 All right, good evening, team. No, what it is. I would try to do these things very quickly. We're going to get started here. I'm not sure if the speakers are on. Maybe they are, and I just, you know, I don't have a monitor, so how would I know? It's fine. All right, welcome, everyone. We're going to get. Oh, you can't. OK. Well, I will continue to try. Oh, there it is. I can hear that now. Great. OK, so I'm going to call the meeting to order. The first thing is to review and approve the agenda. So we're going to be a little bit fluid about this because I think there may be people here for different things. So just as an example, I had a request to move the complete streets plan earlier in the agenda. So I'd like to move that up to item basically six and a half or right after the Montpelier High School students present. Are there, one consideration was we were maybe going to move the consent agenda until after the Scribner hearing, but if it's short, then maybe we can just do it and get it done. I wanted to pull one item from the consent agenda, but I'm happy to bump that till the end. That's fine. Let's do that. We'll vote on that afterwards. OK, I think we're just going to get right into it then. So with that, I think that's our only change. Did you have anything else? I just want to make sure that the agenda gets approved. Nobody's. OK, so without objection, we'll consider the agenda approved. So next is general business and appearances. This is a time for anyone from the public to make a comment about something that is not on our agenda. Anybody like to make a comment about? Yes, if you would come up and say your name and your street and our group norm is that you try to keep it to two minutes or less, if you would. My name is Kate Harrington. Hello, hello. This is good. My name is Kate Harrington, and I'm a 20-year resident of Montpelier. No matter the differences of the places we come from, we each have in common that we come from the same home, the earth. I'm sure each of us feels not indifference, but rather a deep love for home, the place that gives us food and drink, and the splendor of beauty. We owe much to the earth and her extraordinary web of life. As this council considers plastic pollution and what actions might be taken to mitigate its harmful effects, please remember we're talking about our home. A spokesman for a marine conservation nonprofit recently said, nothing that is used for less than five minutes should pollute our environment for centuries. I'm sure you would agree. And I urge you to go forward with plans for a ban on single-use plastics. Thank you very much. Thank you. So I just want to clarify. I think plastic bags is an item that is going to be discussed soon. So that is more or less on our agenda. So if other people have comments on that, we can save that till it comes up. Any other comments on topics that are not on our agenda? OK, moving on. So we're going to go to the consent agenda. Is there a motion about that, Rosie? I would like to pull item G for further discussion and stick that at the end of the agenda tonight. I move that we approve the consent agenda less item G. I'll second. OK, further discussion. I want to make a couple of comments. One is items K and L are about purchases of equipment, vehicles, and one of the things that I want to make sure that we do going on into the future is that when we put out bids for vehicles that we are prioritizing non-fossil fuel-based vehicles if we can, if such are available, it's very likely that for these kinds of vehicles, there might not be something that would do the job that had some kind of alternative to fossil fuels. And that's fine, but I would like to just make sure that we are consistent about making sure that we are at least asking for that going forward. So I'm happy to support this as it is, but just a note for the future. And then the second thing is that as we are about to potentially re-up our contract with good taste catering, one of the things that we have had some counsel discussion about is the possibility of setting some kind of standards for ourselves about a living wage. And are the people that the city is contracting with, are they providing a living wage for their employees? And don't necessarily want to hold this contract up right now, but this is a good example of the kind of contract that I think we might want to consider applying this to once we have a policy in place. We don't have that policy quite exactly right now. So again, happy to support it. Let's talk about this more in the future. That would be a good venue to have that conversation. And I know they have an industry standard that they're paying their people according to. There's some logic that's based on it's fine, but let's keep talking about this. All right, I'm done talking. Other further discussion? OK, all in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? All right, so that passes. All right, so we are going to go to the hearing for the Scribner Street length, width, and classification. So I want to be a little clear about what we are doing here. This is not a regular portion of the council meeting. This is the Warren public hearing in accordance with title 19 VSA section 708 to consider the resurveying and the classification of Scribner Street. As a formal hearing, the council will receive written and oral testimony to help determine the true bounds of this public highway. The question of the city acceptance of Scribner Street as a public highway is stipulated based on uninterrupted public use and the lengthy history of city maintenance. So I've got to be a little formal about this because it's, again, it's a little different. This is a quasi-judicial meeting. So