 All right, so we should get started because it's 6.30. So I'm going to call the meeting to order. So the first thing is to review and approve the agenda. And I just looking through it now. I don't think we have any changes to make. It is quite a long agenda for tonight. I just want to bring that to folks attention and just ask that folks are conscious of, of our potentially long agenda this evening. That's that's as much for for us as for folks watching or present here. But I otherwise I don't think there are any changes. Yeah, okay, I think that's, I think that's it. So we're going to move on to general business and appearances. This is an opportunity for any member of the public to weigh in on a topic that is otherwise not on our agenda for the evening. If you do have a comment that is pertinent to a topic on our agenda, then you can make those comments adjacent to those items. You'll have an opportunity when those items come up. But if it's otherwise not on our agenda now is the time and this is true for all public comments in general, if you would say your name, where you live and try to keep your comments to about two minutes that is very helpful. So, having said all of that, but anyone like to make a comment or address the council. I would ask a mild accommodation because I'm going to cover. Oh, one thing is on the consent agenda. I hope it's pulled and I can comment on it there. A couple things related to transit center in Gertin Park so related to the good Samaritan. To that item. So I will skip over that one in the trust that it gets pulled off the consent agenda. I'm going to pass a photo around. Taken tonight. Of the Gertin Park. And another photo taken last Friday of our sidewalks and our Christmas decorations. So we use our public work staff to put up to decorate the town and trucks. Meanwhile, we're leaving our storm drains clogged and it was one occasion where there was 10 inches of water backed up all across Elm Street both lanes up into the sidewalks. And still the ice and the puddles and the storm drains are not cleared, but yet we can dedicate our public work staff to putting up decorations which promptly brought down and litter the sidewalks for day after day after day. So I'm questioning the priorities. We, I understand from talking to our public works director that were severely short staffed and quote there is no money, but that's not excuse for leaving unsafe and icy sidewalks and bridges. Even tonight, the sidewalks are not salted. They're covered with a thin layer of snow. And they're icy and slippery. I could have skied all the way over here. So this is a real problem. And I think you should consider directing staff and police force to walk out there with buckets of sand if we have to to address icy spots. I interrupted a meeting that the city manager and assistant were having to alert Donna of that problem. Public works had forgotten a section of the north side of State Street between Elm and May. Everything else had been sanded but that section was pure ice and still I drive to Rutland and back and it's still not done. So we have a real problem with y'all not being on the street to see what I see and others feel and slip and fall. And you just don't believe it when I bring it to you. This turns towards negligence. Okay. I made records request of the city manager's office for the whole regarding our decision not to become or to no longer be a public safety answering point. It's a critical response. And it I've learned it's futile to file appeals to the head of the agency, but y'all direct and manage the city manager. And for him to just neglect to find those records is unconscionable, especially when you know it's a repeat pattern, the same with the bathrooms, right of the public to use the bathrooms and city center. So I can tell you're more interested in reading your email than hearing this but I'd like to request that you explicitly authorize any entity using the city's room for a zoom hybrid meetings to utilize the equipment. There's no problem with public safety authority, refusing to plug into the screen, or the amplified speakers, and participants cannot see who speaking cannot be heard and cannot hear. So if you're going to make the city's facility available for zoom, why not make the zoom equipment available to there's no reason not to. I'll take action on that tonight if it needs action. I will just address the curtain park to have moved it and to have denied these folks restful sleep who are sleeping there and privacy, and then to not even bother to sand the sloped walkway which didn't exist in its prior location, and have people having to slip and fall on ice to the shelter. Undignified shelter is again unconscionable. I asked y'all to grow a little compassion. Thank you. Thank you. Yes. Do we know what the process is for getting the AV equipment used for the meetings here? I'm not sure anyone's asked. If they have, do you know, I'm not sure anyone's requested to use it if we see if somebody else, a non city agency was using this room and wanted to have a zoom meeting. Could they use the screen and the sound system. If they wanted to, I would help them set that up, but there's no requirement that they do that. Right. No, it's their meeting. They can do what they want, but we certainly would. We're going to keep, we're going to keep going. They are not a city agency. So we would not, we can't require another agency to conduct how they conduct their meetings. We would assist them if they wanted to. Okay, great. That's so that could happen. Yeah. Yeah. That's the most effective way to make those hybrid meetings work. So it sounds good. Thanks. Okay. Anyone else. Oh, if you'd come up and say your name and all that. I live in Montpelier. And I requested that the television story on channel 22 be shown this evening. And so you're, you're ceding your time to the, to this clip. Thank you very much. No, no, that's fine. I just want to make sure everyone looks clear about what's happening. Well, in central Vermont, who are living outdoors and even more living in the motels. Morgan Brown spent 12 years living outside. Regardless of weather conditions and temperature, it's hard period. Were there ever days when you were living outside where you felt like you weren't going to make it? Yes, many. I don't know how I survived. It took a huge toll. There were days when in this type of weather at night, I'm walking around with no place to go. And I'm praying to God to take me. Not that I want to die, but I couldn't cope. In July 2015, Tammy Menard became homeless with her husband and two dogs. She said cold winter nights brought a lot of stress. It's the constant fear of freezing. It's the constant fear of worry of trying to stay warm. Menard says there is a stigma of people experiencing homelessness face. Not everybody's drug addicts. Not everybody is alcoholics. A lot of people turn to that eventually after being on the streets. Just because there's so much stress. Over an eight-day period in November, three local homeless people died, according to Ken Russell, chair of Montpelier's Homelessness Task Force, an executive director of another way. There were definitely substances involved with some of them. Governor Phil Scott reinstated the state's emergency motel program through March 2022. But Russell says this is still not enough. We need long-term housing solutions. We need money invested in housing. And now that Tammy has a bed in warm apartment, it means everything. It was a relief, a huge, huge relief to be able to feel safe and know that I can stay warm. I also spoke with Dawn Little, the state outreach coordinator from Good Samaritan Haven & Berry. And she told me if you have clothing or food to donate, now is the time. Reporting live in the newsroom, Dana Casulo, Local 22 News. Thank you, Peter. And I have some thoughts on this that I want to share, but I'm going to hold off on that for now, because I know other folks may want to speak. I'm going to go with other folks in person first. Anyone else in person wish to address the council? Okay, seeing nobody. Morgan Brown, I see your hand is up. Go ahead. Morgan Brown, my pay your resident district three. Briefly, I just want to clarify. It was corrected on the article page, the text. However, when it, when it says that I lived outside for 12 years, actually. It would be more accurate to say that I lived on the house for 12 years. I'll ask all right. Okay. Just wanted to clarify. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Anyone else online? You can use the raise hand function, which is under reactions, or you can just. Unmute yourself and let let us know you'd like to speak or turn your camera on and wave that all of those options are good. I also just want to. As a new point, I think that's something I'd like to do is for those of you who are online. If you would make sure that your name says both your first and last names, so that I can address you properly, that would be great. I think most of you do, but I just thought I'd at least put that out there. All right. Anyone, anyone else wish to make a comment? Carolyn, would you like to make a comment? I just heard you're unmuting yourself. Yes, I would. You know, I mean, I find it very sad that the public and Montpelier isn't aware of how serious the circumstances are. That I think we've all been lulled to thinking that everybody got to go to the motels and lived happily ever after. And that's simply not the case that there are about four dozen people living out outside. And this brief clip indicates how sad that is and how we need to do more. Thank you. And Linda Berger, I see you at your hand is up. Yes, I have a question about item number 11. When that item comes up, will that there be an opportunity for the public to ask questions about the information presented. Yes, there will be. Thank you. Yeah, for sure. Good question. Anyone else. Well, so, especially in light of the news clip that we just saw and the article that was in the bridge recently about some unhoused folks who died recently. That was something that I spent a lot of time thinking about and I did end up calling Ken Russell, the chair of our homelessness task force, it's just to check in to say like where we at what do we need to be doing. So I just want to ask the homelessness task force to come back, not tonight, but at our next meeting, just to keep us informed. I mean, if there is. I know there are some projects that are in the works and that there may be other things that we can be doing that that this is all stuff that I think we just need to keep on our radar and keep, keep pushing on. I just want to at least let you folks in the council and the public know that that is something that is on my mind and hoping to have them on the next agenda. Vicki, yes. Yes. One, I don't know how to put my full name on the zoom but I guess she'll just have to deal with it. There's one sober note there though about the three people that passed away. I would hope that there's some way that we can somehow find out who they were, and honor them in some way. Because you do when you work in and you do things out in the community. You get to know some of these people and, you know, I, it just seems as though we should be able to find a way to their lives, rather than simply say three people died on house, because we never do find out who they were and you never know why you're not seeing someone you're used to seeing. And everybody deserves to be to have their lives honored in some fashion. Thank you, Vicki. And just so you know, if you want to change how your name appears you go down to participants, and then that all the participants should appear. And then next to your name should appear a blue button that says more, and then you can click on rename. And you should be able to change your name that way. Just as my eye but thank you also for your comment. Lisa Rochelle, that's Vicki Lane. Yes, okay. Go ahead Lisa. Yes, my name is Lisa Rochelle I live in Montpelier, Vermont, and I just wanted to express my deep sorrow and the fact that we even have unhoused in the, in the capital of Vermont and I think the best way to honor folks is to work even harder to find solutions and use every avenue that we have to build communities and not just shelter people but permanently house them with dignity. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else. Okay. Let's walk around again. I just want to say amen to what was just said there. And I totally agree with that. And I hope that we're able to do more along those lines. Thank you. Thank you, Morgan. Anyone else. Okay. So, thank you everybody. And so we're going to move on for now to the consent agenda. And there's Sarah motion. I think we would move the consent agenda and then consent agenda, and then take things off. Yes, just a request to move item F the housing trust fund recommendation off the consent agenda. Oh, is there a second. Oh, I'll second. You think that I would remember that. So pulling item F that's okay with you, Jack. Okay, so the motion is second any further discussion about the consent agenda item. All right, all in favor, please say aye. And opposed. All right, let's take up item F. I think there is a comment on it. I can be brief. I have mentioned this numerous times before that when city money is being passed to a nonprofit. The transparency and the accountability is lacking. And the public records law is not being passed. And so the public records law right now. Access to the bathrooms in the transit center is being negotiated. Through goods, a marathon or another way. Neither of which is subject to public records law. And we don't have, we have a problem with a particular person. Who has been served a no trespass order from the transit center. Sleeping in the church. And she was sitting outside on Thanksgiving day. And we don't have a system that fills these gaps or sees who's falling through the net. And there needs to be, if we're going to give 10, $100,000 to good Samaritan. Towards the, the new shelter project. We need some accountability and some transparency. And in prior rate, I raised this over several years. There's been a, we don't need to look at what they're doing with our money. I say we do. We need to. Condition those contracts on some degree, maybe not the full transparency of state law that a public agency has, but an enhanced level of transparency. Of communications of where the things are falling apart. People were sexually assaulted at good Samaritan. People had their property stolen. And they're not subject to public records law. So when you're talking about giving them $100,000 from our housing trust fund. Now is the time to put some accountability provisions into that. Also, we need to make sure that the negotiation for use of the transit center as a warming space. Has. A provision to lift the no trespass order. Against. This person. She's too articulate for her own good, but she also needs a bathroom. And to be in, in a warm space. Thank you. Thank you. Any other comments. This particular item. Okay. Is there a motion. Move the way you prove item F. Oh, second. Okay. Motion to second any further discussion. Okay. All in favor, please say aye. And opposed. Okay. So item F passes. And we have. A few appointments to make. And so the way I'd like to arrange this is to see if any of the candidates for any of the three. Committees that we're talking about are present with us. I'd like to hear from all of them. And then we can either. Go into executive session or just have a vote either way. So just to check here. I just in Dressel, you're here. Yes. Would you like to come up and address the council? Introduce yourself. And just tell us about your interest in serving on the CBPSA. Everybody. Justin Dreschler. Here a few weeks ago. I'm a monthly resident. I applied to the CBPSA. I, you know, I'm interested in public safety generally, obviously, which is why I applied to be on the police review committee. I am particularly interested in this because dispatch was the, the area of the police review committee that I had the most focus on. It seems like something that would be interesting that is kind of right up my alley. I care. You know, I really care about getting things done. I'm really committed to the city. We only moved up here a few years ago, but we're here for the long haul. Just trying to, you know, give whatever help I can. So. So yeah, I tried to go into detail on my application. I also think that like I'm pretty easy to work with Lauren and Jack, both worked with me on the police review committee. And there are many things that I did not see eye to eye with on members of the committee, but I do think that we had a good working relationship. So there we are. Thank you. Any questions? Okay. Great. Thank you very much. All right. So for the complete streets committee, we have three folks up for appointment there. Potentially. So John Kim, Nancy Schultz and Brett Apple. I was just going to see if. Or any of them in person. Any of you in person. Okay. And just checking online. Are any of you with us? Okay. Great. Thank you very much. All right. So for the complete streets committee, any of you with us through zoom. I don't see any of them here. Digitally. So. Oh, oh, John. Oh, okay. John Kim, would you like to. Introduce yourself to the council. Tell us about your interest in. In serving on the complete streets committee. Yeah, sure. Hi. My name is John Kim. I've been a resident of Montpelier for about. Actually just a year now, but my, my wife's from central Vermont in the, in the general area. And we moved here recently and. And are also looking forward to call Montpelier home for. For a while. I'm interested in complete streets committee. I'm interested in the city of Montpelier. I'm interested in the city of Montpelier. As just a habit biker and. You know, person who, who chose, I, you know, we purposely decided to live in town so that we could. Take advantage of make being in a walkable city. And we, I'm just very interested in, you know, making sure that the city can be a place that is accessible to all of, you know, be a walking and biking or whatever. You know, both for myself, but for our kids. So yeah, I'd be interested in serving on the committee. I've worked for a long time and kind of corporate sustainability roles and I'd be interested in kind of be more engaged. Not the city that I'm living in. Thank you. Great. Thank you. Any questions. John Kim. Okay. All right. Thank you. And I don't see Jean Leon in person. Or online. Am I correct? I don't see. Jean on here. Yes. Just to clarify, I don't know if it was a mistake on what Jean's application or maybe like the agenda was put together, but. Jean was applying for a permanent position on the development review review board. And what we're seeing is the design review board DRB is DRB. I know it's super confusing. I just want to make sure there's some clarity. It actually should like, if it was the design review, it would be the design review committee should be the DRC. Right. Anyways, it's small. I just want to make sure we have some clarity. That's right. He was actually applying to the development review board. Yes. Right. Thank you. It's a good catch. But I otherwise don't see him. On I think that's correct. All right. So council. What would you like to do Jack pursuant to one PSA section 313. A three I move we enter executive discussion to discuss the appointment of one or more public officers. There a second. I'll second it. Okay. Further discussion. Hey, all in favor, please say aye. Aye. And opposed. All right. We will be right back. All right. Okay. We're back in regular session and I think we're going to. Do this in parts. Is there a. Motion Jack. I move that we. Appoint Justin Dressler to the. CVPSA board. I worked with the Justin on a police review. Commission and he did a tremendous amount of work. And I think he will be a tremendous asset to that board. All right. So a motion and a second. Any further discussion. