 Could everybody just introduce themselves? Please, you'd say what their role is. Sure, we can do that. I'm Mark Barlow, a Northeastern City Councilor and Chair of this committee. Yes. I'm Gene Bergman. I'm a Wharton City Councilor and a member of this committee. I'm Hannah King. I'm the Whartate City Councilor and also a member of this committee. How does one become a member? You're appointed by the city. This is a this is a committee of the City Council and we're appointed by the City Council President. So you have to get elected first? You have to get elected first and then you have to be chosen by the City Council President. I'm going to speak. So for our public, are you here to speak on an item? Yes. Is it on the carbon pollution impact? Okay. So we're going to open public forum for, and I'll ask those watching online. You have comment on the carbon pollution impact fee question. If you were going to have another opportunity for public comment when we take that item up. So you wanted to hold those now. That would be, I think, crucible. If you have to lead, I understand. And you could raise your hand and be recognized now. So with that in mind, also if you're here to speak on other items, besides the carbon pollution impact fee question, this would be the time to speak. So those who want to speak on that other item and carbon pollution impact fee and any other committee business. So with that, I'll open up the public forum. So we have two people in the room. You want to speak on matters now? Sure. Okay, go ahead. Go ahead, Steve. Steve, good time. Is there, where's the camera? Over here, Steve. I'm the resident of the former public works director and city engineer. Tonight, you've got a proposal before you to put an item to the voters. Doesn't say when. The idea being to update something the voters did several years ago. And I think we learned a lot even in the last couple, three years. And I believe there's a consensus, if not in the unanimous opinion of the city, it's not just fossil fuels that are the issue. It's carbon-based fuels on the issue. I think the whole discussion around the seed pipe and the resolution came out of that made it pretty clear that the city really needs to look at carbon, not just fossil fuels. And the resolution that I think you're going to look at tonight to put this on the ballot is trying to update that and bring the city to a point where we're looking at carbon fuels and not passing an ordinance that only deals with certain fossil fuels, but will allow us to deal with everything. I think it's a good idea, especially since we haven't put the carbon impact in the place yet. And like I said, why not take a little bit more time and do it right? I think there's other ways to do it also. But if the city has said that that's the way it's going to do things, at least let's get it all in there and out there. And I think we all learned a lot from the steam pipe discussion that it's really carbon and CO2 that we have to look at and not just fossil fuels. So I would encourage you to take the time if you can't get on the agenda. I got the voters in March. I think someone is, but there may be two other opportunities for the voters to do something before town meeting day, after town meeting day for other issues. So just like it has to go on. It's not like it can't go on and can't take a little more time if you need it. I don't think it takes a lot of time to think if I were voting, I didn't prove this, but if it takes a little bit longer, I urge you to do that before you put the ordinance into effect. So really be kind of only a half measure if you don't dress all carbon. That's what we're going to be doing. So thank you. Thank you, Steve. Would you like to speak? Yes. Can you say your name for the record? Yes. My name is Carol Tansy. And I am the resident of Burlington. I moved here from Albany, New York. Because I wanted to be closer to my family. We didn't have to live together or anything. So I'm a political woman. And I essentially agree with the gentleman who conceded me that fossil fuels are that the McNeil plant has issues with fossil fuels and the definition of fossil fuels. It's not biofuels. They're just generating carbon. And so the physics is that it doesn't matter what anybody thinks about carbon and what people think the carbon is. It's the fact that to release carbon into the air is to increase climate change and climate crisis. So COP28 was a cop out as far as my concern. And I'm concerned about the releasing of more carbon. Thank you. And the way the air and the mineral is being impacted. Thank you, Carol. Yes. Is there anybody online who wants to speak about items other than the carbon pollution impact question? There are two people with their hands raised. Okay. Liz Hillman. Can you hear me? Yes. No, I mean, go ahead. Okay. Hi, Liz Hillman. I'm with University of Vermont and I do want to speak on the. Sorry. Can you hear me? No. Liz, can you? Okay. Sorry. Hey, Laura. Liz, we can hear you online. I think they're having a hard time in the room. Okay. What is, do you know, Laura, what I need to do to change the setting? I don't think it's you. They just need to change the setting or. Okay. Enable something. Go ahead, Liz. Okay. Can you hear me now? Yeah. Okay. Hi. I want to speak about the carbon impact fee. But of course, like everybody probably, I have a 7pm board meeting in another town. So I just, I don't know if you're going to be at that point by that time. We will be trying to wrap by 6pm today. So if you wanted to hold, there'd be an opportunity and I'm guessing. I will hold. Thank you. Okay. Great. We'll come back to you. Anyone else? Sarah, you should be allowed to unmute. Hi. Can you hear me? Hi, Sarah. Go ahead. Yes, we can. Hey, I do want to just super briefly ask the councillor's present to vote in favour of adding the climate pollution impact fee to the ballot. That'll be all. Thanks. Thank you, Sarah. And then Gary. Gary? Yes, like loose. I have a 5.30, but I can wait until date if that's okay. Okay. Very good. And is there anyone else? There's none. So we're going to move forward to the first deliberative agenda item, which is the Winooski Bridge replacement update. And I think we have Laura Wilock with us. Yep. So we have a very robust team here. I'm Laura Wilock. I'm a senior public works engineer with the city of Burlington. Also here is our director, Chief and Spencer. And on the side, Maddie Sender is one of the project representatives. I'm going to give it to Bob or Caroline, I guess, maybe Bob, to give an introduction to the project. Hi, everyone. I'm Bob Kleinpilter. I'm the project manager with the V-trans structure section for the bridge portion of the project. We also have here Caroline Kota structures program manager. And then Mike McCroy is on the line. He's the project manager for the intersection portion of the project. Then we have Josh Nolan from HNTB and Steve Spear from HNTB. And I'll let Josh take it away for the presentation. Excellent. Thank you, Bob. Can everybody see my screen? Okay. Yes, we can see it. I did it. All right. So I'm going to walk you through the presentation tonight. It's not going to be a lot of new information compared to some of the stuff we've shared at the public meeting in September. There's a little bit of advanced things, but we're really going to get into some more new things as we move forward here over the next month with the next public meeting. So I'll walk through this where some of it might be a little bit familiar. I'll try to go a little bit quicker. For some of it's new, I'll try to take a little bit more time. And then maybe we'll just take questions at the end if there are any. Sounds good. Excellent. So we've already done introductions, so skip right past that. So tonight, I really want to take a little time just to kind of refresh everybody about where the project is and what the boundaries are. Talk a little bit about some of the past efforts on this job, what we're currently focused on, and then where we're heading with this project altogether. So starting right off here at the project location, just a quick reminder, it's right up at the border between Burlington Manuski over the Manuski River. It's situated just a little bit to the west of the I-89 crossing and serves right around 25,000 vehicles each day. Kind of taking a little bit of a closer look here. We can take an aerial