the council can ask factual questions at any time. Just any note to those who are giving testimony, please stay on point. We have a very long meeting. So no duplicate testimony, if you would. Because this is a quasi-judicial process, counselors should refrain from expressing what they are thinking while we're in public session here. And we'll talk about what you do think when we go into deliberative session at a later point, which will not be tonight. And the city has retained Paul Gillies and who's here to assist the council to help us keep on track through this process. I was actually going to suggest Paul could come up and take my seat. And I can, that way he's. That would be great. Those who don't know Paul Gillies, longtime municipal attorney. And why don't you come up in my seats. You can be right here to help the mayor and everyone else. And I'll, I'm not that active in this hearing. So I believe the first order of business is for us to swear in all of those who want to testify. And that could be interested parties just in general. So I guess I would ask, and John, I think, you're the notary here. So I might ask you to do the swearing in, because I am not a notary. Oh, you know, I would actually defer to Jack, who knows the proper way to swear in folks under such circumstances. So I would invite anyone who intends to testify to present evidence, to stand. And then I'll give it to you, Jack. OK. Anyone who's going to be a witness, stand and raise your right hand. You solemnly affirm subject to the pains and penalties of perjury that the testimony you were going to give in these proceedings will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Do. Do. OK. So did everybody who signed in, or signed saying that they wanted to testify, everyone got sworn in just now? Oh, right here. OK. OK. OK. So the first order of business is for the public works department to present their evidence in testify. So I'm going to turn it over to Tom. Thank you. They're way far away. That's the table. Thank you. You can grab the other one as well. There, too. It's live. So again, Tom McCartle, director of public works, presented a background cover sheet for our council agenda cover sheet for this hearing proceeding. We can move it, too. So we convened a site visit at the Otskriver Street, reviewed the site and the lay of the land, discussed a number of things, got oriented on the property, which is part of the proceedings, the laying out of the street, and when this was brought to our attention was a matter of questions about property lines, and the boundaries of the public highway right of way. It was determined that we did not have a record of the official action of the acceptance of the street. And from that, I conducted my own research and then retained the services of Lisa Gannett, who's here tonight. She's a registered land surveyor in the state of Vermont. Lisa had done some other work on the street, is familiar with the property, had surveyed the Margaret Neal property, has a background in this type of work known as Ancient Roads. I also consulted Attorney Paul Gillies, appreciate your attendance here tonight, provided a great deal of guidance on how to go about this hearing and how to resolve this problem, which is not that uncommon in New England. Poorly defined streets in excess of 100 years old. Lack of title. This portion of town actually was part of the town of Berlin until legislative action in 1898. Officially became part of Montpelier in 1899. Unknown at the time whether or not Scribner Street actually was part of the town of Berlin at the time and the city acquired all its rights and titles to the streets when Berlin was annexed. So I'll move into the reference to the statute. This is a survey of the existing highway where no previous survey has been properly recorded or the record of a previous survey has not been preserved or the termination and boundaries of a previous survey cannot be determined. All of those are true in this case. I'll go into the exhibits that I presented to city council. I have them here. You also were, city council was also provided them as electronically. They are available online for the public to view as well. So I first prepared a memorandum to the city council in April and the city council heard this received a briefing on the 25th and we talked about the absence of an official acceptance. Tonight the city council was asked to consider the historic evidence of acceptance dedication by the city through continuous and uninterrupted care and maintenance by its department of public works in light of the lack of action evidence of official action including documentation of a certificate of completion, a deed, a petition acted on for laying out of a highway. We are left with the only remaining remedy to us being 19 BSA section 33. The evidence will show that Scribner Street has been considered to be a public highway and has been treated as such since the late 1800s. The public has had clear and unobstructed use and property owners have relied on it for access since that time. In recognizing Scribner Street as a public highway, the city council was asked to affirm this point by formal action in order that a survey be conducted, which will be recorded with your findings of fact and conclusions, which Attorney Gillies will prepare for you based on your deliberative session. You are also asked to determine its classification as defined by statute, title 19 subsection 302. By definition, the improved portion of a street is class three. In any portion of an unimproved road, the length beyond the improved portion will be considered a class four. There is another classification known as a trail. The primary remaining