we make any expenditures to see if they're going to be eligible. If you are put by it to specifically the government to see if these funds are to every state, so not every state is the same kind of emergency declaration that comes up. Depending on what their role is, it's pretty broad. For that, there's not a lot of fair enough business I'll call it in the past. So, some of the questions we've been working through are seeming to start quite... So, for the government, how are you going to do this? How are you going to do that? How are you going to do that? How are you going to do that? How are you going to do that? How are you going to do that? How are you going to do that? Well, I think I should say that the commission that I've come here today is quite a special period. I've heard a lot of things about these fees and you've put yourself through that too. But I don't know exactly how it would look in the future also. I would want to ask the commission to decide what happens with the new projects. And then of course, our goals, and the work on that, too. I mean, to me, for the coordination, the last of our committees, I did have to think about the future of what they saw as potential needs that I think we need, and do I consider for this process? Are they new? I think we have to learn to then approach the new, but we're going to do the same new process. And, yeah, the other, the efficient shadow of the things that we all want to come to, we should be able to do that. Which I don't want to know, the passing of the new fund, or the new public fund, because I do fully appreciate the decision. This idea, but I'm worried about it, I'm thinking about it, needs and what are the strategy and the mission that the strategy and the mission met quite often, and had a long run of work to kind of deal with it. I think setting against that fact she's saying so, in some ways, that this is all a work of technical work, but it's an opportunity to sell into a more sustainable, it doesn't mean that it's a community and that it has to give you the actual feedback, because we talk about that part of it all day, and we're wondering how many times we'll understand all we want. So, as you think, I mean that you work on a translation, I think you tell it about it. We need people who need it, but I guess I just worry, I'm having so many, that most people need some of the financial attention to tackle some of those things like passing language, and just put it back to the company meeting, trying to get it to pass to you, you need to put the work on a community, and then I think the other, that one, I thought it was good to meet a lot of people, that speeded up a lot of the mindsets, and not be able to make that. So our target team is the, that we set today, chosen, and I think we have a little bit more flexibility of the time to meet people, where they are really busy, but we felt confused, what part of it is, the sort of community who is in their phase, instead of ours. I think we used that, I don't think that being part of how we thought that, I think it was a part of that as a counselor, however, helpful, or it was on those, I mean, it was a direct team comment, and so, they began to focus their questions, focus through my questions, and then put that to that talk, that we didn't get to get to that, because there are people that have served, to be responded, and we remember that in that work, because I write a long-winded way of saying, that I think my information, I think it was a number of these, I think there was an opportunity to meet all of these, and have their time to get into more places, survey pool in more places, so that we can get to that. What's the one to talk about, how that was pretty easy to talk about? Because we're not, it's easy for me, to use as a part of the process. I do think, we're not going to have much, but we don't have to have all of these problems, that we can work. I think there's a person, I'm not doing this out of each, but it's human, that we ask for in summer, if we have problems, not for a brush, if we're not from a family, instead of in summer, we could come all the way to the pool, and party in that, because I do think, there's probably no answer, but there is a lot of passion, to do things in this community, and you can do that, if you want to. So, if you started as a group, do that at least. You did go to the first names, that felt like Hallelujah to us, and we were well thought out, very intentional. I wanted to get a collaboration of childcare and the way we offer to reduce the prevention of COVID-19, just to talk about the way we bring people together and to play out. She'll appreciate you for their time and participation in the effort. We have a prior foundation and basically just take two areas where they're having this or even just write down the normal words that they would want to see as prior situation areas. Just to have holding on to some suggestions for COVID-19, maybe the other people as well just receiving a report on COVID-19. And certainly, based on WD, this is part of the charter thing, so we want we shouldn't look further ahead than that, even if it's separate as well. And then, you know, it's the incumbent deadline for how much time it works out. Just to help with that plan. And then, you know, we don't see it as the fall, but how far it connects here. And, you know, we want to have, there's a big feedback and engagement conversations right now. And, yeah, so, it's one line. Because all of this out is happening over the next year. We provide, we also want the program approach to that approach. And so we're like, we're not going to finish this from the beginning, but we're having the options. I'm going to say, we're going to find a solution to that one. And what do you have to talk about in the last month or two months? I mean, what would you say? The points that we have for this program, we actually owe a first program before on any benefits or contracts by April of 2020. That report can say that we have not yet dedicated any funding, but I would like that report to at least be to the steps that are being made to come up with a plan and want to be anticipated. The questions that are very likely. Thinking about projects, so I think there's a bit of a tire that we're bored with. We're just encouraging meetings with kids. So we need them to see that a loss of revenue before them? I've already done our revenue loss calculation, and we do not qualify. We have to look at the city as a whole. And while we have individual money pieces, like monitoring parking, that saw significant amount of loss on a whole, we did not meet the threshold for revenue loss in person. One of the things that we last made is that in general fund last year ended with a surplus of dollars. So. Now, and people who have needs now, and the city is holding a million dollars now. So while I don't want to rush to spend that money, because I think the VLCT's guidance, everyone's guidance on being intentional and strategic about these investments is important. I also hope that we'll be adaptive. If we see a need coming up that we know will be needed. Being able to pivot this process. So say, for example, eviction protection is something that's going to be needed. Because several people are telling us this. I don't want to say that's great. We'll get back to you in 2023. Because we're not going to start spending the money for them. And I don't think that we would, you know, let our process hamper us, but I just want to encourage whatever process we do define has that adaptability built into it so that when we have an immediate emergent need that we might be able to. Be. Speaking about dressing up as well. I don't know specifically about eviction assistance, but I do know that there are state programs right now for rental assistance that we can absolutely direct people to where those funds need to be used up. Those are not out of the ARPA funding. That is from previous cares act funding that they are rededicating. I think that's a good point. Right. Yeah. Just an example of. Of one of the things you might hear it could also be around eyes. My mind is on housing, but need to be around has in quality to be Brown. A certain type of business that's not able to make it through. This prolonged variant is pretty something related to families that are suffering differentially. The people who don't have young kids who can't be vaccinated. So I think there's some. Some of the stories that could still yield people who are struggling through the next six to 12 months. So, and if we're telling people from the start, that there's no way we'll spend anything until 23. I as a community member would feel like. You have the money. You're not doing anything with it. And I, I could use it right now. I can't use it in two years. I don't think it's going to be appropriate. I think it may not be appropriate, but just if we can build in some way to be adaptive through the finance commission or through us. For. Identifying those. And that is absolutely goal is to get the money into the places where people are having the most impact from COVID. That is a definitely a goal that we have. We just want to make sure that at the same time, we're not duplicating programs that exist. Yeah. Good points, Jim. For sure. And that's something that I'll raise to the finance commission discussion. We, you know, we have some existing programs. We could funnel some money into. To try to direct out to this needs. I think that's one way to do a shorter term. While we're thinking about longer term as well. Are there any other thoughts, questions. The only other thought I had is, you know, along the lines of. What Jim was talking about is maybe not from the housing standpoint, but from the mental health and support services. And just reflecting on our, our step, our statistics that, that we've had throughout the pandemic and the increased need in, in support services. And wondering, you know, looking at the four bullet points on the first page, I don't see a clear. I don't see a clear line. I don't see a clear line. I don't see a clear line. I don't see a clear line. I don't see a clear line. Avenue, but I'm sure that we could make a case that, that would be supported. We certainly have the data that backs it up. I think that there's a very clear line that we could draw to a COVID impact on mental health. Great. Awesome. Is there any public comments. They're members of the public in city hall. Is there anyone on zoom who wishes to comment. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for all of the ideas. You know, Angela and Phoebe and I will be bringing this to the finance commission in November. And we'll, I will keep you updated. At the following city council meeting as we move through this process. And thank you staff for being on top of the. Ambiguous and somewhat changing criteria that we have to follow. So we are moving to item C. This is on for discussion. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I think we should be here. Carol is actually not here. So I'll just be providing this overview. And then. I will be providing Carol with just the questions that everybody has. So we can do a little bit more of an in-depth memo. In the future. So this is a very basic overview and partially that's because we have been working on this process and the new updated application. So. This is definitely a moving target, but I do want to get everybody's. Questions and concerns. At this early part of the process. So. Well, you just had a cover sheet for this. So the clerk's office has been in contact with the city clerk and Montpelier. So obviously. Montpelier is. Also a big part of all resident voting in their part of the lawsuit as well. So we'll be working closely with them on that issue. But separately from that. We've already developed a new application for all resident voting, which is it with Bob Alma or attorney. Carol. And he has our equity director are collaborating regarding community outreach on all resident voting and. We'll be meeting next week with. VCSR through the. Working communities challenge grant. So that's going to be a big part of. That's going to be a big part of the process. Obviously outreach and engagement with our. New voters will be a huge part of this process. An additional voter checklist will need to be maintained. So we'll have two separate voter checklists that are maintained in two separate systems. And that's something that. Obviously we'll take a significant lift for the clerk's office to develop and maintain, but it's important that they are. Maintained in two separate systems for. All of that. So that's a big part of the process. So that's a big part of the process. So that's a big part of the process. Considerations to, to keeping those separate. So that is our brief update, but I look forward to hearing any questions that the counselors have. Thanks, baby. Thinking about this from like the process and system side. We had talked in the past. Before moving forward with this initiative. I think that's a big part of the process. I think that's a big part of the process. I think that's a big part of the process. Justice of the peace who support that. Is that. Is that something you're looking at yet? Or is that further down. In the work plan. I think that's further down in the work plan. And that will be a part of the. Community engagement process. So we have had, we've had worked in the, the school community liaisons in the past. Around elections. And I think that that will be a big piece of. Sort of expanding. I think that's a big part of the process. I think that's a big part of the process. I think that's a big part of the election day. So that'll be part of that. That outreach process. Okay. Thank you. Jim. I think kind of building on that. One of the things that we heard during the charter change. Meetings with our. New York community members is that. You know, you know, There's a lot of people that are like, Like the actual provision of information through going door to door, explaining the process in a in person, or in a non remote non email setting is going to be. Feel important. And then sometimes that needs to come from a trusted person or sometimes it needs to come with interpretation. And so I guess the question is how much can this be? Do. With that kind of. Ground. Yeah. I mean, Like how much can. How is there, is there a limit? I think. I'm trying to figure out this question. Is there something that prevents the city from doing that city staff from engaging in that? And I know there's going to be capacity challenges for sure, but is there anything in the election law that prohibits that kind of work? And if either of those issues are coming up, how we can take advantage of the homes, the city staff that we have here. And how we can take advantage of the special needs of the city that they're working on. Everyone. Or expanding their. Capacity to take on some of that work to explain, especially in this first year. In different places in different ways, how voting is going to work. Thank you. Yeah, I don't have, I will, I can check with Carol on the, if there are any. We have engaged the liaisons in the past around the specific issue and we do currently have active contracts with the liaisons for special project work under the working communities challenge grant so they will be a part of this process regardless. And I think that if we do need to put significant effort to going door to door and if we can do that, then there'll be a huge piece of that. Okay, I would add on to that. We talked about this before that the liaison led meetings that we have with different linguistic groups were very successful in the past, as we worked through this issue. So I feel like following up in that same format with, you know, extending that outreach to those same families is a