 I'm going to call this meeting to order. First thing is to review and approve the agenda. Are there any changes folks would like to make to the agenda? Okay. I don't have any changes myself. So. Yes. This is just minor, but you might mind. You might want to move the discussion of the exact, you know, the hotel garage stuff after all the reports. Okay. Yep. Sure. That's fine. That makes sense. No voting on that. I don't think so. Right. Okay. So we'll anticipate switching those or moving. The garage items. Okay. I don't have any changes myself. So. Yes. This is just minor, but we'll anticipate switching those or moving. The garage item till after. Or actually. After all of the reports. All right. Any other changes folks want to make? Okay. So without objection, we'll consider the. Agenda approved as amended there. So onto general business and appearances. This is an opportunity for any member of the public. And yeah, about anything that is otherwise not on our agenda. And if you would say your name and where you're from and. Try to keep your comments to two minutes. That would be great. And that is true for basically all the comments tonight. Yeah. Great. So Laura. Recording in progress. Okay. Laura, go ahead. Hi, everybody. I just wanted to say a little update on the capillary and neighborhoods program. I'm, I guess I should say I live on Liberty street just so everybody knows. And I'm working for a sustainable math failure. But yeah, we've been working to help the capillary and neighborhoods get re-energized since the start of the pandemic. And we've been working with around 30 volunteers. We've been working with about 20 neighborhoods in my failure. And just so the public knows about can it's here to promote civic engagement. Community or communicate important information from the city to neighborhoods and from neighborhoods back to the city. And also from neighbor to neighbor. And so it's really here to help build a resilient community. And right now. So I'm going to talk about some of the things that we're going to do. Our neighborhoods are planning neighborhood focused events for the July third weekend. And two weeks ago we met with Dan Groberg, the Montpelier live director to talk about this. And there's a lot of support in keeping the July third event idea alive, even though the parade can't happen this year. So the neighborhoods that are working on planning some neighborhood based events are Mountain View for something on the next city council meeting. And we're also planning to have some sort of neighborhood event, but they're still working that out. So we'll keep you in the loop on these ideas as they progress. And if anybody has any questions about can you can always reach out to me. Laura. And we have a phone number too, which I can always share. And that's it. Great. Thanks, Laura. Any questions? Laura at this point. I'm going to go ahead and talk about some of the things that we're going to do. We're also planning to have some sort of neighborhood event, but they're still working that out. So we'll keep you in the loop on these ideas as they progress. And if anybody has any questions about can you can always reach out to me. Thank you. Laura at this point. Great job. Yeah. So grateful. For all, for all your work. All right. Other. Comments. Steve Whitaker here. Go ahead, Steve. What of our chronic homeless persons came close to death? A nurse happened to stop by and check the pulse and find the person. Bowling at the mouth flies unconscious flies fall while climbing in and out of his mouth. In the heat. Obviously alcohol was involved. And my request to the city manager and Ken Russell, et cetera, the mayor and the public, and the public, and the mayor and the mayor and the public of the city. We're very concerned about cooling spaces went unanswered for the last several days. So if that's what it's going to take, is somebody dying. You know, we've got people sleeping under bridges. And if you, you all think that's okay, then there's something wrong with you. You know, these things are not okay. And we're about to see a tsunami. Or hundreds of people. Exciting the hotel. accommodate them. Secondly, our garbage cans are being filled by Friday. By Saturday, they're overflowing. By Monday, they're stinking combined household trash and animal waste. A nice older retired couple from New York got out of there in front of the liquor store and said, this is worse than New York. You know, and I said, I will coach you at the city council meeting. So that's something to be proud of. The smallest unit capital city, mismanaged capital city. We're tying up three city trucks in a vastly decade behind public works backlog of unfinished projects. We're tying up three city trucks, entire days or week for the next week or more to plant trees. The tree planting is an admiral task, but it should be done with private contract labor. Our public works is overextended understaffed and way behind the eight ball. And they should not be tying up trucks, planting trees, you know, building swimming pool size, you know, it's state of the art. I don't fault the ambitious technology to make the trees healthy. But that's not what our public works department should be tied up doing. There's more, but that's probably my two minute mark. Okay, thank you, Stephen. Anyone else? I like those things sometimes, you know? Anyone else? And by the way, you can use the raise hand icon, which is under reactions, or you can unmute yourself or turn your camera on and just physically wave and all of those options work. Okay, anyone else? Okay, so we're going to move on then to the consent agenda. Is there a motion regarding the consent agenda? I'll make a motion to move the consent agenda. I'm sorry. Okay, any further discussion? Okay, all in favor, please say aye. Aye. And opposed. Okay, so that is unanimous. We have four votes, so we are good to keep going, I think, then. All right, so we're up to the housing task force annual report. And for this, yeah, Kevin, should I turn it over to you or to Polly? Oh, you can turn it over to Polly. Polly put together the presentation for tonight. Great. Welcome, Polly. Thank you. Thank you for taking the time to let us give you a report. And we wanted to talk about the housing situation in Montpelier, which I think you are aware of, but we wanted to give you some specific data and also make some recommendations that the task force has discussed. So I am going to share my screen and hopefully that will work. Nope, that's it. Yes, that works. Great. Can you see it? Yeah, you may want to go something like a presentation mode or something. Oh, there we go. There it is. Great. Okay. So before I start, I wanted to acknowledge some of the members of the task force and others who helped gather the information. First and foremost, Kevin Casey from the city, from whom a lot of the data came, Liz Gange and Patty Dupuy from Down Street, Brian Evans and Carolyn Redpath, who are members of the task force and also Rick D'Angelo from Good Sparitan. I thought I would start by telling you a little bit about the task force since there are a few new city council members since the last time we presented. Very quickly, we were established in 1999 and we are a group of citizens interested in housing issues. There's one representative from the city council on the task force and that's Jack and Jack's been on for a long time, thankfully. And our current members include residents representing the Montpelier Housing Authority, Down Street, Green Mountain Habitat, the Homelessness Task Force, the Central Vermont Regional Planning Commission, Vermont Interfaith Action, City Council and just private citizens with an interest in housing. When we were created, the purpose that was outlined was to gather and evaluate information regarding housing trends in the city to develop responses to housing concerns that are identified and to recommend policies concerning housing to Montpelier City Government and that's largely why I'm here tonight. So what I'm going to talk about are a little bit of data on population household composition income and then tell you about rental housing, homeownership, people who are without homes, short-term rentals and lay out some conclusions about what we know. So this is census data for Montpelier from 2019 and I think you probably know a lot of this. The number of people in our city has been declining. The estimated decrease since the last census is about just over 6%. 20% of the population is over 65, 20% is under 18 and the median age is 45, which is slightly higher than the state median, which I believe is like 42. Not surprisingly, most people in Montpelier are white and were born in the US and our household size is relatively small. It's just over two people per household and our median household income according to the census between 2015 and 2019 was a little bit over $65,000, which is a little bit higher than the Washington County median and a little bit higher than the state median but not quite much. So rental housing, approximately 44% of our housing stock is rental and there are virtually no vacancies right now in rental housing, both in the unsubsidized market and the subsidized market. Prices are really high. The average market rent is almost $1,400 a month and I did some research on some websites where people might go if they were looking for an apartment and there were only six listings and there were four one bedroom apartments, prices ranging from $1,000 a month to $1,200. There was one three bedroom apartment at $1450 and a four bedroom house at $2,500 a month. So not exactly very affordable. I talked to representatives from Montpelier's two largest landlords and interestingly the two largest landlords are downstreet housing and the Montpelier housing authority and downstreet and this figure is slightly different than in the version that was given to you because I made a mistake but they own 181 apartments in Montpelier and they say for the past few months it's been between 98 and 100% I can see. The only time there's a vacancy is when they're doing apartment turnover and their property manager said she's never seen it like this and she thought if there were new apartments created they would fill right away. Montpelier housing authority owns 185 apartments. They're all subsidized. They have a long waiting list for both apartments and portable vouchers and Tiotriana said she can fill apartments as soon as she can turn the motor. They've had trouble filling some of them because of supply chain issues having to wait months for a refrigerator or a stove or something that an apartment needs but as soon as an apartment's ready to go they can rent it immediately and she said what she sees also with the private landlords who she deals with through the voucher program is there are just no vacancies and she thinks it's a lot worse than normal. This chart shows you the rent trend between 1980 and 2018 and obviously it's out of date but the reason for including it is you can see where rents are going. It's just a steady upward line. The next thing I wanted to talk about was home ownership. 56% of our housing stock is occupied. The median price for a single family home last year was just shy of $300,000 and for a condo just a little over $200,000. Our homes in Montpelier appreciated 143% between 2000 and 2020 and again there is not much available. The MLS listings for May only had six active listings and two of them were on the market for over a million dollars. Something I certainly never thought I would see in Montpelier. The median price was $326,500 and the range was from $193,000 for a two bedroom condo to $1.35 million for a four bedroom single family home. Similar to what I did with rentals, I looked on some of the websites and there were seven listings only with a range from $209,000 to $1.35 million. Those were mostly the same listings that the MLS had. So, what does this mean for affordability? Well, if a buyer earns 120% of county median income, which is approximately $78,000, they're able to afford a mortgage of about $225,000. So, you can see that what's considered a moderate income household earning above median homes in Montpelier are pretty much unaffordable unless they have a lot of help with the down payment. So, what can we conclude about buying a home in Montpelier? Well, interest in buying and living in Montpelier remains high among prospective buyers. Realtors report that most homes are under contract within a few days of going on the market and frequently there are bidding wars with the successful buyer often paying more than the asking price and going through the statistics it looks like that's been between this year and last year $1,000 and $27,500 above the asking price. And the trend seems like 2021, there's even more of that than there was in 2020. And many of these buyers have cash and don't need a mortgage. So, if you're a first-time home buyer, young family, that's the competition. I talked to Downstreet's Homeownership Center director and her characterization in Montpelier was they have a lot of interest among the people who they serve who wouldn't like to live in Montpelier but they really just can't afford it. Once in a while, there's a condo that they can afford. So, I wanted to touch just briefly on people without homes. I know that you hear from the homelessness test, so I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this. But from the data that we were given, it's Washington County data, it's not Montpelier data. So, between 280 and 350 unhoused households in Washington County. Most are single adults and 14% are households with children. In mid-May, there were 95 rooms and motels used to house people without housing. And, you know, some of those were family, some of those were single folks. And at the end of June, there was going to be between 50 and 100 people who were going to lose those motel vouchers and couldn't be out on the street. And very sadly, the Montpelier Housing Authority had to turn down 15 additional vouchers because there just was no place to put people in Montpelier. So, this is a chart that comes from the Vermont coordinated entry system where people enter the system to receive homeless services for people who don't have homes. It does not include Burlington and the Chittenden metropolitan area. But you can see Washington County, we are unfortunately leading the pack in homeless households. Mostly single adults. This dark blue area is an adult with at least one child. I think the only good news in any of this is we don't seem to have a lot of homeless youth without an adult. The green is homeless youth who don't live with an adult. And then short-term rentals, which certainly all over the state are being talked about and have impacted the availability of apartments. And this is the most recent data. It was prepared in 2019 by Airbnb. And you can see kind of shockingly that Montpelier has the fourth highest number of Airbnb rentals in the state. And what surprised me is that it's higher here than most resort towns, including Dover, Wilmington, Waitsville, all the places that you think are getting a lot of tourists. There are more in Stowe, but it's in declining order, Burlington, Rutland, Stowe and Montpelier. Obviously, Burlington and Rutland are very much larger than us. One thing that I meant to include, and this has been a topic of conversation at a housing summit that the city of Burlington held last year. And what they are considering doing or already doing about short-term rentals is if you're going to convert a year-round dwelling to a short-term rental, you have to get a permit and the owner has to live on the property. They are considering charging a housing replacement fee when conversions occur. And also if there are more than three units in a building or on the property that are being used to short-term rentals, they are defined as a hotel and they are allowed only in the zoning districts where hotels are allowed. So it's definitely something that's being talked about all over the state. In our recommendations, we don't have anything around short-term rentals because it's also something that the legislature has been wrestling with, so we want to see what they're going to do. So the conclusions