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. And opposed. Okay. Is there another motion? Yes. Go ahead. I'd like to make a motion that we appoint. John Kim. Nancy Schultz and Brett appell to the. Complete streets committee. We're thankful for all of their willingness to. Participate in this. And think that they'll bring a lot of value to the process. So. Very second. Okay. Further discussion. All right. All in favor. Please say aye. Aye. Opposed. And regarding the. Development review board. We just wanted to note that there are actually three vacancies. And we're hoping that. For a larger pool. So Mr. Leon's. Service as an alternate. We'll continue through. At least the summer here. And so we'd like to take that all together. So we're asking staff to reopen that. And so we can hopefully find candidates for all of the positions. All right. So that is that topic. And then, so moving on to. The. See my earlier mask mandate for this. I assume I'm either going to turn it over to Cameron or to bill. Well, we're happy to start it. I think. Obviously the council had asked that we put this on. Most people are aware that the. Legislature at the governor's request. Provided authority to the local governments to. Pretty local mask mandates with certain limitations. And. This is on the agenda for consideration. We have drafted one based on. Some models we'd seen certainly can make any changes that you like. And obviously you need to determine. Whether you want to do that. That's all I have. Donnie, go ahead. Well, I find the sentence under the requirement to wear face covering confusing. Above it, it says require indoor. Requires indoor inside any building within city limits. But below it, it talks about any. Body who enters a public. City owned facility. So I guess I need to know if it enters any public building. And city owned. I get confused if the public relates to the city. For any public building. So it's intended to include any public building. That was our mandate. That was our order previously. We already have a rule that we've put in place about city owned buildings. So this is expanding it to any businesses, any business that are open to the public. So if it's not clear in the way it's worded, we can certainly try to clear that up. Yeah, I actually, because I saw that as well. And I actually have some alternate. Language that I would like to propose. I'm going to get my zoom back here. I closed my computer. My zoom disappeared. So, because I think it was. The language in the draft. Emergency order was similar to like. And order around like just a publicly owned buildings. So let me see if I can get to that. Yeah. Sure. That would be. That would be great. It's going to take me. Just a second here to get back any other comments just generally about mass mandate while I'm. Get myself together here. Okay. So down. This is. Not the, this is not the resolution. No, it's not. It's under the requirement to, to wear face covering. Right there. Oh, this is a change then from what's here. Yeah. So under at least the draft that I. Have. Where does it say this? Oh, right. Requirement to our face gatherings. So the, right now it says effective immediately. Any person, whether an employee, a customer or a visitor. Who enters a public. City owned facility. Must wear face coverings over their nose and mouth while inside the building. Regardless of their vaccination status. I thought that made it sound like. It had to be a city owned facility. And so I would propose that instead. It say. Effective immediately. Any person, whether an employee, a customer or a visitor. Who enters a. Public. Or private building that is open to the public. Must wear face coverings over their nose and mouth while inside of the building. And then I'd add this. And in the presence of others. That was a clause that we had. From our previous draft. Do you remember that? It was also like in the presence of others. And then continue on regardless of their vaccination status. So, so where would you have that? That sounds great. Where would you put that second part? So after the word building. So over their nose and mouth while inside the building and in the presence of others. Yep. And so it strikes. The city owned facility. The city owned facility. Part. Is that. Clear. Yes. Go ahead, Jack. It's, it might make it less clear to me because. Does that mean that. If someone enters a building that's open to the public. But there's nobody else there. If they're not subject to the requirement. Because they're not in the presence of others. I would think so. But if you're the only one there. Maybe that's okay. I don't know. I've learned that. Yeah. I mean, just remembering the conversation that was mostly due to employees who are in a store working all day. And it's a chance to take a mask off if there's no, nobody else inside the building. That's that was the motivation for it. Yeah, go ahead. One other. Title of it. I think we'll be confusing. So wearing face coverings required indoors inside any building within Montpelier city limits. Maybe any public. Publicly accessible building within Montpelier city limits. So we're not saying. I know that if you read the details, but if this goes out and people see. In my home, I have to wear masks. So just be some clarity. Maybe we should just say public building rather than public accessible building because. When you start to use the term accessible. It gets into. Get make gets people thinking about handicap accessibility. I would say just any building. That is open to the public. Okay. Does that work for you, Jack? Yeah. Okay. Thank you. That's a good point. Any other comments? I'll just say for myself, I am. Very interested in voting for this. I think this is. Especially given where we are at in terms of cases right now. This is something we need to be doing. Other things. Jack. I completely agree. We, what we are seeing is a continued growth in the, in the number of cases. And it is. Vital. Vital to do what we can to. To prevent. Further transmission of this. Disease. It's potentially deadly. And the science tells us that. Vaccinations and masks are the two things that we can do that are really effective in. Protecting. Ourselves and. The people we come into contact with. If people say. This is. My body. My choice, but it's not just my body. It's. Anyone you run into. Run into. You don't know. Even if you're willing to take that risk for yourself. You don't know. If you're infected. And you don't know if you're exposing someone else. Who. Who might get a serious case. Thank you. It's possible for us to accept the edits. And have it effective. As soon as possible. Yes. It does say effective immediately. Even with the edits. You just passed it as a. Yeah. Conner. Yeah. Just a couple of questions. Exemptions. The frustrates the essential purpose of the business. That's. Anywhere. Or is that just sort of discretionary with these. So that was lying. Language crafted by. Former council member Richardson. That was in our prior order. And I believe that was intended to allow for when people are eating. That's a primary purpose of a restaurant. That you can't wear a mask while you're eating. Or if you're getting your beard shaved. You have to. Kind of think. So it was. It was intended to say, you know, yes, you have to have a mask except for when you're. If it gets in the way of the primary. I can't think of anything that would be too gray in areas. I think it's probably fine. So we just took that exact language from our last order. The other question. If. States and county buildings are within city limits there. Would they fall under this? Or are they exempt for us? Well, I would argue that if the, if the. I would say yes. Because the state. I would say yes. Because the state legislature gave this authority to local government. I don't know that they exempted themselves from it. So. Yes. I agree with that. And I would just end, I agree with Jack there. You know, we followed the science one way on this. I think we did right last time. I think we got to follow the science. When the numbers are taken up there. And it's unfortunate because I think largely the governor shirked his responsibility on this by opening up. Civil wars at select boards around the state. But. If it's the right thing to do, you do it. So. I support this. Jennifer. I just like to say that. You know, wearing a mask is the lowest. The lowest on the bar that we can do to protect each other. You don't have to be. Into getting vaccinated, but wearing a mask is super easy. And. We'll cheat because you can get them for free. Right. Before. Actually. Go ahead. We do have a couple of hands of folks online. Should I go for them first? Okay. All right. Morgan Brown. I see that you have your hand up and then we'll go to Ann Gilbert. Go ahead. Morgan. Yep. We're getting there. We're getting there. Morgan, do you have anything? Okay. I was waiting to get unmuted. It wasn't let me talk. All right. Morgan Brown. District three. My pair. I haven't had a chance. Read the draft. Policy. I wasn't aware of there was one. It wasn't provided within. The agenda. That's a problem. That's a problem. That's a problem. That's a problem. That's a problem. That's a problem. That's a problem. That's a problem. That's a problem. That's a problem. That's a problem in the future. You know, if there's going to be some policy. Discussed by the city council. You know, I'll vote it on. Please make it available. It's not easy for some of us to go digging for it. Wherever it's hiding. Excuse me, wherever it's available. So anyway, my comment is. is I support very strongly the mayor's wording, except I have concerns about the line when it comes to the indoor setting in the presence of others. And it's twofold. One, there are businesses and stuff who have a policy that you have to wear a mask when you're in their business. So this line could contradict that and cause confusion. So if you're gonna keep that line in there in the presence of others, you need to add a caveat that says unless a business or entity instructs otherwise, something along that lines. The other problem about saying that, well, you don't need to wear a mask. Well, basically you're saying you don't need to wear a mask indoors unless you're in the presence of others. Some places, you know, they handle them in food, and there's food around, like in sauce and stuff and everything. You know, and I think it's just, you know, you're gonna be more careful about the wording and I think you wanna work on that one a little bit. The other concern I have is when, I don't know what the policy was before, I can't recall, but when it comes to large outdoor gatherings, you know, when people are in closer proximity than six feet apart, I think that's a concern. And I think there should be a policy, you know, unless what the state is saying only applies to indoor or not outdoor gatherings, you know, maybe this is a discussion for another time, but I think, you know, we should be concerned about large outdoor gatherings too, you know, and people might wanna be wearing masks there too. So that's my two cents. Thank you. Great, thank you, Morgan. And I particularly on that last point, I think that's something that we can consider when we get requests for large gatherings. I do wanna note though that this draft was available, at least digitally on the website is under item eight. So if you go there, you can find the draft that we are discussing. Oh, I saw the agenda, but I didn't see where it's available. I'm looking at it right now and I don't see it. I just see the agenda, but I don't see a link. So, Morgan, Cameron's gonna send you directly a link to it. Thank you, but that's after the fact, but thank you. Okay. Anne Gilbert, go ahead and then we have Tracy Canino. Hi, thank you. I didn't have a chance to look at the draft and I can't remember if you mentioned this already. I just wondered if it would be good to have regardless of vaccination status listed in there. Is that already in there? That is in there. Okay, good. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Tracy Canino, go ahead and then Diane Soffron. Hello, can you hear me? Yes. Okay. I was able to read the draft, which was great. And to the point about the not in the presence of others for consideration of the council is even though people don't say it enough that the virus actually is airborne and it will hang in the air for quite some time even after someone is left. So you could have a space someone has entered even if they're the only one, then unmasked breathing in that space, then leave and then someone else could come in, assume that they're alone, take the mask off and be breathing in that space and still become infected because the virus being airborne will remain in that air unless there is ventilation, which then gets into much more complicated things but it might be something to consider about that. And I did just want to say just to state a thank you to everyone in the community who has already been masking because it's a very quiet kind of a daily kindness that they've been doing for others. And even though, maybe I don't say it to the person when I see them, I certainly appreciate being about in my community and feeling safer because I know the masks can feel like an inconvenience sometimes to some people and can be uncomfortable but the fact that they've decided that the safety of other people in themselves is above a little discomfort for themselves is just a wonderful part of this community. And so I just wanted to actually say thank you to everyone who has been doing that. Thank you. And actually what your comment is making me think or realize is that phrase in the presence of others in as much as this is difficult to enforce that part of it is particularly unenforceable because if someone wanted to check then they're in the presence of someone else. So you would never know, right? Like taking that part out might not even matter. Anyway, I'm just sorry. I'm sorry to interrupt. Go ahead, Dan Soffron. Hi, I'll just put my two cents in about that phrase as well in addition to everything everyone has said. One of the dynamics that comes into play if something like that is in effect is that the onus then is on me to always be on the lookout as I turn a corner in a store as I walk into another aisle. And this is one of the things that I find most upsetting as I negotiate my way around town is I'm always on guard against my neighbors, my fellow residents here. And so I think that's not a good thing. No one wants to catch the virus. We don't wanna catch the virus with all these new uncertainties with the changing variants and the uncertainties of how the vaccine is protecting us against these new variants. But not having masking causes, I think a real crumbling of a sense of community and trust in others. Everyone as I walk around town, everyone becomes suspect to me or a danger to me or potential danger to me. Where has someone been? Are they vaccinated? Are they positive and they don't know? And that's a major source of distress for myself as I walk around. I mean, I'm triple vaccinated, but it's destroying the fabric of my sense of connection to other people here because I can't trust people. The other thing I wanted to mention is that not having a mask mandate forces me to do almost all of my shopping online except the stores that require masks or do curbside. And I find it ironic that, some people who are so concerned about the economic wellbeing of our businesses don't want the mask. I won't go into a store unless it's absolutely essential as long as there are no mask mandates. So I would be much more comfortable going into stores if there were because all those other variables don't come into play. The other thing I should say is that we do know that the masks work. I mean, I think about my dentists and doctors. And even before we had the vaccinations, they were relying totally on the masks. And I know my speaking for my own dentist and his office, they have had no problems and they were relying totally on masks, looking into our mouths before anyone was vaccinated. So I just can't see how anybody can question the efficacy of the mask. Another thing that I wanted to mention is, and it's a very serious thing, is that our access to healthcare in the community is being compromised by all those people who are getting COVID and filling up the hospitals because they get sick when it all could be avoided by wearing masks as well as being vaccinated. So I'm very glad that you're reconsidering this again. I was very happy when you did it last time before the governor called, as I remember, before the governor declared a state of emergency. So I think you were really on the ball and it made me feel very proud of the city and comfortable to be in it. So I'm really glad you're gonna, I urge you and support your effort to do it again so that we stay healthy and the sense of community and common good is strong. Thank you. And I also speak for my husband, he's here, Lou Friedland. We live right here in town. Thank you. And Lee, I saw you turned your camera on, did you wanna make a comment? We can't hear you yet. Nope. I think you've gotta unmute yourself. There you go. If you would also say your last name for us. D-O-W, Dow. Okay, thank you. Go ahead. Mask mandated in public venues, although inconvenient and perhaps only minimally effective to prevent transmission of colds and flu's would not offend my sense of freedom of choice. I would consider the requirement and nod to the concerns, fears of my community. Vaccines, on the other hand, I wanna make it clear. I am not anti-vax, I'm fully-vaxed, but mandated vaccine is a more nuanced issue, I think, I personally, I said I'm not an anti-vaxxer, but to require someone to inject the substance into his body, the long-term effects of which are not really yet known is offensive to my sense of freedom of choice. Had I young children, I would be even more alarmed. I understand the current rhetoric is calling the pandemic the pandemic of the unvaccinated. And that may be an accurate global description, but in my America, I must have the power to make that decision for myself. I could be, and I'm not talking personally, but someone should have the power to make the decision for himself. He or she or I could be discouraged to think that the welfare of the neighbors, encouraged to think of the welfare of the neighbors of the community, but to require the person to be injected could cost him a job, the possible cancellation of his health insurance, his unemployment insurance possibly, and throw a whole social system into chaos. So those are my thoughts for whatever they're worth. So just to clarify, Lee, this particular item is not about mandatory vaccinations. It's just about masking in buildings that are open to the public, just in case that was... Oh, I thought it was a vaccine mandate too. This particular item is not that we... There's something related to that. Which is also not a vaccine mandate. Okay, but also not a vaccine mandate. So, but I just wanted to make sure that you and the public are clear about that. So thank you. Okay, thank you. Yeah, no problem. And I went directly to folks online, anyone in person wish to make a comment? Go ahead. Steve Whitaker. Ever the contrarian. Well, I recognize the health potential health benefits of protecting others with a mask or protecting yourself with a mask. And I wear a mask when I go into a store. I don't wanna be told where I have to win. I wanna use my own judgment. And if I'm too close to people who may or may not be safe, I will put on a mask. But this is like political correctness or on a mock. It's totally unenforceable, just like we can't enforce our skateboards and bicycles on the sidewalk. We can't enforce our litter ordinance or our no idling ordinance. This is totally unenforceable. You got jurisdiction issues with the state buildings, whether the Capitol police or the city police are not gonna go write tickets for masks. And the state's attorney's already said he's not gonna prosecute any of these. So this is really just an exercise in political correctness to alleviate the encouragement of citizens to police themselves and demonstrate consideration for each other, the nanny city instead of the nanny state. How are you gonna deal with the folks that are living outdoors who are passing pipes around and passing beers around and refuse to wear masks and then become even more pariah than they already are treated? This is not an enforceable thing. You can do it, you can encourage it. That would be a better resolution. We utmost encourage people to wear masks in any public setting, but to mandate it and then have it unenforceable basically makes a fool's errand out of it. Regarding the notice, you've heard from me for years that the website sucks, it's dysfunctional, it cannot, you know, Morgan couldn't find it, finding the packet versus finding the agenda. If you wanna put a link in every item of the agenda rather than have the agenda open up another window which then has some links to some sections, your website is dysfunctional, replace it, find a new vendor, you know, but don't just keep telling people they're wrong when they say they can't find something or they get a different years, you know, agenda to the homelessness task force or something. It's not their problem. Reading, trying to read with a mask on, fogging glasses and if anyone's ever had any hearing issues that most people rely on with to some degree to, you know, distinguish consonants from vowels and to basically, you got a lot of people saying, what'd you say? What'd you say? What'd you say? Who aren't hard of hearing, but they rely subconsciously on visual cues. So I just think you're way overreaching in a fool's errand. Thank you. Anyone else in person? Yeah. Hi, I'm Eva Zaret. I'm a, I live in Plainfield but I grew up in Montpelier. I'm a public health specialist in social and behavioral sciences. And I have to say, I believe that this is actually an exercise in human decency. And I hope that we wouldn't be looking at one another and making a judgment about whether or not that person is at risk just by looking at them on the outside. I think this is really important to institute a mask mandate. And I would recommend just striking that last bit about whether or not you're around another person. Thanks. Anyone else? I'll go ahead Bill. I just had a couple of points of clarification about comments that were made by various people. Number one, the state legislature that created the enabling statute only restricted our ability to regulate indoors. So the comment about whether we should regulate outdoor gatherings or sidewalks or anything like that is beyond the scope of the authority that's been granted to cities and towns. We might wanna think about if we're granting permits to an event that that becomes a condition of the permit but in terms of whether there's protests or any other gathering outside that is beyond the scope of our ability. Secondly, whether you choose to leave the presence of others in or not, there's nothing to prevent a private business from enacting whichever regulations that are stronger than this. So even before we all do this, there have been businesses which have required masks and they can continue to do so and they can continue to have more stringent regulations. And then lastly, as the mayor said, there's nothing in here about vaccinations. In fact, all it says is that these apply regardless of your vaccination status. I see another couple of hands here. Lincoln Earl Centers, go ahead. Yes, hi, this is Lincoln. I live in Montclair. And I just had a question to sort of throw out for consideration, which is related to the, for whoever there's tension between public health and personal choice. Diane mentioned the efficacy of masks and how dentists and medical professionals are wearing masks. And that specifically brings up the point that in those situations, one party is wearing a mask, not both parties. And just to put the point out there that there is, there's a difference between mandating that everybody have the same perspective and asking people to not do their personal choice that I see lots of people around that have heavy duty masks and are obviously concerned and they're protecting themselves with heavier duty masks. And I just wonder if it has been discussed that balance between, if a dentist is literally working in somebody's mouth, obviously they're not unmasked or that they're not masked, sorry. And yet we are aware of the fact that that is protective for the wearer. And nobody of course is gonna be asking anybody not to wear a mask that chooses to wear a mask. So I just bring that up as a point of consideration. Thank you. Anyone else wish to make a comment, either in person or online? Yeah, so Tracy, generally we try to avoid multiple comments, but if you have something quick to add, that would be okay. I just wanted to add very quickly that within the past week that several scientific studies had come out about the risk assessment between one person wearing a mask and the different levels of the masks versus an N95 or cloth mask or just surgical masks that allow for air to go around the mask and versus if both people are wearing or if an individual is wearing and the risk assessment for that. And it was very clear that both people wearing the masks were better. And if the council would like, I can email the links to those actual scientific articles. So yes, it has been addressed in the scientific community. Thank you. And I'm certainly welcome any email about those studies. Thank you. Phyllis Rubinstein, go ahead. Thank you. And Phyllis Rubinstein from Unpelior. Just to, first of all, I'm fully in favor of having a mask mandate in all public spaces as you've discussed. And the issue of the dental office, I have been to the dentist many times this year. My dentist's office, not only are they wearing double masks and a clear face shield, they're also in, I don't know what it's called, they put on the closing, the gear. So they are totally geared up and the patient has the mask on and is wearing a mask until the patient is actually worked on. And in my dentist's office, she takes the oxygen level, a temperature. So they are extremely cautious. And the patient has the mask off only for the period of time where the work is actually being done. I found, so, and I think that it's important for everyone to wear masks and going to a dental office when you need to have work done is an exception. The same way, if you're eating in a restaurant, you take your mask off while you're eating. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else? Okay, go ahead. I know we had more council comments. I'm gonna go to Lauren who had her hand up earlier and then to Jen, go ahead, Lauren. Sure, thanks. So, I mean, first of all, I've become convinced that we could remove the phrase in the presence of others. So if I recommend we do that, I think that makes a lot of sense. So thanks for everyone's feedback. I would just echo the disappointment that the governor's been unwilling to put in a statewide mask mandate, punting it to local officials, but I agree we should move forward with this tonight. I think there's good data from other states with the mask mandates that these increase the use of masks, even recognizing enforcement challenges and everything. I think we've consistently tried to follow the science when we put the mandate in earlier than the state, when we removed it, we were following the science, when we put it in place for the city buildings a couple of months ago. So I think we're doing our best trying to follow the science and the CDC right now is very clear that if you have transmission at the levels that we have that they urge communities to have indoor mask mandates. One speaker noted another consideration about health system capacity as another factor that the CDC urges communities to look at when considering mask mandates. And right now, we're seeing the articles about how strained our ICUs are, there's lack of beds and the stresses is putting on our healthcare workers and thank you to all of them. Thanks to all of you who are in there. I mean, how it's been so rough. So much appreciation and as somebody noted that everyone with every kind of health condition right now is more at risk if our healthcare system is strained in all of these ways. So I think this is at least we can be doing for each other to be wearing masks to require them. So I will be supporting this tonight. Go ahead, Jay. So quickly, I wanna echo what Lauren said and particularly about what I think lack of statewide leadership in terms of having a statewide mask mandate and how that reduces efficacy of what we're trying to do here. So I really appreciate that. And also I just wanted to add in one point of data which is I spoke with folks from Montpelier live a couple of days ago reached out to them to see if there was a sense, general sense for at least downtown businesses about how we might approach that. And while it was an informal survey, the sense was pretty much at least two to one that they were in favor of a mandate. So it's not not total consensus, you know, not every business has built the same but it sounds like there's strong support from our downtown business community around this. So, thanks. Great. Can I make it very brief? It's very brief, yes. Very brief. I would encourage you to think about using your health officer authority and even some of our loan funds, whatever to offer air cleaning devices. Make sure air cleaning device, that would be a whole lot more effective than masks in varying businesses. That air cleaning devices, it took a long time to get them into this room but that would be a much more effective than an unenforceable mask mandate. So. Thank you. All right, Bill, go ahead. Two more comments. I don't want to drag this out too much longer. A point about enforcement's been made a couple of times. I'd note that the statute that the state passed does allow for fines up to $800 for violations. We opted not to include that for trying to give people the opportunity to do the right thing. And also because of demands upon our police and others, we didn't feel like that was going to be the kind of policing we wanted. But I would note that also under the statute, this has to be re-upped after 45 days and every 30 days. So those are the kinds of provisions that could be included in the future if we felt enforcement was necessary. I would hope we wouldn't have to do that. And secondly, just broadly, this is a more of a professional perspective from a higher level. The issue of public choice versus public safety and public health. I just note that all of us every day give up public choice in lieu of public safety when we stop at a stop sign, when we stop at a red light, when people have to go outside to smoke in a restaurant. These are all because they can't smoke in restaurants. Any number of things that government mandates for the public good to protect all of us and those for whatever reason don't seem to get people riled up over their rights. And this does, and I don't understand it. So from my perspective, obviously, you're the policymaking board, but the science is crystal clear. And if this is a public health issue and it's not a particularly difficult ask, inconvenient ask to ask of people. All right. I think we are probably ready to have some kind of emotion. I imagine. Connor, go ahead. I'll move to adopt the emergency order with the proposed changes tonight, including the last line striked those. Lauren said there at the end. Right. So it does not include the in the presence of others. That's perfectly fair. So just to be clear for the record, since we had a lot of conversation, the heading that says wearing face coverings, to say wearing face coverings required indoors inside any building that is open to the public within mobiliar city limits. And then under the requirement to wear face covering, it would say effective immediately any person, whether an employee, a customer or a visitor who enters a public or privately owned business, a privately owned building that is open to the public must wear face coverings, da, da, da, da. Those are the only two changes. I think that's right. Second, okay, there's a motion and a second. Any further discussion? Okay, all in favor, please say aye. Aye. And opposed. Okay. Thank you, everybody. And I just want to note that I am very grateful for everyone who participated in the discussion. And I just want to note that I think this was the right choice for us to make. And in light that not every community is making this choice. So I think we're doing the right thing for us. All right, and so now we're on to a COVID OSHA policy that is particular to the city. So this relates only to city employees. OSHA has issued a regulation for all employers with over a hundred employees, which is us, that by January 4, we have to have a policy in place relating to vaccinations and or testing. And I know that's in court, but we are proceeding to follow the regulation. Essentially, the choices that we are given in this is to either mandate vaccinations for all employees or to require those employees who are not vaccinated to wear masks at all times other than eating, and again, one six feet apart from someone, and to be tested on a regular basis, at least weekly. So this is a long policy, but essentially that's what it is saying that it is, that you do not have to be vaccinated, but you do need to be masked and regularly tested and that all employees must show evidence of their vaccine status in order to fall into one of, if you don't present your vaccine card, you must do the testing. And it goes on to talk about how this all works. And we have shared this with employees. We've got some similar comments to what we received tonight about choice. And again, and we've responded similarly. We have about 95% of our full-time employees are vaccinated. So it's a small number that would fall under the testing requirements, but I would certainly urge you to pass this. We have to pass one or the other by January 4th. Any comments on this? Go ahead, Jack. I move that we adopt the policy as presented. I'll second it. Okay, motion and a second. Any comments either from council or the public in person or online? No comments. Okay. Any further discussion? Okay. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. And opposed. Great, thank you. Okay. Thank you for bringing this up. All right, so we are up to presentation or update from the Center Vermont Prevention Coalition. And yeah, so I think there's folks here for that. So I would welcome you up to this table. Yeah, come on, come on. And to be fair, you're gonna want to pull that microphone close and do you have a presentation you wanna project? No, we'll just be speaking today. Okay. So it will actually show you two people. Oh, great. There we go. Welcome, and if you'd also introduce yourselves. Sure, can you all hear me? Yeah, is that? Maybe. Can you hear me? Okay. So I just introduced myself, I'm Eva Zarrett. I'm a public health specialist at Central Vermont Medical Center and a project coordinator for the Central Vermont Prevention Coalition backed by the hospital. This is Dr. Mark Detman. He's an ER physician at CVMC and also the project director at the coalition. And this is Olivia LeClaire. She's an AmeriCorps VISTA serving with us this year as a rural community organizer. Yeah, please do. Okay. It works. First of all, as a practicing ER doctor, I'm gonna go to work tomorrow morning. And I'm gonna go to work tomorrow morning feeling really good about what y'all just did. That was sensible, science-based and very thoughtful conversation and resolution. So I really appreciate it. It's a hellish world out there in there. I also just want to mention you're gonna hear about our coalition's work tonight in the area of substance use disorders. But I want y'all to be aware that our emergency department that is your community's emergency department is doing some extraordinarily progressive and proactive things for people with alcohol and drug problems. Anyone can walk into our ER anytime of the day 24-7 and get some real help that starts to get them onto a path for recovery. And they can come in in crisis or they can just come in and walk in and say, I need some help. So that's an extraordinary transition. It's unusual to find in any hospital in this country. And really proud to have that here. And you'll hear more about work we're doing that Eva and I'll deliver you gonna present. So thank you. Yes, thank you, Mark. Mayor Watson, we've had the pleasure of speaking with you and introducing ourselves previously. And we're really excited to be in front of the whole council tonight to introduce you to our substance use coalition backed by the hospital. And to talk to you about ways that we can assist Montpelier and help Montpelier residents who are struggling with their substance use or have an addiction to get into treatment which is available and on the road to recovery. But also to talk about primary prevention efforts so that we can delay or mitigate substance use in youth and hope that they don't end up in that situation later in their lives. And one of the ways that we'd like to do that that we'll talk to you about in a minute and a little bit more is through a broader community forum where we would take this conversation to the community that we'll be having here tonight and expand on some of these points. But first you should hear a little bit more about who we are and I'll turn it over to Olivia. Yeah, so a little bit about us. There are many really great non-profits and agencies here in central Vermont that work in the substance abuse realm including primary prevention, treatment, recovery and harm reduction, including Ann Gilbert from Central Vermont U Directions who many of you may know, she's actually on Zoom here tonight. She's our coalition's primary prevention partner and we meet monthly and really great initiatives have come from these groups of organizations meeting together. Yeah, so the coalition has been working together since I think 2015 but in 2020 they were awarded the coalition and the hospital was awarded a three-year federal grant to address the opioid crisis in particular in central Vermont including rural central Vermont. So some of our work is taking place in very Montpelier but also out into places like Worcester and down into Northern Orange County like Washington and Orange. So we're reaching out into all of the small communities and the opioid crisis as everyone knows has always been serious but it is currently at a level that the country and the state and central Vermont and Montpelier have never seen before. I have some stats here. The most recent data that we have available to us from the health department goes through August of this past year statewide 129 people have died so far at the same time last year 104 people have died and fewer the year before and fewer the year before. So the deaths are increasing every year. Here in Montpelier through those official numbers and they lag about eight weeks from the health department there haven't been any official deaths reported although we've heard tonight that anecdotally there are some that may end up being officially declared later as data becomes available to us. But the point is that it doesn't matter what the life conditions were that led to somebody using substances and developing an addiction. At that point it becomes a medical condition and we need people to know that there are treatments available that are really effective that we can help them get into that will bring them to the road to recovery but that it's not enough to just address this issue. We have to work with our kids to make sure that we're implementing primary prevention activities that are going to just keep them from even beginning on that road in the first place. And we have a lot of ideas and we have the resources to help make this happen. And as we know kids are struggling right now during COVID with mental health and mental health and substance use often go hand in hand. And so we think that although things are really difficult right now and working with schools who are so swamped is so hard. This is such a critical time that we really need to be doing something. So like I said, we have the ideas and we have the resources. Some of these include work directly in schools like training school nurses to be able to do screenings to assess whether or not a child might be at risk and be able to direct them to some resources. But it also means building a community where kids feel that they matter to their community and that they're busy doing things that bring them joy. We were really happy to hear that this hub idea that's coming that might be bringing some sort of sports and physical activity that kids can get involved in. But we also wanna make sure that there's space for kids that are not into sports to be engaged after school whether that's a maker space or even working after school in a job. So these kinds of things are evidence-based. They've been replicated in other countries like Iceland which in some ways not so different from Vermont. And we can help make these things happen. I'd like to turn it over to Olivia now who's gonna talk a little bit more about our Ask About a Community Forum because we really feel that going to each community and understanding what their priorities are is going to be critical for any of these to really be successful. Yeah, so our request for tonight is that we'd really like to have some time with your community to start conversations about substance use and building a healthy community. We're actually doing this community forum idea in Northfield in January. It's gonna be virtual and in person and it's gonna be held at the library community room. And so this will be the first of many that we plan to do around the county. So however something like this gets set up we plan to bring in experts to talk about substance use and ways that we can also help shape initiatives that people in your community want to be involved in and help out with. So our questions for you are really how you see something like this taking place in Montpelier, whether where it is and how this can really become a reality. We really would like to have this in mid February. That's like, if that's possible and we'd be happy to answer any other questions or be pointed to a point of contact person who could help us with this project. But yeah, that's our thoughts. Thoughts or questions, go ahead Jennifer. Have you all reached out to any of the local nonprofits that are working with community members that may be in your demographic? Can you repeat that last part you said? Yeah, have you reached out to any nonprofits that are local that are working with community members that may be falling into this demographic for you? Have you reached out to any yet? Yes, we have a membership of about 30 local nonprofits in our coalition. So if you've heard of them they're likely a part of the Central Vermont Prevention Coalition and have been for years, yeah. And it's been- It's actually a long, long force though. Microphone. Just to involve folks. Yeah, so what Dr. Deppman is saying is that in addition to the people at work and treatment and recovery, like the Turning Point Center, we have Vermont Cares who's a harm reduction focused. But we also have representation from Montpelier Police Department, Good Samaritan, the Youth Services Bureau. Have you reached out to Downstreet? Downstreet is a member of our coalition actually. And the Family Center. And the Family Center, yeah. That's where I work. That's why I'm here. Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah, so we have a really broad representation which is really unique for a coalition like ours and critical because that's the only way that we can make sure that people don't fall through the cracks as if we're building up the connections between sectors that are often siloed. Did you wanna add something? Okay. And we have a whole list of all of, we should provide that to you. And it should be listed on the one pager that we sent out, all the logos are listed. So, yes. So I'd just say on behalf of our staff that we'd be happy to assist with this. We're always, this is a high priority for us. As you mentioned, the police department and I know our EMTs work with this community a lot. Unfortunately, not the sad end of that a lot of the times. And so we, I'm not sure, you could contact me or Cameron Needemire Assistant Manager. We'll do a team meeting tomorrow morning after this meeting and debrief, but we'd be happy to help set that up. I know our community justice center in the past has helped do these kinds of forums. So by all means, we can help partner with you to put something right this on in the community. I figure out where and when and who and all that. Thank you so much. They're also a member of our coalition. The justice center. That's good to know. Yeah, so just go to them. Connor. Thanks so much for the good work, you folks. It's really good to hear about it. One way you may want to go is we're trying to stay away from just like hosting something on front porch forum and hoping that good things happen. So what we did was the mayor's initiative established the capital area neighborhoods there, which have organizers embedded in each neighborhood in Montpelier. So we'd definitely be worth sitting down with them because they have their own email lists. I think they've even been known to do some canvassing and they might have some good ideas of their own to help generate turnout for them. So we can put you in touch with them. That's great. Yeah, thank you so much. Also, I don't know if the schools are, if you're interacting with the schools very much. Anyway, I have contacts I feel like I can connect you with folks at the school who would be pertinent to the topic. But also I just want to come back to the point that you made about the work that's been done in Iceland. I've done some reading about the work there in terms of prevention and have been very impressed with the results really, but also the logical, I guess, it seems logical in hindsight. You're like, all right, of course. Of course you'd want to engage students in in these kind of alternate stress relieving activities. And so like how can we, I mean, speaking as a teacher also, like how can we be providing those kinds of opportunities for students? Anyway, something that I'm very interested in as well. So. Thank you. Yeah, any other thoughts or comments? So we really appreciate the support and we'll be reaching out for some contact information and next steps. Super, thank you so much. Thank you so much. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Okay. So next on our agenda is the Water Resource Recovery Facility. I am guessing that we should probably take a break now. Sorry. Cause we would normally be taking a break at around 8.30 and I think this conversation may last longer than that. So maybe. Anyway, so let's, let's take a 10 minute break. It's 8.10 right now. We'll be back at 8.20 and we'll jump in with the Water Resource Recovery Facility presentation, which I am looking forward to. So great. Thank you. It is 8.21 here. So we're coming back. Oh, and there's Jack. Okay. Okay. So we are coming back from our break, jumping in with the Water Resource Recovery Facility presentation on solids drying. So welcome. Introduce yourselves and take it away. Sure. My name is... My right hand is Cox. He's the Chief Operator of the Water Resource Recovery Facility. And on my left is Colin O'Brien. He is the project manager for the engineering firm we've been working with, Brown and Caldwell, to develop this project. So tonight we're here to talk about the wastewater or water resource facility phase two, just to refresh everyone's memory. The phase one project was completed in June of this year. So it's been about six months of operating the facility with our, with the upgraded equipment. As part of that project, the plant now has the ability to take in high strength organic waste and as a result of the high strength organic waste, we are making, and the digester improvements, the equipment improvements at the plant, we're making a lot more methane. So probably a lot of folks may have noticed the flare off the interstate. So a lot of times, you know, when it's particularly in the summer months, we are flaring that methane. These two projects is really looking at a beneficial use to capture that methane and utilize it. We are utilizing the methane in the winter months for heating the buildings, but there is the summer month offset, which currently, which is really like a project is to look at fully utilizing that methane we're using. So just an overview of the question I had for tonight. First, is the bio-salt, why this is. It's just temperamental. I don't think the presentation is going through that's not coming up on the share. I'm not sure if that's the share screen. So the You're going to get permission. You got to go back to your There are your many layers. We got it. Thank you. Okay. So items for discussion tonight is the bio-salt strier mentioned the benefits of that project. Other plant upgrades that are needed currently the cost assessments for the plant opportunities for funding and a review of the combined heat and power alternative project for utilizing the methane. So that I'm going to turn over to Colin. Stand up and talk if that works. Hi everybody, like Kurt said, Colin O'Brien, I'm the project manager work with a consulting firm called Brown and Caldwell. I work here in Vermont, New England, Massachusetts, Maine, Hampshire. I've worked with staff on the Council and the men for having me this evening as well as the public to join us. I'm going to go through a few portions of more of the technical content here. So I will not try to dive deeply into the details, but keep it at a level so that everybody can be informed about what we're talking about here. And before I do that, I do just want to commend the city staff, the DPW staff working through this project have been very collaborative and you should be proud of the way water resource recovery facility that you guys own and operate. With that, there were three technologies that we looked at as part of this evaluation, a rotary drum dryer, a belt dryer and a paddle dryer. So these are all various different technologies of varying cost up there and on the on the screen share. You'll see there's some data regarding some of their minimum throughput, which comes into play here at Montpelier. Some of these technologies cannot handle the small amounts of sludge that sometimes get generated here. They're mainly larger intended for larger municipalities. For example, the MWRA in Boston has drum dryers. So that is not something that we would thoroughly consider here in Montpelier. What we did land on mainly for its efficiencies, its safeties. And if you see on the bottom those pictures, those pictures are of what we call Class A product. So that's what comes out of the dryer. That's your finished product. We landed on an indirect fired belt dryer as our solution. And the main reason as we're looking at the three of these options up here is as Kurt noted is we're trying to utilize excess methane that's being generated at the WRRF. So with that, we also needed to select the technology that's capable of utilizing that methane or what you'll see indirectly hot water from methane consumption in the safest manner, in the most efficient manner to help me, you know, 2030 sustainability goals. We want to go to the next slide, Kurt. So as I mentioned, the alternative that we ended up lying on was an indirect hot water belt dryer. Staff and myself did go visit installed locations in the United States. A big thing for me is if we're going to recommend it technology, if we're even going to consider it, we really need to go and see it so that the people that are going to be operating this and dealing with it day in and day out are comfortable with it. And it's been established as a proven technology. One really important thing for the WRRF staff was that we could run this automated. The rest of the plan is very automated. So they can do water to your sludge currently without anybody being there. The operators have the availability to log into a laptop and view the plant's current operations. That was very important so that we did not have a huge impact on staffing with whatever technology is considered. The third priority was to produce a class a product. Now class a product in terms of EPA allows this for beneficial reuse as an option. It does not mandate that that is how the sludge has to be handled, but it puts you into that category, which it opens your uses for managing the sludge. We also wanted to utilize existing hot water boilers for primary loop. So as Kurt talked about, I'm going to go back to that. We want to reuse excess methane. The easiest, safest way to do that is low temperature hot water boilers, which the plant already has several of. So we had come up in concept with some ways that we can modify existing hot water loops. And when I say hot water, I'm talking less than 220 degrees F that would be able to generate the heat and allow for the drying process to occur. It had the lowest operational complexity of all the options that we went to, which made sense being that some of the technologies are intended for much larger facilities. And we were able to size the unit in the footprint that I'm going to show out on the next slides for 25 wet tons per day. And what that means is that is the maximum peak solids loading that we see at the plant. So essentially, we wanted to make sure something could be sized to fit to meet all your sludge needs on the site with the constraints that we have. And one other benefit, as I kind of already mentioned, is we're going to replace one of the existing oil burners with a combination oil methane. So that was a project benefit as well. So this is what the layout looks like on the left hand side of the page, that red box that denotes where the dryer building is going to be. You'll see there's an electrical room in there. We also had to accommodate between the DPW building and this backside of the plant here allowance for back trucks to get in there to be able to maintain the existing infrastructure that you recently installed under the phase one project under note two, I believe it denotes the cake pump and other items that we're trying to reuse existing space within the dewatering building. So we need to figure out and what we did figure out is how to convey cake from your existing assets to this new facility. And there is space in the existing dewatering room to accommodate that. And then bullet, the bullet on the right is describing where the new hot water dual fuel boiler will be installed to replace and repurpose where an existing dual fuel boiler is. Okay, not. So not birthday cake, unfortunately, because if the treatment plant made that we would have no issues. So cake is what we refer to as solids that are dewatered, take the water out that are less than 50% total solids. So Chris can run tests in his lab to determine the percent solids in it. So we call cake. The dewatered product. Any other technical items that I might have. Under explained. Okay. I'll turn it back to Chris. Kurt mentioned my name is Chris Cox chief operator. Water resource recovery facility. I'm going to touch on the project benefits. The goal is to sell this product right from the start. We're targeting a 30 mile radius. Initially we will use a third party resource management company to manage the dried product. If a robust enough market for the materials established, the city will eventually be able to manage their own product. And reduce costs further. Another benefit is reduce solids, disposal volume and associated reduction in trucking. Currently we manage roughly 3,800 tons of solids. With the dryer will reduce that down to about 1,300 tons. To manage that will reduce your 75%. And reduce CO2 emit to CO2 emissions, excuse me from associated trucking by 78%. The dryer creates a class A biosods as Colin had mentioned. That has expanded alternative. Alternatives for beneficial use. Soil amendment is one is add nutrients and carbon. And it is used as a greenhouse gas storage. As you put the carbon into the, into the soil land restoration. Examples mine rec, reclamation and superfund sites. And currently A and R and D O T are working on getting approval for the use. State and private core companies to use as a manufactured top soil. It also provides a balanced use of these utilization of methane. Demand for drying during lower heating demand months. I mentioned. Solid. From increased municipal. Sledge receiving during the summer and shoulder months. When the facility in digest or heating demands are at their lowest. In other words, there will be increased demand for biogas to drive. There will be an increased demand for biogas to dry bio solids. During the warm months, minimizing flaring. The process of the biogas. Soil. Soil. Soil. And then watering the bio solids. Excuse me, drying the bio solids. Step in potential PFOS destruction paralysis. Biosolids first need to be dried before the paralysis process can strip out PFOS compounds from the solid byproduct. This dryer aligns with core functions of the resource recovery facility. Soil. Soil. Biogas usage and class A. Biosolids for beneficial reuse. Additionally, I'm not on here as a bullet point, but it will also reduce the generation of landfill leachate. We would stop trucking the water sludge. That is 75% water to the landfill. Few of the project benefits. Now it wants the next slide. We have additional facility upgrades. And challenges. We are really looking to move the project forward. Next slide, please. OK, thank you. Thank you. I don't have any questions. The next slide. The city is under directive from DC to take corrections. Potential causes are increased, septic and high strength ways receiving. Along with the addition of air handling in the dewatering building, since the completion of phase one. The hit, the City has been in discussion with the S G to reevaluate, excuse me, to evaluate the facility's odor profile and provide a solution. Secondary clarifiers are the last of the aging infrastructure improvements that need to be addressed. It was not addressed in the phase one project. Essential to the wastewater treatment process, the two secondary clarifiers were installed in 1978 over 40 years ago and are well beyond their expected useful life. It is about 50% and we're projecting roughly 80% loading. That means that there'll be minimal oil use, minimal fuel use required at projected loadings. Working with Brown and Caldwell DPW is confident that by reducing air exchanges in the dewatering building through the use of an odor control system, the building's heating demands in the winter will be lowered enough so as not to need supplemental fuel oil. Also, as a secondary benefit, odor control is, oh excuse me, also a secondary benefit is odor control on a building suspected of contributing to the recent increase of odor at the facility. Another, talking about challenges, we're also very considerate of high inflation as you are all aware of and cost escalations in the current market. And there's one more challenge, excuse me, is the additional septic storage needed for selected dryer size. Currently the facility has a 50,000 gallon septic holding tank and a 50,000 gallon leachate holding tank that are side by side. The dryer project will create the need for additional septic storage to level out receiving peaks during the day and to avoid the need to purchase a larger dryer with higher throughput. It will require an in-house project that can be done by DPW to combine the septic and leachate receiving tanks together to double the size of the storage to 100,000 gallons. And there is additional tankage on site that can be used for leachate receiving. Thank you, Chris. So now into the economics first on the dryer itself. So on projects like this, we often look to the payback period of the equipment purchased. So really, that is a combination of the debt service, the operating costs. So for the dryer, the operating costs are this puzzle, the cost of the dried solid material. And then also there will be times when the dryer is down for maintenance. So we anticipate some need for non-dried solid disposal, fairly small. There's a, we do have a few use carried in this estimate. We, like Chris mentioned, as part of the phase one project, in order to bring the watering building up to code, we significantly increase the amount of times the air circulated from inside the building to outside the building. And as a part of that, that created a much larger heating demand. So this oil use is projected in the winter months, but if we are able to, which we do feel confident we will be, but we haven't done the engineering yet to verify it, if we can reduce those air exchanges by connecting the water equipment to order control, we don't think that this oil use will actually be necessary. And then there is an electrical demand. There's fans and pumps associated with the drying process. And the maintenance fee will have some outside maintenance costs. So if you add all those up, we've got an air pollution of about $3,000 approximately. The alternative is we don't do anything. And we have a number here, $889,000, or what we're looking at, solid disposal costs in 10 years. This project, this equipment, it's made the last 20 years. Midterm, we're expecting, assuming that we pay market rates in Phil, either through the end of leachate or Coachella potential treatment. We're expecting that we'll play market rate. So in 10 years with escalation, that rate is $191 per wet ton. And then also calculates for receiving potential. The 3,600 wet tons we're managing now that Chris gave you. That's our current level, but once we're fully receiving the capacity of the plant, we expect that to be 4,600 wet tons a year. So that $889 is a combination of the $191 multiplied by with the 4,600 wet tons, which we're expecting to hit in 10 years. So that's like the middle of the project. So you compare the two, summing up operational capital costs compared to what will happen if we do nothing, what we expect will happen if we do nothing. We'll pay this equipment off in 18.9 years, 19 years roughly. The items on the bottom are just sort of backed up to how these numbers were derived. So moving on to the overall project cost, we really break this into three components. The first of the dryer, which I just discussed, the capital cost construction bid about $10.2 million. And then with engineering construction and final design services, looking at $11.6 million project cost. The secondary clarifier is our last piece of aging equipment. It's really needed for long-term reliability of good quality effluent, which we are, hold very important. It's my core function as a wastewater water resource recovery facility. The project total with engineering is $1.8 million. And then the odor controls we discussed is related to the dryer project with the air exchanges in the watering building. This assumes we have to replace the existing odor control at the facility, which is where they're receiving, where we take in the high-strength waste. Very old piece of equipment. It may not be appropriate. We're still evaluating. At the time it was built, we did not take in that waste stream. This sort of water, tree odors, bulls, watering. So total project cost of $16.4 million for the whole upgrade. So the other side now is a great time to do a big project. There is more fun than I've ever seen in my 15 years here at the city. So we have been the officials at USD for them about a week ago. They are really encouraging us. I shouldn't say that. They said there is an opportunity for increased funding through a larger combined project. My understanding is that the bigger the project, you get a grant scaled to the size of the project. There are opportunities through USDA, which funded phase one. There are opportunities through the Clean Water State Revolving Loan Fund, which is already providing 50% subsidy on the design work that we're doing. We will be applying for assuming this project goes forward, a pollution control grant, which also funded the phase one project, which is really geared around solids management. The new opportunity is the ARPA funding, which we've already gotten one grant for a CSO project. This is also a funding program. One thing we were advised to consider is combining the actual ballot item on the bond with the State Street Reconstruction Project. Again, that would allow USDA to look at the project as a single project from a funding purpose. Obviously, there would be separate construction contracts bid separately, but again, you get the economy of scale if we would do that. We do have to run that by legal. I'm not sure if that is allowable, but it's something we want to consider and just get folks thinking about. So just to recap on the other alternative for utilizing methane, back in May, we did a presentation at the council about the opportunity to do combined heat and power at the plant. There was a project development agreement with the energy systems group who oversaw the phase one project, which I should note, the phase one project was very successful. I think we definitely made the right move on that. Essentially, that project had really no rate impact outside of what was planned in the master plan, which was really just a three and a half million dollar project. So just very happy with that project and the setting us up to do something great on the back end through the methane production. Some challenges with the CHP is for the power sale agreement, you have to have 50% food waste. We are hitting that right now. We're about 60%, but our digesters are not fully loaded. We are about 50% capacity. Our projections for the economics of the drying project, the biosolid drying project estimates at an 80% capacity. ESG has assured us that we will get there and soon. The phase one project, the guarantee, actually starts next week. So that guarantee is only a 60% loading on the organics, but there is an incentive for ESG, even to just maximize that to meet their guarantee as soon as the 20-year term, if they exceed the guarantee levels on a no basis that can be used to count against future years. So another challenge with the combining power at guarantee levels at that 60% loading, it did have a cash negative impact on the city. It was roughly a $3.4 million negative at 60% loading. At 90% loading of the digesters for high strength organic waste, there was a financial upside of about 600,000 over the 20-year term. Another challenge is there really is not a lot of grant opportunities for funding the CHP project. If we were to move forward with this and we wanted USDA funding at least, they would require a bidding, a rebid, even if we went with an energy service contractor in order to be considered for funding. But even with that, it is a challenge to fund power production projects through USDA funds. A benefit is this project is shovel ready. We have all the permits for CHP. We have the power sale agreement. We have the certificate of public good. All the legwork has been done for this project, but we're starting to run up against the timeline. So if we're going to move forward and complete this project within the terms of our power sale agreement, we really need to make a decision within by the end of the year that would have to be complete and built by December of 2023 in order to meet the power sale agreement terms. So our recommendation is to proceed with final design in the biosolid strier, the economics and long-term price stability and renewable opportunities that presents. We feel like that's the best project. We also advise that we include the secondary clarifiers and the odor control, which the odor control is a permit requirement. So I really don't feel that's an option not to do that. So we recommend moving forward with final design on all three items, submitting grant funding applications to all the available entities and plan for bond warning potentially with combined with the East State Street ballot item pending legal review and move forward with these projects. That is it. All right, so first any questions from Calvin? I think I know there was at least one person from the public who had asked about commenting or asking a question during this time, but we'll start with the council here. Go ahead, Jeff. Thanks, Kurt. I'm looking at pages eight to nine of the cost estimate pages. Are the secondary clarifiers and odor control laid out on page nine? Are those included in the cost evaluations laid out on page eight? Or are those in addition? Correct. No, those are in addition. So the biosolid strier was looked at independently as it's not an essential function, whether through permit compliance or standard treatment plant reliability. But you anticipate that those both would be needed or recommended regardless of whether we go forward with the biosolid strier. That's great. Okay, thank you. Lauren, go ahead. Thank you. Yeah, I just had a few questions. One, just around the biosolid, so like is this cost estimate assuming that we're going to be selling and finding a useful market for the class A like which line item that was built into if it is? Yeah, sorry, I should have mentioned that. So we do have an actual cost proposal for class A management to a company called RMI. That's where these numbers were generated. We'll actually be paying disposal fees initially. Like Chris mentioned, I think we sort of established the markets and there's discussion of writing biosolids use into the V-trans specs for topsoil. If that were to happen, which seems fairly would mean that service through RMI, but we did carry it for the 20 year term. So we're actually paying for the dried material disposal. Okay, thanks. I mean, because I know like I was talking to someone in Maine and they're pursuing like a ban on land application of biosolids and like, I know I've heard that talked about in the committee rooms here and stuff. So I want to make sure we're not locking ourselves into a price structure that's assuming we're going to have a profitable market knowing the contamination issues and all of that. So sounds like that's built into what we're seeing is not assuming a profit piece from it. Great. One, just a couple other questions. Does the intake of leachate volume, knowing obviously that's been a very active conversation, how would that play into it? So if, for example, we decided to stop taking it in a year, are we building this to a certain scale or somehow kind of getting locked into a structure that makes it more difficult to operate it at peak operation or something because of the leachate being part of that system? Yeah. So leachate really does very minimal impact on the production of solids. It's primarily the high strength organic waste and the septage. We are assuming that the city will not be taking leachate through this. Like Chris talked about, unless it's treated from PFAS, as discussed at an earlier meeting, like Chris discussed, we would likely, we would need to convert the existing leachate tank to septage storage in order to fit the sizing of the belt dryer. But we would do have an opportunity to repurpose an existing tank that's not currently used if the city were to decide to take treated leachate. But yeah, as far as the sizing or solids production, there's really no impact on leachate. Great. Thank you. Just a couple more. Sorry. I don't know. So many questions about our wonderful on the fossil fuel use. So I know that that was something that the Energy Advisory Committee had had some questions about, you know, so it sounds like there's like at least a hope that the system design would either like really minimize or eliminate the fossil fuel use, but there's