good way to give them the next update in the process. We certainly think as part of the outreach process, it would be important to have a sense for the languages and language options that the ballot will be available in. I imagine that will need a number of a number of options available to meet the needs of our community members. I know we have had translated ballots in the past so it's something that the court's office is familiar with how to the ability to have those available. I do think that'll be new information for many of the members of the community that will be eligible to take advantage of all resident voting. So that won't be familiar to them as a, as a existing option. Thank you. And to build on the mayor's point, I think it'd be really important to identify the connectors within these different new American groups, so that they can really be instrumental in getting the word out and bringing people to the table. Thank you. And I think that's a big piece that yes, is thinking about now and just just thinking about how, how we can make those connections and build a network that's hopefully representative of everybody who would be new to this process. So, there was a couple years ago. So the initiative to get the translated ballots was led by you know Ali Jang in Burlington City Council was part of that and another gentleman. How do you know the answer to that. Yeah, I can't remember his name, but will scenic at the secretary of state's office director of elections was heavily involved with that process. So, I'm sure they can. And then we were actually a model for, you know, using their resources to help with translation services. So the ballots could be presented in native languages. Yeah, and when they roll those out, there was an event at the community center, like with me alone interpretation to help. So I think that's something that could be potentially done again. I don't know if it sounds like generally we have questions about the outreach plan that so whenever you all get to that stage could come back to to be shared here. Yes, we can definitely go more in depth and that in our next update this process for sure. Can I ask you might not be able to share but is Montpelier very far along in planning how they're going to support and update their structures. I don't know. Um, I, I think they are a little bit further ahead than we are, but I don't know exactly how far along they are. Just curious. Jim, I saw your hand. Yeah, just thanks Jim. Just the just some context in Montpelier, we're probably talking about a dozen to maybe 20 people versus 600 plus people. So I'm sure they can figure that out much simpler than we can. Not quite the same lift. Right. Thanks, Hal. And I think that kind of tails into maybe another request for the next memo is some, because Montpelier is, you know, doing this work in tandem or alongside us, if we can identify what we can and what we cannot use like what's going to be useful from their work or from that partnership and where are we fundamentally different. I think that would help us understand where our work as a city is going to be maybe more on our own. I'm sure you all will have a picture of that but be nice to hear from the kind of 30,000 foot view level as well like what we see is usable from Montpelier's experience and what we'll need to be on our own. Um, one more thing, Phoebe. I cannot remember the terminology right now, but like it's not just the justices of the peace who support the election. It's the like we are also included in people who can support elections. And so I think I'd be curious to if the clerk's office sees a need for more of us to engage in supporting that than in previous years because typically I don't, you know, counselors usually don't volunteer to do that because there's not a real need. So the board of civil authority, it's made up of all of the justices of the peace and the counselors. Thank you Angela. And generally we see a conflict of interest around the town meeting day for most counselors because oftentimes they're on the ballot. But for any election where a counselor is not on the ballot they are eligible to participate in running the election. We often have them come to count. Jim. I feel like I'm going to wear out this button. The, that kind of tails into one request too is if there's a place or particular points in the process where council participation I guess of uncomplicated counselors would be needed or helpful. That would be great to know too because I think we put this to voters and we called the question so I hope that those of us who can because of the timing will be able to support the rollout as well. So wherever you and Carol and others see a need for us to come in. That will be called upon to do that. Thank you. Are there any questions or comments from members of the public on this topic. All right. Well, baby, thanks. Oh, wait, I hear some. Give them a minute to sort things out. We've got one comment from public here. All right. It's from the chair. Welcome Bruce. So I would just re elected to when we see Democratic Party chairman. And so you're talking about working campaigns and you're talking about working in. place polls and with city counselors and and so I'm you know I'm gonna be reaching out me and I'm George Cross is the new vice chair and we have a new offer of a new officer and Austin Davis is the secretary and Michael Boone he's the treasure and so I'm just you know you'll probably see all the listing I don't know if you saw it already but we are all going to be working real hard to help the Democratic Party and when you ski get better you know reach out be known that's that's my goal and and so I guess my my comment is I want to let you know that that I was chairman and that I'm that anytime somebody needs my help or the party so I'm there to help them so through the city council or whoever yeah thank you Bruce I know there's like there's some lines between what we as a city can do to get information out around elections right like our information needs to be unbiased like not taking a side right so like the city wouldn't go out and say you should vote for X person or something to that effect but I think knowing that we have active Democratic Party doing outreach you know we we could share with you the election information for example so if you're talking to people like you have that information as well to whatever additional outreach you're doing so I wasn't I wasn't thinking that you guys will come out and thinking that I would you know support a candidate a Democratic candidate this you know within this city I would just say and that you know we can help with the boots on the ground piece maybe get some information out to the community about how you know the voting days how do you vote you know where you go you know those yeah exactly for things that's what I meant I should have said that but that's what I meant yes I thought so just wanted to state it clearly for anyone who's watching thank you but I am happy to we're in touch please sure yes we are yes we are thank you just you know I'm mad yes thank you are there any other public comments all right so thank you bbt you in the clerk's office for the this sort of like preliminary update and chance to ask questions and look forward to learning more as things come together we will move on then to item d this is on for discussion or approval it's to review our calendar progress for the all-hazard mitigation plan and chief audi is here with us yeah good evening john russia may know a little bit more about this but overall you know the city has a all-hazard mitigation plan which all city departments look at and participate in the it develops a work plan it's about being prepared for for us like heavy rains snow falls wind events that sort of things and most of that work is done by public works through the summer and this plan requires us to bring it to you and it's a check-in that's reviewed through chitin and county regional planning they they kind of administer they they kind of do the check-ins on the plan so they reach out and john's staff john schott and joe schott and and those folks at public works report back of what we committed to do and this is that kind of progress report so we're in good shape you know i would just a kind of a shout out to john's staff there's so much more behind this work than what's on these two pieces of paper and it's critical work it's without doing it you know we we would our infrastructure and and ultimately our residents would would feel the impacts of heavy rains and that sort of thing so it seems really simple on this piece of paper but tons and tons of work that goes on every day to just stay up to date with the with the all hazard mitigation plan so willing to answer any questions that councilman thank you john and i just wanted to make the connection for folks who are watching potentially that this is like you said really behind the scenes work but is stuff that the city is doing that's making us more resilient to climate change not something we're generally talking about at a policy level but a plan that we are implementing all the time so thank you for the update i think my general you said that we're in good shape is do you have any areas do y'all have any areas of concern or do you feel like we're on track for the things that we are supposed to be doing to meet this plan so yeah i mean we're absolutely on track and john you can jump in i think um you know in reviewing the plan with regional planning we're we're pretty aggressive with that plan with our size staff and you know balance the day-to-day needs but be proactive some days is not easy to be proactive because i'm just reacting to the day's events but i think on that piece of paper if you look at the size of the staff and what's available for resources um we we are um i don't think there's much we can approve um with it that's great yeah agreed and just uh other questions from council about anything that's included here any questions from members of the public all right so hearing no questions or concerns i would entertain a motion to approve the this progress update on the implementation of the all hazard mitigation plan go move second motion by mike second by how all those in favor please say aye hi hi motion carries thank you next up is item e this is also on for discussion or approval this is a firehouse reserve use request yeah so this is two two items that we're trying to continue moving forward with improvements at the firehouse one of which is a water bottle filler we've had a water fountain there for years i believe it was probably 15 plus 16 maybe years old and that failed this spring so we've been without anything other than tap water in the firehouse um and we find ourselves buying a lot of bottled water so it's a replacement of that and then the second part of this is to kind of finish the improvements in the rear of the station has to do a lot of preventing contaminants i am mainly the diesel fuel from the trucks from from um getting into our office space and in our gear um for those that have been there many years it was kind of a wide open garage and we have we have essentially finished part of the back of the station and created a workstation um and that historically was not air conditioned or heated differently than than the apparatus space um so we were on the same heating system breathing the diesel beams um we were subject to the the sudden changes when the garage doors were open that sort of thing so this is buttoning up two things this reserve is out of our building and equipment replacement funds um and you know the water fountain will be installed you know by a local vendor and the other work we've been doing in house as we can um and you can install the door and that sort of thing thanks john i have a question probably for angela and that's that this cost is higher than your building reserves does it matter that i see you then be pulling up from your equipment reserves and does that matter do we generally segregate those uses by which reserve fund they are so the most recent uh capital improvement policy that the council approved included um the mechanism that we've been informally using which is when we have a capital project that completes and has funding leftover we've been holding it in reserves for a similar use so when we did the garage door upgrades at the fire station and came in under budget the money that was left over went into the fire building reserve fund and there have been similar things for the equipment side the water bottle filler 50 50 could be building could be equipment depending on how you look at it so i don't see any reason why there's a question um about one reserve's use over the other they they could really be interchangeable in terms that water bottle filler because it could be uninstalled and reinstalled in another location that's her are there any questions or concerns from council any questions from members of the public hearing no concerns i would entertain a motion to approve this this firehouse reserve use request go moment second motion by mike second by jim all those in favor please say aye all right hi motion carries thank you thank you all very much we are on to item f this is also on for discussion for approval and it is a centennial celebration committee request for reserve funds we have some guests joining us thank you mayor lot good evening counselors um before you tonight is a request for uh from the centennial celebration committee to use reserve funds uh planning the city's centennial as part of our ongoing legacy campaign uh included in the packet you'll find the committee's budget overview and the city's reserve tracking document um with us tonight or a couple of familiar faces our chair amy lafayette and vice chair meredith they tie up are here on behalf of the committee um amy will give a general overview and then the three of us and angela are here so basically when we answer any questions you may have um with that i'll turn it over to amy thank you paul so nice to see you all again so as the cover letter stated you know we're here tonight to ask for some money from the reserve funds um our committee was set up earlier this year but we don't have a dedicated budget yet and we were told to come before you all when we had something drafted so that's why we're here tonight um we have a lot of different things in the hopper that we're excited about and we want to come back at another date to give you more details but tonight just wanted to give you kind of a high level overview of what's in the budget what we have planned um so we are thinking about a week-long celebration for the centennial starting on march 7th and ending on march 14th all of our events are going to be around the theme of welcoming and opportunity and our budget is really made up of four different buckets so we've got advertising merchandise that will give away merchandise that will sell stipends and events i'm realizing that's five things but if we put merchandise all together then it's four so in terms of advertising um we've identified a lot of free opportunities that we'll be able to take advantage of you know like social media promotion from port forum things like that but we do want to make sure that everybody in town knows that we're putting on these events and knows about the centennial so you'll see some money in advertising specifically for a postcard mailer to all of our residents um the next line item is merchandise giveaways so things like pins and stickers little chalk keys that people can commemorate the centennial with also built into this part are prizes that we can give away at trivia on social media contest etc then we have merchandise for sale so those are going to be more expensive things that we can't afford to give away in mass um we plan