 Hello, my name is Dolphicell, and welcome to the hybrid Ward 6 NPA meeting. I look to the welcome back fellow committee members, Mike Grady, Mary Ryder, Michelle Williams, and Nelson Martell. To start the meeting off, we're going to set a public forum on 10 minutes for a public forum. And the 10 minutes is for the public to chime in on anything that interests them or anything that they'd like to talk about. So, we're ready to open the floor to anybody that wants to chime in. We have Peter. Peter? Yeah, I just can't be there in person. I want to give a hearty shout out to Perry Freeman for no longer tinkering at the edges of municipal governance and taking on the very critical issue of prostitution, legalized prostitution in Burlington. It's a subject that has been lying in wait for a long, long time, and I, for one, am just delighted to see that come to the forefront of our local public attention. I think it's a very important issue, and if you take me seriously, you don't understand me. Okay, well, thank you. I'm so good in hearing. So, the second agenda, I don't know if I can hear the loudspeaker. Okay. Yeah, that would be perfect. So, do we have any viewers? No? I think that we don't have any more. I think the public comment is... Yeah, I was just, I was looking to see if we had our first guests of their own. So, if we went earlier, are they here? So, the next thing is the redistricting committee. So, we should maybe go ahead with that. Okay. So, we're going to end the public forum, and we're going to move right along with our meeting. So, first on the agenda is election of award six representative to the ad hoc committee on redistricting. Right. Thank you. Am I audible? Yeah, you can hear me. Okay. So, the steering committee put out a call for a volunteer to work on the ad hoc committee on redistricting. This is a call that was actually put out by the city council, and the awards in the city were charged with providing a volunteer to, from each ward, to the ad hoc committee. And we put out a request on Front Porch Forum. We got a really good response from that. But mainly, we had somebody who wanted to volunteer without conditions. We had a handful of people who were willing to participate, unless only if no one else would do it. So, I want to just say a shout out to those who were willing to do it if no one else stood up. But unless there's anyone else participating on this meeting right now who's here to throw their hat in the ring to be on the ad hoc redistricting committee, we do have a candidate. So, I'm just going to say anyone who's participating in this meeting, please let us know if you're here to announce your candidacy for the committee. Okay. So, the selected member for Ward 6 to the ad hoc redistricting committee is Rama Kautra Lakota, and we will let our city counselors know that. And just a shout out to Rama for your offering to do this important work. Well, thank you, Michelle. Did you, did you want to do the second one or was that the portion that you wanted to do? That was it, yeah. Okay. Well, next up is the city of Burlington Capital Plan. That's with Martha Keenan, Burlington Clerk Treasurer's office, and we're going to give 15 minutes for Martha to talk. Is Martha available? Yeah, we're way ahead. That's 10 minutes ahead. So, we're running a little fast, so we're still waiting for Martha to join us. Thank you for your patience. Well, thank you for coming on early. I wasn't sure if I should just be on from six o'clock, but I thought that you didn't need me sitting in the background hovering, so. Well, the bonuses, did you get 10 more minutes to talk? Well, wonderful. I hope you have lots of questions then. Thank you for having me this evening. My name is Martha Keenan, and I work for the Clerk Treasurer's office at the City of Burlington, and I manage the capital plan and all of the capital projects for the city. And, oh, I'm on spotlight. Thank you. And so it's my pleasure tonight to present to you the continuing of our capital plan. I have a brilliant, I have a PowerPoint presentation that I will share with you, and we're excited to bring this forward. So, let me see if I can share my screen. So, are you able to, are you seeing my email, or are you seeing a slide present? We're seeing the slide. Wonderful. So, this is the continuing of the City of Burlington's capital infrastructure plan. And, as I first initiated in March of 2014, the Mayor and his annual address to the cities stated that this was critical to him, and that he would be presenting the next year a capital plan to the public to better take care of our infrastructure. And in April of 2015, we started conversations with the Board of Finance and the Council regarding the plan. And in September of 2016, the 10-year capital plan was adopted by the City Council, and it was, excuse me, I'm looking up at you, and I don't like looking up at you. And it was a resolution that adopted the capital plan, and in November of that same year, 2016, voters approved a general obligation bond for $27.5 million to go towards the city's sustainable infrastructure. This was, it needed 66.2 thirds, and we received 78 percent, so we had an overwhelming support for investing in our infrastructure. And we worked with all of the City Department and the public and the Council to reinvest the best that we possibly can in this infrastructure. We've now five years later, so that first bond is completely used up, and amazingly enough, our needs are not done yet. They, I look at the plan as a snapshot in time, and in reality, the capital needs of the city are forever evolving, and you just take one incident to create a new project that has to go on the list. And an example would be the other day when we got the heavy rains, it creates bottles, it creates roof leaks, and of course, we have to do work to fix those. It has touched all aspects of the city, the bike path, the sidewalks, the streets, and renovating a number of the buildings, working on our parks, and even doing fleet and our IT area. Each project that we do considers its impact on the City's net zero energy goal and tries to move us in that threat. So what have we accomplished over those five years? It's been huge, and at times it has been chaotic, but I believe that the city is in a much nicer spot now. We improved over 14 miles of sidewalks. We doubled our investment in our streets. We went from $1 million a year to $2 million. Of that, we have a street capital tax, which helps with that, but we did have to supplement that with bond money in order to increase our road investment to that level. We built a new parks facilities maintenance building over at Letty Park, and it gave the trees and grounds maintenance folks a place to live and keep all of their items in one place, which makes them do their job more efficiently. We also, at the same time, put in gas and diesel pumps there, which is an energy saving item in that if the snow plows are out, they can go and fill up at Letty and not have to drive all the way back to 645 Pine in order to keep doing their work. So they can stay on the road, and it saves both labor and energy by having those gas pumps there. Most of the fire trucks can fill up there, and the police cars also fill up there. We improved a number of the city building envelopes with insulation, new roofs, new HVAC systems, and it improved their efficiencies, reduced costs, and made people more comfortable. We improved our IT infrastructure, and this allows us to provide better services to the citizens as well. Right now we're working on a hybrid meeting system that allows us to help the person and zoom-wise and have it be more flawless than we have done today. For security, we've done a lot of things for security. We implemented an electronic door lock system, which also is a city ID. So each employee has a city ID now, and that city ID allows them, is also their key to the building that they work in. It's provided the ability for both the fire and police, our public safety, to be able to get into any building at any time should there be an emergency. We replaced our old city video system. There used to be an individual video security system in each of our buildings. Now it's one system. All of it ties into dispatch, which if there is an incident that occurs, the dispatcher can pull up what's going on on the camera, and they can give real-time information to whoever's responding to make it safer for the person responding and more able to do their job. We have improved our whole list to include public safety. So originally we had mainly streets, sidewalks, parks, fleet in it, but we didn't have a really good handle on what our public safety infrastructure is. And that knowledge has expanded, and with that we've expanded its list in our capital plan. We completed renovations of both 645 Pine and City Hall, which improved both the security and the public services. The new permitting and inspections division is now housed at 645 Pine, and so we were able to make a space for them that fit and was more available to the public. To make all this possible, we had to set up a number of committees. When I first started in 2014, it was me who would get a request for a project, and I would talk with people, but it would be a yay or nay. Now we have a capital committee that is made up of various department heads and the CAO and a member of the administration so that we have clarity and equity across all of our asset classes to make good decisions and use our resources better. We set up a fleet committee that allows us to look at our fleet as one group previously each department bought their own vehicles, and it was difficult to fund them. We had four years where we were not able to fund any vehicles. Now we have a strategy financially and also on collaborativeness between the departments and moving towards our net zero energy with getting electric vehicles and hybrid vehicles as we move