from the data are Montpelier remains a desirable community. Both homeowners and renters want to live here and our housing market is extremely tight for both groups. There are virtually no rental vacancies nor properties for sale. I think the market is just really stuck. And we talk about downsizers and people who may want to move from a large single-family home, but there aren't a lot of options or places for them to go if they want to stay in Montpelier. So I think it's it's kind of contributed to the stock market. Prices continue to increase significantly, both for rentals and homeownership. And very few new homes have been built since 2000. I think maybe 5% of our housing stock has been built since 2000. And so basically low and moderate income households are being priced out of the Montpelier market unless they're fortunate enough to get a subsidized apartment. I did some research on, you know, what are people doing elsewhere in the country? What does the state recommend? And these next two slides are a list of tools for municipalities. And I think you got them in your materials. I'm not going to read through them with you. I highlighted the ones that Montpelier hasn't done yet. And I have to say the city has done a lot. I mean, when you look at this list, much of it is, oh yeah, you know, the city has done that. So it's really not for lack of trying. And some of these are not appropriate for Montpelier. Inclusionary zoning is a powerful tool, but you have to have development for it to work. So anyway, and there's more here. You can see some of them like a TIF district we've already done. We have a housing committee, we have a housing trust fund. So I hope you'll take the time to look this over. And then at our last housing task force meeting, we spent quite a bit of time talking about, well, what do we want to recommend to the city council? And there's certainly, this is not an all-inclusive list. And there's probably many more ideas out there. But I did want to go through them. So the first is to hire a consultant to examine the housing situation among Peelier and make recommendations. Maybe there's something that folks who live and work here are missing and maybe some outside eyes might have some ideas. The second recommendation was to reconstitute the barriers to housing committee. This was a committee that was set up by the city council 10 years ago. So obviously, this is not a completely new problem. And the purpose of the committee would be to understand what's happening in the market and make recommendations. And we would just suggest that there'd be representatives from the task force, city council, the planning commission, the homelessness task force, sustainable Montpelier and city staff. So the idea is maybe with a broad group of people, folks could come up with some ideas that haven't already been tried. Undertaken inventory of potentially developable properties that could accommodate 10 or more units. This may have been done already when the zoning was revised. But I think it's important for us to know where those properties are and keep an eye on them and try to encourage some development there. Fund the housing trust fund at a level of $150,000 annually. Next one is support a shared appreciation home ownership pilot for first time home buyers. Down Street actually has one in the works. This would involve giving household a subsidy that's high enough that they could enter into the market. But in return, when they went to sell, they would limit the percentage of appreciation that they would take on the home. And the traditional model is they would take 25% of the appreciation. And the remainder would just stay with the home. And so it would be affordable to the next buyer. It's a program that's been used all over the state and Down Street does have some shared appreciation homes in Montpelier. But the state subsidies have been very limited. So there really aren't any. And we were recommending using some housing trust fund money to try that as a pilot. The next one is explore instituting a land value tax. The tax is long term vacant buildings and highly developed properties at a higher value than occupied real estate. And the idea here is if there are people who are sitting on highly developable land, that's certainly they're right, but make them make them pay a higher tax. I'm not sure if that's allowed under Vermont law. So it might involve working with the legislature on enabling legislation. The next one, this this was tried a while ago and didn't succeed, but there's new people in the legislature. And we feel strongly that it makes sense to relook at working with the state of Vermont, maybe about making some of the large state parking lots available for housing, you could do parking on the ground floor, or and maybe the floor above, and then housing above, because there's some large vacant properties downtown that are just used for parking for state employees. Then acquire land and make it available for housing development. We think that the situation is dire enough that this is something that the city may want to seriously consider doing. You might want to employ the services of a professional real estate developer to do some negotiation might involve creating a land bank and using other city funds or funds from the Vermont housing and conservation board to do so. But that way the city would would be in control and could reach out and and find a developer who would develop what what we want. Work with the Vermont College of Fine Arts to determine if there are possibilities for housing in some of their underutilized buildings. My understanding is that that is a possibility. The next one is if a property goes up for tax sale, give first option to purchase to a nonprofit and it sounds like there aren't a lot of properties to go up tax sale but you know should that happen if a nonprofit like Down Street could get an option on it, they could get a lower moderate income family into the home. Continue the accessory dwelling unit program. It's a pilot right now. It's got some constraints because of the federal funds but it's a really good way to get more apartments into some existing buildings and it's a very low impact way. And finally support programs to reduce homelessness to recognize the challenges in changing landscape of homeless services and to support state and local programs and to allow the housing trust fund money to be used to support a project to house those without homes outside of Montpelier. That's a little unusual but it's a regional problem and so that's what we aren't recommending. And finally as I was doing a as I was putting this together I came across the following and it's from the New Yorker, it's from last week and it just sort of shows that we are not alone in this so I'm not going to read it to you but I'll go slowly enough that you can you can see it but it's entitled how to beat out cash buyers when trying to buy your first house. Good humor Molly, good humor. Okay and so here's here's the conclusion which hopefully it's not going to be true in Montpelier. So that's that's it and I don't know if anyone has comments or questions or thank you. Just so we did have a request to send this out so this is a newer version right then wasn't our packets is that correct? So the I think Mary sent you the PowerPoint and the only slide that was changed was I had the number of units that down straight has in Montpelier wrong so it's it's one of those but otherwise you you have it. Okay great thank you. So Connor I saw you had a hand go ahead. Yeah thanks very much Polly that's a pretty depressing presentation but really really well done you know. Some of those stats hit pretty hard. What are the ones I like I'm trying to reconcile I think I have an idea but how do you reconcile the population going down 6% and virtually no homes are like rentals being available is that like second homes is it less people with families moving to town I'm just trying to get my head around that. So I'm not an expert on that but I think what a lot of what has happened is people who moved here you know when they were young they had kids have stayed in their homes and so the household size has gone down. There are an awful lot of couples and single people who are occupying larger homes and there isn't there aren't a whole lot of places for them to go if they want to stay in Montpelier so I think that's I think that's something. Connor just to also put it in perspective too with 230 units going to Airbnb and short-term rentals you're going to reduce your overall population although you don't lose the number of units they just they're not full-time residents and so you know there is a it's not an insignificant impact when that transition occurs from long-term housing to you know to Airbnb and short-term rentals it's a significant if those numbers are truly correct from the state you know taxation department in Airbnb it's not insignificant. One more question I think the scariest thing I saw was you know just the average rental price there right it's like if you're in your 20s if you're like you're a server in town like how in the world could you afford that has the has the committee looked at all this is pretty controversial probably in trouble but at like rent stabilization policies I think it would take a charter change I don't think we could do it unilaterally but have you thought about rent stabilization how that works what impact it has? No we haven't talked about it I mean I know from friends you know who like lived in Cambridge Massachusetts or New York or you know in places where they had or have rent stabilization there can be a lot of unintended consequences I mean it does hold the rents down but it also tends to impact the condition of the apartment and so it's it's definitely something to look at but it may not pick up a panacea. You would also run into the situation too where you get people who you know where you would have the downsizer situation where people like they're stuck in their big homes now they would be stuck in their apartments because it doesn't make sense for them to leave if they've lived in the same place for 20 years and the rent is stabilized you know they're not gonna they're not gonna give it give up that rent stabilized unit you run into the same unintended consequences of basically like primogeniture everybody ends up with giving it handing it down to their oldest and next thing you know you've got five generations in a rent stabilized apartment um yeah there's a tough one thanks very much guys okay Dan go ahead sure the last comment reminded me there's a curve on a short story I think that ties in with that in which some people are fighting for the bed within the apartment um but they all live in um my question goes to really um when we're looking at housing um needs you know is there a specific sort of category of need um you know is it is it um for lack of maybe a more nuanced term a starter home uh you know sort of for younger families or for people wanting to downsize and get out of their larger unit or um you know sort of uh you know smaller homes that might be more affordable um or or is it is it the subsidized housing that's that's really driving you know what what where are some of these where are the gaps I guess I think and and Kevin looks like he wants to jump in but I think it's all of the above you know I spent um a career working in affordable housing and that was the lens that I looked at everything through but um in the you know work with the housing task force I've really come to think we need market rate housing we need subsidized housing we need starter homes we need housing for seniors who you know who don't necessarily qualify for subsidized housing and maybe like maybe can't afford something like Westview um it's we need it all I think yeah no I'd I'd agree with Holly on that one I mean there's um you know when you look at the market from zero percent vacant vacancy rates for market rate and subsidized rental you know when five percent is your mark is your um you know your bell weather for healthy housing market um and you have functional zero the only time you see an empty apartment is because they they're going to spend some time working on it or something needs to be done um but you know as far as the housing market is concerned too you you also run into the situation of like polly's data showed that you know if if you're at 120 percent of a median income you're making $78,000 a year you're going to afford a $225,000 house there are no $225,000 houses available because the moment they hit the market they're now $275,000 after being bid up so you really do run into the situation and it's something that like I've advocated for before is that you know by having things like a land bank or you know where the the city has to play that role of of doing or the state or federal government whoever it is to subsidize some of those development costs so that you offset the the the total cost otherwise you know your construction costs at $200 just wear a foot quickly push you um to that limit before you've you know included anything else well let me let me follow up on that if I if I may um you know when you talk about these construction costs and subsidizing it um okay um obviously that's that's one solution um and is it just simply the per square foot cost of building a home um or are there you know are there other ways to sort of drive down the cost of of the home uh building costs well you know if you're per $200 a square foot and let's say just for math's sake it's um a thousand square foot home small home you're looking at $200,000 but you haven't you know but if you take into account your you know acquisition costs of say $75,000 or $80,000 for land plus your utility hookups you're over $300,000 without you know putting a curtain rod up so it's you know whereas that's what kind of what I'm saying is that you know where the city has no sorry I'll go ahead go ahead no I was just going to say is that you know that's why when you look at you know whether the city you know where to undertake something like a land bank where we're eating some of the the hard infrastructure costs and you know making the lots available at a reasonable rate looking at is a long-term investment to create new neighborhoods um then you have the potential for um developers coming in and saying okay we can make this work all right well I'm wondering too if there's anything like you know and this this is I think something that's come up every now and then but whether there's zoning bylaws or building code requirements such as sprinklers or such that you know are having or is that a negligible kind of impact I think at this point it's a negligible impact I you know when you look at you know historically people would say oh it's the zoning you know but when you talk to the developers now that are looking at Montpelier they're like wow this is the zoning's great you know the the the the numbers look great like you know there's a demand and everything else but there's lack of available land that is right for development or is owned currently by people who are not able to develop it so um yeah yeah I think the changes to the zoning were terrific in terms of encouraging housing um really really good yeah go ahead thanks um yeah I think some of the changes in zoning we did a few years ago are are great we uh it's possible we have more density it's possible for people to turn their houses uh that they live in into duplexes um Napoli you mentioned the accessory dwelling unit program and I think that there that might be something that people aren't aware of so it might be worth uh talking about that a little bit yeah I can take that one it's your baby you want to talk about so that the accessory dwelling unit program which is funded in part by Vermont community development program funds which is indirectly from HUD we're partnered with the Vermont State Housing Authority and Tyler Moss is running it the challenge has been Tyler is now in charge of the rental assistance program for the state uh which is you know if people can't pay the rent the hundred like 153 million dollars is the number eight it's not insignificant so he's busy but we're we still