to sell these items just a little bit over cost um and donate any proceeds after expenses to a non-profit we're going to work with downtown winewski to identify that so that's why in this line item you'll see that we do anticipate generating about fifteen thousand dollars worth of revenue and we should have a profit of about forty one hundred to donate after expenses are covered um we also are building in money in the budget for stipends and you know the part of the reason why for this is because the centennial committee it's a it's a pretty big commitment it's pretty lengthy as time goes on putting on all of these events is going to take a lot of hours and um you know just a big commitment from folks on our team so we're proposing that we pay members fifty dollars for each meeting that they attend as a way to keep folks engaged throughout the process but also just appreciate the time that they're taking out of their lives to commit to the committee um and then the last category are all of the events that we're considering so we obviously don't know what the world is going to look like in March with COVID so we're planning a mix of events that can be in person virtual or hybrid um and you know moving forward with all of these until we hear otherwise um one of the first events is a photo exhibit that's actually two different photo exhibits in and um categorized into one bucket so one of the photo exhibits would be a historical look at Wynuski over the last 100 years and a booklet that goes along with that and this is one of those events that could be hybrid because we could feature all of these photos on our website as well um in addition to having them in a physical location on display and then the other exhibit would be faces of welcoming and opportunity which would be a portrait um a portrait exhibit of people from out of our town and a little blurb about who they are and and you know what makes them special in our town again this one could be featured online and the costs here are really associated with hiring a photographer getting the prints made any mounting and framing that would come along with it um we also have an event that uh well we hope to have an event with the city um I'm sorry with the Wynuski school district and we're not sure what exactly that's going to look like yet but we're kicking around a lot of different ideas like a student performance or potentially asking them to you know do a project like writing a hundred birthday cards to the city I think there's a lot of different ideas and flexibility here um so we're building in money in the budget for things like supplies the office supplies equipment rental anything that they may need um our main event will be a combination of food live performances we kind of see this as the culmination of the week we hope to have it on the Saturday of that week we hope to have a cake cutting ceremony and just kind of a big birthday bash essentially so we're thinking about inviting people from the community to make various foods and giving them a stipend to provide that food to the public having DJs and local bands perform having council and hopefully the mayor do a cake cutting ceremony for us um and then after that wraps up sending people out to the downtown and asking them to to go to different bars and restaurants who want to participate in the night very similar to what we do with the holiday pop-up market well we'll we'll have DJs and um businesses can have local specials as a way to kind of share the love and get people into more businesses downtown um so what we're looking at for expenses here are really things like paying for the food that we want to have provided paying the performers any sort of space rentals and miscellaneous things like decorations um we also are thinking about a historical walking tour of Wenuski and this one's exciting for a couple reasons but for one there's not really that many expenses associated with it but two I think this is the type of thing that could live past the centennial and have longevity so you know making a commitment now to invest in things like a map um putting it online additionally but it will have you know lasting power beyond the centennial and pretty minimal cost there um we're also thinking about a trivia night potentially at waterworks and this one's great because there aren't any expenses to go along with it Craig Mitchell who's one of our committee members and I'm sure you all know him he has uh he has all of the equipment to do trivia and uh with waterworks they've decided that they could donate their time and their space for us to hold a trivia night specifically about Wenuski and then the last thing that we're considering when the weather's a little bit nicer so past March sometime in the spring we want to potentially do a big aerial photo with anybody from the city any residents that want to come out and be a part of a huge group photo so the costs here are really to have some sort of banner for people to hold and to celebrate the one hundredth in the photo and then getting the prints made um and lastly I'll just say that you know what we have here tonight what we're talking about this is really just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what's possible we we want to engage local businesses especially to participate in the centennial in a way that's going to work for them so for example asking for quarters to maybe make a centennial ale or asking waterworks to to run a dessert special or monkey house to do a cocktail whatever works for that local business I think there's a way to fit everybody every you know business in town into the centennial if they're interested and we also encourage local departments at the city and commissions and other local groups to get involved however you think might make sense for you all as long as it falls into the theme of welcoming an opportunity thanks Amy it was really exciting to hear you guys already have a ton of ideas um I have one question on the monetary side the the merchandise for sale so you're like donating the profits any profit revenue from that then what I phrase this so you're selling it covering the cost of it to you and then you have profits that you're donating then where does that money go like it seems like what you're really asking for isn't 42,000 it'd be like 32,000 right it's almost like we're asking you to front the money to allow us to buy that stuff and then reimbursing you for that cost but thinking that we have to ask for the full amount up front right because we have no guarantee that we'll be able to sell 250 t-shirts or 250 sweatshirts but yes whatever we do sell we would plan to give back to the city and then whatever margin there is donate that to a non-profit okay that makes sense thank you yes brand I see your hand oh sorry Angela go I just wanted to um iterate that the running the merchandise through the other entity was actually at my request the city currently does not have a sales tax account to be able to sell merchandise that has sales tax associated with it so the apparel would be okay to sell from the city side but anything like a water bottle that you would normally pay sales tax on we don't currently have that ability okay that makes sense Bryn yeah thanks um it's really exciting to hear about this uh and and fun to see the the budget details come together um I'm curious so for the uh staying on the merchandise for sale conversation a little bit longer is that I mean is that assuming a hundred percent sales yes it would be okay um and then just thinking about from the the downstream end of things uh because that's the background I come from um just thinking about charge keys and stuff that may end up um in a landfill so anything that we can encourage to reduce waste um encourage reuse things along those lines would be awesome um and then you know thinking about our past is always in conducive to thinking about the next hundred years is there anything any conversation about a time capsule or um commemorative um tree or or plaque or anything I love all of those ideas no we haven't talked about that but I do really like all those ideas about you know thinking forward so our um our group is meeting I think next week Paul I'd be happy to bring some of those ideas back that's right thank you um otherwise I I don't really have um much more to add I again just really excited to see all the energy behind this and I can't wait for for it to be next march thank you it's feeling a little uh close now that we have about five months so it's feeling important to get some money behind it but yeah thank you yeah Mike I think that's a great idea Bryn time capsule that that that will be a fantastic idea so someone can open that years after we're gone um Amy I can make a suggestion uh I know uh I know an entity that has a tax exempt entity which is the Kenneth R. Myers Memorial Pool Foundation they could help you out with that um just to make sure everything is on the up and up so it's something that you can bring back to community and talk about um help out with which aspect Mike with the donation to a nonprofit which is the Memorial Pool Foundation okay and that money goes to it will go it goes to good good causes such as scholarships for the the ideal of the pool is to not leave any resident behind that can't afford to go so that money and it will help it supports the city on anything they need if they ask for the of the foundation to support the pool in any ways the foundation is there as a backup plan great thank you yeah just to um maybe I'll kick it over to Meredith just to talk through a little bit more of the logistics but as Angela was explaining because the city is not set up to sell things that have um tax associated with them the only thing that we could potentially sell is merchandise or I'm sorry is clothing we were thinking about actually having downtown when you ski sell stuff and if that happens and the proceeds are going to go through them we would likely have their board decide who um what organization would be the recipient of that fair if you want to say more there it was just a suggestion no that's great I think I think what's important to note about this entire presentation that Amy is doing such a beautiful job with is that all of it is what our committee has come up with over the past couple of months um but the especially things like where the donations are going and even what items I mean we have done a lot of research a lot of work on pulling this together but you know between now and March even though it does seem really soon Amy things could change um and certainly those decisions about which um uh nonprofits to to look at have not been decided at all so we still have some time there to have those discussions are there other questions from council Mike yes well actually this should be a no-brainer but we're going to make sure it stays in when you ski as a non-profit for the donations correct okay thank you absolutely are there any questions from members of the public comments ideas John there's one in there hello thank you I'm Bruce Wilson resident of Winooski and um I like the idea about the 100-year celebration you know and I love that um Craig Mitchell's a part of it you know he's I'm known for over 20 years but I just want to know too is are there any youth involved on your committee and is there any people of color on your committee who's helped plan who helped to help you plan is wonderful all the wonderful things that she has said about how it's um it's where I have work you know and I'm you know so I need to know I need to I really need to know that answer you know is there any youth on the committee and is there any people color other than my dear friend Craig Mitchell on the um committee who's helping you make the decisions yeah so um right now we don't have um a dedicated person from the school but we have considered inviting a student to fill that role there's been a little bit of turnover at the school and the person that we had hoped to be on the committee is actually moving um so we have considered the idea of opening up that seat to a student um right now we don't have any dedicated youth but the student would obviously fill that role and to answer your question about people of color we do have um two of our eight positions are folks of color yes awesome and I would also suggest too that I'm a youth service provider my program I run a service reunion corporate I'm executive director of a nonprofit since 1999 here in the state and so I work with all the different schools around primarily around Chidney County but even further St. Arbor's and Rutland you know um Addison County but the thing is that too is us we we're and I have youth advisory boards as well around the state and we just don't go get students from I'm not knocking you I'm not trying to you know what you say I'm not going to try to give you something something else but um but I think you know students who are in school I have a lot you have a good structure you know they know how you know they gotta do their homework it's time to go to bed you know you know and it's there's some students I mean some individuals out there who just is not into school who hasn't who might not be in school who who need to be a part of um things like what you're offering you know when I learned through my program over 50 words and what I've learned through have doing inviting other students or individuals who is not in school to be a part you know what they get structure they want to be a part of something they feel the worth they feel they got some worth with themselves and um and and they want to know when when um can we do this again you know I mean when the next time can we do it how can I help plan it and so I would also say you know like we always used to get like student council members four age club members you know and that's awesome we want them involved in everything too because for us every youth is at risk but we need to include all individuals all types of individuals and making decisions especially for a hundred years I remember when I was in this heat when when uh new Americans first came to town like in in Burlington the mayor actually come talk with them and um and I think I've been talking with them every since you know um and so it's very important like you said I did like you said uh people um show off their um foods and uh being more like festival and you know be inclusive like you know I really love those like all the ideas you said but we gotta be um very um open you know when we when we do these type of events and believe me I've done over 700 events in this state that um was you know it's it's real easy to sit in the room with people who look like you and um and um when I came here it was a white state America you know in 89 and so it's easy to sit around the room look people like you'll come up with these wonderful incredible ideas and suggestions and not really thinking about a person who looked like me it's it's not no it's not you know it's not nothing wrong you know it's not bad about it but why would you when when we were 0.1% or African American why why would you think about me you know you know I don't go to church with you I don't go to school with you I'm not I'm not your neighbor so why would you think of me but but when you ski you have to because the number is so great of people who look like me so yeah absolutely if you want to help you Bruce Wilson and you you just google my name you you'll find me thank you Bruce Paul did you want to say something there yeah thanks Amy um and thanks Bruce we we definitely appreciate the uh the offer for uh for assistance somehow just a couple of clarifying points um Stephanie Hackett um who ran community focused courses at the school um she is the the teacher who is moving to a different state so um quickly after