 We're going to call this meeting to order. I'm going to call this meeting to order. So the first thing is to review and approve the agenda. So there were a couple of changes we were going to make. One is we had a request to move up the winter parking ban ordinance amendment up second public hearing for Sibley and Prospect Street. So unless there's objection with that, we might move that one up to right after item 6, right after the appointment to the Transportation Infrastructure Committee. Do we need to have item 6? No, I think you did that last time. We did last time. So we're going to take item 6 off the list. And then I know there, the roads are bad and I'm not sure if anything else got shifted or canceled. Well, I think if you want to have Mike Miller here for, is Mike still here or did he already leave? He already left. So he was, so if you want to delay the river, depends if you want him here for the river stuff. Right for him. Yeah, because he had a treacherous drive ahead of him. Well, regardless, I think we'll have the public hearing. We just may not be able to answer all the questions when that comes up. Beautiful. Okay, so I think that's it. Were there any other thoughts about changing the agenda? Okay. So that will consider the agenda approved. So on to general business and appearances. This is an opportunity for any member of the public to address the council on any issue other than what is on our regular agenda. I have one. You have one. Go ahead. Unless there's others first. Well, just to finish that thought, if you have something you want to say, if you'd come up and say your name and where you live and try to keep your comments to two minutes or less, that would be excellent. But go ahead. I just wanted to introduce to the council in the public our new finance director, Kelly Murphy, who will be starting January 6 officially. Kelly is a Montpelier resident. So decided to come and listen to our budget presentation. So the last chance for her to complain before she actually has to be on the other side. No, we're really excited about having her come. She's got a background in municipal government and state government and budgeting and we're really looking forward to having her on board. So along with all the other new people coming on board. Yeah. All right. Well, we're psyched to have you. Thank you. Yeah. Any other any other comments from the public? Yeah. If you'd come up to the mic so you can be on the record here and people at home can hear you. Laura Rose Abbott. I'm on Prospect Street. I'm just concerned about all the interim zoning adoptions with kind of this, well, we have to do it in two years. And I just, you know, you're stating you're doing it because of certain projects and without the public input. I just wonder if this opens the city up to things that could be problematic. Thank you. Thank you. It's Laura, right? Laura Rose. I would love to email with you about that just some answers to your questions. Okay. Thank you. Anyone else? Okay. So moving on then. So we have a special resolution that we're going to, what's that? Oh, I was skipping the consent agenda. Okay. So that first. So, right, is there a motion regarding the consent agenda? Move the consent agenda. Second. Just so you all know, I added a phrase that I dropped onto the minutes to the one-year alternate position on the Transportation and Construction Committee. And you added the name. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Okay. So on to the next item, which is, oh, yes. You're so eager. I am. I'm so excited about it. Okay. So there was a motion and a second. Oh, gosh. Don't make a motion when you approve the consent agenda as stated. Too late. There's already been a motion and a second. Further discussion? Okay. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Finally. Finally. Okay. Oh, gosh. I need to get back to sleep. Okay. All right. So we have a, exactly. We have a special resolution here to celebrate Kate McCarthy. So I know Megan Tuttle is here from the Vermont Planners Association, the president of the Vermont Planners Association, who would like to say a few words about this. Thank you, Mayor Watson, and to all the council for having us here. As Mayor Watson said, my name is Megan Tuttle. I'm the president of the Vermont Planners Association. And I think you all know Kate McCarthy on your development review board and works for the Vermont Natural Resources Council and is an active member of the Vermont Planners Association and a lot of the work that we as planners do in Vermont. I wanted to share really quickly just what the Vermont Planners Association is and what this award is that Kate was, that was granted to Kate this year. The Vermont Planners Association is a statewide nonprofit. Our members are made up of professional and citizen planners as well as other allied professions and interested parties that promote good planning in Vermont. We say that through our membership's work, we advance the art and science of planning in Vermont. The Vermont Planners Association is also one of three state organizations that make up the Northern New England chapter of the American Planning Association. We call ourselves NECAPA because that's a mouthful. So we also collaborate and advance planning work with our colleagues in New Hampshire and Maine. Each year, both the Vermont Planners Association and NECAPA have an awards program where we recognize citizen planners, professional planners. We also recognize planning efforts and the work that comes out of those planning efforts that are implemented in our communities. VPA recognizes all of our award winners in the spring during the legislative session by having a reception with our legislators. The NECAPA organization hosts their award ceremony in the fall at our tri-state conference. So I'm here tonight on behalf of both VPA and NECAPA because this year Kate was nominated and was the recipient of both of our organization's professional planner of the year award. The criteria for being nominated for professional planner is someone who has a sustained contribution to the planning field, someone who's worked to increase the understanding of planning principles, somebody who's been effective in formulating and implementing those plans, and who has generally furthered the cause of planning. I'm happy to announce that we selected Kate for these reasons, and I think for all of you that know her professionally and through her volunteer work, she definitely lives up to these principles of our award. So I know that the mayor is going to read a resolution, but I just want to say thank you for letting us be here. As I mentioned, NECAPA does our award ceremony at our conference in the fall, and Kate being the dedicated volunteer that she is was actually at a board retreat for the Housing and Conservation Board for the state. So she wasn't actually able to be there to accept her award. So we're very grateful for you allowing us this time to recognize Kate here in her home community among people that know the work that she does. Thank you. Thank you, Megan. And so I'm going to read this resolution. All right. Okay. So thank you for being up here. Okay, so whereas Kate McCarthy is the Sustainable Communities Program Director for the Vermont Natural Resources Council, VNRC, and whereas Kate's work at VNRC focuses on building sustainable, compact communities with the goal of providing residents with transportation, housing and employment options while also supporting the state's working lands, natural areas and wildlife habitat. And whereas Kate is a member of the American Planning Association, the American Institute of Certified Planners, and the Vermont Planners Association where she served for six years on the executive committee. And whereas Kate was also appointed by the Vermont Speaker of the House to serve on the state's Housing and Conservation Board and serves as the vice chair of the Montpiler Development Review Board. And whereas many know Kate's work as planner, advocate, researcher and educator who has had a far reaching impact on statewide land use policy in Vermont and beyond through her work with the legislature, elected boards and commissions, regional and local planners and other nonprofit and advocacy organizations. And whereas Kate continues to have an impact on state level policies by providing new data and helping guide discussions on critical issues such as land use planning, transportation, climate change, systems management and resource protection. And whereas Kate has been successful in increasing the understanding of these issues among professional planners, lay citizens and elected officials and advancing land use planning in the state by working closely with representatives and planners at all levels across Vermont. And whereas Kate is recognized by her peers for her unique and much needed style as an advocacy planner, someone who sees the long term picture and advocates for policies that are necessary to keep our social, environmental and economic systems healthy. And whereas Kate is careful with information, patient in educating the public, passionate about creating a better world and is one of the bright stars in the Vermont professional planning community. And whereas for all of these reasons in 2019, Kate was selected as the professional planner of the year by both the Vermont Planners Association and the Northern New England Chapter of the American Planning Association. Now therefore be it resolved that Mayor Anne Watson congratulates Kate McCarthy on being named professional planner of the year by her professional peers and thanks for her and thanks her for her commitment to Montpelier and all of Vermont's communities. Thank you so much, Kate. Thank you all. That was so very nice. You know, it was a surprise to hear that I received this honor from my peers across Northern New England. That really meant a whole lot to me. But then to be recognized in my community is really particularly special. And I was wondering beforehand talking with Megan what the resolution might say and maybe I would learn some things. And I appreciate the insights you've given me into my work and I will strive to continue to achieve those. I also want to say I'm grateful that I've been able to grow as a planner by virtue of service on the development review board right here in Montpelier. So really nice connection. It's really an honor to be part of a profession where I get to work on these issues of human communities and the natural environment making great places. A lot of that's really epitomized by the work that all of us do in Montpelier. I'm glad to be a part of it. And it's very kind of you to say all those nice things and take time this evening. So thank you very much. Thank you, Kate. So we have moved the winter parking band ordinance public hearing up to this slot. So with that we're going to open the second public hearing on the potential changes for Sibley Ave and Prospect Street. Anything you want to add about that? I don't know if I have anything I want to add. I know our staff is here. We left last week. We were going to look at, I believe our folks were going to take another look at both Sibley and Prospect to see if they had any changes in recommendations or not. And I don't know. I assume they were, I believe they're here to talk to this topic if they have anything they want to add. Sure. I'll speak first on Prospect Street. And our recommendation after taking a look at Prospect Street was to exclude or have no parking from School Ave to Hill Street and allow parking from Northfield to School Ave. That opens up that bottom section. I think the request was by one and two prospect. I think it's better to identify it by street. So from Northfield to School Ave, take that out of the total band. Yes. And have from School Ave to Hill Street within the band. So representing public works, we would agree with that recommendation. We would suggest one other situation in which we moved. There's a sign on Prospect Street that prohibits parking to the curb in the intersection. And we'd like to move that back six to eight feet. Just there's more than enough room there. That's not a deal breaker for us. We just think that in the winter months, it would be helpful to have that be a little bit tighter away from the intersection. Thanks for that. On that last point, are we talking about the intersection with Prospect and Northfield? Yes. Okay. So shifting the no parking sign farther away from that intersection so that people don't park too close to it. That makes sense. And the other question, the language has been a little confusing for me in some of this. But what I understood was that there's also an exception to the band on the south side of Prospect Street between numbers 35 and 51 that's being proposed. Is that correct? Yes. Yeah. So all of Prospect would be under the band with the exceptions of the chunk between Northfield and School Avenue and one section on the south side between 31 and 51. Yes. Okay. Okay. Good. Just making sure that we're both on the same page. Your engineers are okay with that section? Okay. Yes. My question had to do, besides listing the street, is there a map enclosed at all for these that are banned 24 hours a day for the whole winter? So we have a map that shows where parking is never allowed during the winter. So the sections of Prospect Street would be added to that map? Well, some of it already is. Right, but you would be able to look at it and see if this part is in this part. Correct. It helps me more than the number sometimes. Who knows if the house number is seeable. But, okay. Good. One question that had been raised previously was looking at adding locations where people could park during a parking ban. Did you all... Were you on the maps? Was that? Oh, well, so that's the section down below on Prospect Street? Well, there was a request last time to have more spaces near Prospect Street. I'm not sure how close you could get necessarily. I wondered if anyone had looked into that. I'd also asked about the spaces outside of Allen Lumber as being places where people could park during a parking ban. I don't know if anybody looked into that either. We looked into it. The information we got was that most of those are filled pretty early in the morning now by people. And I think if the concern... So I think the real decision has to be... I don't know yet if we're really to weigh in on Sibley. One of the concerns about Sibley parking was that even just walking from up above down below was a concern. So coming all the way over from Stonecutter's or Allen Lumber, it was a much longer walk. So was that even going to meet that need? So depending on what we choose to do on Sibley, I think... And there wasn't necessarily a place closer to Prospect that presented itself? Well, so the bottom part of Prospect between 1 and 2, we've opened that all back up. That was in the ban before. But if there is a winter parking ban, that wouldn't be a place where people could go. No, but that's not the case now. Right. Just trying to think of how to expand those opportunities. Donna. I think the gentleman may be here who talked there was some snow storage area that I thought someone asked us to make available for parking. Like a bump out? Yeah, some sort of bump out. Anyway, that ended up in the winter and snow got piled there and they were wondering if that could be cleared out so that could be a parking area. Maybe I can speak to that. I think that I mentioned that as a possibility. One of my constituents had suggested both that little bulb out on Prospect Street and the section between Northfield and Skulav as potential exceptions, further exceptions to the ban. My understanding was that bulb out is really useful on Prospect Street as a place to store snow and if we don't have that, it's not a very... There's not much other place you could put it. So I think that that main... My understanding in the last conversations I had was that that was not a possibility. That's our recommendation. Yes. I mean, is it possible to clear that out like after a storm? If you put it there during the storm, but after the storm, it could be cleared out and used? Tom? I think that becomes a challenging promise to make given the nature of the winter, storms, what other things we have to do. And so we're very hesitant to make that promise that we would clear it out because it's purpose in that area. And I understand that parking is an issue, but I don't think that we could guarantee that we would be able to meet that requirement within a certain period of time on a regular basis. But do you haul snow away from other places on a regular basis after a storm? So I'm just trying to see what's the difference if you're doing clearance... Well, when we haul snow from other places, it's usually in a concentrated area. I mean, to send up the whole snow removal operation for that one fall by on a very narrow street is not the same as clearing out the whole downtown or the whole of Berry Street or, you know, they're very large vehicles and it's kind of a convoy type of information. That's very helpful to know. I didn't have that image in my head. So thank you. The only... I guess this is more of a general commentary, but I understand that, you know, as in life, these things come up. You know, we make changes and it's challenging to sort of foresee what, you know, what other changes might need to happen as a result. But what stands out to me, particularly as a renter, and I'm incredibly grateful that I have parking right now, but for the folks that don't who do rent, if the council and or the city would agree to sort of presenting these in a much more anticipatory format, I think, moving forward so that folks who don't have off-street parking are able to, you know, look at other options that are available or, you know, plan their lives accordingly, I think that that would alleviate a lot of these sort of reactions to something that is going to be a significant shift over time. And, you know, I know that you have to lease parking spaces in some instances when I lived in Boston, you know, you're releasing them for, like, double my salary for a year, which I can't imagine being reality anywhere, but I think that if we were to set this up in such a way that before the ban went into place, people would have an opportunity to secure parking or to, frankly, to move because, for some, that's a really important decision component to where to live. But if we set a deadline for next year, you know, of addressing these in maybe, like, October or September, if, you know, based on what we have seen and observed this year, people would then have an opportunity to weigh in on it earlier on in the process and would then have an opportunity to sort of do this feedback with city staff about this and, you know, I just drove over here in, like, a whiteout. But it just strikes me that I appreciate the city's needs, but I also appreciate the sort of give and take of being a renter in a community where you're sort of renting something with this understanding and it transitions through no fault of the landlord or anyone else's, transitions to something else. It just strikes me as sort of a fundamental equity and fairness issue to be more mindful of how we time this going forward. Thank you. Well, I want to make sure that we are able to hear from the public, too, so if the city members of the public who want to come speak to this, now's a good time. Don't forget to say your name and where you live and try to keep your comments relatively short if you can. Hi, my name's Thomas Moore, Prospect Street. The biggest problem last year was the snow banks. They just came in so much. You only had room for just one vehicle to get down and it was a real problem. Like, if you had a fuel delivery, UPS guy, or any type of delivery there, they were stopped right there. You had to wait, you know, and if it was an oil guy, you had to wait, you had to wait, you had to wait. Now, if I had to call Bob, you know, he wouldn't be able to get there and a lot of times there was, you know, just coming out of my driveway, I'd have to come down and it was like a three-point turn to get out of there. It was very, very narrow and going down the street, if I came upon another car, he would have to back up or I would have to back up or go up into somebody's driveway. I've been living there 27 years now and we've never had a problem like what it was last year. In my eyes, I recognized it. We always had this city garage come with a big snow blower and they cleared the snow banks about three times a year last year not once, not once. And I was really PO'd, you know, because that was a real pain. You get UPS there and, you know, you just want to go and you couldn't go anywhere. And I just think, you know, you clear these snow banks and everything, you know, serve our street a little bit. Maybe we won't have these problems. And then if you're saying about parking down by Northfield Street and School Street for people on Prospect Street, it's already taken by number two Prospect Street, the Housing Authority there. Their employees take up all those parking places there. I mean, it's public parking, but you might as well say it belongs to Prospect Street, all those parkings. And they even park on Schools Ave or is it Street Ave? And that's even a pain in the summertime when you've got all those people trying to come down the Hill of Prospect and go on to School Ave. They're right out to the corner. And, you know, I don't know. I just think you've got to remove our snow. You know, you do it for the bike pass, but you're not doing it for my street. And they did it like three times a year. They had a machine that would just clean it right off. And they'd get all the dibbits and everything. So if I had people visiting, they had a place to even park for an hour or whatever right by my house. All you got to do is clear my snow. And you've got, you know, the problem solved. Thank you. Hi, I'm Heather Corey. I live on Sibley Ave. I have a few questions. I'm still a little unclear. Is this for Sibley Ave, Lower Sibley? Is this a full winter parking ban for all day or just at night? I'm also a little confused if this is for the purposes of snow removal. Why we need a full winter parking ban and just not continue as a as-needed basis? It snowed the past couple days and we haven't had a winter parking ban at all. And I'm also wondering where, again, we are supposed to park. And I'm also wondering why is this happening now? It, like Miss Hall said, Hill, it's a pretty poor time to put a full winter parking ban into effect. I think a more appropriate time for that discussion as far as a renter is concerned is the typical renting season, like closer to June at this point. Leases are already signed and I don't have off-street parking. Thank you. Do you want to answer? I can answer a couple of them. The winter parking ban is really only from 1 a.m. to 6 or 7 or 7. So it's not daytime. It was intended to be a full ban at that section of Sibley. And it was raised, did get raised by residents in the area last spring or summer and when we were preparing the stuff this fall, we missed it and then it got raised again. So we went and brought it up now. But in fairness to the folks that were concerned about it, they did bring it to our attention. So we looked at it and said, yeah, we should probably add it. I don't know if it's, speaking for myself, if anyone else, if we were to delay the decision on Sibley, it's been that way for the last two or three years at least till summer or spring. I don't know that we'd have a huge problem, but I defer to the safety folks. Yeah. We did receive some comments this