move through a few of them the challenges is that um there's a lot of interest we have run into challenges with the HUD funding because what we were originally told we could do things like um you know detach structures or um they changed it kind of last minute so um it's a great program it gives people up to $20,000 plus the $10,000 interest-free loan so a total of $30,000 to put an accessory dwelling unit on their property and it just needs to be affordable for five years so it provides a significant amount of money for homeowners to um to participate and on top of that too the eligibility is flexible so either the unit needs to be flexible or needs to be affordable or the homeowner qualifies uh as low income lower moderate income so if you're retired when you have a home um and you know you've got some equity you can use some of your equity to build unit and get the grant uh and loan up to $30,000 to offset those costs um so it's a great program we just have to get through the last few it's a pilot and kind of long-term it's a really one where kind of a no-brainer um as far as you know a public um investment when you look at affordable housing units are usually you know 220 to $300,000 a piece per unit whereas if we make a $50,000 contribution and we have a you know or sorry a $30,000 to $50,000 contribution um per unit we have an affordable affordable unit in place so it's one-tenth the cost if i recall there were more people who wanted to get into this program than we had uh slots available to yeah and just to follow up on that jack too we the pandemic really kind of hit the program hard there were a number of projects that were in process and almost overnight last march and early april people just said i don't know if i'm going to have a job i don't know what's going to happen everything shut down so this we're going to put on hold um i think one of them has been re-resurrected in the spring too that's underway so um but they're still interested just i think people were waiting for the the world's situation to stabilize thanks uh so i'm going to jump in here um thank you uh Pauline Kevin this is excellent it's um it may it may not be encouraging but i i appreciate that there are suggestions um and so i'm going to focus on those and so i when i see this list of suggestions particularly the ones that you're making recommendations um to the council about um my my head organizes them in a kind of graph i guess you could say where on one axis it's like is this easy or is this hard and then on the other axis it's like will this have a really direct impact or like an indirect impact and uh so obviously we i want to like if we can what are the things that are easy to do and will have a direct impact and there's nothing that really fits clearly in that category and that's fine um but just thinking about um where other things fall on on that scale um there are a couple things that jump out to me that i think are really interesting unfortunately they're pretty hard but i i maybe i'll save those there's a couple things on here that feel really um obvious maybe is uh a word i would use one is you know if our fund if our revenue allows getting back to um funding uh you all at i feel um i feel like i previously we were funding you had like 140 000 um annually um maybe i'll have to go back and check but but funding you at 150 000 um annually like that is of interest uh to me and that's something that we you know we wouldn't do now we'd be talking about that for um during budget time also the continuing the adu program uh you know as that comes up that feels worth worth doing um you know because i know we're in a pilot program now but when it ceases to be a pilot and and it's something that we should adopt um that's that's certainly of interest um you know i'm also interested in this last bullet uh allowing the molecular housing trust fund money to be used to support um those without homes um you know that's i'd love to see that fleshed out a little more but that's that's certainly um something that feels like especially if that it's just like a permission that you need i mean there's there's certainly trade-offs there like oh maybe it's not going to a house in Montpelier but is that um necessary um so that you know that's that's certainly a conversation there's there's two others though that jump out well yeah so let me back up so one is not actually listed here and i'm curious about your thoughts on it um i'll i'll start with that one one of the things that i feel like i'm taking away from this conversation is the substantial impact of short-term rentals that feels like it's worth addressing and i don't see that on your list of recommendations seeing that like there's a there's 230 uh you know short-term rentals out or hosts out there and we've got potentially a hundred new um folks facing homelessness in the next couple months like that is somehow very well it's very irritating right like and at the same time i understand like there's a need for short-term rentals blah blah blah but um you know what can what can be done about that and so i'm sorry go ahead poly yeah i've got another one but i'll hold on to it yeah go ahead it was on the list um but because the legislature is trying to address it statewide we took it off figuring well let's wait and see what they do um you you know i'm i'm not one to wait right like if we think there's a good solution uh i don't mind saying like let's let's come up with what we think may be healthy what what would work for us and um and then get after it with the legislature i realized that's that's a heavy lift but um but i think we all recognize that there's there's this need anyway i want to put that out there that that's that's some that's something i'd be interested in um i'm speaking for myself here but um that's that's one thing and then a second thing and again i realized that this is a heavy lift but um i have been interested in land-based taxes for a long time and i i think there are multiple reasons to pursue land value tax or land-based taxes and you know this in my mind this is adding one more reason to explore that when i when i think about both of those things um which would probably require charter amendments it it seems to me that those would be the kinds of things that you need a champion or a group of you need a group to like to to vet it to talk about it um and yeah i'm well that's something that maybe warrants more conversation i don't know if other folks feel um like you know that we know what that is um or if there's any interest in that uh but yeah what's your what's your thought on on that with the land value tax or land-based taxes mic oh yeah go ahead yeah i could jump in here real quick one of the the hang-ups that comes up with the land-based taxes that we of course have a statewide education tax rate so in order for us to implement it we would basically have to have two assessments for every property one that's the the the state education assessment and then we would have to have a local assessment so that that's one complication and then we would also have to then cut out the um the tiff district because we can't do anything um outside of the ordinary to the tiff district so we would only be looking at properties outside of the tiff district so those would be just a couple of the the major issues with uh that that approach to things um just as off off the top it would be it would require a certain amount of complicated um and then the question we'd have to ask steve quombly the assessor is whether our computer programs and our tax software actually would allow us to print tax bills and such but um from a from a ability to do its standpoint those would be the the barriers i would see to going forward beyond having to actually get the state give us permission i mean my understanding of land-based taxes is that the algorithm would be pretty straightforward right because it's based on the land and not what's on it right and so that assessment presumably would be pretty cut and dry um separate from that you do make a good point about the tiff district um so what space are really talking about and does it apply to places to like the rurally zoned um spaces but it would be interesting to see you know outside of the tiff district uh what what space we're actually talking about potentially because there there may there may be um space that's that's worth talking about for that um there is at least one member of the planning commission who also very strongly supports the idea of the land-based tax tax system um so it's it's not it's not something completely foreign that we haven't discussed certainly has come up in planning commission as well well maybe i'll reach out to that planning commissioner and see if there is energy to put together a committee to explore it further um uh dan and then bill uh the the only other concern that i would think about is uh land is the state land gains tax um and how that would have an impact on that because if if suddenly land values rise as a result of taxation um you know you might have home owners that are you know the which the land gains tax is pretty harsh um it depending on the number of years you own the land um and it can make a homeowner it can make it ununaffordable to sell your home right okay fair enough and um bill yeah i wasn't going to really comment on the land tax i think there's a lot to look at there i just um you know i think you were heading the amount of mayor is we might want to take a look at these proposals and ideas and and put them you know one in the box of the things we have the authority and ability to do now that are within our discretion and and you know whether it's a budget decision or those kinds of things uh or within the current statutes or zoning and those that would require you know extraordinarily heavy lifts and and now we can weigh the pros and cons those policies and also those the political realities of you know are we going to really put a lot of effort into this only to find that you know pvi or somebody is just going to say you know they can't do that and the legislature shoots it down and so you know i i'm not saying that will happen i just think we we can take a look at what's our what's this workload and this workload because there are a lot of good ideas and i think some of them you know whether it is just securing options on properties or those kinds of things to help people get in um helping you know buy down the cost of some of these homes or maybe it's even you know counterintuitive but helping support more expensive homes and thinking maybe people go into those freeing up the other homes you know i so i think but those are all things we can do um without changing the world but we should be also looking at changing the world at sea time. Fair enough. Other thoughts or comments? Steve Whitaker. Go ahead Steve. Um i'm marvel at the fair enough uh uh it's the uh this is an emergency this this is not something that can stand for a couple of years at committee work uh i'm reminded of your homelessness task force uh that we we really need to think about accelerating like drastic measures to create several categories of housing uh from and i've just sent a few of you links to both the Conestoga huts which are $2,000 for the homeless and then $50,000 pre-assembled accessory dwelling units fixtures are already included in them so you set set them down on a foundation even a light foundation unfold them and they're ready to occupy so we really need to think about doing something even if it's going to have to get rearranged later or relocated later both of these solutions are are appropriate for that but you've got you've got an emergency situation whereas you know recreating the tax structure to disincentivize Airbnb or trying to place you know uh socially atrophied uh homeless people into Airbnb uh tenancies is really absurd uh that the owners will not tolerate that so i think we need to look at real drastic situations that are going to both uh take advantage of available land and housing i'm thinking of the unused you know building between trinity and uh disability rights uh unless jacob's has somebody living in his attic up there in a commercial zone but there's lots of properties they could handle uh three four six uh of these foldable accessory dwelling units at $50,000 a piece and you know you you need to start taking the pressure off with immediate action i'll leave it at that and you know follow up with the appropriate people if there are any okay thank you other can i can i follow up that can i follow one more comment on that madam mayor uh i i had an opportunity with a an owner who had a property for sale that is really a tear down but the site could handle six or eight units of affordable housing but the years of ineffective of ineffective government has eroded the trust that it is worth trying to battle this machine of city hall to get these kinds of things permitted the unequal enforcement the favoritism that you know we've we've created a problem that's discouraging creative affordable housing development and that's a that's a trust issue that you all got to deal with and i didn't hear any mention of it thank you other thoughts or comments jack go ahead well i think it's worth pointing out that uh uh when i there are a number of people still working in housing today who are working who are on the barriers to housing committee back 10 years ago and uh it in that and i'm one of them and certainly in that committee one of the things that we found was that uh among developers there was an image that uh the city of Montpelier was hostile to development and uh you people just couldn't get things built here and uh and it was also very clear then and it's even more clear now that that image was uh was not factual and that uh there are uh the barriers that people claim claimed to exist to uh to housing development simply aren't there so i i don't not i reject the contention that uh the administration of the city of Montpelier has been uh engaged in incompetent and uh and unequal treatment of people who are interested in in developing housing in in Montpelier there there are reasons that it hasn't happened but being badly treated by the city i don't think is one of them so i mean i i like to be leaving a topic like this with some next steps and i'm not totally clear on like like what do we think some of those next steps might be uh dan go ahead sure i mean i think one of the easy steps i know the city of burlington has been tackling uh the airbnb issue you know and so it might be a nice first step to see you know staff can uh obtain some of the material that that burlington has either promulgated or gone through to start start that discussion i mean that's a difficult and fraught discussion because there are people that rely on airbnb as a income source to help them afford to live in houses and so you know i think that's something we just have to be careful about but you know i think one of the points about that kevin and poly made is that this is having an impact and at the very least we should be having a discussion about it because there may be some low-hanging fruit and there may be some some issues that we can start to identify um that that would strike me to be maybe a uneasy first first lift um and would go directly to the heart of some of the things that they've been talking about yeah thank you um ryan evans good evening everybody um i am on the board of goods maritain haven and a member of the non-cleaner housing uh test force i do want to just let you know that goods maritain haven submitted a uh an application for the housing trust fund we are trying to secure the um the twin city motel on the very mount pilier road which would provide quite a lot of uh better housing space um so i that goes to the uh the final bullet on that list is that you know to be able to open that up for not just mont pilier is uh is what we were hoping for as well just so thank you you know i almost feel like some of these could be um brought to us sort of like one at a time you know if the if the housing task force came to us with just a proposal around that um then we could we could just zoom in on it you know address it and then start checking some of these