we learned that we did connect with Emily Hacker um who is the communications director at the school um who will be uh connecting us really specifically with students members of the student body um you know we the original plan was to try to get a student to um sit on the committee of course um Stephanie was only able to attend one meeting and then moving so Emily Hacker's been doing some work since we learned that news at our last meeting which was just recently so she's doing a lot of work with connecting us with students directly and helping plan a lot of those she will likely be the sitting member on this committee to be able to connect us to students and then one of her directives is to is to connect with somebody either on the student body or somebody that they feel um would be uh worth connecting and then um the other the other point too is I just wanted to also note that Karabu Webster um is also doing uh she's on the committee and she'll be doing a lot of the direct outreach through her position as a caseworker at ALV to make sure there's a lot of um new American voices involved with this process as well so just wanted to make a couple of those points and thank you Bruce for for offering to help we welcome you to our next meeting and I think it would be great to have you so thanks and Meredith I see your hand is first I swear I know how to use them um I just wanted to also add that the um and I appreciate all of those comments and it's really important to you know make sure that there's a lens on all of these committees and all of this work that's being done um and make sure that we're being you know true to the theme of the centennial celebration which is welcoming and opportunity um and I wanted to just put a point on that as well which is that inclusivity and welcoming and opportunity what we're trying to do also and I think Amy touched on this briefly was that not only is it COVID friendly to have these events be you know able to be viewed online um but we're also trying to be inclusive of all ability levels um sensory um you know situations of people's you know food allergies things like that um auditory you know needs um and it is hard that you can't be everything to everyone but I feel like the mix of events that we have talked through with our committee um you know the fact that they can be virtual that they're self-guided that there's something for everyone I think I'm really excited about it there's a very diverse group of um passionate people on this committee um and I think that the you know mix of events um I'm really proud of to be and I do think they all point to that kind of welcoming opportunity inclusivity um so I just wanted to make that point when Bruce gave that wonderful opening thank you Meredith Mike yes Amy um have you guys tapped into Dan Hagens for the community photo and yes he's one of our members of the committee yes he might have connections for an aerial but like if you guys plan on doing something aerial with a bigger group of people yes that's his baby that's something he's wanted to do so he's doing that he's going to be also doing um the historical photo exhibit of the past 100 years perfect I want to thank you guys you and please relay the message to your committee thanks for all our work this is this is fantastic I can't wait yeah thank you we will we'll pass that on for sure thank you are there any other questions or comments here so I am not hearing any concerns I'm hearing a lot of support does someone want to move to approve the centennial celebration committee request for reserve funds don't move second motion by Mike second by Jim all those in favor please say aye hi hi motion carries thank you thank you um it's 744 I want to call a five-minute recess before we get into our next item we will reconvene at 759 do aquatics program so huge appreciation to the Y and Matt team to certainly my team here so Jenny, Louis, Matt, Brianna, Ariel, Allie just an awesome team to stop the summer who I think worked through a lot of kinks with us and learned with us this summer certainly John Russia and your team from public works for the behind the scenes effort and then last but not least is the community I think as you saw from the report a huge amount of response from the community overwhelmingly positive interactions and feedback and a huge amount of grace for our team as we learned through the summer so I just wanted to start by saying those thank yous and appreciations before getting into some of the details um so I also want to preface this by saying it's really hard to believe but it's only been a month since the pool has been closed so a lot of this data is still fairly preliminary and so I want to sort of caveat that with some of the numbers here are I think a good estimation but probably not audit worthy at this point so I just want to preface that but at one we wanted to get a report out to council relatively quickly and obviously leading into budget season get some high-level numbers in front of you to review and so with that I want to jump into the the report here that we sent through the memo kind of broken down into three sections and if it works for council I'd love to just kind of go through those section by section and Angela it's here too to keep me on point with the numbers but on the budget side I think overall you know as I've said a few times and we'll continue to say throughout we learned a lot this summer you know we have we have not operated the pool on our own in any of the years that I have been here and it's been a while since the city was in charge of running the day-to-day operations at the facility you know even before the new pool was built so you know we went in with a lot of guesswork and a lot of you know estimations and so I think we certainly will have tighter numbers looking towards coming budget season but on the revenue side you know really pleasantly surprised with the overall performance of the facility I think past sales were well above what we predicted which was awesome to see as I do mention I think that had some impacts on our day past sales as those on the resident side at least were lower than we had projected but overall the budget did come in well above what we predicted for revenue I will say that this 36 percent number maybe a little bit overstated because Angela and I were looking at it Friday and realized that in Civic Rack which was our rec management software there were some past refunds that were not captured in there because they had been purchased very early on like March and then we're not refunded until the beginning of the pool season and so those were not refunded in the same way that they were purchased so there's a little bit of a discrepancy there between the numbers I was looking at and the actual but overall a really strong revenue season and again past sales were really I was really pleased with that and we were also really pleased and surprised to see the non-resident day past sales as well really high usage from neighboring communities which we sort of anticipated but not anywhere near as much as we saw so I think that was a really cool testament to the pool and what a great resource it was in the ways that people in the area were hearing about it and coming to visit so I'm going to pause on the revenue side there before jumping into some of the program pieces just because there's a little more I want to highlight there but any questions so far on past sales or day passes? Yeah Bryn? I'm just curious what thoughts went into the projected for some of the season passes? Yep so when we built this out we worked pretty closely with Weston and Samson and then also look back at the historical data that we had available from the YMCA when they were running the pool prior to exposure so Weston and Samson was looking at pools in similar sized communities or similar sized facilities that were constructed in recent years one in particular up in Maine I want to say Waterville, Maine was a community that they were looking at that pool had a lot higher revenue and I think we were feeling based on our historical numbers like we needed to be conservative on the revenue side and not overstate so we kind of stopped for the middle there and with our budget and I think ended up being again as we sort of anticipated a little bit conservative on the revenue side for our budgeting. Yeah I guess what stands out to me is the season passes and like the adults and senior passes especially just seem like I don't know why do you think it would be so low? Yeah well I think again a lot of that came from our historical data with the YMCA we didn't sell a lot of season passes when we used to run the pool through the YMCA so again I think we were going on the best data we had obviously we're super pleased to see the numbers turn out the way they did and I think too with a higher price point there was some question about you know obviously season pass upfront cost is a lot higher than you know four bucks a day for folks so we weren't sure they're either what we'd see. Jess were you going to weigh in? Oh you're still on mute. Been a while. I was also just going to share historically part of the agreement with the YMCA managing the pool was that YMCA members could utilize the pool and so we saw quite a few YMCA members now that that is not part of the agreement also become Myers Memorial pool members for the summer because it's way better to some outside than it is inside so I think that's also something that was really nice was was we didn't expect that and the numbers used to be pretty low by those adult and I don't the seniors like they didn't come to the pool historically a whole lot. Yeah I guess I was wondering if it's good to know that it was the numbers weren't projected based off of COVID they were it was previous so I think that's what I was mainly struck by so it's it's good to have a little bit more background there thank you. Mike? I think it just shows the facility that the city voted on to build because in past years the pool was so run down I do I believe that people just don't have you know the attention to go there anymore they certainly didn't have a zero entry pool where it was easier for people didn't want to swim to enter so I think that's where you see the seniors are getting more involved but just the amenities of the pool alone I think the city was really bombed in 2015 when it closed for the people that used it and when people saw the pool take shape a lot of buzz happened and I mean I'm surprised about the numbers I really am but I'm not I mean I think it's great. Yeah agreed and I think that you know Brent to your I guess back to your question a little bit obviously we will use these numbers as we build our budget looking ahead fiscal year 23 and it's nice to now have some ground level actuaries to go on here in community versus you know dated information and speculating from Waterville name so so yeah so that's encouraging all right and then jumping down to the program piece you know this was one that as I mentioned in the memo a good portion of the revenue here was drawn from the contract with the school for ESSER funding and so we did as part of that contract commit to providing free swim lessons for Winooski residents so a lot of that revenue that you're seeing there is coming in through that ESSER contract so I think that something that as that contract begins to sunset we want to keep a look keep an eye on and figure out you know is this the service that we want to continue to provide for our residents free of cost if so how are we funding that post ESSER and if not how do we sort of ease community members into a comfort level with having that cost again for for swim lessons but I will say you know just early on obviously we're a few years away from that conversation but I think from a safety and sort of public health perspective the demographics of our community and and just you can speak more to this than me but the demographics of water safety incidents overlay quite a lot and so I think there's a real value in focusing on that as a priority for our community moving forward especially given the number of community members who are from demographics that are traditionally non-swimmers and obviously we've seen that first hand here in our community and I think it's a good move for us long term to consider that as a real investment in our in our residents and their safety so more to come in the future years on that but I just want to clarify one point none of the revenue for the pool here reflects ESSER all of the ESSER money is coming into the city through the miscellaneous line item in the general fund because it's built for across all different types of programming it was not built out split so the revenue line does not include funding received from ESSER. All right thank you for clarifying that. And then two other pieces here so the swim team this year we we did not run the swim team the YMCA did and so we did not have any revenue associated with that that's a conversation that as we look ahead to next year I think just and and our team are going to have to talk about and figure out what we want to do and then on the space rental side I will say so this number here for space rentals includes both camp rentals which actually perform pretty strongly for us and also the community room rental so kind of the more birthday party private event type of usages I will say that number for us was surprisingly low I think if there was a surprise for me this summer that was it that we did not have a ton of traction with the community around private birthday parties and sort of rentals of that variety with that said I think for a host of reasons we didn't really push that super hard this summer and so I do think Jenny and I were just talking today I do think there's some opportunity for us to promote that more actively next summer and try to build that revenue center up for us in association with the left but again better than projected overall which is great but I think we're in for growth there certainly as well any other revenue questions before we jump into the expense side Mike yeah I got a quick one Ray I don't know if I'm jumping ahead but the unintended children is that part of the revenue side that the youth passes so it is yeah it comes in down in the programming section too but I can talk about that a bit here so in working with you know with Justin the white early on and trying to figure out some of the aquatic safety policy decisions before the pool opened we talked about establishing and being more consistent about enforcing a policy for how young kids could be and be at the pool without an adult figure there the number that we came to 14 was really based on safety and wanting to make sure that for those kids in particular coming into the water they were there in a way that we could keep them safe so by having this policy in place I think it helped that I will say overall I think this safety in the pool this summer was pretty fantastic given the number of community members that we've had in the water with that said I think it did make it difficult for some younger kids who don't have a consistent adult caregiver during the day to get into the pool so this is something that we talked a lot about during the season we piloted a couple things Jason Zeider was part of that Molly who is our Vista Molly Schneider was part of that I brought a few kids with me to sort of see like what would it look like to have a surrogate adult caregiver for some of these kids coming up to the pool without without someone with them and I think it's definitely on our radar for next year I think if we can get that figured out and try to try to work around that barrier in a way that stays true to safety I do think we could see that that youth usage from residents both for day passes