forward. We also created an asset management committee which is our next step of a capital plan without good data and information on all of our assets. We can't make good decisions and we can't make good strategy, and right now we're in the process of implementing a new software platform that will hold all that inventory. It will allow us to do forecasting and to better manage our asset cost. What have we learned? And I've spoken a little bit previously about this. The needs are evolving. We are still learning what our needs are and that our initial understanding of our assets was not complete. Another area we did not include in this was our bridges and the city has a number of bridges. We have public safety and it continues to grow. We learn all the time what we have within the city and as we implement our asset management it will help us house all of that in one place and keep that historical knowledge in one place. We have decades of deferred maintenance and so we've done five years of work but it's going to take us decades to catch up and so this is an ongoing need and an ongoing work that I think is important to forever be there. With it all pulled together in one place it allows us to have a better understanding of all those competing needs and helps us prioritize them and create better strategies that sit city money in the long run. Our fiscal year 22 budget survey showed that we had strong support for the infrastructure. When we look at our three-year needs we have over 140 million dollars worth of needs over the next three years. We have about between grant dollars and existing dollars about 60 million and so we have a gap of 80 million dollars. We're not expecting to get that from the taxpayers. There are a number of opportunities in front of us today that help us fill that gap and that is the federal infrastructure bill that's in process right now, the American Rescue Plan and various state fundings that are out there and so we're looking at all of those we're researching we're ready to apply for grants and to use these other areas of funding as soon as we know they're available. So this plan incorporates all of that and yet even if we were able to get all of the grants we wanted we would still have a need and so we are still needing to come to the voters for a request to fill in that area that is not covered by the above opportunities. A particular area is our facilities in our parks are not covered under that. So our funding over the next three years to continue the investment that we started in 2016 we've done a pretty set amount of investment in sidewalks, streets, our IT infrastructure, transfer page, transportation planning and so all of those come out to around seven million dollars a year of annual need to keep going and over the three years and what we did is because the need is so large we balanced it between all of the assets we wanted to continue our initiative at the same level that we could and make sure that we don't miss or put our emphasis too heavily in any one area. So the request that we are looking to come to the voters for for this portion is around 30 million dollars. We do have one big public safety item our public safety infrastructure which is our radio system cell towers is at end of life and we need to replace that that's around 5.5 million dollars. So what are our next steps? I'm here and presenting to all of the NPAs. I am working with all of the commissions, the wards, the committees that are out there to help educate the community as to why we have these needs what they are and why it's so important to do it now. We're going to board of finance and city council on September 13th. Our hope is at that time they will approve that we can bring a request to the voters for a bond and we're looking at a November 9th special election. Between now and then there are a lot of meetings. There's a lot of outdoor testing of our needs. We have to strategize to utilize all the opportunities out there to the best of our ability and to continue our work to understand what a sustainable capital plan is and what it will take to maintain that. While we have all of these needs we have some ways that we're leveraging our dollars and and other things that need to be considered. We have taken advantage of a number of large grants so we are working on the rail yard enterprise which is just starting down near the waterfront, the parkway, Sheldon Street Roundabout which is under construction right now and the rail realignment that's bringing Amtrak to the downtown. All of these are federally and state funded and allow us to do more work than we could ever afford. These four projects are around 60 million dollars altogether and the city's investment in them is around 6 million so that's utilizing our funds to the best of our abilities. Within this we'll be implementing our master plans that we have like PED master plan parks, scoping and corridor studies. There are a few large revisioning projects that are not. In this the Fletcher Free Library has worked on a design to revision the library. They just put on an RFP for a schematic design and got the results back so their redesign is estimated at somewhere around 20 million dollars. A large portion of that will be covered by a capital campaign but they're very excited to get started moving towards it but it's not actually included in this plan. The fire department has looked at means of consolidating. Can they go from five fire stations down to four? They had a consultant come in and do a study and yes indeed they could consolidate two of their stations. That would be a savings to the city by reducing the staff load and the vehicles that they need without hurting our response time. That value is around 16 million dollars and then there's been a lot of talk about consolidated collection and whether it's important that the city build a new building and bring that in-house that item is around 6.7 million dollars. All of these things relate to operational and maintenance needs to keep up with them and so it's important as we look at these things that we consider how it's going to affect the operating fund and budget and if we do it well we're going to reduce it may have an increased cost to operations in the beginning but long term we should be efficient more across both sides and save money in both areas. Some things that we're thinking about as we're coming forward to the community is that we know that water reach I came in 2016 were clear that they had further needs and they will likely be coming forward for a bond as well. The school district and the high school is another area that we know they'll be coming back and I believe it was in the news yesterday about Burlington Electric coming for a bond as well. The water resources in the Burlington Electric bonds are revenue bonds and they do not affect your tax rate. Yes they might affect your rate that you pay to each of them but it is does not go on your taxpayer bill. The school work and a general obligation bond does affect your property taxes. So considerations as we go into this the city instituted a debt policy cap in 2018 so we are limited on how much we can borrow and that is to continue our good credit rating and to be fiscally responsible. We're looking at all the other funding opportunities that we have out there and we are we're hoping to make this request of the general obligation bond in November to the voters and just as a thing the longer we defer this the more it's going to cost us. So our schedule we have a lot of meetings there's probably more. On Tuesday I met with the trustee communities group and I will likely be going out to each of the communities to talk to them and have a translator so that that those communities can have a better understanding. I still have a number of the different awards to go to and we will continue to go all to all the commissions and committees out there and that's it. Questions. That was a lot of information. Yes it is. Well it looks like you're going to be busy in the next coming months too. I think so yes. I will not be bored. Hey Martha can I ask a question this is Matt Grady. Yes. You know for for somebody like me it's so hard to to know how this fits in with the overall city budget I mean capital expenditures one part is it like are we are we talking like like 50% of the city budget or 5% how much are you representing here in the in the so the the annual capital budget has been 30 million dollars for the last five years the city's overall operating budget is 87 million. Okay so it's quite considerable. Yes so I it's probably the largest budget outside of the operating budget. I see and then school budget probably is like yet another 100% more right if we count. Oh yes yes the school budget is I don't have a clue as to how large but I believe it's longer larger than our operating budget by quite a bit. It's about 90 million. All right thank you that's really great thank you. Sure. Joe looks like there's a question from Anna. Hello Anna go ahead. Hi Martha it's Anna Grady. Hello Anna how are you? Martha and I go way back. So you know I'm curious about what the what if any impact the federal infrastructure bill should it get passed in whatever form would have on on the city of Burlington's infrastructure work. Is there any talk or speculation about what we could do in the city as a result of any dollars trickling down from that? We are extremely hopeful about it. The emphasis right now on the infrastructure bill is street sidewalks, bridges and then the electric vehicle infrastructure. Those are the four main areas that we are looking carefully at for how they could help us and so right now we are trying to move our fleet towards an electric fleet but you can't buy electric vehicles if you don't have a means to charge them. And some of our vehicles that we would most easily be transferred to electric are in use 24-7 so an example is our police