question is length and width because I believe we've established that it is a public highway through use, acceptance, and dedication. Although not absolutely conclusive, the weight of the evidence will show that the street is 340 feet in length. You'll hear testimony and receive evidence that the street is 24 rods in length at 396 feet. The improved portion of the street is about 314 feet, but this is not the length of the right-of-way. The width of the right-of-way is less certain per the evidence. In this case, we have looked at the best possible fit, given the monuments and evidence of record, the actual needs of the city for maintenance and consistency with the neighboring properties, Taplan Street. I refer to them as the sister streets. Nearby is Taplan Street, and laid out about the same time, we believe, at 33 feet wide and Blackwell Street at 40 feet wide. I don't have those two. Sometimes I'll mix them up. Ms. Gannett will explain the layouts considered and why the width of 40 feet makes the most practical sense with the least impact on properties while respecting and guided by historic boundaries. I will now describe the exhibits and have them entered into the evidence or for evidence for review by city council. So they're all labeled. I have 15 exhibits. Exhibit one is a memorandum, background dated 419. This was provided as information to assist with the understanding of the matter at hand. Exhibit two is a second revised report by Lisa Gannett, the registered land surveyor. She prepared preliminary reports. This is her revised and updated report based on additional research. And a physical survey will be presented as exhibit 15. The courtents, well, this first was a notice to city council as exhibit three regarding the April 25th meeting by statute. It was required to submit notices to all interested parties. And I affirm that I sent notice of this hearing by certified mail to interested parties. I also received and contacted their respective utility companies and have written record from them that they have no concerns, that they were duly notified. The public notice of this hearing was published in the Times Argus. This is exhibit five. And as required, this is evidence of public be noticed, which was published in a local newspaper of general circulation. Exhibit six is a survey of property belonging to Margaret Neal, conducted by Sunwise Surveying, which is Lisa Gannett's company, which is dated July 2001. I had a question on the date of that. Exhibit seven, a survey of a portion of land owned by James and Deborah Penard by Gregory Dubois. This property now owned by Enelrad LLC, joining the southerly end of Scribner Street. Note that neither exhibit number seven or six or seven illustrate the length or width of the street. Exhibit eight is an email from Bruce Sargent, a resident of eight Scribner Street. Contains a list of pertinent records, relevant as evidence to the public acceptance, and activities that have taken place on the street that is evidence that the city has accepted and maintained the street for all these years. Exhibit nine is a city of Montpellier Street planned by Percy Smith, dated 1921. It's considered to be an official highway map of city streets. And it contains a notation about street acceptance, which asks Lisa to discuss about with measured length and that is behind me, I believe that's the blue one. Exhibit 10 is also a official city street plan, 1932, by J.J. Pine, considered to be an official highway map, and also containing a notation about street acceptance. Number 11 is another Montpellier Street plan, 1932. Through 40 Last Revived, 1947 by J.J. Pine. Exhibits nine through 10 are considered as the greatest evidence that Scribner Street was indeed accepted and its length was known when these maps were created. Also of interest are exhibits 12 and 13, which are sandborn maps. These were created for fire insurance rating purposes. They have detailed information about buildings such as building materials, whether they're wood or brick in the city's water system. They're interesting maps, but they're presented as exhibits because Scribner Street is illustrated with a municipal water main and shown to be unlike other city streets on their maps. Exhibit 14 is an email from Bruce Sargent, dated March 8th, 1918 to myself. Contains references to street commissioner reports, which were commonly presented to city council to explain expenditures, again, evidence of municipal acceptance and dedication. Just to, I believe you misspoke in the email as dated 2018 and 1918. I'm terribly sorry, yes. I don't think I was there to receive that. Thank you. Exhibit 15 is a survey of Scribner Street, dated June, 2018 by Sunwise Surveying, file number A18514. There's four maps. These are the various widths that the council has asked to consider. Ken Lisa will refer to those and they are draft surveys of the width and length. So I'll conclude by saying, in my opinion, Scribner Street should be surveyed and laid out at 340 feet in length with a width of 40 feet in alignment. With existing monumentation found along the existing street, shown, and that it be considered a class three street for the improved portion, and the length beyond the improved portion would be considered class four. Any questions for the exhibits? Do you have a quick question, Ashley? Should we go to Lisa to describe the exhibits in more detail? Sure. So first a question for you, Attorney Gillies. Are the rules of evidence relaxed in these proceedings or? Modestly. Okay. I do think we need to accept. Yes, I think you need to have, but the proper thing would be to ask if there's any other party who have objections to the material. Okay, so any parties