view of the project site itself. And of course, we see it's a busy place. We've got a dam off to the southwest corner. We've got some buildings off to the southeast corner and kind of a roadway and private parking lot for the mill building down there across the river into Manuski. We've got kind of a decking area. We've got an apartment complex to the west. We've got another mill building to the right. So there's just a lot going on at this site. And to try to take a different look at this to really understand what the project is that we're talking about, we pulled this contrast out. So generally speaking, this is the boundary of what we're looking at for the project. It's not super specific. It might grow a little bit. It might shrink a little bit. But this is really the area we're focused on improving with this project. And there's really two focal points to what we're looking at. There's the bridge itself. And then there's the intersection in Burlington as well. And it's really hard to advance one without the other since they're so close and they have a lot of similar needs and goals behind them. So let's talk through the past efforts on each of those items. The bridge and the intersection were both advanced through a project definition phase or a scoping phase separate from one another. They generally progressed through that phase in a similar timeframe. However, starting in around the April 2017 timeframe and wrapped up somewhere around the May 2019 timeframe. During that period, they both established a purpose and need. There's a lot of public meetings, public project advisory committee meetings, city council meetings, lots of discussion. There's a traffic study, alternatives evaluation, and eventually coming out the other end of that study was a preferred alternative being defined. Again, that happened separately. So the bridge alternative defined and separately an intersection alternative defined. And to generally wrap up the ends of those phases, we had a series of reports one specific to the bridge, one specific to the intersection. And then a couple years later, there was a separate grant application which I like to include as a report because there are some other obligations within it that set the tone for where the project is heading. So just quickly touching upon what was in those reports. I mentioned before that the scoping study is wrapped up in 2019. And we had the scoping report here that was wrapped up and recommended a complete bridge replacement. So get rid of everything that's out there and put back all new infrastructures so that way you can get a nice 100-year service life in the end of the day. A lot of the focus of this scope and report was on bike and pedestrian accommodations, but it also went forward and touched upon conceptual construction methods, which we'll get into a little bit later. That with that complete replacement came with a recommended geometry for the bridge. Here on the right side of the screen, we're looking at the existing bridge on the top and the proposed bridge on the bottom. You can see that the existing bridge has four lanes of traffic squeezed into about a 42-foot width between the gutter lines of the sidewalks. The proposed bridge moves forward with that four-lane configuration and makes that overall travelway a little bit wider and a little bit more comfortable. The biggest increase, however, is within those pedestrian areas, the shared use paths. The existing bridge has about six-foot sidewalks. Moving forward, we're looking to include 12-foot multi-use paths for both the pedestrians and bicyclists. So that's the biggest part of the widening of this bridge altogether. The intersection scope and report also wrapped up in 2019 with a lot of similar focuses on bike and pedestrian accommodations, mobility, and safety. The outcome of this report was to advance the project with a four-way intersection which aligns riverside across from Barrett Street. And that can be seen here conceptually in this image taken from that scoping report as well. Again, it's a consolidated intersection with improved mobility and an emphasis on bike, pedestrian movements. If you look at the top side of this image, though, you'll see that the roadway next down because, again, this project was advanced without any sort of advancement of the bridge readily in eyesight. And I mentioned there was a grant application that came forward a couple years later. Within this grant application, kind of in return for receiving additional federal funds, there was this obligation to improve safety on the bridge, to address bike and pedestrian accommodations, compliment the natural and cultural environment, and really at the end of the day, provide an appealing bridge. So that's why I say I treat this almost as kind of a separate report because there are some obligations that drive the direction of this project. So all of that happened in the past. We had a lot of studying, a lot of outreach that ended up resulting in specific recommendations and preferred alternatives being defined. So now here we are moving forward and we're looking at really stitching together those two projects that were advanced separately. We've got the bridge and the intersection. We want to make them actually function as one kind of altogether holistic project. So that's the focus of our efforts at the moment. We are now in this project design phase or phase B of typical development project process. And usually when we get into project design, we're looking at all the things you see here on the right, but really at the moment, we are heavily focused on just these top four, really refining that preferred alternative, working through some of the preliminary design, heavy focus on traffic control, just given the volume of traffic and pedestrians at this site and starting to work through some of the right-of-way process. So what does this all look like? Well, to refine our preferred alternative, really what we need to start doing is get more outreach. And that's what we've been doing. We've had some public meetings, we've gone to different events, we've had some stakeholder outreach, property owner meetings, initial utility meetings, and environmental coordination. We're trying to take as much information as we can gather to refine that alternative. And some of these little bubbles you see on the side are just some of the things we've been hearing from different people we talk to, whether it's by pet safety or construction costs or schedule or aesthetics. It's all different comments we're collecting, reviewing, and seeing how it might continue to shape the project. We are working through preliminary design, too, as I mentioned. The scoping report came out with some groundwork of what we want to advance the project with. But since that time, we've been able to collect ground survey and actually start putting real numbers and real engineering behind those concepts that we're moving forward. A big part of what we're doing, as well, is reviewing constructability. I mentioned there's a lot going on at that site. There's a lot of constraints. We're trying to figure out the best methods to actually construct this bridge and really secure the environmental permits and right away to do so. As we've been getting into this preliminary design, though, one other thing we are looking at is some different alignment variations, which some of them are conceptually shown here on screen just for graphical purposes. These aren't set in stone. But we are looking at what happens when you replace a bridge, completely on alignment, versus a partial shift. And what does that mean for your different traffic control, phasing, and costs associated with those items? So these are being explored and will be further discussed at the upcoming public meeting in January. But I wanted to share them here a little bit, just kind of as a sneak peek. One of the bridge phasing concepts that was presented in the Scoping Report, which is where this graph that comes from, really focused on what's called a lateral slide technique. So in this situation, if you want to follow me from top to bottom on that right side of the screen, is you would start with the existing bridge, and build a little piece of the bridge next to it on the downstream side, so kind of on the dam side of the existing bridge. You'd set that little piece of the bridge in place, you'd transfer