cars our cruisers and we have a number of hybrids. They would be willing and there are now good electric vehicles to go out there with however we they need to have a tier three charger in order to do it which is around $80,000 a charger. So we have in this capital plan spending $500,000 a year for electric charging infrastructure but we know we don't have the money for it so we are looking to be able to use the infrastructure bill for that area. We are hoping that it will cover the sidewalk work and the bridge work that we want to have over the next few years. There are a few large projects that we could also apply for. We have a number of bridges so Rockpoint Bridge, the North Beach Open Pass Bridge, the bridge to nowhere over Route 127 all need work and we are hoping that we can get funding through the infrastructure bill for those. So yes we're looking at that as a great opportunity and a way that we can move forward. Unfortunately it has really reduced the amount that we can ask of the voters because the infrastructure bill the American Rescue Plan and many of our funding opportunities don't cover some of the park needs and the facilities needs. So we still have a lot of needs out there even if we are able to take advantage of that. That's great. Can you say this once again? I heard bridges and streets what were the other two? Sidewalks and electric vehicle charging. Right right okay great thank you that's that's good to know thank you. My pleasure. So Martha was the city able to capture any money from what we call ESSER funds in the school district. We call them ESSER funds. Did the city receive any you know any improvement money for you know COVID relief like new faucets, new fixtures, anything that were energy saving and touchless that would help the city at all through COVID? At this point we have well we have air purifiers that we have throughout the buildings that we installed in the conference rooms and the more used areas. So we do have those we do not have touchlets assets or any of that. We are doing we did some ventilation upgrades to city hall and we are doing some ventilation upgrades to a couple of other buildings. We the power center and then north end is a recreation center and the windows don't open so we're replacing all those windows with windows that will open so that will be covered under the American rescue plan as will heating and ventilating systems in a number of buildings so we are looking at those opportunities. Good very nice very good. Do we have any more questions? Okay well well thank you very much Martha and thank you for your work and good luck this fall with all your meetings. Well thank you very much and you know I hope that you see the need and the importance for it and I know there's a lot of other things going on in the world but I look forward to talking with you more. Okay thank you very much. Thank you I hope you all have a good evening. Thank you. Okay bye bye. So next we have public recycling and trash receptacles from Jada Bearden excuse me if I missed that but it's the black perspective Jada. Hi there. Hi there welcome. Hi thank you. So like real quick I don't want to stay near here too long. Oh you have time. I just yeah I just want to express my concern with like the public health and public I guess safety and public aesthetic and beauty there is a shortage of trash bins and recycling cans in Burlington like the only place the only places that have those items are Church Street and people's private homes but as far as near bus stops or near near places like merchants like Cafe Marmelana and Poppy and all those other like Barrio there are no trash cans so I think that's a problem and I run around with my friends the Burlington area to sort of like estimate how many trash cans and recycling bins we need I came to the number 50 and I'm not sure the dollar amount of each trash and recycling bin is but I'm sure we can afford it and I think it's a it's an issue that needs that needs to be prioritized maybe it's just me out here but yeah I me and my friends who helped me gather this information they were right on they were right on my side about this so I really wanted to bring this to the council's attention because it's been on my mind like I'm outside like even sushi enjoying like a naked smoothie right and I'm trying to dispose of this and I have nowhere to go so I ended up like holding it so I get home no one wants to do that so it's about convenience it's about safety it's about health it's about beauty it's about making Burlington the city that people want to come to so that's all thank you so can I ask a quick question what's up and so you're asking that there be more receptacles placed throughout the city for people to drop things into when they're out and about like you know just just out and about having dinner so you're looking for more receptacles in the city yes okay it just makes sense like I just I mean there's like people accumulate trash we are a trashy bunch like there's food there's like water you know there's people people make stuff so people have stuff so I feel like this is just an easy an easy feat okay do we have any questions does anyone have any question we have a question no another question just a comment but there was somebody he made a comment on front porch forum about coffee cups and so forth being left at bus stops and that maybe you realize that she's actually right there's no trash container let's say the bus stops there's no trash container anymore on the buses etc so it means there's more throw it on the ground yeah jada did you hear that comment I did thank you okay well um for me the only thing that I could add is that when we add receptacles and when we add services there's a cost and and I don't know how that would be paid for if anybody you know brings it somewhere there you know the question of cost would certainly come up and and I'm sure people would be looking for a solution on on how to pay for these services well I work closely with mutual aid of Burlington and also other organizations like Food Not Bombs and we could definitely get together or go fund me and raise some funds for it like that's no problem like a couple hundred or maybe a thousand like yeah we can do that that's just an option yeah well it's a good observation I mean if it's a problem in the city it'd be you know nice to to bring it forward yep thank you for your time thank you jada thank you for coming aboard bye bye bye bye okay we're running a little ahead of schedule next we have a new place panel and I see lacy smith is here I don't know who else is here so far lacy welcome can you hear us again thank you okay so we're a little ahead of schedule I don't know if we want to wait for everybody for a little while or I'm flexible so whatever works for people won't have questions that are specific for me I mean I'm happy to start talking oh that would be good yeah that's nice so I can I'm gonna just start and as people roll on and if we have weird moments of silence that's okay too so um you're now too I am lacy yes oh okay so if people are kind of rolling and I can wait all right just Michelle only like well I think that there may be some folks who want to capture the whole okay discussion yeah yeah that makes sense may not be on board yet um yeah so okay so that's hang for a little while yeah that makes total sense so why we wait for a couple other people to to join us um if there's anybody watching um if you could let us know if you plan on having questions for Kevin Pounds in the committee um if you could let us know we can plan and make time for those questions so feel free to just say hey Joel or hey committee you know I got one or two questions put your hand up and we can certainly take a look in and make sure we have enough time to answer all the questions so we can we should have some commercials I see we thought maybe for the next 10 minutes you could give us an update on Champlain College or any exciting news around town um to do that's great I would be happy to and I just want to I just want to comment on your embracing of technology um you've got the hybrid meeting going and it's just very impressive um so um yes thank you so uh for those who might not know me I'm Sandy Euston from Champlain College and I serve as Champlain's liaison with our neighbors and usually attend these these meetings and answer any questions that come up so our fall semester is off and running for those of you who are nearby in the neighborhood you know full well that our students are back and we have returned to full in-person living and learning for our on-campus undergraduate programs we are at our standard occupancy back to that for this fall I do want to assure neighbors that the health and safety of our community remains our highest priority so for those of you who might have followed the numbers last year we really did remarkably well in minimizing the transmission of COVID on our campus and that was really thanks to students who just did an amazing job in following our protocols and working with our faculty and staff as well so we do have all of our COVID protocols up on our website so I encourage you to visit champlain.edu and there's an alert there that will take you to all of our communications our dashboard and FAQs about COVID we have a masking requirement in place for all students employees and visitors when in shared indoor spaces regardless of vaccination status we are requiring that students be fully vaccinated we required pre-arrival COVID testing of all of our residential students and we have our isolation and quarantine practices in place and all of our students and our employees are required to sign our fall 2021 Champlain Community Health Fledge so we're working together to maintain the health of our community and that means on campus and in Burlington as well I'm happy to answer any questions but we're excited to have our students back