with objections to the submission of that evidence? Okay, so we're gonna accept and acknowledge that evidence, those exhibits, Ashley. And with assuming for a minute that we were to accept the 340 with the designation of the unimproved portion as a class four, what if any maintenance or repairs would need to be made to that additional unimproved section if we designated it as a class four, as opposed to a trail? The class four is unimproved and there is no municipal obligation to maintain or change any of the status of it. We do not plow it. It's optional if the city wishes to maintain it but it could be improved at a later date and reclassified. So essentially it's status quo and no obligation to change the status quo by statute. And that would be if it were a class four. What if it were a trail? Trail is, I don't know an awful lot about trails except that it's limited to use for access. Not necessarily, it can be other access besides motor vehicle. Okay, and let's assume for a minute that we, the council decides that it will be accepted at 396 feet. Would that analysis stay the same as in the improved portion remains as is and then the remainder back to whatever the footage we decide would be a class four or a trail? That's correct. You notice at the site visit there was a drainage structure beyond the end of the improved portion. It's important that that drainage system and the maintenance of that be included in the, which the 340 feet does and certainly the 396 would do that as well. That would all be unimproved portion beyond that. Okay. So I guess we'll go to Lisa. Do you have different evidence or are you just talking about the same evidence? I'm gonna talk a little bit about why there is no width available on this road. All right, thank you. And it just, from my own point of view, I started this survey, okay, I started this survey for Margaret Neal last year. We essentially did the research on all the parcels except for the GMT associates parcel, which didn't have anything to do with what we were surveying. We looked at the Greg Dubois survey for Pinar that wraps around this area. And one of the things that is clear is that the first lot out of the east side of Scribner Street was the Staples and Gomez lot. It was never owned by Scribner. It was not owned by John Doucet who owned a lot of the land in the area. That lot is originally deeded out as having four rods on River Street and eight rods on Scribner Street. They also call for the two southerly monuments of that lot to be granite bounds. Those granite bounds were not found, but I'm suspecting that when they dug for the little garage here, they replaced those bounds with pins. They're in the right position. They are the right distance apart. So on the basis of those two pins is kind of how Greg Dubois came about a lot of his survey with a tie into various properties over on the Taplan Street side of things. So I was really asked originally to survey Margaret Neal's property. I did a lot of the work to locate these other monuments because I needed to figure out how things lay in here. So we have another two lots that were deeded out by John Doucet or various later people and that created the Martinot and the Neal properties. Both of them are called for as eight rods along Scribner Street. And that's how we come up with the 396 feet that would be called for if all of these three lots stacked up and they were all along Scribner Street. The only thing I'm going to say about it is that Doucet who deeded to the Enorat LLC, Margaret Neal, Martinot and Enorat all came out of the same chain of title. Now, John Doucet when he bought this land didn't own right down to River Street. He owns a 14 or so acre piece back here. When the piece got conveyed into Neal, he calls for this entire eight rods to be along Scribner Street. But when he deeds further lands, when he deeds his land forward, he never discusses Scribner Street at all. There's no mention of any street in that deed at all in none of them. Okay, GMT associates. Now remember that I often had to go back to the town of Berlin to fill in my deeds because Scribner deeded to John Doucet. It was still Berlin. The GMT associates and the Staples and Gomez piece came from somebody named George Scott who was not part of the John Doucet deeds. So when I looked at GMT associates hoping once again that I could find something that showed me where the other edge of this street was, there wasn't anything. They gave a description. They start on a line where it hits River Street. They go along River Street until they come to something that they called Slaughterhouse Road. Then they went along Slaughterhouse Road to do Sets line along do Sets line. So there's no distances given here. So there's no way to come from some other boundary and pull onto the other side of the street. That is why there's no, that's why we can decide what width of street to put on there. I like the concept of holding the monuments that are out there already for, along the east edge of the street and whatever width is decided to hold those monuments. They've been there, they're established. Everybody's lived with them for a while now. I can't remember the date of the Du Bois survey but clearly the original pins for Staples and Gomez have been there at least since 1907, if not before. So I favor holding that. If we go for the full 49 and a half foot being a three rod width that are standard roads, you're gonna knock lines like right through the edge of porches and the front edge of houses on the west side of the street being the Enelrad and the GMT associates side of the street. After looking at things, and let me say this as well, there's no monuments of anything on this other