utilities, and then allow pedestrians and bicyclists to use this new portion of the bridge. In the meantime, you'd go upstream of the existing bridge, build the remainder of the new structure, and then when that's ready, you would actually close the road entirely to traffic, to vehicular traffic, for about a four to six week duration. You'd then demolish the existing bridge, slide that new portion of the new bridge into place, merge the two halves, and then open it back up to traffic. And during this, pedestrians would be accommodated on that little piece downstream the entire time. So that's a concept that we're exploring with some of those alignments. There's some other phasing and different traffic operations that I'll get into as well at the upcoming public meeting. But traffic control definitely isn't something we're taking lightly. I mentioned there's 25,000 vehicles a day, roughly. There's also about 300 pedestrians a day, roughly. In looking at traffic control, we understand there's an absolute need to balance not just the impact of a traveling public, but also the contractor working on site and all their laborers. They need to have a safe and sufficient construction site to be able to perform their work. So as we go through this, we very much believe there's going to be a need to utilize a combination of temporary lane closures for very specific short term activities, as well as perhaps that temporary bridge closure and that lateral slide technique that we talked about just a second ago. With the maintenance of traffic, of course, we are trying to figure out exactly what we have for the different crossings over the Winooski River in the area. How much traffic do they currently take? How much more could they absorb if a bridge were to be closed? And we're doing kind of an origin destination model to try to... It's somewhat of a sensitivity analysis to figure out where those new vehicles would all of a sudden go if the bridge was closed. As far as the temporary detour, the shortest and seemingly most logical one is what we're showing here on screen. Of course, this isn't just something that we're just drawing a line on paper and wiping our hands of it and walking away. We understand that when you take 25,000 vehicles and put them onto these already very busy roads and intersections, there's going to be some other improvements and needs that have to happen in order to make any sort of detour of that magnitude successful. So there's a lot of different analyses going into the different detour, the different intersections and legs of this detour that you see here to understand if we need to make improvements for the short-term closure. And once again, I want to reiterate that all pedestrians are maintained on site at the project during all times. And then finally, our other current focus right now is the right-of-way process. So we are going through and doing the deed research and the boundary mapping. We have met with a couple of property owners. We will continue to do that over the course of the spring as we start to refine what our impacts are, especially with the intersection. Once we get through that, we'll get into the appraisals and then ultimately into some offers and negotiations to secure the space to be able to construct this project. It kind of brings us into future efforts. I'm already talking about things we're doing in the spring. So our future efforts will really focus on the bottom half of that list that I flashed on screen a while ago. So utility relocation, environmental permitting, and then really the contract development for when a contractor gets on board. So as far as utility relocation goes, we've got a lot of exploration to go for. There's a lot of subsurface utilities out there. We're still mapping them, still trying to identify where they all are, what's abandoned, how deep are they, how many conduits. So we have some efforts happening now to pop manholes, and we have a subcontractor coming back later in the spring to do some test pits and try to really hone in on the location of all those utilities. That'll help us identify conflicts and reduce risk for the contractor going forward as they really move forward with their operations. Utility agreements will then be made as well. And just to kind of emphasize that municipal utility relocations are project reimbursable. So as we come across those, that'll be something else we train in the city will work through as well. Then environmental permitting. This is something that's going to be an ongoing process over the coming year. Year plus is to really figure out exactly what we can do on site. So right now we're focused on trying to identify construction methods and impacts. That will then transition into discussions with the permitting agencies to identify work windows and allowances and really come up with commitments. The historic process or section 106, if you might have heard that, that's going to be a big focal point with different outreach and coordination and input from the public as well as different organizations within Burlington and Manuski. This is a historic bridge. There's an adjacent historic district out there. There's numerous historic properties. So it's a very sensitive area in terms of the cultural aspect of the project and we're going to be marching forward with some very specific regulations around that too. And one of the next big things as well as we kind of get past defining the project is starting to build out the contract for this project. And we're using a construction method called design build contracting where our team is going to take the design to a certain point where we can define what we believe is the footprint of the project, the impacts, and really kind of a design criteria, a shall and should type of situation where we tell the contractor what they need to do. Once we get to that point, the contractor and their designer are going to take the design over the finish line and put the finishing touches on to really meet the needs of the contractor and their specific tools and means and methods to provide a betterment to the project lower cost, faster schedule, and more innovation. So why use design build contracting? Like I kind of just hinted at it a little bit but it really promotes innovation that allows the final design team and the contractor to put their heads together and really use the tools at their fingertip that they're comfortable with to push that project forward. Should improve both design and construction efficiencies, reduce cost, and reduce schedule. So just for a quick comparison's sake, a traditional design build project which is I'll say 95% of what V-Trans does puts V-Trans kind of under the scope of doing all these things on the left with the contractor just doing construction. And you can see down in my little graphic there, contracting happens very late in the development process. With a design build type of contracting, it sheds some of that effort that V-Trans normally would do onto the contractor and pushes some of the risk with it. So all the final design and permitting goes to the contractor and then a lot of the utility coordination and public outreach ends up kind of blending across the two. It allows us to pull that contracting time period forward and get the contractor on site earlier. But I get the question of, well, what does this mean? Why are you telling me this? It's really because we are trying not to fully define and detail every single aspect of this project as we march forward. What we are trying to do is put our arms around what the necessary boundaries and guides and shells and shoulds need to be on this project to tell the contractor what they need to adhere to but allow them the flexibility to still come in and provide some innovation and cost and schedule efficiencies for the betterment of the project. But of course, with every project, the checks and balances with V-Trans will be maintained. So we will still be guaranteed to have a product we're all happy with at the end of the day. So then in terms of just project delivery, just kind of wrapping it up here, got the schedule here in front of us. This is just the first part of the schedule and this is essentially everything that has happened to date. So we already talked through the project starting off in 2017 and really kind of having that definition of what the project needs to be by in the