afternoon. Everyone got to see them. From the police from Captain Martel who recommended that we do put that ban on from a safety standpoint because of the steepness and the narrowness. So from college to Barrie, that's lower section, the comments we received this afternoon from the police is to do that. We also, we went over there, fire one night, I don't remember what, one night this week, and it is difficult there for emergency vehicles. And we don't have snow banks yet, but as we start to get snow banks and it, so our recommendation, and I'll speak for public works, also I got the mic, is that we do put a ban on Sibley Avenue from college to Barrie. That's our recommendation. Thank you. Hi, my name is Kathleen Burroughs and I own the house at 35 Prospect Street. I have, for the past 35 years, I've lived there and I have mostly rented exclusively to family, although I have had other non-family members there over the last few years. Currently my daughter and my grandson, who's three, live upstairs and then I have a non-family member that lives downstairs. So I'm very, very familiar with the property and I live there for many years. And never have I had the experience that I did last year. Last winter was horrible. I appreciate your recommendation. I love it. I think, I agree with Tom. The snow banks were horrible last year. My car personally got sideswiped three times. I use Meyers trash removal. I wanted to count today. I stopped at number 10. At least 10 times last year they could not. They called and said, we can't get up Prospect Street. We'll get you next week. And that's a real problem. It's a problem for me as a landlord, as a tenant. Now you have trash sitting down in a snow bank. You got animals. It was just a real problem. In addition to the safety concerns, because like Tom said, if the UPS guy came, forget it. I use, I get my propane from Gillespie's. They take up the road. I do have off-street parking for four cars. But last year was the first time ever that we had people parking in my driveway, parking on my lawn, obstructing. I've never had to call the Montpelier Police Department for regulatory stuff, as I did last year. They're pretty much on speed dial. And that's a really sad thing when you can't keep people off your personal property, because they're desperate for where to park. And once the ordinance was made and the sign put up in front of my lilac bush that said you can park from here to two houses down, it was like carte blanche. And people went wild. Now I understand what you said about being a tenant or buying a condo. There have been changes on Prospect Street over the past few years that decisions were made to help bring people in long-term residences. And I just feel like there wasn't the foresight. If you buy a condo, a couple of doors down, that only has parking for one car and your two-car family. What are you going to do? I know a few years ago when I was going through a change in my life and trying to figure out if I could do a little daycare at 35, I went down to the pizza shop and said, would you mind if we parked here? They were very open to that. They said it would actually help business because people would see cars and think, oh, that's where I want to go. And I'm like, well, that's all I'm looking for. So there might be opportunities outside of the box than, you know, parking somewhere. And Tom's right. Number two takes up all those parking spots, but really only during the day from what I can tell. I usually bring my grandson home at night. And by 6 o'clock, 5.30, it's pretty much open down there. Whether you want to park there and walk up is a whole other story. But I think there is that availability there. But from a safety standpoint and from my car and my grandson, I would love your recommendation to go forward and not allow parking from, you know, Cherry Avenue down because it's just, it was miserable and I'm not a complaining person. But when my car got sideswiped for the third time and my daughters and my tenants and they're like, whoa, you said this was kind of a quiet street. And plus it does open up there. But if you come off hill, it's really skinny and then there's that straight away and boom, they fly. And that was how my car got hit twice, is they just kind of got going a little too fast, slipped and then boom, my car. So anyways, that's my two cents. Hi, I'm Stephanie Cohen. I own with my husband 46 and 48 Prospect Street. It's a duplex. We have two parking spaces. We have four cars typically. Anytime we've ever rented to people and had ourselves included, it's always been at least four cars. I would say that we depend on street parking to appeal to renters. I think it would be a disservice to them and to us to not have access to that most days of the week. And part of my concern with only having access to one and two, if it were removed from the rest of the street, is that it would rely on people being fully able-bodied. There's a giant hill that even when the sidewalk is maintained to go up that hill to get to the residential part of Prospect Street, it is very icy and slippery. And I would like to hear what plans are in place. There's not really a way to maneuver if you even have a broken ankle to move your car and then get back to your house in these months. I just want to put that out there. Can you clarify your question? My question is exactly what is the proposal? I'm still not completely clear. Is it just the evenings and every evening between Labor Day and Memorial Day approximately? It's between November 15 and April 1. Okay. And I think the question to what you've articulated is what we're all struggling with as a staff. And I think the council is that we don't want inconvenience anybody for parking and we want people to be able to live in their homes. But we're also concerned with if your home needs an emergency vehicle to come to it and they can't because of snow banks or parked cars. And we've heard testimony about other service vehicles and we're in the safety business and so we're trying to figure out what the right solution is. And you make a great point about people being able-bodied and going up there. And we also don't know what the answer is when we can't deliver maybe the house beyond yours. We can't get to them in their time of need because cars are parked on the road and there's no room. So this is a difficult balancing of needs and any suggestions I think would be really welcome from anybody. We don't want to prescribe a solution, we want to find one. And this is what we came up with. It doesn't mean it's totally the right one but we haven't thought of anything better. I'm just curious, did you own your property when there was a full winter being all year every year? No. We bought it right after I think it changed. I'm just curious what people had done prior to that. And it certainly was an appeal. Right, sure. That was the case to living there ourselves. And that's the reason we went to this band was to make it easier for renters and for people to live in their homes. So now we're trying to find the sweet spot. A follow-up question. Is there a minimum width that emergency vehicles like on a street to consider it adequate access? Ten-foot is minimum, but it gets real tricky there because you had already mentioned the steep hill. So to come, you know, to try and get up that hill with a fire truck and then get bottled in and have to back down out, it's... So the way that that street goes is you go up the hill, it's pretty steep and that's the case in the summer as well or during the day when there's no band in place. But then it opens up immediately to between 22 and 24 feet for the exact length that it currently stands between the two signs where you can have a temporary... You can be exempt from the van. So even... I'm just kind of putting this out there. The most narrow part of the street with snow banks would be, I think, in question for a ten-foot clearance. The widest part of the street that currently is exempt, even with six feet wide for parking for a car, say, and even a couple extra feet for snow bank that maybe isn't cleared yet, would still give significantly more than that. So at 24 feet, we'll even say 22 because that's like the... we did some measurements. So even at 22 minus six would give us a number that if I'm not so nervous, I'd be able to come up with more quickly. 16, minus even a generous three feet for a snow bank, which is pretty huge, but a foot and a half on either side, say, would still give you ample clearance for emergency vehicles in the exact spot where currently signs are posted for there to be an exemption. So I just want to make sure that we're clear on the proposal on the table, because I think that... I think what's on the table is that that section on the south side between 35 and 51 will be... will continue to be exempt from the ban. Continue to be. Yes. Okay. I wasn't clear on that. Yeah, it's... I have gone back and forth myself. We spoke about it briefly at the beginning. But yes, I believe all of Prospect Street, except for the stretch on both sides between Northfield and School Ave, and the stretch on the south side between 35 and 51. Okay, great. I would like to add my nervous math as... as like a... agreement with that. Yes. Thank you. I know that we have a paradigm of thought right now, and I know that it is... we're talking about right now transitioning certain areas to no parking. But I wonder if, in the future, maybe the shift becomes, we know that these areas are problem areas, and we are going to come up with some sort of, like, zone for snow removal or, you know... So priority areas, that would be... I'm just going to use an example, but zone one. And all of that area will be... that's first priority, that's high priority, so I would envision, you know, State Street, Main Street, Memorial, Northfield Street, any place where there's going to be a lot of traffic, so that those areas are cleaned first. But also what that would allow is, as the city moves from tier to tier, people would be able to actually move their vehicles away on occasion, that it may not result in such a significant disruption, because those sort of downtown artery areas would already be cleared, so that, you know, the parking lot back here might be more accessible, it would be, you know, a less of a disruption. I know that's not the paradigm that we're operating in, but I always like to see, sometimes I find that my own perspective on something is the problem, maybe shifting from a snow removal plan as opposed to a parking plan when it snows is sort of the shift that it might take to find a more, you know, a way to address all of the needs that are being articulated as opposed to, like, car versus snow. That's an interesting idea. I'm Scott Sabatino. I own Six Sibley Ave with my brother. We've owned it for the past five or so years, so we took ownership just as the full parking van was leaving, and we were thankful for that. I'll echo the last landlord's statement that on-street parking is certainly something that appeals to tenants, that we can, it helps us get tenants in for sure. If... I can echo everybody in that last winter was really bad and that snow removal was a problem, and I think it's in everyone's best interest to have snow removed from Six Sibley Ave, but there's a lot of days between November and April where there's no snow on the ground, and to say no parking for that complete period of time, it doesn't make sense. But if snow removal is the issue, then perhaps we can do an extended ban for certain areas where, you know, the parking van goes into effect, and when everyone else comes out of it, if there's still any time to clear snow off that street, you know, Six Sibley Ave can be backlogged by two days or there's some delayed ban that goes into effect and it gives the public works time to clear that snow out so that we can all park against the sidewalk. So, thank you. Before you come up again, is there anyone who hasn't spoken yet that would like to? Hi, I'm Valerie Lewis, and I live at 1 Sabin Street and maintain my mother's home at 8 intensively. You all heard what I had to say last week, so I'm not going to take a lot of your time. Just for me, it's a safety issue, and if we can find some other way to deal with it, that's great. I think there is enough parking at the top of the hill, but I did do a little research between meetings and did check on some of the other streets where there is a full-time parking ban. For example, Downing Street is almost exclusively rental properties, and it seems to me that that's comparable. It's a little narrower, but it doesn't have the wicked curve, so I would just ask you to consider it from an issue of safety and anything that we can do that makes everybody happy would be great, and thank you, and happy holidays to everybody. Good evening, Stephen Cohen, 46 and 48 Prospect Street. I have a question. I'm kind of unclear as to what's actually changing on Prospect Street at this point, because we currently have an exemption between those two signs, 300 feet, during the period between November 15th and April 1st. There's always parking on that south side, so are we saying that there's no parking during the day on the rest of the street? Is that what the proposal is? I feel like I've heard a lot of different things. I was unaware that the exemption on the south side stands based on this proposal. I thought that that was leaving as of last week, so I'm unclear as to what is actually up for change on Prospect Street. I'm going to leave that to... I'd have to take a look, I'm not sure. I was surprised tonight also to hear the exemption. So maybe we should clarify that before we do ensure it. Because that's honestly what I came up with this week. I actually understood the way you understood it, adding that side, but then the clarification tonight was that we weren't, so I'd like to be sure. Great. I'd love clarification on that. And I'd also just echo other Prospect Street residents' feelings about it, whether they feel on one side or the other that we should extend the ban and that I think, you know, either way, it's not a parking issue, it's a snow removal issue. I don't have the historical perspective that some other residents do. I would say last winter was really challenging. The winter before wasn't really that bad. Yeah, and this winter obviously has been really dry. And yeah, it'd be really frustrating to have our renters have to schlep up and down the hill while it's potentially dangerous conditions. People have to leave super early in the morning to go to work to be able to access that. Yeah, and I'd also just echo Stephanie's point about the actual street width and that with cars there or not, it's not actually kind of the crux of getting a vehicle through. Other points on the street make that much more challenging. Yeah, so again, I'd love some clarity on what we're actually talking about on Prospect Street and other than that. Thanks. Jack, go ahead and then we'll have another. I don't think we're ready to make a decision like this yet tonight, but one of the questions that occurred to me hearing the people talk about the difficulty of parking on Prospect Street is to wonder if we have any policies or standards for when an area would be marked out as resident only. I don't want to necessarily alienate my friends who work at the State Housing Authority, but if the problem is where do people who live on Prospect Street park, is there a standard that would lead us to conclude, well, maybe that block should be for residents rather than for employees. I don't know how that decision gets made, but I know there are other areas in the city where there is resident parking only. There are a couple areas. We haven't done any, we haven't implemented any of those in the last 25 years or more. I think the argument or the point of consideration in this area would be that, housing, somebody mentioned it already, a resident that during the day people could park on the street. So people that live up the hill could use their street and if the Housing Authority people are using it during the day, fine, if they're cleared out at night and it's overnight parking. So I don't know that it would necessarily be a conflict in that situation. I think, you know, we've got to look at, you know, what's the best combination of practices here? Okay, thanks. Do you have something? I apologize for having to step out. It was work related, but sort of in conjunction with the tail end of the last conversation I came in on, you know, after living in a city for a long time, whenever it seems like areas are designated parking areas, there are eager beavers who park their car there super early and leave it there for a really long time. And I appreciate the convenience that that can provide, but I know that we're talking about other parking locations for folks, but I just want to be mindful that if residents that are going to be impacted by this are going to need access to those spaces that we're all talking about, I think we have to have another policy that says, like, you know, you can't park here all day and just sort of leave your car indefinitely in this space because these are for, you know, nighttime resident parking and in areas that I've lived where they haven't sort of made that explicitly clear, it literally translated to driving around for hours trying to find somewhere to leave your car. And I appreciate that we are not a city of millions, but I remember that with a surprising degree of rage still at the number of hours of my life that I spent in the city of Boston trying to find places to leave my vehicle in snow emergencies. And so if we are going to sort of have other parking areas that are available, the city has to have some sort of policy or designation that this is not intended to be, like, leave it indefinitely spot. This is intended to be either a parking space used for day and then, you know, departures so that our residents can utilize parking. That is always everywhere that I've seen that done. That's always been kind of an unintended consequence that those spots end up getting filled by people who are not impacted by changes. Go ahead. Hi. My name is Teri Galfetti. I live at 4 Sibley Avenue. Sibley is not a narrow street. It's actually probably relatively wide, considering other streets. We may have a tricky corner and it might be slick, but are only because of the incline, but there's other streets that have a more steep incline that may be slicker. I don't see where it's not wide enough for any sort of safety equipment to get up there, only unless it's slick, but other roads are slick as well. Again, it's not a narrow street. It's fairly wide, considering most, looking at all the other streets. So I'm not really sure what the safety issue is for the road. That's just my two cents on the street and the parking matter. Thank you. Did you want to... It does have a... Here we go. Most recommendations from the East Side are actually... It's just to make sure that it's for the fire and public works. I just want to be clear. Our job is to enforce whatever the policy wishes are so we can do the best that we can, and we're trying to make this work for everybody. I just want to be clear. The police side of it, this isn't based on accident. Information, it's based on can the fire department effectively operate and get to residents, as well as how DPW and what capacity they have from a time frame to manage similar operations. Again, the Safe Roots to School, that's a concern around Union School and Main Street. That's one of the priorities, historically as well. So it's very clear what the police role is. So Captain Martell's recommendation is based on the concerns raised and input from the fire and all the works. That's where we're at. So I just want to... There's no other policing issue. Okay. Is there anyone else who has not yet spoken who would like to... Laura, did you want to speak to us? I'm just wondering why the Prospect Street is brought up if it's not really changing, and I just wanted to question the notice, like I only got one flyer on my mailbox for this meeting. Like, did you mail to residents or how do you notify people if you are making big changes in their lives? So I'm worried about that. And just the premise of it, the stop sign is only like where the stop sign is at Cherry, it's only 15 and a half feet wide. So access, that is the limit. That's how big the road is. So we do maintain that. So anyway, those are my points just about are you notifying people? Thank you. Thanks. We have done a variety of notices, including just putting them actually, can't delivering them like we did for this meeting, just to be sure everyone got them, but we also do the normal public notice thing. We did do extra for this. Hi, my name is Stephanie Quaranta. I was here last week. So safety really is a big concern on Civilly Avenue. And for the last 10 to 12 years, I've been there every night caring for my parents. So I am on that street. I'm probably technically one quarter owner of that house. And we've been there for over 60 years. So I feel like I have a very strong history of the street. The PD responded probably two weeks ago, maybe Tony, somebody came down College Street, hit the guard rails, spun in front of, you know, between 10 Civilly and 12, had there been a car there, that probably would have been a smash. That happens a lot. Heaven knows, we've had the ambulance many times. It's a tight street. I disagree. What happens, snow banks? You know, our neighbors at six great people, we're still going to be friends at the end of the night, no matter how this comes out. But the snow banks, it just is not, hasn't been a priority for removal. And I think that's what happens. Without a parking ban the last two nights, I was looking tonight, what happens is the plows go around, cars are parked there, I'm sorry. And then there's like these ridges, it's going to freeze tonight. And so that adds more to it, so the cars are parked out. I, too, am worried at night about my car being side-swiped. But it's all about safety, it affects us as well, no matter what decision we'll live with it, and we'll all still be good neighbors. But safety really is a factor, and I say that with a lot of years' experience. Thank you. Thank you. As a new DPW director, in the past we've done a much better job of removing snow, it seems, from what I'm hearing tonight. I will look into that. I don't know if we changed operational priorities or not, so I just thought I'd put that out there and say I'll look into it. I don't think that that resolves all the problems that are being discussed, but I can at least make a commitment to do that. I am opposed to parking there. I don't, I think it may solve a problem on paper, but in reality it creates more problems. And I'm really opposed to it. However, I do totally agree with what Ashley Hill said in that there were two vehicles parked in front of my house at 35 all winter long. And I called the police department and I gave them the license plate, registration. One car wasn't even registered. And I'm like, people are just like parking to ditch their cars here. When they don't move for five or six days straight, you know it's exactly addressing to what she was saying. So it definitely does help somebody who needs to ditch their car, but it doesn't help the tenants who live there. So I just wanted to say she has a valid point because I saw that firsthand in last winter, although for me it may seem like it's a wide street there, but people fly over coming up the hill and they may see a wide, but last year, and it is snow removal, but it's not that wide. And if you see parked cars there, it's just, it was bad, we never