things off yeah just as an aside we know we will be calling together the housing trust fund committee to um to the process is the housing trust fund committee will vet that and then do a presentation council to you know likely approve um that recommendation um to fund good sam with the housing trust fund um we just have to go through the process um because it will involve you know a bit of an exemption um but it's you know the important piece is is recognizing the regional nature of this that you know normally we our trust fund dollars go directly to projects in mont pilier whereas this would be unique but at the same time too it's been such a uh council priority task force priority the homeless task force priority um and you administration that uh you know that that'll be coming up probably at the end of the month we're gonna be I'm going on vacation this week so I I can't do it this week when I get back um I promise uh but yeah it's uh that's coming up uh that'll come up we'll meet at the end of the month and probably in early July we'll have it to you guys so oh yeah Lauren go ahead yeah thanks um and apologies I was uh late tonight for a fourth grade graduation um so I might have missed um I missed the first half of the presentation I think so apologies is are there like short term next steps that um holly you and the team had recommended tied to the um like American rescue plan act money and the fact that there's like unprecedented dollars in the state that are going to be you know like they the huge amount of money that's going to vhcb and um other programs like is the recommendation tied to the consultant or other things like how are we making sure that mont pilier is right like right right in line and taking as you know as much advantage of this moment and and that the funding that's not normally there is is that tied to that and or they're like short term steps that you see would be necessary for us to be like as prepared as possible to take advantage so the recommendations um were not tied to that in part you know I talked to people at vhcb and they they were still kind of sifting through and trying to figure it out our nest task force meeting is next week and Mary Hooper is going to come and talk about what the legislature did and the opportunities that it presents and um Kevin's Kevin's as he said isn't going to be here you know maybe i'm hoping might might be able to join us um so we can have a conversation about um are there opportunities for mont pilier um i did mention the um you know possibility of i asked the director of vhcb um you know could some of the money that they're getting be used to capitalize a land bank um if if mont pilier was interested in that and he said he thought so but again you know they they hadn't at that point gone through the details so just the just the follow-up on that with poly is that that's that's pretty much the the general take is that there is a lot of money coming from the federal government but nobody knows exactly how it can be spent where it can be spent and who's going to spend it so um i think it's it's basically just keeping our ear to the ground and looking for opportunities um but you know each of these could be capitalized using some of those funds hopefully um and it may not be appropriate in some cases to use federal funds it may be you know something that the city needs to to take on um because sometimes the strings of the the funds can be more onerous and counterproductive to what you want to achieve and um and just doing that i don't think the city should be shy about asking i mean i worked as as a funder for for years and you know i mean the worst you can get is a no and often um it's something that they haven't thought of and and they want to do it and they can think of think of a way to do it so i think if if um if we have needs which we do um we we should be right in there because certainly um burlington and the burlington folks are gonna be knocking down the door so go ahead connor um i may have missed it but i i thought that was a really good suggestion um reaching out to the college has there been any discussions so far i mean i could see that as such a win-win if they need to get rid of space and they have it you know it could really improve the vibrancy up up on college hill there you know they've got a cafe and everything um and it would seem like some of those buildings would be easier to convert to housing so uh i was just wondering what the next step might be on that one i guess the question is have we spoken to them yesterday um i i don't know who the we is i know that um at one point they were they i think approached good samaritan to see if they could work with them and for some reason that didn't work out but um that would seem to say that they are thinking about how can we be a good community partner and also what can we do with these underutilized buildings yeah we'll make a plan to reach out great thank you it sounds sort of like there's multiple next steps um here that that were all throwing around um poly kevin mic do you do you feel like you have a sort of a clear picture of what your some next next next steps might be for i mean we've talked about a number of them but uh i i'm curious um what your reaction to the idea of approaching the state about using some of the parking lots um might be because i i i think the city made some pretty serious efforts quite a few years ago but the person who was negotiating on behalf of the legislature basically killed it and he's no longer there and um you know given that state employees some of them may have more options for working remotely post pandemic well they really need all that parking um i don't know i i'm i'm i'm curious what you think about that i do go ahead donna well there's some past discussions with the state but every time you mention a parking garage and their dollars they sort of have walked away maybe if there could be a deal where there was a way of covering some of their costs for the parking area but we take a lot of negotiations i think you should do it we should do it but it has not been uh fulfilling to try in the past um i would am i getting drunk with this one better than that i gotta say it but you know in development like you know the kind of your primary um uh goal is control site control owning the land and having that um that control of the site so i think that's gotta be kind of the primary goal because what we've seen again and again you know in town is you can make incremental progress on small projects like ad use or you know maybe we do something with with airbnb but none of those are a panacea but when we look at some of the larger parcels or we look at the stuff that you know if we are going to look at development it's gonna have to come from you know us having control of those pieces and then making a determination you know with the community how we want to proceed um so that's just my thought and that's why i like the land bank ideas where where you you know you you come from a position of saying like okay well you know we're gonna we're gonna maximize development for this area or this area um and we're gonna do site control and we're gonna take the lead on the master planning and we're gonna take the lead on some of these pieces um or work with the developer that can i can do that um and has the experience to do that so that's just my take um i think that until we until we have that control i think it's going to be very difficult to make progress are you saying that just in general or in response to i think that you know anything that we do um as far as like the adu program we can make some incremental progress and airbnb but if we're gonna you know really have an impact on this it's going to be a larger development um you know when you have zero percent vacancy rates and four homes on the market right now uh i mean you're not you're not going to piece me all your way out of this one this is going to take a big investment and um and partnership with people who know how to do it so i'm off with the land bank yeah fair enough so that would require either finding some federal or local dollars to to at least even start that conversation right yeah knowing knowing that there's a funding source unless unless the city wanted to issue a housing some kind of housing bond to do it that way well yeah let's so i would certainly be interested in um hearing back from you all uh as things progress and uh keep us in the loop if there's one thing that rises to the top um you know come to us with like one ask so that we can dive deep and um and then and the five million bucks one ask give me five million bucks we're good all right okay daughter go ahead well i just wanted poly to know that uh barbara conry the architect teacher at vermont college of vermont tech she had a class that did several renditions of buildings with parking underneath housing above parking underneath some retail and housing above sustainable buildings all throughout downtown so you might get in touch with her just because then you might have some concrete images and who knows that might fly on some opportunity of money in the future it's not going to be immediate but they were beautiful buildings and well-purposed for those parking mods okay she's actually coming to our next meeting but with her planning commission had on tell her tell her you went there wonderful ran her back yeah yeah thank you don't okay any final thoughts on this i think we probably need to move on okay thank you for all right well thank you again yeah absolutely um yep and certainly keep us in the loop keep us updated as to how we can help uh all right yeah all right so we're gonna move on to utility rates and i am assuming that i'm going to be passing this over to either um curtain tico or uh double casey or possibly kelly oh there's kelly kelly turn your camera on awesome all right i'll go kelly go ahead thank you very much um so it's me um i'm going to be doing the um utility rates um and then we get into the master plan they kind of flow together um and so i've got it just a really quick presentation of slides to go over the greatest hits um and so if i can i'm going to go ahead and share my screen here and let me know if you can see it uh yes yes you can see it so we'll just kind of get right into the history of the rates um this was included in your packets along with the rate setting resolution um last year we set rates in september um and on the consent agenda um but i thought just given the times it might be worth um doing a presentation to go over you know what we're proposing and how it ties in and hopefully um year over year we can set rates before july one um so they can just go into planning for folks as they consider their usage should um they be impacted by increases or if they're level funded which maybe not so much but we've got a lot going on so without further ado this is a little bit blurry so i apologize for that but i just wanted to highlight a few areas to focus on the majority of consumers um water and sewer are in the first tier of usage um and for that it's the first five or 15 000 gallons of water used or wastewater for um a quarter and so it's that first column after the um years here and then if you come over here to the sewer meter rates um that's shown as well and so for the water rates just focusing on that first tier and i'll get into it a little bit more um from an impact perspective on the next slide um but from 21 to 22 for that category we would be going from 880 to 904 um and likewise for sewer within the same category we would be going from 995 to 1022 that represents a 2.7 percent increase um additionally i want to know that the fixed ready to serve charge would also go up from 230 to 236 um and so you can just see how the rates have changed in the last column over the years here and so just getting into kind of what it means i'm just going to keep this pretty simple um but i did want to kind of uh show a range of consumers and show what it would mean on sort of an average bill and so what i did is i pulled our quarterly consumption averages and then took a look at the different categories and so bucketed them so in this first table you can kind of see the number of accounts and the range and the um where they are mostly mostly our users are within the 5000 to 10 000 gallon per quarter range um but i wanted to kind of factor in other users um this list represents a total of just over 2500 users or so um the total number of consumers across all users is just under 3000 so it just sort of gives you a sense of where this sits and so you can see if you look at the impact annualized for water and sewer you can see them separated out here but then you can also see them combine so if you're looking at between a thousand and 5000 gallons annually the impact will be 18 dollars and 87 cents if you're looking at 5000 to 10 000 it's 27 dollars and nine cents and then if you're looking at 10 000 to about 20 000 you're looking at just under 40 dollars annually of an increase and so just thinking about what that means and the impact on users that's what the annual increase would represent um and i'll get into what this funds in the next slide but you can kind of see the breakdown here which i just mentioned based on the rate history what our fixed annual ready to serve costs would go to and from and then water and sewer and then i also wanted to list the high top three users here down at the bottom just so you could see on the other end of the universe and spectrum you know what folks are using it drops off significantly from here but this is the higher end of usage per quarter um and we're number one so that's um pretty interesting there um but as i understand it historically it is gone between the city and the hospital um which isn't really all that surprising and then moving on into the recommendation here um this would be if you approve these rates and um execute the resolution and be effective july 2021 um for fy 22 um and would be seen on the um december bill um and this is representative of 1.7 percent inflation and then 1 percent for infrastructure which tracks the master plan um this funds infrastructure improvements current and future upgrades of note um here this will include phase one and two of the um wastewater recovery facility and then also east state street project which includes a series of things um sewer lines water lines um combined sewer overflows and also um some street work um the other thing that this does address and we you know work with public works extensively on rate setting but also the master plan there was some concern about asset depreciation and making sure that we had captured that accurately within our planning um and i can say that this plan does address that um we learned from our auditors that we either we need to book the full amount of debt service or assets depreciated over time whichever is greater and so we've tested that and that's in the plans that's good just then we'll be square as we get down the line and need to replace things and so i also wanted to note here i did run a little bit of fly here i did run the current delinquency rate so we're just up over 1 percent which is pretty good considering you know what we've been through um historically people pay their bills um and we're still seeing that and so i think that's kind of an indicator that you know while the pandemic has definitely um had some real impacts um the impact here isn't as significant i mean it's still there is you know there are some delinquencies but we are seeing people pay their bills and so um with that you know we'd recommend approving a rate increase for water and sewer of 2.7 percent um and executing the resolution that was included in your packet i do want to know if there's two minor changes that will go um with the resolution that you assign that ties to this and one of them that i noticed when i was looking at it is the readiness to serve um quarterly fee was not updated in the resolution so i updated that and then the date on the last page should be june 2021 not 2020 so um that's what i have for a quick presentation and i'll stop my share here on rates um and wonder if you have any questions uh dan go ahead this and kelly