middle of 2019. A couple years went by as we tried to get some money for the project and then a raise grant application happened in 2022. And if we advance to the next part of the timeline, you can see that we're still pretty early in the project in terms of wrapping things up. Got the big old yellow, we are here lagged there on the left side of the screen. This phase of the project where we're still defining or still developing the project and defining the contract documents, this will take us through 24, 25, and partway through 26 before the project is advertised and the contractor can bid on the project. We're probably not looking at breaking ground until at least the end of 27 with final construction probably wrapping up sometime in the 29 timeframe. Final site restoration might even linger into the 2030 timeframe just depending on impacts, park restoration, and some of the details that we have yet to figure out. In terms of project costs, there are two buckets of money floating out there. There's the intersection funding and there's the bridge funding. All right, so they are two separate buckets of money even though we are pushing these projects forward as one project. The bridge itself received that raise grant to 24.8 million. That project is being split with 80% federal funding, 10% state, and 5% each to Burlington and Manuski. The intersection is 100% federally funded. The overall project with construction, design, oversight, right-of-way, everything all together. The entire project is slated to be roughly $60 to $8 million. And with that, I will open it up to questions. Thank you, Josh. Questions from the committee? Yeah, so on May 2 of this year, I sent to DPW a list of questions and I don't want to go through all of them. I know that what Laura had told me was that these were going to be integrated into documents that were going to be shared. So these related to the intersection, not to the bridge itself. So I am interested in knowing how, where they are now in this process and if, you know, and I can get this subsequent to this meeting, if that's easier, that's fine. But there was a bunch of detail. The email was sent to Chapin actually, and then we had a couple of things back and forth, but it was in advance of a tube meeting. So there is that. And then one comment about the bridge, which I had not focused on yet, but there is a real question about the safety of there being a shared use path over the bridge with both pedestrians and bicyclists. And, you know, that being really problematic in the constrained or confined space. One thing on Riverside Avenue, I use it on Riverside Avenue for both biking. And when I run from my house in the old North End, that's not a problem because people can move on to green belts and get a little bit on to people's property. You can't really do that if you're on the bridge. So and with 300 pedestrians, now we don't have, there wasn't a number for the bikes that are crossing, but all improvements will lead to increased volume of bikers. I think naturally, and I think that's what we really want as well. So that's a concern that I have that I have based on what I saw and what has been articulated to me from constituents. Yep. So I'm unfamiliar with the May 2nd email off the top of my head that you're referring to, but certainly it's something we can go back and take a look at what those concerns are and look to address those or answer those. So I'm going to unfortunately pass on that unless Laura, Steve, Mike. I can speak to it just a little bit. Jean, those comments have been incorporated into the RFP that was used to procure HNTV. So they've actually incorporated that into their proposal to us about the safety improvements around the bike ped intersection concept, just going even a little above and beyond how the, sorry, my son's here. And just making sure that some of those improvements are looked at as we advance the concept through design. So that's where a lot of his comments currently landed, Josh. This is that was Councillor Bergman that was speaking. We can hear you guys great. You're just far away. You're smaller in the background there. Been smaller. So I think that what I would love is to get where those ideas have landed in the work that's being done now and the analysis that's happening now. If they've been incorporated into the RFP, that's great. What does that mean now that we are where we are in terms of planning, in terms of its input? Reflections on them, if no decisions have been made, interests and conflicts or however you want to put those two things together so that I get a sense of the thinking as it relates to those issues. And I definitely don't need them now. Thank you, Laura, for reminding me of where they got rooted to. Great. Thank you. We can still provide some guidance on that. I mentioned it's 100% federal funding. The funding took a little while to get in place, so we're not as far along with the intersection as we are with the bridge. We're doing a little bit of catch up now. So I probably don't have any of these specific answers now, but as we get into those answers, I'm happy to share them. Thank you. Of course. And then as far as the bridge goes with the concerns over the shared use path and the use of bikes and pedestrians, we've heard similar concerns at the public meeting and some others too, so we are looking into measures to help people stay separated on that path, whether it's striping, signing, different guidance. It has been somewhat of a focal point, and we plan to talk about that a little bit more over the next couple meetings and really at the public meeting as well. Thank you. Of course. Okay. I had, thank you for that presentation. I had questions, two questions. One is around the alignment slide that you had up briefly, with the consideration of different alignments, be it a facility bridge construction and minimize closure. Is that why you're considering different bridge alignments? That's exactly correct. Yeah. So we'll, we'll share some additional phasing graphics at our public meeting, but the intent of going with kind of a shifted alignments would be that we'd only have to actually reduce traffic to two lanes for part of the time. And one of the innovative things that we're looking at is actually closing the southbound lanes and detouring southbound only. And it sounds a little bit perhaps counterintuitive, but it results in a lot of right hand turn movements. So it actually improves the efficiency of a lot of those interchanges or a lot of those intersections. So we're going to talk through that in a little bit more detail, but yes, you're absolutely right. The reason for the alignment shift is because it reduces some of the construction risk, reduces some of the impacts to the public, and generally speaking, should just reduce project costs altogether. Thank you. And then my other question is I was selected to be on the project advisory committee, and we had like one meeting, I think it was back in September, and I haven't received a notice of any additional meeting. So I was just wondering if you knew when the next one of those might be. Off the top of my head, I don't know the next meeting, but I thought there have been two so far as well. So I will follow up and make sure you're on the email listing. Okay. I know that there was a public meeting that came out of the first meeting, but I didn't know if there was another. So thank you for that. I don't have any other questions. So I guess the only other thing is so in terms of this committee and reports, what is the schedule? What are we going to get back when? So I think, Jean, it's helpful to share that the project team is looking to bring forward to the city council presentation at the January 16th meeting so that we can share this with the entire council. It relates to the section 106 and starting informing all the counselors of the upcoming agreement that will be in front of them. Following that, there is the next public input neighborhood meeting that happens on the 23rd. I'm sorry, I don't have that date in front of me. Yep, that's correct. Okay. That one is at 630. It's being held in Winooski at their Performing Arts Center. We did look strongly for a location proximate in Burlington, and we just didn't feel that there was any facilities large enough to handle what we anticipate for a turnout. So it's a hybrid meeting for this time. And