and the season passes grow is there up to well I'm sorry right okay is there opportunity to have a um like a lifeguard training if a child that's 12 years old can pass a swim test gets a card and they have to show that card so they you know that they are able to survive um I mean we have lifeguards on hand too but that's I guess there's a question there from our opportunity for one obviously safety first but it just seems like there's some loss I hate to see the kid get turned away um especially on the hot hot days and then goals and finds himself in trouble because he has no outlet to do anything right right I mean I can say I think I speak for everybody at our front desk staff like that was the worst part of working at the pool this was having to give kids that answer um at the same time I would do that a hundred times versus having to make a save on a kid that's having a water safety issue and so again I think it's something we need to look into I think there are some potential opportunities for us to get creative next summer with that um but I think too I just want to signal like I do want to keep safety really at the center of that conversation and as we think about any updates there oh absolutely safety first it just seems like it's changed since I was a kid go yeah yeah um and we did do you know we did do um swim tasks here and kept the log of kids that passed that so that was sort of the the trigger point to allow kids to go into the deeper water and to use the slide and so that was something that worked pretty effectively I think this summer um in terms of allowing kids to come in and show their ability to swim and then sort of be able to be a little bit more independent in the pool based on that yeah I think just to to be back on that the concerns we saw and kind of just more was not as much the lack of sustainability this is just pretty good about understanding you know I can't swim I think what I've seen in the like that happens more depends on the majority of our community I'm tired at this point you know against the students my friend went to walk away so and that's why we spent 80 years and we did find that it was a pretty sweet spot as far as the majority piece but I don't think I think another beautiful thing inside the summer was the community and their response to like where they basically brought kids who's only a family too where right away is that really good about when they came in saying you know hey are you ready to be team you want to come in today it's not been able to get in to see I feel like most of informally help match people up and to get those kids into school so I think like we're we're hoping to connect through that a bit more formally and find out of color how's the opportunity to be in and out the pool and learning in a safe environment um yeah I think those ones have that as well right because I think the demographic that we're looking at would with the um adult supervision being an issue is exactly who we should be reaching to because it gives them an outlet some self-worth and it might teach them some lifelong while I it will teach them lifelong skills on how to handle themselves um I think that's something important and I'd like to get involved in that and help out if I can awesome you're already on the lift Mike congratulations all right um yeah I'd be interested just to carry that thought thread a little bit longer um about what other um pool policies are out there from a municipal side of things and just have a sense I don't know if there's like a um a rec association pools and rec association or anything that can correlate like policies with um uh just incidents and injury data um just to have some frame of reference of like does having a swim test option work um you know I also hear the emotional maturity component um so maybe there's uh there's some balance there um I uh I have a couple other thoughts but just if you want to speak to that sure there's there's a few resources um all of which we dove into one you guys are part of the Vermont park and rec I always forget the full name of it so that's that's a network of all the municipalities and there are park and rec departments so everybody from St. Albans that has a city park pool down to Montpelier um so you know reaching out to them researching what their rules and regulations are um for us at the Y a lot of it comes from our insurance company and so that's another resource is who's who's ensuring um the property and for us it was sort of you know a joint agreement so we had to make everybody happy in that and then lastly Vermont has no public pool regulations we are the only state that does not have them so that leads to constantly reaching out to our network which is something that um Ray and I did for for how many years six years while the pool was closed um working with the committee Mike was on that committee um really really doing doing a lot of research and figuring out what we call best practices are um and then kind of going with our gut based upon history and so I think just to to second what Jenny was saying the lifeguards are there swim tests are happening the ages are more for for assurance of good behavior choices and so it's it's navigating that piece of it more than like the necessarily like the safety component of swimming because they don't have to take a deep end test they don't have to go down the slide they can still be there but you know at what age um do we hope people make good decisions I guess all ages but um thank you for the additional insights there um I also was some data that I would have liked to have seen in this memo is um closure data like how many days of the season from open to close were did the pool shut down for a half day full day and the associated reason so it was like yeah yeah 50% or 75% of the time weather related um you know either thunderstorm or temperature wise um because I imagine that that would be useful to help with um budget forecasting as well yeah that's a great question Brennan we can definitely pull that and get that back to you I think John can speak to that because of the chlorine yeah I mean there are multiple we'll get into that like don't steal my thunder just yet um all right so I'm going to jump over to the expense side um you know I think long and short here is that it was more expensive for us for summer to run the pool than we had anticipated um I think there were a number of reasons for that as fell that here I think certainly the equipment replacement piece was a big factor um and there were a number of pieces that as we got into the first season we realized we we needed to make some investments up front that you know are really sort of I don't want to say one time because we'll have to replace these items eventually but they're not things that we're going to do year over year over year we're not going to buy any picnic tables every year we're not going to buy new umbrellas every year so I think these are some things that again we're not initially budgeted um you know I will own my miss in that and I've never run a pool before and there are definitely things that hindsight being 2020 um and looking back I wish we had factored into our expense budget out of the gate um but I do think some of those initial equipment costs were were impactful um the pool staffing and contractual services definitely were above what we anticipated um and so I think that already with Jess and her team I've had some conversations about looking ahead the next year are there ways we can do things more efficiently on the lifeguarding and city staffing front and I think more of a more of a conjoined approach versus having two separate entities running those services so I think again that's an area where I do feel like we can bring that number um back into line a little bit um and I think we also really saw where we needed to be more heavily staffed and not on the summer and I think generally given the first summer and learning we were doing I will say we aired on the side of caution and and had an extra body versus not when when we needed it and then the other piece too is and I think you know John if there are more specific questions can speak to this but just the facility operations again I think we learned a lot about how this you know the physical plant of the pool runs and what the needs are um you know our water budget was higher than anticipated because we had some early season startup issues and we're leaking water um which you know we did get sorted out but that was an additional cost um so you know I think the chemical costs were a little bit above what we had projected but um yeah just I think some general um facility related costs that we now have a year of run data to work from to kind of build a more accurate budget for for 23 it sounds to me so it sounds to me like you're saying that the staffing model that we initially started with was insufficient um I wouldn't say insufficient I think it was I think that the model that we ran this year was very much built on the premise that neither Jenny nor I have an aquatic background and so I think for us to have tried to bring in lifeguards get them trained while simultaneously building up the operational systems figuring out how the building runs I feel like there would have been a lot of opportunities for error there and you know I think on the aquatic safety side that wasn't an area where I felt comfortable rolling those dice um so I think that by by contracting with the why I think there were certainly points this summer where there were some redundancies in staffing so you know us having a supervisor on site and the why having a supervisor for their team on site um that that's not efficient and I think that's something that again looking ahead to next year we've already begun conversations about how to do it differently um I wouldn't say that I don't know if I would say it was insufficient I think like every every aquatic facility we struggled on the lifeguard in front just with finding people I think that was an issue nationally not just here and so I don't know that that was a function of the structure so much as it is or was a function of just the moment and circumstance nationally um we've already started conversations with Jess and her team about doing a series of lifeguard trainings through the winter for local Winnieski kids and potentially using some ESER funds for that as a way to sort of build a workforce for for next summer so I'm super excited about that thinking and planning that's happening right now um and I think generally and Jess you kick me under the table if I'm wrong but I think generally there's a feeling that this year was a bit of a blip because there was a lost year of lifeguard training due to COVID and so that there will be a rebound in that industry and an ability to sort of catch up if you will in terms of the number of available staff in that workforce so I don't know and Christine I don't know if that gets at your question but yeah I just I know you were there a lot and it sounded like there were holes in stamping so it's surprising to hear that there were also you know these redundancies are extra costs yeah yeah and again as we look ahead um as much as I enjoyed my time at the pool this summer um that is not where I need to be spending that volume of time um so that is definitely on our radar too and how do we how do we kind of right size the people that are in those positions and doing that work and and kind of free up um those books as well so again I think we learned a lot I think we will be much better and more efficient next summer so I know in our initial projections from a couple years ago the the operating expense was around 80,000 a year are you saying this year so it was 47 for expenses 47 percent higher like it was like 120,000 this year and I'm looking at Angela to help me confirm that but that it's a little funky because it does straddle fiscal years and so there's some challenge in sort of giving that great answer but Angela I may ask if you can help frame that for me are you struggling to come off me nope nope I had to pull up the budget number because I don't remember that specific department so um year to date the budget has spent since July 1 76 percent of its budget spent 112,000 dollars and just a reminder that that does include a portion of a public works um equipment operator to handle facilities related work there um that's not necessarily outrageous considering the total operation cost um the there aren't a costs necessarily beyond uh utilities through the winter for that most of the expenses are during the actual operations of the pool and so that last 25 percent will mostly be spent in those last couple of weeks in June um when we ramp up for the new season and I think Christine to the numbers that I was looking at were and again this is an issue of crossing fiscal years more based on an operational cycle so basically the budget that we used to sort of model things um with Weston and Samson was based on an operational season not split across fiscal years and so for me as I looked at the sort of all the expenses basically across both fiscal years both fiscal year 21 and then through the kind of current for 22 that's where that 40 whatever 47 percent number came from and again I think last year with startup we did see some higher costs up front which would have been part of our 21 budget and so I think again we're hopefully starting to stabilize a little bit there yeah and I can see where Ray can definitely see that um in the FY 21 budget where we would have only had those initial operating costs where we opened up the pool there was 103 thousand dollars spent so we would far exceed if we had similar startup costs this season but I don't expect that we would um this includes quite a bit of startup time and investment in equipment thanks for the added context any other budget questions before we get to the more our concept she doesn't think I'm in the public yet Christine do you I I'm eavesdropping on you John but do you want to do a I was just gonna ask if there is public comment that's fine can you guys hear me sometimes my mic works sometimes it doesn't okay we can hear you John yes there is a public commenter here thank you it's probably Bruce Wilson because I like I like the idea this is about the pool and um um consulate Myers I really like his idea about like on youth getting like a like certificate or you know to um or the level of swim they have and it brought back memories consulate Myers so I'm from Chicago I'm born and raised and so my folks send me to camp every year and some just like that like that's like that like but anyways but one thing that they all did was um they did the certificate of um uh swim type you know you prove how you can swim and I was like I got up to like the dolphin which is a good swim you know and then they had this little bracelet on your wrist like a color code bracelet you know you they knew exactly what your swim capability was and your safety level was and there was some incentives if you kept going like this having nothing to do with the pool but you know I could take the canoe out and bring some up somebody else with me and so I like that idea um about that I think I think that's it helped us a lot too because it's you've come in see the bracelet see the color code and say okay these guys are dolphin he's pretty good you know um so we don't have to like you you know you watch everywhere but not as closely as you can you watch others and then also you train him to get better um by um um like lifeguards support some of the things you guys understand lifeguards um um techniques so they can actually also be helping the lifeguards look for visuals who might be in um in a situation in the water so I'll thank you um Councillor Myers for that and everybody who jumped on