and and be a busy campus once again is vaccination a requirement or is it not a requirement vaccination is a requirement for our students and we are also strongly encouraging our our employees to be vaccinated as well the latest data I had is that 98 percent of our students are vaccinated we do have a few that have you know met an exemption process for medical or religious reasons and then 93 percent of our employees are vaccinated okay thank you very much my my email is s usan syusen at champlain.edu so if neighbors have issues questions hopefully not concerns but I take those too please do reach out to me at any time well thank you and thank you for stepping in and short notice and being part of tonight's meeting absolutely happy to connect with you all hope to be back there in person soon I found there's certain things you're very passionate about hi there I'm Michelle Maraz I'm gonna help I'm gonna help jewel moderate this agenda item so just as soon as we have all of our panel members here we're going to start the agenda item on a new place and a discussion about homelessness in Burlington so the our goal with this presentation is that we wanted to open up a discussion about a new place and the impacts that residents have seen word six residents have seen since its opening and we're going to have Kevin on board hopefully very soon and he'll give us a short update on a new place and then if there anyone if there are any participants listening right now who want to share comments or concerns you'll have the opportunity to do that and then after that we have Lacey and Smith from the Burlington Police Department Paul Dragon from CV OEO Michael Monty from Champlain Housing Trust and then our word six city counselor Karen Paul and those folks what we would like to do after we finish talking about a new place specifically is talk about the the issue of homelessness in the city what are the factors that are contributing to it and what are the agencies that these experts represent doing to address homelessness and do we have any you know constructive positive suggestions for addressing some of the concerns about a new a new place specifically so we apologize for the weight that you're experiencing but we are really close to having our whole crew okay all right now I do know that Karen Paul's attending another city meeting and she's going to hop on just as soon as she can but we do have Kevin Pounds here and Kevin I've just explained to the group how we're structuring this panel and the presentation and what we'd love for you to do is to give us a quick update on a new place and then we've let folks know that if they have questions or concerns they can relay them to you and then we're going to bring in our other housing experts to talk about homelessness in general in the city and etc and if you unmute that would be even better we think after a year and a half of this that we would all be zoom proficient by now that not not quite the truth while paying for inviting me tonight and I obviously because of what I do is the director of the new place I think talking about homelessness is a really important topic and a really complicated topic that um as is prior to this and I am the executive director of the new place we're obviously a homelessness agency here in Burlington and the Champlain and then is one of three facilities that we oversee in the city and we opened it in December of last year I should say reopened it in December of last year um just to give some quick highlights that we typically have between 52 and 60 guests on site 42 of those are what we call permanent beds and that means that once somebody has that bed theirs until they either move into housing or they decide to move out or dismiss something some reason um we also have eight walk-in beds uh typically have eight walk-in beds which are given out on a first come first served basis each evening um if we have space we typically allow more to stay on site I would say that because we really don't like turning people away um if you live in the neighborhood you probably have noticed so despite us um trying to make every bed available yeah we are turning quite a few people away on a on a nightly basis most of our guests have to check out in the morning at 8 a.m they check back in at 6 p.m on the walk-ins who are the people that kind of come in each night first come first serve they're allowed they they can start lining up at 6 30 but we check them in at 7 30 p.m right now we have four guests who have 24 access to their rooms due to what we call reasonable accommodation and that's usually related to disabilities or health issues we're raising that to 10 over the next couple weeks and and really people ask me like what determines like our ability to allow people to say 24 7 um it really does come down staffing there it really is that's that's in a nutshell and uh during the cold weather months we're planning to open our common space during the day so just have a warm and safe place to be that's probably going to be around the November 15th to April 15th so that was a rapid fire version but um we can also also obviously can answer questions if you have specific questions about what we're doing okay great so this would be a good time for folks who have questions or concerns they'd like to relate to Kevin to speak up hey Kevin this is Matt Grady I wanted to ask something I think you've been having you've been doing these kinds of meetings pretty regularly am I am that correct I mean I feel like I see notices that you're doing these kinds of outreach presentations pretty uh like on some service schedule is that generally true or yeah we were doing we were doing monthly meetings um to be honest like we had one that was probably well attended and the others you know it tended to be three to five people and so um I I reached out to the NPAs about us sharing these occasionally because it just seemed like it had a larger group of people I found that unless there was um like a specific incident that occurred I mean that would be the one exception there's an incident occurred we had a lot of people show up for a neighborhood meeting after that but yeah okay that's great thank you thanks Matt Andy I see you've got your hand up yeah thanks Michelle and hi Kevin um I remember one of the meetings uh I'm a neighbor here I live across the street on Hoover and Parada one of the meetings this summer you had mentioned that there were going to be some site upgrades a picnic table some redesign in terms of the front uh you know the front parking lot on the property there can you update on the status of those projects yeah I mean one of the things you realize most of you got into it is we had um it got a little more complicated than we envisioned because um if I've regained upgrading the parking lot and that being tied to the landscaping and so um we had to bring in a this is going to get taken over a taco surveyor and then um our primary funding source of that asked us to pick it to the spring to start the process you know it's kind of like a combined conversation between them the architects and the general contractors they felt like um beginning of spring would be a better time to stack that I mean in the meantime I mean this isn't a real thick maybe it's gonna work um I think next week we have picnic tables arriving so we are gonna put some picnic tables behind the signs so there's like more of a real waiting area now that we know that that's going to have to be funded so the beginning of the spring so the goal is to do that like first off maybe I can just ask a follow-up you know I'd be interested in your perspective I don't know maybe if others on the panel are going to talk about this but you know I know a topic of conversation over the summer was that access to hotels was expiring for a lot of people in Vermont in anticipation of having lots more people you know unhoused and looking for a place to stay and I'd just be interested in your short version about how that transition has been and how you you see that impacting what you're doing there at Champlain in but also you know whether you've got more people seeking access to your short term housing I mean we we definitively are turning more people away I mean that's you know and so I would say just if you're talking about foot traffic phone calls emails every which way and you know I mean a lot of times we'll just quite honestly tell people that it may not be worth your time to come this way because by you know you're you're probably not going to get it though you know and so it's especially if we know that there's that there's a chance that they can have a safe place the and I say safe in quotation mark to be that night I mean because you know I guess what they come here and we're not safe then you know it's 7 38 o'clock and they're ending up on a bench somewhere to be honest to be realistic so I think and I think Lacey can probably Lacey's with the Burlington police department and she's well aware of what's happening with encampments and you know so I know that just if you eyeball around Burlington right now I mean I live on the north ab but I mean I can just eyeball it around where I live in the green spaces in cases there's an increase of people camping with someone for sure so in any I'll say this I don't think I think some people are thinking like oh when winter is like there's going to be places for everybody to go I don't actually think that's accurate I mean to be honest I think that's actually not true at all it's going to be a messy winner this year for sure so Lacey why don't you go ahead and let us know what you're seeing in terms of your work around the city sure so just to introduce myself I'm Lacey I'm the social worker with the city of Burlington and I work out of the Burlington police department so for context I've done this I've been in this position for about seven years so I have been working and