this may be more for bill who would looking at these historic rates i'm just curious it looks like about 15 years ago or more there were these zero percent growth rate that years what what was the cause of that there were a couple of factors um one was that the council at one point i'm doing this from memory so i have that all the data right here but um one was that the council had done a very large rate increase at least for water when the water plant first came on and so they thought said you know we'll even it off for a while the other was at one point i think at least the water fund had a pretty large surplus which has since gone away so the council was having trouble raising the rates and some of it was kind of just political decisions that they want to raise rates um and since then you know we've we've kind of had a rollercoaster ride particularly with the water fund but with the sewer fund as well where you know we had this big surplus when a deficit that was pulled out of deficit and the council has adopted this sort of incremental policy and i think gotten better much better hand um we actually spent a long time couple of years on looking at different types of rates and um i think opted not to change those and we're you know sort of deciding who the winners and losers were and it wasn't obvious which way to go there but i'm sure ian and ian and donna at least can remember us looking at you know pretty extensively at different rates and uh so we you know as kelly mentioned we've adopted the one percent over inflation in terms of dealing with the master plan the capital work i mean that's later on this agenda and we've been trying to you know we've found that if we can stay with inflation at least operating wise so far we've we've been pretty good um i don't know if that is a succinct answer but that's best i got right now no that i appreciate that it just it and it explains i mean you know looking back there these years of zero percent growth and then like you said like in 99 there's a 25 percent growth and and then years of three percent ten percent and six percent you know and so i think it's i i certainly that's sensible to me this master plan and sort of a steady leveling out so the funds are consistent and the rates don't suddenly drop or rise up ahead bill am i wrong i thought somewhere in there we also had some major requirement from the federal standard improvements that we did on some of the treatment was that any of the big increases well of course the biggest one was the construction of the um the water treatment plan itself that was a federal requirement and then there have been some on the sewer side as well um and the other i think another area that we um we had to make some adjustments is that we when we went to full metering uh estimates had told us that metering would actually increase our revenues pretty substantially because people would were you know sort of overusing with their flat rates and in fact that that didn't work um you know we while we have accurate now we have accurate reads of our water or more accurate which is good and people are certainly paying fairly um they did not provide the boom that we thought it would as far as revenue so then we had to do some revenue just about read adjustment to to make up with that i think the other thing to remember as far as sort of steady incremental rates is concerned is that to some extent people have um well i don't mean this to be funny but you know water and sewer are liquid in terms of economic asset so they can people can get low flow shower heads low flow toilets they can reduce their water use they can you know make other conservation efforts now we've also seen a lot of a lot of our major buildings have already gone through that national life for example and i think the state and others have really you know we saw big sort of controls on their usage but it it is so you know a big rain increase can force a lower usage so it doesn't always just because we raise rates 10 doesn't mean it's good we're gonna get 10 more revenue like it kind of does with the property tax so you know i think we have to be cautious of making this manageable for ratepayers who are our homeowners by large i mean obviously there's some big repairs too but they as as they use more they go into the higher categories um and we are like our taxes we you know we have a pretty expensive pretty expensive water system with a lot of old lines that need major work and we don't have a huge you know we could stand have a lot more customers as you know we tried really hard to tie in the Berlin system and supply them and that that didn't work so we are on the higher end it's not like the property tax we're paying for a large service with a small base so yeah other thoughts or comments jack i'm ready to move to approve the proposed rates the proposed resolution i'll second and this includes the changes that kelly described the date at the end um there's one other thing you mentioned ready to serve quarterly rate um that yeah that's your understanding jack and dana yes okay uh lauren oh yeah i just wanted to make sure we were with those amendments okay okay great um for the discussion okay all in favor please say aye aye aye all right okay and opposed all right uh thank you kelly thanks for that update on that resolution um oh it is so you know we didn't say at the beginning that we were going to take a break at 8 30 it is now almost 8 50 we did start later what would you think about taking a break at 9 is that okay dana okay oh i'm seeing lots of thumbs up okay good so we're gonna aim to take a break at 9 roughly um so for now we're moving on to um public restrooms uh discussion and so for this i assume i'm either turning over to billard's camera and actually i think we're gonna do the water sewer master plan update okay oh i'm sorry i just totally skipped that i'm i though you might want to do your break now because this might last one 10 minutes okay okay that's fine sorry the utility race and the water sewer just merged together in my head but there are separate things um all right well let's take 10 minutes right now we'll come back at 9 o'clock and we'll jump in uh with the water sewer master plan update okay all right great um so i will uh kind of cruise through this presentation and we can do questions whenever um current is um on and available if there are um project specific questions um that you have but otherwise we'll go through it um so uh the last version of this plan was established in may and approved in july of 2016 and since then you know we've seen some changes some large changes and so we thought it was a good opportunity to revise it and um make it current with what we're experiencing today um and so the the um goal of this plan is really to establish steady state over uh this plan represents 50 years but it's really you know within the calculations 100 years but we just didn't extend out as far within the planning documentation but um that's the way it tracks um so then we can fund facilities and undergone infrastructure um at a stable rate and so you can see here with this slide this um kind of reviews what was in the memo for the plan that was in your packet these are the calculations and what goes into them um generally water and sewer are identical in terms of the amount invested um and so just to kind of highlight the factors here you know it's 50 years uh with inflation starting at $750,000 per year um and so we can see that equates to 37.5 million or approximately 83.2 million when adjusted for 1.7 percent inflation plus 1 percent for variable economic conditions um and so depending on where we go um as we come out of the pandemic you know this inflationary rate may change um we did take a look at the northeast um CPI indicator and did run an analysis to make sure that this 1.7 percent was holding true over the course of time and not just necessarily um within the past year or so and we'll continue to keep an eye on things as we come out of the pandemic and things develop um and so you can kind of see with the water distribution system um this replacement plan covers 52 miles um and so we've got the the math sort of there and then with the sewer collection system it's 44 miles plus the eight pump stations and so that's sort of what factors into this investment um and so this is covered through a series of things annual appropriation that's covered by the rates um and also um by bonds and grants and you know any funding that we can get to secure the projects that we're doing for the infrastructure and so just to go through you know what's included in the planning um this breakdown just kind of shows you on a timeline what we're doing currently um and fiscal year 21 and 22 there is some money for water distribution capital improvements um and then just kind of moving down on the line there um we are going to see some larger investments and that's why I think it's critical that um finance and public works really took a look at this plan just to make sure that everything is kind of factored in as we know it to date um and so this includes east state street this is a third of that funding and so it's the total project cost is 5.25 and that's spread over the water fund sewer fund and general fund um in terms of the various components of that project um there's also um some water meter replacements and so the these was start in fy 31 and it split over two years and it replaced 2783 meters at about 311 dollars a piece so that's there um and then some of the pipeline improvements and um infrastructure improvements are phased in um so the first phase phase here is just over 12 million and it's expands from fy 23 to fy 47 um you can kind of see you know what that includes um but it's just really focusing on providing the required minimum um gallons per minute for fire flow protection um and then also maintaining minimum psi requirements throughout the water system so that's the first piece second piece um is to replace undersized water mains and um serving fire hydrants um and so we've got those indicated there and you kind of see that you know when one ends the other phase begins and then also tracking through there we've got some extra pipe work that's been booked um and then additionally we have some work that is being done in house um and we'll manage that um as we come to it within the planning and so moving on to the sewer portion of this plan um you've got a similar um lion item here for the east state street improvements so that we can get shovel ready for f by 23 this assumes that we'll do the work in 23 um but as we get on we'll you know assess where we get but I wanted to make sure and public works wanted to make sure that we included everything that's currently on the table in the plan um and so we've got it captured here and maybe the years may change but we'll see what comes to pass um I've got a lion item here for the water resource recovery facility for phases one and two um I don't have anything booked there because it is um neutral in terms of its impact on the plan because of the revenue generation um and so just noting that um and that will also come into play as we get into later slides and we start to talk about the impacts of these improvements on debt service um and so much like the water plan there's um additional pipe replacement um work that's going on here um and then um we so that the phases just based on the timeline are kind of broken off a little bit here so we've got a phase one and phase two just like the water plan so the first phase is um sewer line improvements and to eliminate combined sewer overflows and then the second phase which is the larger of the two by far uh just um under 44 million is to construct two sewer line improvements replace the clay tile lines um and then additionally much like with the water plan there is DPW in-house work spread across the life of the plan um and then noted here phase two the wastewater treatment facility um we're projecting to be roughly about 6.5 million and so we're working with that target in mind based on what we've heard from ESG and the discussion set have happened um recently and so this um graph is um really a visual of you know the work that we're doing and kind of how we're paying for it um and you can kind of see you know as we're we we are trending up here um but it just kind of gives you a sense of what's happening and how it's happening um so it's pretty interesting that's um the way like to see information and so getting on to some of the um more policy related um impacts of this plan um you know especially now more than ever it's really important to make sure that we're holding to policy when it comes to debt service and so um two key factors here in our debt service policy related to general fund and city-wide um debt expenditures um are the general fund at 8.2 percent which is a threshold and then the city-wide including um governmental and business activities at 15 percent and so with this work we are um getting to the camp on the 15 percent city-wide with these two projects when you're just considering the debt to expenditure ratio however that is mitigated with um the revenues that are coming in and so we'll talk about that a little bit but we also wanted to touch base and make sure that's you know within reason and the um council is okay with our approach um and so you can see here on this graph in FY 23 um if we're looking at a purely expense um side picture and not factoring in the revenues we do bump up against the camp of 15 percent and it's a being 15.3 percent um so it's close and then it comes back down because we are you know making payments steadily um but it's still something to note because you know we've got the thresholds there to you know really benchmark where we are um but we've we're also doing some pretty big things um and we have a system that needs the upgrades so just looking at the numbers here to highlight two columns in particular these percentages columns the percentage of gf revenue and then the overall city revenue you can see on the general fund revenue side we don't approach the 8 to 8.2 percent threshold but on the city wide revenue we do but then you can see where it starts to come back down and it's highlighted cheated looks in a purple on my screen probably peach but it's really the only color there so that's I just wanted to highlight that for you but if we do factor in the um water resource recovery revenue savings um that have been projected to date um which with phases one and two comes to 876 821 um for comparison in FY23 we would end up if we took this out or netted it against it we'd be at about 11.7 percent which is still you know favorable and within range and so I think given that there are um revenues that are going against our debt or paying for the debt and then some hopefully you know we're in a good pretty good position but it's still really good to monitor where we are because we've got a lot coming down the line especially as we've delayed projects and there's a lot of pent up demand um and you know not only in water and sewer but in streets and capital needs and you know other things um so I just wanted to really highlight this for you so that you could see where we're at um and so moving on I also wanted to kind of pair this with our unrestricted fund balance perspective um because we just kind of you know the debt service is a big piece of um expenditure but then you know thinking about you know what we have for you know money on hand at the end of the day um and so we ran the fiscal year end 21 projections and there's a few caveats with each of these categories um first starting with the general fund I think it's just um important to note um we're doing okay our um deficit mitigation plan is working however you know we are still limited in terms of you know where we're at compared to policy to really be stable so um just reviewing this really quickly general fund we should be at about 15 percent which is just over two million dollars and that does factor in deficit mitigation taking down those expenditures that we you know didn't end up spending um and so with that um noting then where we're at for fund balance we're at projections so again these are projections