that but um Ray Ray's good to see you man you probably can hear you that's good to see you so anyways um yeah you can hear me say um so um Ray should get a certificate for being the um like um PH balanced guy and the chlorine because I know Ray when I was part one of the commissioners we took me a tour to the pool he was talking about how you know how how much he learned about the PH balance and the chlorine I know how it is because in one of my homes I had a hot tub and I would you always gotta check it but um Ray um so I want to ask you um um did you give away any scholarship seasonal passes and or day passes did you give we did um and actually that as an retrospective the number we should have also brought tonight Angela I see you unmuting so you may have it at the ready do I actually just did the analysis for our audit we had over 3400 dollars donated for scholarships for the pool um and we only have 1500 dollars remaining so we issued over 1500 1900 dollars worth of scholarships um into the community and that was a variety of different scholarships and that was all before June 30th in addition we had some day pass scholarships that have been issued since the beginning of July we did not have any I think we have two additional season passes that were given scholarships since July 1st oh that's good that's also um and also um what is the um average age group that um attended the pool hmm it's a great question so I think unfortunately with our rec management software um there are a lot of a lot of pieces of it that are not as sophisticated as we would like um so I would need to do a pretty deep dive to get at an average age um and I think quite candidly that would not be um a number I would try to publish a paper on I think it's it's going to be a lot of speculation um one issue we have is that when a family pass checks in there's not a way in our system to say is it mom and the three-year-old is it dad and the 10-year-old is it just mom and dad is it so there's not a way to really have a great sense um when a family pass checks in of the the details of user data in our system we have a lot of that in paper form from the front desk when people were signing in but that would take that's going to take a lot of analysis to dig back through you know three months worth of daily sign-in sheets so we can certainly try to dig into that a bit but I think that's going to be a cold winter day project for us as we look ahead um so so um I should notice you know working with with this project as one of the commissioners for a long time but um is there is there just one right say a kid what is who gets in free what age group none none zero or is it um like if you're 12 years old do you pay the same as a 55 year old so there's a youth there's a youth rate for kids that are under 18 um there's an adult rate for 18 to 55 and then there's a senior rate which is the same as the youth rate for anybody 55 plus um and that's both for day passes and for season passes that's awesome and um last question is did you have any incidents uh whereas there's like some high risks like somebody might have drowned or some fighting or some at risk um I'm gonna I'm gonna knock all the wood um and say that we had a really overall pretty pretty successful summer on that front we did have a few and just you can speak to this a few um saves from the lifeguard team um but it was I think quite honestly compared to what I was anticipating we might see lower than that and I think again a lot of that stems back from a really strong focus on our collective team around safety and keeping an eye till that um Jess I don't know if you want to share any any detail there yeah I I meant I had one more question I forgot I hadn't waited so long for my time but how many lifeguards do you have uh on um the job I know it's YMCA right I think I remember that one YMCA yeah how many on duty during uh any day that the pool was open yeah how many do you want me to speak to that right yeah go ahead yeah absolutely um and so I'm I'm Jess I'm the aquatics director at the Y um so it depended on if the slide was operational um or not and then how many people were in the pool so the morning would be different with the rentals and the swim lessons versus open swim when we had a higher capacity so we had anywhere from two lifeguards on for that morning lap swim to between six and eight lifeguards on during the the busy open swim where the slide was operational so the staff team was about 15 lifeguards um it was important to us to have the same guards there as best as we could the entire summer to get to know not only the facility but the team um working from the city side of things as well as the community so there was about 15 lifeguards that were fully fully at Myers an additional substitute would come in from the YMCA when needed um and I've got a the summer I had a team of about 35 which um normally it would be a team of closer to 50 to 55 but Ray mentioned nationwide and local shortage of lifeguards yeah well that's awesome that's where we got to train like Myers we've got to train those kids right now right maybe lifeguards you know but thank you thanks Bruce Mike I see your hand short comment Jess I love that idea of keeping it consistent only it brings the community in but it brings trust in with the youth so they get to know who's kind of telling them not to be doing what they're doing or be positive reinforcement I think it goes a long way when you have trust in a in a like an adult supervisor or a lifeguard but I think that's a great idea thank you it's something that was historically done and also honoring residents so we gave um everyone who's from Winooski so a lot of them grew up at the old pool and now I think there were three of them that were lifeguards and remember swimming at the old pool as well as Colchester residents was the second in line being neighbors with them so that was um a historical piece that we continued to honor feeling to your point Mike it just the benefits are are immense with that so I think working Jenny and I exchanged emails on Saturday um we're really really hopeful that we can actually train up staff in Winooski all school year to just deepen that bench and I think that's a great idea it's trying to get some of the older high school kids involved um because they're already known to some of the to the younger kids and some of them have the siblings and I think that will be just a huge benefit all right I'm going to jump into programming quickly um so I think you know overall again really pleased with the the participation numbers that we saw certainly far outstripped what we used to see um in the the sort of waning years of the the old facility um which was great as I mentioned the the open slash lap swim user data is um is an estimate at this point because we have not had the time to go back through those paper forms and and sort of analyze that day to day usage it's something we are hoping to get through this winter but we sort of estimated for each family pass check in two users and and went with that number as an estimate um I think that's probably on the low end because we definitely had a lot of larger families that we were seeing on a pretty regular basis um but uh you know long and short is that I think our usage numbers were really pretty strong for us this summer um Jenny and I along with the Y had a great kind of debrief on the programmatic side a few weeks ago and are already looking at sort of some schedule adjustments for the coming year um wanting to make sure those are part of our thinking as it relates to budget development but um you're really trying to learn what what we could from this summer and see where we saw strong usage less popular usage and use that to build a schedule that sort of responds to the community's interests as best we can and that first number is really a point of pride I think the number of swim lessons we were able to provide this summer and just some of those individual stories that I think we saw of you know our little buddy who I think all of us from the pool team know who on day one of the pool this was a ton of bravado walked up and jumped in and sank all the way to the bottom and by the end of the summer was helping to teach the younger kids swim lessons um those are the kind of stories that I think you know you can't put a number next to but to see that happen in real time over the course of three months is just incredible I think such a testament to what this facility can do so I'm really happy to have the number of swim lessons out there that we were able to and definitely speaking that going in the future and then swim team too I mean swim team is one of those 20 programs that grew during COVID strangely enough uh so or during the shutdown of the pool I guess I should say so again hopeful that that growth will continue and that we can continue to find ways to get more Moonee's Peak kids involved in that program because it's I can say as a parent firsthand it's awesome um and to see your kiddo kind of learning those skills and building that moderate team is is great and then you know on the challenges side challenges side I think just a few things we wanted to highlight here um certainly the limitations on bait or load um based on our life-guarding ratios was was tough um some of the the strategies that we put in place initially around having blocks of time were related to COVID so that was sort of initially designed to give our staff teams some um windows of time during the day to do sanitation um by the time the pool opened that wasn't necessarily needed but what we found was that having kind of forced opportunities for people to get out of the water get a drink put some sunscreen on you know get a snack really also I think helped it a great deal with some of the behavioral issues that in historical years we had seen at the pool where you could show up at noon and be in the water until you know five or six without a without a break so I think we will likely carry some variety of that forward but um it'll probably look a little different next year um we talked about at lengthy unattended child policy so that's something we're looking at and then also just the limited use of the community room is something you want to explore um doing better next year I don't know if there's any program impressions before we move into the facility piece to wrap up and you know the facility and John you can again weigh in here or kind of not in solidarity I think you know first season it was a bit of a wrestling match to begin I think uh we had folks probably know the challenges with water retention early that really set us back and and sort of basically wiped out our our anticipated runtime before the opening of the season so we had initially built out a plan for opening that would have given us um you know a couple weeks of having the facility open with limited programming just to kind of get our feet under us and because we were spent a lot of time trying to figure out what was going on with the water retention issue we essentially lost that window so the first couple weeks were definitely definitely um you know sort of building the building the airplane as we were flying it a little bit but um again John and his team were awesome Jess and her team were great my staff really was willing to kind of jump in and do whatever so I think again we're hopeful next year to have a much easier go with with opening now that those those initial issues were sorted out um and we do have the contractor returning um in I think about a week now next week to kind of walk through closure processes with us make sure we've got all that documentation and have the facility buttoned up well for the winter so you'll see some activity out there um next week um and then I can't not mention the creamy folks Aisha and Dan from offbeat creamy um I think all of us have been blown away by the number of freemies that have gotten out of this facility and it's just such an awesome story of local community members taking a flyer and a business and really killing it so they've been awesome they actually have extended their lease through October with us and then looking ahead the next year we will bid that out again because that was a one-year contract or lease I should say for this space but really pleasantly surprised with how well that went and how many people enjoyed that uh that service so I don't know John if you have anything to add on the facility front I guess I guess the only at all yeah the only the only additional thing I'll add is you know the bright side of having all those challenges beginning is I think our team has a much better understanding of the facility like you've got quite a few folks on our team yeah and and race team too that really know the facility like the nuts and bolts of how it functions and without having to troubleshoot all those issues in the beginning we wouldn't have had that so I guess that's the one bright side of like you know having to kind of fight through those issues is you know we got we have a much better educated staff now and it'll make next year much smoother well thank you both for the summary are there any last questions Mike real quick I want to just give props to public works John your team and Ray and your team if anyone's taking a tour of that facility knows the amount of equipment and expertise it's going to take to run that facility and John you're right I think having some setbacks was the best thing that happened because now you guys really know how to dial stuff in and I'm anticipating next year you might have some minor setbacks but I don't think anything like this year and I think I would I just want to say thank you very much for all the work you guys have put into this year and also the YMCA Jess your team thank you very much we appreciate it thanks Mike I'll send Mike all right thank you Ray and team thank you we are going to move on to the final item in our regular agenda that is the discussion of the city manager hiring process update so I put together this lengthy memo there is a detailed outline here of the search process that we have taken to date there are also some bullets of recommendations you received from our equity director and had a previous discussion about an executive session and then just a couple of takeaways from candidate feedback call I had so last week we decided to extend our search in lieu of offering putting an offer out to the finalists that we had from the process to date so the point of this discussion tonight is to hear from you all how you would like to proceed what you would like to do differently what you think we should change to improve this search moving forward so we can get to you know a final candidate that that we are comfortable with for the city manager role so I hope that you had a chance to review this in advance and would love to hear thoughts from council can also I would start with that and then maybe hear some recommendations from staff if there are some right now Jim I think one thing that you could add to the list is some sort of like I or not add to the list but using the list that you put together in that helpful summary is the concept of utilizing the firm for recruiting so I think that's something that we should consider at this point and I don't know what the cost for that is or what our ability to pay for that is but I'm certainly interested in learning more about that I'm hiring a recruitment firm yeah that's what you said yeah I tend to agree I feel like I don't know I feel like the process we put together so far was really robust we posted this job in 23 locations that were state and nationwide so I also feel like some additional resources on recruitment could be useful and then the other piece that I don't have a solution for so it's something that I guess I would