side of the street. Nothing in the ground to mark the line between Enelrad and GMT associates. That's not really my issue. It would be hard to prove because of the lack of distance calls in the GMT associates deed. All they have is an area. Call, which is fairly weak. So I like the 40 foot. It gives enough room for the street. It also leaves the apple trees that are on the GMT associates parcel on their side of the new line of the street. I have got a couple of different drawings prepared if people wanna look at the other possibilities for width. Obviously you could do the full three rods. You could center the 40 feet on the street, but then you'd be leaving a strange gap between the monumentation and where the new street line is gonna be. Not impossible to deal with, but maybe not that favorable. The survey also, one exhibit 15 shows the 340 and the 396 and the finished rods, you can see that. Yeah. All right. Any questions from the council? And I guess, Ashley. So assuming we go with the 40 foot width, that would still mean that there would be access to all properties on Scribner Street from the public highway. Yes. Correct. The frontage of the Neil property. I don't know exactly what that is. You can scale that off. The frontage? Yeah, the full width of their frontage is 132 feet. The 340, what is the frontage to the 340 line, that length? Well, it would be 56. From here to here. Okay, it would be 130, yeah. I'll just scale it. Okay, to the 40 foot line, you would have somewhere around 75 feet. So all properties would have frontage on a public street for access for driveways. It would allow for the widening of a driveway there, if you so desire. Much of what we're basing this is on highway maps that were submitted to the state of Vermont for call outs to when streets began to be laid out, the state wanted to inventory all public streets and that began, not sure the year, maybe Paul knows, but the towns had to as tests to their actual roads and began submitting maps and every year this council is asked in February to send in a certificate of highway mileage and you attest to the true measure of your highways and that primary purpose for that is for financial state aid. The town receives aid for class one, class two and three roads for maintenance that we do. No funding for class four portions of roads or trails. So that's the primary purpose of submitting official maps, typically not your key evidence as what is actually the record. Typically you submit the record to the state of how you acquired a road and then that then becomes the measured distance. There was a little something odd that happened over the years in those measured lengths. It was done by feet at some point, I think in the maybe 60s, they went to decimal miles. That led to some confusion in the record. This 340 feet works out to 0.06 miles as actually 0.064 miles will give you the 340. They rounded down giving us 0.06 which is 316 feet or 317 and that's been the record for quite some time merely from a rounding error. There was no questioning of that as far as the state aid goes. Eventually everything balances out. Some are rounded up, some are rounded down. Presumably the state aid is the same but feet matters when we look at this and what that record might be, what the council actually attests to for its length and it has contributed to the confusion of what the true length of this street is. It's 0.064 miles or 340 feet by the records that were submitted to the state. Okay, so at this point, if you were one of the interested parties who was sworn in, this is an opportunity for you to ask questions of Mr. McCartle or Ms. Gannett. No questions? Yes. If you wouldn't mind coming up to the microphone. I'll also just introduce yourself. Sarah Field. I just have one question as I heard your testimony, is this on? I heard your testimony about the different lengths and from the 340, the additional 56 feet, did you find any evidence of any highway maintenance, of any town maintenance, of any portion beyond the 340? Have they ever plowed it? Have they ever put pipes through it? Has there ever been any kind of use by the public of that portion from the records? Perhaps Bruce Sargent can address that as well but from the recent past, more recent history, that has not, if anything did occur back then, that has not continued in the last 40 or 50 years and I know of. So that would be discontinuous maintenance of the street. So at some point, that was not continued. Thank you, that's all right. Yes, Bruce. Just a quick question. I think on your survey, it was posted this week, there was mention of a finding that Maggie's Deed of 396 was based on a fraudulent transaction or conveyance that, so I'm confused by what I read, that's why I wanted to check. Because what I'm looking at here is clear evidence from 1990, 1915, that the street was built almost up to the pine, paved. And so when John Doucet sold that property four years later, there was a street there. At least by the evidence of it. Well, there may have been a street there, Bruce, but there was never any dedication of that street to the city. John Doucet never conveyed any rights to the city for the street. So someone can say, I mean, the lot size is not going to change, but the fact that he calls it along the street does not then suddenly make that a street. He did not sell those, he never conveyed those rights. Neither John Doucet or George Scott in the front ever conveyed any rights to that street to the city. I think I understand that. So there's nothing fraudulent, except that he called it a street and there is no certainty. There may have been a road there, but while I'm saying it, there was not a street listed to the