we'll see what comes to pass it doesn't seem like it but there's still um some time left before the end of the fiscal year here but um this is our rough cut at this point so um 216 thousand or so um almost 217 um and that does factor in you know the impact of the parking fund revenues that we're not seeing um and also local options tax revenues that we're not seeing and so with the parking fund in particular we're projecting that you know we'll be 305 thousand dollars down um and so this is where we think we'll end up so we'll end up to the good um but still considering on the whole you know we're not where we need to be in terms of policy and so you know from my perspective it just seems like this would remain until we can continue to grow a little bit there so that we're you know tracking towards policy um and then as noted above in the unrestricted fund balance we're looking at the enterprise funds for positive value and and the water funds sewer funds they are positive um in large part because in the water fund based on covid you know we really constrained any projects and you know really limited spending to only essential spending so we weren't doing the projects that we had otherwise planned um and so that's why we have a pretty healthy fund balance here and then in the sewer fund um again really healthy balance however you know this is um we've taken in our pollution pollution control grant as it relates to phase one of the water resource recovery facility and then USDA grant funding has come in too and so this money really um is there to kind of you know possibly fund phase two um and so when you start to factor in phase two and the costs associated there um and the necessary improvements related to the plan it's um healthy but um there are definitely demands on those funds um so that's in summary where we are in terms of fund balance and feeling okay um you know it's good to be honest in the things that you know especially in the general fund it would be really nice to have a bigger unrestricted fund balance um and so recommended action um you know we'd like to review and revise this plan every three years so that then we can really stay current with what's happening in the city and to kind of you know make note of um some of the benchmarks and make sure we're getting to where we need to go and to make sure that you know our debt service ratios are within range um and just generally so that we can review on how we're doing if we're meeting our mark if we need to change things um it just is a good opportunity I think to keep things current um we'll continue to monitor um progress when it comes to the water resource recovery facility in phase two as well as east state street and then as I mentioned we'll the work to continue to align um debt service ratios within policy and then our recommendation is to approve the plan as presented and that's what I have hey uh questions or comments for Kelly oh lord good yeah thanks that was really helpful um I guess just just I'm my mind are like thinking of the I get a decent number of questions about like the burst pipes and like thinking partially about like the climate resilience of this infrastructure like I anticipate and hope that we're like planning this out knowing that we have a changing you know precipitation patterns and all of that like I guess just curious how much that's being factored and at this point um so that we feel like we're not going to you know we'll get the full lifespan that we're anticipating and projecting and that all these costs are based on um and not going to see kind of shortened lifespans because the um materials or the size that they're designed or whatever don't um work in the new kind of um climate that we're going to be living in so just and I don't I see curd or I don't know I'm probably gonna hand this one off to him um because he is definitely the subject matter expert when it comes to what's going in the ground um I'll take the finance questions but okay sure um so you know all these all the infrastructures underground so um you know it's not directly impacted by like rain it's more storm system would be for that um so you know the water plant is probably the biggest infrastructure piece that would be impacted by the amount of rain just because of um the available capacity you know the pond levels but we've actually seen an increase in that you know there was the rates were actually set up um for conservation where the more you use the more you pay um and back when that was established it was really a lot tighter you know it was drier back then so we've seen kind of the reverse um so you know at some point we may want to think about that rate structure as it relates to that as far as pipe materials um um the water system uh we did a lot of research on pipe materials and landed on htpe as the most the longest lasting pipe available and it also um can take the pressure surges that the city has we have the highest pressure probably in all of the state if not new england um but this pipe can actually expand and contract with the pressure changes so I think it is the most resilient option available longest life pipe system and we also have a consultant that has a hydraulic model um that models the water system and they we hire them to size every new pipe project pretty much unless it's a very you know small neighborhood where you just go eight inch um so we do and that factors in you know future growth and fire demands generally we size off um off from um insurance rate requirements so you can get the maximum fire flow capacity which is more than adequate for domestic demands so that answers your questions one of the things that I uh I'm wondering about from following that presentation is um looking through the projects that are listed there um it's not it wasn't totally clear to me if those projects were in addition to the annual number of feet replacement um or if that was a part of if if that if the feet replacement per year benchmark was being accounted for by those projects does that question make sense um you know like with the with the 12 million dollars for the phase one for the um the suit uh sorry the water line to make sure that we have enough pressure for hydrants uh you know we've got this quota that ideally we're we're meeting and maybe sometimes it's last or sometimes it's more but um it wasn't clear to me how those two things played into each other well if you're referring to like east street um that that would be included in the total footage targets for pipe replacement or are you referring to the plant um referring so that wouldn't was like 23 20 or FY 23 uh or something like that uh but this one was the next one down there was a 12 million dollar line and maybe it was over multiple years um but that I get like it just wasn't clear because presumably that's replacing line right like that's uh we're replacing some amount of water line with uh with a bigger pipe so I assume that that would be counting towards our our goal um the you know line replacement for the year um it does okay and also if you within your packet there is a and within the plan there's a pipe replacement schedule table that kind of shows you know when we're replacing pipes and that's factored into the plan at large and kind of a kind of um so that that does give you sort of a sense of when we're doing that so we'll start to really ramp up after FY 27 um that is at least as a part of this agenda item that is not included in the packet there's only one page included with this item okay um well I am happy to share um the memo and the additional pieces with the plan um and what what is shown there is just kind of what I think you're trying to drive at is that you know are the component pieces um all part of the same or you know are the pipes separate from the projects and I think and you know like Kurt was saying would the estates read that would be you know part of um you know that calculation um I can say that we also did you know run sort of a rough calc on well not really rough but what we've done so far um just to make sure that we were tracking and well you know we may be down a little bit over the pandemic over the life of the plan we are you know within range to meeting targets and so I don't know if I'm answering the question fully um but you know it's it's part of the the total picture um so I um that that all sounds fine in part I hate to say this um in part knowing that there is information that maybe we should have had that we don't have like it's actually something that I'm uh that I'm interested in and would like to see and so I'm wondering if um if you need an approval on this tonight or if if you could give us another um you know to the next meeting to you know I'm happy to make sure you've got all the information um and you know we can certainly you know talk about it at the next meeting um really the intent was just to sort of update our plans so that then you know everything was factored in um because with the 2016 plan we didn't fully capture the um water resource recovery updates yeah I like as as your presentation was going I was like trying to absorb all all of those numbers as we were going yeah that's kind of a kind of a lot if you don't have a memo I'm sorry I assume it's okay um and so let me um I'll send it right over and then you know we can kind of maybe that's just a quick summary and then um let me know what you think um or what questions you have so that we can you know drill down into details if you like um I don't think you'd need to do another presentation other thoughts I mean if you if the rest of the council is happy to move forward then that's fine I'm just um you know putting that out there other other thoughts I got one question from the public I'll get yep thank you Steve hold on for one second just want to check into the council um about how do you feel about waiting until next time to go on this jack go ahead I thought it was a very good presentation but I think for us to be uh satisfied that we're seeing the information we need and answering the questions we need to answer I really would feel better uh to do it do your follow your suggestion of putting off till next week okay other thoughts from council on this is anybody prefer to take it up tonight okay all right uh Steve go ahead uh do these prices uh account for the the time shift of emergency breakages that which seems to keep throwing our our calendar off and do they include the costs of repair restoring the streets and sidewalks as we do this work or are those entirely you know bigger numbers on top of it is this just pipes and holes you know that's good good question the footage price includes uh pavement restoration um you know the whole cost the service lines hydrants everything is factored in when we develop those those costs per foot of utility replacements as far as repairs for water breaks those are included in the operating budget you know we did just complete a rebuild of the finished water pumps at the plant which seems to have smoothed out some of the pressures and not gone with but it seems like our water leaks in the last couple months since that project has have dropped off so that's good news um but yeah that when we do the bigger projects like east state street it's split between the funds when we do the complete street rehabilitation there's some general fund money that goes into the stabilization fabric and the storm system and things like that if it's strictly a utility project then the utility covers all the pavement patching um work with the project um jack go ahead hurt when you say knock on wood you're not talking about any of the water lines are you there's a few water wooden water lines in the ground but they are in longer in service okay i'm just to um follow up on that too um so so there's uh i assume i mean maybe this is something i can dig into once you send over on the details but uh i'm assuming that there's a water replacement uh or i guess an emergency replacement line and i'm curious how that um has been budgeted as compared to actuals and it sounds like you know we're hoping that it's less because we've done these repairs to the to the pumps um but yeah any thoughts on that well yeah well the operators that are in the operating budget um so that's kind of built in outside of these capital improvement projects it's rare for us to replace an entire line an emergency situation has happened it happened on ridge street when um it washed out the road uh twice in a matter of five years so we did find money to replace that section kind of on as an emergency project but that's a rare instance otherwise it's um it's captured in the operating budget sort of separate from these numbers in the presentation okay as part of the rate that you just approved right right yeah um other thoughts okay uh all right thank you kelly and kurt again thanks for all your work on this and we'll um take this up again next time if that is okay all right sounds good okay so um all right so now we are up to um the discussion of public restrooms and uh for this I think it's is it either bill or Cameron uh well it can be either of us is actually this was requested to be on the agenda by council member Richardson uh at the last meeting and um I think we do have some information about just the inventory of what's there what isn't but I also would defer to the council member who may um have his own thoughts as to what he'd like to discuss yeah go ahead Dan if you'd like um well I you know I what we were hoping to talk about last time or what I was hoping to talk about is you know we've had talk about um adding permanent public restrooms um and I think that you know this was born a little bit out of the fact that you know we have potentially money coming from the federal government or the state um that would be well suited for this and we should probably get serious about where what it would look like design thoughts um you know sort of forwarding it and and it seemed like I I mean my hope would be um like a working group or committee that would be starting to starting to do that and I you know I know I appreciate that Cameron put together uh the sort of George Costanza list of available public restrooms in the city of Montpelier um so you know I think that's a great way to that's that might be a great way to start um talking about this but then you know what I what I'd ask is whether we're ready to to create a committee to talk about this you know what what type of what restroom facilities I mean I know when Steve Whitaker's way done on this you know he wants or he's urged us to have showers and facilities um and you know at the same time I you know I think location is key and you know just understanding what what would it mean to add a public restroom like the year and should be year round should be 24 seven or should it be you know uh or are we talking about multiple places um so I think it's a good conversation that we should be having um and maybe not us as a council but a group that could sort of look around because you know the other part of this is that there's been a number of cities Burlington Portland Oregon Tokyo you know other communities that have adopted public restrooms of different types and different designs and different uses and different functions and we should uh I'd really like to have a group take a look at it and be able to come back with us to us with recommendations that's how I'd start it sure Connor go ahead uh well we had we had a good chat about this today at the homelessness task force and um you know first want to give a big shout out to Cameron because uh it's pretty clear uh she's moving mountains to get where we are you know I think we're thinking long term but you know just saying today she's we're almost running out of uh handicap accessible Porta John's there uh because he's on the phone to them all the time trying to get them there um so I think city staff should be commended for doing what we can in the short term but you know I think we need to be as Dan said you know we need to be thinking long term here and um you know there's there's other models we actually heard a really good presentation a couple weeks ago uh from the facilities director at Montpelier High School