had this problem. I never had my car swiped until last year. And now, you know, and I'm calling the police department saying, come get these cars out of here because it's ridiculous. It's 1.30 at night. My daughter's just getting home from work and we have people parking in my driveway, pounding on her door, seeing obscenities because they want their car, you know, when they parked illegally. It's like, come on. So it just, it turns into Pandora's box. So that's all I want to say. Thank you. Hi. I neglected to mention that in addition to being a landlord, I've lived in that building for the past six years. And I've got two young kids, one's six and one's three. And when the parking ban goes into effect, speaking to the safety end of things, that means we are parking across Berry Street somewhere. And that means two little kids, and it happened all last winter and the winter before, have to travel with their mother from somewhere, winding behind the apartments that are there and then cross Berry Street, which if anybody's been on Berry Street, people do not drive slow regardless of the weather. And have to cross Berry Street and you can't see the crosswalk at all there. So it's a hairy spot to cross and have to come up Sibley Ave. And walking down out of there, it's the same process except you're slipping and falling, going down the sidewalk. So there's more than one side to it. I totally appreciate getting emergency vehicles in, but there are other safety concerns as well. All right, thank you. So I have approximately one half of a recommendation, which is that for Prospect Street, it seems like we could use some clarity for everybody's sake about what is being proposed. I had thought I also understood, but I think it could probably be clearer. It seems like an exception to an exception, and so it just gets a little tricky. So I would recommend that, at least for the Prospect Street portion of this amendment, that we post another public hearing where we can really crystallize at least what is on the table. And actually for that, if that is what the council would like to do, I would recommend that we also include a map that make it just very clear, especially for those of us who don't live on Prospect Street and the numbers are not pinned to a certain location. I mean, I can look it up, but I think it would still be helpful for the discussion. That's my half of a recommendation. The other half is about Sibley. What is your pleasure to do with that team? Would you like to also post another hearing for that? Would you like to make a decision about that? Yeah, Connor. Yeah, I'd like to move that we approve the addition of Sibley and from Barry Street to College Street for the Winter Market Blend. So that was a motion. Is there a second? There is a second. Any further discussion just about the Sibley portion of this amendment? Yes. I suggest we close the public hearing. Oh, thank you. We're going to officially close the public hearing. Good call. Any further discussion about this? Just the Sibley change. I just like to say that we were speaking for myself and not for the whole staff, but I feel like there were a lot of questions asked and I'd like us to get together as a team and be able to answer them more clearly and more effectively than we were able to tonight and before you make any decisions and speak with one voice and make sure that we know what we're asking for and why and answer a lot of the questions that were asked about. I mean, there were good points made all the way around. So personally, I'd suggest you delay everything till the 8th and allow us a chance to really talk this through ourselves. So including the Sibley portion. Including the Sibley portion. I will draw my motion. Okay. So that's... Seconded? Yeah, Jack's seconded. So I assume then, does anyone else want to make a motion regarding this? And I want to be clear by saying that. I'm not necessarily saying that we won't come back with the exact same recommendation, but I just feel like we need to vet it and obviously there was confusion and there shouldn't be even amongst ourselves and we need to make sure we are talking to you clearly and the public. I move we schedule another public hearing at our next meeting on the entire ordinance amendment as proposed. January 9th? 8th. Second. Further discussion? Ashley, did you want to say something? I might have a separate motion, but I have a few questions to ask of DPW. But it's not about this motion. It could be in tandem, but no. But this motion is setting another public hearing. Okay. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay. Thank you all for coming out tonight. It is really wonderful to have such valuable first-hand input as to all these changes. We really appreciate your questions and your thoughts on all of this. So thank you again. Ashley, did you have something? So in terms of sort of assessing how we are after winter ends with regard to snow removal, sort of what were the problem points that were identified. I guess, well, I'm assuming something, so I'm going to ask before I assume, is that something that DPW does, like kind of just a winter recap to figure out pressure points, things like that? Since I wasn't there. Sure. My guess is we do have ongoing. I have experience and we do have ongoing conversations throughout the whole season. Right. So I'm assuming that by the end of the season we do debrief and make some... We actually did do a debrief this year, but it was a more compartmentalized to how do we manage the towing part of it. So we were really addressing those problems. And as a result of what we learned there, we were able to unfortunately have a plan for that. So that actually segues into the next my proposal. And I appreciate that. That's kind of on the fly. But if that review happens, let's say... I'm just making this up right now, but if Council said, we would like to hear from all city departments about potential changes to certain streets in relation to winter parking by the J1 in the summertime. July. There's two J's in the summertime. But if we were to say, if the Council were to make a motion saying or issue a directive to city staff saying, we need to have all of these sort of pressure points identified by this date such that we can gather all of the information and let residents know sooner so that people can plan to me, that would actually be the most prudent thing I think for everyone so that staff isn't trying to remove the snow, scramble figuring out who's going to do the towing because we didn't finalize that earlier on because we're all so busy and have a whole bunch of stuff going and there's lots of moving parts. But I think that could help alleviate some of the tension between the competing interests and all really important but also give everyone a meaningful opportunity to weigh in and to prepare as opposed to being forced into having to make a change without anything in advance. Just for clarity, the towing piece it wasn't a matter of it was a matter of I got this. I know. So I would like to say we did do an update with the Council and I think it was May or June because of the parking ban and the challenges and the issues and we certainly would be happy to do that again and to what I think Tony was going to say unfortunately this fall and this is, the Council knows this but people here don't is we were not sure we were going to be able to secure a towing contractor at all because last year had been so busy people were not interested in the business and so actually the choice so it's actually good we're having this conversation because of the choice we were really facing a full winter ban because we had no way to remove cars and if you can't tag and toe then you can't do the interim ban. So while this is difficult and while this is challenging I suspect for most of you it's still better than a full winter ban and so we weren't able to look at the specifics and then when it started we went back to looking at the choice points and so absolutely quite well taken and that's why I want to make sure we're looking at this more carefully before we do this but it's a balance all the time I mean it's not just a regulation that's made in this room there's people out there with tow trucks in the middle of the night that have to find a place to put the vehicles we used to have three towers two of them said too much work you know we do work for AAA we can't do this anymore so we're at sometimes at the mercy of things that are out of the city's control so I guess at this point I'll make a motion that we would direct the city manager to have city staff get a report you know about snow removal identified issues over the summer months whether it's June or July that then can be brought to council you know as soon as possible from there and I know that life happens and I know firsthand how busy city government work is but I also appreciate like I would be super anxious I'm just going to be real about it I'd be super anxious if you know I have an apartment here in town and I have to work late which I often do and you know I run the risk then of having to walk to my house somewhere which I don't feel safe doing even though I live in Montpelier and that's a byproduct of my own life experiences and I accept that but I would be really apprehensive about this in my own life if I were going to be impacted by this and I'm grateful that people are taking some time to sort of think about this more but I know that we are where we are right now but I like to think going forward how we can improve on this and it just seems like having you know a definitive thing on a calendar that says you know oh hey this is on this is you know we're paying attention to this and then residents can also you know make their reports also about concerns that they may have to a level during the season but it just I know that this can be a significant anxiety and stress point for folks and I think if all of us could avoid any more anxiety or stress then we already have to navigate on a day to day basis that would be preferable for me so I would move that we direct city staff to report to the council by I would say by the end of July in relation to snow removal issues and then that that be on at least as a topic of discussion in an August or September meeting so that people have time to plan. Is there a second? A second. Do you have any comments on that? Can do. That is doable. Yeah we did it May this year. Done. They did do a report but circumstances changed. But I think the problem is let's let Donna finish. So I mean they did a report at the time whether it was May or June because I know at that time you know we didn't know all the results of the cost yet but this whole aspect of not having a towing company because the volume is so much people are not cooperating with this temporary band it's very disappointing and so we are overwhelmed with the time of staff as well as the towing company and so it was the very last minute that we got one and I think in looking at it deeper saying oh if you don't have a towing company what else can we look at I think that was a deeper look that came up with then let's look at these streets. So that's all. Yeah and I totally I understand all of that but what I want is also something for residents to know about because you know folks who are going I mean they're going to be the ones who will be impacted by it but those who you know at least in my life experience it seems that you know seemingly minimal changes to some of us can actually be significantly disruptive you know for others and giving people the sort of certainty of knowing that we can anticipate as the public to hear about this and then you know folks can engage with that as they may certainly can't force anyone to participate or pay attention but it just it strikes it seems to me to strike a better balance than you know being reactionary right now while we're trying to you know navigate moving pieces and parts and there's a lot of confusion about what proposals are and aren't it just seems to me like if we are able to and be candid about it you know this this is a fluid process because life changes moment to moment but I think that that could avoid a lot of this sort of like back and forth that we're doing now trying to get out of this and we're trying to make a decision as snow is falling okay there's a motion and a second is there any further discussion okay all in favor please say aye aye opposed I think that was I think that passed okay all right thank you all right so we are going to move on then so now we are up to the presentation from the Kellogg Hubbard library about their budget so welcome hello I'm Carolyn Brennan I'm one of two newish co-directors at the Kellogg Hubbard library my counterpart at the library is Jesse Lynn but I have here with me tonight Rachel Muse who is one of the City Council nominees to our Board of Trustees and I'm here tonight primarily to ask that we be added to the warning for town meeting in the same amount that we requested last year and that's three hundred and fifty thousand four hundred and seventy one dollars and while I was here I don't want to take up too much of your time but I thought I would share a couple of highlights from the library in this past year we had a we had a very busy year we've started in the past couple years using door counters to count how many folks come in and visit the library on a daily basis and so last year we saw two hundred and one thousand visits and that was pretty steady from the year prior we also if you include eBook and audiobook downloads and our physical circulation counts and online database use we saw over three hundred thousand circulations at the library so we are just we are just hopping all the time and we really offer too many services to put in a one page report for the annual report or to present in any full capacity to the council but in this past year we did a few really exciting things our former executive director Tom McCone retired after five years of service and we used that as an opportunity to restructure the way we managed the library so we went from 2.75 FTE administrators down to two and so in our co-directorship we are kind of separate but equal and Jesse manages the budget and the non-profit and our beautiful 125 year old building and the 20 year old addition and then I get to do all the fun stuff so I get to do the library service end of things so anything that is programmatic at the library anything that deals with the development and advancement of our collection anything that deals with our computers or technology that's in my Bailiwick so that's kind of how we have split things out this year we also implemented a new cataloging system at the library and that's it's called a integrated library system and so it manages the organization of our collection but it also manages how patrons interact with our collection how they search for items and find things in the library and place holds and renew their items and all of the pieces where we interact and manage our collection so we were really excited about that upgrade it brings us in line with the system that's being used by the Vermont Department of Libraries we're now on the same system that they're on and it's the same system that we use for our inner library loan system with the way we relate with other libraries and it builds capacity for us to be able to improve technology in other places in the library in the way that some of our other technology pieces communicate to our cataloging system so that was exciting for me as a techie we are also 98% of the way to our goal in a capital fundraising campaign so that we're calling that to give the library a lift campaign for a $600,000 goal and we are going to use that to complete some larger projects that fall outside of our regular operating budget and to establish or improve a maintenance reserve fund that will put us in good stead for future big projects we think about things like when we have to replace the roof on the library that's now 20 years old and some of those other things so if we have a maintenance reserve that puts us in really good stead to do that I am happy to answer any questions that the council has I'm just cognizant that we have the homelessness task force presenting shortly after this and I even friend up with Burlington who works at the library there and she was saying library is much more than just leasing out books obviously it's a bit of a sanctuary for some people and I appreciated Ashley raising this point last year I think it's a place where children can feel safe at the end of the day they have nowhere else to go so I'd be just interested in your perspective on if you've seen an increase or an uptick on people who are sort of just finding a safe place to stay at the library at the end of the day so we definitely do see people who are currently experiencing homelessness in the library on a day to day basis and we try to be up front with the things like the behavioral expectations in the library so that everyone can access our services equally so we do we definitely see people come in we see people use the library as a sanctuary of all kinds and this year has been a pretty good year so far a couple of years ago we struggled a little bit more with we had some larger groups of folks that were coming in a hard time interacting in a positive way with the library they but what I've seen happen last year and it's stayed the same or even improved this year is that there's a lot more coordination of services in Montpelier so we have the warming shelters from 5 to 8 when another way is closed we have another way all day long we have the Bethany at night that opens at 8pm we have the coordination of the churches that are offering lunches and extending those times so it's from where I sit I'm seeing that there are more options for people that are looking to eat and stay warm and find that sanctuary so the folks that are coming into the library are welcome and they come in and they hang out in the same way that many other people hang out and we haven't seen anything like an uptick in behavioral issues during the darker months of the year we generally see an uptick in behavioral issues across the board everybody starts to get a little bit of cabin fever so that's not isolated to any specific group of people but it's been a pretty positive year I think the library is great I remember a few years ago I don't know how many years ago it was the it was made public that the the only public library in the state that had a higher circulation than Kellogg-Hubert was Fletcher-Free in Burlington, is that still the case? I believe that's still the case, yes yep and that's a much larger library so it's really remarkable to see how much, how vibrant the Kellogg-Hubert library is Rachel works at Fletcher-Free so Ward just a little bit building on what Connor said I think the library is my two kids' favorite place in town so they love it and I know that also there's a lot of kids that go there after school and I think often there's been a shortage of after-school care and options and I think the library staff and the library management has kind of rolled with it and really taken in this community shortfall in a way that I think is really impressive and has been a service and is kind of asking too much of it and I know that there's been no change in after-school opportunities and more slots and things which is great but I just kind of laud the library for really taking on another community need that was being unmet and really in a positive and all the parents I know who some of whom had to avail themselves of that at times that it was this amazing resource to have this library willing to you know take care of kids essentially for this window until parents can get home from work and so it's just another way the library has been servicing the community beyond the books and the other resources and programming that is there so just I really appreciate that I actually I also have two middle school students at MSMS and they spend their afternoons in my office actually but one of the things that we see about 75 give or take unattended children after school between the hours of three and five when school is in session and one of the things that we started for this school year we worked with a private donor actually to renovate a space downstairs it's our East Montpelier room it's one of our two conference spaces and we hired a staff person on to be there in those after-school hours as much as our budget would allow and so we have kind of another space where kids can go because what we see is generally the kids that are coming after school they've spent their whole day sitting in a classroom and they're waiting for mom or dad to pick them up or their parent or guardian to pick them up and they don't necessarily want to sit in a silent space or sit at all for that matter so there were definitely days where it would be where we would see some rising energy levels upstairs in the children's library and having the space open up downstairs gives kids another place to crash and hang out and play a game or look at videos on their phones we put some hubs down there with headphones so we multiple kids can listen to a single device if that's what they want to do so we're trying to give as many swimming spaces to all of the people that use the library and we've seen a huge it's been wonderful this fall it's been really great and all of our spaces have been used really productively and really actively today we had a huge crew of kids that I think they were making holiday decorations up in the children's library so we always try to have a focused activity and things for them to do part of what a library does is just filling those unmet needs and being the community space where people can come and just exist and so I mean I completely agree with you but I'm biased and if you haven't been to the library lately to see that new revived space it is so bright and fresh and clean and just has such a great energy I really recommend stopping by and taking a visit we'd love to show you around come by anytime Donna well along those lines I'm glad that you're sharing more information we have a Montpelier community foundation yes fun, fun, fun, we have a foundation too but the fun and within that there's a requirement to produce certain data so we can see the outcome and here you are one of the largest entities outside of our city government with money and yet there's no written reports so do you have an annual report to make we used to get at least some data of users or distribution of other money that you get from other communities so if you have anything like that I'd love to have some real data of users so I brought our 2019 annual report we're starting to get low on copies of that but I do have it I believe I also have it electronically so you are welcome to keep that copy and that does give some more information and you can share it and if you guys would like an electronic copy sending that along as well like here it says 52% is municipal funding that's correct and of that how much is Montpelier and other communities well I would have to go back you don't have to give it to me if you could just look that up and likewise your users your distribution of users and I'd love to know you have some programs but you don't really list them here but at least you have some data like how many kids do really individual I mean one of the things the community fund does is ask for unique individuals not just their visits that's a nice comparison like you have this many members you have this many kids with cards and you have this many visits however you take your data those kind of