town. Okay, I'll work on it. Okay, thank you. That's not uncommon, we have other streets. I refer to them as paper streets. There's streets that were intended in a subdivision to have been conveyed, but never actually were. So it's not, it was a anticipation, expectation that there would be an acceptance. It may have been used as a street, but what was actually accepted is the question here. And what does the city council believe is the appropriate true length of the street or establish what that length should be? Okay, any other questions? Okay, great. Thank you, both. Do they have evidence to submit? Well, that is the question. So at this point, other interested parties can submit testimony. And I think we have a sign-up sheet right there, but it is a little far away from me. I'm wondering if someone can grab that sign-up sheet and throw it my direction. Thank you so much. Okay, so next up would be Sarah Field. If you wanted to present any testimony. I guess the only testimony I want to present is after reading all the research and listening to this presentation tonight, though we feel that the street is appropriately at least 316 feet. Probably there's good evidence that it could be 340. That's the anorads do not dispute that either way, but that we feel that there it does not go beyond that. There's no evidence in the record. There's no evidence historically for that roadway ever being longer than at most 340 feet. Okay, thank you. Mark, I don't know how to say your last name. McGeer, McGeer, would you like to offer anything? I'd be an echo for, so no. Okay, thank you. Maggie Neal, would you like to offer any evidence? And if you would, if the answer is yes, you should come up to the microphone or the table. Sure, why don't you sit here? I'm glad that my driveway doesn't seem to be in peace hinged by this discussion. The fact that my deed seems irrelevant. I mean, it was brought to Tom and he kind of put it off. It's the only deed that I have on this piece of land and it says along Scrivener Street. So I was going along with that. And the neighbor that I shared the land with for 17 years felt that the stream was the boundary. So we just had this kindly assumption that we owned to the stream. So when it was uprooted and blocked, it was alarming. And then to find out when we asked the length of the street, there wasn't really a length of the street, but we were told that it was 0.060, which put it below my driveway, south of my driveway, north of my driveway. It was upsetting. So speaking from the heart here, this has been very uncomfortable. And I know that it's not all written in stone and that we're trying to correct it now. So personally, I'm very glad to hear that 340 is a number that's being spoken by both of you up here because it was not the number that I was hearing in the past. It's been my privilege to care for that wild piece of land up there and to have the edge of the wilderness so near this capital city that I have worked very hard to keep the art vibrant in the town as much as possible. So I guess I would like to appeal to the council to at least do the 340. And I do understand how there's not much evidence that there was a road. I think there is evidence, but I do understand that if it wasn't accepted by the city that it was just a little local road that belonged to those people that lived here on the top of Scrivner Hill. All of them were French Canadians coming down, working in the granite sheds. And I think that's, I've really been happy to have learned a little history about this place where I live. So there are some benefits to having this problem because I got to learn more. Well, thank you. Jack? Before you leave, Ms. Neal, could you hold? I have a question for you if I could. Excuse me, Jack. It's okay. It was very useful to me to go out and view the property and the question I have for you is, do you think there's any, there would be any negative effect to you if the line were set at 340 instead of 396, keeping in mind that it doesn't change the boundaries of the lot that you're deeded? Yes, thank you, Jack. I think that's a good question. It is a very water-full piece of land and therefore all the years that go back in history, a lovely stream that came down and that held a lot of the water. Now the city put in two French drains, one at my driveway and one up at probably 350, 360, back in the late 1980s. The city council and the workers of the town came up and resolved that situation in the backyards of the homes there. So I like that the city was taking care of the property. I do think that if you let water not be channeled properly, it can be very destructive to the land. My son is in California, he's an environmentalist and that's one thing he's really worried about that it doesn't have a real channel now. So yes. And are these French drains located in the area where you think the road should be or are they located right on your property? The French drains run to the stream but the upper one has just kind of, it's come to the top of the ground and basically it isn't there anymore. But my other son has dug channels just to get the water from the hill over to the stream but now the stream is not a stream anymore. But they're within you a lot? Yes. Okay, thanks. Yes, Ashley. Piggybacking on that. Do any of those things on the property fall in the width or the length of the question that we're being asked tonight? Any of the things on the property? So the French drains or, I think there was one other... The first French drain does fall just past the driveway and goes down to the storm drain that's there and it's within the 340 feet. And is it also, it's also within the... Right in the middle of the stream. Right in