he's a teacher down at um at Norwich um where he he tasked his class with designing day shelters that might go broader than bathrooms and you know incorporate lockers you know shower facilities so that might be a bit aspirational but it would be nice to get a few few plans like this on the table if a location uh you know popped up and you know if we did have the money like some of this federal money if we were eligible to spend it that way um so I really liked that idea and I said it a few times I really do believe this should be a shared responsibility uh between the state and the city because you know we're not just talking about people experiencing homelessness um we have thousands and thousands of visitors to our state capital every year and you know I spoke to a few legislators this year about it I don't think it was the year to do it but to get an appropriation in the capital bill I don't think should be far fetched and I don't think we should be shy asking um so maybe linking up with some of our legislators as part of this task force and um you know I'd love to see the makeup be you know maybe a couple counselors a couple homelessness task force reps um and I I do know kens here who could probably maybe sum up some of the discussion better than myself here but uh totally totally support moving forward with us yeah no that was I mean well said Connor and um yeah that that presentation by is from my technical college uh professor um it it would like helpful to imagine what the city would look like if we took all the needs of the folks on the streets seriously um citing something and paying for it is a different issue obviously um but it'd be nice to you know it'd be great for all of you to see this you know we good to have you see this presentation um obviously you know folks are coming out now and we're gonna get a wave of folks in a couple of weeks um and yeah kudos to Cameron for getting these basic needs met for folks for just basics for helping to get some money for some of that um and yeah we want you know be fantastic if you all could make the permanent bathrooms that are 24 7 accept inaccessible that'd be fantastic um you know and the inventory of existing facilities for people's basic needs is very helpful as well and you know it's it's frustrating because some of these things that seem fairly simple and straightforward you know we run into red tape and different issues even like charging stations or lockers but but this just kudos to making you know moving forward with this and I know we're all frustrated we can't just wave magic one and make it happen tomorrow sometimes so yeah but I very supportive and I know Don little is here as well so um Jack you had a hand up sorry sorry if I cut in there oh it was perfect time for you to do that Ken thanks um I agree with everything that Dan and Connor said I think we are I think we should move this on our agenda from something that we think it would be nice to have to something that we really need and I hope people recognize that and I really appreciate Dan putting this on our agenda in the first place a year or two ago and continuing to push it I think it's it really is a need it's not just something that we would like to have um on the uh on the short term so I think that what we should be doing is is planning for how and where we can do it um not whether um on the short term perspective one of the things that I think that the hand out from Cameron is is very very good and useful and one of the things that is stuck in my mind and I don't remember if we actually made a decision or came to a resolution of how this would work but I recall that there was a time when we were talking about what we could do to make the uh public bathrooms downstairs in uh on the lower level of city hall open at night and I know that there are building security issues there I know we had some discussions of that at our meetings and I'm I'm not sure where where that stands but I think that is something else that I'd like to see on the agenda because it's something that could be done more quickly than building a permanent structure and Donna go ahead well I think it's part of this committee work Jack um to look at that because I think I would like us to really look holistically as Connor brought up of the building of the other possibilities and get a model in mind and that we find the money and we do it it's it's really important and it's gotta be more holistic than just toilets you know I think we really have to look at the whole problem that we now face with people who don't have a place to put their head at night don't have a place to shower so I would love to see a committee and I'll be glad to make the motion that we create a committee I think we need to move forward very seriously on it yeah I agree we've been talking about this for a while I think it's it's worth having some minds dedicated to it I need a second oh sorry that was a motion okay all right so motion and a second um this is a a committee what do you want the name of this to be Donna some wordsmith in the group something creative and inspiring what are we calling this public restroom committee boards of the loop camera gets credit for that one while you're thinking of a name I guess I so first of all I think it's great that we're doing this and this may be more for the committee than for the council but part of part of what you're using the old begin with the end in mind as we think about this are we looking you know our I think it's a question are you looking for something for evening use for overnight is this something for the unhoused population or is this you know daytime tourist visitors or we're trying to serve both uh so where the locate you know I think it's thinking about who the who the end user is before we just start saying here's a great place to put a bathroom because it might be a great place for some use but not for others so I think that's probably not your job I think that's a committee job but I would just say that be that be in whatever directions you give the committee is first identify and it may you may end up with like a daytime restroom option and list of options you know as the states reopening their bathrooms are going to be getting reopened um to you know daytime will have more options is going forward like we used to but you know are we looking for evening and and given the widespread area that people occupy at night you know are we thinking we're going to create one place for someone to go in the middle of night and I that's probably going to be difficult but I'd leave that to the committee to work out matter of mayor if you public comment when you're ready um sure go ahead Steve uh this is an issue that as you know I've been raising for several years um there is both the long-term architectural and strategic locations for to accommodate residents and tourists as well as the unhoused but there's also the impending emergency or the existence and about to increase emergency you need to I would advise that you create this committee with an immediate charge not leave them to develop a charge try to come back for approval in a month it is more urgent than that um consideration of uh can't be with the emergency consideration can't be separated from the whether or not we're going to allow designated camping because where you could put a toilet trailer or a shower trailer those there's a lead time there's a maybe in a backlog those are tens of thousands of dollars each uh and those are reusable you know like in a FEMA type motor pool as a statewide resource but you know that there's what I'm trying to do is emphasize that there's emergency considerations that need to be made that can be need to be happening sooner than the architectural designations the I disagree that uh once ago you approved and you took Bill's word for there's no room to negotiate anything more out of the transit center the transit center has excellent bathrooms it's a grossly underutilized building they're open to having the city uh either extend the hours of that staff or people in the building staff at or city hire somebody to staff it and keep that open longer term there's even room for lockers there even on an interim basis until a vendor goes in but the vendor doesn't look like they're coming in to sell coffee anytime soon so you may need to make some emergency provisions and I I just encourage you to get that framework in mind while we simultaneously start looking at architectural uh and existing options but the city all at the city center probably not so much anymore uh and the transit center are our best options just want to clarify a point that was just made on when I said there was no more negotiation I said and I said this at the time that GMT had no more funds to expand hours but if the city wanted to pay they were willing to have us do that and we looked at the cost so that is an option that we could very you know we could do that he's correct but he's not correct that I said we couldn't do it and I'm reaching the end of my patience with his misrepresenting my statements in public I've also talked to bgs about as I mentioned they're reopening their their buildings I've also talked to them the original model for the transit center was that the welcome center the bgs welcome center was going to be co-located there and so the state employees would actually be staffing it it would be a combination welcome center people could get the bus the RSC GMT would have to provide some technical assistance and I've reopened that conversation with the state because that would provide perhaps more operating hours and perhaps and save GMT some costs so to the extent that the state is interested in supporting transit as well as having a welcome center located right where people are coming into town so that is a current conversation that's happening so far they've said sounds interesting we'll talk about the immediate commitments but we are not simply ignoring the transit center as an option thank you if it needs my motion needs to be more clear I guess for now I guess I would see that we I would like to see this committee be very holistic in its view of looking at our current need for what I call public washrooms as well as toilets and that they look at the list such as what Cameron's done for us and how do we expand hours there might be ideas lots of ideas I don't want to get into them tonight but I'd like the committee to really be very broad and holistic in their approach and there may be several different solutions that feed into or several different components that feed into the ultimate solution to serve people who are homeless as tourists mothers with little kids whatever there's a holistic need here because the porty pods keep disappearing the state took theirs away this week I was very disappointed to see them gone at one point so that was my intention of the motion yeah and the state actually took theirs away because their buildings are reopening and their bathrooms will be available that's why they took them away so they did not need external port bodies and they really do but it's another story okay and so there were a couple of seconds is that clarity amenable to I think was Jack and Dan I'm not sure who's the second of record so Jack can have it yeah it's not totally fine with me and Donna did you or anyone else have thoughts on the name for this okay public do you want to I added the word public washrooms as well as toilets restrooms public washrooms and toilets jack yeah and I had someone suggest to me online public facilities to suggest that it's broader than just bathrooms but of course that also perfect means it doesn't facilities can mean every public building in the city which is maybe a little too broad but public facilities beautiful the committee may come back with something very clever uh john yeah just for clarification um I started following that description for a while but is the entirety of your description then part of the motion because I mean I can go back and listen and reconstruct if that's fine I just want to be short sorry go ahead the intention of my extra wording was I didn't want it to be seen very narrow I wanted the charge to be broad about public facilities that will meet our need no I understand that it's just that I didn't know if that entire description was then part of the motion no part of our consciousness okay that that seems fair just yeah it doesn't need to be a part of the motion as long as it's clear to whoever is on the committee thanks for clarifying john who are you thinking our committee members this is a council some committee is this members of the public is this bit members of the business community the city staff like what what we're thinking of is the makeup of the committee I guess I heard a suggestion of a couple council members a couple individuals from the homeless task force anyone else conard dan I missed well I mean I think general public I mean if somebody wants to join us um it strikes me that you know there's a couple of different architects in town and um it'd be really wonderful if if someone like that was willing to serve um so I I'd like to see maybe a couple maybe one one or two counselors whoever wants to be on it and and someone you know at least one person from the homelessness task force but I think it should be a small committee I mean I would suggest five well anybody can bring in resources so by all means if we say two council members two people from the homeless task force and one general public but I don't I don't I guess I don't want us to wait and go searching that we start and people join in um because it does need to be done get the ball moving I like that makeup um you know I I I think nothing precludes other people from joining the committee if you just have the core five that are the ones voting on it right I think you might want it if you're going to have two people from the homeless task force and two people in the council you might want to have someone from my pillar alive or someone representing the downtown community because that is certainly a need for many of the businesses uh during you know they they have people but also I think they may you know they have their own concerns about congregation of people and so that's a voice that should be heard uh not necessarily kowtow to but to be at the table so whether we just ask my pillar alive to to find a rep um whoever they they can round up it's a good idea it's great then if there are two members of the public then that would bring us to an odd number I'm sure that would be good um can I can I can I caution that this uh looks uh has all the specter of the uh two years of non-action uh on any of the goals of the homeless task force so if you put you know the vested interest in the status quo that's what you're going to get out of it you know so I would just disagree that we've maintained the status quo I feel like we've made progress with the homeless task force and um it may not be all like have achieved all of the goals that we hope to achieve but we've we've done we've done some things and like I'm glad that we've formed that committee in any case um I yeah this group is going to have a have a clear mission and a really specific well does not well defined goal uh and I I hope that they're able to come back to us in a timely way um yeah so uh having said that um so we have a general idea of the makeup I think we have a clear mission for this group and uh maybe we don't I don't know if we have clarity about the name public I feel like it's like public facilities is actually too broad um but like public bathroom facilities maybe uh or public restrooms restrooms kind of covers it all no restrooms could have hand washing things public restroom is that done it doesn't like it works is it is that okay with you Dawn yeah fine fine I just think that's such it's such a terrible term it's just anyway yes the water closet committee the the water fair enough okay um any further discussion on this okay uh all right all in favor please say aye aye and opposed okay so that passes so um I assume this is something that Mary will be posting advertised for and then hopefully be able to um point folks to at the I'm not sure what our timing is it's either