some, like it could result in some usage. I guess just, I mean, are you feeling pretty confident knowing we've got our net zero goal and all of that? Like I would just love to better understand like what a little bit more about that. I'll pass this on to Colin. So currently right now, the dewatering building, which is one of the larger structures at the plant, air changes, 12 air changes an hour. So if you think about that whole volume because of NFPA classifications for the equipment and materials that's being handled in there, that building needs to get air change 12 times an hour in the middle of December, January, February, March, I guess we'll say April two. That's a lot of heat for a big building. So what we looked at and what Kerr was presenting on is to meet those NFPA codes, we can classify that space to four changes in air per air changes per hour when it is unoccupied. So for the safety of operators, it's going to be 12 air changes an hour when it's being occupied. But for the majority of the evenings, right, which ends up being a larger portions of the day. And when the temperatures are colder, that building is unoccupied. So we did evaluate the difference in those heat loads, assuming the same building, no insulation improvements. And that's where we came up with the reduction that came to what that fuel consumption was, was the BTU value was equivalent of that. So that's why we put the placeholder in there still saying that it was, but if the improvements are made, and to be honest with you, these are really just programming improvements. We don't need to build anything. It's changing the systems and how they operate. Great. Little lengthy, sorry. Just two more, sorry. So, filtration, I'm just thinking about the potential opportunity, you know, knowing with the federal grant funding and their specific line item in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, I believe that was tied to PFAS contamination. I think Montpelier would have a great case to try to get a grant funded filtration system to address PFAS and other contaminants as the one on the state right now. Is there any either benefit or opportunity you see if we are doing a bigger bond to look into that? And or on the flip side, if it's not included here, are there any challenges that this design and project creates to installing that like with space constraints or anything else? Just curious if this is like precluding or an opportunity around the filtrations. Okay, so we've mentioned PFAS a few times already. So PFAS is in two different states as far as we know at wastewater treatment plants or resource recovery facilities in the affluent and the biosolids. Right now, EPA and through our DEC does have regulations on what we need to do for that. So as far as filtration needs, there are technologies available. We would most likely at this site want to site it physically closer to where UV disinfection is, essentially after all of your clarification and treatment has happened. And the only thing left to do would be to take out the PFAS or remove the PFAS and then disinfect it to discharge it into the river. I would say the unfortunate part when you ask about PFAS and you talk about biosolids is EPA has not sanctioned a method that is acceptable to test or treat biosolids. There's a lot of technologies out there currently that have claims, but those aren't sanctioned approved treatment disposal methods by EPA. But what a lot of the other communities in New England that we're working with specifically, we've already talked about Maine too, that we're working with are seeing drying is a first step in this, right? This is a volume reduction, a risk reduction. It doesn't eliminate it. I think we can all fairly say that with drying. It doesn't remove the PFAS, but it eliminates and opens up to other options of how we can manage this risk because at the end of the day, the WRF can't close the pipe off and not take in any more influence. So this would be considered a first step as far as the solid treatment of managing PFAS in the solids. So I guess my question though is we had heard from A&R and Kasella that there's technologies that could be installed on site. So this is separate. I'm more thinking of a bigger facility bond that is addressing other issues beyond the biosolids project. Is this making it harder to install? I don't know if it's reversed us. Most of us are like, is it is? Do you see any? No. Okay. There's no. Yeah. So like Colin mentioned, the dryer will be kind of on the solid stream of the plant, whereas the, you know, the liquid stream PFAS treatment would be sort of at the end. So as far as physical location of it, of a filtering system, yeah, it would not be in the same location. It wouldn't work where the dryer is going. And you're not proposing to do it now. I know you've said cost was the biggest if I heard you correctly to not just... We hadn't planned to do that project at this time. We don't know what the regulatory requirements will be. So it's kind of waiting to see, you know, at what level do we have to treat to? It's a little bit hard to sort of size something. You know, obviously you'd want to get as close to zero as possible. But I just, I feel like it's a little bit early, you know, personally. And, but I mean, I'm not, certainly if there is funding available and we could get a grant for it, you know, I would support that. It just might, you know, slow down the work that we just discussed, you know, because it would be kind of starting over for another evaluation through engineering. And there's, you know, three steps as preliminary engineering, vinyl design and construction. We're sort of through the majority of the preliminary engineering on these upgrades. But I certainly am definitely open to looking into that funding option. Just one about the combined heat and power. Do you, like, the core negative to that is the economics, which is what interested you in looking at the biosolids. Like, if knowing, for example, that the state just adopted a climate action plan, they committed a bunch of money to climate action. Like, so if funding did become available, it sounds like there's a lot more funding available on the biosolids right now. I mean, is there any benefit to seeing what funding might be there? Or I mean, do you just see this as just fundamentally a good way to go regardless of kind of funding streams? Like I feel like originally it was like because of the funding issues around the electricity, but if we've got the permitting and all that, I guess just like what's the case for doing this versus the electricity if there was a funding that became available, although like recognizing we probably wouldn't know that for a number of months. Right. So part of it is the timeline. So we would kind of have to move forward relatively quickly in order to meet the deadlines for the power production. But really I think kind of what Chris and I like about the project is that we are using a renewable energy to create a renewable material that is otherwise landfill. So the landfill and we have one in Vermont has a finite capacity and we are sending 3,600 tons there every year. So I think if we think about what is the best long-term benefit, the other thing is we're not really in the power business. It's a little bit of a stretch for us to, it would have to be completely outsourced all the operations of the generator. It's not, it doesn't really tie into core function of wastewater treatment like managing the solid stream from a plant. So I think it ties in better. I think a long-term price variability, if land application of wet, you know, bisolids class B or unclassified bisols goes away, you know, the market for disposal could really skyrocket. So there's, you know, there's stability through doing a project like this where we're managing our own waste stream that has, you know, long-term benefits, I believe. Thank you. Very last one. So knowing that the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act has like more, a ton of water project money, including things like this, if we approve, move forward with a bond on this March, does that make it harder to get any of that grant money? Like if it's been approved by voters or are you still able to apply for a project that's like mid process? Yeah, so because we're going through the state clean water state revolving loan fund, we expect that additional funding will be administered by the same program. And so we're following sort of the rules to be eligible for all of this funding. It's essentially, we expect to have the same rules associated with it as soon as long as the money is released before we go to construction, which is going to be some time. This is probably, you know, two and a half, well, it's probably at least a year before we go to construction. The equipment takes a year to order to be manufactured. So, you know, at least two and a half years before we'd be online with this project. So I do think we would be, you know, we'd be in good position for our future funding as well. Great. Thank you. Other questions from Council? As opposed to like opinions. We'll get to opinions in a little bit. Yes, Connor. Yeah, I don't think I asked last time, but our understanding is this would trigger the responsible employer ordinance that we passed in 19 since it's over the 200. Yeah. All right. I'm a zealot on that. Thanks. I have a question about, I think this is really maybe a question for later potentially, but I'm just thinking about our debt service and our debt service policy and wondering where this puts us. I sort of assumed that the, even though this is a part of like the water sewer fund generally, that it would still count against us, so to speak, in terms of debt service. And so I just wonder where this would, I mean, you know, maybe we get a whole bunch of grants. That's wonderful. Maybe we don't know if we've gotten the grants before we need to go to a bond. And so that puts us at something like $12 million if I am not mistaken, you know, based on the total project and what we have left over from the last one. So anyway, I'm just conscious of that and know that that's something that I will want to revisit when the time comes, especially because, I mean, we're looking at other bonds potentially as well, you know, combine that with East State Street. And who knows what other, I'll have bonds we will decide to include. So I'm not sure that that's a question right now. I just want to raise it as a concern. That's all. So I can tell you we've given a lot of thought to that. We understand that concern and I think we'll be prepared to talk about that more detail. I don't know whether it's today when we do the bond section or next week when we get into these further. But it's definitely a concern. And I think the flip side of, so the good news is it's our policy. It's not a requirement. So we can we can try to make it work. I think more importantly is, you know, project like this is large and then it's done for a long period of time, you know, it doesn't necessarily, you know, parse out. So we, you know, one of the things I think we're going to look at is if we were to do this, then when, how long before we would sort of get back into compliance and, you know, bond again and under the water and sewer part. So we, I know Kelly's a lot of work into this also while trying to finish the budget. So we're we're juggling a lot of things right now. So it's on your radar. Okay. Great. Other questions from council. Yeah, go ahead. I'm gathering from your recommendations. You would like to leave here today with a direction of either that we're moving forward with the intention of bonding with more information from staff. Is that correct? Yes, I mean, that would be helpful or in order to sort of be ready if we want to, you know, go to construction next summer. Now we need to move towards the final design. So if I can jump in here, I think obviously if you're ready to support it behind right now, great. I mean, that would be, I think the goal tonight was to introduce, you know, we owe you this presentation. We're actually going to, we're going to do it in November. This was the follow-up that we that we promised. I wanted to make sure you had a chance to digest the information, ask questions, understand the scope, size, scope and scale. And we're meeting next week for a budget workshop. And, you know, later, the next item, we're going to be going through the budget. We do have other bonds to talk about. So presumably we'll be giving some conversation then. I guess, you know, sort of one of these things like if you really don't want to do this, and that's clear, tell us now. But I'm presuming that, you know, next week is fine. Here, we've got a still, it's still going to be warned in March. So through the, through the budget process till the next couple of weeks, we can reach a decision. But we just want to make sure that this entire chance to really acquaint you with this detail. Tonight I did say, I really support this and I want you and Kelly to do your magic to make it possible. You certainly could say that. I mean, the recommended action is a provide authorization to proceed with final, with project development. So. Well, so the bond warning would need to happen in January for a March vote. It's not a ton of time, but you know, it does not have to be decided tonight. It's not any different than our same schedule. Okay, well, any other questions particularly Okay, so I want to go to public and so Jeff, I see you've got your hand up and then Linda Berger, go ahead. Jeff for Linda Berger. I'm not sure who's Oh, sorry, we'll have Jeff go first here. Go ahead, Jeff. So you can hear me. Yes. Okay. So you guys, obviously, this is a huge project and once again, I'm here before you talking about a huge project. But I want you to look at what is in our rear view mirror, which is the phase one of this project, which has been a pretty much unqualified success. So we have some issues. There's no doubt we have issues, but we spent a lot of money to upgrade things that needed upgrading and we've created a wonderful wastewater recovery recovery facility that has now produced all this gas. And we got to figure out what to do with the gas. And I just, I need everyone to kind of understand that where we are now is not where we were five years ago. So we're, we're looking at what are we going to do with this incredible resource incredible resource we have. And we have two basic choices, CHP and the dryer right now. I mean, we've, we've really looked at this. And we've looked at it pretty carefully. I mean, I need to really give a shout out to Curt and Chris for all their work on what they've done to research this. And I also have to give a shout out a little bit to MIAC because we have put their feet to the fire. We were constantly on them about what is this going to do in terms of either our net zero goals or our gas use. So our big concern with the dryer was when they came to us initially, they said they were going to use like almost 10,000 gallons of supplemental fuel. And we were like, no, that is not acceptable. So when they started reworking the whole dewatering building HVAC system and the whole, they realized they, and that's what we said. We said you must be able to save some money in the heating of the, of the plant to be able to make up for this. And I think they've convinced us they're right about that. And I'm sorry, I don't know the engineer who, who basically said, yeah, we're pretty confident of this. So now we're MIAC, and I shouldn't, I should not be saying I'm speaking for MIAC because we have not met as a committee since we've been able to review all this information. But I feel personally pretty confident that it's going to be a minimal supplemental fuel use if there's any fuel use for the dryer. So we're looking at an almost perfect use where you're going to use all your gas, flare some of course in the summer, you're going to have to flare some in the summer because we're producing more. But it's, it's really an amazing project for me that's less than a 20 year payback under the worst case scenario. That's the 20 year payback is not even with the funding that, let's be honest, we all know people are throwing money at wastewater recovery facility projects right now. They're throwing money at it. I, I'm just, I know we can't guarantee this. Of course it didn't come through for CHP, but with the, with the dryer, I feel pretty confident with Kurt and Chris's research that we are going to get some funding, which is going to reduce that 19 year payback. So I just want to say that personally I am all for the dryer. I can't say that MEAC is all for the dryer because we haven't been able to meet as a committee. I do want to point out that you're saving over 40 tons of carbon per year reduced just on trucking to Coventry. Now I know the city sometimes doesn't think that we should account for that, but I do. I, I think that's a big issue. So I actually think we need to be thinking about that. And the last thing I just wanted to say was the power sale agreement for the CHP. Now Kurt didn't mention this, but when we last met, he told me that the food waste issue on the CHP contract was a big issue. So that we might not even be entitled to those very advantageous CHP terms that we thought we were basing our CHP argument on. So if I'm wrong on that, Kurt, correct me, but that didn't get mentioned in the presentation. That's all I have. Okay. Okay. Sorry. Thank you. All right. And we're going to go to Linda Berger now. Go ahead. Hi. I'm Linda Berger. I live in district one. I have five questions. The first is, when was phase one of the Montpelier Water Resource Recovery Facility upgrade completed? She wanted to, like, ask all your questions and then we can. Okay. Two. Sure. It's absolutely. Second, were the phase one upgrades completed exclusively the ones in the bond placed before the public in November 2018, or were there additional upgrades added or substituted? Three, what were the originally planned phase two upgrades? Was resource recovery originally a part of the plan for the facility for the phase two upgrades? Four, when did the city receive Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation Notice of Directive Action to address the odor issues? And what is the timeframe for this order? And five, can a copy of this notice from the DEC be added to tonight's board packet and be made available to the public upon request? Yes. Yes. Sorry. Go ahead, Bill. The answer to number five is, yes, happy to. And I thought we meant to send you that today, yes, pre-request to Council Member Hurl, I'll try to do it right now while we're talking, but we can also post it publicly. And we may. I think current probably the team will need to go. I think I wrote them down, Linda. I may ask. So the first one was when was phase one completed? The second was were the things that were voted on in 2018 part of phase one, were there changes or additions to the project? Substitutions. Was energy recovery, I think, was part of phase and always going to be part of phase two? And then when did we get the DEC notice and what is the timeframe for addressing it? And then can the notice be posted? Is that those correct wording of your questions? I think number three was what were the originally planned phase two upgrades was resource recovery originally a part of the plan for the facility. Thank you. Okay, so I'll just go right through the list. So the first question was completion of phase one. The final completion of the project was June of 2021. Additional plant upgrades, you know, really I don't, I don't believe any significant scope was added to the phase one project. There were some changes to the way things were designed, but as far as the overall scope, it was relatively consistent to what was originally planned. Can I interrupt for a question? So solid solid management in terms of the way it's it's currently being envisioned was an original part of the plan. That's correct. So we use what's called screw presses for dewatering the solids, and that was in the original scope of the phase one project. Okay. Thank you. As far as phase two, we had the city initially had or through ESG energy systems, they did a high level of valuations of valuation of alternatives for utilizing the methane. And at that time, CHP was identified as the best alternative. And that was sort of envisioned, you know, even, you know, they originally we had considered combining the CHP project with the phase one. Later we decided as our city staff recommended that we sort of wait and see where our levels of methane production were and keep those projects separate. But initially it was planned for power production phase two project. For the notice of alleged violation on the odor at the plant notice was issued on November 5 of 2021. And there are three compliance items, literally four. The first item is to take possible actions to control odors from the plant. Right now, we are looking into trying to increase the performance of the existing bio filter, which deals with the receiving area. That's really our only odor control system at the plant currently. So, you know, we've been in and discussions with the vendor, trying to get recommendations on what we can do to improve that unit. The second item is by November 15, we were required to provide a written response of receipt of the notice, which we did. By January, well, I should mention as part of that written response, we did ask for an extension of the engineering evaluation, primarily because we want to sample, you know, part of the process to evaluate the odors is to take samples through a plant to get a profile of the odors being generated. And in the summer months is when we take in a lot more waste. Particularly on septage. So we have asked them to provide us some extra time. We do not have a written response from the state yet, but I did get a verbal that they were willing to do that. So we're still waiting on final confirmation. By January 1, we need to retain services of a qualified consultant. We are proposing to use Brandon Caldwell. We expect to have a proposal to City Council on that evaluation, hopefully in the next few weeks. And as part of that evaluation, recommendations and timelines to mitigate odors need to be provided. And then March 1, 2022, this is the deadline we're asking to extend in order to do the evaluation in the summer months. By March 1, 2022, two copies of the consultant's evaluations and recommendations need to be submitted to the agency. And as Bill mentioned, item five, we're happy to provide a copy of this notice. I want to check in, Linda, any follow-up you have to any of that? No, this is helpful information. Okay. Thank you. Great. Thank you. Okay. Any other public comments either in person or in online? Go ahead. Steven Whitaker. I would like to just be explicitly clear that the economics or understand that the economics of the drying investment are in no way tied to the continuation of the PFAS leachate. I mean, are we even considering through residual unclean systems or tanks disposing of farms or roads that's contaminated? And if so, I would really halt and design a different method. I want to offer into the record this article regarding Maine putting a do not eat order out wild deer that have been feeding around PFAS contaminated. I didn't have a stapler. So the idea that we know we've got this oxygen in our systems now, we're proposing to start storing our solids instead of hauling them to Coventry. But at what point are they going to be? This system can't go until we get the PFAS out of our system. That's what I'm asking you to consider. With regards to bonding capacity, I don't hear much discussion of what other competing. I would hate to think that that this admittedly probably a state of the art combined facility might be further delaying our decades old deferred maintenance on our sidewalks and our streets and then our replacing failing water lines. I don't know. I know those have different funds and all that, but I wonder at what point the public students say we've, you know, we don't want to keep counting for tens of millions of dollars. I know we need a public safety radio system and we need railing streets, you know, sidewalks and water pipes. So I think keeping all of this on the table for the discussion is important. Well, I admired the engineering and like I said, the state of the art demonstration project. I want to first raise the red flag around the toxins because I'm not at all confident that there's a resolve here to not repurpose any dried solids that have PFAS in them. So I'd ask you to fix the laptop in the projector, whatever it is, because it's really disruptive and it denies people the opportunity to even understand. The laptop won't go full screen with the projected presentation. The projector or something's lacking out way too frequently interrupting your presenters. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else just in general? Is my question going to get addressed? Show them your shoulders. I said, maybe it will, maybe it won't, maybe not tonight. Well, her questions were addressed. Yeah. All right. Other, so let's move to opinions. What, where are you going to do? Actually, if I may respond to that. The reason I was struggling, Steve, is that the presentation made explicitly clear that the assumption was that we were not going to be accepting any more leachate with PFAS in it and that all the economics were developed that way. And it was stated at least twice during that presentation. So then you came up and asked us about where the economics dependent on continuing taking leachate. So that's why I shrug because it helps when you pay more attention. All right. Thank you. So we're going to move on to opinions. Council. I'll just say for myself. Oh, sorry. I didn't see you. Okay. Well, I was going to say, you know, just in terms of like the recommended action for, you know, tonight, if it's, you know, obviously, there's several steps that we need to go through before we I get to the point of approving a bond, obviously, but in terms of moving forward, looking at project development, I think that is worth doing. Yeah, this seems like a really promising project. I'm very hopeful around the idea of pyrolysis as a mechanism to PFAS. Who knows? We'll see if that turns out to be scientifically true. But that's that's encouraging to me. And I think all the assumptions that you all made are pretty conservative. And that's really encouraging. And yeah, hopefully all the pieces fall into place. That's that's where I'm at. Others. Yeah, go ahead, Donna. I'm there too. Yes, move forward. We could. Yes, go ahead, Lauren. Yeah, I agree with that. I mean, I just I and thank you for your thorough answering of many, many questions. I just like underscoring. I am concerned about just like keeping an eye on the use of the biosolids, like, you know, and I know that you guys are and are thinking about it. I am there's all kinds of contamination issues beyond PFAS with land applied. But I think the benefits of removing the water and worst case, it's going to the landfill with less water, less trucking seems like a better outcome and a you know, beneficial use of the methane. So I think in that regard, if that's like the worst case scenario, and then if you know, maybe there are some better technologies in the future, but just appreciate so much work and good thinking must gone into it. So thank you all. I think you could probably use emotion towards that. And if unless other folks, I'm sorry, I know we haven't heard from everybody yet, but I don't want to jump the gun there. Sorry. Other thoughts, other comments. I'm on the same page. It sounds like there's opportunities to continue asking questions about this, but fantastic presentation guys. Really appreciate it. So I would I would actually at the risk of getting drawn and quartered by folks sitting in front of me. I'd suggest that you don't make a motion on this right now. You've indicated where you want to go. And that's really helpful. You have to point to Mr. Whitaker made. There are the bones being presented. You haven't heard the whole budget. And you owe it to yourselves and everyone else to see this in the context of the whole. And not as an individual item is I support it. And I hope you will support it as we go forward. But I think to just see it in isolation. As I said, we're we've got we're going to do the budget right next. We have a full workshop next week. That's all budget and nothing else. And you have, you know, able time to vote on these and decide what you're going to put on the ballot and all that. I think the takeaway for me, and I think the team is that you're enthusiastic about it, want to keep rolling with it. Yeah, I'd suggest that's all we need for now. Let's other folks have comments. Go ahead, Jack. I agree with what I've heard. I think that Mike and certainly I don't have the expert on this area. I think it's it's a great asset to the council and to the city that we have council member hurl who can get into great detail about these these environmental issues. And I just love having you here for that in any other reasons. And so I'm enthusiastic about this. I'm, as Bill said, I think it's very it's important to look at this in terms in the context of all the other potential demands for funding. But this this really seems like a good plan. Thank you. Any other comments folks would like to make? Okay, great. Thank you. Thank you all for that. That's it's very encouraging and looking forward to hearing more. Before we move on to the budget, I just want to address Mr. Whitaker. If you would please refrain from calling out comments or questions from your seat, that is important and helpful and part of having an orderly process. And so if you would please control yourself to not do that, that would be great. Thank you very much. All right, now we are on to budget presentation. Thank you guys. I'm going to shift over here. Didn't you just do that? So I've got to get out of this and go to this. Yay. Okay. I'll get this one of these days. Thank you very much. We have been working diligently on the budget. We expect to have full budget books to you by the end of this week. So you'll have in advance of the workshop next week to look through and see everything. My goal tonight is just to give you a pretty high level overview of where we're at and a point you with some of the key issues in the budget and take broad questions. Like before we get started, really thank our team for as usual a great amount of teamwork to come up with the plan. It was an unusual year. Certainly I'd like to thank Kelly Murphy for all the hard work she's doing, especially as you'll see the budget book as we're using in the new budget software that we showed you. So it's all kind of learning that on the fly too. So we're into the budget this year and we had key budget goals and challenges. One, you did such fine work on the strategic plan this fall and such clear work that we really felt, we always take it seriously, but this year we really were like we've got to, you know, they've made some very clear statements. We need to make sure they're included. At the same time we were rebuilding from the COVID cuts of the last couple of years deferred things. So a lot of pent up demand. We had the, we still need to deliver our responsible services to our residents, despite all of the extra things that we like to do, that really is the core of what we do. And our revenues are returning, but they're not quite where they were. So, you know, the good news is they're better than last year. The bad news is, in some cases, they're not where they used to be. And then as we've seen inflation has gone up this year, we settled on a 6% inflation rate that was, I think, based on the October consumer price index of 6.2, coupled with the November announcement by Social Security, they're going to be doing a 5.9% cost of living adjustment for next year. So we settled on 6, the December numbers, I think, are coming out in a couple of days for November. So, but that was our goal. So looking at the strategic plan, I'm just going to try it through. One of the, we have an overall goal to improve community prosperity, and included where we had, including development. As people may recall, we had $100,000 for years for economic development, which went to the Development Corporation. Last year, we cut that to 25,000. We are still wrestling with how to proceed with economic development going forward with the end of the Development Corporation. We put 50,000 in this year to provide two uses of the funds. One is, we think it's time to review the economic development strategic plan, which initially formed NDC a few years ago and charted what were then the goals and priorities of the city. The major project identified in the plan was a hotel parking garage in the center of the city. So obviously we want to look at that, but also I think some other aspects of it. It certainly talked about us being a higher end hotel and that type of thing. And so I think we should at least look at that assumption and decide if that's still the way we want to go. So we think updating the plan and then having that work inform how we go forward with that. The remaining funds would be used to actually assist us with economic development as we go forward this year, bringing in consultants as needed, particularly folks like Whitenberg to do a project analysis that can I think to assist our existing staff for things that are a little bit beyond our scope. So I'll allow for those two things. You had wanted to look at school childcare and as we look at rec center options that the idea of building that facility for that is included in that. We're looking at additional outdoor recreation, including the homeless task force continued to be funded at $45,000 per year. The community fund is fully funded at last year's amount. My career live is fully funded and we restored $10,000 last year we zeroed it and we're recommending 10 this year. Under the responsible and engaged government, we have the website is due for an upgrade. So we have a proposal to include $10,000 for the the capillary neighborhoods. It's 20 in this current budget had been traditionally until then we in trying to meet the goal of the financial that we were shooting for which was to hold the city's budget within 5%. We know the inflation was 6%. We really committed to bringing the city's portion of the budget in at 5%. We were that we also include the transition plan projects are in the which was a priorities you're are in the capital plan. One of your priorities was a fully staffed city department and that has been achieved. All that were put on hold are fully funded and back to full staff and we've posed in one of the I'm getting later some of the pots of fun but a way to look at our communications and think about different ways to put information out helped at least in part by suggestion from Council Member Erickson. We've last year so we have housing in $10,000 annually last year we cut that to $50,000 we've restored that about $110,000 for this year. We've also included again in one of those funding sources you had mentioned as a priority a housing and services hub. It was a project that didn't have a lot of definition but we put $100,000 in to set aside to assist whatever that project looked like it could involve the group that we just heard from tonight. Maybe we need something different. We also you know I think I forwarded your request from Down Street to partner with a housing project so anyway we've included that in to try to address those needs. Under practice good environment stewardship we're proposing funding actually in a bond for Confluence Park. The net zero plan listed three priority projects for the city the first two were the schools which we don't have any control over and then there were three building projects for the city one and so the very first one was a pellet furnace at DPW so our proposal is that we fund that this year and and then after those three building proposals were vehicles and those that we know are going to be more challenging in a longer time but we're we certainly appreciated the clarity of the net zero report and wanted to immediately take step at making those things happen. We also included dam removal seed money. We estimated about $120,000 for a study to do this. We believe there will be funds available for looking at dam removal so we're gambling on that a little bit but we included I think those $34,000 in in case we needed a match or something like that and we fully funded my ride again this year. Build and maintain infrastructure this is the biggest issue obviously and it's also where most of the funding is so the good news is we've increased the CIP capital plan funding about $250,000 from last year. The bad news is that still $130,000 below the target that we've been trying to accomplish and had been out a year before so we basically built half of it back this year with the goal that we'll build half back next year. However, we felt okay about that because of some of the available ability of other funding. We have the ARPA funding. I'm going to talk a little bit more later about reserve funding that I'll talk a little bit later so included in these various plots of money is funding to get us to the level of 70 PCI street conditions. That won't happen this year. I mean we won't get to 70 PCI this year but if you recall when Zeck Blodgett presented to you he said if we have a certain amount of money each year we will get there over the next couple years. We've got $325,000 in for public restrooms obviously to be determined where and how but we put funding in there. There's fundings to pursue the land for the Beck Center as discussed. East State Street which is a combination street, water sewer, combined sewer overflow, sidewalk project, the street lighting and those kinds of things for the very main intersection which we've studied and you'd approved an alternative for. Downtown street lights not only improving their performance but converting them from their current lighting to LEDs so that would be more energy efficient and also higher performance and of course the water resource recovery facility dryer that you just heard about. Oops what did I just do? Something I didn't want. Let's see yes okay I moved a slide didn't I? Yes okay under the goal of improve public health and safety we've expanded the social worker and the NPD related social worker putting in another half. You may recall the police review committee we currently have a half that's shared with Barry and partly funded by the state. The police committee recommended to put in another whole plus half of a peer support worker. We weren't able to do all of that but we have included half of the new social workers expanding our half to one full-time social worker. That's what's in the budget. We did include the body worn cameras. Dispatch consoles had been in last year so we didn't have to spend the money so holding that because that those can be used as matches for grants. We're pursuing some funding to move forward the move the televate project forward. So we're keeping that as our beginning funding for that. I believe Barry is doing something similar but I'm not sure. As you recall from when the chief was here many of the police review committee recommendations are actually in the operating budget some of the training things and those sorts of things so those are moving forward and specifically calling out the CIT the crisis intervention training which we are proceeding with. It's included in the operating plan of the police department. So to go to the cap room and here's what we're talking about you can see and again you're going to get these charts so if you can't read them don't worry they'll be all in the book. But this is showing that the the plan is up $223,000 from last year overall which is $100,000 less than the year before. There's a whole list of projects that are proposed within that funding again the committee is going to be reviewing these on Monday Monday and then you but they will also be included in your budget may change after approves and again same thing there's a list of equipment that's included within the funding that we've talked about that's where you'll find the body worn cameras for example. I'm not going to get into detail but we're basically breaking up our extra funding sources what we're calling ARPA 1, ARPA 2 and the capital reserve. So ARPA 1 is essentially the first million that we've already received and as it turned out we finally did the five violations for lost revenue in pre-match with that one million. So we're going to allocate from our proposals to use that funding for items that have been approved in prior budgets that we had to delay and not do. So these are all things that have been in previous budgets and we're going forward with that. Then we have ARPA part two which is the new money this year which is not eligible for lost revenue. So we're proposing to put about 75,000 into a community outreach type effort to deal to get some more data about community needs that were included in the survey. We're prioritizing future events and also figuring out how we can communicate a little better and that we were we were directed this is where council member Richardson, excuse me, Erickson gets the data. He directed us for Montana which really shows projects and things going on and so we're trying to figure out how to incorporate that in. This could also be a place where we put in the mayor asked me about a C-click fix solution and this could all be part of us you know in terms of getting a sense of where community needs are. This is where we have the $100,000 for the housing and services hub and we can define that more fully. And then the remaining $500,000 for investment in water and sewer infrastructure. Obviously if you choose to do something different with this or you know do some sort of public processing but we just put the rest in you know we have old water and sewer lines and anything we can do to invest in those would be great but it could also be used for other things. That's our proposal. We have what we call the restoration reserve and this is Kelly will be able to explain this more next week how we have been cutting our budgets and putting things on hold trying to stay within you know we were doing some estimates and some of our revenues came in a little better than it felt some of these products but we had the reserve at the capital and $35,000 and that is not a normal thing that we have and so we felt since we're behind we need to invest so we're proposing to take $180,000 this year to reach full funding for PCI and as I mentioned next year we're expecting to increase the capital plan budget by another $30,000 that's that funding coming to that so this is to go to jumpstart that. We have $34,000 for the DM study included and then again more trucks that had been an equipment that had been proposed that didn't make it into the other fund trying to get caught up with where we've been certainly happen to look at all of this again all of this will be reviewed by the capital projects committee but so then there's bonds so even more infrastructure we're proposing we're suggesting that there's at least sort of five bundles of bonds obviously these can be bundled however council chooses we could each each one of these could be an individual item we could could potentially bundle the east state street and the water resource recovery facility if necessary but the first one is east state street $7.2 million that includes $4 million from the general fund for the street stormwater and sidewalk improvements between the water and sewer fund for the sub surface work we're proposing $1.5 million for purchase of the property club property we think it's going to be in that neighborhood to give a site control and a future looking for lots of recreational opportunities then we have a group of infrastructure projects that have been talked about the total $1.2 million the very main intersection improvement the downtown street lights the the dpw heating system the keeping it net zero so we'll see and then we have a failing retaining wall on marvin street that needs to be addressed so we want that in here confluence park we need about 600 000 to complete that there's an external funding that would be great and then the water resource recovery facility that you just heard about for 60.4 million so you can see the totals there as i said they can be lumped however possible i think it would be an interesting conversation whether we think the voters would think that east state street and the wastewater plant were related and so we're going to try to take a look at that also getting paid i'll say that all the funding for all of our plan because we will at least the first year payment payments that will come due in the f y 23 budget later as we've looked at the future built those in so so we can do them or not do them as you see fit but they won't increase the budget for next year any more than what's already proposed so proposed is a tax property tax rate uh about six point four cents five point five i know i was five word the city portion of the budget is five percent the library's request for about 45 pushes us up to the five point four five percent so if you hold everything from last year to this year uh we're at five and then then that additional money reminder that last year's was only zero point six percent really about three percent per year over two years and there you can see the city services are five percent the library ballot has a point for five we're not proposing any changes in the sewer benefit or in the cso benefit charges and we'll have all the detail tax rate breakouts that we normally provide to you uh when we get there um so as we we think about wrapping up i would say that from from our team you know and this is for you to judge not us but we felt like