just highlight as an area for that I hope that we can crack a little bit better is the initial screening process and timeline so I think we I think this I'm assuming I believe this is true that this is at least a part due to the timing of everything where we're doing a lot of that initial sort of committee work in the summer and even our own council scheduling was a 15-minute conversation about how unavailable we all were to get together for three days in August so I think I hope that that goes away to some extent with the timing that we have but I do foresee that problem rising again in December so I guess however we can structure the initial screening and committee review before it gets to council again would be whatever we can do to tighten that up if it stipends if it's some sort of commitment some way to make it both compensated and agreed upon the level of work that we're asking of search committee members and ability to show the certain meetings I think that would be the other area where we could have some room for improvement that or some if we did it a little bit better if it happened a little bit faster we might end up with a better process well I think for starters we can outline a schedule a full schedule at the outset I think depending on y'all's thoughts we don't need to engage the search committee to the extent we did before because there's already a job posting there's already questions criteria you know part of the committee's timeline was there were at least two meetings where they dug into like tough topics I know at one point there was discussion reimagining policing and talking about bringing equity and inclusion into city services and those conversations people felt unfinished we added additional meetings because they wanted to continue digging into it so I do think that we could have a tighter schedule and be more stuck to it we also I don't think ever had we did have a rough timeline for council for the stage of council interviews but we never did have those dates like a window like set in the beginning for folks to commit to and I think that's something else we can do too Brian I see your hand um I thought that the council approved stipends for committee members back in we did yeah some of them were taken all right that's all um yeah I guess I was curious if we depending on the expense if we hired a third party recruiter um if the committee would still be involved um and you know I I just wonder how how much of this initial process that was came together before our DEI director was on boarded um if there need to be tweaks I mean there's time um still to to look at the first interview second interview questions and see about tweaking that um so that doesn't need to be decided tonight um I I definitely think it's it would be ideal to have um applicants selected before the holidays in December um and then have interviews shortly after the new year um I don't I don't know the feasibility the challenge is I don't know the feasibility of that with budget uh season um and the demands of that on on staff timing so part of me is wondering if it if it needs to be pushed out until like what's realistic um so we don't burn our staff out if it needs to interviews need to be held in March um like how long of a lead do we want to give um a recruiter or ourselves I guess to have um applications uh an application deadline I think if we go the recruiter out the recruiter routes that is something that we consult with them on before like setting that firm timeline how um thank you I like the idea of the certain firm as well I think in my past experience with those kinds of organizations they do a lot of the vetting as well as you know recruiting candidates so then they pass it off to the committee like a slate of potential um but I think they they would do an excellent job on on coming up with that slate that we need to consider um that they're have the qualifications experience and so forth so I mean you and Bryn raise a good question is is the recruit are we are we talking about hiring a recruitment firm to get us a pool and then we're still continuing with the search committee process council interview all of that Phoebe you have something to share yeah if I can jump in so I think it would basically be reversed if we engaged a search firm so we would have them do the initial recruitment um and as you and Hal just mentioned a pool for us to review and then that could be narrowed down further and we would have the search including community members um do the like the second or third round interview and become involved a little bit later in the process as opposed to from the beginning Jim I like that structure in that it puts our broader community into that evaluation seat at a later stage so they can focus more on discerning amongst qualified candidates like that first screening second screening from a pool that's already been vetted I think would make more use of the community community member time as well and so I see and banish that kind of the outline to process the outline Phoebe I think that sometimes sounds impactful I think um something that is going to be challenging no matter what we do for timeline is the availability of candidates and the ability to schedule interviews and you know that was one of the challenges both for us and for um search committee scheduling and staying on time so I do just want to make that statement that we can't necessarily predict a specific time period and be able to stay with it depending on who the candidates are um Hal I also think it'd be useful to know um how much time a search firm is going to need to deliver us a pool and then we can incorporate that into our timeline and almost you know kind of backward thinking like you know how far out does it does it need to be in its final stage and then what are all the steps that we have to do to get there um sticking on the timeline theme I agree Hal that's there's not much point discussing if they need two months leave time before we get involved but I think as far as budgeting season and how meeting they go I think um I see some advantage to trying to wrap this up to get through this process before town meeting day um and I would look to staff in terms of budget preparations I'm drawing on a single conversation with Jesse but my recollection is that once the budget's presented the amount of staff work goes on the budget is lower in that you're presenting specific department areas is the preparation phase between November and December or after our goal setting in December when the budget book comes out that the bulk of the detail work happens so I do wonder if we you know it might be harder on council potentially depending on what we're doing things but that if we're beginning to get back into candidates in December that may work okay um I think there's some advantage to not pushing this out past another election I mean I would love to introduce this person a new hire at the annual budget presentation the annual meeting before town meeting day but we'll we'll see we engage a recruiter and have a timeline conversation Brynn um does that process need to go out for bid I think staff would come to us with a recommendation I don't remember the the dollar amount um the bid threshold is $10,000 it's good to know we do have exceptions for things that require timeliness um if it's gonna cause undue burdens to do an RFP process we can do a sole sourcing memo and just use informal quotes um to support the selection that we've made and we have enough flexibility I imagine with council to set um additional emergency meetings as they are not emergency meetings unless there's an emergency it's a special meeting yeah and with the budget season coming up we do usually meet more frequently in December to do budget discussions in January um leading up to those town meeting day presentations yeah I remember pretty frequent um so in which case there wouldn't be a need to call a special meeting uh because we'd already be getting together likely one of the things I'll be coming to at your next meeting is that potential budget meeting schedule so you will have the dates of those meetings already set yeah I feel like I uh I don't know what a reasonable timeline is it'd be great if we could have a pool um provided by the recruiter whatever process we end up taking um before the holidays so that we can line up interviews or whatever subcommittee can line up interviews um right after the new year or again depending on how all things come together maybe even have a first interview before the holidays but that might be ambitious Phoebe do you have thoughts on the viability of by our next meeting having a recommendation for potential recruiters recruitment farm teams yeah I think especially I think um I think if $10,000 is our limit we would we would need to do um probably the sole sourcing memo but we could we could definitely have recommendations I don't know if we could have a conversation and a timeline from search firms but I think we could definitely have recommendations by the 18th um that sounds like we are still wanting to engage a search committee would you like to solicit the previous membership or make changes to membership I'd be in favor of opening it up honestly I don't I feel like if they if that input is coming later in the process then I don't know if if there can still be enough structure to it by opening it up to basically whoever is interested and then you know trying to ensure that key community members are available and can participate but otherwise I don't know um just allowing it to be more inclusive do others have thoughts on the committee membership yes I would be curious I'm still not totally sold on the or convinced that we need the committee in the same configuration I think it depends how many candidates so if we're looking at we get a pool of here are four to six candidates that deserve up to semi-final or final consideration I think council could be interviewing those folks and we could have a panel of like what so basically do a council interview plus a panel interview with whoever can attend from that group plus others so that's one the alternate structure we still get input on the process but it's not a tiered approach I think if we go with a search committee that's comprised of a portion of council and a portion of community members I think keeping it small it's going to be needed I think we'll have to reach out to a number of people to get them committed to meetings but I think it's going to be more feasible to have a very targeted and focused search committee and the previous one drafted the questions that we will presumably be using for or the KSA is to do the initial evaluation so I think they'll already have an idea of they've invested time in thinking about what those are and how to articulate those and hopefully the recruitment firm will be using those to recruit so I think there's some value to sticking with those members if they're available and interested in participating. Can you describe what do you when you say a panel can you describe that to me what you mean? So when we do recruit at UVM we have a search committee but we also will set up meetings with the Inclusion Diversity Equity Action Committee we'll set them up with faculty stakeholders with student groups so we will actually set up interest group meetings with the candidates during their time to get additional feedback outside of the search committee process so that's envisioning something maybe a little bit more formal for our like if we have a community panel or something that could also interview or meet with this person these people it would allow us to maybe fill roles where there are multiple people who could fill a given role and it gives us a little flexibility in scheduling that panel so that if you have as long as you can represent all of your roles you might be able to draw on and say six people to fill four roles it makes it easier to schedule but you still get feedback from those groups within the community that you wanted to represent. So it's still just it's still another round of interview okay but as he is concurrent so you basically each group of the interviewing or convening with the six candidates and it could be in person it could be together right it could be a panel plus the council it could be panel plus the search committee I think that we could think about some and I would hope the recruitment firm would advise us on potential models given where we are in our process with regard to a round of candidate review we went all the way to the end and are starting over so I think they would hopefully have some models that we could consider but I guess to say like yes we will have a search committee seems like well maybe we'll have a search committee but it may be able to be configured differently every if we use two groups together to get that job done. I guess it all depends on how many candidates make it through the first round just thinking about demand on time and were there five candidates that were in the first round? Christine? I went to interview the pool had 10 with a committee there was a pool of 10 that committee interviewed five right correct um and it's not like even with five like that was challenging for the committee to make to schedule time for and not everybody could make it absolutely yeah so I think factors certainly the fewer people the fewer schedules you have to work around I think um I don't know that it may be a factor where we can include that in the RFP for the consultant that for the recruiter that that's we want additional feedback and input on on that maybe it's not something that we have to know at this moment or can or commit to at this moment. PB if we engage a recruiter is there what is normal them providing us with a pool or them providing us with a pool and advising and making recommendations on other parts of our process? So I think whatever we would like so they can they they will they will ask us how much screening do you want would you like us to go through our first round of interviews that you're not even involved in and then present you the candidates who have already been interviewed um you know we can they can present us with six candidates and then the council can review all the all the resumes and decide who the council wants to interview so they there are sort of multiple configurations but I think it's um totally reasonable also to ask a search firm to give us a couple of different options um because there isn't you know I think with it with the with an executive search um it would be typically it would be more typical for them to do a significant amount of screening before we even see applications on the search committee or so they would you know basically send us people who have already been pretty pretty well vetted if that's what we want I want that I want them to recruit a pool for us and do a significant amount of screening to reduce the amount of time that we spend again doing this process I am unclear I am still unclear how we want to engage the search committee in this process like I'm hearing a lot of we could do this or that I mean Mike and Hal haven't given your perspectives really I think the search committee had a pool of people that we were choosing from and if we go back to the same people they're going to feel that they made a failed after job to find us a vetted or a candidate that was worthy and you know my feeling I already voted on the candidate I thought would have done a great job for Wunewski Hal yeah I think more of a hybrid maybe depending on what the search firm things and how they weigh in but it helps us with less heavy lifting to get the pool together and then we can still involve some kind of version of a search committee to do some of the initial you know interviewing of these six candidates that