comparisons I would appreciate that I just want to make a note I think they sent us that information I didn't see it in my packet it wasn't in the online I sent it individually at the end of last week I gosh I hope I didn't miss you but I sent along a page of I sent along a one page report for inclusion in the annual report and I sent along a page of statistics yeah I'd be happy to it has information there like the number of Montpelier residents with active library cards the number of children the number of children thank you any other comments I should have to dig through my email too I think I did get it but now I'm not seeing it but I want to second all of the congratulations and praise and mention that I've been hearing praise from the community for you and Jesse and the new directors so congratulations thank you so much and then also I do want to not to put more on your plate but I think it's great to have as much of a report as we can in this period so clearly I'm going to look in my own email hopefully I'll get Donna to share her reports but maybe for next year if we can get it in the packet too in the packet that goes out with the meeting so I probably going to blame myself here I probably should have forwarded this on to Jamie or someone else it did go to everybody but just make sure that it's in the packet one of the still not on the online link there's no link to it it's not it just went to our emails so one of the things that I'm still learning as a new administrator is we serve six member towns so I'm learning all of the rules and who to send what to for each community it's a little bit different for each town so it's good for me to know who needs to get what and when always we can have a conversation we can talk about other people unless you had more Glen I have a logistic question about moving forward because really the ask was to put this item on the ballot presumably without the requisite number of signatures otherwise which in case folks are not aware the customer of the council has been that as long as the library has come in the same budget that we have exempted them from the number of signatures and so I mean my inclination would be to move forward with that but I guess my question is for you John do we need specific ballot language to be voted on to put on the ballot or can we just reference last years or because it should be the same as last years right yeah I mean I can't do the language so I think for tonight all you have to do is indicate so we'll end up drafting a warning as long as as long as we know that this is going to be one of the ballot items then we will make sure the language is on there we have this amount in the budget that we have so it's not a change you'll end up approving the language and you'll approve the whole thing just sort of in total we could but for now we could have a motion about exempting them from the number of signatures to get on the ballot you can even say you got to put them on the ballot yeah we can just put them on yeah Connor I'll move to put the Kellogg Hubbard Library on the ballot for the requested appropriation I'll second it for the discussion thank you so much for your work we're so grateful for the city's support absolutely okay it is a little after eight o'clock here team would you like to keep going would you like to take a break I would like to take a break okay let's take a quick break and so we are up to an update from the housing trust fund welcome thank you for having us I'm Polly Nichol and along with Jen Holler co-chair of the housing task force and we're here mostly to just answer any questions about the trust fund and also to thank you for your past support and to request that in this year's budget there be level funding for the trust fund we had a kind of lengthy the conversation about the funding level at our last task force meeting and our ultimate goal is to still you know get the annual appropriation of $250,000 but we do recognize that it's a difficult budget year so we're asking for same funding as last year which was $110,000 and just thank you again it's really been a remarkable resource the demand is steady both from first time home buyers and the city has been able to fund multi-family developments which have given it a leg up in a very competitive state and federal funding environment and we know you're going to hear from the homelessness task force in a little while but a number of the funds funded recently do serve in part people who are homeless and one of the applications that the city staff expects is for some of what is currently in the trust fund maybe to fill a budgetary gap on a building on Barry street that Washington County mental health owns that serves formerly homeless people so it's a great resource and we thank you and we hope you'll continue funding it Jen has anything to add? Any questions? Oh Donna just thank you for continuing to serve on this task force it's great thank you great thanks for your support is that it? to be clear the amount that they're asking for is in the proposed budget you don't have to fight for it I wouldn't say that no no no just because it's in right now I'll just make sure they know it's that's why we're here okay well thank you so much okay alright and up to the homelessness task force report welcome good evening how are you good to see everybody so we thank you for the opportunity to listen to to consider this package and we recognize the funding challenges for the city as a whole and did our best to you know be frugal in our thinking think about tactical smart tactical approaches that will address all the needs and the gaps that we're still in the process of identifying you know good complexity in all of this and there's also a lot of good responsiveness in so many places as we've talked previously it's very hardening and again we're putting forth the package we understand you know you'll look at each item separate you know as individual pieces make the decisions that you feel are right we have some items for the current fiscal year the first one it's been discussed quite a bit amongst city staff and thanks to Cameron Niedermeyer and working for for these items and talking with Bill and others it's $750 to put in Cameron's done some shopping and Jody who's on our task forces found some as well to install lockers we've I think described the need before but basically people are out there sleeping bags get stolen you know there are things that support their living out there sometimes need to be under lock and key and so I think it's very forward thinking of the city to this solution number two is the bathrooms and Cameron did some shopping and found a Porta John company that would cut us a deal and they would service the Porta Johns and there would be two of them one that would be accessible and the other one just straight up one and deciding would be spread out to try to you know be in smart locations to reach people and then for fiscal year 21 we'd like to continue the bathrooms or the Porta Johns we'd like to ask you to consider what you did previously for extending the season for the shelter we did ask you know that was a $10,000 figure for the fall and spring we did because that only meets about half the needs of the population and there are people who can't don't fit within the current capacity or have a hard time being in a congregate setting we did bump up our ask to another $5,000 again with your gracious consideration number three number three is the street outreach position and Don can speak to this and we recognize that the police are looking at an embedded social worker and I think that's great and I talked with Chief Fakos the other day about this and I talked to the street outreach person in Burlington Tammy Buddha and recently with the police over there it's considered a very successful program for the church street marketplace management of that whole situation a lot of thumbs up I talked to Mark Schroeder at the Howard Center about this it's a very popular program and it's able to meet people where they're at and of course there's some people and who will in certain situations would have a very hard time keeping people with all their needs to somebody associated with the police department and I understand there's a bunch of issues around that potentially but the point is getting people, intervening people and keeping them alive keeping them out of the ER keeping them out of spiraling down even farther Don is an angel who's out there with these folks currently do you have anything more to say on this piece? You've said a lot of it I think as Ken mentioned there are some people who are not served by the existing services and that doesn't mean it's the fault of either the services or the individual existing services pretty much have a responsibility to larger groups of people that they serve for their safety and the safety of their employees and they can't be effective without maintaining boundaries which often members of this chronic population are unable to meet for medical reasons very often I think the biggest challenge here is reaching this chronic population and part of the reason they are chronic is because they have already fallen through gaps in the system. They also cost more in police time, emergency room time obstruction of the public, businesses and generally being more obtrusive than other people out there I think that it would be more effective and more cost effective for these people to be served individually and I think that both peer support and street outreach are in a unique position to do that partly because they are not nine to five services their very approaches are aimed at meeting people both geographically and situationally where they are they are often available after hours when other services are not they can go out and find people on the streets who do not find their way into the services there are also a lot of people who are disillusioned with the system, fearful of the system or have gotten out of prison have mental health issues, whatever and often they are a lot more trusting of people that they perceive to be peers or to be out in their own, in their comfort zone in their own setting the other thing is that often the street outreach people can have greater flexibility in dealing with these people and the unique issues and barriers that they face they can sort of tailor the services to fit the needs in a way that a lot of the existing services can't and I think those are the main the time, the place the trust factor and the flexibility are the main reasons that either street outreach of any kind and also peer support and if you combine the two I think it is a very effective combination can I ask you a question about that sorry I don't want to interrupt if you were so particularly with the street outreach positions it reminds me of another part that's in our budget which is the social worker that's already in the budget to be shared with Barry what is your perception as to the differences between the social worker that would potentially be hired through that position and the street outreach folks that's something that I actually need to do more research in I assume that the hours would be limited to business hours I don't know whether that's true I would hope not but it seems fairly likely and I think part of it is that I see I think that position would be incredibly valuable in terms of helping the police interface with difficult populations and averting crises but again that's a more expensive way to do it and I feel like often the things that street outreach can address they can address before they get to the point where they require emergency services and take away valuable police time or emergency room time and also street outreach is I think kind of uniquely situated to find gaps in the system and to connect people it's sort of a communication between the people who are out there and the people who are providing the services well thank you and just to zoom out a little bit I just want to make sure that we're operating in the same understanding that we don't actually have to decide on any of these numbers tonight and so it's probably worth while exercise for us to have those conversations with some other points between now and the next meeting does that make sense so that we can have a clear understanding of how these things might be different do you know what I'm saying? I think I know what some of the advantages are both to the social worker and again the trust factor the geography and the time factor but I think looking at the specific functions of both the embedded social worker versus the street outreach would be really productive Jack I agree one of the questions I have that I'd like to explore further before we finalize the budget is just that what's the difference between the street worker program and the social worker program which I'm familiar with the Howard Center street outreach program was Matt Parks I think his last name was Howard Center street worker and I know that I represented clients who found him to be a good resource thinking in terms of other questions that that occur to me that I don't expect you to necessarily have the answers right now but one is that Ken when you and I were talking you mentioned trying to get Central Vermont hospital to direct some money into this effort and so I'd be interested in seeing what they could generate because you're absolutely right if we keep people out of the emergency department that will be funds that those emergency department visits are probably Medicaid visits so keeping them out of the emergency department completely probably saves the hospital thousands of dollars I'd be interested in seeing how we how this proposal interacts with the state redesign of the emergency shelter program that they're working on and I think I'm interested in some more detail or structure on the $10,000 general responsiveness fund had you had you gotten to that part yet okay well and before we oh sorry unless you want to address some of this question don't necessarily need to have the answers tonight but I wondered also if Tony wanted to weigh in on this question just can be I'll answer at least the first part of Jack's question regarding what we are looking for and that would be a certified clinician and this is specific to again I couldn't you know it was very well summed up here as far as what the expectation are meeting people where they're at we're so the details as far as this you know the schedule we don't know what that looked like except for that it would be 20 hours a week would be in my pillar or with our officers 20 hours a week in Berry City and if that person is needed in either community if they're you know we just get them right there's an MOU essentially between Berry and my pillar and it would be an employee of Washington County mental health meeting them when they're at is sending them to the institution so and then the other piece of that is somebody it would you know which is we don't know if it's directly going to happen or not as far as the the next the other piece of that is that somebody that cannot you know a navigator and that's exactly what Berry City has currently right now that's somebody that just can help people link them with services we'll be able to some of that we anticipate but this is going to be a clinician thank you yeah go ahead I think that I mean I think that's a serious need and I think it would be very effective in a lot of circumstances I I would hope I don't want to assume but I would hope that there are there are a lot of issues that homeless people there's a very high incidence of trauma PTSD and non-visible disabilities in the homeless community and hopefully that that is something I know sometimes the current agencies are working sort of on a different model than that I would assume that that a clinician that was brought in by the police would be very familiar with that since that's a lot of what they'd be dealing with I do know that a lot of people who do street reach outreach have extensive training in things like domestic violence mental health issues trauma issues um so thank you anything you want to add can or no yeah I'm having a little difficulty concentrating but yeah fair um yeah I know I you know the model of looking like you know the social worker working in different towns multiple towns I mean we're talking about this as well I mean I think there's a lot of people like in Burlington they had multiple funders they had the united way they had the city of Burlington they had city market um and I think the Howard center may have been the fourth one um you know multiple towns multiple funders you know the need is clear um you know and it's good we're all thinking in similar ways um but you know it's you know peer support people reaching people where they're they're at and there's a trust factor um there's a lot to be said for that so um I do you know I can move on to um the general responsiveness fund um which um this um was this is my verbiage here I um I thought you know the simple notion is we're at the city level trying to advocate for our population barking up various trees of various agencies that are all trying to do good things but oftentimes the actual needs of the individuals don't get fully aware identifying gaps there's still people out there um we want the city to advocate for its population and you know and sometimes it's simple alignment and simple like efficiencies like there's just been this great effort with working with the food justice council and Joseph Kiefer and uh Kathy Suskin and the different churches with finally you know and just today we're getting a card printed out with information for people of where if you're hungry if you need a place to sleep this is what you can do the AHS is restructuring the emergency housing fund the state the state is and it's bringing it back to the down to the county level so that's an opportunity for innovation it's it's an opportunity for people for the needs of our community to get more fully met when they're not and maybe some more local control my personal theory is that if you know if we have some token you know to play financially we can match with partners and you know who have more money and try to be a catalyst for some innovation that will get these needs met we were called out by Sarah Phillips of OEO Office of Economic Opportunity for filling in a lot of the gaps that were needed in this local level and I see our ground up approach where people don you know talking to KC, talking to people on the street everybody at our task force we're working with each other we're sharing ideas where we are building efficiencies in the system and we're advocating for our population on a greater level so it is a work in progress general responsiveness I mean there are going to be things that are going to arise you know it's to some degree a placeholder but it's some degree there's this very specific opportunity here which is that you know the moving of this program to the local level AHS is going to have money it can move around to target to get more money it's met but everybody it's a lot of movement trying to solve this I think one of the things that comes up when you both when you implement new programs and with existing programs when the population is not inclined to move forward and speak to people about them you run into simple mechanical gaps in the system some of them fairly obvious some of them unexpected for instance if you provide emergency shelter for people it's nice if they have a way to get there to actually utilize it that wouldn't cost a lot of money I don't think but you know and it seems like a really simple thing but there are things like that that have sort of gone unaddressed for a period of years and I think the task force is has been along with street outreach I suppose has been in a unique position to be able to address this by specifically looking at these issues rather than having a single perspective you know this is our chunk this is what we are doing and we do it well we are sort of trying to look in between that and I guess my point is that the need for a contingency or responsive fund is that these needs come up and they may not they may not cost a lot to fix but some of them are really vital to the functioning of the programs like a taxi ride yeah or gas money for volunteers I mean whenever possible trying to minimize the expense but it's really vital that some of these needs be met and we don't always anticipate what they're going to be so having a fund that we could tap into would be really helpful did you have something to add Ashley? I have a lot of thought I'm really excited by this this has been like I am very excited that this is something that the council is finally talking about but I also want to be mindful that I know it's your time to present and not necessarily my time to ask a bunch of questions or um unless you had anything more or unless you were done um no I think we're eager to hear your questions yes we are so I cannot thank you enough for taking your time Ashley can you talk in your mic? sorry not only to be here tonight but also to put some clear thought and reflection into what we're going to take to actually address the unmet needs in our community and I know I support the social worker addition to MPD and BPD Berry City sorry police department and I definitely think exploring that third Berlin partnership option is wonderful and worthwhile I would however encourage people to sort of take a step back for a second and in my experience in law enforcement and working with populations who are in crisis or in transition um or you know who have significant unmet needs that um are chronically under or unmet um I think that there can be a lot of distrust in systems and I don't necessarily share that distrust in systems I understand that that can be a significant barrier to entry for a lot of folks who may need services and resources um and so I think from a law enforcement perspective a social worker is also critical because there are so many components to police work that are so different than what anyone you know who watches the TV show thinks it is that officers or prosecutors or frankly anyone involved in the criminal legal system um there are a few things that stood out to me as um things that I would caution against the city endeavoring I know that there are organizations that do provide some of these types of um services for a one time fee um there would be a question about maintenance but uh lockers while I totally agree that having a place for folks to store and secure their belongings is critical especially when we're talking you know um when we're talking winter months or winters that go on seemingly forever um however the city assuming sort of the responsibility and upkeep for those would be an additional city liability which is not a problem um but I would caution that if the city were to maintain and operate these it could create some sort of institutional challenges as um as you know often life seems to do lately but um in terms of uh you know what the policies are how they get used things like that um I think I could I could foresee some enforcement problems in terms of you know if um if there were ever were to be contraband and someone were to be alerted to that sort of how that would work and that is um an area where uh there's still room for litigation for sure I'm just not sure that that is a an assumption of risk that the city would necessarily want to make but there are lots of organizations that actually can help um find local places that have storage that they may be willing to donate or things like that I just um the lockers to me was something that