doing outreach with our homeless neighbors throughout the city the entire time so I would agree with Kevin in terms of so numbers today I was just looking at so all of so 2021 housing was even offered the city had asked like 15 people to move from parks so there were still people in our parks even when the motels were an option but since the ending of the motel program or not ending but the eligibility tightening we've already hit that number since July 1 so within the last few months so it's a huge increase for me because in 2019 we did 21 the entire year so to do 15 in just the summer is a lot so I am and unfortunately with with the parks and how the process works there really is to no end the folks that are in the parks right now or are outside really are the ones that categorically don't really meet eligibility for the motel and there still is some ambiguity to the folks that are actually still in the motel system too with other questions of pending eligibility narrowing again at the end of this month and so luckily we have really fantastic advocates in Chittenden County that are talking with the state to hopefully try to push that off some but even then I would expect that like this will continue through the winter I just even if the best circumstances in terms of a shelter capacity expanded in any sort of way it's super complex and so that'll only meet the need for a few unfortunately there's no really one size fits all for this population um so we need a little bit of a lot currently so if anybody has any specific questions or wants to talk more about anything in general I know Ward 6 specifically has definitely seen some people in their parks when they historically really it's not been an issue in those parks so we're seeing it in every park instead of just the the bigger parks which is kind of more typical in the waterfront thanks Lacey Paul I wondered if you would chime in and let us know what your agency is seeing and how you're responding to folks struggling with homelessness yeah hi everybody thank you for having me uh Paul Dragan with the Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity, CDOEO just so you know CDOEO runs 10 different programs everything from emergency food relief to housing assistance to micro business development and we serve mainly the four counties including Chittenden, Addison, Franklin Grand Isle and we have some statewide programs our recent experiences we ran the holiday in as you some of you probably know for the state um in South Burlington we did that for a little over a year during the pandemic and at one point we had about close to 160 people in in there who were experiencing homelessness that program ended at the end of June and we were able to advocate with others to get direct payments to people and to move most people out into other hotels or into permanent housing however like 30 people left the holiday and without that kind of an accident they did take these essential payments to at least try to have themselves get settled somewhere else with some funding but we are seeing an increase in street homelessness as Lacey suggests we weren't worried about the closing of the holiday in and also the other closings that are happening and will continue to happen around the state we put in a grant for Chittenden County for three outreach workers which we got which we have and we do have three outreach workers now that are working in Chittenden County and going to Sears Lane and connecting with our feeding Chittenden program to bring meals out to Sears Lane and other places every day about five days a week one day through Friday and doing other outreach around essential needs and we'll continue to do that work through the winter and hopefully for the foreseeable future and we've connected pretty closely with Lacey and some others doing outreach as well so that's one way that we've responded we also recently from January to the end of April last year from the city of Burlington we ran a daytime working center at the VFW and South Gnusky it was super successful we had over 500 unique individuals come in we had 6900 visits we gave out over 10,000 meals people got to use computers get connected it was a really nice space for people to be and I'm only mentioning that because we did see a strong need in that kind of community resource center for people who are experiencing homelessness like Kevin said folks at his place do leave during the day so most of those folks are coming down to the daytime morning center we also got calls from places on church street and businesses thanking us because there was this community resource center and people had a place to go and to check their email to get connected to resources unfortunately the funding to the city of Burlington is only for four months we did put in a grant with the city of Burlington to do this community resource center year around you did not get it but we are still looking for opportunities I mentioned it here because I think it is part of the solution to try to get people warm in the warm in the winter cool in the summer and have them access services and computers and other things I just think it does help keep people off the street even though it's not a nighttime solution obviously it is part of the part of the solution CBOE has also been running for the state a curious housing voucher program we have 420 vouchers for people who are homeless we've been administering that around the state and so far we've given out 330 of those vouchers that subsidize housing for people experiencing homelessness it's hard because as you know there's just not a lot of affordable housing so but we have been able to get quite a number of people housed through the vouchers so that's important to make sure that we continue to get subsidized housing and as you all know with low vacancy rates the best solution is more housing stock that is affordable so we can get people out of you know congregate settings on shelters off the streets and into housing this is not a CBOE issue it's not a new place issue this is our issue as a state as a community Kevin and his team do a wonderful job they're doing the best we can the permanent solutions are really the systemic solutions and that's about that is around housing and affordable housing so and support services that's important and with that we do what we can laces out there in the streets we're out there in the streets trying to do this work as well we also have several housing advocates here at Ciguillo that work with people experiencing homelessness we operate a rapid rehousing program with funds that are able to pay security deposits for landlords first second third month and last month rent we're able to help people with moving costs it's really flexible dollars and we've moved a lot of that out the door but again there has to be the housing available for people to to move move into so those things we're looking at trying to get an outreach van we're putting in a grant so that our core community outreach resource team will have a van with some computer wakeups to go out Sears Lane other places so people can have computers right there that they can access hopefully services applied for housing applied for three squares and other things again a small part of what we think is a solution so we've also hired landlords we ease on that's busy connecting landlords from around the county to help them understand you know what the benefits are to subsidize housing and what the resources are i think there's not a lot of landlords understand that you know if they do take a person experiencing homelessness with a voucher it um it is stable income that one is going to keep coming every month there is other income that could help with costs we also usually hold backs from funding so if there's any damage we can help pay for that and it also comes to support services so we think the landlord we ease on which we recently hired will make a difference to help bring landlords in our core outreach team you know Kevin had reached out and well they'll be doing more stops around the ship playing in and also over at the park and in other areas but they are kind of over over chipman county doing this this work right now that sounds great because they do a fabulous job with a lot of they do a fabulous job with a lot of constraints building affordable housing and they're one of this really really incredible work and that's what we need more of so thank you thanks paul that's great i appreciate that i also feel like this is a really perfect segue to um hear from michael monti from cht about um the housing stock affordable housing stock and other efforts that cht is doing to help homeless folks i think i am the aforementioned um michael monti i'm the ceo of sampling housing trust uh let me just let's say that um if we if you have a house be thankful right now it's really hard for a lot of folks out there um and really very tough at the end of uh by the end of last year we were able to build 68 apartments out of the susie wilson road converting them hotel with services and we brought in that many homeless folks into that into that hotel we also work with steps and domestic violence a lot of folks who are homeless are victims of domestic violence are a decent number and so we were able to convert another small motel to handy suites and close some st mics into 21 apartments and all of our offices and really really increased their capacity to be of service to folks who are need so that's we ended the year sort of on a high note and then began this year throughout the last seven months and a sobering number for us is that we received 1500 applications for affordable housing over the last seven months or so i've wished there were 150 apartments that were available so we're not able to serve the need at this point that is out there many people attempting to try to get into a better situation um other folks basically who are