 You don't need to mess around with your computers because we won't need them for tonight. Not much to discuss about logistics because it's not going to be the ordinary type of meeting. Am I being heard okay Kelly? Okay great. The first item is to approve the agenda. Is everybody happy with the agenda? Okay. The next item on the agenda is general business and appearances ordinarily. This is an opportunity for any member of the public to address the council on any topic that is not on the agenda. We will certainly take comments on topics that are not on the agenda but also if any members of the public are participating and would like to be heard on the topic of tonight's meeting, which is city council strategic plan, we would hear from you about that too and I'll ask Kelly if there are any people seeking to be recognized. Okay. Nobody is seeking to be recognized so now we can move to the main business which is city council strategic planning session and pass it right off to Paul. It's an honor to be here with you all. I don't have an agenda of my own personally to bring to this meeting but we do have a sort of structure that we're going to walk through. I want to give the floor to the city manager Bill Frazier to sort of set the tone about how the goals work with your annual work plan and then I'll review the agenda and then we'll walk through efficiently but in an open way. We're not making hard decisions tonight. We're exploring what some of the big goals are. We're also not trying to fine line out strategies for everything. But we do have time to brainstorm and think about those things so I'll walk through some of that in just a second but they'll kick us off. Paul, it's great to have this session. This is one of the only times really we have all year where we just get to sit down in a room and talk about what's important. So it's good and it's good to have a facilitator so the mayor and I and the team can all participate without the trappings of a formal meeting. From our perspective, staff perspective and I think for your benefit, what we hope to get out of this meeting at the end of it or however many meetings it takes is some sort of clarity about what's the most important to the city council. You know, big goals and particular projects and items and strategies. We can come back to you with suggestions for specific projects and that kind of thing. And this really guides our work plan during the course of the year where we put our emphasis and obviously we're about to do the budget. So if there are a lot of things that you think are important, we would include those and try to reflect this plan in the budget or at least seek guidance from you to then prioritize further if we're not within your budget goals. And then lastly, it sets for those of you that have been on the council longer know that once we finish this process, depending on what comes out of it, you'll see sort of a filled in agenda for the year almost, you know, as things come back. So right now, if you look at the upcoming meetings, there's a lot of blank spots, but you know, what's happening in November, once this is done, then some of your items will show up as now because this really drives what shows up on council agenda. So these are things that you've said are important enough to spend time on kind of if you remember when we did the orientation, we talked about how do you want to spend your 250 hours? This is really helping set that. And I say that and I know Paul will get back to this, but one of the outcomes of this process isn't necessarily to decide every issue. So, right, well, I mean, because we could be here all night, right? So I'm just making this up, but let's say there was a zoning issue, right? And we someone said we really need to have more density and so we really have less density, you know, we could spend all night debating the policy issue density. But what I think we could say is it's important. This is an important issue that council council needs to make a decision about zoning density and we'd like to do that in April. So we don't really spend all the time fighting about that policy, but we agree is this is important enough issue that we want to spend some time on it and get staff work and those kind of things. So so you don't have to wrestle everything to the ground. Obviously, if things are unanimous, you really want to move with things that that's helpful. But part of it is to identify areas that need your attention and your discussion and your decision. We today provided you our staff met this morning, gave a quick outline. This isn't meant to be telling you what to do, but sort of things that were on people's minds, projects that we've got going to give you a sense of stuff we're already working on. But you could also add some track, multiply and divide. It was really just sometimes people want some help getting started. So it's a little nudge, but it's not meant to be, you know, this is your meeting for you. You're the elected officials. You need to set your goals and priorities for the next, certainly for the next 12 months, but really even, you know, your vision for the future knowing that councils may change over the course of time and may alter these. But at least your particular group is saying this is where we want the city to go. So with that, I'm going to turn it back over to Paul and let you all do your work. Thanks so much, Bill. So if we take a look at the agenda, we've got a few big blocks of work here. And the first is to really look back at the vision, mission, values, sheets that came from the last couple of years of process. Say, is that vision still true to us? Are there needs when we, we aren't going to like micromanage and get all the language that if there's changes tonight. But we, we'd say, you know, is this going in the right direction? Are there things we need to change and set up for future work around that? Really review those goals from, from the 22, 23, think towards 24. What's changed? What, what's most important to us now? Brainstorm those goals, put some things on the wall. There's no right or wrong answers. Everything is in play for the course of the evening. So we'll put ideas up. We'll review them and then we'll have the chance to, you know, you're really trying to get your fellow counselors to vote for the thing that you think is most important. So we'll have some time to champion the ones that are most important to you, that you think the city council should really rally around over the course of the next year and, and inform the work of city government. Then we'll do some quick prioritization exercise to see which ones are the absolute top ones. And we'll also be considering as we go, is this a big overarching goal, like an arena of work, or is this a particular strategy to advance that, like, like a particular housing project versus the issue of expanded housing, right? And then we'll have some time after we've come up with the five to eight goals, whatever you all think are your core priorities. Are there particular strategies that ought to be listed out now as some of the work that you'd like to see moving forward through the course of the year? And again, we're not defining those as, you know, decisions that are forcing action today, but, but your first thinking around some of the strategies that you think might be most effective in moving these goals forward. Okay. So just, yeah, I forgot to mention what you come up with today will be draft and outline form. We'll then take it and put it back. And if we have to have more conversation, we will. But at some point, this, this plan will be on a council agenda, you know, regular agenda, and you will vote to adopt it. So you will take a final action, but it won't be tonight, just some people laying the ground. We're laying the thinking together that will later be voted upon and adopted. Before we start, though, I don't know you all and just, you know, Bill said, do you do these opening exercises? And I said, no, I really hate them. But let's do one anyway. And what I would ask each city councilor or in the mayor to do is to just take a second and tell us why did you run for office? And, and I'd like it if you could pose it as a positive affirmation. Rather than I, damn it, the taxes are too high and I ran this up, you know, lower the taxes. But, but to say something in a positive way that like affirms something from your heart, that is why you love Montpelier or why you wanted to be on city council and what you want to move forward. And I see you nodding, Lawrence. Laura, I'm going to start with you. Great. So, yeah, I first ran whenever it was five fish years ago and then kept running. Like I have worked on federal policies, state policy and just kind of realized like in your communities where the rubber meets the road and where like projects actually happen or not. And, and like I love our community and, you know, everything I do, I'm like, what future are we leaving my kids and all of our kids? And so just being able to like come into city government and try to, you know, leave it a little better in a few years that I serve was just my inspiration of like, but try to get some stuff done for the community. Tim, yeah, I've been, Tim Heaney, I've been part of the community for a while too. And it seems like I had a chapter in my life where I was on the school board and I thought it was one of the best civic opportunities I've participated in. So having had a couple of decades off from that, it seemed like a good time to get involved again. And this felt like a good way to contribute to all the conversation about housing. Got me kind of excited because that's what I do. And so here I am. I moved here seven years ago. This year will be my seventh year. I'm Turkish American and I attended a leadership program and my capstone was how create more inclusive environment for immigrants in local offices. Then I start doing a research and my curiosity took me so many information and my friends told me, you know what to do, why don't you do? So I said, hmm, okay. Then I went home and said my family and my husband, oh my God, she has another idea. Fine. And then I decided to be here at the table and represent 3% of Montpelier population. And I'm very happy being here. It created such a great positive environment and nice friendship for me. Thank you so much. I'm Sal Alfano. I came to Vermont in 1969. I met my wife in the registration line in college. I'd like to tell people I came to Vermont and married the first person I met. But we raised our kids in East Calus, which is a small town. I was pretty active. There was on the school board. I was building dugouts for the baseball field. And then my job took us to Washington, DC, which was a wonderful city. I loved it, but we're completely anonymous. It's like stuff happens and you never see anybody you know. And when we moved back, we wanted to be in Montpelier. And we were in a neighborhood of people who were concerned about issues. And we got to know them. Got to talk about it. And actually, they asked me if I knew anybody who wanted to run for counsel. And I racked my brain. But in the end, I thought, you know, being engaged in a town like Montpelier, maybe I can contribute. So that's why I ran. Great. Likewise, I've been here some 53 years. And I've been very involved in city government in lots of ways, job and family and kids. But the opportunity when it came was one to change the ratio of females on the city council at the time. I was also wanting to always build in a future of vision. That your budget, that your actions were building towards something, not just staying in a framework of what do we have to protect. So that's been very important to me. Great. Well, I didn't run for office. Oh, yes, you do. I mean, you do. Yes. Well, I, you know, my real phraser, I've been city manager here since 95. I moved here for this job. So I've lived here 20 and a half years, raised four kids in the community. Came here with two under two. And now I have, you know, four graduates of Montpelier High and four graduates of colleges. So it's been a while. Tim was on the hiring committee. We were both considerably younger at the time. And, but, you know, I have been, my grandfather was a main state legislator. I got introduced in interested in government and those kind of things. I was a middle school or during water gates. I got engaged with sort of all of that and went to college, got a degree in public management and worked in some small towns in Maine and New Hampshire was working in Cambridge, Massachusetts. As a middle manager, got my master's degree there. And wife and I had kids decide we wanted to move someplace a little more kid friendly than Cambridge and Somerville, as much as we loved being there. And we made a little list of communities in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont that had a council manager, former government number one, were interesting places to live and work, you know, fun, good communities. Had a history of stability with council managers. Because there are many communities that churn people out, you know, firing the manager every two years is kind of the way of life. And was a place where, given my career at the time, I had a chance of getting hired. So like a Portland, Maine probably would have been too big. It would have fit all the criteria, but it would have been too big a shot at the time. So my pillar was the only one in Vermont that was on the list. But it was the first one that came up. And so, and I tell the story because, you know, obviously I loved being here. I mean, we've had our ups and downs. But I remember coming up to the interview, our second child was literally due. Cell phones weren't a big thing then, but I had a cell phone. I remember going to all these interviews saying, at the beginning of everyone, I might have to leave at any time and drive back to Boston. So just so you know. I remember getting home at like midnight after this whole day. And you know, wife said, how did it go? And I said, you know, I don't know if they can offer me the job. I don't know if we'll work it out, but I can tell you those are people I meant to work with. We totally connected. And the staff at the time, none of them were here anymore. Well, Bob was. And the council at the time and it worked out. So they offered me the job the day before Patrick was born. And a week later, I was in heating real estate, looking for a house. And there we are. Charlie sold me a house. It's Charlie Wiley. Thanks, Bill. Here we go. Jack. All right. I'm Jack McCullough. I've been on the council or mayor for, well, I guess it must be six years now, because I kept saying, keeps getting fine, but five, but I've lived here for 40 years. And I always say this, that Montpelier is really the best place in Vermont to live. My wife and I have been here. We moved here when my wife was seven and a half months pregnant. And so we had raised our two sons here, both graduated from Montpelier High School, one still lives in Montpelier. And the entire quality of life in this city, I have really appreciated from the time we hit here. It's a welcoming community. I've considered it to be a welcoming community. It's been, we have a lot going for us from the professional theater to the beautiful downtown, to the feeling of community as you go into the stores. And over the years I've been here, I've been involved in a lot of political activity, and I've spent many, many, before I was even on the council, I spent many, many hours in