might not be in the city's best interest to to pay for and maintain themselves if we if the city were to pay for them and another group were to maintain them somehow or you know policy creation or government you know however those are going to be managed they would need to be um from my perspective some clear delineation about what is the city's role in that versus what is this private entity's role in that for a myriad of reasons um largely you know privacy and or criminal liability if there ever were to be a misuse of those I'm not not saying that I anticipate that I am just from a place of pragmatic reality um I think the other piece is that bathrooms oh can we pause there I think it might make some sense to talk about this one chunk at a time if that's okay yeah so were there other thoughts that council had on the lockers yeah go ahead Donna question that came up when I was talking to Ken was location do you put it in building and how do they have access you put it outside how you keep it snow away from anyway where um I had some similar questions um to Ashley uh just in terms of all of the policy would be around the maintenance of of the lockers uh as a school teacher uh I know that sometimes I was saying this to Ken the other day on the phone uh that sometimes somebody leaves a ham sandwich in there and you have to be able to get in there and remove it and so you know what is what are the policies around getting in there and I know that's kind of in the weeds kind of uh question but $750 on the scope of the types of money that we usually talk about is really not very much and I see that you've got that as proposed as being in the FY 20 budget which is this year um and so I mean my in um if let's say we were able to come up you all someone we're able to come up with a um policy work out if there are constitutional issues or you know work through all of all of those challenges come up with a plan this is where we're going to put them and these are the policies that are surrounded and then just come back and say you know you know can we have $750 when all those questions are resolved um I guess that's what my advice would be about Councillor Hill if you don't mind just have a question um when you're referring to constitutional issues are you talking about the ability to search what's in there against security privacy, things like that right and um you mean the Fourth Amendment is still a thing? so you anticipate thankfully in Vermont the Fourth Amendment is still so I mean the person puts his or her possessions into a lock or locks the door and I mean is there a need to search what's in there? Well there may be I mean that's right I mean that's sort of I am not saying that that would be the norm but that is a significant question that would almost by definition and it doesn't sort of matter I mean this is something there's plenty of litigation about this because train stations used to have lockers um but when you have a government entity being involved the calculus is different than it is if it's a private entity that is um going to access the materials because there's a sandwich in there or because there's something in there um and so I just want to be mindful that having the city administer that would change that calculus because it would be a government entity rather than a private entity setting policy so we can look at well we need to dig into this yeah and I'm happy to talk further about that with you um if that would be helpful I don't know if it will make any difference or not I just wanted to make it clear that these lockers uh the need for these lockers was not intended to address the situation of where people put their belongings in general but specifically to address a constant issue of people needing sleeping bags when it is very cold outside and there may in some cases uh recently I spoke with people at Good Sam and arranged to have sleeping bags at the shelter so that when people are asked to leave the shelter they can hand them a sleeping bag which is which solves some of it but not all of it um I think the issues you bring up are very real issues um but just I don't know if it simplifies it if anyone else has any idea of how people can access things to keep warm you know at night without you know yeah no that's I don't know what the question is but the focus is almost entirely on sleeping bags and tents and just things that that address immediate survival needs at night in cold weather and I'm wondering if if the um the police department is open 24 hour I know that there are always folks there I also appreciate that that sort of brings with it um you know some some other questions comments concerned we've had difficulty in finding anybody who's I mean we haven't tried everything but there are a lot of issues with finding anyone who's difficult to host either lockers or supplies right most people will not don't want it to use the space or there's issues with access or you know safety or trust or whatever so this is sure you know I yeah I'm sure I I appreciate that question I guess I see the issues as separate and distinct and now that I understand that that's the sort of where do we put things so that people can readily access them as opposed to necessarily store them I would I think I see that right people not having vital supply access to necessary survival repeatedly stolen which they are or repeatedly destroyed or they get wet and you can right one in the morning with no money or any further comments about the lockers okay if you had so the bathrooms this to me is is almost a bit of a no brainer I know that having publicly accessible bathrooms 24 hours a day carries with it attendant issues that humans bring wherever humans are but you know certainly don't imbibe the way I could once upon a time in my life however you know as a as a late 20 something who is in Montpelier for a lot of that time there were times where it would have been really helpful to have access to a restroom in downtown and not if I've been out drinking you know but even if I'm getting getting out of a movie late and I'm walking home and and that to me is sort of like a critical piece to all of this is like having facilities that are accessible when people leave bars so that they don't urinate on public streets or alleys which is an ongoing concern in a few places here but I think it also affords people dignity and I think government is important to recognize that things that a lot of us take for granted like a restroom facility that we have access to is it's about fundamental human dignity to me and the fact that it would only cost $3,000 for the year if I'm reading this right to for this city to have a bathroom that is accessible at all times is is worth the assumption of any potential risk that could come with it so I think that's and $3,000 for a year I mean does not it's an investment but it doesn't seem an insurmountable investment any other comments about the bathroom? Glenn? I think it's a good idea too I'm curious you were talking about putting them in smart places and I was curious whether there's been conversation about specific locations for them yet in the task force I've missed the last couple of meetings I'm sorry. Partly we need to look at where people will most likely be concentrated if they are sleeping outside and we are still seeking to clarify property ownership and safety issues and stuff like that I can imagine that city staff can just some good thinking can go into that it's preliminary at this point there are obviously a multitude of considerations I just want to also point out that this was something that you had on the FY20 budget this fiscal year and so again with thinking around if you have a specific place in mind I guess I would want to separate as you propose I would want to separate this $3,000 out from our budget discussion it's not really something well I guess it's something that we could include again for the next fiscal year it's an ongoing cost it's an ongoing thing but again it's some money it's not a terrible lot but but I would feel much more comfortable discussing this if there was like we're going to put one here and there and so we can point at it rather than talking about it generally and then if we were going to start it in the middle of a fiscal year anyway then it's something that seems like perhaps as fluid and we can discuss any time potentially I'm just in danger of thinking out loud which is never advised but I mean there's the problem with the trash at the pocket park along the bike path so maybe if you know there was a trash can and a port-a-potty there you know there's basically or down by another way or something like that I mean those are just two locations that just jump out at me before I get to you Jack I just want to note that there is some I don't love making decisions about money outside of the budget process I just want to make a note about that even though I just said oh yeah come back and ask another time but my hope is that that's not normal I'm just going to say that yeah thanks I think the idea of sanitary facilities or people who need them is very important I think as I look forward into the long term if we're really going to provide facilities or anyone in the public on how those people are anyone else I anticipate that some more substantial structure in those plastic port-a-johns are probably going to be where we should be moving and so that's going to be more money and they probably will need upkeep and such but as I say that's probably a longer term consideration I just want to throw into your thinking to that point as well I know the business community would probably really appreciate port-a-potties generally downtown let me just say addressing the needs of this population is going to help everybody's quality of life unmet needs tend to express themselves in not always the best way so did you want to continue same topic or the next one I think the next one next section where did my notes go the next one was the that was the sort of general next one was the shelter extensions I love that we are talking about extending shelter season what I would love even more if we could talk about extending shelter season because we're working on transitioning folks into permanent stable secure housing and I wonder and I say this knowing that I won't be here any longer after tonight to answer this question or provide any context as a citizen but to me this really sort of seems like a really unique opportunity given the changes that are coming on a state level to how counties are addressing housing related issues to maybe step back for a second and think about the money that we are going to expand to operate a shelter which we have the city funded it really and I think we agreed to even keep those funds in there so that it could stay open later but that's only a short term solution to a much more complex long term chronic issue and I feel strongly that given the decentralization that the state has agreed to because it's not really working the way that the state intended it in terms of housing vouchers and we are getting folks into safe secure housing particularly in winter months I wonder if so the housing trust fund is to get people into homes although I know that it has historically been focused on first time home ownership I submit to everyone here that there are a large number of folks myself being one of them and many other millennials and folks younger than I am and older than I am I think all over this spectrum who home ownership while certainly an exciting prospect is not a pragmatic reality and I love that Montpelier is also worrying about how are we going to make this a place that is attractive for families to buy property here but we are the state capitol and I think that how we react in situations where we see our friends, family neighbors struggling I think can give us a really unique opportunity to use this housing trust fund which has done amazing work over the years to increase first time home ownership but to potentially open some of that up to folks who need assistance to move into some sort of supported housing arrangement and so I would certainly if the question is allocating money for a shelter or not I would say yes but I want the question to go further which is not just allocating for the temporary fix to a permanent and long-term problem but rather to really start focusing that shift on okay we're just focusing on the immediate needs and being able to step back a little bit and focus more on the long-term needs because I think that the resources exist it's just really a question of connecting all of that and making sure that we know what the available housing stock looks like we know what sort of living arrangements are available and if state money is not being matched which my understanding is that is the case that vouchers aren't able or being fully utilized because there's no community matching funds available I'm curious to hear from the council if those monies exist we have already allocated money towards housing you know the housing trust fund it doesn't say first time home buyer trust fund what it would sort of look like to expand that to also help renters Jack I think it's important to point out that the great majority of the money that's been appropriated to the housing trust fund has in fact gone to creation of rental housing and there's a significant share with the projects we put it into include the french block the Taylor street project 58 barry street other rental housing we need more I always say we need housing of all types of tenure and all price levels and it's one of the things that's enabled us to bring in outside funds for some of the big projects we've done has been the city of Montpelier has committed some of our own taxpayers money to that to those projects and I I'm glad that we're looking like we're going to keep the trust fund at the same level that we had last year and I hope we'll continue to be able to do not just home ownership but also rental housing creation can I may I just yeah probably keep going but yeah creating rental housing is huge I think you know I've had that sort of scary like I have 30 days left on my lease where I'm living and I know I need to move I don't know where I'm going to move like but that you know building housing is one thing but actually making sure that people are able to move in and continue to afford to pay for it is I think sometimes even a more significant barrier and whether that's because you know it's a living arrangement that might not work for everyone you know whether it's that some folks might need someone else to be present on occasion to help facilitate things whatever it might be you know building housing is one thing but making sure that people can actually access that housing particularly folks who you know historically have been have been experiencing chronic homelessness and other related issues it just strikes me that while building housing is one thing making sure that we can actually house people in our communities is the second part of that question and I don't know that you know that just building the housing is going to be enough to get people in there and able to pay their rent and you know get them stabilized to a place where at least a housing need is met there is a short paragraph in the housing trust funds report talking about trying to meet that gap for the homeless and so it's just a little brief thing but I think their attention is there also that's all I just attended Beth Pierce just convened a housing summit up at the college and I mean she's looking at the economics of this statewide $53 million maybe for a thousand new units at $200,000 a unit you know and I was talking to Pauli Nicol on about that's kind of what it cost and I'm thinking well can't you talk to some you know good yes tomorrow builder folks you know can we just put up some structures out by the stump dump or you know can we just get people out of the cold now I mean a lot of thinking which you know let me just say about the shelters where you started is I mean the churches are doing tremendous work on behalf of the greater good and they're we definitely get indications that they're feeling they're feeling the pressure of some of this and not necessarily going to there's no promise they're going to continue doing what they're doing you know so we're talking about this $10,000 just to extend on either side of the season you know so we're very grateful for what they're doing in between and yes we're looking at the longer picks this is a huge topic you know and the supportive service the lack of meeting the needs for the housing vouchers a lot of what we're trying to do is look at that whole system it's a big question and we've got all worked together so just looking at the time here this is valuable conversation important topics I actually because I don't think we're going to be able to get to our whole agenda tonight as posted I think we're going to have to genocin a couple of things unfortunately so one thought because I think there are two things that we can't genocin right one is the conversation about the rack building and the other is a conversation about the budget so I want to save some time for both of those things now to be fair we're not done with this conversation would how would you feel about pausing here coming back next time to potentially continue this conversation sorry we're not coming back thank you for your kind consideration we'd be happy to come back that would be wonderful this is a budget request I hope we can discuss as part of our budget conversations yes and it's we don't have to have it all now so thank you to be continued if that's okay with the council did you have a comment Conor I think I'd have trouble green lighting a position with the street outreach positions that pay like $11.25 okay that's we just kind of threw it in at that rate because it would be an introductory program and longer term you might want to look at something else but part of it is we're trying to be cost effective we're trying to get it to happen yeah I just wondered if one position that's paid better might get a better caliber of candidates and also be a little more consistent that's another conversation some of the other things we're doing and Warren go ahead just another thing if you're kind of looking at fleshing some of this out a little more and again like thank you for all this great work it's so appreciated just the general fund I mean I like the idea of having a responsiveness fund are there models that other cities or examples and maybe just a little more tangible of you know these are the kinds of things that it would be available to do just to put some more kind of clarity around what how would that work and what kinds of things would it fund and if there's kind of examples that we could look at a friend who runs a soldier in her house down in Roxbury, Massachusetts and she has a business model where she keeps families together she's able to pull funds down from the budget we're saving the prisons money we're saving the schools money we're saving the hospitals money so I mean this is a work in progress but there are a lot of examples out of there there are things that work and you know and we're running pretty fast trying to learn and you know find solutions so this is a little bit of a work in progress frankly but there's a lot out there a lot of research of yeah there's models out there there's a lot of smart people getting together and there's a lot of like okay you're having this there are five different groups that are having the same conversation let's all get together so okay well thank you so much and we'll see you again okay thanks it sounds good okay so just as a matter of considering the agenda we had scheduled a public hearing for the Interim River Hazard Map and I'm guessing is there anyone here for that no okay so I mean one hypothesis that we could just open it and close it but I think there's probably more conversation that we need to have around that um nonetheless I'm going to open the public hearing now I'm going to close the public hearing yes would anyone like to reschedule or not reschedule but move in another hearing for that I move we schedule the next public hearing for our next meeting on January is it the 8th yes well second for the discussion I'll in favor please say aye opposed okay um and just as a um looking forward um Donna I know you had brought forth the the dog okay January 8th can be really crowded that's that's fine that's great and before we move forward I have a communication from a constituent who wanted to make public comment about the homelessness issue he's not able to be here and he said that John Odom the clerk was going to read his comments I just uh it's Morgan and I had informed Anne and I actually when she started continuing and I emailed him back saying you know good news you can still have a chance because you want it to be here to deliver it in person if he'd rather not I'm I'm still happy to read it I thought I was delivering good news okay well I think it's better to give him that opportunity okay okay all right but thank you um okay so on to uh the rec center uh updates and decision uh so welcome my name is John Dale I'm the project architect with red love corporation that did the study for the rec center renovation and John Johnston mechanical electrical fire protection red love so just to um we're just gonna uh camera put together and we helped a little bit with put together this powerpoint presentation just to go back to what we talked about the last time is that the very quickly is that this is the existing rec center it's on Barry street it was built originally as an armory uh that looks much better lights off um and uh the north is up on the page and Barry street is there on the right and you can see the proposed restoration of the parking pavement around the building which is limited uh and this is the proposed renovations of the basement which would be to uh put in an install an elevator at the sort of the lower over to the on the right side with an entrance from the outside that allowed you uh handicap access to the basement to the first floor and to the second floor uh the the two uh changing rooms and shower bathrooms would be built one on the north side northeast corner one on the southeast corner for men and women on the first floor there would be a family slash non gender full bathroom available uh and then renovating this uh what is a you know series of storage rooms and shooting gallery in the main part of the uh of the basement underneath the basketball floor we're proposing four uh different fitness areas that could be a great room it's cardiovascular room uh you know spinning classes dance classes etc. Tai Chi and so forth and then to the left is the underneath the uh stage the original stage is the loading dock in storage area introducing new e-grass and so forth uh and so this would all of these renovations would be basically the baseline renovations we're discussing is to gut the building down to the studs or the masonry uh replace portion about a third or half of the slab in the basement all new electrical systems all new electric service uh all new plumbing and mechanical systems on all three floors uh all new lighting etc and uh and then the appropriate athletic flooring in each space this is the first floor the main floor just um which is about five feet above the street level so the gymnasium is the main space in the middle that would be involved replacing all the lighting in there uh and replacing the gymnasium floor with a sprung wood new wood floor uh and then introducing classrooms at the front of the building in office space