in fact part of the homeless communities that are out there um down shelbin road as i as i looked as i had sort of looked at it recently there's about 300 or so folks in different motels and hotels in the system now a decent number of them down shelbin road starting at um the shelbin end and moving all the way down to harbor place where we operate a 58 room motel which is at full capacity with a variety of different folks we also own another motel the whole hum 2 out on wilson road which is strictly used for covid isolation and quarantine and so folks who are experiencing uh covid or need to quarantine for some reason come to that motel and we have people who are operating that both motels at this point we have about 10 and 12 people who just work assisting folks the various motel systems um so that's all like very sobering for me um and for all of us but i do want to say that right now we are in the process of being able to put up another 96 apartments over the next year at two locations um one out at um outside of burlington not in burlington at this point uh the biggest one probably being 60 apartments at three former st mic storms um at the same time also we got a we got another 92 apartments that are specifically targeted to with working with coordinate entry and homeless folks this includes a town place suites and conversion of that motel uh the conversion of the harbor place uh to permanent housing because we're buying the days in it's across the street and turning that into a motel and also the eventual uh conversion we hope of the whole home too into permanent housing the 20 apartments so we have about you know 100 or so maybe 200 or so apartments in the next six months hopefully in the next year all together now that'll be up and available i would say a good majority a good half of that's not more our hope will be homeless let me say even though folks that might not be homeless people are very low income we're going to wind up being in our apartments using vouchers and we're going to prevent people from being homeless uh in that context and after that we have another 128 or so uh apartments sort of on the drawing boards a couple of new ski we're working with the bfw actually the redevelopment of that particular site for some additional apartments there uh for homeless veterans uh so we got a lot cooking if i looked at the total number this is including renovations and some home ownership opportunities there's about 550 or so different units that are sort of in our working uh sort of queue um we actually hired two new developers over the last year um to sort of assist us to take advantage of the various resources that the state has put forward through the CRF funds and also the ARPA funds uh so we're working as hard as we can and frankly we made a handful of legs a couple of few legislators today and we said to them if you made more money available to us we would do more and we just would have to go out and hire somebody else so that we could actually get some of these other apartments running it isn't a lack of opportunity it's really sort of just a queue of getting the resources into into the pipeline for us to be able to redevelop and i i would i would i would serve just want to emphasize though we do real estate shall we say we put up apartments we have done more services lately um um and we can predict we bring the rents down as much as possible but for the folks who are homeless they need both the supply and the services and the subsidy in order for them to be fully successful and really that requires then other organizations like cvoa and the housing authorities uh nusky housing authority broken housing authority state housing authority to assist with subsidies on a more permanent basis and a range of some of other organizations to assist with services so that's my report for you all at this point that's great thank you michael does anyone have any questions for any of our panelists um i actually have a question i thought you hey you've had two so this it's sort of sounding like a trend of conversion from hotels or motels to um emergency housing or permanent housing in terms of apartments can you just describe a little bit michael why we're seeing that dynamic why that i just um yeah historically that doesn't seem common so let me just say this and i would say that we're proud in terms of our leadership i've given now three different workshops nationwide most recently one in utah me and the secretary of housing for california which is you know just a guy here on king street you know um talking about the conversion of uh of the motels and hotels uh the the the if we do the next two that we have which we feel like we will be able to do we'll have done eight we have passed on a few but we certainly will continue to do more it's just an opportunity and the opportunity is very simple it's faster than a permitting process um and it is generally uh at least half the price to develop so it's it's doors and doors and bathrooms that they have small kitchenettes to start there as well and so we wind up being able to do for instance uh susan's place at it on susie wilson road um those cost 180 000 dollars to fully develop um and we were able to do it six months um and we were able to and that's used that's about half the price of what it would really have to typically cost probably a tenth of the time almost or a third of the time and certainly half the price and so we continue to look for those opportunities we have hire brokers to assist us to get those properties uh in our um uh in our uh we all right we don't we don't grab all of them there are a few that we have passed on um but we do when we see something where we know the zoning will allow us to create more density and we know we'll have something at the end uh you know we'll serve the test of time shall we say then we go ahead and we do it okay and the hotel owners are willing to give up their asset for whatever reason well you know um again we're we're always it's just a will and buy and a willing seller we don't have any powers if they're a permanent domain or anything else like that so it's um so it's just a will and buy and a willing seller and and we negotiate prices based upon appraisal and we usually pay that and often enough we have patient sellers um you know these these kinds of this deal making takes a little bit of work and but we're able to get there pretty pretty successfully uh many of the owners are who are getting out and they're getting out because they want to take that money and do something else with it uh many of the motel operators are basically done as a mode you know it's not you don't go to Expedia and find um the various motels that might be on show and road listed as an opportunity to stay so many of them are sort of experiencing uh you know sort of a reduction in their business when because of the Hilton Barn Inn and the any other motel hotels that are being built you know which have higher value for tourism great thanks i want to steal a minute from our next presenter and just ask our panelists what your magic wand would be for your particular agency to address homelessness and is it and is there anything other than money in your magic wand and lacy why don't you kick us off we'll go in the same order gosh i mean i see ht is definitely taking care of part of my what my magic wand would do but i think i mean i definitely having some sort of green space to allow people to that need the ability to camp to camp i think is really something that i uh appreciate and would would like and would use my magic wand for um because it's i think it's a definite need as well as a place for uh another would not be there when beating we're homeless guys it's my magic wand i can i can make that happen so that's what i'd say okay great kevin how about you um i'd say it's two things really um one has very i mean we'll do with what we do as an organization but i think that i mean when i wake up in the morning i i don't actually look at expanding shelters is a positive thing i mean like so sometimes you'll be like oh it's really great that you you've tripled your size in the last year and a half and i'm like no that's that's a bad sign for our community when we're tripling our size and i mean so my magic wand would be more affordable housing and supports for those people in the housing that would be a hands down um and i think secondly and i mean obviously you know champion housing trust is you know leading the charge on that you know i think that paul spoke to this earlier but i think of a spacious daytime warming shelter or warming space not just for our guest but just for people in general that is getting them out of you know hotel rooms and you know alleys and tents where they're um yeah i think paul's already spoken to this but just that kind of space um creates community and it creates um just a place for people to connect to services better i mean even though we do that on some levels here i think that i would just if i could just like man you know way of a wind and just all the grant money to do that i would do it tomorrow sounds great saying of what him and his team do okay and then quickly paul and michael your magic wands yeah it's permanent supportive housing more of what chd is doing i do think uh community resource center year around and um and homelessness but until we get there we're going to need robust street outreach what we're doing community resource center and places like kevins and people will need to support them thank you right so i think um more money shouldn't be off the table but i would say um i would like to fix a broken health care system essentially i think that really most of the people walking around need services and support not just you know intervention in terms of the social work sometimes we really need to do but really mental health services at a higher level health care services at a higher level