 So I would like to call to order the South Bronson City Council meeting of Monday, November 15th, 2021. We have four of us in attendance personally. And Councillor Megan Emery is joining us on the big screen since she has a cold and a cough. So thank you for being thoughtful about that. So our first item of business is to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. So Tom, do you want to leave that please? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Okay, thank you. Instructions on exiting the building in case of emergency and review of technology options. Great, thank you. So as you can see there's two exits at the back of this room. Folks can use either one and then go left or right to get out main doors. Just a reminder to those who are participating remotely that I will be monitoring the chat. If you would like to speak you can message me of that interest or you can turn your cameras on. We will not be monitoring the chat for actual public comment or feedback for the council this evening. And then for folks in the room or who are interested in participating in the room in the future, this room is wired for assisted listening devices. So if you're interested in that in the future please see either myself or Andrew Bulldock. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, item three is the agenda review. Are there any additions, deletions or changes in order of agenda items? Megan, did you have any? No? Okay. So seeing none we'll move on to comments and questions from the public not related to the agenda. Just so you know, Megan, there's nobody in the audience here but we've got a couple people who would like to speak. Karen, I think you put your put your picture on first so why don't we start with Karen Ryder? Okay, I have no that the council has heard a lot about climate change in the last several well a year or two since we began interim zoning. I wanted to speak from my personal point of view. I am a grandmother to four grandchildren. I am a great grandmother which is hard to admit to one. And I just think about their future and I know they don't all live in this area. Some do. My daughter does and my couple of my grandchildren do. And I'm somewhat concerned at this point about the attention that South Burlington is going to demonstrate towards the whole issue of climate change. I know we have a resolution. I don't frankly remember if we agree that you the council who I appreciate has listened to a lot of this stuff is going to review that on a periodic basis. But I know that some of you have young children as well. Some of you may have grandchildren. And so you know that their future at this point could be very bleak. And I lay awake at night thinking about that. How my four-year-old granddaughter may have to face a horrible future because of what is happening to our climate. Now South Burlington is just a small piece of that. But we take all the small pieces and we put them together and they make a larger and more impactful piece. So I would like the city council to regularly review how we're doing in terms of our land development regulations in terms of how we are combating climate change. I know it's small but I hope that all of you will remember that we have children coming up. And even my young adult grandchildren who did not have children yet will have children. And their future is in the balance. So I am just requesting that you take this whole climate resolution seriously, look through the lens of climate change when you make decisions. And that includes the DRB and that affordable housing committee and even the bike and bed committee, the park committee is all wound up together. So that's what I have to say. Thank you for listening. Thank you very much. Okay, Bob Bick I think is next. Brick, I'm sorry. Bob, you're muted. Sorry about that. It's okay and I apologize for giving you the wrong last name. It was close anyway. Yes it was. So I wanted to call the city council's attention to a stormwater issue that is impacting neighborhoods across the city. As I understand it, the city is presently trying to get residents to sign up for an open ended obligation to pay for upgrades that are needed to various developments, stormwater facilities, due to a 2020 change to the state's stormwater regulations. As such, each such neighborhood would be responsible for the cost of fixing their own stormwater system. My neighborhood, for example, started to be built in 1986. We moved into our home in 1994, the second owners of the home. In 1998, we were told that our stormwater system did not meet the state regs and we were assessed fees to have it brought up to the 1998 standards. Now we are being asked to do it yet again. Since the last last time that we fixed the system, the city started a stormwater utility that I thought was now responsible for all stormwater facilities across the city. I thought we were covered. We all paid a stormwater fee on our quarterly water bill and I assume stormwater operations and facility maintenance costs are included in the city's property tax. Evidently instead, each neighborhood will be set up as a special assessment district and be charged for the cost of their respective project. We've been told that the grant moneys may or may not be available to pay for some or all of the costs. However, we are also been told that grant moneys may run out if other neighborhoods fix the issues in their neighborhood first. Hopefully there'll be plenty of infrastructure money, but it's unknown. So don't get me wrong, we support clean water, but I believe that the net cost of these upgrades should be spread to the whole city like it was done recently in some of the city's older neighborhoods or at minimum in a pot net of grants to all neighborhoods that now require upgrades. It seems like it's going to be very ad hoc. I know there's a lot of information that you would need to know about this and maybe some of you already do, but it just feels weird signing a document that has no limit of liability or no known cap of liability so that you know with the city and the state saying we're going to mark your deed for this liability if you don't sign this agreement this week. So I just wanted to bring that out. Thank you. We should probably get an update from Tom D. Pietro or Justin, I don't know, one of the two, but Tom Chinden, you want to say something? Yeah, if I may just chime in on this, Bob, I'm pretty sure I saw on Jesse Baker, our new city manager's agenda planner that a coming meeting, it might be the next one early December, we'll be discussing this topic in relation to a specific resident in Butler Farms, but I really think what Bob's raising is a broader discussion about stormwater planning so I don't know if that is part of your agenda or not. So that agenda item is very specific to a line that's not in city right-of-way, but I do think that we can provide a, I know Tom D. Pietro is on the line right now listening to this conversation, so we certainly can provide a more comprehensive update to the council at a future meeting. Yeah, I would like to understand that because this is, I think the first I've heard of this, I know we've gone through a lot of different stormwater repair and upgrades in different ways. So it would be good to, Tim? Just a quick comment. I've noticed in various developments, including my own, residents throwing yard waste into either a stormwater pond or into a culvert that, you know, connects with stormwater, Butler Farms and ours. And if our stormwater utility has specific rules and regulations about that, we need to broadcast that to all the residents to say, take your yard waste to Patchin Road and dispose of it properly unless you have a wooded area that you can dispose of it. Do not throw it into stormwater ponds and do not throw it into culverts, you know, because it can have detrimental effects later on. Just a side note. Thank you. Or maybe not even just the open space on the other side of the fence, because it's somebody else's property. The back 40. I think some signage would be useful to that regard, too, around our stormwater. Megan, did you have your hand up? We can't hear you. We still can't hear you. We've got to get this fixed. I think it's, she's unmuted. Well, you're unmuted. Now you're unmuted. No, we still can't hear you. Is your mic connected? Are you using AirPods? Because those often mess with microphone settings. I don't think she uses ear pads. She has in the past, I think. When we're all remote, I remember her having some dying batteries on your earbuds. Do you want to? Pauline, get off and then come back in and see if that works. Okay, so Robert McDonald, you'd like to say something? Yes. Hi, good evening. Thanks for letting us have a few comments about stormwater as well. I live on no circle off of Du Bois. And we're going through the same thing with our stormwater system here, which is expired. And, you know, we had several meetings earlier on about forming an association, which we come to find out that it's really not going to be something that could happen because you need 100% of the homeowners to do that. So it was something that happened over the summer. We had several meetings on that. And now we're proceeding to do this independently with the city. So we have to have every homeowner sign an applicant certification for the general permit. And there's an awful lot of confusion about it because I'm not sure, we're not sure what we're signing, as Bob was kind of saying, and what our liability might be and how open-ended it could be in terms of the various permit fees that are going to be imposed down the road. And I also wonder what happens if you do not get 100% compliance by the homeowners who have to sign this applicant certification form? Does that make it, you know, void for the neighborhood or is it a majority? So these are, there's a lot of questions about this. And, you know, I think the city would be better served trying to go at this, you know, as a city entity. And then, you know, having certainly the neighborhoods being involved, but I think we just, you know, it seems like we're in a competition. You know, for this, for the monies and like, again, they're like Bob said, there could be some grant monies out there that we could get access to, to reduce our, the final fees that could be assessed either by the state or the city. And December 1st is apparently a deadline. So for this applicant certification form. So I just, it just seems to be very unwieldy. And I don't think the city, you know, by all intent wants to operate in this manner. I think it seems to be, you know, this is something where you need almost like a top-down type entity to take it over and work, work this through. So I just want to kind of echo what Bob said that it is a little bit, it is very confusing and we're going through the same thing in our neighborhood. Okay. Thank you. Thanks. Are there any other comments from the public? And maybe under business, can I just say that maybe under new business, we could talk about some ideas? I would, sure. Or do you have some or? I mean, I think we'd need to bring in our professionals because I don't know the answers to these things. I meant in terms of getting information out. That's what I meant. Okay. But, but we don't have to. I can wait, but if December 1st is the time frame, it sounds like some public education is needed. I don't know what the decision is. I agree with Helen if you can hear me. We can now. Thank you, Megan. Good. And Joan Britt is. Now we can't. Are you just muted? Oh, you're okay now. Well, wait a minute. Who's on first? What's on second? Megan, well, I just wanted to say we're concerned about this deadline and we don't know what to do. And with the holiday coming up and all that stuff. So we're just, we know we're just bringing this to your attention right now. But if there's anything you can do to give us some guidance, that would be very helpful. Because if we sign it, does that lock us in while the city's working on a potential solution? Or should we hold off on signing it and have our clouds, our titles clouded until it gets resolved? So that's our concerns as well. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Okay. Megan, do you want to come back on with a comment? I simply wanted to let you know that Joan Britt was hoping to speak. Oh, okay. That's all. All right. Thank you. Are there any other comments and questions from the public? All right. Seeing none, we'll move on to announcements and the city manager's report. So Tom has some announcements. Are you running for the U.S. Senate? I'm rooting for Helen really to step in. So I just have one that's hot off the presses and I think it's going to have been drowned out by other news of late. But about 4.43 p.m. today, I was told in one of my other roles that the governor is working on calling a special session of the legislature this coming Monday, the 22nd to with one specific purpose relevant to our role, which is to impose or to consider legislation that allows municipalities and their governing bodies to enforce and enact a mask mandate. And that that could be soon as that body takes action. So I just want to put it on all of our collective radar that if this does happen a week from today, it would then be before us to consider imposing a mandate up and through until April 30th, 2022. And it doesn't include education, though. It's I that's what I heard on the news. Okay. But you must have gotten the official input in the station. So it might be more accurate. I think the legislation has been effectively fleshed out. All I'm seeing is the letter from the governor. But just putting on a radar, maybe we'll have a special meeting during Thanksgiving week, huh? All right. I won't be here. I'll be gone. Okay. Okay. Any other announcements? Seeing none. Okay. Jesse. Great. Thanks. So I'm sorry. Megan, did you have any announcements? I got to remember to look two places. Okay. Um, thank you for sharing that. Um, Councilor Chen, and I also, uh, given that I did want to give you a little update about where we are with COVID in South Burlington. Um, so as of November 10th, uh, we were at 996 cases of COVID in South Burlington over the course of the pandemic. So the, the, during the entire, um, tracking of place based, uh, or reporting of police based cases, however, that was a 9.6% increase from the prior two year, two week reporting period. So that's almost 87 new cases in the last two weeks in South Burlington. So given that we may hear, uh, or that we've heard this announcement from the governor and the legislature may take action, um, I welcome any feedback you have on how you want to proceed, um, here in South Burlington. So I'll leave it at that for now. Um, wanted the council to know that, um, there has been a, um, Act 250 appeal of the South Village permit application. This is, um, a permit that you, that the city has fully approved through the DRB and through the council. Um, we are inclined to enter an appearance, appearance just for the purposes of tracking and monitoring the appeal. Um, and if the council had any concerns about that, I wanted to give you the opportunity to express that. But generally, we will be keeping our eyes on what's going on. It's being appealed at Act 250, not to us. What is the, um, specific appeal based on the, the field, the store? We don't have information on that yet. Okay. Who are the appellants? You know, we don't know that either at this point. But we're just going to sit in and listen, which makes sense. So we know what we need to do or might want to do. Okay. Um, I want to let you know that there is, um, on the, at the December eighth bike, pet committee meeting, right at the beginning of that agenda, there will be a public forum on the spear street bike and pet improvements that are forthcoming. Just as a reminder, those, that is the improvements between the existing infrastructure at the U S force you're building to the Swiss street intersections. So if folks are interested, that's 5 30 on December eighth. There will of course be other opportunities for public feedback in that in the future. Um, the holiday lights display will be up at Veterans Memorial Park from December 3rd to December, sorry, December 3rd to January 3rd with Spark the park, a new event to me on December 3rd. So mark your calendars for that. We are also preparing a request for proposals to, um, go out for auditing services. This is something we do on a regular basis. You know, there's been interest in that in the past. Uh, of course, you know, prior charter, the council technically will appoint the auditors once they are selected. So if a counselor is interested in sitting on the RFP review committee, we would welcome that it will likely be the RFP reviews will likely be second half of January with appointment by the council in February. So any one is interested in reviewing those RFPs with us, please let us know. And many thanks to Martha and Andrew for shepherding through that RFP. Um, and then just a heads up that this tonight ends our weekly or more meetings together for a period of time. We are after this meeting, we will go a full two weeks without a meeting. Maybe thanks, thanks governor. So we may need to do a special warrant between meetings that would likely be the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. So just keep an eye out for that. And then I did want to preview for you just what's coming up on future agendas were about to go kind of headlong into budget and LDR review. So on December 6th at your next regular meeting, you will receive the full land use development regulation update from the planning commission as well as receive the over the full FY23 budget. We will then go into department specific budget presentations for the next couple of meetings. So just heads up on that. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. We got some busy times ahead of us. Megan, did you have your hand up? No, she was just coughing probably. Okay. Consent agenda. We have four items, disbursements, approval of minutes from October 4th, October 18th and October 30th City Council meetings. And give it authorizing the city manager to execute an agreement for the V-TRAN small scale bicycle and pedestrian program grant to fund the construction of two crosswalks across Williston Road. And finally accept a sewer easement deal from fire district one in Queen City Park to the city. Did you say deed? Yes, a sewer easement deed. I moved that we approve the all four items on the consent agenda. Is there a second? Second second. It's been moved and seconded. Is there any discussion? Yes, just a quick question for Mr. Bolduck. So I'm looking at the disbursements and so they're the cost of well there's a green mountain power bill for 180 Market Street for $4,300. So I'm just curious, do we understand how the building is performing from an electricity point of view versus the solar panels? And I mean, I don't, if you know something that'd be great. Sure, yeah. I know it's taken us a little while to get online. I don't think we're fully there quite yet. I know our head of physical plant Greg Yandao has been working with our vendor to get that as functional as possible. But at the current state, I can't tell you more than I don't think we're fully there yet, but we're starting to have a better sense as we as we live in this new building. So we don't know whether we're actually consuming the power from the panels at this point? We do know. Yeah, we are consuming power from the panels at this point. They are operational. Okay. But you don't know to what extent this bill reflects that. Correct. Yeah. Okay. But we can get it, once you know, we can, it would be interesting to find out. Yeah. Then in addition, 577, the old 575, we're not paying that power bill, are we? Correct. Yes, at this at this point. So the accountants switched over to the to the school district? Well, so we still need to divide out the what the difference is between 575 and 577. I don't believe those are separately metered. Although even if they are separately metered, we still do occupy a portion of 577. And I believe that was going to be done at a square foot basis. Okay. Okay. There's no further discussion. Ready for the vote? All in favor of the approving the consent agenda as presented. Please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. So that has been approved. Five zero. This pen doesn't work. Okay. Item seven is approving the city's FY22 policy priorities and strategies. So Jesse is going to. Yep. So I provided, Andrew, do you have a spare pen? Oh, I have another one. Oh. Oh, was it for you? No. Oh, I have some others. I thought that one was working. Thank you. Such a high maintenance chair here. So I provided to the council a very quick memo on the policy priorities as well as a rearranged hopefully for ease of reading policy priorities and strategies set of recommendations. So a couple of things I want to emphasize as you consider this. So first, thank you so much to all of you and to the leadership team and the community members who participated in the October 30th retreat. I found it extremely useful and hope others did too and that it kind of set us up for this work together in the future. As you'll see in this document, we've organized the final document in two policy areas. So tried to break it out a little more for ease of use and organization in the future. We've also sorted them into several categories based on the votes received and for further analysis that the leadership team did. And those are into strategies that are must do strategies strategies that the council and the leadership team identified as high priorities strategies that the committee's expressed interest in working on as its own kind of body of work strategies that are pending community or committee interest or future funding. So not necessarily things will do unless something else happens that moves those forward. And then core services that we think at this point we are going to do regardless of prioritization. We also included the vote tallies on these spreadsheets as well. So they're here for your consideration. They are very, very similar to what you saw at the retreat. If approved tonight I just want to go over what the next steps would be. First and foremost we would of course circulate a final this final version to committees for their consideration as they do their work. Staff is already well on our way to working on most of these things. We would continue that work through FY 22. We would report to you regularly on progress made towards each of these strategies. And then we'd as talked about before revisit again in late April or May after town meeting day and set these our next round of priorities for FY 23. So they're here for your consideration and possible approval tonight. If you have other comments you'd like to provide. Of course we're happy to integrate those before approval if you would like. That's all I wanted to okay. What's your pleasure? People have any comments or questions? It was a thank you for putting it in a format that I didn't have to scroll back and forth to read. In fact I printed it and then I could read it. So I appreciate that. Thank you for counting the dots. Yeah it was interesting right? Yeah yeah. No this is good. This is a great process and this is a lot of work. You can tell putting it all together and it's very substantial. Does the council want to comment any more on the bike rack? Because those are items as I understand it that aren't anywhere on these. Correct ideas we don't want to lose for a future prioritization efforts for next year. And I know that and by the way credit for calling it a bike rack and not a parking lot as we move towards alternative methods of bike rack. Well we are so PC it's incredible. Right metaphor. Yeah just not one that I'm going to argue that we need to move off of the bike rack but I just think it's important to recognize that