with an observation to control the entrance the stage would be used for equipment storage for that would be used directly in the gymnasium and then the top floors just on the east side of the building would be office space for the rec department in a conference room and offices and so forth um this is a when we met the last time we presented two options one was sort of a base cost the next was an upgraded cost which improved the efficiency of the HVAC equipment which would be mounted on the roof uh improvements to some of the finishes and so forth um uh and one of the options and then there was requests from the council to also look in more energy efficient uh how close we could get to actually a micrograder and net zero um approach to the building this diagram is it's a little hard to see is showing our proposal that will go into more detail on of mounting uh the maximum amount of photovoltaic panels on the roof and we're basically confining them to the main roof of the gymnasium the front roof would be used for mechanical equipment correct? Can I ask a question about that? Sure. Which way is solar south? Solar south is down. Okay. Well, do south is down. North is up, do up, straight up. Okay. So it's, you know, it'd be silence. I'm not confident to that either I think it's I would have, I would have guessed from thinking about where Berry Street is that north is the top right corner and south is the bottom left corner that's the student. Yes, as a resident of Berry Street I agree it's not, Berry Street doesn't yeah it doesn't run quite as east west as you would think. This could be I could neglect forgotten That's okay. Well, I just did a note anyway. So this is a spreadsheet of the three options. So the one on the left is the base option which as they said included gutting it down to the to the studs and rebuilt you know redoing all the finishes. I knew as we said all new systems installing a new elevator that would be allow you access to all levels. The east wing with the insulation of the where the offices and classroom spaces is insulating the perimeter walls adding interior storm windows to the existing windows and refurbishing the windows installing new windows in the gymnasium they're presently no windows in the gymnasium they've been blocked up new women's and men's locker rooms and shower rooms and the non-gender bathroom and four new exercise rooms in the basement the middle option cost option of 4.7 million and again on these cost estimates also include higher estimates for the all the owners cost in terms of permitting architectural engineering fees hazards materials abatement etcetera is to install more energy efficient rooftop units replace the full basement slab and add a canopy entrance to the main entrance into the elevator entrance so allowance for fitness and weight room equipment for the exercise rooms upgrading the finishes in the bathrooms and showers improving even more so the electrical lighting systems in terms of efficiency emergency generator for the building and replacing the roofing on the east end of the building and then in response to the request at the last meeting is upgrades that would totally come to a total of 5.2 million estimated which would include everything under option 2 plus upgraded HVAC system to be fossil free air source heat pumps insulate the gym walls to improve the energy efficiency of the building and the isolation of the solar array and John Johnston will go into more detail on this did you send this this diagram I don't remember seeing they created a delay in the information so we created this a little later we will send this to you we'll update this okay so we'll send this to you as well I'm sorry it was just one of those things I got it's very helpful I tried to make the differences but that's helpful so well I talked in a while so the additional energy efficiency or heading towards a net zero we looked at was really going to a complete air source heat pump system and that's where it dictates some of the other systems as you filtrate down what we're seeing now well I'll just go down in order the solar array would cover about 40 to 60% of the building and these are big rough estimates at this point because it was a planning study of order of magnitudes to give you an idea it would produce what we're looking at was 57,000 kwh a year lighting in the building assuming it's 10 hours a day maybe 6 days a week and again we'd have to get into it with the staff more on what it would be that lighting might be 30,000 kwh so to give you some order of magnitude it's not going to cover the whole building but it's going to cover your lighting and a lot of your miscellaneous loads when we got into the full heating with all electric air source heat pumps full air conditioning if you chose full air conditioning for the gymnasium say it's not going to cover you on those peaks that being said what we're really seeing is the new air source heat pump systems can operate down to minus 22 degrees we have like 4 hours a year in Vermont that we're going to be below minus 20 on average so you might get 8 hours so the key with that is as much as we can do for the envelope so one of the things was taking the gymnasium which we weren't really reinsulating those first two price range and saying we're going to insulate the walls there and get this resilient envelope so we don't have any issues but we're actually we're right in the cusp because now that we can go to minus 22 and really they operate to minus 30 we're getting to the point where we don't need to hardly worry about that envelope as much as we did 5 years ago currently the system is still going to minus 13 degrees that being difference we'd have a myriad of zones within the building so each office and each space would have a thermostat so we're not going to see it's after hours hurry up John so so those were the basic things and when we looked at is there another page on this or not when we looked at the district it's roughly a quarter mile away our experience on campuses we can see $100 to $400 in linear foot I don't know how many utilities are on Berry Street that we'd have to work around so unless you really got a few more users up there to put on the system we truly believe it would be cost effective and you'd be better off spending your money on an array or some other things that are doing doing more work for you next biodiesel generators we don't see too much in the HVAC system use of biofuels right now mostly in transportation is where we see it if we were to say we can't get enough array on the roof which we know would you want to put a couple generators in or a generator to run the building then you have a microgrid yes you could do that I'm not sure how cost effective would be you're in a neighborhood there so it might be a little tough to have generators running you know 20 hours a day or so but something that we could definitely analyze with the air source heat pump in there so prevalent of what we're doing almost every project these days you know we've seen for the town of Hartford their town office and Middlebury's town office while they didn't have enough roof area because of their downtown nature and historic things issues we ended up giving them a net zero building they built an array somewhere else and pointed at that meter so it's a net zero ready building it's not net zero on site it is an opportunity to say we have a net zero rec center with the array somewhere else off site sorry can I jump in on that too it's probably worth noting that we have a one megawatt array already which is 500 kilowatts over the cap exactly and so I don't know how that works if we can do it behind the meter yeah yeah that's to be continued sooner or later they're going to have to uncap that yeah we have to push to have that uncap because a lot of towns are running into that what's next John? next goes into the are there any questions on the approach so just to go back to the the heat pumps and the potential for insulation am I understanding correctly that we may not need to insulate the gymnasium because the heat pumps are good enough that they can heat the building without? yes it would take some more analysis whether you want to do that because the envelope is so important and especially with some of the other discussions that were had concerning just being a shelter type building where if there is a catastrophe we might not have power and that resilient envelope does a lot it's an $80,000 item to be discussed not only discussed but also done a life cycle analysis on and the other thing is we basically assumed a relatively modified insulation on the exterior because of the concerns about damaging I think we covered that the last time which is if you over insulate the exterior walls that you can end up damaging the brick and the brick deteriorates prematurely but again a lot of that would be done on that brick wall and how is that we've done in other buildings if there's three whites of brick it ventilates itself so you can add the insulation and not have any fear of damaging the wall the other question you get moving to amortization but is there an analysis of operating cost savings by going to the PV for large percentage of the electricity there has not, that has not been done yet that's the next level of I think we'll get to it in a little bit that's the next level of study typically because it needs to be fully modeled and start down the true design process so just to piggyback on that question so that's not something that you could have prior to us making a decision about which direction we want to go the reason I say that is because knowing the ongoing operating costs of each of these choices if it were attainable to have that information would I think help inform our decision so typically that's what we work through through the start of the design process is the first true schematic and design development process we would work through all those, actually all these options that we're presenting today and say which ones are the most cost effective on life cycle and what not it's the planning study aspect versus starting down the road because it does need to be modeled to get we can give you ideas but if we want to be comfortable and that's one of the hardest things of any type of all this analysis is what are the hours of our operation and then we can model it and it's the insulation and the lighting and the aerosol receipt pumps that's all once you build the model it's easy to flush through and analyze we gave this to you guys in your packet this was a base assumption of our scheduled payout for the bond if we went for an estimated $5 million bond that Todd provided us so we just wanted to include that for context within this discussion to what this would look like over time for us are there any questions on this that we can get answered for you? I would love to see this plotted against our debt policy does that make sense? well and when you're doing that Bill we talked ahead about having it integrated with the CIP because I was concerned about the bond payment as I look at this I'm confused about that first that page of that was 505 and the hand out we got of all the numbers term 31 years amortization period 30 years and average life 15.84 years and what is that what's being measured by that life like does this mean that we're paying for 30 years for something that's only going to last for 15 years? I will ask Todd and I will give you an answer when we look at this in terms of the I don't know anything about the finance I can give this a high level answer this is probably more of a Todd answer but the bond bank flows several different bonds and then we see the blended version of all of them so what they're saying is the average maturity life of the bonds in this mix would be about 15 years but it's not the life of the asset that's only being inclined to so we would be purchasing we would be paying this off over 30 years for a building we assume would last much longer than 30 years thanks the intent of the study was the guide we used was that this was a 50 to 100 year building these are improvements that would be indefinite you can see the source of my confusion there yes I would love to sort of mention about what this process would really look like for us yep so I asked Bredloaf to come up with some base understanding of how long it would take them to get them to the next step to get us ready if you guys wanted to move forward with any sort of bond scheduling and because we wanted to remind you that the work that they've done so far is a feasibility study this is not a fully modeled building these are their recommended renovations so these estimates are what Bredloaf believes they can reach within that amount but it is not a fully modeled building so there's a couple different things that we have to take into account when we decide to move this forward to march or November so I'd like them to talk a little bit about that and then we can talk about our next steps so assuming you needed more information by the end of January for March vote is that correct except the timing is that some of the things that we think would be that we'd be most concerned about is eliminating some of the risk factors that we tried to incorporate into the estimate but just to make sure that they've been covered in terms of the estimated cost so one would be the structural assessment of the room in the foundations there is one notable crack in the building that then transmits into the slab which is what we tried to cover repairing the slab and dealing with that area and theoretically the crack has been there for an indefinite period of time and it's not necessarily a risk that's increasing but we really want to look at the structural it would be wise or prudent to have a structural engineer go through and just review the existing structure and make sure that it is sound particularly as there's been discussion of using this as an informal shelter and so forth and also add with the added load of the PV panels on the roof which is not huge but it's starting to add up you've added insulation in the last few years which adds load to the roof and now you're adding the PV panels load from the snow load because it's not melting like it did 30 years ago also is to confirm we made a while an conservative estimate of how much what the hazardous material extent might be and what it might be to obey that what if we're wildly optimistic about how much we there's much more than what we're estimating is to have the habit has material expert go through and do an assessment of the building and what those costs might be there's more fully confirm the energy efficiency options which would be doing the beginning of the modeling do the model so we can start running some analysis on that and then it's just essentially our coordination of all those efforts of those consultants so essentially we're pretty confident about what we proposed architecturally and the finishes and so forth that these are appropriate and we have the right cost for them but it's sort of getting initial consultation in from consultants on the building to make sure that that's been incorporated into into the study into your sense of the cost so those are something that we think that it would be feasible to do get that some real information back on that by the end of January and that could cost up to say one percent of the construction cost which would be 30 to 40 thousand dollars some of that including your cost because you would be hiring the hazardous material consultant in but we would coordinate with that if you wanted to get even more detailed into it if this was moving back to the next vote we could extend this out and become even more definitive over a couple of months about the cost what the estimated cost would be for the project if it was November vote I will say the last line 15 to 20 percent of CD's construction documents would be more up to pro for November we're not going to get three weeks quite present construction documents this is one of the things that comes up this is for the council's benefit I think often when we have bond projects because people will say you don't have all these specific projects but before you invest what it costs to get there you want to be sure that they're supported for the project so we do often go forward with estimates and say maybe go a little high to get bonding authority up to a certain amount but the flip side is what's it going to cost to get the construction documents $100,000 or something like that realistically with engineers and everything else so do we put that money out and then find out that the voters don't approve the project I think those are important I just want to point out when we did those budgets that Cameron showed on the spreadsheet each of those budgets includes a contingency factor for the owner that's at 10% this is a going into bidding that might be considered overly conservative but at this point it seems pretty for a standing building that doesn't have a lot of site issues this seems like a reasonable contingency at this point so that would cover things like say that might hopefully it would cover things like this more hazardous materials the roof needs strengthening things like that we do have an house designed to work with construction documents or architectural firms so our numbers are you stand by our numbers I'm not questioning you this is more for people understanding the process we want as much precision as we can get but then we have to decide how much of that we want to pay for before we take it to a vote and then we hear pushback during the public while you don't actually know we don't know because we won't we're building a $17 million plant wastewater plant that we think we know so far it's coming in on budget but you don't know until you're doing it so one thing that I think would be helpful at least I know that I'm not going to be here any longer but I think would be helpful to conceptualize what the addition of this potential project to the city would mean in terms of bonding and money in versus money out it would be helpful to have this city put together something about where we're bonding for the water resource recovery facility we bonded for the parking garage and we may ask to bond for this I think it would be helpful for folks to conceptualize a lot easier like a comparison like here's where the city is at in terms of this is an authorized for bonding and we anticipate these things and that translates to this liability for the city would be a helpful thing for residents to look at to be able to make an informed decision about what they think is best so this is it, this is our last slide so with all of that being said there's a couple of choices on the table you can move forward with bonding with our estimates you could want to spend that was abrupt more yeah so you know spending more to get them to get us closer to those construction documents or deciding even which vote to aim for so there's a lot of choices we also as a Arnie and Jana and Alec and I have worked together as you know the community services department to sort of propose a date to have folks have a special meeting if you want one have people review the rec center options and then you know be invited to view the rec center in its current state which would be helpful thank you and Bob I know you have a question yeah I apologize if I missed will the building have a complete fire alarm system and sprinkler system they'll both be on yeah okay I must have missed that yeah thank you we didn't mention that it's in the budget Jack I think this is a question that Bill may know the answer to off the top of his head there's a question in the estimated budgets there's a question of whether building permit fees were payable or exempt I thought I remembered that when we were doing the water resource recovery facility that we did have to pay permit yes we would include those fees in the budget and the reason for that is that we also had factored that in with the parking garage even though we haven't done it yet but the reason for that is we have to do that work now just like anyone else would and so it comes from the bonded funds into our present it's an appropriate payment if it were paid to the state we have to pay for all of those it's helping offset the cost that the current day so that eliminates one possible safety no I was going to say it eliminates one question mark yes correct so in terms of thinking about whether we're going for March or whether we're going for November with this if we want to go for it at all knowing that potentially construction documents are those that cost something and so we wouldn't have those regardless right if we decide to pay for them sort of separately outside of the scope of this right us barring that what might be the differences in information that we would have if we went with March versus if we went with November it's really just a specificity guaranteedness of the it's a new word guaranteed something it's a 940 word just the accuracy of what you're voting on you know it's matter presented in a lot of it is just what Bill was saying is that you know we've been behind the questions from the public when you're doing it with feasibility study versus you know a 50% we've done it at all different levels you know it's the questions it's it's how you can answer the questions without much confidence Jack sorry to be dominating the discussion I think for me the biggest piece of information that we might have in November that we don't have now is the fate of the parking garage and what impact that might have on our total bonded indebtedness we don't know that it's going to be resolved by November but we might we can do a model with you know I think that the mayor said is to look at our debt policy and assuming that it's going to happen and understanding that that's not necessarily being funded by general fund taxes but we could certainly that's easy enough to do I say for Todd and Kelly to do it's easy enough for them to do it is though I know how to do it Bill forgive me for not knowing the answer to this question but when do we need to decide so we have to hold a public hearing on a bond you have to we have to pass our and so one thing we can do is to pass the necessity resolution you know you should do that in advance of you know because you can pass that and not actually pass the bond so it's just a formality that we have to do we have to hold a public hearing on the bond before the election normally we do that the day before the meeting before our last hearing on the 15th but ultimately you can still decide to pull it I mean you could hold a public hearing on the bond and see where to go is present this see what kind of feedback we got from the public and float it out and then ultimately you decide on the last day whether to put it on the ballot or not okay other thoughts Donna I would I hope this project gets a lot of attention and I would rather get it out sooner and do a sort of a push towards March and see what happens rather than to wait November it's going to be such an intense election cycle I don't want this to get lost I really don't want that's a good point I didn't think about that any other Lauren yeah I generally I mean it seems like especially knowing that we would still have options preparing for March and moving forward and doing the things and seeing holding public hearing I think January 7th seems great to see what kind of engagement reactions knowing that there was the whole public survey on this topic so we had a lot of information from the community at that point but you know is this does this become a really kind of contentious conversation