we had um stage or parameters you indicated and had funded the lion's share of the strategic plan within those parameters so hopefully we're making your work a little bit easily um you know we've got to try to get the budget done before the mayor goes out so we're going to have you lifting in december this year um so just a reminder of our schedule that next week next week we're here in this room at 6 30 would not the capital and committee and we'll have three hours or so to work this you'll have your spreadsheet that you can pop your options in and see how how that works um and it would be great if you know some preliminary decisions after that but if not that's great you've got more time the following week is a regular meeting we don't have a lot on the agenda but we will have a couple we will be setting aside time at that meeting as well to talk about the agenda we have set aside wednesday january 5th for a budget workshop if we need it so again that would be budget only and then we go to the formal public hearings on january 12 and january 20 and those will also be public hearings for bonds uh the all the normal the warning about all the things that we normally do um just so the way that works for um the the newer folks is typically the council adopts a budget prior to the public hearings so we go to public hearings saying this is what the council is proposing but the council could change it up until the 20th so after you hear from the public just continue discussion it's not final until you vote for the number that goes on the ballot and then that's time because that's the number for the ballot but it's uh but again typically the way you know I propose you a budget to you you work that budget between now and january five and then you then it becomes the council's budget being proposed to the public for their consideration and then finally of course then on tuesday march one is election day however that ends up looking um seven p.m. to seven p.m. and early voting to start at least february and I know we have an item on tonight's agenda to at least discuss what those options might be but that is our schedule and that is all I have in my presentation I'm certainly happy to answer questions about any of this in big picture as I said you'll have lots of detail to look at um coming up for you don't need this I can close this off and go back to my seat knowing that we have a fair bit of time to continue to discuss this any questions that folks want to ask right now thank you yeah yeah I just also wanted to say how impressed I am with what you all have come up with you've managed to do quite a bit with what was still not you know the revenues that we hoped would be have bounced back by now so very grateful for the difficult conversations I'm sure that have happened behind the scenes and um and that you've been able to come up with this um yeah absolutely and that's as I say about that I guess I think that's I think that's it for now for me anyway other thoughts questions um yes jack just a very uh I recall that the uh main street and very street intersection for different chunks one was the uh footy and ethical light the other was uh paying for whatever is involved in coordinating the uh the lights are those both in the what we've got here I'm I'm going to defer that question to when there's someone better able to answer that I think I know the answer but I'm not sure and actually I do have one other question um I think I probably misspoke in the wastewater recovery uh facility uh water resource recovery facility presentation um because I saw that the total uh cost was 16 million but there were 4 million left over from the previous one so I assumed that you could subtract but that I mean in hindsight right like that was not a part of the original bond so you couldn't just apply that 4 million to the next project well possibly okay so maybe so we were showing the highest worst case so yes and so and a couple things about bonds too to be clear um uh you can you can approve the bomb but not spend all of it so so again if if you were to get other funding for any of these sources just because we voted it doesn't mean we actually would let all of it you know again um bad example really but the parking garage bond is is an example of that we we approved 10 and a half million dollars well we spent one in a you know 1.1 million dollars so that's all we're letting for bond you know even though we had that remaining approval we're not going to ever use that because we don't need it and so if we were to get additional funding for a bond project then we can do that I don't know Kelly are you able to talk about the debt policy now or do you want to hold that um I I think it's the council and it's 10 o'clock yeah I think it's okay to do that later um for now just in light of the time for now and knowing that we'll have much more opportunity any other comments yes go ahead Conor quick was that was the hospice uh ballot item built into the yes I hope it was great thanks any other comments either in person or digitally okay Lauren um just curious when fully funding the staff which I'm super excited to see um we still we don't have an energy position like what Kate from me at right so so what I say fully funded last year we held six positions vacant so we basically we restored all the existing positions the only expansion of something that would be staff related was the extra half for the social worker so there is not an energy position in there now unless we were to rework something yeah just want to clarify get ready to yeah say that again what get ready for that proposal yeah fair enough all right yeah um all right any other comments yeah I just want to call attention to the comment that uh we're pursuing the funds to implement the telomate project that would caught me by surprise because this has been a confusion between what our police department does some of the investments in radio vehicle radios etc in the police department budget that were pre-approved or being slipped back in here even whether or not they're consistent with the design that has yet to been started the engineering design telomate was only a needs assessment it is next phase is the engineering design so it's premature to be spending money on towers and radios uh for our police department that are not integrated with the regional plan that we're working on but the idea that the city managers get together and launch their own initiative to but pluck off a piece of it before the engineering is done is totally inappropriate so I just want to raise that red flag you'll be hearing more about it thank you all right anyone else great presentation sets up in good shape for next week yeah I agree uh all right moving um on uh for that I we've got a couple of three more agenda items and it is a little after 10 um so wondering if we can actually flip flop a couple of them like I I would be in because I know we really need to to talk about the election update um that probably needs to happen tonight um I would like to do the legislative agenda thing I don't know how long folks think that will take um but I'm curious for I mean only if there's questions well let's let's do the the election update because I think that it's going to be um we've done the legislative agenda stuff before so it's a little bit familiar this is going to be um I think a little bit uh different so John are you okay to to um go now sure um and now I just uh uh warn you all I've been having trouble with the sound so I'm afraid it could be me I'm on an island off an island in the woods um so you know hopefully you all will be able to hear me um I have a presentation just to try to focus the discussion just so you all know and I apologize all of this stuff should have occurred to me uh a month ago but there were a lot of assumptions being made uh sort of assumptions made in silos and I only put it all together myself a few weeks ago and so suddenly we have uh some questions that need to be answered and I put a certain amount of urgency on the agenda but given what's been happening with meetings of other bodies since then I could wait till the 22nd to get the answers I needed if you all just want to hear what's going on and think about it um so the basic problem with the election coming up is the question of mail and voting I finally trained myself to stop saying all mail because that just sounds wrong when you say it um mail and voting and the fact that there are now going to be as many as four different discrete entities that are going to be involved in this election so I'm going to share my screen if I can um now you're gonna make me choose which screen fine we'll do that one we'll start a slideshow and the slideshow is not starting trying to start the ah lucky slideshow yay okay so I know you all in the past have wanted to you know regardless of what uh you know what's happening at the state level or what isn't wanted uh to do a we return to the mail and election which we did before sponsored by the state um so this is coming if this is about that now the Montpelier Rocksbury school district is in the process they the school board wants to do a mail and election as well so they are in the process of working through that process which you'll hear about in a minute so the question is what are the implications for Montpelier's decision to pursue to proceed with a mail and election or not and they are not insignificant okay Rocksbury's select board will decide on the 20th whether or not to allow the school district to proceed with a mail and election now the thing is the way the law is written the school district if it straddles multiple towns cannot simply decide on its own we want to have a mail and election they decide that and then that the towns in question have to give their blessing and it's all or nothing so if the school board wants to have a a mail and election Montpelier says yeah it's great come on in Rocksbury doesn't they are not having a mail and election so you start to see where things start to happen here if the city decides to have a mail and election but the school doesn't so to proceed the school board is going to need to decide to proceed with an election but also Rocksbury's gonna have to decide Rocksbury had the select board had an initial meeting on Monday and they punted their decision till the 20th they had the members of the school board from Rocksbury coming down pitching them on it because it wouldn't cost them anything it's just a matter of it becomes just a philosophical question unfortunately the the Rocksbury clerk who is also the school clerk is very much against it and is going to be arguing more vociferously on the 20th so this is all a big question mark right now it's hard to handicap what's going to happen here so if we choose another mail and election I'm going to assume at least to get going here because I think the odds are more in favor of it assuming the school settles on a mail and election then a shared ballot with the city and school sort of ballot people are used to seeing will be mailed to all active voters in the city okay that election will be coordinated through my office you know it's you know technically two elections on one ballot the way we've always done it and the school district then becomes responsible for most of the actual costs of the election which is great bad for them great for me that includes ballot printing and mailing you know all the fees and the postage to obviously does not include the ballots for non-citizen voters if there are any we still have zero but there's one I hear rumor about technically they're responsible for ballot design but you know I've always done that I'm going to do it it would just really make everybody's lives complicated if I didn't the fraction of the cost of programming the tabulators equal to the number of questions minus the cost of programming non-citizens and this sounds a little piddly because it may end up me billing them for only about 100 and 150 bucks but that's something I'd still kind of like to do and then half the cost of any part-time paid poll workers that I might need to bring on which is a great insurance valve for me because as you all know the we've been understaffed in the clerk's office there's rarely a week goes by that we don't have to have some closures at some point from our normal you know eight to four thirty five days a week schedule so having that possibility there will be tremendously helpful now if we choose another mail in election the implications for the central mont public safety authority are significant because they are in the same boat as the school the cbpsa would have to decide for their purposes whether to do a mail in election in the same way it's all or nothing both the decision would have to also be given the blessing of the Montpelier and berry city councils okay here's where it here's here's the deal right so now if they do commit let's say this happens if cbpsa gets permission and decides they want to do a mail in election they would share the physical ballot with us in the school as usual and their questions would therefore be mailed out unfortunately i think this is kind of a fantasy because i mean here's the thing we might say yeah but berry city they've already indicated they do not they're not having a mail in election the clerk there is going to send out cards again to everyone encouraging them to ask for absentee ballots so imagine for a minute first of all they're not going to be inclined to but if they did then you'd have a situation in berry where all the cbpsa separate standalone ballots they'd have to be separate would be mailed out to everybody in the city and the city ballot wouldn't be neither would the school so voters would be like what the heck is going on right um and that would that's not good for anybody because then the cbpsa would be on the hook for paying for that entire election which you know 10-12 thousand dollars possibly as i ask you a question about this uh cbpsa point um all right on this election are there going to be uh candidates running for at-large cbpsa seats yes there's two slots open and so what could potentially happen if cbpsa doesn't have a mail-in vote and we do then anyone in montpellier who wants to vote in the cbpsa election would have to come in physically even if they do everything else by mail which i just anticipate that depressing turnout from montpellier for the cbpsa election you just took all the thunder out of the rest of most of my presentation i'm sorry buddy i'm just thinking ahead man and you told everybody this is terrible oh well okay so to to go over some of that oh well there's another body in this too that i should mention there's implication the central vermont career center wants to break off and form their own school district so there's very possibly i think 50-50 at this point also going to be a ballot situation a question with them so they would be in the same boat now they could also choose to do a mail-in election but cbpsa serves 18 towns um they're going to have to have a standalone ballot anyway and i'm not sure exactly about the legalities of that carol daus is on that in berry city she explained it to me and i was already my brain was mushed by that point but they will have a standalone ballot all 18 towns would have to authorize the mail-in election otherwise it will only be available at the polls are they going to authorize it that one is a total fantasy that's not going to happen in a million years i'm hoping there's some buffy fans out there anybody remember oh well it was a great episode anyways so here's our most likely scenario in a mail-in election should you all the mission should you all choose to accept it right um bit montpellier city and the school questions would share a ballot which would be sent to all active montpellier voters non-registered voters would only would receive a ballot only containing the city questions cbpsa ballots would only be available or the polling place or by specific absentee request and cbcc ballots would only be available at the polling place or by specific absentee request so what this means yes jack you stole my big moment here this is going to mean very very low turnout for cbpsa and the career center i mean we could be looking at based on last time around with this you know overall city turnout could be um 2700 3000 maybe even a smidge more voters and in that cbpsa ballot you know they might only get four to six hundred votes um now i i'm not gonna handicap whether that's a good or a bad thing but it's just a thing you know um so now in case you're even though your brains are probably melted already what if the school doesn't opt for a mail-in election you can probably see where this is going the montpellier city and this is also assuming that you all do a montpellier city only ballot would be sent to all active voters a school only ballot will be available at the polls or by absentee request only and then you get the other two the cbpsa the cbcc although at least the cbpsa could be in a position to possibly arrange something and and share with the schools now the schools then have to pay for their own election under this scenario so they're paying for all their ballots they're doing all that um obviously i'm going to coordinate the you know the the actual functioning of the election and because you know if this were happened i you know we'd manage their absentee requests too just because i can't imagine the chaos if i didn't um so anyways so you could theoretically have someone go to the ballot to get three different no go to the polling place to get three different ballots that they didn't perceive in the mail potentially um anyways now if we opt against a mail-in election and we withhold the approval for the schools to proceed with one of their own then elections proceed as usual with the exception of that standalone cbc ballot which would be available um at the polls should that actually happen well now you get into the philosophical question here and this is where it gets really tricky is what's the right thing to do here because this um you know the the august in november elections are going to be mail-in the state handles those they've decided that's the law uh you know we had ours last time so this is no longer theoretical um there is no no inaction there is the action to decide to provide these ballots by mail or there is given the new paradigm of most elections there's going to be the the decision to limit access to the ballot and the way this is shaken out those are sort of the two choices there isn't just uh there's no longer a close your eyes and and look away possibility here i think that question has been called so that makes it tricky so how should you proceed if you don't want any mail-in elections do nothing that's um easy if you want to allow the school district to proceed with the mail-in election you need to pass a motion to give them your blessing to authorize them to do it um and if you want to have a mail-in election of your own obviously you have to pass a motion saying we're going to have a mail-in election so or there is a big or and that is that the legislature is working on a new emergency election bill now when they did one last time i was involved in all those discussions so i got to go to the meetings and i got all the gossip and i knew what was going on i guess they got tired of me out of no they didn't did not invite me to these so um and it's it's it's hard to glean what this what's happening and what's going on i've spoken to uh both chairs of the respective government operations committees um i've spoken with legislative council about uh about all of this and about how in the future what we'd like to see is because this is all a disincentive for mail-in elections all this hua and we want to incentivize it right it's why we have the ability to do it at all so the idea that the legislation ultimately needs to change so that if a multi-municipality entity uh holds an election that that election could be held under whatever the paradigm of that each individual municipality is so you know ideally if there's a question about cvpsa well we have a mail-in election in montpellier so it's a mail-in election in montpellier they don't have one in berry it's not in berry that's what would be the simplest clearest path of least resistance for running these things um and so that's what i'm advocating for um and that may or may not happen because i know there's some folks who just really don't like this whole paradigm at all but this emergency legislation at least senator white told me she's hoping it's basically going to do everything their other covet emergency legislation did which would mean we'd have a repeat of last year we just get all of it paid for we could all on be on one big happy ballot life is good and this whole mess gets put off to another year and who knows maybe by that other year they can clean it up the way i asked them to um it won't if i'm the only the lone voice and the wilderness on that so maybe that can be something added to the lobbying list that y'all are working out but so the or is maybe everything i just told you doesn't doesn't matter basically but that's what i got so if y'all have any questions or where you go from here obviously there's going to be a need for some decisions there but since roxbury has has punted on their decision on the school until the 20th and i'm not going to be able to get anything done you know in this regard december anyways since you all are meeting again this month i would just ask that you try to give me something uh you know by by before january don't make sense yep yes okay so we don't have to make a decision on anything tonight you don't have to like thank you for for this update it's good to know that this is like something i have to consider well thank you um and i do see your hand uh go ahead oh then donna yeah um yeah uh i'm concerned uh with the idea that the school could um have their own thing and then they would have to pay for it but what it really means is they can have their own thing and pass it on to the taxpayers because that's exactly what they'll do is they'll include it in the budget and we'll pay for it as part of our property taxes and that i don't i don't find that to be particularly palatable thank you will we the city pays for it it's still paid for by the taxpayers yes i know but if we have to pay for more than one election you know i mean i don't mind paying for one election but i don't want to pay for three just because people can't get their acts together just to um to clarify on that right now our normal pattern is we we do pay for three elections they're just a three for there are three for one they're all paid for together um and depending on how this works out if the schools end up essentially having to run their own election then yeah i can see how you could argue that that would be coming from two different directions now yep um so i i i appreciate another reason for them and so so let's i'd