this is not killing this topic. It's something that we're just going to continue to keep an eye on which is the resident parking ordinance. I just think that's going to continue with what we've heard in different areas of the city. So I'm fine with having it on the bike rack for now but I would just say to anybody that has concerns with parking know that I see it still coming up in the years to come. Well along with the rental registry in the Airbnb I mean those are that's pretty active in Montpelier. Nespa? So we may hear more about that or want to weigh in or have a committee look at that or the city in terms of costs and what it might look like. Megan any thoughts or? I just wanted to say thank you for I think you incorporated the handwritten comments into the sidebar comments which I thought was you know in terms of the action but also the committees and I appreciated that and I'm assuming but I just I guess it's better to ask. The bike rack just as Helen alluded to is it includes actions that would require more time. That's how I understood it otherwise you know some of these things could have been moved into the work plan because we see some things that don't have votes that are on the work plan right but are of committee interest or I'm just you know our our core services of course but I mean some of the things that had the city council the city council vote for I mean there's clearly interest in them. I would have voted for some of these things on the bike rack too and we had a limited number of votes so I guess that was my my question is you know in addition to the resident parking parking ordinance the rental registry I was also thinking about the winter parking ban that's something that residents have brought to our attention as well as the the ban on herbicides and fungicides and South Burlington parks these are things that we've heard a number of times are these things that would require more time to implement Jesse which is perhaps why they would be on the bike rack. So there are they're not on the bike rack because of time necessarily although they would all they're all very new or I shouldn't say new initiatives they're all initiatives that we would be starting and therefore you know what have to be our capacity would have to be weighed against other our capacity to make good progress on them would have to be weighed against other capacity on the other priorities. They're on the bike rack because they were not well one I think it was a failure process on my part to say here are the ideas that we have heard that we're not necessarily prioritized in the recommendations by the leadership team and I didn't give you all in the room a clear way of communicating to us that you wanted to move them off the bike rack so if they weren't highly voted on they stayed on the bike rack. If you want to move some of them off the bike rack into the FY 22 priorities you can do that if you want to move them all then I think we're going to need to go back to the leadership team and say what can we realistically accomplish this year. To me the purpose of the bike rack are there are you know there are tons of great ideas out there in the community of things we could work on and here is our ability to not lose those conversation to conversation so something we may want to prioritize in FY 23 that we're not prioritizing in FY 22 because we are prioritizing these other things that we're working on so that's how I'm thinking of the bike rack but I'll use capacity instead of time next time yes I think thank you for clarifying is that okay all good you know okay all good all right well let's see Rosanne has indicated she wants to talk if Rosanne you ready for comment Greco yes hello you're on the the priorities right that's yeah okay so um I unfortunately I wasn't there for the your day long session on this but I think that's a wonderful thing to do and I'm glad glad you did it um but I look through all of them and except for one or two statements there's very little if anything about the climate crisis and how to address it I mean you have a point there about developing the climate action plan but there's no mention any place else in your priorities about the climate crisis or how the city is approaching everything else if you think it is the you know an overarching need which of course it is and the few places where it is mentioned are on the bike rack as to do this sometime in the future which means a year or two to come because this is your priorities for the next year so I'm really um hope you will reconsider and if you don't think the climate crisis is a high priority then I'm aghast um but I really hope you you take another look at this with through that lens and that all of your actions ought to be measured against does it make the climate crisis worse of what we're about to do this strategy this process this policy this regulation or will it help it mitigate the effects of it I mean municipalities have huge power because you could act quickly and boldly I mean we learned from Scotland that nobody's coming to save us I mean nations are not going to be there doing what needs to be done it's up to us to save ourselves and we can do it as a city so I really encourage you to to maybe rethink these priorities and put the climate crisis right up there as the highest priority for the city so thank you I think I might just respond if you look at the list of the green and clean the second item as um Roseanne identified um has developed the city's action plan but the next box down identifies I think what are a lot of um actions that are on the must-do list that acknowledge that um like reducing fossil fuel use in south burlington by looking at alternative fuel options for the city fleet research the capacity of new technology and include that and the investment for future budget consideration I mean that was part of our request and and so it's in here expand the use of electric handheld equipment integrate into relative relevant sections of the climate action plan I don't know what we're integrating it into I guess all of our work it seems like there's a word missing there um I don't know what we're integrating into well okay but I mean I think there's some but I appreciate your sensitivity and reminder that it really needs to be um a major issue across all of these I think the affordable housing also actually includes a few things in terms of you know looking at um you know alternative and energies and affordable housing and I would add to that I think a lot of the walkable goals are to address the climate crisis being more connected getting people out of cars I think do you mind if I respond to that? No not at all um I think Roseanne you bring up an interesting point about what we have not done it what I have not done in this document is provide philosophical context for why would for um each of the specific actions and I think there may be a way to reflect that in the future with color coding or something like that because I actually think a lot of them sprinkled throughout the policies are addressing different aspects of our response to a climate crisis we're just not articulating that articulating that in the words on this spreadsheet so perhaps an improvement for the future is um to better call out those things that may be related and I think that will come much easier as we actually have our climate action plan and can pull that draw back to that right well one thing if I might that we've run into in the past when we look at the comprehensive plan and I know the you know the clean and green and the walkable affordable and and etc are you know from the vision in the comprehensive plan but one thing we've never done as a city is uh prioritized our priorities because sometimes they're in conflict with each other so it's it's sort of up in the air so if one thing um doesn't um doesn't further um the climate goals that we have and one thing does what do you pick I mean if they're if they're in conflict if they're not prioritized then they're all equal which means none of them are prioritized so um I don't know just for your consideration yep that um yeah thank you Barb would also like to make okay Barb's comment on that yes go ahead just about the bike rack you know there's an item there to examine our investment policy to match climate action resolution so that that seems like a really important thing to do but at the last pension advisory committee we asked we had asked the sei representative to look into that for us and what he what he said was that our current allocation if you look at the total portfolio is just over one percent that you can directly tie somehow to um you know oil companies or you know non-renewable resources so to speak right and that compared to other funds they tend to range in the three percent area so he goes and the other problem is that um a lot of the funds that it's invested in are spread out and hard to actually identify and even some companies which are pumping oil are also engaged in renewables so it's it's not easy to be able to isolate that exact percentage but he said from what they can tell it's just over one percent so I mean that is on the bike rack because I don't think there's a lot we can do about that right now we have to do but it's just something to know about so well and you're on that committee and yeah you ask those questions right at least we did ask the question uh-huh got any answer okay someone else wanted to speak yes barb service barb service you're up although she put that in the chat and now I'm not seeing her on here he's right above Megan well on the on the big screen I don't know about your screen excuse me barb no that's about Brit well maybe not okay can you hear me yes we can hear you okay good um I don't doesn't matter if you can see me as long as you can hear me um I uh I had this all set on my computer to be able to comment a little more articulately and the tech is here and my computer is on pieces on the table so um but I had a couple of comments in the affordable and community strong the parks and open space I certainly understand recreation and park and natural resources I would suggest that the common area and dogs committee should somehow be consulted in that process as we plan parks whether we think about it or not there are going to be people with dogs and um I think that that needs to be part of the master planning process when we look at Hubbard um when we look at any of the other open spaces um so I would strongly encourage you um I'm glad that Holly is there and she's links with that committee but I think it would be helpful to have some sort of a notation that they need to be included in that there also was an item and I'm like I said I don't have it in front of me but where Wheeler park is in parentheses after the phrase dog park I would suggest that you remove Wheeler park that parenthetical comment just because I think it confuses the intent of the sentence which is really to look at at dog parks and dog spaces in both public and private areas um I read it as being a little bit limiting so that's my comment about the dog related stuff I also want to comment about walkable and I have said this to the committee my perception is that the bike and ped committee is really a bike committee it is not a ped committee and as one who walks all of this city um I hope that there will be careful consideration given to pedestrian issues um around the city as we expand that it is a wonderful place to walk it is sometimes really difficult as I nearly get run over by a bicyclist and so I think as we look at those kind of shared spaces please remember that bike ped does include those people who walk thanks thank you okay we finished with this item for the moment all righty thank you I would love a vote to approve so we can have a final version okay I'm happy to Helen can I say one more thing I'm sorry you may I this is what I should have said first I want to commend Jesse and the council and