council meetings, mostly advocating for housing. And that's really what got me to thinking, well, I could do this. I could be advocating for housing and for the other values that are important to me. Energy saving. As a member of the council, not just on the outside. And I really appreciated being on the council and having a group that is willing to work well together. And I've observed councils that have not worked well together. It's important to have a group that works well together and can commit to cooperating to achieve the goals that we share. Thanks, Mayor. I'm Carrie. I'm in my first term still as a city councilor. It kind of feels like it's been a lot longer than that in some ways actually, which is interesting. You should meet it. But I think I come to this from a very idealistic place about really believing in democracy and really believing in the power of people within the community having control over their government and government as an expression of the individuals within the community. So I have a lot of idealism about it. It's certainly different in practice than it is in ideals. But I think that the way that Montpelier runs itself is it's a really remarkable place in that we have a lot of accessibility. We know our neighbors. We talk to our neighbors. We hear from them when we do things that they don't like or when we do things that they do like. And the opportunity to really be part of not just turning things over to whoever's in charge but actually taking control of it ourselves as our community is what really brought me here. So I would say I'm still trying to figure out ways that we can take the structures that we have in how we run city council and how we run city government and incorporate the rest of the people in Montpelier into that. We're working on that. That's a big part of what gets me very excited about being here. Well, terrific. I'm sure that the things that brought you here are going to resonate in your goals for what should happen in the next year. And it's interesting to hear you talk about strategies and the sense of importance of vision and then you sharing that perspective of democracy and this is where it happens, right? And when you set your goals, you're really setting a big framework for what's going to happen in city government for the next year. So it's a pretty serious business to represent all the people behind you. And again, it's an honor for me to be here. Let's get right into the agenda. We're a little late because we started a little late because a couple of people. But Tim... He can handle it. But let's look at this first major part of the agenda in terms of the vision, mission, and values of the city. I expect this is something that's been batted around and been looked at over and over by staff, by city councils year to year. And it probably changes and evolves as things go forward. But have you all had a chance to read it and think about it? And are there observations on it? Is it basically still work? Does it make sense for us to read it? To kind of go through it? Yeah, that's... Yeah. Is there someone who'd like to read the vision statement? Do you folks have this with you? Is there a city councilor who'd be willing to read the vision statement? I've got it right here. Yeah, I have it right here. Okay, go ahead, Sal. Montpelier is an engaged and growing city with a population that reflects cultural and economic diversity. The city balances being a hub for businesses, arts, outdoor recreation, and other cultural events while ensuring there are strong core municipal services, environmental protections, a variety of housing and support services for all. So let's start with that. You know, does that statement work as a vision for the future of the city? It's a description of the city as a balance point between the businesses, outdoor recreation, arts, and all those, the hub role that it plays, and then the strong municipal services, the environmental protections, housing. Yes. So I think this is a great vision statement, but the thing that struck me is missing from it possibly is something about economic security and economic conditions for people in the city. And I would probably put that in there, although certainly there's a place for it in the goals and everything, but that this is a place where people can afford to live and can, you know, thrive economically. These are all levels of, all economic levels. Yeah, Bill, is one of your staff going to be officially taking notes for us so that we have a record of suggested changes here? Kelly's going to do that? Yes. Okay, thanks. Does it mention economic diversity? Yeah. I just feel a little uncomfortable. I see that more as a chamber of commerce. Economic security? Or economic... The city has, I guess, influence of bringing employers in and employment and business, but we're really, I feel it's on the fringe, but that's all. So I wouldn't necessarily talk about it in terms of employers and employment. That's a part of it, but economic security encompasses a lot more than that. So, yeah. So, I mean, economic diversity, well... That's like food security. I would love for everybody to have food security, but to me, it comes out from there. Maybe it comes... Into the actions or into the... It's an action versus evasion. I don't know. Well, let's make note of it and come back to this. Or maybe just how you word it. Yeah. I'm reacting too, sorry. Thanks. Lauren. I almost wonder if... Sorry, this is kind of wordsmith-y, but I wonder if it would get at what Carrie is saying. Just because in the first sentence, it says... End of vision, right? Okay, so it's an engagement growing city with a population that reflects cultural and economic diversity. I wonder if we said reflects, and this isn't the right word, but accommodates or... It supports. Somehow, yeah. It fosters cultural and economic diversity, which to me indicates that you're trying to have a community that people... That diversity can actually live in and thrive in. Okay. And you have several people nodding one way and another. Yes. I'll leave it to you. Hey, then. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we mentioned housing there. I was thinking maybe we should add what kind of housing, because we talk about affordable. It doesn't have to be affordable, but others are like more specific, right? Yeah. Cultural diversity, economic diversity, to the point, or environmental... Yeah. Like support, like core municipal services, but then housing is very general. This is a variety, which would mean maybe housing for diverse populations, but she mentioned the word affordable as well, which is nodding here, per se. Yeah, I think with both of these, a variety and diversity could include people who have no money and no housing and they live in terrible places and they can't afford to pay their bills. That's diversity, but that's not exactly what we want, right? It's not your vision. Yeah. Okay. But we don't want everybody to be really, really rich and living in mansions either. So I'm not sure how to phrase that, but the idea that this can be a place where people at a variety of income levels can live securely and safely and happily. Yeah. Other thoughts about the vision statement? Okay. Well, there's... If you think of something as we go down through the list, we'll come back to it. While Kelly's caught those thoughts, they'll be there for your future contemplation and potentially wordsmithing to improve that. The mission statement is very brief. Is there someone willing to read the mission statement? Do you guys have it in front of you? Right here. Sal? Go for it, Sal. You have a good radio voice, too. Sure. The city of Montpelier will be a leader in the state by providing excellent municipal services that align with community priorities through proactive communication and public engagement. That's the mission statement of the city of Montpelier. Yes? Yeah. I think it is good. There's a lot saying excellent. Can we say what we mean by excellent? What's excellent? So we'll see it, right? So when I read the statement, I can understand something else. Excellent. From excellent, yeah, but... Yeah, it might mean different things to different people. Yeah, what we are trying to say when we are saying excellent. It's too general, I think. Do you have any words that you'd suggest? Like, you know, services probably supported by public or included, but I don't know. Like, I don't know the right word. But excellent could mean different things to different people and it would be interesting to think about some of the other words that might be used there to... And we have the survey results, right? All the things people like about living in Montpelier and the city. We can take one of the key terms from there because they already gave us so many explanations why they like living in Montpelier, why they like about city services. But I don't have anything specific in my mind. Okay. Yes, Mayor? I have a thought about this and of course, you know, I was part of writing this over the last five or six years and as I'm thinking about it, this is good, but I almost would rebalance the emphasis in how this is written so that this starts out by saying we'll be a leader in the state. And I wonder if our emphasis should really be we will provide excellent services to our residents by doing these things. And maybe we add to that and this will make us a leader in the state but that our emphasis is on providing great service. Yes? Yeah, I like that a lot. This was the part that stuck out to me about this was the leader part that, I mean, to me that feels unnecessary. Like that doesn't feel to me personally like an important goal for the City of Montpeliers to be a leader. The most important thing is that we provide excellent municipal services that aligns community priorities and everything and then we may end up being a leader that way but the way this is worded sounds like the most important thing we want to do is be better than everybody else and have everybody look up to us and tell us how great we are. And that just does not feel like a value that I don't want to discuss. So the Mayor is saying that if you had that other clause first then you'd be able to say That would help. Making us the City an important leader for Vermont. So it could be reversed and cause and effect would be reversed a little bit in terms of the way it reads. Can we say pioneer? A pioneer? Instead of leader. I like like Montpelier passed the non-U.S. citizen voting, right? It is one of the very few cities in Vermont but it's not being a leader. It's being like opening the way to other like being a pioneer like the first couple, first one. Modeling new ways of doing. Yeah, like starting. You captured the essence of what that was supposed to be or what it meant to the people who did it. I was around when it got done and been modified many times. So you really captured the essence of what was behind it that made me. So that notion of taking leadership, pioneering and doing things that other municipal aren't. I mean that's what makes you a leader for the rest of the state is when you're doing things that are both excellent and really well done in terms of management but also modeling. Yeah, then when we talk about pioneering then I have all the examples. In my mind, right, I can. Oh, yeah. Montpilers did this, did that. But when we say leader, so I cannot come up with ideas like leader, being a leader. Leader is like kind of a more personal, like a person thing to me. So that's why I mentioned that. Okay, thanks, Sal. At the risk of being accused of being convergingly, could we align not only with community priorities but with community resources through proactive communication and public engagement? I mean, do we want to just provide every services no matter what, whether we can afford them or not, or do we want to provide them by aligning priorities with resources? It's a good, I see a couple of heads nodding and resources could mean, could be fiscal but could also be, could be human resources. Volunteers and other people, it could be all kinds of different resources, not just tax basements. It's just not seeing a mission statement as putting limits. Again, it doesn't mean whatever. Priorities and limits? Yeah, well, it's grounds for further thinking. For sure. Did you want to say something? I was just going to weigh in on that, which was to say, again, times of change and clarity is kind. When it was written about aligning with community priorities, it meant that the community would also have priorities about the resources. Like, it was all the priorities. So that was intended to be, we'll provide services within the community's priorities. That could be financial, but you could also call it out. With regard to leader in the state, I think Don is right, it was just meant that we were willing to try things that people don't. So maybe you just say, my pillow will provide excellent and innovative municipal services and programs. Leader in the state. General, excellent, how excellent. In a way there? Perfect. It's very specific. I think, again, to your Michigan statement, I think the thought here was, we're basically saying we're striving for excellence. We want to be really good at what we do. And then later on, when we lay out our programs and our surveys and how we measure our program, we then define excellence by how much we want to put in it, but then we're not just sort of getting the job done you know, we're striving to do a really good job when we're looking for a police department we want an excellent police department. And I agree that what that means is in the details of management and your goals and priorities, but in terms of just a general mission, we want to be excellent at what we do. We don't want to be mediocre, we don't want to be poor, we want to be average. We're striving to always be excellent at what we do. But again, whatever works for you folks. Right? Kind of. Lauren's had her name. Yes, Lauren. I just, on Sal's point, I definitely had a similar reaction to Donna. To me, it's just immediately constraining and I think you can set a vision and goals and then work to find resources if it's a community priority and there's different ways to do that. So if you're like, this is just what the same budget as last year is going to be and this is all we can do. So to me, it sets that sentiment, which I don't know if that's what you mean, but it feels very stifling to me. Well, let's think about where this goes. This is a document that you're thinking into, right, that has the opportunity to have iterations back to you. So I don't know, Bill, in the past, if city staff have taken these kinds of inputs and then reflected back with changes based on the work, or is there another means that you would digest this thing as a board? All of the above. Sometimes they make a change. Sometimes they ask us to get back with that. Okay. But it works for the council. Let's decide that at the end then. Let's go into this value statement piece. Sal, do you want to read the value statement for everybody? Thank you. You want to read the whole thing? Yeah, read it all the way through because some people things may be just great and other things may need tweaking. The city of Bumpillier is guided by the following core values. The dignity and worth of all people is recognized and respected. The city government will be transparent and accountable. All city activities will be conducted in a highly ethical manner. Innovation is encouraged and rewarded. Diversity, equity, and