in the community or is this a really rah rah let's move forward and then and we can but give us the opportunity you know do whatever due diligence we need to be moving forward to pursue March if it seems like that you know becomes feasible and like it's going to be a good process are what are people's leanings generally who's who's sort of leaning towards going towards March yeah yeah I would say no but I I will say no and I will only say no because um I think there's a lot of I know that the November election is going to be a big one but I think that also means hire voter participation and I think that there is right now an opportunity to have a really robust community conversation about the design and plan of the rec center and at least from my perspective the parking garage illuminated a lot of perceptions and beliefs and um you know and frankly I also saw some room where you know there might be room for us to make some space as a city as to how we engage with folks and um to me I would I would I would really push to wait till November so that the community can be engaged in this process so that questions that you know come up about design or things like that can be fully answered or community members for the council um but also because I think we'll be in a little bit we'll have a little bit more information about the parking garage and and what that posture looks like um and I I think that there's a lot of value in I think there's a lot of interest in this particular topic I received lots of phone calls and lots of emails when this came up and um you know it's wintertime it's kind of awful to have to leave the house where it's snowing and cold um and I want to make sure that everyone has an opportunity to come out and express their enthusiasm or I would express enthusiasm but I appreciate that others might not um and I just want to make sure that we have enough time and space to actually answer questions that are asked and and instead of sort of sticking to a self-imposed plan of March um I guess I would just encourage folks to think about you know higher voter turnout and a more meaningful community conversation to to sort of address some of those planning you know what's this going to look like because with the parking garage we were kind of making changes like as we were going and and I think there was at least for me that's not a process that like I function well in so I would I would encourage people to think about November um that makes sense to me I don't think I'm terribly worried one way or the other about March versus November um I I would go along with either of those uh schedules I wanted to throw in uh since we're talking about what we think about all this uh just the um my preference for if we're going to uh spend a lot of money renovating the rec center I think we should go for the the most efficient um closest to energy neutral building we can and I'm I'm I would push for that angle I'd love to get more information on the operational costs and so on uh and if if that could be forthcoming by November then that would be an argument in my mind for pushing it out further wait what would be so if if we if we um if we could get more information about the operational costs of the different options by pushing the bond vote to November versus March then I would then I think that's a strong argument in my mind for pushing it to November so we have those numbers um I I still think we could work towards March but I very much agree with Ashley's sentiment of wanting to do a really robust, really proactive engagement outreach and if we felt like it was being too rushed or there were unanswered questions I mean I guess at some point not having been through this process of you know what's on the ballot once you put it on the ballot so we have till and I think actually we can say we're not going to have it but it's still out there you know I don't know what happens if we don't yeah I I think you can withdraw it from the ballot but I don't know how that works practically for the clerk um I'm not sure I don't think you can there's state deadlines when the ballot is done the ballot is done and what date is then that includes you know if a candidate were right suddenly I would also uh Donna go ahead and then Ashley well by March would you not have better numbers for us if we decided to invest that money to do it so there's a different due date of getting things printed and your town meeting and we can have as many public hearings as we want between you now and the vote and if the vote doesn't make it then fine we do more but I just think we're more ahead to get out there quicker and do more now and then we can do more later this is a non-ending public information project the only other thing that I would highlight about November versus March is you know budget season is upon us and there are lots of hard decisions to make there also and I also I mean for me it's I don't think it's the best look to talk about sort of adding or cutting certain services you know over others and then you know on the other hand of that we're also asking voters to approve a bond vote I mean I guess I know that that's how life works but it just if I have learned anything in my time it's that perception is really important when it comes to planning and if the council is willing to sort of put in the extra time there I think that the benefit could be significant in the longer term you know as we sort of figure out ways to navigate what it may mean to bond and have a new rec center which I think most people said they want but the biggest question has been a funding question and if we're already talking about a tax increase for the March budget and you know then we're asking about bonding and other things I fear that that's an awful that's an awful lot of asks that are that I think create a lot of cognitive dissonance that may not sort of comport in a way that moves us all forward the way we would like to go so one thought here is that regardless of whether we're going for we can proceed with the necessity we can do all the procedures we can do that part we can have a public hearing on the seventh and then that as a sorry to interrupt but just so we're clear about our terminology I think if we had we'd probably have to be a public forum okay thank you not a public hearing there's a public hearing yep fair enough so so have a have a general informational meeting for the public get their feedback you know sort of take the temperature and then decide after that just how does that that way we have some time to digest this I know having seen all this information I have lots of other but more in the weeds kind of questions which I don't need to take up time with right now but I think could be further conversation I just had a question for to clarify my thinking on this do you want us to present all of these options to the general public or do you want to move forward with one of these three options for us to really do a deeper dive into for presenting purposes to me in terms of what we would be presenting at let's say public meeting yes what's your thought team I mean my question is well yes good morning I mean to me I could see possibly presenting a base project of what needs to be done to become ADA compliant and to just basic upgrades to me the what we're calling the eco friendly are just part of what any building that Montpelier is investing and should be doing so I don't want to I don't like seeing that as add-ons I think when we look at the future of energy and know that there's going to be today I think it does not accurately reflect the 30 40 50 year time horizon of what fossil fuels are going to cost and so on so to me maybe there's an upgraded version that includes the option three and there's a base project that people could look at I mean things that might be you know have been add-ons in part of three right two options yeah there's there's like an upgraded option that you get all of these things that are right now option two and three or a base project to be clear of what what we could get if we just wanted to become kind of compliant and basic upgrades one proposal I like that can't believe I'm suggesting this but I just want to note that because we are over the one megawatt or the 500 kilowatt limit right now that if we were going to put solar on it it would have to be delayed so I want and green mountain power has this 100 percent renewable goal so that optionally that's something that I don't know what's that did you explain what you just said both of the things both of those items are you going to sell it to green mountain power? the cap the whole thing so I might even just rescind this comment it's fine it's fine it's good do you think do you think so I know there's momentum behind changing that for municipalities the cap on solar statute would need to change so there might become an issue of what the city can and can't do but I think there's a lot of interest from a lot of communities in changing that so so to explain there's a rule in Vermont that no single consumer of electricity can off take more than 500 kilowatts of electricity and so major users end up getting they can't sometimes one megawatt for us twice the current limit is approximately 50% of our total electric so we would be limited to a quarter of what we would want to be able to off take and that's pretty problematic anyway so we're at one megawatt right now we got in before that cap went into place so we're just prevented from doing anything further and just to your second point there is again a statute there is an effort underway supported by major utilities to increase the in-state renewable requirement to do 100% renewable electricity standard by 2030 that would presumably you would need to be raising all these caps to allow for more more solar and other renewable energy so that is going to be an active conversation this legislative session clearly that won't get resolved until after potentially this that might be a question that we can put out to people as well is that of value to them did you have something to add the only suggestion I might add I am a very visual learner so words are super helpful and I use them a lot but I love that budget spreadsheet that we have where we can like make our own additions and subtractions and see sort of what the financial impact is of adding or subtracting particular positions, proposals things like that and I wonder if this is something where a similar sort of tool could be utilized so that people can sort of see the basics, the bare minimum this is what we would have to do to bring our building into compliance but then all these extra things could be added on and it might be that you have your base option and your second option but then with the second option there might be things that we could like do without upfront, something like that so that people can sort of get a sense for the cost and what the amenities would translate to so moving forward how does what do you think Donna do you want a motion yeah sure that'd be great that'd be wonderful I make a motion that for the January 7th public meeting to hold one to hold one and at that meeting we are to hold that option one gets presented as a base project and it'd be good if it's visual as well as actual listed items and then two and three get combined as the second option so there's just two options real base and then the second option within the second option I think it's great if we had them do little postms of these things what do you like the most you know I don't think you want to get into all the numbers but you could but that the idea of option one and option two is to present the public with information and maybe some choices about option two I like to see if they have this is not part of the motion John I'd like to see if the fitness and weight room equipment do they really want a spin room is that how they use that or would they want something else so I'd like to see some post-em interactivity that way so on this January 7th public meeting I'd like them to have two options the one and the combination of two and three and a way to express what they like the most option three we have a second is a part of your motion all the procedural things to move forward moving forward to March okay okay motion and discussion is there any further discussion all in favor say aye opposed okay great thank you thank you for all of your work thank you for your responsiveness I want to acknowledge the time is 10 I would think we should still have a budget conversation I would presently be aiming for about 10 30 what do you think team you're going to collapse I'll be fine chocolate no I'll be okay chocolate okay alright so on to budget discussion and actually Laura rose since you're here was there a particular item that you wanted to talk about drive carefully okay oh you should go have a conversation with this fellow over here I know it's okay good so you aren't here for a specific item okay cool great okay so alright oh gosh that would be cold sometimes we want soup alright okay but budget so I don't have an additional presentation unless you want to go through last week we could put up the spreadsheet if you like I guess I'd be happy to move down there to do that or you have your budget books we have our team here so I think it would be helpful for us to know what issues you'd like to know more information about what you're thinking about certain things where you'd like us just to walk through the process a little bit more we've always got this bond discussion that's floating but you have a workshop schedule for January 8 then we have a meeting for January 15 which is not our normal night but that would be our first round of public hearings normally on the budget bonds etc and the following week Thursday the 23rd would be the second public hearings on everything and then when you finally vote so you know how you want to allocate that time is important and you know we did move a few things to the 8th tonight that we're originally scheduled so just keep that in mind that we will be revisiting some issues and hopefully we can have clear information on some of those things so my about this is to give every council member an opportunity to say whether you'd like to keep all the things, subtract anything add anything what is your inclination and so keeping it kind of general knowing that we don't have to decide tonight but just to take a temperature of everybody where are you at, what are you thinking what are you inclined towards at this point does anybody feel ready to share something like that okay go ahead Donna and then we'll go Conor the staff did such a great job I actually reduced the Montpellier Development Corp to 75,000 and I added 10,000 for Ashbor and I circled the Wreck Center at the 300,000 and that's why I had the question about the Capital Improvement Plan that Bill is going to give us a report on but those are my three things one reduced and I add the Ashbor and the Wreck I want to write those down but I don't know that the Wreck could possibly be done in thinking FY21 can you say those again Montpellier Development Corp I reduced by 25 I made it 75,000 it was 100,000 Ashbor was 10,000 and then the number that Bill had for the Wreck bond was 300,000 and my thinking of the Development Corp we have flat funded them at 100,000 at some point I thought they were supposed to start getting some other funds but maybe and I guess my response to that is obviously we can have them and meet with them but when we created them we made a five-year commitment well I mean it wasn't a contract but it was a five-year commitment that we would fund them and I think this is year four so that was our when we talked about it as a team I thought it was three but yeah that's fine fine actually pretty similar to Donna just going up the NDC there I mean there's got to be vacancy savings we've got an empty position in an empty office four months there so I think it would be a good idea to invite them in and actually see what their budget is up to compared to the appropriation there right and if they have something after in the coffers I'd rather throw 25k something else so I'd just like to see those numbers anyways with the idea we would keep 100,000 commitment in the future other ones Legislator welcome reception I love legislators we've got a lot of things pending over at the State House now I'd rather convert that into an information session or maybe we invite them over cheese and crackers to City Hall where they can hear about rail, they can hear about microtransit they can hear about non-U.S. citizen voting and along those lines I'd really like to double down on the lobbyist position because I think for $10,000 and it could be a pretty narrow scope there having eyes and ears in the building 24-7 while they're in session I could yield some pretty good results as far as tapping into the capital bill, appropriations bill we've got stuff cooking in the transportation bill and also just advocating on some of these issues so we just really want to double down on that lobbyist contract which I know we won't get the world for $10,000 but it would go a long way I think USS Montpelier I've kind of been bivalent on but I can be convinced either way just initial stuff anybody else ready to share if you're ready Glenn, go ahead I don't think I'm really ready but I might as well I'm glad that we're talking about the Montpelier Development Corporation one of my questions was going to be because I remembered that it was five years but I didn't remember when it started I think that's a worthwhile conversation to have I think it's also fair to say that they, while they were meant to try to find sources of funding they've also had a fair amount of turnover in the first few years so it makes sense that they might have had trouble fulfilling some of those goals but it would be great to be able to find a little extra funds somewhere I also would love to find space for at least some of the Homelessness Task Force recommendations I think that they've done really great work and some of those items are very very small and would have a huge impact on some of the people who need it most I think that it would be great to have some of that in just see the Washington County tax box is that an optional thing? no it's a bill fair enough over here I I mean I think I've made my thoughts pretty clear over the while however what I would say is with this I understand that as a practical reality right now we have no choice but to pay increased health insurance premiums and I accept that because I cannot change that for this year but what I can do is be super loud about how fundamentally abhorrent it is that the city of Montpelier Taxpayers have to eat a 25% increase to premiums because we have employees who utilize health insurance as intended and so while I understand that there is nothing that can seem to be done to change this year I would really encourage the city to plan going forward for a way out of that because that's a race to nowhere I mean it's literally a race to the bottom at this point a 25% increase this year coupled with you know what's the next year going to be I know we haven't seen a 25% increase in previous years but as someone who almost died medical care is a critical component to what we do as a city and how we treat our employees and I don't believe that that means that we have to sacrifice care for our employees nor do I think that that means that our residents need to every year simply accept whatever Blue Cross Blue Shield says is going to be their increase so whatever you know I know that there are some options and there are some questions about amending some statutes that could potentially allow us to purchase into other places but I would really encourage the city to spend effort there because I mean human beings we break sometimes and we need to see people that know how to fix us and that I don't think should mean that taxes go up to accommodate a 25% increase to a corporation that is still able to pay its executives quite well and frankly sort of leave the city in a position where we're making choices about cutting services to literally people who are sleeping outside right and to other residents to accommodate for Blue Cross Blue Shields demand and frankly hostage type situation so I will leave it at that I'm going to step off that soapbox but I would really encourage the city to look at other alternatives to Blue Cross because this is not a sustainable mechanism by which we can plan a city budget or continue any sort of long-term financial planning okay thank you that's my big one but I too would encourage the council and the city to engage in a little bit more value-based budgeting when it comes to when it comes to services that that people need to be here and I know that personal responsibility and accountability is part of that conversation but part of the tradeoff to me of living in a community like Montpelier is that while eventually one does get priced out for life reasons because that's the way the world works there are services and people and resources in this community like I have not experienced myself in other places and making sure that we continue our commitment to those that are the most vulnerable among us is the most important thing that I think that I have done in my time here any other thoughts I'm not very far along yet I agreed with Donna's email that the city's done a great job at presenting something that you know where we are as the city and as I look at what the city government does I think we need to keep doing basically everything the city is doing we're providing essential services for the quality of the city that we have with the emerald ash borer thing it wasn't clear to me that the tree board was asking for $10,000 this year my sense was and I think we should explore this my sense was that they were thinking well you know it hasn't been as aggressive as they were afraid it was going to be so maybe we have enough in the bank for that now it's worth exploring that to see where they're coming from with regard to the my biggest question is really what we can and should and need to provide for homeless services I think that the proposal that we've seen seems a little more vague than it really should be to get me to say yeah this is money we need to provide and if we both the money we know what it's going to be what's going to be done with it and whether there's a trade off between social worker from Washington County mental health or someone else that's another question but so I may have more thoughts but that's where I'm thinking now so being new to this still formulating thoughts and there were some things like I don't know what the U.S. Montpelier is for $1,000 or why cemetery flags cost $1,500 it's fascinating but I agree with a lot of the comments people have made so far and really appreciate that this budget does maintain a lot of really critical services I think the city is doing a great job with and is very responsive to the strategic planning we did and trying to incorporate some new programs and positions and looking at the challenges like DPW faced this year and trying to address that that's been built in you know if I had my all of my wishes I would definitely want to see the energy plan funded and I know there was some looking at the efficiency funding or some opportunities for possibly funding I think we can say that we've got funds for the energy plan I meant to mention that at the beginning it was just the hour I forgot there's money in the capital plan that we can identify for that so you can probably take that one off the album great to do that that seems great to me I would love to see