if we had a system that wasn't wasn't broken which really sort of took public health is really seriously um that would be major people would be productive members of society or at least get close to it at least get the support they need to stay in their apartment without failing i think to me that is the the thing that is the principal thing that we need after that we'll supply housing because housing is health care you know but still you really need a health care system great thank you all so much i appreciate your time and i'm going to apologize to our south end construction coordination plan for stealing four minutes from you and again thank you very much to our panelists this was really helpful to get your perspective and karen we're going to loop back to you um during your 10 minutes at the end um i just wanted to just um just so you know michelle i'm actually because we had a public safety committee meeting that ended a few minutes ago um i'm in city hall now i have to leave because they're going to throw security is going to throw me out so i will leave and i will try to come back at the end um if i'm not here it's only because i just didn't make it in time but i will try to get back um online in time okay great thanks karen sure okay well um next up we have the south end construction coordination plan managing simultaneous south end projects and with us tonight we have chapein spencer norm baldwin cori mims from burlington department of public works yes so uh thank you everyone for having us just wanted to note that chapein won't be here tonight so it's uh going to be uh cori myself um i guess i would start by the basic introduction of what we're trying to do and and then introduce you to cori who is our senior public works engineer managing uh at least the parkway and the rail yard enterprise project but all these tie back into these significant major projects so i guess i'd begin by saying that uh would you leave onto council and introduce this idea concept it really has been driven by a number of things all the the demands and needs of all these various projects and i would begin by listing those projects that are kind of in play in the south end some of it's uh paving by the state so it is uh the rail yard project it brings passenger rail to the city as you know shovel road roundabout project is up currently underway we have the parkway we have a perspective project of the main street gray streets we have a rail yard enterprise and uh so all these things combined we recognize and understand that we have disrupted people's lives significantly and we've actually heard that in our um public conversations with the parkway itself that people are fatigued and uh it's understandable when you identify the fact that for anyone coming from the south heading into burlington there's only two major corridors and there is shovel road and then then there is pine street and uh you should have actually gotten in the packet i think courier attempted to share with you the memo that was shared with the council it really goes a deep dive into many of the details that are driving our i guess our recommendation and direction in managing all these projects together and uh courier is going to give a very brief summary of how all this is intended to work but we really want to be available to answer any questions you may have assuming that you've read the memo so that aside i guess i would uh share with you that courier minns as the project managers were both the rail yard enterprise product and the parkway itself and rail yard enterprise um is actually taking significant steps forward if you if you're not aware of that one of those is of course that we have a cooperative agreement with the state of ramon to begin advancing design and permitting of the project and the second piece is that we have put out to bid for a design contract rfq for design contract for a yard enterprise which we've got two respondents and we're currently reviewing so there's significant movement on the rail yard enterprise project that ties into all these things in context but it's important you to know that we're trying to make this all be properly sequenced and make sense for your daily lives so with that i'm going to push this over to courier and you can go into it a little further but i think we both want to be brief and let you ask questions so courier go ahead right so first and foremost i think we try to get this to you i'm not sure if you did receive it if you had not we have pushed this to be published on the jambplain parkway website so this memo is one that went to board of finance on august 9 and so that's ultimately what we're sharing with you as well this concept was first made public on that date and we are looking to take this to the city council for their consideration on the 13th so let me share with you as norm stated obviously the number of projects that are happening in the south end are going to be quite a long time as well as quite the impact to both the businesses and the residents ultimately by this phasing plan that we're proposing which i'm trying to share at the screen give me one second uh if the host could allow me to share that'd be great okay thank you uh is this large enough for people to see i could see a pretty good court so what we have here is the proposed south end coordination plan for construction as norm and listed there are a number of projects that are planned to occur um and as you kind of look through this the biggest portion of this i guess the biggest key to this plan is that in this staging we are looking to phase the jambplain parkway project into two separate construction contracts what we're looking at um in this process is to allow for the start of construction uh with the jambplain parkway uh being this first phase would consist of the segments between home avenue and lake side avenue uh the side path section over near 189 uh lakeside avenue and a portion of pine street between lakeside avenue and kill board the plan for this would be to have this first phase of construction uh the goal would be to have it start in 2022 and we would look for completion of construction for this phase approximately end of 2024 um that being said a big portion of this is that we are looking to have all the construction kind of managed and by breaking this into a two-phase project this first phase could be constructed with minimal uh additional traffic impacts anticipated for the neighborhood while we're still working on this um the other projects in the area such as the main street project which is planned to start construction 2023 as well as the rail yard enterprise project which is norman indicated is underway as we're starting to work on our design procurement um for that project we are you know allowing for these projects these additional um uh improvements to the south end to get progressed along in order to have a full at the end of the second phase of the Champlain Parkway a complete street and a completed infrastructure for the south end we are looking to have uh the second phase would consist of the 189 to home avenue connection as well as the pine street from main street to Kilburn so this kind of is the plan of what we're looking for construction phasing um to try to again minimize the impacts to all the neighborhoods as as much as possible and to stage this so that uh we can successfully um progress through these projects in a probably the most feasible manner without overloading the south end so corny can i kind of jump in here and add a little more uh context to this yeah so so for everyone's benefit Shelburne street roundabout is is as you know is significant in how it impacts the south end and the first phase of the parkway is intended to complete work that's not directly I guess impacting pine street to allow circulation to work around that construction detour and it also provides the benefit of us advancing some of the environmental improvements that go with the parkway and that is the storm water system improvements that will reduce peak flows to the lake and also reduce uh any sort of sediment load to the lake itself so the benefit of getting that early on is there from an environmental standpoint but also just avoiding impact of the public trying to drive through from north to south on those two major corridors I guess uh try to look at this so secondarily I think I think there's an important point here we've heard from the public that they are concerned about some of the improvements to the parkway related to EJ and we are sensitive to that and have been thoughtful about that by trying to stage this work where it doesn't provide a direct impact to the that community by first of all staging it somewhere subsequently behind the radar and enterprise project but also we've heard from the public that they are concerned about the installation of traffic signals or any sort of improvements to those segments erode early on in the process but would prefer later on the process depending on how um traffic distributes itself within the network once the rear yard enterprise is in place so these things are all um things that we've considered and heard from the public we're trying to be responsive to that and worth noting the council has control of all design and construction contracts being released and awarded and so this gives council control of when this for instance the last segment of the parkway would be released for construction we have shared this with our partners at thorough highway in the state of ramon atrans and they're supportive of this approach they see this as an appropriate path forward to have it have the Champlain Parkway project advance while still being sensitive to the needs of the public that have raised concerns so again if additional details uh can be found also like said in the memo uh that we have it's both on the city website uh as an attachment to the original board of finance