then we will talk with our PAC and ensure that Councilor Barlow is also there about a location for future meetings. Thank you. If there are no more questions, we can thank the presenters and close the side of it, I guess. Thank you so much. Thank you. And we'll move on to our next item, which is the carbon pollution impact item. And as promised at the beginning of the meeting, we'll have another public comment section specific to this item that we'll begin now. And what I will say, I'm not sure how long this is going to go, but we may have to, if it goes to the 10 of 6 timeframe, we'll probably have to end public comment. So be advised of that ahead of time and defer to our next meeting. I'll also say, if you're not able to speak tonight, we would welcome written comments, which we will include with the meeting record. And I know at least one person who's submitted written comments already. And so with that, I'll open the public comment. And I'll go back to first the two speakers from before. I had a loose Hillman who was online. Are you still with us, Liz? Okay. Yes, I am. Go ahead. Okay. I'm loose Hillman. I'm executive director of facilities management at UVM. And I want to say that, you know, UVM is very interested of course in reducing our carbon footprint and we're working hard on our own sustainability plan and energy master plan. And we've been very involved with the ordinance committee on developing the carbon impact fee ordinance. The city of Burlington has recently passed. So this came a little bit as a surprise that it's being changed when we haven't had the opportunity to implement it. We, you know, we notice the 25,000 square foot building size instead of 50,000 square foot. And also in the ordinance, 50% of the payers fees could be used on their own property to help reduce their carbon footprint. And that seems to be removed in this amendment. Also, the, I want to say that the state of Vermont is still working on the clean heat standard. And I'm on the technical advisory committee and we are working very hard on that standard, which will also impact lower and middle income people and help them weather rise into other improvements to their home. So I would like to recommend that this not be brought forward to voters because we've already spent a lot of time developing a good carbon impact fee ordinance with the city of Burlington. Thank you. Thank you, Liz. I'm going to go to one other online person that we asked to wait and then I'll go to in room and that person was, I believe, Gary. Yes, that's correct. Go ahead, Gary. Hi, my name is Gary Scott. I'm the Vice President for an Indiana construction and real estate for the University of Vermont Health and Network. We're just concerned about the process proposed around the Bella item. We feel that it undermines the process we've already gone through, a very thoughtful process that we work hard with. The city on the carbon fee increase and removal of renewable energy credits in the proposed Bella item would have a substantial impact on the hospital's budget. But we can at least afford it at this time. It will increase the cost of patient care to our patients in the state of Vermont, which we feel is a huge negative outcome. Despite how much we value our partnership with BED and BGS on the district energy steam project, all of that work that we've been working so hard on to make this country fruition will have to be paused until this is resolved. Finally, advancing the Bella item would almost certainly prohibit our ability to expand our physical hospital in the city of Burlington in order to meet the health care needs of our community, which means that there will be little to no avenue for partnering with the city on the development of renewable energy sources. Which would seem to be the opposite of the goal of moving towards a net zero. We accept that this committee not advances proposal at this time. Thank you. Thank you, Gary. I'm going to go in room now. I know Kelly's been a patient. Kelly Devine, I'm the executive director of the Burlington Business Association. Because I know we don't want to take a lot of time. I just want to ditto everything both of those people said because that was really helpful about process and about giving this piece a chance to show that it can be impactful. This is the existing carbon impact key ordinance requires some kind of action to see the resulting reduction in carbon output. And there's potential penalties for not going the most efficient group. You don't know if those things are going to have real impact until you have a chance to see them operating within the community where they're going to where they're being implemented. I often say Burlington, at least three of Burlington's supporters are porous. One of them is fairly fixed the lake. And I have increasing concerns and supportive data around that about small businesses, commercial offices, commercial office tenants, moving out of Burlington into South Burlington, into Williston, into Winooski. Part of those decisions have to do with other things that are happening in Burlington that I won't go into. But part of them have to do with the cost of being in Burlington. And part of the increased cost of being in Burlington is energy-related costs or costs related to energy. These costs will be passed on to tenants because most tenants have what we call a triple net lease, which means you pay a fixed lease price and then other costs on top of it. We didn't have any significant concerns with the first phase of it, especially since it focused on such large buildings. I did think that process had a lot of good compromise. When you start to move down to buildings that are 25,000 square feet, you don't necessarily think of some of your smaller shops or some of the smaller stores we have falling into that category, but they really do if they're part of a larger building because it would apply to the building on there. It really depends. And downtown in Burlington, we have a whole bunch of buildings of a variety of sizes. I think there's some concern that some of our small shops will actually be impacted by this. I'm pretty certain that most of our commercial office space that already is in the pool will be added to it. And we have a vacancy rate now that's about 1% above the average, but we have a lot of phantom offices. I think we're going to see a pretty significant reduction in the amount of commercial office space activity that's in Burlington over the next couple of years. I think a real harbinger of that is the fact that if you want to attend the DPW commission tomorrow night, you'll see from their recent report out that their number of leases of people that are in garages four or five to six day leases has dropped, I think fourfold at least, if not more since the pandemic. People aren't coming to offices. Many, many, many of our professional office building holders aren't considering moving out of town. They're already moving out of town. They vacated and are still paying rent until their lease expires. We're going to continue to see that trend because for several reasons, including it's part of the national trend of people not necessarily doing five days inside an office anymore. So I think anything that puts pressure on that that doesn't seem to have been vetted the same way the first half of the process is something that raises concerns for me. I think we need to slow down on this. As Mr. Goodguide said, and someone I don't often disagree with, I mean, agree with. So that was kind of nice, especially at the Santa hat, very festive. We have other election opportunities in 2024 to address this issue. So I'm going to ask again that the committee consider not advancing this proposal. Thanks. Thank you guys. General Manager Springer, are we here to speak on public comment or support questions later? But the latter. Okay. Is there anybody that is? Yeah. Yeah, I'm coming to the audience. Sorry, I don't want to go into that. So, Manny, if you want to just sort of serve them up and... Chris Ma. Yes. Hello. My name is Chris May. I'm a volunteer with 350 Vermont, also a parent of a two year old daughter. I'm a Burlington resident and live in Ward 2. Asking the committee to please take climate action by passing building decarbonization tonight and letting the voters decide on the March ballot. And also in the spirit of saving time at tonight's meeting, just