if we can find some money for the homelessness task force I think I agree that I would love to see more details and some more thinking but they've done amazing work on a short time frame of really trying to come up with some concrete ideas and things that really help real people everyday in our community so would love to see what we could do there and I do think it's worth exploring the idea of the lobbyists just knowing that if there are state dollars to be found to help us do some of this important work you only know that if you have someone in there advocating for you and even things like the healthcare issues that are a huge part of our budget and if we could have the option of being part of the state exchange for example and that kind of advocacy to give us more opportunities and options for our budget I think could actually be money really it could pay for itself so I also have a question about the cemetery flags what is that why do they need flags I believe that this is for the veterans veterans fund and they put flags on the veterans cemeteries we'll get the specifics but provincial finance director you're still here yeah trust me the local VFW posts does a number of functions throughout the year the tally that they provide us in support of that request for a contribution is between $79,000 I believe so this is the city's contribution towards a greater effort I will send you copies of what the breakdown of that is the flags is a part of that where they decorate for Memorial Day and they put flags in the cemetery to honor the veterans it's kind of a community support but the count line has stayed as cemetery flags that is not truly descriptive of everything that's involved in that and did we contribute towards this last year we've contributed for years and years and years I'm going to ask this question out of ignorance why do we keep buying new flags is that it's an annual appropriation that we provide to them now whether they're buying new flags each year or not I can't tell you the specifics it's just part of a their expense portfolio that they for their various activities that has been a budgeted line out of for as long as I've been here okay well fair enough so we could change the name that would be helpful I was picturing flags just saying cemetery here I think what they do is they actually go out and put a flag on the grave of everyone who's a veteran all the cemeteries in Montpelier and they don't go out later and collect them they stay there this is one of those things that it's kind of indicative in my mind of what's the culture of the city of Montpelier kind of like the smoking ban downtown that was proposed kind of like the toy run this is kind of in the same thing that these are cultural markers for parts of the population that are not reflected on the city council but are very important for the people who are for whom they're important to save money by taking that out I am convinced thank you that was very helpful and I guess nobody specifically asked but really connected to that is the USS Montpelier obviously we have the museum thank you upstairs but this also helps contribute you know the sailors come in March in the July 3rd they cost a lot more than this but this is our contribution to their transportation and housing and to bring them to Montpelier and keep that connection between them and it's been a fruitful connection they've come in our time of need in 92 the flood the whole ship they sent a whole crew up to help people and when we were to know that if they needed resources they would send people from their ship up but again it's something I think that is important to an aspect of the community the welcome legislators reception again that is actually you all know what that is and that's put on by actually the Chamber of Commerce and again this is our contribution to it it's not the full cost of the event I'd argue that so potentially important this has built a lot of positive relations between the city and the legislature over the years as well as a way to say thank you to our volunteers I think it's a small investment for a lot of goodwill I'm glad that you mentioned that because it is and volunteers are invited and it is a party so it's a real positive thing and sometimes you get into good conversations but it is a feel good for a change but we can still have them here for four I don't know if Jack was on the council the first time John Snail came to us with the ash bore and I believe we started out with like $8,000 and I know Anne supported and we got to 10 but his number was in 100,000 and so the 10 is to be constantly steady state to put it aside because when it does hit us the expense is huge so that's why the 10,000 to me is important to that and Alec do you have anything to say about this 10,000 for ash bores not to put you on the spot but I'm putting you on the spot just to keep it brief, Todd and I have been working since last week to figure out what has been put into that fund what has been spent and once we figure that out I'll be able to calibrate the request properly for this year so sorry but I think just put it off for now so that's a to be determined amount exactly okay that's helpful thank you so speaking for myself unless there's other things people want to add oh yeah okay go ahead I think it's already like written out somewhere but I would just want to be explicit that the green mountain transit $40,000 would preferably be for microtransit and then we could always reallocate it later yes that's correct they're going to reallocate it yes so for myself I I'm glad you brought up the question about the REC bond Donna because I also have that same question such a large figure that thinking about how we like when does that kick in and how do we talk about it so there's the details we'd figure out when we actually were floating the bond the first year is actually $100,000 and it becomes $300,000 when we finally paid the first full principle of interest so we would build that into the plan to some extent it is a policy decision so the way we've set up our capital plan is that we have and if you go to our books and you all don't have to but I can find some talk somewhat intelligently if you go to page 17 of your budget book you can see that so we've got 2.4 million proposed for this year total and capital spending some of that is from our equipment spending the 515 and then the remainder is what we call annual money versus debt dollars and as you know that's been the system so as we've had this total fund they've all been in together and as we've increased our money and debt has either leveled or dropped that's allowed the annual funding to grow you can see pretty substantially even just in 10 years it's gone from 434 to 1.2 million in what we can use on any given year so the simplest thing would be to say okay we're going to add that 300,000 in this debt column and that's going to reduce the annual dollar column now before we totally freak out we look and we say well look it's already dropping $100,000 over the next couple of years with what we already have on the books and remember that the parking garage debt probably would not fall into this because it's tiff and user fees would be in the parking fund this wouldn't be included in here but even if you took it all and I'm not saying that cutting annual funding is a good thing but even if you took it all and you know already next year we've got $100,000 drop in bond $627 this year down to $529 next year so you'd be knocking $200,000 off of our projection for next year so that 1.4 projected would still be 1.2 which is not that far off from where we are right now $50,000 lower so we could for example choose to put another $25,000 or $50,000 we could choose to slowly build up that fund to try to offset it we could choose to say alright we're going to float this bond and the rest build into here or we could say we're just going to absorb it all into pre-plan and it would affect the taxes because it would be part of this fund but it wouldn't necessarily be a tax increase it would be in lieu of doing something else so the taxpayer would feel it it would be $300,000 redirected but that's I mean if you all didn't make any decision based on our debt policy it would go in here and reduce that's the default that would happen to it okay did I say that at all intelligently? it made sense to me I think the question is like how do we communicate about that and to be fair I mean this project may not we may decide that it is not for March and we may we may decide and so then it would and even if it was for March there's no reason we couldn't recalibrate this and show how that looks and project that out and actually we've got some future years to put more specific numbers in anyway okay so that was one thing I would also like to fund some part of the homelessness task force I'm not sure how much that is and probably well I will tell you that I am interested in the general purpose fund that last thing I know it's pretty vague but I think it might have some potential to be matching funds have potential to be incidental costs and I think of that and I know we have yet to have that conversation more robustly but thinking about the energy committee that has $5,000 and we spend it we find things to do with that money that furthers our purpose so I guess something about it I don't have any parity with the energy committee but then beyond that I do worry about the locker policy but I guess I would rather talk about lockers and porta-potties if there's a really robust specific detailed plan of course that's easy for me to say it's still chicken and egg there but then beyond that I'm interested in the lobbyist and potentially hearing more about the ash borer so that is I would still like to see us try to come in under 4% if possible again I'll speak for myself but and we'll we'll see that's it for me so people know I just was fooling with this and so adding $27,000 to this would get you to 3.9% so that's what you're working with if people agree you all might not on the homeless so you were not including $10,000 for extending the shelter time you were only wanting to add some money for the contingencies I didn't get to say this part but I was I'm worried that the $15,000 extension of the homeless time should maybe come out of the community fund if there's an ask from the popular community fund as an allocation for Good Samaritan and that's not enough then that's where that money should be expanded they missed the opportunity the deadlines gone I'm open to further discussion about that I was just interested because I don't want to set a precedent right now that we're going to give $10,000 or $15,000 every year once we do that it's there do you mean for the extension? yes we can't do anything else if they were going to go to the community fund to say the amount and the appropriate place to get that kind of extension money just the timing of that is off as you're saying that is it for me so one possibility is that given all of our input well maybe from this point for our next meeting we get into the nitty gritty of hammering out the numbers we've got all our departments here is there specific information from them or concerns about anything that you'd like them to be prepping for I'm sure they'll stay because they like this more than they like life itself it would be good if we could have them doing work for you if that's what you'd like this is just reiterating a little bit just thinking about I know we just spoke to it a little bit tonight about how a social worker would be different from the street outreach proposal from the homelessness task force but just being able to point at if there was some memo or something about that I don't know, just something I can point at to say this is how this is different I would find that helpful anything else I'm going to say no everything that every one of the departments has asked for so I don't feel a need to so good job I don't feel a need to come here and say justify it because I'm already there the ash borer thing that Donna raised is a good question I do have one other question for Donna in the current proposed budget that include were we able to figure out converting an internal converting the municipal trash collection to be an internal position okay and so that is included in the proposed budget okay great alright anything else okay thank you thank you all for staying I appreciate you all especially those of you that don't work here yet okay okay so we are going to move on to council reports Donna are you up for starting well the parks commission approved a kids pump track along coming street and there's a a lot of details to that and it's right now where DPW dumps snow and they're moving in partnership with them and the conservation commission to make sure that what they're replacing will not erode more so they're really looking at it very carefully what was the middle word you said kids what track pump track you know it's it has challenges that you would find on a mountain bike trail the fat to our mountain bike trail but it's at the size of a portion for kids they start to have some maneuverability around the earth maybe Alex oh there we go I got a fighter come it's going to be a dirt a series of rolling hills and so by pumping they're not pedaling they're using balance and momentum and it's kind of goes back to the roots of the 1970s riding a BMX bicycle motocross back in the day but it's a great activity for kids and they're great skills and for adults too they're this one is for kids Tony you can't use it and it's like a figure eight it's like a figure eight kind of it's all a confined space so it's not like the meandering trails that we have but it's part of the north branch park trail that goes behind Cummings Street in Cummings housing so that was decided they've also expanded the fat bikes into Hubbard Park and I'm also on the regional planning commission besides the TAC I'm on their basin clean water plan and there's a new legislation that was approved this last year and it's act 76 that actually is going to be setting up around between 50 to 60 million dollars for clean water and of course in 2001 is Lake Champaign and Lake Minnes Memphis Memphis Memphis the one up north the big one but slowly over time all the other waterways and basins do get some money but the interesting thing they're now looking at having the clean water service provider be the regional planning commission and they'll get all this funding all this grant money and then they'll assess the projects and they'll supervise it so the state is once more subcontracting with a non-profit entity to do its work and I'll keep you post on it but it's very interesting so is this potential money for us to be aggressive on our CSO project yes but we're not as high on the spectrum as other heavy loaders they're really going after the heavy loaders whether that's farm railroad tracks is another place it's a lot of pollution that comes out of yeah I mean agriculture is really the biggest of all in general stuff off the roadways is really heavy but yeah that's all and Ashley it's been interesting whether we agree or not it's always interesting thank you for serving not much I guess I should announce I will be running for re-election I don't want to say that did you? I'll take the limelight here I think I just miss hanging out with you guys so much that I got the power for lust for another couple of years and definitely will miss our colleagues from district 3 here very much so I won't go into too much because I love the campaign and you'll be getting a lot of literature in the next couple months so thanks so much I don't have much to say tonight I'll be at baguillos tomorrow morning as usual 8.30 to 9.30 I want to apologize that I haven't managed to get to the homelessness task force meetings the last couple of weeks this is the craziest season at my day job and my co-workers would murder me if I were not there in the middle of a Wednesday and and Ashley I'm sorry to see you go and I thought I was going to beat you out but as usual you're ahead of me so yes thank you for your service we believe her for last oh would you like to come for us yeah fair my only thing tonight I just wanted to also thank Ashley bring up such importance pertinent perspective and it will be missed and thank you for your service and keep in touch and hope to see you here in other capacities sure we will thank you Jack? I have nothing to say other than I appreciate all the work and energy that Ashley has brought to this job and thanks Will still be in touch and take care of yourself so for those of you who have not yet seen I tendered my resignation effective at the close of this meeting I did send out a statement which I would be happy to read right now I get a little emotional it's a little hard right to you all today to announce my resignation from the Montpelier City Council District 3 Councillor effective at the close of tonight's meeting as a community leader I believe it's not only my duty but my obligation to be candid with myself, my constituents and my community as I reflect on the myriad of complex and incredibly challenging personal, professional and life circumstances and shifts in my own life as of late I find my mind continually coming back to the importance of making time and space for self-care in the healing and rebuilding process despite my own dogged determination to be my best self in all that I do I realize now that my life looks very different than it did a year ago the hardest part of this time of reflection for me has been the realization that in order for me to keep doing everything that I do and doing it with the care, love and integrity I pride myself on taking in my service of others I would not be able to make self-care and healing a priority this juncture in my life I need to focus on regrouping and focusing on my own overall health so that I am able to continue my advocacy work in the long term seeing the many amazing opportunities and possibilities that are coming together for Montpelier and that have come together for Montpelier since I joined the council is one of the most meaningful experiences of my life I am proud of the resilience, commitment and dedication I've observed from community members, city officials and city staff in Montpelier over the past almost three years I too Ashley just want to be I'm so appreciative of your time and we've really benefited from your perspective from your from your push I love that you called it a push and not a shove people call it a shove No, I mean we bring a very strong perspective that you pride yourself in and I think that's really valuable and I love that you are willing to disagree and again do so gracefully thank you for that that's really important and I want to thank Arnie for my piece of coal he actually did deliver and I made sure to pick the heart shaped one but this is from the rec center and I think everybody on the council has a piece I was going to say they may have stopped here but there is one for everyone we so appreciate you logging all the coal over there on a on a logistic on a logistic level I also recognize that we interrupted the conversation about the homeless task force tonight and I know you had more things to say about it and so please do send those comments and to you know time and healing allows if you want to weigh in on anything else I mean certainly welcome that to find y'all just remember your time two minutes you know I think I'm very effective in life at getting it all out quick I'm used to being cut off so I've learned there you go alright so on to other other things I this is from anyway what is the status of the dirt pile here this coming week by the end of this week this by Christmas last I heard we were just negotiating a price with this cell up it's going to New York so it was a little shift in where they reported and I did a task for you today okay so early next week okay great wonderful okay well that is actually it for me John and in fact we got an email from Cory today sorry to interrupt but he just said the hauling of the stock pile will begin on Thursday morning so assuming that means tomorrow morning trucks can only make one run a day pile and the holiday next week will extend it a little longer I'm estimating it should be completed by the end of next week or early the following week but starting tomorrow so Thursday great well thanks Ashley we're going to miss you and I can't believe I'm losing both my council reps here gets anarchy that sounds like an opening Mr. Odom as one of the last charter changes Bill Hatch act to me so I can't run I'm afraid well you could run and I couldn't take the job if I won there you go also just really briefly finally been working on this for a while I got the formal okay from the secretary of state to proceed with a blockchain pilot project for securing election data there has been picked out for I mean with everything else we're doing and with everything the secretary of state is doing we're going to have some of the most secure at least during the length of the pilot some of the most secure election data in the world I think this is a pilot can be done by a big company based in Switzerland actually and this is not blockchain voting it's just blockchain data security but they do cyber security for NATO for department of defense they run the election security for the entirety of Estonia so these are some serious players and it's going to be pretty cool to pilot an American product for them here just a couple things first of all thank you Ashley anyone who who does these positions they do a lot of work and time and emotional and energy and everything else I appreciate it and you've been fun to work with so fun! I wish everyone that's worked with me over my career would pick the word fun well remember I'm a 25 year city manager so my idea of fun is the same as most people maybe I'm just wise beyond my years so over the next couple weeks so you know we have three weeks before the next council meeting but the holidays really are disrupting the next two so while on one hand we have a lot of things to do before the next meeting we just be clear that we won't have everybody on board all the time to get it all together so we will be coming back out of the holidays and then jumping right into this January 7th hearing so I would note that and to that point because of Jamie's departure we are a little short in City Hall so we're actually good Cameron and Jane and I are going to meet tomorrow to sort out who's going to be on first which day but you know there may be some and I don't know what the clerk's office looks like over the next couple weeks but you know I'm just mentioning that just to be clear so you can reach us but just understand it will be some different people are going to be different places I just want to acknowledge that we need to be super intentional about advertising the heck out of the January 7th meeting yes sorry and yes that's on our list and then for those of you with whom I have regular Monday meetings I assume we are planning not to meet the next two Mondays so unless just saying that out loud and that's you know we don't have anything else that we need to talk about a quarter of 11 are we doing 630 on the 7th do you mean for the meeting time? the public meeting what do you think is January 7th right so 630 let's go with 630 we have the recs and not the recs I'm sorry the senior center has covered their space for this so that we can if people want to go see the rec center we can just walk them across so I'll let them know that that's the time okay great I don't think there will be okay well I'm going to call the meeting adjourned at 10.47