meeting on the ninth as well as on the Champlain Parkway website so uh kind of you know that was our very brief sort of summary of what this plan is what we're looking to proceed with uh and wanting to provide this information to the public prior to the september 13th council meeting um if anyone has any additional questions um we're happy to feel those in regards to this plan i can you hear me yep yeah so i i'm just sort of absorbing this map the railroad enterprise project is the attempt to bring trains back into burlington and no those are two separate projects i can understand the confusion so passenger rail the yellow is up top that's passenger rail and bike path relocation project is up top that's currently underway okay what is the rail yard enterprise project so rail yard enterprise is seeking to develop uh further expand the street network to connect batter street and pine street and expand the street segments to connect south champlain okay and and so uh going back to the rail yard upgrade project up there in yellow so tray yeah are you expecting trains to be operational in 2023 then um yes the state has federal dollars i guess that need to be spent and the work needs to be complete by i think december of this year but they still they still have other state funds to complete the balance of the product so my my suspicion is or belief is that it'll be complete by spring we are they're currently underway with contract two and contract three and have released contract four to explain to you what contract two and three and four are so contract two is um passenger rail development for the loading area between college and king and also the bike path relocation to the west contract three is between king and maple and that's a continuation of bike path relocation and passenger rail and then contract four is um the relocation of the valley lane and the development of overnight storage for passenger rail facilities is that thank you thank you very much yeah so you you probably have seen some of the construction and i'm going down on the waterfront yes yeah any other questions i don't have a question i just i just wanted to thank you for letting this all out i think i could have drawn this if i tried but seeing it all in one place it's the first time i've ever seen it it's amazing how much it's going on i appreciate you putting it together like this can you tell me what's going to actually happen on it on the year in your meeting coming up like what is what is is this is this require approval or are you just informing everyone um a few things one is we're we're trying to keep the council aware or the public aware of how we're advancing projects and trying to be thoughtful about sequencing our projects so that people have comfort and confidence that what we're planning makes sense additionally there we're continuing to provide updates to the parkway itself and also we have a design contract with our consultant needs to that requires an amendment so in order to continue to make progress on that work we need to we need to have that contract because design contract executed and as norman mentioned earlier a part of going to the council on this is to get their sort of uh get them on board or get their approval for this two-phased approach with the champlain parkway that um that discussion with the extension would provide us the design to break this into these two phases as part of that amendment uh what that amendment would do uh once we're in these two phases as norm was saying about the contract award would be then to provide uh the control to the council to award construction contracts as they feel confident and comfortable so we would go get this approval for this amendment you get approval for contract one and then at a later date we go to get approval for contract two for the phase two portion of the champlain parkway so that's that's kind of what we are looking to present to the council so that we can proceed forward with uh the project so all of our projects is to be clear you know either it be design contracts or construction contracts ultimately the council has control whether we advance those or not so we're working at their pleasure we certainly have obligations to our state and federal partners and uh we've we've got existing cooperative agreements that obligate us in certain ways in that partnership so we're trying to navigate what the council's interests are and the public's interests are while still being responsive to our partners who who frankly have spent considerable amount of money on advancing the park parkway project and if so you're not for me you may not be familiar with this but the parkway has a very favorable local match of two percent and the the balance of that is paid by the state federal government okay thank you very much i understand i have a question for you either one of you um what would you say to folks who've been around a long time let's say who may be jaded in cynical about the parkway what would you say like your level of confidence is for a 2022 start date for construction and i understand what you've said about the council i'm just given all that how confident are you in the 2022 start date well i we are at the the very later stages of a ls now feis process under the federal nipa process and very shortly we'll be in a position probably to go the next step of potentially getting a record of decision issued so that is a significant milestone and one that um in the last few years has been a bit of a challenge given the process has changed in terms of ej issues and the process is required which we don't we support and we believe in but it takes time so uh the difficulty with this project is is that the standards of practice change over time litigation leadership uh direction of administrations change so this project has suffered that over the many years but we think that this plan and the disposition of this product is probably in its best shape it's ever been but we also have a lot of other projects underway we want to make it we want to advance this project in the right context to best serve this community so because you're oh sorry oh no you're right i was just gonna ask that question uh ej is an environmental justice yeah sorry yeah yeah thanks for that so i imagine too given the mercurial nature of these um approvals and other contingencies on the projects this all looks good but you would also i imagine be prepared for perhaps a significant delay in any one of these like the parkway in terms of how you're staging and phasing the others around it absolutely we have to adapt to the changing condition and we're constantly monitoring how these all relate and making adjustments as necessary but also trying to keep in close communication with the public and uh the council and in the administration well thank you yeah that's a that's a lot of balancing yes it is it's challenging but it's an important work so norm i got one quick question on the roundabout any surprises yeah i mean everything going well do you guys happy um i think anytime you embark on a project of that scale and that there are always unknowns i think uh one of those unknowns is um ledge oh i think that project struggles with the utility work that relates to ledge but i i i believe it's it's continued to advance and advance well it's good but i am i am very pleased to see that we're actually under construction so once you get to the stage of construction then it's a it's a function of just mechanics like making getting the project that can you forward well thank you very much and thank you both for your hard work yep it's a pleasure and again if there's any questions please feel free to reach out we are scheduled to go to council on september 13th if people have comments so i'm gonna share with your council's all the council members but also you're welcome to give us a call if you have follow-up questions hopefully you you will see this document if you if it's not available or you can't find it give us a ring we'll get it to you okay well thank you robert i don't michelle ask the question that was on my mind having been following this project for since 1992 yeah i can understand the cynicism but it's um i think with deep dive hard work i think um in in the context of everything else i think we're making significant progress i actually would like that's a follow-up but that's okay sure is there any indication that you are going to have trouble with the city council i cannot speak to that i don't know i assume that uh i i do know that uh our director has made every effort to communicate to members of council where this proposal is that and so far we've heard positive feedback to this approach because i think it really is trying to be responsive to what we've heard from the public while still advancing the parkway along with all the other projects i'd also just like that it's great to see the roundabout being done that's been talked about for so long yeah great that the money was finally assembled to do that and the planning and the construction starting is really wonderful yeah it is exciting okay well thank you gentlemen well thank you for having us and as i said if you have any questions give either core or myself a call hopefully everyone has their contact information but you certainly can call our main office number 863 9094 and our customer service can connect with us if you don't have that very already well thank you thank you thank you everyone have a good night already you too and Karen yeah so uh that ends tonight's meeting thanks everyone for joining us yeah for the people who still are we're going to keep trying we're going to keep doing this hybrid meeting we did actually have an attendant an attendee here for a little while it's kind of fun so we'll see how things go but we're going to keep doing both ways for we'll get closer and closer getting back thanks for coming thanks so much thank you