the next meeting or the meeting after um so but we'll we'll get on it it's great thanks everybody thanks Dan for for bringing this up to as its own agenda item okay super all right uh so we are gonna move on here um and all right so oh we're so at the end of the last meeting everyone's internet simultaneously uh disintegrated and it was very exciting but it meant that I'm not sure that we were very clear about which summertime meeting we were canceling so we wanted to put it on this agenda to just confirm assuming that everyone's internet was working now um so we're on the green on july 7 but we didn't let everybody just went out so how do people feel about canceling july 7 and move we cancel the july 7th meeting I'll second for the discussion I feel like that one didn't work well for Dan is that is that's accurate well I mean so I'm gonna be on a maybe on a plane next week uh when we have this meeting so but I think we discussed this before so I think I'm the only one affected um and uh I'm willing to uh grant you a repeat for you for my presence next week so we can take the 7th off as well I'm happy to do that okay all right um fair enough there was a motion was there a second I think there was a second um yep okay uh are you for the discussion okay all in favor please say aye hi hi hi and opposed okay uh all right so that passes so we will be canceling our july 7th meeting this is gonna take a second and take it out of my calendar right now okay all right so that um brings us up to council reports uh Donna are you up for going first I'm gonna pass we'll get out early okay uh all right Connor well definitely have to express disappointment in the governor's veto of our charter change and uh I don't know if you know anybody in the legislature uh Kimmering and please override in a couple weeks there that'd be a beautiful thing um also I want to thank uh thank the state's attorney uh Rory Debo he wrote a pretty stern letter to the assistant secretary of human services I don't know if you folks saw that just on a state not really having a comprehensive plan uh for when the hotel vouchers dry up on july 1st there so uh yeah really really appreciate Rory uh you know stepping up and you know in his role applying some pressure there so that's it for me great jay I'll keep buying uh I'll keep a theme for my two quick comments which is uh school related one is uh congratulating both the girls tennis team and the boys lacrosse team at Montpelier high school the one state championships tonight um and good luck to uh the the girls ultimate team tomorrow night on their on their finals but also I think probably broader and more significant is acknowledging the work of administrators faculty staff and particularly the students of all of the Montpelier Roxbury schools getting through what was an incredibly challenging year um and being able to um uh to to be able to stay in school and stay um you know really committed to uh to their to their community and I think that that is really showing through the elementary schools graduation tonight middle school tomorrow night the high school on Friday night I just think it's uh um worth pointing out the the effort as a that was made as a community to um make sure that kids have the experience that they did throughout the school year so I just wanted to acknowledge that thanks yeah thanks uh Dan I'm actually gonna take a pass tonight thank you jack well I thought I had three things but when I got to writing down I could only think of two of them so um sorry about that but one of them was uh as with the Jay I know Friday is the last day of school and I also want to give thanks to the teachers the administrator to the mayor and all the teachers in the schools the administrators uh I know my granddaughter loves her teacher and I think that our schools did a great job you know they did everything they could to make this a successful year under the worst possible circumstances and I really recognize and praise them for that the second item is also a school related uh people on the council and people in the public may remember that a couple of years ago the school board created a committee to look at the uh main street middle school possible uses and uh of the building and what else could be done for for the middle school I was appointed to uh be a city council representative on that committee and as it happens Jay and Dan were also pointing to that committee and have since also become council members so so we really have a lot of muscle on that committee although we haven't the committee hasn't met in a little over a year and we just received notice uh last week from the school board that they decided to uh terminate that committee and they're going to be doing other things to uh to look at the physical uh plant needs for the uh for the school system um I do think that uh among the members of the community uh who were on the committee and we had a we had faculty representation we had uh administration representation we had student representation and uh neighbor and community representation it was uh it was quite productive during the time we were working and even though we were terminated without a final project I don't uh I don't think the time we spent was wasted in doing it and that's all I've got for tonight thanks Lord yeah thanks just one thing um so Jack and I are serving on the um police review committee and we had set as a council a June 30th deadline for a report from that group and they have been working very diligently you are now on weekly meetings and working very hard doing a lot of uh analysis and um outreach and all kinds of things and it's looking like we're more on probably an august timeline and just wanted to check in with the council to see since we had set a June 30th um see if that was okay with you all we definitely wanted to get it in before we're really into budget season um so just wanted to put it out to you all to make sure that that was okay we um the committee basically said we could give a a truncated and less thoughtful report by June 30th if that's what the council prefers um the committee is willing to and interested in taking that extra month month and a half to um kind of deliver a better and more vetted report um so hopefully that's okay I just wanted to kind of make sure that that worked for council um I can take back the whatever reaction Jack and I can to the committee so does that sound okay to people yeah that's fine I'd rather have something more thoughtful than less thoughtful even if it means more time so great I will share that with the committee and that's it for me tonight thanks okay uh all right so I have uh one item uh I'd forwarded to the council uh letter that uh came to me from Ken Russell uh asking the original version of it asked for the governor to delay uh lifting the emergency or the state of emergency because there were um funds tied to that for uh you know keeping folks housed in the current system and um so and when whenever that emergency order is lifted uh that those housing vouchers basically go away um and so the request was to delay lifting the order I I told him well basically he wanted to know if he thought you know we would be on board for something like that I I told him while we probably wouldn't be on board for lifting for delaying lifting the emergency order or I'm sorry delaying lifting the state of emergency we might be potentially I you know I didn't speak with anybody about this beforehand but just guessing in here anyway that it might be more interesting to encourage the governor to keep uh funding in place for uh these housing vouchers uh so that people are not you know immediately homeless by the time um the state of emergency is is done um so the the letter that I forwarded to you uh says uh you know we're reaching out to you to request that you delay fully lifting the state of emergency order to ensure the continued safety of vulnerable remoders until more complete plans are in place to expand state support for access to healthy food and safe housing um one possibility is that uh if we can all get behind that great if not um you know would we want to encourage staff to write a letter on behalf on our behalf um asking the governor to um maintain funding for homeless services um or this program that's keeping folks in in hotels um or housing housing folks in hotels for now uh or I the alternatively I I can come up with something on my own as as mayor and just sign it on my own behalf and any of those is fine um thoughts about about any of that yeah go ahead Connor I'm happy with what you drafted to be honest I think it's direct I think it actually might be uh more meaningful coming from the the city you know than just signing on to a bigger letter there and it's more clear with what we want so yeah I support it do you need a motion and or just support from us um but you know a motion wouldn't hurt you made the motion I'll second it I'll move it all right so Connor is moving that we sign this letter uh Donna you're seconding is that right okay um any further discussion on this okay um all in favor please say aye hi hi okay and opposed okay great thank you um I didn't see any municipalities uh had signed on to this letter yet so I mean it may be the first and I think it's a worthwhile thing to ask for uh all right I that is it for me uh so John uh nothing but to say that I am neither going to Moldova nor Bulgaria and other than that um you all should listen to my podcast I have a podcast now everybody go see my podcast that's it thank you uh Bill um so I don't have a lot just I think you've already referred to this um so that next week we have a meeting so we don't normally have them back to back and then we won't be meeting till the end of July so that schedule be out I didn't want to talk again we've had a couple references tonight to the ARPA money and I wanted to address something just to put you on alert um and I hope it will be rectified and we it'll just be a little blip but I think it's important for everybody to know when funding as you know the the funding established by congress went to cities and towns counties and states and then many other parts of the count country counties are a very important part key part of the governmental structure and not so much in New England and in the northeast but particularly New England and so when the bills and the final things were established it it arranged for um counties the county money to be distributed straight to cities and towns except they missed Vermont um so the so all of the money we've been quoted in terms of what we're going to get was assuming county money was redistributed to cities and towns what the legislature approved was that the counties would get the money and return it to the state and the state would then decide what to do with it um now presumably they would decide to give it to the cities and towns who've all been counting on um and I I have been in touch with the league of cities and towns they've talked to the governor they've talked to our congressional delegation all of whom are advocating very hard that this money goes straight to cities and towns but just so you understand for us it's a difference of a total over the two years of 2.1 and a half million to 771 thousand so it's about two-thirds of the total is this county money so again hopefully it won't be a problem we're certainly going to jump all over I would recommend and I assume you'll all agree that we contact our legislative delegation immediately and point this out to them and urge them to support this money going to the cities and towns for whom it was intended in the first place um but there if if the treasury doesn't change its guidance on this um in theory the state can take this and do whatever it wants with it so um so you know obviously all the plans all the funding we've talked about um might require a rethink I don't want to you know I think in the end it'll get straightened out because congress was clear but it it's not a guarantee so I felt you ought to know about it and know that we're already chasing it down it's obviously substantial and it's a huge difference on what we would be able to do with those funds um and then lastly I just wanted to again thank you all for allowing me to serve as original vice president for ICMA we had our first in-person meeting um since I've been on it's all been all virtual instead this past weekend and it was a real honor to represent our city and our state and our region um with the 20 other people who represent the rest of the world so and it was an interesting business talk for the organization and the profession and all of that so thank you for letting me serve and that's all I have Cameron do you have anything else I don't right now um thank you for asking I will sort of volunteer myself to help out with the public restroom committee um it's something that obviously I'm very close to in the work that I do with the other committees and would like to continue that if that's all right it's great thank you that's excellent um all right so we have one other item which is um hotel garage update um uh Jay yeah excellent quick question um seeing as our next scheduled meeting is on the 16th um the day after the mass mandate ends are we assuming that it will be still be by zoom or what's the possibility of being back in chambers that's a good question the reopening plan so you guys can do what you want the reopening plan that you approved called us called for us to start in-person meetings after July 6th right okay I just didn't know maybe you can I mean that was your plan uh Lauren um just noting I was planning to zoom in from Connecticut so I could do that even if some of you were in person I guess if we'd have figured that technology out so really we still do have the city council chambers open for for folks who need to use it we're going to try to keep this hybrid model open for this month and then throughout when you meet in person try to get that to be part of our council meetings going forward yeah so uh we would basically at most have one more meeting by zoom even if things are um lifted so I feel okay about sticking with that plan for now thinking about the next meeting as sort of our our last zoom meeting and having it be kind of a transitional time I guess thinking about okay we're ready to go back um so is that okay with you or was good checking is that okay with you Jay absolutely yeah absolutely I'm totally fine with that I just wanted to put it out there um just with as quickly or not as quickly but as things are changing and involving so I just wanted that that's fair it's a good question and Jack did you have something yeah I think it's consistent with the overall plan of reopening city buildings to the public on July 6th and so yep um much as I really want to get back in the same room with all of you I think we can make it one more meeting yep okay uh all right so for this next item um we have an update to receive and uh I'm anticipating that we may want to do this in executive session jack I move pursuant to one vsa section 313 a1 that we make a finding that premature general public knowledge would clearly place the city of Montpelier in uh at a substantial disadvantage in pending civil litigation to which the city is a party second and motion in a second any further discussion okay all in favor please say aye hi and opposed uh jack I've moved that we go into executive session and that we not return to public section session at the conclusion of the executive session I think we might have to is that yeah in order to adjourn okay take that last part out of this uh I'm sure we go back without any plans to do anything no right yeah I'll second okay motion a second and just to be clear who are we including in who's coming with us a bill is there anyone else okay I'll be here holding down the public line okay all right thank you yeah okay so um motion in a second to go into executive session including bill um further discussion yeah all in favor please say aye hi okay and opposed okay um so we're gonna most of us are gonna hop off this line we will return to this line to officially adjourn but we will not be taking any further actions uh okay I'll see you everybody on the other side