the leadership team for this document it really does lay out in a really nice clear way whether we like all of the pieces of it I think the process um was much more transparent and you all are to be committed for that and I should have said that first I'm sorry I'm a little distracted by this tech issue at home so thank you for the work that it took to get this document ready for everybody to see and to use as a a working document for the future thank you thanks Betty did you want to say something I've got a yeah um I just had because I've got to start a public hearing in about a minute okay I just had a quick question how would a committee have input or be identified Barb just mentioned it um on one of these um these strategies uh if you're if the committee's not identified in there as um to be included in either seeking information um how would what a committee how would a committee be involved if they're not there um I think the okay well you know how do we go about doing that when we don't know what the issue is it may be something that's related to um our committee but we may not be aware of it as an issue okay so um Betty one of the next step or the next step in this process once it's approved by the council is to distribute this document to all committees um so they have an understanding of what the council has approved and then of course if they're they want to align their work to approve priority they are welcome to do so um and then next you know in six months when we pick this back up of course the committees will go through a process of providing feedback again as well okay thank you you're welcome so um Jesse you'd like a motion to approve this yes I'd move that we approve the city's FY 2022 prior policy priorities and strategies document second okay are you ready for that vote okay all in favor signify by saying aye aye okay so that's been approved thank you good work okay I know I'm a dork about it but I really appreciate it well you know this is great and oh I didn't need to do that um so next item is holding a public hearing on the tax incremental finance districts substantial change request um huh it says it was warned for 7 p.m. yep that's fine as long as you do it after 7 it's fine oh okay we're a few minutes late I'm sorry so we need a motion to go into a public hearing are we going to hear from you first no either either way yeah well let's move into a public hearing uh second second all in favor aye so we are in a public hearing on the um tiff changes substantial change and Alana Blanchard is here good evening Alana Blanchard community development director um I'm just going to provide a brief overview of the tiff district and um give you some of the highlights of the substantial change request that's been um developed I also have one typo that I wanted to mention um but hopefully I will keep this brief um so essentially this updates can I just ask you do you are you uncomfortable taking your mask off so that we can hear you sure I think you're far enough away and you have a a gentle voice so sorry so and I can speak louder um I think that the sound doesn't actually go back to the stage it just goes behind me so so um so this request uh essentially updates um the project list uh for that's approved to be tiff district financed within the city center tiff district the time the project timeline um the costs um as well as the revenue projection for the tiff district uh and um there's a lot that goes into that and I will not go into that in great gory detail but it is all in the document so uh the list of um infrastructure projects uh is being amended um to remove the parking garage the stormwater and wetland mitigation um uh the um sorry I have them right here um um I say these so many times um uh the uh urban park and festival streets um and then also the recreation center um and so when we look at these projects removing the projects and updating the development um within that's projected to occur within the district um the overall tiff district cost of projects changes from 97 million to 62 million and the tiff district portion of that changes from 54 million to 29 million um so it does reduce the overall debt tiff district debt that the city um is projecting that it would take out um and then the estimated federal funds that the city would receive is uh just under 18 million and the estimated city funds is over um is around 16 million um while there's a lot of changes in terms of the investment and in terms of the pace of development the overall estimated value of the tiff district is actually very similar um so in the original plan it was projected at uh 311 million and it's now projected at 307 million so at the end of the life of the tiff district um a similar value economic value would still be provided um to both the city and the state now would be reflected on the grand list correct okay and that's where that number fits in yeah okay but for the nonprofit buildings i mean are those are those property values at 100 of what they would normally be or is it just that the tax their tax just the tax is different that's all the tax rate is different on those buildings but right and we we so there's very i think this building is the main nonprofit building that is estimated that will be are projected to be built within the tiff district so we don't have we don't anticipate other nonprofit buildings being developed within the tiff district that may occur but we don't have them at the moment we also anticipated in the prior in the 2015 financing plan at that time there was a lot of discussion about the rick marcott central school property being redeveloped or some infill development being developed on that property and that would have changed that property from a nonprofit to a for-profit taxable property um so that has been removed from the projection so on page nine i have three bullet points that are uh related to the development of increment and i just wanted to point out because this while there are um several uh typos that i'm correcting that are generally not substantive in nature um this typo uh the first one is a stray leftover from the 2015 plan and so um i'm deleting it and that is it basically says that the increment is a result of public private partnerships and while generally the entire tiff district is a public private partnership it doesn't relate to a specific development agreement so i wanted to remove that first bullet in order to not make that can or help remove any confusion on that issue oh so that whole bullet is eliminated okay so it does leave um three major drivers which is that south brillington city center llc um managed by south brillington realty and formerly the months and property has a specific developer that um is actively developing their entire site um we as i mentioned earlier at this the rick markott's uh central school site has been removed um and then the overall pace of development has been considerably slowed and then some development has been removed additional development has been removed um and then the last point that i wanted to um make uh is that um is that this oh the the accounting for this project on the tiff district side so not for the city funds but for the tiff funds is over the entire life of the tiff district so as we collect increment it goes into one column we're paying it out of another column and at the end of 20 years we're going to true up the two columns or earlier if we're like getting a ridiculous amount of increment to the extent to which the state would like us to return some to the state prior to the end of the district but generally that we will be looking at it over a 20-year period over the life of the time over the time during which we're collecting increment and um and not on an annual basis and that's an important point because if you look at table um six qa you will see that in some years we're paying out more than we're receiving and we're in fact carrying that debt for several years um but that at the end we would use the increment in future years for those other years i had a are you and that's sort of done okay i had a question and i just want to be reminded about why one of the um projects that's off the list is the stormwater and wetland mitigation and um just remind me was that that center part and was going to have a bridge that connected um market street to the park yeah so so and um if this had been more of a large development agreement um there there was an opportunity early on with the development of the market street plan and the and the looking in the private sector looking at their site for a joint stormwater pond a single stormwater pond that sort of served all of the public and private infrastructure together and in addition we have an offsite wetland mitigation site that was purchased for for the development of city center the good rich site because that wasn't there wasn't there did not end up being a large sort of intertwined development agreement and so because of that the the offsite mitigation site was not required and um and as part of the wet of the mitigation not only the offsite but you can also use um in order to mitigate wetland impacts to wetlands you can also restore uh areas like um the existing wetland on the site so those were two parts of the wetland mitigation that we had proposed to be funded through tip district financing but because there wasn't a sort of large grand agreement um we did not proceed with those projects so then I just want to make sure that the mitigation is there for the proposed development now and going into the future correct in terms of the wetlands and right stormwater right so the so the wetland mitigation um for the existing so the south berlington city center llc property has an act 250 has a i'm sorry does it is it's not act 250 but it does have a army corps of engineer and an a and a and as each individual project comes through and receives a permit from the state does receive a wetland permit and so though the impacts to that are um are um the private sector is entirely responsible for addressing those impacts and and so they have permitted that on their own and will be um funding those on their own so not through the tip district oh okay yeah i understand thank you rock are there other questions people have or comments tim you're no okay no megan um not off hand i did catch a couple of typos but it sounds like you're on the melana if you want to send me any i'm happy to receive that okay i just i see the detail and i just want to appreciate the years and years of work and the calculations that have gone into this and being conservative from the beginning has always given me great comfort as we've moved ahead in these projects so just thank you for being the lead on this big project thank you yeah for sure tom i just remind we already saw this about a month or so ago so this is just coming back to what we all agreed to are the public is i'm very interested at the public yes the public i'm going to ask them once we get our questions or comments made then i'm going to turn it to the public okay well so when does this go before the go ahead when does this go before the permut economic development uh so they would receive it um probably this week if once approved and um they would then consider it in december in december does that is it going to require a meeting between you and them or uh so that yes they will have a meeting and invite the city is it one day meeting or two days i'm hoping it's a one day meeting hope it's a one hour meeting yeah and then we're doing this with winewski and everybody else that has a tiff uh so i think based on the experience of other tiff district reviews during uh based on their experience with the state audit they're recommending that as each district approaches their state audit that they do a substantial change in order to align the plan with what's happening on the ground have other um cities made substantial changes as well i'm sure they have but yeah