inclusion in the organization and community are essential. Climate change is real and the city must work actively to address this issue. The city will be financially responsible with public money. City employees are respected, treated fairly, and recognized for the commitment to the community. Great. Is there anything missing as a value that is like a hole in that value statement? Is there anything missing before we think about tweaks that might improve them? Yes. I feel like there's something about strong communities, supportive communities, strong families, something about a community where people support each other and where resources are available to help people who need help and we all. Like what happened after the flood? You know, the hordes of people who turned out to help each other. That's a thing that happens in Bumpillier and I think it's a value that we have in our community and I'd like to express it somehow. Together we are strong and we help each other out. Strong supportive communities. I'm not sure how to word it, but I think that needs to be in there. I also think we have a lot of things about sort of how the city operates that maybe if we don't want a really long list we could kind of combine. Like we could say the city government will be transparent, accountable, ethical, and there was something else about like financially responsible. Yeah, exactly. That could all be just one bullet point. Why don't you guys work on one and submit it to Bill? You can send it to us in the draft. And then we can make room for other bullet points. Just to that point, I think the value statement was supposed to be about the city government organization, not necessarily a community as a whole, but that might be more at least. We have this big vision for the community. We as a city government have this mission and these are core values of us. So just move that one. I agree that the community is strong, is important, but I guess to the extent that we encourage that. Yes? Yeah, I think there's a way for the value statement to be both of those things. So that it could be this is how we conduct our business and this is how we do our work. And so to have values that we value diversity, equity and inclusion, we value climate responsibility, we value supportive communities, and we value respect and dignity. And so all of these can affect how we treat our employees and how we conduct our own internal business as well as how we do the work in the city. Kelly, do you have notes on all that? Okay, all right. Anything else in terms of values that you see either misplaced in here or where there's additional needs? Sorry, go ahead. I'm going to wait for someone else. No, no, no, Lauren has her hand up. Oh, you did? Yeah, I was just, again, the danger of being wordsmithy. I feel like the climate one, I feel like we had tweaked this last time, but I'm wondering about adding in, the city must do its part to address climate change and foster climate resilience. I want to add something about, it's both, we do need to get our own net zero and obviously with an enhanced focus on resilience following the flooding, I think it's a both and. Okay. Lots of resilience besides flooding, lots of resilience. Yeah, and Lauren, what do you think about expanding that to other environmental concerns? And I'm not sure exactly how we'd write it, but address the issue of climate change and other environmental impacts. I'm thinking a lot of what we've talked about about waste and water. Yeah, me too. I think we're kind of, I'm hoping, we're moving beyond this idea that climate change is a thing that's happening and we need to respond to it and more like there's an environment, we live in, there's all kinds of things that we need to do to be environmentally responsible. The climate has changed and is changing. I mean, it's not a point of debate anymore. It's not a single problem that we need to solve. It's something we need to take into consideration as we're considering how we dispose of our waste and how we deal with our parks and all that. So something that captures environmental responsibility but also naming climate, because we're not ready to not name it. So climate change, resilience, the health of the environment. Yeah, sometimes they use sustainability to cover all the things, like global warming, climate change, sustainability. Yeah. I don't want to name climate. I agree. But I think adding in environmental sustainability is like a more broad catch-all. Is there anything else in here? Are we kind of good to see a new addition? One thing that stands out for me here is the idea of hearing from people who, from all kind of walks of life and hearing from people who we don't normally hear from or maybe there's something in there about transparency isn't quite it, but that the community as a whole is engaged with city government in some way so that we're not just talking to each other like in this sort of... So if we combined, as Kelly has on her list, the idea of combining transparent, accountable, ethical, and there's one other, financially responsible and engaged with the residents of the city to... Yeah, something like that. You know, I think is probably that comprehensive statement. Yeah. Okay, anything else on... All right. So again, you're not adopting anything. You've got a draft that's going to come back to you, apparently from Kelly, that you'll be able to nuance, digest, and adopt at will as part of your strategic plan. Let's turn to corner. And do people have a copy of the goals and prioritize strategies from the 22, 23 plan? We want to quickly go through the six that were adopted last year around this time, I guess. And someone will want to take a... Someone will want to read them off for them. Tim, you've got a mic in front of you. You want to reinforce? So you like the goals or the priorities? I think just the goals is fine. Goal one, improve community prosperity. Goal two, is provide responsible and engaged government. Goal three, is create more housing. Goal four, is practice good environmental stewardship. Goal five, is build and maintain sustainable infrastructure. And goal six, is improve public health and safety. Okay. Any... We all know the difference between strategies and goals, right? The goal being the big overarching statement of purpose and the strategy being one of the means, one of the step ladders or, you know, tools that you'd use to get there. So we're not trying to build a list of 30 strategies today, but we're trying to say what are the arenas of work that are really fundamental that we should have a big goal, knowing that lots of city government is going to be functioning and handling lots of small issues all the time. But as you look in terms of your policies and the work that the city council and government should be prioritizing, what are those big picture goals? And anyone want to comment on the six that are there or have been there from the past year? I think these are... This is a good set of goals. The question that is in my mind is, looks back three months, I think that we can't... We can't ignore what happened in July and I'm just playing my mind with whether it should be a top level goal to rebuild from the flood and plan for resiliency. Clearly, that could come within a bunch of these, but it was such a big thing that happened to us that it may merit its own top level goal. So I'm going to start writing goals, new brainstorm goals, and I've got it written down to put on the sheets. Is there anything in the past goals that you think... Is there further discussion needed on the past goals? Tim, you've got something. I think they're all good. We can work with all of them. It's just how we fill the prioritized strategies that follow the headline. Maybe there are other priorities that ought to be on the wall as well. Why don't we take a second and we'll write what was the word you used for yours? Rebuild? Rebuild and plan for future resiliency? Yeah. Should it be resiliency or resilience? It's resilience. It could be resilience. It could be either, probably. Let's use resilience. I'm just going to stick this on the wall. It could be a big goal for 40. Are there other... When you step back from... Let's not look at last year's goals. We can come back to them. But are there other things that ought to be big goals that... When you're sitting in those council meetings, the things that you really want to be working on, the things you have to work on, what are the things you want to be proactive about? Dealing with the homelessness issue. And is that... The homelessness that they need to... Not just the homeless, but the whole picture. Yeah. So should homelessness stand on its own as a big... Like addressing homelessness? Or should homelessness be part of the housing conversation? Maybe they're too separate. Much more than that. I think our issue is that we left it under housing. Yeah, I think it's much bigger. Okay. And is addressing homelessness good enough for now? As a people. And it's okay. Actually, I don't like addressing. And that's because it always infers we have a solution. Versus I feel that we have... Just like putting kids in school. You don't start on first grade. You're ready to graduate. So in dealing with homelessness, there's so many issues that I just feel like we need to develop a packet of services or packets of items of homelessness. I don't... Addressing just seems to be fine. I get it. That sounds like you're getting into the strategies for homelessness. But what's the verb for ending homelessness? Or what's the goal that you would propose? It's reducing the hardship of homelessness. And lots of different steps, whether that's the bathroom, whether that's a shower, whatever, but really reducing the fallout. Tim, did you have a thought? Because you said ending homelessness, and I hate to say it, but I don't think that's realistic. No. So it's more going to be, within our community, can we help members of our community to reduce? It's more like a comedy. I don't want to say we're in a comedy. No, I don't either, but that's more what it's like. Reducing the impact. I like reducing the impact. What about something like supporting the unhoused as we work to create more housing? I mean, maybe they're two separate ones. Yeah, I know. It's not a big, shiny goal. I mean, it's hard to, like, if you're public. As we work to create housing for all. I mean, reduce the hardship of homelessness. Reduce the hardship of homelessness. And anything you do towards giving them one service, one night inside, it's reducing that. Small steps. We get to overwhelm with a big solution that doesn't exist. Let's try it this way, like you say. And we may come up with a better title. Reduce. Reducing the hardship. The hardship of homelessness. So this one is, for me, this is falling under that kind of bigger picture of economic security or community security, so that, because homelessness is, it's a symptom. It's a thing that happens when people don't have their certain needs met. And there are other people who also don't have those needs met who don't end up homeless but who need those needs met. So it's, sometimes homelessness is because you can't find a place that you can afford to live in. Sometimes it's because you can't kick your drug addiction. Sometimes it's mental health that you need. So all of this is about, I don't know what the way to say it, but I think the goal here of improved community prosperity is sort of trying to get at economic security. I would prefer to put it that way, because community prosperity sounds like we're all going to get rich and we're all going to make more money. That's okay, that's fine. But that people's basic needs are met. So maybe that's what it is, is that people's basic needs are met. I think that's a core function of government is to make sure that people's needs are met. So they, that includes housing, includes, you know. So we're putting them on the wall, we're not adopting them. We're saying, so it's, so anyone can get anything on the wall. So meet people's basic needs, meet people's basic needs, or ensure that basic needs are met, or something like that. We have to put them close together though. Okay. It's another goal that the city ought to have for 2024. So like maybe being more global or having a global mindset, like there's a term like global, local, like you can solve the problems locally, but you need to have a global mindset. So my experience is it's, Montpellier is a great town to live in, but very closed inside, like how we can make it open to externally. Is it like expand multiculturalism or is it open Montpellier to come closer? I mentioned this to Bill in the long time ago, and he said they discussed it before, like cities have like sister cities, right? They have like contracts with cities in other countries. So they go visit them, they come visit them, then suddenly they adopt that global mindset like interacting with the rest of the world, not only, oh yeah, it is, are responsible to fix the roads, to fix the water system, but how about just reaching out beyond? Connecting with the world beyond. Yeah, something like that, yeah. And it doesn't have to be like physical, we can always do it like digitally, it doesn't have to, we will go and do things, but just being more global, yeah. But I don't know how to make it like a one sentence. I'm not sure, but connecting with... The rest of the world, yeah, something like that, I don't know, something. Anyone have a good suggestion on three or four words that tie that idea up? Well, I think that's what Paylon said. Connect with the world beyond Montpellier. Good enough. Yeah, there's a million strategies, right? Yeah, our schools do it, right? Our schools, colleges, they do it, so... Okay. I think the infrastructure is key. We've got kind of a big hole that we've got to work our way out of. What's the verb you use with infrastructure? Improve, complete, transform. So we had address newer improved infrastructure needs last year and it seemed... Is that language work? Address infrastructure needs? Yeah. We have the goal of building and maintaining sustainable infrastructure. Do you want to word that differently, Tim? We want, behind your thoughts, maybe much more expansive than this. Building and maintaining sustainable infrastructure is key. It's got to be in our goals to do it. And then in terms of the strategies, what are the five things you're going to do to drive that forward? Building and maintaining sustainable infrastructure is still important. But that's last year. It's okay to put it on the wall. Building and maintaining sustainable infrastructure. Are you saying that anything we want from last year we've got to tell you to go on the wall? Yeah. We're starting from scratch right now. We're brainstorming. If there are things that... No, no, I just didn't... But we're going to come back to the idea anyway. Sure. Okay, sustainable infrastructure. So if we were going to wordsmith that one a little bit, we might have one effective infrastructure because sustainable just means it can keep going. And we can limp along. Or we could... To me, it's like the waste water treatment plant that we're making it more sustainable for itself. Okay, that's another way of sustainable. Maybe it's not the right word. So you know what we're doing. You guys may end up tweaking language on all these things. Let's solve the question. Say it. Yeah, improve public health and safety. I think it's a goal that we got to retain. Okay. I mean, we added