prefer to not get into a back and forth here mickey i'm gonna let you say one more thing and then we're gonna move on okay oh i i was just gonna say it's just um you know another way for them to i just don't understand any of that crap yeah fair thank you fair uh tana go ahead well my question and john thank you you gave me a heads up on this i appreciate it but your comment that school mail in is there a time a day a deadline on that for authority to the school if or decided no i mean it's just a matter of having all your ducks in a row by the by the time the election deadlines come it's not like it's not part of a sort of standardized election process it's just election law it's election regulation it doesn't say it's not like uh you know candidate deadline or certain public hearing deadlines it's just this is these are the rules for running the election so you got to figure it out before you get into it basically so if indeed the kennel though decided to do the mail in and gave the school the or approved the school that give them any initiative any momentum to do it i uh i don't know um i don't think so because i think there's an assumption that they've you know you've got their back with stuff anyways um so i i mean i you were cutting out a little bit so i may be making some assumptions on the question i was just trying to think if there was a way indeed if the council favored mail in if we could influence the school you know whether that's by giving them approval early or than they have their own decision but they know that we've already said yes to the possibility even if we just did like a straw ballot not making a firm decision waiting to see what the school did well that's that's that's what i thought you were asking even though i only heard every other word but you know um am i honest answer is i don't know because as i say they already sort of assume that we've got their back on it and it seems to be something they want to do now of course they could change their minds and i could be wrong but i've been speaking with uh jim murphy and you know there's a very sort of assumptive tone between us that we would all like this to happen so um i don't know that it really makes any difference i don't also don't know and this could be me being my you know paranoid self um if making such a decision and getting into the papers before rocksbury has made their decision could you know kick off some of that big bad mob pillar telling us what to do kind of vibe i you know that may be completely unfair to say um but it just occurs to me we can't even like offer encouragement oh you could pass something today say we authorize um but um i don't know i mean whatever you all want to do it's um i this is just me talking off the top of my head so thank you for doing the slides very helpful and a pretty pictures too um connor go ahead hey john no worries if you don't like the exact numbers but how did our mail-in turnout stack up against like a comparable election like when there wasn't a presidential primary did we see a big increase sir um we we didn't see as much of an increase as i would have thought i mean and based on the other numbers around the country but it was big it was definitely big and there's no question that it was bigger than it otherwise would have been so it does have an effect i think that's that's easily demonstrable um that's just i'm just geeking out a little bit saying i expected more but yeah i know it was way up great uh steer i i'm not an expert on this but uh i did appreciate uh john's presentation uh a couple things come to mind it it strikes me as it's almost the risk of disenfranchising uh a lot of voters uh which we you know the one text does it intentionally uh is not worth if we've just imposed a mask we can put air cleaners in it it's almost akin to a jury verdict has to be unanimous and that if we know roxbury or very city is going to prevent that we've created this mess with our overlapping jurisdictions and i just think that at this point my advice is to plan encourage people to do absentee voting but plan for a real election in order to get it all on one ballot because there's no way anybody's going to understand the complexity that john just so eloquently laid out for y'all and a whole lot of people are votes are not going to be made or not going to get counted and i just think that's too great a risk especially at this critical time in the evolution of cdpsa so uh that's that's my advice go for a regular election thank you right any other back and then jay or jay and then jack you go ahead just a quick question john thank you for the presentation but um what's you talked about the possibility of the legislature you know passing emergency rules for for this coming um election what's the timing on that they're going to pass something the first week of january they said they're going to pass it more quickly this time than they did the one last time which was in within the first two weeks and it's uh you know right now the energy is all you know there's there's the just the the omicron happening um people are there's momentum for it so uh i honestly i think there's a pretty good chance you're going to see the same thing pass again because i do think there's still money for this but i know how much we hang our hat on that probably should proceed as though it's not jack um i'm thinking about terminology uh you've been referring to an all-male in election but what that really means is ballots get mailed to everybody but nobody is stopped from coming in in person and voting in person if they want to do that um geezer that i am i love to come in in person to to vote at the election but objectively it just seems that having creating the structure that gets the most people to vote is objectively the most democratic way to do it which makes me lean very strongly in favor of doing mail-in for the city and voting to authorize all of these other bodies to vote by mail also fair enough um well so this is something that we are going to be talking about again presumably right john yeah so any other comments that folks would like to offer this evening okay right thank you john that was amazing it was yeah i don't i don't think i've ever seen a gif in uh in a council presentation before so we're gonna have to have our game you didn't see a gif you saw a gif thank you very much i was always getting wrong no gifs no gifs gifs gifs thank you thank you yeah yeah that's the question of the voter turnout and um track of them every year just because i'm interested in like the the city budget votes but they have the combined total so we had 2800 votes 2842 voted on the city budget last year and in in a non-presidential election year which are always highest that's the highest one i have during my time here the next highest was 23 something in like 2015 or something um so we had 32 the year before was the president of the primary and um but it was still a pretty it's still like the fourth or fifth highest turnout even including presidential primary story in my 20s years so definitely a higher turnout and a thousand more than 200 2021 was 20 history would have suggested we were going to break 3000 but um you know we're making our own history here right fair enough all right just uh i want to check in here team we're at 10 for five um and we have one other item that i well the executive session i assume that we really do need to do that this evening as well um do you want to also tackle the legislative agenda i have one suggestion for that we can do it okay we're here let's this is what's going to happen all right um legislative agenda anything um that crew the committee would like to say about legislative agenda introducing it i i mean a lot of it's just chasing the dollars you know um it's going to be really important to you know pay attention to the appropriations committees and all the moving pieces uh because that didn't inform like you know what we can do with some of these other agenda items but we have things like you know the dams in there we've got like the public restrooms in there um absolutely like lauren's all over p fast like white on rice there so uh but but a lot of it i i mean i'd probably turn it to bill because he did the draft but it's not too dissimilar to like last year's legislative agenda aside from the currents the current stuff right the elinor we basically just went through last year's got rid of the stuff that was outdated and added the this year's new things and i took the liberty of adding the highest priorities at the end and sent them out to everyone and no one said those weren't it so you know i i'm remissing that because i would recommend that we add one other thing to the highest priorities um which is um trying to find the exact wording here it's the item that includes uh funding for net zero stuff i mean that's that's something that we will probably spend a lot of money on and so if we can get state dollars for net zero um infrastructure that is i'll speak for myself that's a high priority for but i think it is a high priority for for everybody so yes jack if you look at the top of the back page the third bullet advocate for climate change mitigation includes yeah that's that's the one um if we can add that to to the list of highest priorities if that's okay with folks i mean i mean i realize that makes it five bullet points but i'm not sure that matters too terribly um do we need to we need a motion do we need a motion you i think might as well make a motion that we adopt to present a 2022 legislative agenda and thank lord and Connick and whoever else worked on it thank jack thank you thank you thank you motion the second we're going to have some discussion here um steven you can go first then morgan i just want to raise the issue the uh especially when you're talking about dam removal we've just been through a real community traumatic event with a garage i think most of you are going to should be conflicted out from recommending removing act 250 jurisdiction on any project for the city uh anyone anyone who supported that garage the ask should not be this is a protection against a stacked development uh stacked council in the future that's just very very dangerous ground to go to so with that one exception i support the other uh legislative agenda but act 250 removal within the city is should not be on that list thank you um i will also add that uh that is not how we use the word conflicted um go ahead yes morgan go ahead uh sorry um just if john odin still on john it's not just you uh there's a sound quality problem uh i'm no techie but i think it might be a bandwidth problem maybe on the city's end i don't know i have no idea anyway um i'm glad you took up uh the 2022 legislative agenda because i missed it last year so you know i didn't get into the weeds on things but i looked at tonight and i have a question and uh two or three comments uh under create more housing uh i'm all for the first item first bullet item of course uh just on funding uh to agencies such as down street to bill housing great uh the second item though um here's the alphabet soup again ad us what's an ad what's an ad u i have no idea and uh then um i have a problem all right i'm all for anything that creates more housing that's really essential however the next item i have issues with eliminate act 250 regulation and designated downtown to growth centers well unless you're more specific about that you know uh what you're asking that opens up a can of worms in my opinion and uh you know i mean people if you if you do that all kinds of problems could crop up including you know there's all these people who they're very interested in development housing but it's not necessarily affordable you know and uh you take out act 250 regulation that i'm no lawyer i'm no geek on any of this stuff but you know i i have a problem now if you if you do modification in these regards that's a little different as long as it's tweaked very carefully you know and it's centered around housing but you're not really saying that in that you know sentence that bullet item you're not being specific and it'll be really important to be very specific and even then it's kind of a can of worms it really is and you know that said i'm all for more housing then the last item i have is down under practice good environmental stewardship you know continue the bullet item on continue funding microtransit opportunities first off you know if you're talking about my ride not everybody's a big fan of that and there's a lot of problems with it however i'll stick to you know environmental stewardship well you know i've gone by the transit center many a time in the back walking along the path behind the the building and there'll be buses sitting out there running idling for a long time more than one bus sometimes you know that's a problem now i did bring it to the attention of somebody at uh sustainable mapea coalition and you know it's sort of going to address a little bit sometimes they're not running and that's good but you know especially for the bear Berlin route route i'm all for the mapea pot but the Berlin loop you know these buses the gas fuel guzzling huge taxis oftentimes empty you know and they're taking six to eight trips up the hill when before you know sometimes they were empty here and there but they'd be running up the hill with up to four to six people sometimes more you know or down the hill one or the other and you know it's costly and it's also you know they're going up more times now with maybe one person on the bus and sometimes empty because sometimes they're not picking somebody up in the hill right so they're empty on the way down so what's the point you know environmentally environmental stewardship i don't think so anyway that's my take uh thank you if i may thanks morgan yeah go ahead adu stands for accessory dwelling unit and it's allowing people to put an extra unit into their house quickly i would point out that under a designated downtown is active 50 it's already exempt in those areas for some for most projects and this has been a policy position of the city since before the parking garage got involved in this um housing is one of the few things that housing over 50 units is still regulated in active 50 in a designated downtown and our argument is that if you're going to build high-rise housing or whatever you're going to build it ought to be in the center of a downtown and not out in the field the whole point of active 50 was to prevent sprawl and push development into downtown and so active 50 should not be used as a tool to prevent uh what is otherwise allowed development in downtown so i agree with that the only reason in fact that the hotel became part of active 50 is that someone had ruled that hotel units were equivalent to housing hotel rooms were equivalent to housing units because it had 80 rooms they got pushed in as a hotel itself it would have been exempt as was the parking garage okay thank you thank you bill any other um so thank you morgan any other comments or questions all right loren sorry um i i had i i know that like we've had that before i was wondering about possibly rewording the active 50 to say support smart growth policies that encourage and and incentivize housing development in designated downtowns or growth centers i think like it's well understood that active 50 is part of it but i think there's also more policies that are going to be considered this year lumped into smart growth and incentive programs i would support that if it also said including removing active 50 regulations i don't love that phrase i mean i think that would be part of a negotiation but to me it's like if you're going to remove that i would hope there's a better forest protections and other things paired with it just removing exemptions without a broader smart growth approach as i mean there's like a smart growth designation bill that's going in so i think this is like in line that that would change active 50 jurisdiction in downtowns and like would essentially accomplish this but it just has more parameters around it than just eliminate so i think it's getting it basically the same thing but again these are broad strokes when you go in and actually talking to people you can add the smart growth you can add whatever but i think this really nails it personally that they're not looking at all the motivation of why we have zoning and why we have active 50 in the more rural areas like bill brought up and so i want to overwork smith this and if you do then i suggest we put it off it's almost 11 o'clock so other thoughts jack go ahead i'm happy to put it off to probably not next week because we're doing budget but if there are other substantive comments that people have they'd like to see change i'm happy to push it back we haven't we haven't invited them yet we pending to see what happened tonight we tentatively hope to have them in on the 22nd to go over this with them i mean i think we could still go over the ideas with them and maybe get some feedback from them before you adopt it so um it's still work it's what you want to get the feedback on them yeah send them the draft could like they like purchase it could be like sure that sounds good yeah i mean i guess along the way i see us changing this all the time folks and so we i'm i'm just a little frustrated and uh that we spent 20 minutes on this to say we're going to put it off and that's what should change is happen in the state house so this is like in grant i think it's super so that's you know do you have a motion actually put it on the floor i'd like it at least adopt this draft move forward with for discussion purposes yeah well i think we had a we had a motion in a second i mean we could um the alternative is to table it right but um yeah or we could just take out the active 50 line for now pass the rest of it and then suffer over it later can we get it on what i mean is that amenable to the no fair enough vote it down and then you can have another motion um okay uh jack as a point of order do i'm not sure i heard a second did did somebody second i'll second it we don't have one but uh okay one maybe the clerk maybe i had imagine that john odham do you have any recollection of this john is probably not gonna go through the record you're still here if nobody remembers second it i know you can't unmute himself there i got unmuted that wasn't able to unmute i was gonna ask the same question did anybody recall second me so now it's me okay so so jack is seconding uh all right so i'm i'm you know whatever happens is all good we'll talk through it or you know either now or or either acid or we'll talk through i mean we're gonna talk through it again later um but uh nonetheless here we are so do we have a any further comments as is well i assume with the addition of the changing the okay um uh all right so um all in favor please say aye hi all right and opposed i mean had nobody opposed i think these are the opposed so i think the motion passes and right so uh we are going to revisit it we keep talking about the act 250 part of it and that is fine um all right so moving on uh we got one more impossible acquisition of labor in pond uh all right uh and for this anticipating that we may want to go into executive session and actually before we do coming out to make the decisions uh i feel like we might we might okay so um just want to make that note before we get it jack call good call yeah let's do that uh council report um it read i have nothing move on okay jack one that i should have mentioned when we were discussing the uh consent agenda one of the items we uh passed was funding for for a mini excavator for parks and when i saw that item on the agenda i asked the manager if uh if we had investigated uh the possibility of getting an electric excavator in consistent with our interest in moving towards electric vehicles when we can and the answer was yes that it was investigated and uh it would have been prohibitively expensive we're spending somewhere around 45 to $50,000 for this and to buy an electric one would have been another 40,000 so we are for people who are interested we are looking at electric vehicles when we can but this would not have been practical at this at this point um and the other thing is to follow up on the uh on the reapportion because we discussed your house district into two um the uh reapportionment were decided to create all single member districts um and you know the clerk and i were having uh conversation earlier and we could get into the same thing here because the the vote on the uh favor of this single member plan way the members of the board lined up in voting was very very weird from um the most farthest left and farthest right member of member districts going to be decided by the legislature not by by this board so a lot a lot of towns didn't like the single member district idea and it's i would be surprised if it stayed this way that's all i got so thank you great uh okay i also don't have anything john anything from you here we go just that the office is going to be uh my office is going to be closed tomorrow because of a staff crunch um and it will be open on friday but neither myself nor crystal will be there so it's really going to be limited to payments thank you uh bill i'll pass given the hour okay super uh all right so i think we are anticipating going to an executive session and i just want to make sure that when we do that that we also invite make sure that we're clear that we're inviting christine zaki okay still on yeah she was yeah uh uh go ahead jack i move that we find that premature general public knowledge would place the council or person involved at a substantial disadvantage concerning a potential uh real estate uh transaction okay um for the session may all in favor please say aye and opposed okay so uh we may be coming back to um take some action yes i move that we enter executive session to discuss the possibility of a real estate transaction pursuant to one bsa 313 a1 whatever the section is great thank you uh is there a second please second okay um for the discussion all in favor please say aye hi and opposed okay all right so we may be back matters is there a motion to come out of executive session so move second all in favor okay and is there a motion i think we need to make sure we're we're in the right place well here are we are we are casting still okay and i think we're okay unless you want us to wait till okay uh yes go ahead jay so i'd like to make a make a motion that we authorized the city manager to uh pursue and enter enter into a purchase and sale agreement for a uh lot adjacent to berlin pond based on the conversation and the parameters established in executive session weren't adjacent okay close enough okay uh okay so there's a motion and a second any further discussion uh okay all in favor please say aye and opposed okay and so with that we are done with our business for the evening uh so we will without objection adjourn at 11 19 we made it good meeting