because as you as you get into the process you find out that what you thought you had to do you didn't have to do what you have to do things you didn't think you had to do that partner anymore and stuff didn't materialize and other things did and so right yes this is expected yes yeah and if i could just add to that um alana led our uh annual tiff site visit with vebsi a couple of weeks ago and went over some of this in concept so their staff and a board member has already been briefed about what is coming before them okay so do we have any comments from the public we only have one public member i mean in the audience that i can see so if there's no more comments um all right i just want to you know piggyback on on megan's comments this um i mean the numbers have come in as you've predicted which is great we haven't pretty much so kudos um you know i feel more and more confident about this when i always feel confident but um or optimistic or enthusiastic or whatever the right uh adjective it is but um it's proven to be a good process and um it's working so to some of the naysayers that were originally like this will never work and um you know i think we you have proven them wrong and it continues to progress at a great um a great way and thank god we didn't decide to build a parking garage first i remember the business community was pushing for that then they would do whatever they were going to do once we had a parking garage yes times do change okay so if there's no um comments from the public i guess we can close the public hearing i'll entertain a motion to do that we'll close the public hearing second second all in favor hi hi and so our next um action is to um approve this right that's is that you've had some real language in here do you want us to use that let me find it who's found it at the front i don't know what page it's on wasn't in the beginning is that the language you want okay so that motion has been made second and seconded so if there's no further discussion all in favor signify by saying i i i so you have your approval thank you very much thank you very much thank you a lot of work but you do it very well you make it look easy which is nice for us okay so now we're moving on to item eight nine excuse me a discussion on the land development regulation amendments data requests and processes as i understand this paul what you'd really are asking us as the council is to let you know what additional information we might need um prior to and for the um conversation with you on the 15th yep that's exactly right paul connor planning and zoning director um so uh as is laid out in the memo as a timeline and as discussed last week um we're working with uh jessica the chair of the planning commission to prepare a uh full presentation and material supporting materials for the council on december 6th um there are some uh piece of the puzzle that we're already putting together updating some of the numbers that were um presented back in the spring around environmental protection standards uh we were waiting until there was a draft that was to the council because it's fairly labor intensive to run those numbers and not a good use of taxpayer money to do those multiple times over um and we're preparing some additional graphics uh to help illustrate um what is in here but um really tonight the main purpose as you said is to understand are there information points data uh subjects of emphasis that you feel that you would like for uh jessica and myself to focus on and make sure that there's a lot of attention to it questions that you might want to um have us be prepared um to uh respond to so that you can best make your decisions over over time after that and then um uh is there anything about the timeline and process that you'd like to reconsider um and give some additional thought to so we can be prepared so that's really what we're looking for this evening and thank you for the opportunity to engage with you on these jessica is also here virtually tonight uh listening in so okay um comments or questions people have thoughts tom sure uh so i just have three and i'll just throw them all out there two uh the first one i don't necessarily think falls to you and jessica but the first one just i would really like to see for the december 6 timeline piece says possible executive session on legal liabilities i just love to have an executive session on legal liabilities uh given the legal concerns and documentation that has been shared with the council from different uh stakeholders so that that's definitely of great interest to me i want to ask some questions similar to the warnings and guidance we were given about three and a half years ago right at the start before we implemented interim zoning i would like to speak to our lawyers about that the second one which would fall between over to paul and to jessica i really want to understand the conservation pud requirement um it just seemed like it took a a different turn about two or three months ago the beginning of interim zoning and throughout it i was always supportive and still am for the conservation pud option but at some point it shifted to then be a requirement in the southeast quadrant and not the whole city so i just really want to understand the planning commission's thinking on the on the conservation pud requirement because that causes me some concern based on some of the the documentation i've seen from different sources the last one which i don't know if this is really what the planning commission has tackled of yet but it's dominant in my mind and maybe you can tell me if this is something you could present on or have some thoughts i'd like to see with specific focus to the secu which from my understanding is where the conservation pud's and some of the expanded nrp zones are being applied that's where i'd like to understand the impact on our grand list and ultimately the overall housing stock that will be at maximum capacity over the next five 10 20 year horizon relative to what it had been prior to these proposed changes and similar to if there was an option of the option for a traditional pud or a conservation pud so i i know that we have kept though might be a surprise to some taxpayers we have kept our tax base uh with the grand list growth at a reasonable pace a more sustainable base over the years because as that document from that study by kevin doran's charge to john stewart showed that additional housing stock has helped in the municipal spread of the the uh the costs of our infrastructure to our taxpayers i just want to understand how much less housing uh these rules will will afford the community in the years to come those are my three areas of concern thank you for letting me state them i have one just to piggy back on the last one and it's sort of the flip side of that um and i don't know if you can do it with a map i know there's the map that shows all of the four acres and greater lots in the city some of which you actually could develop could be developed potentially mine is not yet it's in that pink thing because i have a deed that doesn't allow my lot or my neighbors to develop anything unless we both agree and that's highly unlikely just in terms of where our houses sit on the property so that's kind of one piece of the potential development opportunity out there i don't know how many others there are but i'm just trying to get a handle on if all of the potential development sites were developed relative to the new pud density how many houses is that or how many can we estimate that what what is the growth of housing potentially in the city when you look at four acres or more of land that's um can be developed so so you you you would like to have some scenarios like possible scenarios yeah like okay if these yeah all these pink areas i think it was pink on that map were developed to the max allowable how many houses is that how many units would there be yeah for like just just the southeast quadrant four acre plus unit uh parcels you mean or or i was thinking of the city but i could focus on the southeast quadrant i just don't have a handle on i mean i you know i read and you've conserved more land so that can't be developed and then you have the conservation puds and the whatever the other pud is the traditional traditional neighborhood yeah traditional neighborhood pud um and i'm just curious because people you know you just made this statement that we don't have enough housing kind of you know so what what does it really look like i mean people say these things and i don't know if they're factual they're a statement of a perspective or point of view so i if you can do that i so both of those are really excellent and interesting um questions and challenges the the first and and we'll think about how to best go about doing that um two things that just sort of come to mind in terms of how we would um take on something like that one is um to councillor chitin and sort of looking at today versus the future one of the things that we would need to i think account for is to what extent have for the last five 10 20 plus years um development that has taken place taken full advantage of what is um potentially allowable because there's what zoning could theoretically allow and then there's what's actually happening and so sort of controlling for that variable because it can be a very widespread um but let us think on that a little bit and then i i think we did do leading up to the last comprehensive plan a build out analysis of the city it's a pretty substantial undertaking to do sort of a full spread one but we can think about maybe these four acre parcels um you know one of one of the tricky things with it is that some decisions have to be made sort of at the putting together an estimate um of especially with redevelopment what choice is somebody going to make so for example you know to take the area across the street from us the university mall could have hundreds and hundreds of dwelling units or maybe they'll choose not to be residential for a long time in the future so there's there's some variability in there similarly at the other end of the of the spectrum under vermont law any single family home could have an accessory apartment um so in that range and you know something that um the regulations will be making a little bit simpler to do pursuant to the new vermont law in theory there could be um however number of single family homes three or four thousand doubled as accessory apartments now i don't think we should we wouldn't project that every single one is going to but thinking about how we how we characterize it in a way that is um respectful of of the request which is to understand what the new rules do but not sort of assuming extremes of every single person's going to use every single stitch of land that they could so let us think on that a little bit but that's that's helpful but you know people have talked about this balance between development and conservation and so um you know what what are we talking about in terms of what's the reality and then the second thing is probably because it's me being lazy but can you um clearly show what the arrow would report suggested and what these ldr's deliver and to what extent i just like to see that kind of on a on a piece of paper or something absolutely yeah okay matt uh yes thank you a couple things one is similarly i'd like to know how much lay in that is currently developable is now conserved um secondly to back to reiterate council chitin's point you know we've had testimony here one week ago we've had letters written to us suggesting that what you put together is a taking i'd like to have a deep dive from our legal team to determine whether or not these policies put in place are in fact legal that's what you meant about legal liabilities okay and lastly these these these land development regulations are now vested for 150 days that gets us to what april 5th april 6th the timeline is incredibly aggressive especially