homelessness, which was a strategy within that, which I like, but it seems like there's a lot more. Salad said improve public health... Public health and safety. And safety. Okay. And I like to practice good environmental stewardship. I think it contains a lot. Practice good environmental stewardship. Until we get it right. Until we get it right. Okay. And are there good strategies next to that? Promote conservation of river and water and land resources, address climate change issues. Or what? Yeah, I mean, I wonder if planning for future resilience might cover a lot of that, but let's put it up. Yeah. And the concept of stewardship is very kind of patriarchal. It's our job to take care of it. I think it makes more sense for us to figure out how to work with it. So that might be a word. Like what do you do to support it? Right. But I'm happy to put it on the wall. Well, the stewardship to me was a partnership that you're making and that you're having your actions so that you're caring for it and not abusing it. But you can pick another word, but I just feel we need something more than what I saw up there. Now, are you going to let me put anything up there or not? Yeah. I'm just, I'm just... So tell me... We'll do better. That's me up there. Do you want me to write... Do you want me to write stewardship? I mean, I think people, you know, I think stewardship is okay to use as a term. And I know Native Americans were stewards in multiple ways of the land, right? Of course, one better word, but the next one, we're not, so I don't know. But we need something about environmental up there. Yeah. Yeah, so when are you... Exactly. When I say good environmental... I have the word stewardship, but... Okay, so same thing. For now. So I can write it down. Steward, environmental stewardship. Practice good environmental stewardship. Oh, okay. Black or Kelly, the word's not bad. Yeah. Yeah. Build more housing or create more housing. I don't want to lose that one. Right, that's a top level thing for me. Always, always. Yeah, until we have enough. But I don't see us having enough any time in the next six months or a year. Okay, create more housing. And I also think that the responsible and engaged government is one I would like to keep, provide responsible and engaged government. Yeah. Just as an outsider here, when I hear provide, it sounds kind of flat. Like, is there a more muscular verb? Involve the community with their government. Well, yeah, that's the other side of it. I think we should have that. That's part of it. That is part of it. Yes. Not combine those two languages there. That's the idea, Donna. How do we combine those two languages? What's the first one that you started with? I said involve the community with their government. Involve community. But responsible and engaged. When we wrote this, what we meant was that we want to be open to and actively engaged in what the people in our community want. So we all encourage participation. Be good, transparent, accountable. Yes. Do your responsibility. That was part of the engagement. Yep. It goes both ways. Two. It was a two-fer. So when you're setting this as a goal for the city, you're saying the city would be responsible more responsible and engaged, or what's different by setting it as a goal in the community as opposed to a value? Like what are you going to... How is this a goal that's changing something? You've done it. Well, from that, we've got our communication person. I can't remember your title. So we have a public works newsletter that's just awesome as well as other things that are happening in that realm. Our communication, we've definitely acted on this a lot. Okay. So let me go back to the beginning of this conversation. Sorry to make it harder than it has to be. It does matter. There's a couple of different versions. One is responsible government that's responsible and engaged government. The other one is actively engaging with citizens. Is there a bridge between those two concepts that is important in this, or should we put the statement from last year on? Well, it seems like one thing we want to do is, and I'm not sure it's clear in this goal, is encourage citizen engagement. And I don't see that in provide responsible engaged government. I see that as government pushing out and not so much taking in. That covers what Jack's talking about, I think. So encourage citizen engagement. I've seen a bunch of heads nodding, so let's try that, okay? See if this is useful. Encourage. Okay. Let me just read what we've got. Well, that to me won't stand alone but also to be in this other part. The part of us being responsible and engaging. If we're putting out a lot of communications, cleaning up our website, creating newsletters. Let's do these strategies to accomplish the goal. Let's look at what we have for goals and then we'll keep high into this, but I just want to make sure that we recognize what we're not so proud of. Rebuild and plan for future resilience. Reduce the hardship of homelessness. Meet people's basic needs. Connect with the world beyond mob failure. Create more housing. Build and maintain sustainable infrastructure. Encourage citizen engagement. Improve public health and safety. Practice good environmental stewardship. Is there anything missing from what you bring to the table as representing the people of your parts of town that you think you're on fire about, that you think the public cares most about, that you want to drive forward in the next year? In terms of big picture goals. It's a pretty good list. Yes, Lauren. I like the ideas. I feel like it doesn't feel very visionary. It's like baseline to me. It's like let's reduce hardship, let's meet people's basic needs, which I think is really meaningful, but as we work to let everyone thrive or something, it feels like we just want you to barely get by is what it feels like. We're not going to try to get rid of homelessness. We're just going to be like, let's give you a better tent for the winter. I don't know, it just feels to me the issues are right, but then how we're putting it, our goals and our vision, it feels like these might be more like the strategies, like when we're getting into the nitty-gritty of what this year we can really do, but I would just like it to be a little more aspirational on how we're wording them, I think. You know, Elon Musk wants to go to Mars in the next 30 years, right? And we're not him, right? It doesn't stay. What are some of those more audacious things, Lauren? Well, it doesn't even necessarily need to be audacious. Like, you could say, you know, like we could rewrite them as like, maybe insure it's too strong a word, but something like insure a clean and healthy environment for all, like, or work towards, you know, like you could say stuff like that, that are the same sentiments, but just feel better. And I think are more like what we're working towards. Like what we really want to do. A gap between this one and what we had here that she felt was to improve community prosperity was too much up there. There was some way to connect those two. I was going to say, economic development is sort of missing from this, and I think that's important to the community. Obviously, they just mucked out like a hundred basements, you know? Yeah, yeah. This is what we, this is what this was like. So, Sal, do you have a recommendation for work? Would you want to have improved community prosperity on the law? Well, I would like to have something like improved community prosperity. I understand what Kerry's saying about the word prosperity. I mean, prosperity is a thriving thing, which is what Lauren's after. I think you could add for all that it would be more inclusive than just prosperity for some. That's true. So, it is related to economic development. How we can take them, I would make it like so, we use city budget to, you know, fulfill all these goals, which is coming from mostly taxes, right? Taxpayers. So, how we can reduce that burden on public and create more financial support for city services. But I don't know how to, like in Turkey, most of the cities have their own like companies, like they make bread, sell it with a lower price. They make money and also help public. So, I don't know how much we can do, but just like they have their own corporations, right? So, yes, something like that. So, instead of using taxpayers' money all the time, we create our own financial support. Actually, we're not legally allowed to compete with the private sector. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I don't know, maybe something else. Yeah, but you're right. Yeah, just then, yeah. Because it's a public service. And again, this is Montevideo, this is America. It could be different. There might be strategies around that. No, yeah. I don't know how. Because non-profit can also sell things, raise money, right? It doesn't have to be a private organization or corporation. Again, it's just an idea. It's engaging all kinds of private organizations. It might support economic development. It might support the community prosperity. So, I guess my question is between what you're saying about economic development and what Sal's saying about prosperity, is there, and what you're saying about a big, like positive goal about well-being. Where are you, what's the outcome that you'd like to all see from all of that kind of thing? Is it prosperity? Is there another word? I think prosperity is a fine word. I'm ready for putting improved community prosperity. You know, in the last three months, what I've been, I talk to a lot of people in Montpelier now, outside of Montpelier, and people have been constantly talking about how sad it is to go through downtown and the businesses are closed and it's like being in a ghost town and you don't feel like you're in the community that you have come to know and love because it doesn't have the activity that we need to have to keep the community going. We want people to be able to have jobs. We want people to be able to buy things in Montpelier as opposed to going outside of Montpelier. I think that's all included in community prosperity. And there may be another phrase for it, but when we're putting that on there, I think that's what we had in mind. Well, it's not just the consequences. It's COVID and people not coming into the offices anymore and you know, a lot of that stuff is really effective economic activity and we need to prop that up. We're going to like write up one or two more. So we won't need to debate any of them. We're just kind of, we're going to have a minute to grab our pizza or whatever the food is and then we can start championing what we think is most important of these goals, okay? So, Donna and then you. Probably sort of radical. I really like the six we have and I would plug these in that are addition to that such as meet people's basic need under prosperity as a priority strategy along with the economic development statement that's already there. So everything there I would plug in but I wouldn't change the base goals. Let's come back to that and as we're championing what, let's see if some of these could be combined, okay? Because maybe you're right. Are there any other ideas for big goals that aren't on the longer term? We really aren't looking ahead. We have a strategic development plan and it's just kind of pistol. Is it up for renewal now? Well, we had, because we created the. And then everything went. Yeah, but we really are looking ahead. The money for that plan, we actually put into the country club road. That's where we've been investing our economic development money right now is into that project. Yeah, so we're not really looking at the big picture. We're looking at kind of a project and right now with the times we're in and all these changes happening around us every day, there are actually incredible number of opportunities and if we were looking ahead and planning for that we could probably be pulling up some really significant things for the future but we're in today's mode worrying about some stores that haven't opened which people are working on anyway and they will open, but we're not, it's hard to get out of this mode to look where we should be looking. So I don't know how to say that as a goal. So is the goal a strong economic development plan or is it, you know, what answers that, Tim? It's like you're almost raising your question more than anything. I know. It's like we have to have. Is that a strategy, Tim, that you would put in, make action real clear? An act strategic economic development plan? Yeah, like improved community prosperity is going to come from a strategic economic development plan. Yeah. But do you want to have a, so maybe that is a strategy and not. Okay. Don't let it go though. And my heavens, you should share those ideas even if we can't do them. And just point of history that the community prosperity goal initially started as a combination of economic development, downtown promotion, and actually financial management. So the idea being, if you're watching the talk show, that helps community. Yeah. So that was meant to be those kind of categories. It's evolved over time. That's what those words are about. I'm going to just park it as a key strategy for right now. Okay. Okay. And we'll come back to it. All right. Any other goals? So I don't know if it's a real goal. Maybe it will connect with other ones, but how about providing or sustain affordable living, right? All the taxes are raising all the, again, it's just like a general things I'm talking about every, every single thing related to living in Montpelier, financially raising. I cannot talk for other pipe, but personal experience, my salary is same. And it will be same for a long time. And I cannot afford living here if it goes like that. But I don't know how to make it like a sustain or yeah, provide something like that. Yeah. You like the word excellent, the word affordable, see if we are good to find. Additive. Yeah. Like rents are going high, right? People cannot rent. So it's all like everything. It's a huge problem. So I heard that they cannot, some of the schools cannot hire teachers because teacher salary cannot pay the rent or buy a house or like, that's why they don't come to Montpelier to work. Is it enhancing affordability? Like then you'd have a lot of strategies that could connect with that. Again, we're not adopting any of these yet. We're putting them on the wall for further discussion, okay? So let's put that up too. Okay. Are we good? Should we start and have some pizza and we can talk a little bit more about this? What's the plan Kelly for food? How are we going to do that? How are you distributing it? Well, we've got pizzas over here. Maybe we can open them up a little bit. Okay, there's plates right here. Sort of like a salad. We're going to get the window sills, I don't know. Probably it's enhanced affordability. So we keep them all as I and G but just words. Meet people's basic needs. Improve community prosperity. Connect with the world beyond Montpelier. Create more housing. Build and maintain sustainable infrastructure. Encourage citizen engagement. Improve public health and safety. Practice good environmental stewardship. And Tim had suggested strategic economic development plan. And I wonder if that's a strategy that you do to reach one of these. I wonder Tim though if we could say enhance the economy to improve community prosperity or something like that and then it would say what do you do and what's the strategy and the strategy would be obvious or at least part of it would be. Does that work for you? Okay, so let's put that on. Now we've got a list of big ideas on the wall. You could have, how many are there? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven. Strategy or big goals for the future. I was on a school board once where the superintendent came in and said the best way to do nothing is to have 25 goals and give your superintendent all these balls and they don't get any of them done or they don't do very well. The thing that you see in communities when they line up around action is they set four or five goals and they knock those down in the year and the next year you're ready for other goals because you've made significant progress, right? So you don't necessarily need eleven. It's not my place to say how many you're going to come out with. But when you look at this list, one of the things Donna suggested is maybe some of these are reverse coins of each other. Like sometimes people will say you know, at a community meeting they'll say let's fight drugs in our community among teens and then five minutes later someone will say let's give our teens something more to do and they'll realize that actually they're talking about two sides of the same coin and they unite those kinds of ideas. So I guess there's a question are some of these flips of a single idea that if we combine it might simplify the process. So that's one thing you can suggest. The other thing you can suggest is say well listen for me, creating more housing is the most important thing on the wall and I think we all should use this. So you have the opportunity now to advocate. Nobody gets ten minutes to give a speech about your philosophy of homelessness or housing but you say some pointed things about why one of these things is most important for the future of Montpelier that the city government and you all as city councilors want to drive forward. No, I want you to take, I want people who have a passion who want to say something to take the floor because what's most important to you in terms of these priorities? Why are they important? Which one should be priority? Yes, please. Enhancing affordability. Enhancing affordability. Yeah, because most of the things can go under minutes. Okay, thank you. Other things that are really important to you? Tim. I think the infrastructure piece has to be in the top a couple. Are there particular things in infrastructure that you think of as being essential needs that aren't? We've been dealing a lot with water systems issues. So our system issues will be parallel with that and streets. There's some street issues. Okay. Yes, Donna. I think rebuild and plan for future. That's all. Without that done, all this rest is going to be pushed to the side. Yeah, ten years from now there's another flood and nothing's been done. People are going to ask you about everything. Yeah, okay. Other things that are most important to Sal? The homelessness issue I think is something that just isn't going to go away by itself. It needs us to take some action. And it should be at the level, not of a committee, but of city council paying attention to it. I think the higher up, the better. Yeah, yeah. Okay, thanks. Create more housing. I think that we didn't make nearly the progress on that in the past year that I think we hoped we would. So I'd like to keep it there. Yeah. Bill was pointing out that some of your six, you know, you have six goals last year. They're not necessarily going to be done with this goal at the end of 2024, right? Like housing. Some of these things are going to take five years to do. But you're saying this is our absolute priority as we look at the big picture of what we're trying to drive forward with all the engine of city government right now. Tim. I'm comfortable calling it that. I think some of the other sort of goals, they're good goals that are built into what we're already doing and they will happen anyway, like encouraging citizen engagement. I think we're doing a great job. We'll keep enhancing that, but it doesn't need to be. If we want several that we can focus on and get something done, the five, the ones we've listed, I think covered for me. Okay. Other things that are important to other people. I'm sorry, Tim, when you said one we've listed, one we've verbally listed for, you take a marker, you take a marker. Yeah, let's. Which ones? Which ones were those? This one. This one. Affordability. And next thing. Housing. Create more housing. Housing and infrastructure. Housing. And infrastructure. You're still going to vote. You're still going to vote. Yeah, so there's still economic prosperity. There's still advanced economy to improve community prosperity, meet people's basic needs, connect with the world beyond Montpelier, encourage citizen engagement, improve public health and safety, practice good environmental stewardship. Are there any of these that aren't really big goals unto themselves, but maybe practices that are actually part of your value statement? When I look at practice good environmental stewardship, I almost see that as like a practice that goes through everything in government rather than a particular priority. But that's just me, yes. I mean, the most particular we have is city net zero plan. But I do think I hope we remain committed to, and so I don't want to lose that, although I could see if we reword the rebuilds and work towards climate resilience, then that to me would capture, I think we could put net zero and the kind of like, that's going to be, there's going to be water work related to that. Those strategies can fall under that, certainly, yes. And I think the connect with the real plan should be a long term goal or a vision. We cannot do this like one year, but it's related to future of our town. Yes. And did I ask you what you really mean by that and why it should be important to the city to the city of good here? Yeah, it is for diversity. It also includes all the things we talk about cultural diversity. So we talk about it, but Montpelier leaves not based on that diversity that much. Likewise, city doesn't have any international center. Right? We start offering this oh, you can translate these things into these languages, which is great. Right? Similar things will connect you with the world. They talk about connecting with the world or connecting with an increasingly diverse community within Montpelier. Diversity in our services to connect with people. In my opinion connect with the world beyond Montpelier helps you create more inclusive and diverse life here. Yeah. That's my point. The way you started that conversation like saying that connecting to the world, learning from others, being open to diversity, all those things are sort of like you said, that could be part of our vision or our values. We have diversity. We don't just name the world. We can change that language. Yeah. So what's the current language? Do you want to read that, Donna? Because I think it's a point that means a lot to you and probably means a lot to others too in this community. Diversity, equity and inclusion in the organization and the community with a global sense or global focus or global mindset you know, something like that. Like put something like that in there. Global mindset in global region I don't know about some of that because I was talking to former mayor of Burlington and he explained how many things city under his mayorship learned from other places. Did global projects create global projects but working in locally. So maybe we can invite him and he can talk about other towns, not other towns Burlington is doing but we can with the state capital state, we can do this things. So again, it's not a goal. It's a value like an ongoing value. And maybe there's a way to add that in so I know Kelly is going to be taking a note on this but it's sort of like when you're interested in equity and inclusion you're also affirming the importance of multicultural awareness from beyond from other parts of the world and best practices and models that are being used in other places in the world so that we're a learning community we don't just think oh well Montpelier we've got it all figured out and so having something about that and the values might be a way to encapsulate that. So it sounds like you're saying well it's something that is sort of should be part of the values. Because as you said we should focus on goals tonight but we shouldn't forget that idea because it's the future. I think that is very well said and I think that that nothing gets lost. Everything you're thinking about now should be somehow you had 10 ideas for priorities and these are the ones we're really zeroing in on this year it doesn't mean the others aren't important. Like we can do it's just the brainstorming like so many exchange students in high school did they have a city tour did they experience the public services like I don't know fire department like there are so many things that's being global mindset right they are they stay they spend their time in high school and they leave but they don't really experience the community some of them live very far away from Montpelier so their host family drive them to the high school take them from high school to the home so that's what I was trying to say it doesn't have to be oh we will travel all around the world no just show that we as a town we have a global awareness I think that's all very well said so thank you so much let's so if I'm a business person I'm reading these goals I'm wondering you know what's in it for me presumably we create more housing there's more business but I mean that improving community prosperity seems particularly under the circumstances unless it's something that we fold under the rebuild the rebuild the build goal because the business environment is changing for the folks downtown and I think we need to help them solve that problem I would keep that too so we want to start there I don't know where the stars link on here because Tim said something about I agree with those five and I wanted to know what five in a way we're going to go to voting in just a minute you're going to get to put your own stars up on the ones that you think are most important so let's let's champion a few more and then we'll do a quick vote to see where they kind of shake down for people I want to be clear I want to make sure that climate resilience or environmental if we're not naming it as a standalone that it's built into the like planning should this be tied onto the bottom? I think it could be and I think that's fine because everyone who doesn't want to see this look like that yeah and then like the infrastructure a lot of our resilience and sustainability issues too just to say rebuild and plan for future resilience in the face of climate change is that what you're saying? yeah something like that yeah I did just also want to say like I totally agree that affordability is an issue for our community and it needs very different things to some people that just means cut taxes it could mean short-sighted decisions that save money now but cost us all a lot more or put costs onto our kids but like I just want to be really careful like I don't really love that free zoology just by itself to I feel like it's more often used as a let's cut taxes cut services do less so you want me to do something with that or you're just saying you don't think enhancing affordability as a standalone is a good one for I don't I think that if you're working to advance the economy improve community prosperity you're sort of looking you might want to throw for all and that would mean that you're looking at affordability for lower income level and what above it I feel goes in there basic needs and affordability so is that make sense to people that we would take this advancing affordability off as something by itself I'm seeing nods is anyone not want to do that we're starting to get to look at what's standing here there was a I wouldn't understand more housing maybe but then to have it as self standing reduce the hardship of homelessness bill let's get my one and only plug for the work our staff did today just to give you some thoughts one of the things that we kind of said was for us to recommend to you the top three issues and I think you're housing homelessness, flood recovery and infrastructure but I really wanted to make the plug for the however we call it but the public health and safety we included under that providing resources for unhoused individuals develop emergency mayor preparedness capacity addressing mental health and addiction issues and providing community resources for healthy activity so it was kind of a broader a lot of our activities fall under that but so we basically wanted to include this however you want to word the homelessness under public health and safety do you think of meeting people's basic needs as fitting under that could you wouldn't so I agree with what you said because this addressing needs of addressing homelessness was part of improve public health and safety before and I think that you know we could easily say well public health and safety is just a basic function of government we don't need to have that be a goal but we've got needs in public health and safety that are not being addressed now and so I would put the homelessness part within that what do people think about that addressing improving public health and safety you know one of the most fundamental things would be reducing the hardship of homelessness so it should be under that yes carry it I agree with that basic idea I think that homelessness falls under a couple of these at least so there's and I don't like the phrase reduce the hardship of homelessness because it kind of sounds like we just want to make it easier to be homeless or nicer to be homeless but we want to reduce homelessness but we also want to make things better for people who are homeless even if we can't get them some place to live so that definitely falls under public health and safety I think but then additional housing and affordable housing comes under create more housing as well as probably improve community prosperity so people can afford the rent or so rent is lower it falls under a few different services so you started by saying you would agree that having homelessness under here makes sense instead of having it stay at the long I could be persuaded to leave it as its own goal because it is such a pressing need right now that it might be something to I was just concerned with elevating it but I could also be persuaded to include a strategy you know I look at these things now there's one two three four five oh this one I thought we were going to move homelessness or ship over to public safety it would be good if it was like a motion you know if someone would say I moved that we do that yes Donna I move that we move homelessness and there's a way to reword it as Carrie was saying in a more positive way to improve circumstances for those in homelessness as well as it's reduced homelessness and the hardship of homelessness I know I was picking up from Carrie and putting it in a positive way to improve the condition of those homeless is that sort of what you were saying and I like the context that Bill gave us on the staff's recommendations for public health and safety I mean it's a broad you know it's a pretty broad category homelessness does fit there it was something like public health and safety for all residents including the unhoused so that gets it into the top level so just because I