we're going to come our way and as long as the pool is uh is uh diverse in and in all of its many ways I think that's that's going to be key that we get a good selection of people to be considering and then so maybe maybe more of a hybrid than what we did before so I agree not the same people fewer people still have additional community subcommittee of some kind participating in like the second round of the process years ago I participated in a UVM hiring panel um I as a as a key stakeholder um I thought that process went well I I wonder if we could get some more insights um from Jim or others that uh lead that effort just to give us some concept of what that looks like and if it's something that we would want to replicate sorry for that I something you want to respond to on now no okay so I'm hearing we've got our criteria and job description from our previous search committee we want a recruiter to vet a pool for us we want counsel to do the first round of interviews we want to tap the existing search committee in your second round if folks are not able to continue participating um look for replacement members is that is that what I am am I hearing you all correct I was in favor of different search committee members new members yeah anyone else have feelings about membership I think you're gonna need some people that know our city from current status of the city from the past of the city and um I think it's important that we have an established committee of people that have been here that are here and that are coming here um I'd like to remind you the last time that we did this and we hired someone from out of state did not end very well for the city of wintersky so I don't know if the recruiting firm is going to have some kind of knowledge of how our city operates and how our state operates if we're hiring doing a recruiting firm outside our state um I hate to see lightning strike twice especially on a negative side so I'm hearing support for recruiting new members for search committee I just want to check with you mayor because you did the recruitment for the first round is that and I looked back at the members that we have recruited and I think they were pretty solid list of people what you want would you anticipate being able to find different people that fill the same roles yeah I think so if we look at it as like those different stakeholder groups I think we can yeah I guess as a follow-up is like would the folks that participated the first time can have interest or time to participate in a second round when going into it it's time bound it's limited um so um I guess my last question then is about the public the public interview process where we invited we wanted to invite our two finalists to present in a public forum um selecting from some wintersky relevant topics are there changes that we would want to make to that process I'd like to give more time for the presentation um I think extending it out at least five more minutes to 15 minutes feels reasonable um I mean that time just flies by and then um I hey I think we can in some regards provide more guidance on on what we're expecting for like a quality presentation what without dictating the topic per se I think that aligns to um one of Yaz's recommendations too yeah I think we've covered the like different pieces of the process and the questions that I wanted to raise this evening are there any other thoughts reflections ideas anyone wants to share how I think it might be important to consider how do we get feedback from the staff for the final candidate so it's a more of a formal um interview process I think that might be helpful in the overall process okay that's you raise a good point that I forgot is that we kind of we do not think about staff input heavily at the beginning um so in our original process we asked staff at the outset all city staff to share their thoughts on the criteria we should be looking for in this role to help us build those the evaluation criteria we gave them like an anonymous form where they could share feedback and then um Phoebe also shared with me from kind of the overall discussion that the leadership team had we then invited the finalists to an informal meet and greet with the leadership team um is there a do we want to do something different than than that I obviously if we were already using our criteria we don't need to do that step again so I feel like it should come earlier in the process I feel like it should come before the final um community presentation I think we've got to detail the informal too is it going to be informal casual or is it going to be business as a meet and greet you can't have a candidate be set up for failure but be by by being blindsided by questions they're not prepared to answer Phoebe John have you do you have thoughts about references for staff engagement um I I understand that the first that the search that involved Jesse the candidates were taken around two different departments and introduced two department heads and staff and that was the extent of staff involvement in the process at that point I mean I think having the way that our regular director level hiring process works with the city is to have a non-management member of staff on the interview team at some point in the process so I think that works really well and that would be you know if we're talking about the search committee coming in or a search committee or different representatives from the community whatever we want to call it having a non-management member of staff I think would be important um but I do think you know with a little bit more structure I think a meet and greet could be beneficial and I think that's kind of a best practice for a position at this level so you think before the public presentation makes more sense less sense yeah I think it probably makes more sense to have before oh I guess the better question would be is this with like the final finalists or would you do this with like semi-finals I mean I think I think a semi-finalist pool having a meet and greet a structured meet and greet makes more sense than having just be the final candidate so I think if we're at the point of like two finalists then that makes it would make sense to have staff feedback at that point but not like after a conditional offer is made is that am I answering your question or yeah yep yep thank you other things we haven't touched on that I am forgetting to ask about can I bring up something brand brought up but last time are we gonna put in a probationary period in the conditional offer is that going to be on the need to know if I mean if we all feel solid about a candidate but should it be equal for everything should we add that language into a conditional offer is that standard already he I I forget this conversation already um I don't think that it would be standard for a city manager candidate you I missed that TV would you say I don't I don't think that it would be standard for a city date so a probationary period is it's something that we actually have in our employment policies for non city manager staff and I do think that that's also something that would need to be negotiated with the candidate with the finalist as part of the conditional offer process and I'm not sure that yeah I'm not sure that we would want to do that standard because I think that would actually sort of maybe turn off candidates if we wanted to add a probationary period because there's typically language in there about reasons for you know each party ending the employment um if it's not working out so I think I would say it's probably not standard for for a city manager level role anything else I think just budget for some food to be part of the process so I will thank you all for this discussion I'll be connecting with Phoebe tomorrow um we'll work on coming back to the next meeting with recruiter recommendation and I can also like get this summarized for us a fresh outline of what we have just discussed doing for the new approach going forward thank you that I never opened to public comment is there any public comment hello it's bruce wilson wunewski resident iberus hey honorable mayor um so i'm glad that you um i'm doing an extended search for city manager and i guess i'm on um council mires team because he talked about getting a search committee that represent uh wunewski who would know wunewski been around understand the needs are and uh i agree with that you know i just i just wish he would put some white socks in the back in on this wall he got new york yankees and he got the other so all right anyways um so um so you're looking for 67 candidate possibly that that where you say you had 10 so that was cool so now you so the last process you had five candidates two did make it three three went on one was let go two candidates went on one resigned and so i left you with one one candidate and i was here to last city council meeting so i know what that person is and i know who the other candidate was who who you let go and so um and so um so that last candidate that was here last city council meeting um was who was i'm presenting who's i like and i say that i like it then um now she's in she's it was a it's a four month process you guys went through for all of this four months and so she uh went through four months of a process and so did the last candidate went through a four months the one that you let go went through a four months process and it's i think and i know i see you guys are coming you've learned a lot city councils and uh honorable mayor and deputy mayor you learned a lot about the last these last candidates and rounds and all the four months of process you learned a lot because i'm listening to you and so what the goal is that you still want to be like you know god we don't want to take four months you know i mean which is you know we're going to um get a search or um hire maybe a higher search team um find a great good candidate you know and um have some public process you know um and then all makes sense you know and so it's like you're trying to be you learn a lot and you want to be real fair about this and so the only way you can be fair about this far as uh i feel as a city of wanooski residence is you bring back the the candidate that was two that you let go you know that person went through a four most process as well you know and and um and now you're talking then so you got you have to bring her back into the process when it's going to be a whole new process you have to you know and um and so like like many people like all of us you know i read it from a nice irelia college and university but i didn't i didn't i didn't you know i didn't do well all the tests you know just like some of my students who are went to um nurse um through the nursing school i'm it's hypothetical they always for years they always come in oh bruce we got this test and it's called an NCLEX and the NCLEX test means that all of the answers are right but one answer is righter than the other one and so they didn't necessarily didn't know the answer they just didn't get the one that was best answered in some cases and that's saying what interviews and that's saying with um um yeah that's that's that's saying what interviews and you know it's like um uh like a city manager position would do they might not know come up with the right answer right then they might not have the um you know the ways that people want to see people look when they give answer don't mean that they don't know the answer you know and so it's only fair who a person went to almost to the last round two weeks or something whatever from it was a day or whatever it was two days or a week or so before they finally didn't go to the final round that they should be back in that in the round when you have saved you a lot of time first of all especially if you're going to do um a whole process over you know the question is going to be different you're going to use a search committee you know you know and um all these those two people are already the most outstanding in the whole candidates they're the best that you got who else you got that's better than them nobody one dropped out um seven you let go you know right at the start you let five go then five didn't go to the then three didn't go to um second round two two made it three um two two didn't make it three went on one was let go two candidates went on one resigned left you with one person and so then you only had really two candidates who were who was your strongest for the city of Wanooski and it's only fair that you bring that other candidate back that went through four months a process that that was didn't all the shebang she ready to fireworks and everything but just didn't make it to the final round with the last one there you know and so I'm telling you right now that you know you know we need to bring some red bull or James him or something but somebody we need to come up we need to actually bring that person back it's only fair it's only fair to Wanooski as a Wanooski resident it's only fair that we bring that candidate back and let her go over the new process of questioning just like the final candidate was she that wasn't even a final you can't use the process of elimination because everybody dropped out and you got one so that wasn't even the final candidate really wasn't it Bruce thank you I hear you and I I don't think that previous candidates are excluded from this new process um so that is I can I can reach out thank you I appreciate that your honor I appreciate that but mayor that thank you so much thank you so much you know I'd love to see a person who looked like me work with you and I love margarit I'm gonna get off but you you heard me last city company what I said about margarit with nothing but good stuff and I meant it and I still do thank you thanks Bruce any other public comment on this all right so that brings us to the end of the regular items we do have an executive session on here pursuant to Vermont State statute section 3133 about the appointment or employment or evaluation of a public officer or employee I put this on here to discuss interim managers interim management with you all um so I am looking for a motion to find that we should move into executive section executive session pursuant to Vermont State statute section 313 so moved second motion by brink second by howl all those in favor please say I motion carries so I would like to I am looking for a motion to move into executive session inviting with us our HR manager Phoebe Townsend oh and um John Rauscher both of our co-interim city managers so moved second motion by brink second by howl all those in favor please say I hi hi motion carries so we're going to move to another zoom line for this executive session we will only be discussing the interim management um we will come back to this line solely to adjourn the meeting oh what's that is the what's the link for the executive session um what do you need oh wait I have it I will reply also this is at the top of your inboxes you need the password too I think that's it has a passcode in the body of we will come back to this potentially for a public vote on the management process and or solely to adjourn so I will see you all in the other zoom line I am seeking a motion to authorize our HR manager to negotiate terms and an interim agreement uh for an interim city manager conditional on passing our background check and not having a significantly higher cost than we have budgeted for this role in our budget already so moved second motion by howl second by brinn all those in favor please say I hi hi motion carries thank you that brings us to the end of the agenda this evening can I have a motion to adjourn so moved second motion by brinn second by mike all those in favor please say I hi hi motion carries good night everyone thank you night good night