if it's not aggressive if we just vote them up or vote them down but if we are to alter to change to modify to edit any of these regulations land development regulations we need more than a week to run it by paul and his team to run it by the seven volunteers i think that the january 10th date as a possible vote should not be should be edited so people don't think that we could actually possibly vote in the 10th i don't see that possible at all unless we're just doing this and that and i'm not in favor of that i'm in favor modifying as we see fit okay tim um everything that's been said before us so but i mean so i i'm not going to make any large comments other than echoing the things the things that people have spoken about right now i mean philosophically i'm not going to go into that right now because uh i'll save that for another meeting right when we actually start having those discussions you know with planning commission at the next meeting and uh but um i think it's important for everybody to understand that you know we uh there is a finite amount of land in the southeast quadrant especially in south burlington and there are large swaths of it that are being developed now are going to be developed and the planning commission has produced a seven oh decision on a set of proposed regulations which seek to make the best use of that remaining property right for all everybody in south burlington so um i i think this is i think the schedule is good for moving forward and we need to get uh advice from our uh our legal team but i don't think we have any issues other than just ironing out some small details in my mind and i may be wrong but megan are you done thank you yeah thank you um i don't need an excessive amount of information either and i want to thank you for putting up on the web all of those helpful two page explanations paul they're very helpful um and i i would like to know for the you know where the neighborhoods are to occur the new neighborhoods um and designed to be walkable i would i would like to have some kind of understanding of um what walkable meant to the planning commission when they came down on the final language walkable to to wear to go where um just to get exercise or or to actually um go somewhere and i i'm assuming that also means bikeable or um i would hope also access to to transit um so i think that you know if we look at the um that that zoning change just south of the interstate on hindsburg road that that r7 and neighborhood commercial um i i find that to be compelling case for for that kind of housing that would allow um new residents to to access basically anything and everything um with without too much travel and or difficulty and so how how does that um compare to to the other possible neighborhoods that will you know be developed over the years to come and just like helen said i wanted to know uh how the the land development regulations stand up to the arrow wood recommendations since that is uh you know they they came forward with um i think actual maps that i haven't seen necessarily um but i would be very interested to to know how the you know those maps would uh jive with with the land development regulations as the planning commission has has issued them to us thank you okay great thank you any other parting i i suspect if someone thinks of something else they could contact you and jesse and is that okay i mean not the day before the meeting obviously but um you know in the next 48 hours or 72 hours if something comes to your mind that would be helpful on on that point yeah um you you could saw that note from sandi dually i share her question so i hope that that will be elaborated on but that's in the conservation pud discussion rosen greco wanted to say something uh yes and it's not anything to do with the specifics of the ldr's but rather a comment on something that tom brought up um and it had to do with the the study done by john steward a while back and uh unless i'm misreading his study it was about municipal taxes and the the taxes that are brought in but he never included the school in those assessments and we all know that the costs of the school are the overwhelming costs uh that drive up our taxes so to to not include school costs and of course bringing more children in um you know requires more facilities more teachers more school bus drivers more schools um but to ignore that whole part of the city doesn't tell a true story about what the cost of increase in population is so i point that out to you that that study it only shows a small portion of uh where our taxes go so thank you thank you okay any other thoughts you have enough homework yes okay we'll enjoy the holidays all right thank you for your time just do you have any uh comments or thoughts no i was just here to listen and think about how to prepare thank you okay thank you all righty so oh yes michael me tag i'll come here um the question of walkability i think is not it was not developed in the LDRs i believe it's in the comprehensive plan that south berlington should be walkable uh so uh we shouldn't confuse those do or conflate them okay well i i was just thinking about the civic you had civic space you had recreation space so i just wanted to you you clearly thought you know as you adapted these puds about having places where you know where these neighborhoods would not just would not just be you know islands or um what i want to call them dormitories right that that that there would actually be a life there and so i just wanted to hear more about how that pud was envisioned you know and and ideally also to think about uh just like i said with regard to the development south of i-89 and heinsberg road the accessibility to to city center or to a major medical campus or to you know any number of services uh within proximity to that area okay thank you thanks everyone all right let's move on to item 10 this is discussing the vermont attorney general's opioid settlement and consider whether to participate in the negotiated opioid settlements and collin mcneil is going to lead us on this welcome welcome thank you good evening um so back in september uh the vermont attorney general uh assistant attorney general joshua diamond came before you to speak about a settlement that the state had reached in and many other states had reached with um some manufacturers and a distributor of of opioid drugs and it's a nationwide settlement and they were asking what i believe to be about time municipalities in the state uh to to join in on the settlement and the more than more municipalities that joined in on the settlement the more money that the state was eligible to receive um and if the state's joined in in the settlement or if the community's joined in on the settlement they would eligible be eligible to receive some of the funds uh from the nationwide settlement um so i'm bringing it back before you um the timeline that's been set up is for the um for us to sign up on the settlement or not sign up is january 2nd um so i'm bringing it back before you uh to see if if there's more information you need or if you're ready to to uh to make a decision on whether to sign up for the statewide settlement or not as you can see i i put together a memo that i provided to you um and you know uh there i did some math with the assistance of the the attorney general and as as we laugh about it it's two attorneys doing math which might might not be the best thing but it's uh it's a rough rough calculations um so you'll see in the memo that memo that um if the city were to sign be a part of the settlement um from the distributors distributors it would get approximately 340 000 over 18 years and from the manufacturer it would get 78 000 over approximately 10 years uh those are those are rough numbers but that is what the the city would be entitled to receive for for opioid abatement purposes over the course of this the alternative if in analyzing whether we want to participate or not is that if we don't participate we don't get that money um and one thing to consider is that if we elect to participate in the settlement we'll likely be having to sign several documents such as general release documents that would waive any claims that we would have against um the manufacturer and distributors who are involved in the settlement uh and we wouldn't be able to bring an independent claim so uh that that's another component to think about if you want to bring an independent claim or or not tom so i'm generally inclined to support this um i would say i don't see value in us as a city going it alone lawyers are expensive uh very much so my one question that could factor into wanting to either consider more time or hear more perspective i'm assuming that this settlement is is conditional on enough of municipalities actually signing on to this do we have any inclination or any read that this is mostly palatable to a majority of municipalities in vermont and elsewhere or do you have the sense at all any sense whatsoever whether or not this is hitting a lot of resistance in conversations just like this in my conversations with the attorney general they didn't indicate that there was any resistance being received uh but at the same time he didn't they didn't notify me whether it's being received positively or not so i i don't have the information to answer your question so could i yeah i know um anecdotally from conversations with managers that these conversations are happening and other elect with other elected bodies and being received well i haven't heard of any yet that have not um been received well but that's anecdotal it's not the full 10 municipalities they're being considered um matt you had a yeah i'm in favor of this but uh quick question do you know the answer is 418 thousand dollars paid out over 18 years various stages is put into our account in s in an escrow account or is it what do we drop on it when we have something that fits the terms of the settlement it does it gain interest do we put it in the pension in an investment vehicle do you know those answers i don't know how that would work i mean i think we'd probably have to set up i would just be guessing but i mean it's it has strings attached so it has to be used for certain purposes so i imagine it wouldn't just be able to be deposited in the general fund it would have to be deposited in and when it does come in probably an account to be specifically used for abatement services i i if if the tobacco settlement is any a good example the state got quite a bit of money but it came in on an annual basis they did not give us the whole settlement and then you can you know invest it and make twice as much money and spend it all in three years if you want right it was an annual i think it was annual but you got your annual allotment within the year maybe it was two payments i can't remember that yeah that makes sense so i would guess that's what this is going to be too yeah i thought that when we had this this discussion before with representative from the office that that there was something like you know we we really couldn't use the funds directly we would want to have them directed back to either the state or you know whatever entities are that provide those abatement services whether it's the howard center or whatever i i was under the impression that that we would we would want to participate to get the money but we actually wouldn't get the money somebody else would get the money to use correctly but i don't i don't remember the details of that this is what we get if i'm not mistaken this is the 15 percent that comes to the city the states get keeping 70 percent is that right yeah that is correct but this is the money that we would have authority to use if we for example were to deem that we need better bus facilities a better bus house for the methadone clinic or something like that then the city within some parameters could use these funds how we see fit to address the opioid crisis or we could