see it there I mean it's like our top three of our staff and to not name it seems that's a great suggestion so wait a second let's slow down enough to take things off when we're changing them does that mean we don't need this one? that's right everyone's nodding on that I made a motion to you no no let's not thank a motion that's what he said he said make a motion well if you get an upgrade to consensus we will but when it gets to 10 ideas you just need to nail something down sometimes just got to be clear with your point let's see here we've got advanced the economy to improve community prosperity for all improve public health and safety for all including the unhoused build and maintain sustainable infrastructure create more housing meet people's basic needs rebuild and plan for future resilience in the face of climate change practice good stewardship environmental stewardship encourage citizens engagement someone's saying encouraging engagement is a strategy rather than a goal I don't care I thought you said it to me one of the things that we were aiming for in the original putting that in there with responsible and engaged communication was we were really thinking of all the ways in which we hadn't communicated with people we started including social media newsletters and so we were really making a city effort outward to me that's too weak to be a major goal that's there but I still see us needing to do what we do we keep working on it and that we keep strengthening our city outreach as well as encouraging the citizens I agree the reason I mentioned it when I first moved back in 2017 there was something called CAN Capital Area Networks I think which suddenly disappeared and I think we missed it like during the flood it would have been great to have that network available so to me it was it's a good idea and it didn't work for the first time we tried it so but I think it's worth doing partly because we don't there isn't enough engagement people don't come to meetings they don't read the newsletters they need someone to sort of spoon feed it to them and if you have people organized by neighborhoods you've got somebody who not only knows where everybody is and what their situation is but you've got somebody who can sort of summarize I mean imagine having all those representatives at meetings so that I mean the minutes are just a legal record of whether we voted or not but it doesn't really give people the information that they need and instead we get we get the questions about it the idea was just to work to bring something like that back so it doesn't need to be top level but I think it's something worth talking about let's keep it on until we are ready to let it go a question for you all do you guys want to like take six dots and put dots on the things that are most important to you or do you want to do you think we're really close to not maybe we don't need to kick anything off the island I don't know I let one go I feel uncomfortable in trying to meet people's basic needs I know we've gotten more and more into social services kinds of things but I feel that's just huge and as much as we can move towards it with having human services and other connections for people especially around homelessness I just feel like that's not really our role to be a major goal I think it as a subdivision the city is not a social welfare system yes Lauren one thought just kind of like mirrors the public health and safety one a little bit but I wonder if we reworded the improve community prosperity for all residents and local businesses because then we're kind of getting at like we mean that for both individuals and for our local business community if I did that I would take off advance the economy too I would just say more generally improve community prosperity and we're going to have different strategies for our local businesses so you can still have a strategy that would be similar to what Tim's idea was I think if you name the businesses then you're getting at that that is where you would capture the economic development since that was your piece Tim not okay with you community and business prosperity for all community prosperity for residents and business and local businesses for residents and businesses and businesses for local we're not working for Amazon Lauren said you know what I see people's basic needs or something that is kind of bugging and now I recognize that it's the city government is not going to meet people's basic needs but we want to do a whole bunch of things that will create the circumstances whereby people's basic needs will be met including public health and safety advancing prosperity providing more housing maintaining sustainable infrastructure rebuilding planning for future resilience with the stewardship and engaging citizens yeah so we can probably take that one down so he's suggesting we take it down I will just say that can we not put including the unhoused just say improve public health and safety for all when we say including they are separate part of the community oh yeah we will include you too but they are in the all I think you're making an important point so long as we don't forget and we build strategies around the unhoused then we can put the meet people's basic needs under that like we were discussing so basic needs and those who are more improve public health and safety yeah that's what I was saying improve public health and safety and help meet people's basic needs I'm seeing some people shaking their heads they're not sure about it I like the way that Jack ordered it but I would put it under a strategy versus as a major statement in the goal would that be comfortable I like the way Jack ordered it wait say it again Jack can you have it can you create circumstances by means of this community where by the community and the economy where people's basic needs are met in the community and the economy I like this as a subdivision statement because it would be much prefer that we were creating circumstances where people's basic needs in which people's basic needs are met that's what I like it could be public support or it could be economic activity that gives people jobs support themselves I wouldn't put it in the regional state right but they're one of the first that sounds alright okay so the word community there is covered by citizens and businesses so we don't need community in there I like this climate though because I was always a little vague when I looked at that what does that mean community prosperity exactly district heat is making a lot of money does it mean plus I'm saying we take the word community out take it out because it's we've specified what we're talking about so remember we're not making a decision to adopt these tonight we're going to see an iteration of this you're going to get to move it around push it back and forth a little bit towards adoption at some point that then becomes fundamental to the actions of the city works into your budget and so forth as you go forward let's look at what we've got so the different goals on the table would be to rebuild and plan for future resilience in the face of climate change practicing good environmental stewardship it's like a subtopic or practice there encourage citizen engagement create more housing build and maintain sustainable infrastructure improve public health and safety for all including the unhoused or did we want to get rid of we don't say improve public health and safety for all including children it's like they are in all so I think it sounds like you guys need to remember that you're going to hold the city staff accountable to have strategies around the unhoused under this category because I think that was essential to you all right then improve community prosperity for residents and businesses in which people's basic needs are met and I suggest that we don't need a community there because we specify the community is the residents and the businesses right someone else said they liked it but does anyone want to defend the word community here improve prosperity for residents and businesses where people's basic needs are met or so that people's basic needs are met so you're going to have a chance to do that kind of language stuff back to the encouraged citizen engagement that feels like sort of a partial one to me it feels like it's kind of about running a government that is that encourages citizen engagement that's accountable and transparent and responsible and all that but I do think it's that bigger picture of how we kind of we run a good city government that encourages citizen engagement at the beginning of the evening why you ran for office it was about democracy yeah like encourage citizen engagement to empower the people of the city or to like why what is the outcome that you want from doing that Bill do you have any suggestion on that I was thinking of that too first of all I think we should use resident not citizen just because not everyone's a citizen but I was thinking something along the line engage actively engage residents in good governance or for good governance or something like that when we're talking about quality it becomes us it's not just encouraging people to participate but it's saying we will actively we will reach out and actively engage people so whether it's through networks or the stuff that everyone's doing or all the other things we will reach out you know I might engage them beyond the activities of government like governance it's not just governance it might be that are doing things in the streets are doing right except we're a government so yeah that's what we're doing so I think engaging people to do other things is great too but Engaging to enhance democracy do you want to work democracy in there somewhere no I don't know I did kind of want accountability in there somewhere because that's part of why we want citizen engagement so that we know that we're doing what the community wants us to do we're accountable to now one inputs for me is I think there's some problems we don't solve unless we have real community engagement so in the homelessness task force meeting today for example one of the guests to the meeting said that you know the listening to the testimony of that person from the way can really connected to him with unhoused person in a way that he had never been connected before and I think that unless a large number of people in the community wake up to that and experience that you know we won't solve the problem it'll always be pushed into the background so it's not just networks and stuff although I think that's important but I think it's engaging in the problems that we're facing in a real you know sort of hands on hands on way so the good thing about this title encourage citizen citizen or resident engagement is that it covers anything you think strategically should happen to encourage engagement or to engage so you can build a set of a pretty broad set of strategies on how you're going to do what's going to change between last year and this year if you're not doing anything different you don't really need a goal so if you're going to take in this year try to encourage engagement in a new way by activating citizens you just you're already activating a new commission you're looking at other potential actions is there I think you have a very engaged community which has proven out more times this year we're just so fortunate but I look at the number of committees we have and I really feel like we should look at those kind of things and say we're bringing people out they're getting engaged but let's make sure we use them in ways that are something's going to happen from we're not wasting their time because I think if we waste that public capital you never get it back and I think our communications are fabulous and all these different enhancements yeah maybe you had like a tail on that that said why or for what end well it's really the accountability piece the good governance, the you know transparency that kind of thing and you like that overreach that accountability too so sort of we're engaging we're engaging the residents so that we have good governance and that means giving them the services they want or the transparency that they want or the programs they want or the priorities they want I'm thinking of what you said Paul you need to go which is that if you're not going to change anything it doesn't need to be a goal and I'm wondering the way we talked about putting engagement with the world in our values whether putting resident engagement in the values might be where we go rather than having it be one of our top level governments I was having that same thought we had just read and we've got engagement like interwoven throughout transparent responsible government so I mean I think I guess my question maybe it's like a staff question is like are there projects where having that as a standalone goal is helpful because like before it was like we were upgrading the website we were doing specific things that it felt standalone and like you know being able to hire Evelyn and all that was like we wanted you to focus on we wanted us to focus on like building out that so I don't know if there's stuff that it seems like it's still really important to keep it as a standalone or it's just like keep doing what we're doing and keep doing better I think you're right the initiatives we took over the last couple years were based on your communication that that was an important area in our own sense that we needed it and you know we have built out a lot of capacity we have Evelyn we've got a lot of things going and we will continue to run that communications program if that's not the highest thing you know if you don't feel like you need a lot of council time on that you know will that might be it doesn't need to be gold maybe it is just becomes part of our values I think you know I guess you know I come from a place of our job is to deliver the services to the residents and so I always feel whether that it's important for elected officials to say we want to have good governance for our residents even though we're going to probably try to do it anyway it's to always be a high goal now the con you know the flip to that is of course that's what you want to do it's what we do it's in our values it's not something we're calling out this year as a particular problem so whatever really wherever you come down on that we were I think you know personally I'm delighted with the strides we've made on that front and I think people are you know I will just say this too as far as resident engagement there are you know there's a point where people choose not to engage you know they get the information and they just like you know I'm happy things are going and I'm not saying this to be self-serving or you know but if things are going okay they feel like they're getting information they just until they need something or they have a concern they're happy that they count on the folks they voted to do their thing and that as long as they know they're getting they know how to get the information you know can't always make people so we need to hear one thing that I would say as a little caveat in this like I do a lot of strategic planning with organizations and often they have a mission statement and they have a value statement but it's sometimes called principles in a way what you've got here are your operating principles in some ways, accountability engagement, public engagement these are things that you stand for that you're accountable to the