wanted to share that I'm speaking on behalf of a few other friends from 350 Vermont's Burlington node, who are also remotely on this call. Kim Horne and Marcy, Marcy Cass, Andrew Simon and Brian Forrest, volunteers for the Burlington node of 350 Vermont. And also here, asking the committee to pass building decarbonization. Thank you. Grace. Nick. For San Pierre. San Pierre. For San Pierre. For San Pierre. Thank you. Can you hear me? We can, Nick. Go ahead. Thank you. As I think was made clear and as I think a number of the city counselors agreed during the course of some of the prior committee hearings, the ordinance that is on the books now is seriously flawed because it only imposes a carbon impact fee on fossil fuel heating systems. But not on non-fossil fuel heating systems that also emit greenhouse gases. So it perversely creates an incentive for using those non-fossil fuel systems that emit greenhouse gases, including renewable gas, liquid biofuels and advanced wood heat. Just to give you an example, it creates an incentive for if a new home is built for a new furnace to be installed that runs on renewable gas. This is not what we want to be promoting in Burlington, especially with regard to new buildings which are low-hanging fruit. We know they can be built with sufficient weatherization to allow them to run on electricity. So the only way to fix these perverse incentives is to impose a fee on all systems that emit fossil fuels and unfortunately the only way we can do that is by going back out to voters because the charter change says if you want to impose a fee it has to be approved by voters. It's really too bad we didn't get this right the first time. When I saw this ballot item I was horrified and this is actually what turned me into a local activist. We pounded the pavement to try to defeat the ballot, the first ballot measure. Of course we had no luck. So I really think you need to fix this and there was some language written in an attempt to blunt the possibility of these perverse incentives being realized saying someone would have to submit a certification if they rely on something other than electricity or solar or geothermal. But that certification is really broad and it would include proof that something's and economically unduly burdensome. Well electricity is relatively expensive so someone could claim that it's more electricity is more expensive so therefore I'm going to put in advanced wood heat. We just don't want this happening. And my last point is all this ballot measure does is give the city council the authority to fix the problems I've identified. It does not change the ordinance in any way. There's going to be plenty of process going forward for everyone to be heard. And as a result of that process it might be that we agree not to raise the fee or that we don't go down to 25,000 square feet or larger. But we have an urgent issue that needs to be dealt with. Let's put this on the ballot. Thank you. Thank you, Ned. Neal Lunderville? Go ahead, Neal. Hello, Mr. Chair. Can you hear me okay? We can. Thank you. Excellent. Thank you. My name is Neal Lunderville. I'm the president and CEO of VGS for Montgas Systems and formerly the general manager of the Burlington Electric Department. We're served for four years doing some great work working to help make Burlington a more renewable city and working toward the goal of making Burlington a net zero energy city, work that we're still working on here at VGS, working with Darren at the Electric Department and other partners around the city. I come tonight to ask you to consider not advancing the resolution to change the ordinance that was just passed by the Burlington City Council for a couple reasons. One is uncertainty. I think as other speakers, I've just talked about the ordinance that was worked on for many months with a lot of consideration literally just passed the city council just a few weeks ago. And by now making a change to that ordinance or proposing to make a change, you're injecting real uncertainty into what what the policy will be for folks who want to make changes in this space, including us, as we work to decarbonize our portfolio of services that we serve the customers. Uncertainty means that we wait and see and that means we're not taking action. Burlington has already passed an extremely progressive ordinance to decarbonize buildings in Burlington. It's time to let that ordinance work for a while and make changes after a careful study and see how it works. We're not we're not, you know, we are always looking to make policy better. We want to be a partner in that. We also need to give policy time to work. The second point I want to make is about affordability. I know you care about this deeply as do we. We serve 15,000 customers in Burlington. We're one of the cheapest ways to serve energy, although we know one of the inherent flaws that we have is that we are contributing to to climate change with greenhouse gas emissions. We also need to make sure as we decarbonize, we do so in a way that our customers can afford. And this resolution proposes to increase that carbon impact fee by 57%. We know because we've heard from our customers that they're already working hard to manage their cost and they can't afford anymore, whether it's energy bills or grocery bills or housing bills, whatever it is. So we'll be really careful before we're imposing any new cost on them. That's residential customers and business customers alike. The last point I'll make is a point made by a couple other speakers, including Loose and Gary, is that we have one of the most progressive energy policies in the country in Act 18, the Affordable Heat Act, also known as the Clean Heat Standard. We need to give that that law, which is statewide, applies to all Vermont time to work. The Public Utility Commission is in the middle of building a regulatory process around making that work. As Burlington continues to change its or proposing to change its ordinance, I am concerned that Burlington will move at 90 degree angle from where the state is. And again, this creates uncertainty and it creates doubt and it causes people to pause in their actions. We cannot let people pause. We have to keep moving forward in a very aggressive way to beat that climate change, but to do so we need a stable policy base from which we can work. So I would encourage the committee to not let this resolution move forward. Take the time to let Burlington just passed ordinance work. VGS will continue to be a great partner to the city in those efforts and making sure that our customers stay safe and warm in every season. Thanks for the time today. Thank you, Neil. Can you guys hear me? We can. Go ahead. Great. Thanks, everyone. So yeah, I just want to remind folks, you know, this is part of a process that we're in in the city. In 2019, we declared a climate emergency. We set the ambitious goal of eliminating emissions from all buildings and eliminating fossil fuel fuel use in all buildings by 2030 with the net zero energy roadmap. And I think we're all committed to that. But the thing is in order to get there, it's going to take a lot of work. And it's going to be difficult work and it's going to require leadership. We've taken some small steps in the right direction towards that goal, but we still have a long way to go. And I think that was acknowledged kind of throughout the process thus far of the existing ordinance. We got voter approval in 2021. So two and a half years ago, with the voters saying the city can regulate thermal energy in buildings, including using fees, but the fees would have to be approved by voters. We ultimately got this, we got some level of authority on the fee side and we developed this initial policy, which really, in my mind, is very much just a starting point. It is looking at, you know, commercial and industrial buildings above 50,000 square feet. So about 80 buildings in the city. So that that starts to touch on, you know, some of where we need to go, but it still leaves a long way to go. And even within those 80 buildings, you know, that the policy that we have on the books, the ordinance is specific to at the point at which someone is getting a new system. And I think that's critical that folks getting a new system that the city should nudge them towards, you know, installing a system that doesn't emit. But again, it's going to take a lot