organize with um and like give it to the howard for more services to have another person um mental health and that's substance abuse kind of right that my recollection of that conversation was that um mr. daemon was saying that we don't have to individually be praying we can pull with others and support you know like pass the funds on to howards and so the initial conversations we've had and very very tangentially with our neighbors as well is is this assist assist um a fund financially sustainable funding source for the community outreach team to actually expand their services so we know that those are the employees not our employees but employees we are paying for to partner with our staff to address these emerging needs in our community is this a way we take that by my calculations in the first 10 years it's about 26 000 and offset basically the general fund to to fund that added service for our neighbors but would that be abatement though i mean i think that's considered abatement because well i mean we'd have to go through the the legal yeah hoops for it but it's addressing the immediate impact on residents in our community sending those outreach workers out to cross that bridge and we get to it i also recall that the the attorney general speaking that you could potentially pool your money with other municipalities to make it a you know maybe have more of a direct impact together right in the state still going to do something with their 70 percent which might come to south burlington with through one way or another to the Howard center okay would you like me to make the motion that's in front of me yes please do so i move that the city of south burlington participate in the national opioid settlements in the lawsuit brought by the state of Vermont against pharmaceutical distributors mckesson cardinal health and amerisource bergen and pharmaceutical manufacturer jens and pharmaceuticals incorporated and its parent company johnson and johnson and authorized the city manager or her designee to register on the national opioid settlement website to participate in the settlements and authorized the city council chair to execute all formal and binding documents required for participation in the settlements second is there any further discussion megan do you have a comment no okay no i didn't want to i forgot to ask you on that okay you're ready for the vote all in favor signify by saying i hi hi great okay thank you thank you thank you call um reports from counselors on committee assignments did any committee meet nope naturally airports meeting wednesday it's always after okay um but i will tell you that we're working on um whether it will be um accepted or not but we're working on the job description for the for the airport director so we've added it's changed since the last time well we wanted to see what it looked like and potentially make some suggestions in the process and that makes sense so i don't know if we'll have any um participation actually but we'll see anywhere on the former director's lawsuit oh did he is he well there was there was a news item that there was that he was suing to get his job back but i don't know what the status is now whether i wasn't even aware of so but maybe we'll talk about it at the meeting i don't know on that comment on that topic i'd love it if that job description and the hr policies that i heard the burlington city council talk about wanting to amend and revise i think that aviation director since it's really the regional air space should it should solicit on an annual 360 degree review basis feedback from the affected communities of the use of the airport i would looking back on my eight years if i had the opportunity on an annual basis to submit a written document with my feedback about the airport management and that would be factored into their in a private discrete manner not in a public manner but used in their hr file i think that would have gone a long way and could go a long way in in addressing a lot of the valid concerns and municipal interests around that asset but i'll leave it at that well i i did recommend a 360 once in a while i don't think you want to do it every time but it's a wonderful way to review in a very holistic way but it's a lot of time so you really don't need to do it in my opinion every year but anyway okay so if there's no other committee assignment reports is there any other business small yes so it's always small uh one of the items on the bike rack was abandoned properties right and we know we have at least one i was just curious how many we actually have we we had two close to each other spear street endorses treat but the spear street one has been torn down now to make way for spear meadows right the other one is paul hildes house and the yellow house and it's disappearing quickly underneath the vegetation um my wife stopped by that property to take some small cuttings from you know from one of the trees and and looked inside and um everyone has been busted out people have been taken spray paint and and pretty much have tagged the entire inside of the building and thrown all the furniture out through the windows and so it it's a complete disaster and it and the barn is falling down so i'm just just asking that question who owns this property are what are they paying in taxes is it is it the full value of the property whatever condition it's in i'm just just curious you know and what what are they waiting for i mean this is a prime piece of property that could be redeveloped and you know can can we as the city do we have any influence in that process i know that's hard to do sometimes but you know i it just uh it's a it's a disaster uh luckily it's fairly well hidden by vegetation at this point but so anyway claim it through eminent domain and we could have another dog park i share councillor barrett's concern over this particular property and i know we don't have a effect of power over that property but i think inquiries and asking questions start to prod things so i i don't know if the manager has any capacity to do so but i think it's well worth looking at the danger that this property poses to the neighboring community from a public safety perspective oh yeah it's not fenced off or anything yeah so a quick quick story a real quick story because do you have some information yeah just briefly i do know that the one of the air has reached out to our planning and zoning department within the last couple of months oh really i'm asking about demolition permit and what those costs look like and what what that looks like so i don't yeah right i don't know if there's been any follow-up conversations since then um i think i made a comment about whether or not there could be some type of uh restorative you know project that could be done um because i think they were worried about costs associated with demolition so um happy to follow up with planning and zoning if there's a contact there that we could we could leverage cool thanks sometimes these houses are um practice fires right i don't i don't know if this one's too close to anything else but i think it's yeah but all the time when you ski that might not agree with some of our climate change so so the the quick story is that where i used to live in burlington uh in the old north end there was a house next to where i used to live that for basically 30 years was uninhabited right the people left and and it wasn't until i attended a meeting at the public works in burlington with some other neighbors to come because they were contemplating um and and they actually were starting to levy fines of owners who had properties that were unoccupied especially you know residential housing right and and we sat there and said look for 30 years this house has been unoccupied has fallen in a disrepair you know is you know it's bad for the neighborhood it's a lack of residents residential housing and and neighbor after neighbor sat there and and and criticized the the owners who were doing nothing about it right and within a couple of years the house was sold right it was completely completely rehabbed and now it's a nice residence and it's got it's a it's a rented out building but it's in good shape and you know it just it took some pressure but it finally paid off so everybody's got a different situation but some it sounds like they may have their time have come for them to make a decision too so that's good good well encouraged please so Helen if you wanted to go back to the stormwater issue tom de petro is on the line and can talk to you about it quickly if you would like you want to hear a little bit from tom about the stormwater it's not warned but i think him hearing that the council seems to have interest in understanding better the citywide implications of the 2020 rules makes sense okay so tom if you're well thank you very much for hi folks can you hear me all right yes we can great okay good yes i caught the end of some of the discussion earlier i was on for another item and i overheard a bit of it but i can give a quick overview about what's going on i mean specific to the two neighborhoods uh legend on overlook is that what council would like sure just an overview i think the specific question tom was there there's a december first deadline that folks are concerned about um and what that is and is there in for me is there yeah and i think there it sounds as if the public or those people in the those neighborhoods are confused and not clear about what needs to happen or you know how to partner with you what they're signing up for and and how they're competing for grant funds yeah all right sure i can address all those i think um quickly enough for you so the december first deadline is actually a state of vermont permit deadline um you've probably heard us talk about sort of the new state stormwater permit it's called the three dash 90 50 permit it created these three acre sites around the state um and so that's what the deadline is there's an initial no i or a notice of intent on application form that needs to be submitted uh i there's 46 of these sites if i recall around the city um and folks are working on getting their said their n o i's in uh these two neighborhoods are special in that they don't have homeowner associations that can sign off so in order um let me step back for just a second our involvement here is to try to help them get these applications in uh that's what we're doing at the moment so uh dave wheeler the city stormwater superintendent has been in touch with these folks uh and has done outreach trying to reach individual homeowners to talk about kind of why there's this deadline the fact that maybe they have a state storm permit in the first place they weren't aware of uh so so that's the deadline piece and i'll stop there for questions before i get into the the money piece what's your dog's name that's obby is he back there yeah he's listening in it's a puppy right no he's 13 oh an old dog oh yeah well they have tricked too um you can't see the white in his beard from there i guess yeah um yeah tom so tom i'd love not necessarily related to the december 1st hearing but bob britt raised a notion that i'd love to hear your thoughts on not tonight but maybe at some point in the future but with all the different he proposed that with all the different communities around the city having to uh the neighborhoods and the neighborhood associations having to come up with monies to get up to the 2020 code you wanted to see if there was a shared pooling across either the city or some other mechanisms where it comes back onto the or is paid for by the stormwater assessments that are are signed across the entire tax base so that's not what i'm looking for you to respond to tonight but i'm interested to hear what how you would think of different a fair assessment methods for the rising chorus of people addressing their stormwater issues great no certainly um and i guess i point to the ordinance we recently updated the