city council for every day all the time like there's the big goals for the future and then there's the things you're accountable to and values are one of them you can call it values but really they're the principles that you've established by mutual consent that are foundations for the way the city should be generally operating so to me I think that might be clear to change values statement to principles or something like that just as a to make it real and accountable not just something that's nice like we care about that not as you care about it, it's the principle the way you work sorry for the editorial Bill just said something that he's often said in this session in previous years and he didn't mention tonight until just now which is that one way to think about the goals at the very top are things that we really want to be spending time at the council level to address and the citizen or the resident engagement thing that's something we expect of our government but I don't think that we're going to need to spend a lot of time at the council thinking about telling the staff to do that and thinking about how we're going to do it so that might take it out of goals and into values and principles yes so I just want to make sure I'm really clear on what the strategic plan actually is I think I'm putting it together but in my prior experience working in the nonprofit world the strategic plan kind of covers everything that you're going to do and we seem to be talking about it as this sort of special things we're going to do or we're going to talk about council meetings that we want to do differently like you just said if you're not going to do anything differently it doesn't need to be a goal so if we think in terms of these are the things that we want to make sure we're making improvements to or doing differently then where does everything else live we have to take care of public safety and infrastructure and all that kind of stuff whether we want to or not whether we put it in our strategic plan so I guess I just would like a little bit more clarity about what our goals actually mean I'll just weigh in on that where that becomes important what is when you get starting into projects and activities because just using this one that we're talking about but I'm not really trying to beat on it the other current citizen engagement one of the items would be to conduct that survey again this year so now that becomes an actual so if you didn't have that here where would that fall like would it just be so I think it does call out even if it's just delivering government there might be a whole bunch of we need to do this and obviously to some extent buying equipment getting plow blades we're not going to put in our strategic plan by salt and sand but we need to do it but we're not necessarily going to have big discussions at city council about how many plows but this year we're going to be talking about rebuilding and planning for resilience and we're going to be talking about infrastructure in more than just the regular how much sand do we need kind of ways it feels like we kind of balanced this around 360 now in terms of weather engagements up there or not if it's up there you can take it off and not have it you can keep it there if it's there it says that you're going to look at strategies to encourage citizen engagement and if you take it off it means that you're going to expect that that's part of the principles of the city anyway and you're going to see that that's happening and if it isn't that city councilers you'll bring it up but if you have it on then you're going to see something of a work plan this is part of your work plan and you're doing engagement so we could do like a show of hands we could still do the dot exercise on priorities it feels like you've got six big things here but maybe someone could make a motion to take it off or to leave it on I'll make a motion to leave it on and at least until it comes back for adoption next time so this is not a legal vote not a legal vote this is I've been charred here so you're just basically saying in this draft do you want to see that stay so his motion is we don't need a second just raise your hands if you want to see it stay into the next edition there's a majority so with that do we have a majority that says these six are good to go as for an iteration that comes back to you for improvement all in favor raise your hands that's the question because it says three, two and four so the goal setting I think the first one should be our focus after the plot so one because we have one year to fulfill so that's my understanding then look at the heading right it says it's physical year 23-24 right we are talking about goal setting for a year not ten years like create more housing is not a yearly goal right but we can just take the goal one rebuild and plan for future resilience we can work about all the flood results infrastructure or whatever but in a year like one year it's what I understood maybe I misunderstood so when I look improve public health it's not a one year goal yeah it's a huge it's to say that over the next year this is going to be a fundamental thing you're going to look at a lot like housing and it's not going to be done in a year necessarily but you will have concentrated to move the ball forward on housing that kind of thing because I know that our staff can focus on different goals because that's their professional field but as a city council which we said I think our goal should be for this year rebuild and plan for future resilience then talk about all the strategies principles ways like projects whatever so that's just I just want to raise my opinion yes mayor I was engaging in a conversation with a constituent just the other day about that very question and you know I suggested this right as a very top level thing but I think we also have to be looking beyond the immediate and a lot of what we're talking about is looking beyond the immediate crisis to talk about the future and a lot of these things clearly we're not going to even if we spend all of every meeting on that goal for the next year we will not have fixed everything with it in the next year and we're we're not even if we create a lot of housing in one year it's not going to be enough to be done and I think that's true of a lot of these things so I think that just the way our staff can work on more than one thing at a time we can expect ourselves to work on multiple major goals at a time that's how I think of it yes Tim I think I'm trying to figure out whether you are both new so maybe that's what because I remember when I first met with you Bill before I was even elected when we were candidates looking at this strategic plan and going how can the first priority be prioritized recreation in parks as an economic driver I mean it just can't be our top priority the numbers weren't really but still how does someone read this or understand what we're doing and know what the priorities of our city are this doesn't do it for me in years past we've opted councils opted not to just say we have six priorities you could choose to say these are our priorities in a way that we as staff kind of said hey look all of this is important and housing, homelessness and infrastructure flood recovery those are the things but everything else is important too but if you had to say top items I don't know I mean you've essentially got that to your list so are we going to take the agenda and it says that 745 no 747 brainstorm discussion on strategies to meet these goals should we take a little time to think about these goals are we okay with this list of goals for now knowing that it's maybe not perfect and that it can be nuanced and we're going to get an edit iteration okay people want to yes should we take a break at this point thank you that's a good idea where's that I'll do it to the right but we finish at 8.30 right even if we take a break that's the goal because all the kids we can take five minutes and come right back it could be 10.30 almost people so that's that's what I'm after okay now we've got big things to accomplish now what is it we've got a half hour left we're not writing a whole strategic plan tonight staff are going to have a lot of ideas on things that would help advance these different things strategically so what we're really doing is brainstorming key ideas that we might have that you think might be interesting for the city to push forward that would advance these different issues and let's first let's just walk through them and maybe just take five minutes or so to throw darts at the wall with your ideas you don't have to have it all figured out you don't have to be right you just need to share your creative thinking about a particular thing in terms of practical strategies that could advance an initiative and plan for future resilience in the face of climate change while practicing good environmental strategies and we need to work with building owners homeowners and commercial buildings to make sure that they're ready to go into this winter doing everything that they can so Kelly I'm really going to count on you Kelly I'm not going to take notes on this other ideas on yes Tim you support the resiliency commission too because I think that's going to be a source for hopefully information we can use I know housing for months trying to raise money but their expectations partner okay go ahead I think we should be seeking state and federal grant funding to be helping impacted residents and businesses such as the substantially damaged folks and whoever but probably this will go on our lobbying plan or whatever I don't think you'll always think about going after this federal program funding there's so much money out there right now that we're not doing that and oil companies I was just thinking that we to I know the housing committee is doing some of this but we got to work to provide you know energy efficient and resilient specifications for the development that we do maybe a tiered level so that we can get the best possible products so for future buildings for everything that gets built we got to develop sort of a bulk code of the standard that encourages developers to you know exceed the minimum I mean it goes to affordability because even it's higher initial cost but over time the savings we can look at truly configure the affordability you know there's you deal with this a lot what do you think about that I've seen this building to really high standards right now a few years ago your home is so outdated so I would just be careful just in terms of the way we seem to work as a city prescribing what we think are higher levels that we think are a good idea with no tie to what it's going to cost yeah no so is there a care and a stick it's like you're asking people to move things out of this hell or is there yeah there's no financial help for that either so do you think we need to make the changes in 218 we made too many we made some changes into 18 that would mitigate well they're national standards too that's what they basically so Sal's got an idea the idea is there for you to think about and you're not solving it tonight good other thoughts about this rebuild plan for future resilience and then by most yes Lauren I guess I would now go under this one I think we should continue implementing our net zero plan yes Tim a lot of people a lot of people are there is what to do with like the river how do we to be environmentally sensitive but also there's people saying we need to dredge we need to find ways to make spaces where things can evaluate all those opportunities to could be a place because I know that was one of the topics that the community forums identified so the resilience commission is going to be looking at could be like partnering with the commission to explore opportunities to you know address yeah it's going to be a huge issue yeah Sal I was joking with Jen earlier the shorthand for that goal is hope for the best and plan for the worst I think we have some potential climate disasters heat and cold related that we're probably not as well prepared for as we could be I mean we could have a drought extremes that are coming fires all that is part of the awareness of this and strategies around that could be part of the story here yes I really would like some discussion about our relationship with this resilience commission and what their role is and what ours is I feel like we still need to keep moving on our level and yet be in tune but I would like further discussion and development about it you might want to invite their chair to share what they're up to and gain clarity yes just to keep beating the drum I do think we need a specific focus and dedicated staff time looking at federal resources inflation reduction act and I know that we are but like I for example was just talking to someone today from the state who said that the way some of the grants are working is basically they think only the state is going to get it but cities are named and can participate in it but we have to basically send them our ideas of what we want funding for so I'm going to connect some people they know what you're seeing yeah but like there's a $500 million grant the state's going to go after for climate mitigation efforts and the cities are named as parties that should be able to take advantage of it they can take our net zero plan put it in there but we have to be getting that to them and so I think like this has to be a focus of how do we if we're going to be able to afford to do the things we're naming like there is unprecedented money as I said a million times but like we need I think to dedicate some time to figuring that out efficiency Vermont is on the commission for example and how does Montpelier maximize what it's able to draw into businesses for really efficient appliances and so forth like really good I agree I think we're at a unique moment in time when it comes to available funding for this kind of stuff the kind of stuff that we need infrastructure yeah but Lauren you're a regular library you got it I want to turn a corner to the next item so it's Lauren we are talking about what we could do as a city council but I think how we should be communicating with our reps and senators we don't know what they are doing there or how they can help us how we can help them so we should I think open or increase the communication channels with them okay so feedback in both ways and they can help with resources too yeah and they were some of them part of the city council so they know all the things we are dealing with but there's no communication when they move to the the other building let's go let's take five minutes and think about what you would do to encourage citizen, resident engagement what are some of the strategies that should be advanced on well I think we should explore the networks the neighborhood networks the can yeah and what's the role of the city is the city the organizer of the no not not ideally I think it's it needs to probably support it with some funding just for technology not much but that's one of the issues with the former can setup okay so it's one of our next priorities finalizing a new city plan that's happening it starts in January it seems like that would be a great way to engage so engage the public in helping to build the city for the future yes this is more of a tactic than a strategy but it's it's been a pet idea of mine for years which is to do a recruiting fair volunteer fair where we get people from who chair all