more than that to get where we need to go. And so I think this is a continuation of that work. I appreciate you all for doing this work. I think there's a lot of great examples from other cities. You know, we don't need to reinvent the wheel here in Burlington. So I hope you'll continue and earn us to try to move forward policies that can move us closer to this shared goal of eliminating emissions in our building sector. Thanks so much. Thank you, Jack. Ashley Adams. Hi. Thank you. I appreciate you taking public comment during the meeting. I was helpful. It allowed me to be here. With all due respect, I don't think you can call climate policy in Burlington progressive when you have a 50 megawatt biomass plant in your backyard. The ordinance that voters thought they were getting is not the ordinance that they got. It's a deeply flawed piece of legislation that allows for renewable natural gas, advanced wood heat, biofuels. And that is really problematic. That is not by any means progressive climate ordinance. And it needs to be fixed and voters deserve to weigh in again and have an opportunity to demand that the city correct the ordinance that's on the books. So please allow that to happen. And please recognize that it is, as a previous speaker indicated, a process. It is not an ordinance. It's a process that voters deserve to vote on. So I appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you, Ashley. Is that it? That's the only people have their hands raised. Is there anybody else who's listening online who wishes to speak to this item in public comment? Please raise your hand to be recognized. Nobody? Okay. Then I'm going to go ahead and close public comment. And I guess I'll open it up to the committee to sort of decide on how we want to move forward. How do we want to start? First of all, I think that we clearly have a short of time today to get into the details and make decisions. And I am an advocate of moving forward on this. So clearly, I'm not folding to the contrary opinion that's been expressed. So I would love for us to have another meeting that would allow us to meet the mandate of the council resolution to be able to report back to the council in time for us to have an action on January 29th. I think that we have a meeting set for the 23rd, which is the Tuesday, but that can work to be able to get something to the to the council for the next Monday, which I believe is the 29th and when we're meeting. So we have a full council meeting on the 29th. I believe we have a full council meeting on the 29th. When you were saying all our meeting here took on the 20th. The 23rd, yes. So our meeting on the took on the 23rd. Correct. Yes. So meeting. So us meeting in time to do that. Now, we're also it's also meeting on the council is also meeting that on the 16th and perhaps given the the desire to put enough time into this that there is the ability for us to meet the week of January 8 would seem to be prudent. So that's sort of the first. Yeah, I would prefer that if we met that we could talk about this. I think I would prefer that as well. That sounds I prefer that as well too. Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, you have to be able to give us the sufficient time to do the work that needs to be done. So we're talking about trying to find time the looking at January the week of the 8th. I mean, whether are the preferred days of the week. I would ask that of Maggie and staff as well. That conference room and for a conference room as well. And we might anticipate meeting a slightly larger space if one is available. It is booked every day that week. There is availability before a NBA or five NBA is at six on Thursday. So we could try to do it an hour and a half or so before as early as I would folks think feel about going back to Spark space or one of those other alternative spaces or I would I would be okay with that. The 9th is also which is a Tuesday. This is our traditional meeting with them. And the sharing budget conference room was available on Thursday. Oh wait, I'm looking at the running week. The 9th of Tuesday, the 9th of January. It is not available that day. I was looking at the running week. Hold on. Which one? The sharing budget conference room. But the DPW conference room is available on the 10th. This Wednesday at the 10th? Wednesday at the 10th. All evening. So. I have a sort of a major conflict at 7.30 that night. But I would be depending on it being early right when we do make a time I would prefer just to leave it so we're not we're not constrained by it. Yeah, I can do and any day that week is fine for me. So I have. Yeah, so whatever works. So the 9th is I think the best day for me. Okay, Tuesday the 9th. Is there space anywhere on the night? Not in DPW but I can continue to look and circle back with you and soft line. Thursday the 11th is also time that I think that that puts us into if we were want to do something for the council meeting on the 16th, if that were to happen, then that that champs that up. Well, because of deadlines, you know. Right. And then 9th also Yeah, but that's a little less problematic and we can put it up in a placeholder and meet that on the 10th. And it'd be Consent, I see committee and sense of things they're supposed to tell right. Yeah. Friday, you know, not the whole so. So I'm open to yeah, whatever either of you like to do. So I think that I is the best day. But what then let's try to meet on the 9th somewhere to be determined where what time would you like to meet in a normal five o'clock time? I can do that. I can do earlier. Yeah, anytime works for me. I can do. I can do either as well. So let you guys know and spark is I mean if we're looking at a bigger place versus a smaller place, sparked places is good and generally okay with BD and they have with me. So I don't have the access. Yes, we have to check or elsewhere. So we'll say that that's to be determined, but it'll be a special meeting of the two to a season finale to deal with this deal with this one issue on that day. But do we want to talk more about things that we might want to have? Are there anything that we would ask BD for? I mean, I am. I'm interested in understanding the buildings that are feared to be swept up into this a listing of that would be quite helpful. I would like in the nicest way possible and some of you know me to be sharp mouth. So I'm going to try not to be sharp mouth. Kelly and I go back along. I'm bothered by the broad swipes that UVM MC gave. And so I would like to actually understand from UVM MC if they're here exactly what they're talking about when they say that they have to pause that is going to give let me just pull up their letter. Okay, not that one that's UVM's. Is this the MC? Yeah. Yeah, I got it. It's from Gary Scott. That they have to pause and create. I don't understand how it's going to how it creates. And so they should explain it in their own words how it creates uncertainty that they're forced to plan to pause. This is a letter that we got is dated to December 17. Yeah. So I'm reading from the third paragraph just to be particular. So they make they make claims that it creates so much uncertainty that they have been forced to pause and work on distributing. Now, this in my mind does not create it. I respectfully disagree with my friends in the room and those online when it says it does it because all this does is create an authorization. It does not create any law. It does not change any existing thing that we put in a place. It doesn't do any of that. And in fact does not short circuit the process by which we would get there. So I don't understand how this creates so much uncertainty that all the time that they spent working with BED is now has to be put on hold. And there are a number of other things that they claim that I need verification for. I cannot trust that they most certainly would prohibit their ability to expand in Burlington. I do not understand that and want to understand what they mean by that. So and they probably make a couple of other allegations here with regard to the things and I would like to mean if this is possible and I think that there are things that we could get for this next meeting. A listing of the buildings that would be covered that Kelly expressed concerns about. And to the extent to which those relate to the heating systems if we can get details about that. I mean people's it's