ordinance with a cost sharing policy um and so we have that kind of in writing it's a little confusing admittedly but it tries to cover a lot of different scenarios so that everybody with impervious surface that's covered by these permits is sort of pitching in um but to get back to the the grant piece so back in mid may council approved us uh to obtain an srf loan uh it was an amount of six hundred and seventy five thousand dollars uh these are engineering funds that the state made available uh and that we were able to access as a municipality so that we could get projects ready for the infrastructure and ARPA money that is kind of on its way uh so we have been working on that and we've been working with whoever we can really to use that grant funding up uh to get the engineering done uh so that was the grant piece uh so we're trying to get legional and overlook and a number of others and there's 12 total we've got in the queue right now that we're trying to get together to get agreements with in place to kind of do the engineering um and then there's no great detail on construction phase funding that'll be available once the engineering's done but we are hopeful uh that we will see some of that coming soon and more detail on that right so I'll just note one final thing there uh that December 1st deadline like I said that's a state of Vermont permit deadline and um originally in the state of Vermont the permit that was written indicated that these folks were going to have to form some sort of association to deal with stormwater uh myself and mostly my co-worker Dave or again our stormwater superintendent has worked closely with um DEC staff to make it such that they're not forcing these neighborhoods to form an association the city is taking on some of this responsibility on their behalf but sort of the the compromise there was they would sign off they being the homeowners would sign off on this NOI like I mentioned previously so who's the hold sorry go ahead so Tom who's the holder of the permit if they don't have a homeowners association is it the city it runs with the land so that development was approved it covers you know however many acres of area so much impervious surface was approved to be built and so it covers the houses the lots the road at this point the city has accepted um and that's sort of where the cost sharing that uh Councillor Chittenden was asking about kind of comes in it's it's an impervious space calculation of the way we've always done it in South Burlington how many homeowners are we talking about here who would you know be questioning what this December 1st deadline is about I you know that's a great question and a level of detail I'd have to defer to Dave it's I want I'm going to make a wild guess I want to say 60 or so at leginal and it um overlook about the same but I can follow up with that I don't know off hand like so there's 46 permits but that covers hundreds of properties so we do do we know what to what extent you know construction requirements will be needed for you know after to meet these the permit requirements that's we understand the standards that they're going to have to meet so to what level they'll have to treat the stormwater we don't yet have a firm figure of cost or exactly what's going to have to be built uh that's what we're going to spend the engineering money or hoping to spend the engineering money on to to help nail down and again the the permit issue is one that we don't want to see these folks have a clouded clouded title issue so that after december 1st if they've not followed their NOI a real estate attorney might do a title search when somebody's going to sell a home and um that could raise an issue with the seller where they come back and say hey there's this expired state permit they didn't file their application on 12-1 and and that is going to be a real issue coming up here um and I guess I want to stress very much so this is not an issue that the city caused uh we're just trying to help people not enter into that situation because it's it's unfortunate so tell me what happens if some homeowners don't sign this um letter and and others do with regard to stormwater you just talked about one scenario where an attorney would see the flag and raise it at a closing what would happen with regard to the the payment of the costs and all of this other aspect here on the front end yeah um I think Dave has been working very closely with the state I don't know that I have a solid answer to give you at this point we're just in trying to get it all worked out mode and seeing if we can get everybody to to sign on to these NOIs as the state's requiring um inevitably there's going to be some properties missing in these two cases like I said because there's no homeowner association that can do on their behalf um and hopefully we can identify kind of where those hangups are and work through them so has Dave met with some of the homeowners I mean we can't really have a a meeting here before December 1st so um and yes he's been doing quite a bit of outreach um we've had web meetings earlier here it was late summer um and you know those get attended not everybody shows up uh but we've hired out you know he went door to door um yeah and I know um he's spoken specifically uh with Mr. and Mrs. Britt and I didn't catch the other gentleman's name in legnol but I know he's Donald McDonald yeah so it's been very um individual you know one-on-one unfortunately uh it's taking a lot of time he was out there hand delivering letters recruiting people to help him hand him out to try to get the word out and get these documents the NOI documents out to everybody um and kind of fielding questions you know constantly he's getting a lot of phone calls I mean I don't know what else to do other than thank Dave and Tom for their efforts yeah there's an each away there's a path if there's not an each away it doesn't seem like there's a path a clear path you know right it's a lot of work for them all to the December 1st deadline is sounds like it's right now is is about preventing people from having title searches denied them the right to sell their property that's the first hurdle the second hurdle is the engineering and then the question is how much construction is needed and then how much is it going to cost and you know if you have an HOA you could do an assessment if you don't have an HOA how do you get individual homeowners to pay for it or change the legislation in january and the city yeah the city can also play a role with special assessments on certain areas I mean we have done that before have we not for butler farms about eight years ago so that would be through the city if you are in a certain area we would assess to pay for these things okay through the storm log utility I don't and I think Bob said they did that once and now they're concerned they thought they fixed it and now the regulations change and they need to do it again he wants to broaden the pool to have everybody that has this problem I'll pay into a big pool and then fix all the I think he wants the whole city yeah I mean you know well I mean I'm not saying I support either one of those right I think it's worth more conversation the question is what's the role of the responsibility versus these patches of land where people live that either do or don't have an HOA you know I mean how is that I don't know how to spell that out so okay well thank you you clarified a little bit I mean we still don't have a pathway forward for them other than to hopefully well I would I would I mean if you're talking with your constituents I would encourage them to get in touch with yeah Dave and Tom because I think Dave and Tom are doing all they can do on the city side to help neighbors comply with the state permit so I think that's yeah that's the best path forward I would agree the other paper at all has there been in do we do we have a little thing on the website I mean it might you know like pop up and here we know the address is so we could also do a mailer I mean is it incumbent on the city to send a mailer out on these things to get these neighborhoods sounds like they did door hangers yeah they went door sorry Tom was gonna say something oh actually yeah I can follow up with you and get more details on specifically what Dave had done to reach out to folks but yeah people have questions they could definitely reach out to us like I said we're just these two neighborhoods are a special case because they don't have the homeowner associations that the others do which is difficult and so I charge will avoid the confusion to get the message out and get people to understand because it's a common issue it's been a challenge but you know we're trying to work through it as best we can kind of on a one-on-one basis unfortunately we're forced to do and one more time is there a penalty if they sign this NOI after December 1st so in our discussions with DEC they've agreed that well they can use some enforcement discretion because they have confidence in South Burlington and all the work we've done previously we've got a pretty good track record and working through these things so they're not going to necessarily start enforcing on us but that's a separate issue from the title issue so if I was going to sell my home and the buyer see you know the attorney hey there's an expired stormwater permit they could scare that buyer away or he could ask for some sort of compensation to help pay for this future cost which is if you're for unknown it complicates those transactions and that's a totally separate thing last comment okay it just it's it's no more than just nole circle and pheasant woods it's also the second part of butler farm so ha butler farms is built to we have other residents that i've connected with the city manager and with tom is it butler farms or oak creek oak creek thank you the other half but that area so there's that's three neighborhoods and I'd love to get a better handle on how widespread this is across the whole city and what financing options we should be considering yeah because one one of the um residents said to me in an email I believe that they found out they were unable to create an HOA now I don't know what makes that impossible in a neighborhood but I think it's a hundred percent have to sign on right no I understand that but it may he this person suggest at least my reading of it was even if I got a hundred percent we can't create an HOA in our neighborhood because of some development requirement in which case we have a formal utility which would suffice that special assessment right maybe okay well thank you very much tom I appreciate you weighing in and all that you've done and hopefully we'll get the word out to this these homeowners that they need to call you or Dave I guess Dave again call Dave right call Dave yeah that's your advice okay we'll tell them that great thank you everybody have a good evening okay good night have a good Thanksgiving all right so that takes care of other business and then executive session for the purpose of discussing a pending contract negotiations and receive confidential attorney client communications regarding the same so I'd like to move that the council make a specific finding that premature general public knowledge of the council's discussion with its council about pending negotiations of labor relations agreements with employees would clearly place the city at a substantial disadvantage second all in favor hi hi and having found so having so found I now move that the council enter into executive session for the purpose of discussing pending negotiations of labor relations agreements with employees and receiving confidential attorney client communications inviting in Jesse Baker Andrew Bullduck and Colin McNeil second all in favor hi hi and we will adjourn our meeting upstairs no no action so no action is anticipated thank you and good night and happy Thanksgiving to everyone Ellen you oh okay I'll call you