the city boards and commissions and we're going to be out there we're going to have an event and anyone who ever thought about getting involved with the city you come and we'll talk to you about what we do and you'll recruit people to be on these commissions and one of the things that I my former daughter in law went to one time was where she was working was her employer reached down to their employees and say we'd like you to go to this thing and have that represent us or just you know it's like leadership development and personal development for those people now of course lots of the people who work in businesses in Montpelier don't live in Montpelier but lots do yeah good idea on the table are there other strategies that should be on this list I mentioned this before December 5th is world volunteers day and we have all this like comedies but we attend the specific comedies we represent city council but it will be nice to celebrate that day or create our like volunteer appreciation day and it can show that rest of the public we are working with public they are engaged because I don't know how many comedic members at least 60 at least yeah it's a lot and if they bring their families maybe it's half of the town I don't know it's like volunteer yeah it doesn't have to be too long one hour couple of hours but just to make them feel they belong a bigger community by you know helping city right to the community okay anything else on this one are we going to move on well we can make it somehow easier for people to access what we do at the council I mean it's difficult to it's nice to be able to access an orca video but to find what you're looking for is difficult I don't know how hard it is to sort of chapterize the video and when we get to an agenda item you mark it can you just have it I don't know but it makes it easier to see the community yeah I mean I get emails from people who want me to explain issues that it's all the information is out there they're just not getting it they don't know where to find it we just need to help I you know it would be great if we had one of the ideas for the network for the neighborhood network is to have someone who's responsible for his group of you know 50 people to keep them informed but a summary which is more work than probably tagging a video but just some way to make it easier for people to access the information partly because when they don't have when they have no information they supply their own version of what happened yeah I'm going to ask people to be brief so that we can walk through all of these I'm going to turn one more comment on it quickly I mean I just generally would say just continuing to like build on the expansion of communication tools that the team's been rolling out I mean the other thought is there was all that work put into like the collecting community response around how we engaged around the flood and so there was like a lot of lessons learned so how are we acting and there were a lot of action items so making sure that we're following through on acting on and letting people know what action we're taking in response to the lessons I don't know if there's a solution I think people are very uncomfortable standing in front of the council and speaking and if we can make that easier I think we'd have more people doing it and maybe we don't want that it just seems to me that people have a hard time getting through those two or three minutes or five in this case maybe let's go to the next one more housing and strategies that are within the power of the city that you would like to see considered that would help advance more housing Tim you must have one simplify zoning simplify zoning a lot people don't realize how many barriers we've built into it and for good reasons I'm sure at some level but any project you start we were going to do and a month later staff came back with a change in zoning to allow it to happen on that site it couldn't have happened there without a zoning change we've got a lot of barriers built in and I think we need to work on that other ideas on things I mean I think continuing to develop out the helps club housing project but also I'd really like to previously had some I think kind of vague like exploring other opportunities for more housing development like I think either setting some more specific target we want to work with at least three developers to help see projects through which whether it's a partnership or just identifying the barriers or something that were like how are we how are you getting proactive getting more proactive with the developments that are underway that have come before us but like how are we helping identify property owners of underutilized projects have someone in the city actually go out and talk to and have a list of ten property owners let's talk about your building or your field okay sure I think you know I look at the pit in Montreal you know the huge parking lot I look at that and say wow there's a lot of air rights going to waste there and it seems to me that we're at a point where the feds and the state and I mean everybody who's got anything to do with the buildings that were flooded along that street is trying to figure out what to do next and they're about to spend a whole pile of money and maybe they should spend it on something that converts the pit into something more useful than a ground level parking lot which is right smack in the center of town a block from mainstream the governor's taking a lot of it would be amazing part of the economic development plan the governor's putting all that energy into north berry with big big goals and bringing in developers and putting in some money and why not partner with the state right here and I think this is a unique opportunity for us to you know visit that idea with those those landowners resilient buildings and the recovery strategy okay other ideas that should be on the table for that housing knowing that you're going to add to this this is just starting brainstorm right okay build and maintain sustainable infrastructure things that we ought to be thinking about there the plans we got what the water line plan and then figure out how to fund it okay and that's going to be something that will be a priority for this year is there other infrastructure the next faces for the water we have a long list of infrastructure projects that are they don't need to be enumerated right now maybe okay so you'll add those in right is there anything that a city councilor wants to say about this before we know that this will be fertile ground for future the groundwork for the city council we're saying we do have a huge list kind of listed the big ticket items on yet and figuring out how to sort of come up with a funding plan for all over the next 5 to 10 years it's going to be the biggest heavy lift we're probably going to have the city council will have some role in prioritizing that list okay improve public health and safety for all so here we want to have the homelessness strategy I don't know what the homelessness strategy is to make their lives what were the words that people were using to take some of this reduce the hardship improve their situation well I think more specifically than that to make sure there is winter shelter in Montpelier for everybody so there's a specific strategy work towards developing winter shelter for anyone who's home without a home they also need a day center they also need access to services yep you can't have a winter shelter without the services you're right okay bathroom showers okay great and then in general public health and safety are there other things that would be priority strategies for the councilors I've got a lot of people talking about speeders on Main Street how do you speed on Main Street I don't know I'm looking I'm sure you guys are aware your chief of police your chief fire department your civic people are here and are online and are fighting the battle every day in the nation every day but are there anything that you think is missing or that should be prioritized strategically as things go forward that you think of right now so this robbery happened right last week so what happened like maybe informing public we were informed it happened but also maybe we can inform public about the result it was scary seeing that picture and I learned that the place later on but I don't know when we talk about safety about the incident there was a press release announcing the arrest yeah but yeah then I missed it yeah and we sent we sent it but let's not what you're saying is try to improve the communications around incidents like that and that could be that could be online it could be front porch it could be any number of ways that people gather information so it's a good point to make if I missed it then yeah so other people are missing it too other I take the blame Lauren I think it's in the stat list but just to name for me it's like continue working to like expand the peer support outreach workers try to fill the social worker position which I know has been really challenging but it's just in general like continuing the progress made towards the police review committee report which we steadily implementing in great ways so just kind of keeping on that track all that's still important it needs to be tracked yeah what else in this category okay so improved community prosperity for residents and businesses so that people face it needs are met not beautiful language probably you guys will better language for that but part of this comes from Tim's idea that there should be a strategic economic development plan there should be a big idea process of what the economy can do and how it could grow and what are the best opportunities and so forth towns and cities do this stuff yes so I think it would be great if we took the concepts of walk the bull city and tried to have that as a goal for ourselves we don't necessarily have to declare that we're trying to achieve anything but to think about what's happening downtown so for instance the post office the post office is actually considering leaving downtown that would be bad for downtown and so I'm not quite sure the way to say that but something that's supporting the health of downtown and that even as people are thinking about moving away from the river maybe because they don't want to flood but that we're not going to lose anything crucial from our downtown so we could say there is keep the post office downtown that's one of the things we want to make sure but I think the parks already have that walkable goal but the post office is terrible I think the commission is wrestling with this one too and they might bring the congressional staffs together you know Bernie Sanders has saved the post offices in Vermont whatever whatever else what's that they're in the parking lot they're not even in that building yet they've promised that building that's why they moved to the very Montpellier Road and they're still out in their trucks yeah we need to find them a space we don't we don't really have any information from them about what are they planning to rebuild we don't know so we can't have a dialogue until we have a dialogue let's not get into the tiny tactics because you don't know but walkability of downtown supporting the idea of keeping that post office walkable in the downtown are there other economic development strategies that you'd like to see well we know it's going on everywhere offices, people are working from home and there's a lot of empty office space in town that you know is going to be converting over to residential and we should create incentives and help that to happen are there incentives other places used to I don't know but to look at those incentives and think of ways to help in the interest of landlords to turn it into housing great other ideas on housing or on on public health and safety no I'm on the last one community prosperity for residents and businesses are there other strategic things that you should be missing I wonder about supporting all of the community meals that are happening in town you know like the churches are offering lunches and that's probably that's about supporting people who are on the house but it's not just on house people who eat that those meals it's about food security and so I don't know if there's something that there's something we can do to facilitate that or that's been something we've done in the past whether that's in the power of the city put it in the list as something to think about as you defining your strategies prosperity for all and maybe because we're a tight community we have a lot of utilities we're fortunate but it seems like broadband access for everyone is really critical especially going through the pandemic and how many children were just disconnected from schools because they didn't have good internet at home is that a community goal to see that's like an infrastructure sustainable infrastructure project as well I'm not sure where we are with that whether it's affordable to everybody it's probably here it's just not affordable to the poor I was noticing in the how important the surrounding area was to Montpelier it's a regional thing that's going on economically it always has been we need to promote that more particularly since we've sort of lost the stuff that we take for granted the office workers and that kind of stuff just promote a more regional profile for the city businesses yeah continue to work on outdoor recreation as an economic development driver okay so that's a lot that's a lot of really good ideas and a lot of a lot for cities as a citizen I just would thank you all for being on the line it's a long hard job being on this council and you guys are doing good hard work for the community you're listening you're setting creative strategies for the future you're looking at basic human needs so good on you again it's a real honor to be part of the conversation and I'd turn it back to the mayor if he has closing reflections but it feels like an evening well spent to me I agree I think this is what what I said at the beginning about what I appreciated being on the council is that we really have people who are committed to the good of the city committed to working together to get there and tonight not many people have been watching on zoom but it's going to be on youtube too and I hope people see that because people are here to work for the city and we'll get through this stuff if I could just ask a technical question what would you all like next and when so we'll wrap this up next week's council meeting to try to wrap this up do you want another work session do you want what are you feeling you need to finish this and then decide if we need a work session we'll try for next week we may not have it fridays packet but we'll try next week we will be able to share these ideas with our constituents I mean this is all public is it okay to discuss maybe they will give some feedback because it is public it's okay we don't have to wait nothing as long as it's clear this isn't approved it's not final but here's what we're talking about and once we submit a draft to you that'll be a public document we'll just try to move this as quickly as we can along with everything else we've got going let's thank the staff for this yeah I'm using it we'll look at that and start a little late and we're adjourning a little early so we adjourn at 8 25 p.m yeah in all my years once we're engaging in all my years of doing meetings I've never heard anything about this thank you