really easy to be scared and everybody actually should be quite upset about this. The people in Barry and in Waterbury and more down today are dealing with the uncertainty and the fear that is coming from this massive climate disaster that we are all facing and we are all going to be paying for it. We don't avoid those costs. So it would be helpful to understand in more granularity when people say we're scared about added costs. Who has got systems that are going to need to be replaced but are going to be affected by this. And if it can happen I mean this is. Can I ask a question Linda? Sure it's okay. So I think what I'm hearing you saying is that I'm exaggerating how many buildings it would impact. No. Or I just want to know if you want to see evidence of the number of buildings that it impacts. But if the number of buildings that it impacts and the number of heating systems that impacts are quite small. Maybe that's the reality we uncover. Then how can this this measure in any way be equated to the flooding. You're asking for I want some baseline data. People have said that this is going to cause major disruption. I want to understand and so I want to get into it. I think one thing for sure is when we approached the last piece and people were working together we had a really clear list of the buildings and those were laid out for everybody before the thing was passed. And we couldn't. This is part of the uncertainty is not knowing. And this this you know I mean again I I believe that authorizing and a new way an additional way I don't know the words are not coming the words not right coming to me. But this this change does not foreclose that process. But given what I've heard it you know people I think should I would like to hear some verification to the claims that that are being made to oppose this. So I would that so that's that's what I'm looking for in that because I just got to say that I like I think probably virtually every other human being would really like to go. So I would like to make sure that everything would be able to be vetted out perfectly. So we're absolutely sure that this is things are the right thing to do and that we test everything perfectly for we go anywhere. You know this is what the humans do. I believe that that has gotten us to the edge of the cliff. And I do understand that I just think it's important to remember that the UVM medical center is right on the borderline self-prompt. It's easy to do this by moving a few feet away. I have I have seen the effect of economic strikes by people opposed to making changes that need to be made. And they've been fairly drastic but I but I don't want I'm sorry I don't want to get into that debate now. I'm just saying that from my standpoint the we do not have the luxury of going as slow as what I hear people asking us to do. And I really um yes I feel that very deeply in my bones for for me and old people we're gonna have to deal with all these things when we're too fragile and for the babies and our babies babies that that are out there. So that's that's my take on this. I guess just broadly where I'm at right now is I need to have many conversations. I am sympathetic to the outreach that at least I've gotten from business owners in the downtown specifically and understand that there are economic realities to them which make this feel impossible and also I personally do not want to jeopardize the work that was done on district energy. I think that many many people before me put a lot into that and so with the new information that we've gotten over the last couple of days that's a lot to process but I think my thing is mainly conversation and just getting a better grasp on where we're at and understanding what this actually looks like. So okay thanks. Where I'm at I didn't support this referral when it was referred to committee. I had proposed an alternative which was a process that mimicked the process leading up to the last valid question. I understand it's here now and we will deliberate on this and you know we will make a recommendation on this committee back to the whole council and expect that we will. However like a bright line for me is that we just as as speakers tonight pointed out just enacted a policy and we need to give that policy time to work whether this was a policy that we enacted on carbon pollution impacts or a policy on something else that we would make as a city council. We need to be able to show the people affected by the policy that there's some stability for some period of time under whatever policy you make. So in the case of this current ordinance I would like to see this play out for some period of time and see how it works. And I think the institutions as we heard tonight that are affected UVMMC, UVM they're asking for that as well. So that's something that I'll be looking for in any council action that I think I can support is to allow this to some period to be in effect and see what you know see what comes of it. Are we collecting carbon pollution impact fees or are we as we hope driving the Haiti for the adoption of of more efficient less emitting thermal systems in the city. So that remains to be seen. And in terms of the other class of buildings that we're talking about the buildings 25,000 to 50,000 square feet. I'm hoping to a discussion on that but I first need to understand how many buildings who they are. And I'm very sensitive to this notion that if we make if they are businesses and commercial properties in the city that we make it too onerous of an environment to be here we're not going to prevent those emissions they're just going to move those we're just going to move those commit emissions along with any economic activity that we get out of those buildings to an ignorant community. So I think we have to be mindful of that as we you know have down this path but but as it were we're a side earlier we're going to continue to operate on this item and we will be convening again on it on on the 9th of January at a location to be determined and I think we agreed on five upon so with that if there's no other discussion this evening I would like to move on and give Director Spencer a chance to provide us with a director's report which is the next item on our agenda. Thank you very much two quick items one is I wanted to let the counselors know that on December 14th last week we hosted two meetings related to Great Streets Main Street with stakeholders along the corridor thanks to Kelly Devine in the room for facilitating the space for one of those meetings and we are continuing to engage the stakeholders we have promised a mid-January meeting once we have the construction schedule from the contractor to share with the public. Number two is that tomorrow night there's a DPW Commission meeting December 20th where we will be discussing adjustments to rates in the downtown garages specifically it relates to extending the max daily rate which will just affect people who stay over eight hours in the garages and the hotels who pay half of the max daily rate for those stays in addition there's a proposed 5% inflationary increase for monthly parkers those will be discussed and for the consideration of the commission's approval tomorrow night and we are continuing to look at data and study the on and off street system to have further recommendations either in the winter or spring with the COVID recovery not being as quick in our garages we are projecting somewhere in the range of an $800,000 shortfall this year alone and fund balance was depleted during COVID so we are trying to be responsible stewards of the parking facilities fund while minimizing the financial impact for folks coming downtown so more more to come but I wanted to at least give you a briefing on those two items thank you thank you um and with them the next item is councilor items are there any anything you didn't know I don't have anything either tonight so uh the last item is um our next not a special meeting but our next regular meeting which is scheduled for the 23rd of january at our normal time Wednesday at five is that work for everybody still yeah okay and we will do that what was that and uh if that's it then we're ready to adjourn all right without you with jerry we'll go up and leave the project it's the second part and I don't believe there's a meeting discussion on that so I'm always in favor I know we're adjourned that um