the middle, okay. And the second one, is that both, depending on the 340 or the 396, does that second one fall in the length of? It falls at 350 or 360. Okay. It is past the 340 mark laid by the city. And does, would that also be encompassed in the width question, if we were to go with either the 40 or the 49? Is that right? No, it's further, it's beyond the street. So... It's, I did not see that second French drain. So it's not located on here. Okay. I can't answer your question. Can I have that microphone? It was Jim Pinard that was talking about it. So he's the one that refreshed my memory that that happened. And he would be here tonight, except he said it was just going to be too difficult to watch the conflict, witness the conflict on his land. Well, we're hoping to resolve the conflict. I want you all to know that my hope is that we will be wrapping this up at around eight. Within eye shot of. Now, I just want you, I'm going to put that there. I'm not going to hold this to it, but I just want to watch you all know. Good to have boundaries. Yes. Pardon the pun. The, I'm not familiar with the second drain. I am familiar with the storm drainage work that was done on Scribner Street. There's a lot of drainage that was affecting both private properties in the public street and waters the enemy, especially for public roads. I don't know about the one further up the street, but as far as whether or not there will be encompassed by this, the holding of the line along the westerly, easterly side of the street, whether it's 49 or the others that would, as you can see from the site visit, how far back they are 14, roughly down in front of their house and way up. So those would fall within that boundaries. However, those are, those serve a private purpose. There are many private connections of drains to public systems. So that doesn't necessarily mean the city would be responsible for maintenance of those. Although if the record shows that they were done to protect the city street, certainly that's of interest to the city and public works. And we would participate to the extent we can. So I think anything by the side of that, it could very well be, but again, I don't know where that upper drain is. A question perhaps, if you don't mind, Mayor Watson is, if I could ask Attorney Gillis, as a survey or re-survey under the statute, there is there a question of this street, if it is shown to be 340 feet by acceptance and dedication over time, and city council chooses to go to 396 feet where the evidence is less, doesn't carry quite the weight. Is there a possibility that, that could be considered a new taking and damages might have to be paid for acquisition? How would that be resolved if that were to be questioned? Well, if we start with the assumption that the only evidence of acceptance is at 340, then to go beyond 340 to 396 would be to lay out a new highway and it would be a taking. And there would be an argument that compensation should be paid or should at least be discussed. Thank you. But I don't think you have warned at laying out hearing tonight. You're just re-surveying. Okay. I happen by notes that Scrivener-Sprey was reported and accepted by city council at 397 in 1919. So at some point it was accepted. Now you're asking where that is and I'm not sure. Yeah. If you have that evidence, I suggest you submit that for review. If I believe it was accepted. So I'm going to interrupt you, Bruce. Sorry. Cause I just want to make sure that we are done with Maggie and then, and you're next on the list for us. So if you have evidence that you would like to submit, now is the time. And answering the question. Also, do you want to just say your full name for? It was my understanding that Scrivener Street at 396, because that was implicit in the Maggie's original deed. It was dedicated at that distance. Otherwise, how could you sell the property? And then it was accepted by maintenance from 1907 to 1920. So that was my understanding. I don't know if that, you know, I really was the case down in Southern Vermont. I'm not sure anymore what those, I think it's very difficult to have an implicit dedication and acceptance become law now, true. So it's become very stripped. And I don't know if those conditions on Scrivener Street meet those new strict conditions or not. So do you have a set of evidence? In any case, let me launch, because I'm very excited to present evidence on this, because I think evidence is the thing that will answer a lot of different questions. This is a picture of the number eight house from 19, from 19, here, 40, just, just that. Thanks, Bruce. And the house is photographed with the residents there. On the right is Susie Bertoli, she lived in that house. Her father ran a boarding house on Paplin Street. Down here was Alexander Breganti. He was a relative at Breganti, the first purchaser of the number eight house. So there's a lot of information in the picture. But for me, what's very exciting is you can see Scrivener Street behind the gang. And it's paved. And if you do a little math, because the house is 19 feet wide, so there's one known in that. If you do a little math, you realize that pictured here is a paved Scrivener Street up to almost 340 feet. It's six feet short of that. Now, this street is going somewhere. And I would say it's probably going to the shed that was on the 1915 map of Sandborn map. So that puts Scrivener Street paved at 365, probably. So anyway, I think I'm excited to add photographs to the project that you're doing. And I think it will help because to actually be able to see what is happening. Bruce, was that part of the evidence that you already submitted? It's exhibit seven. Exhibit seven. So we'll just go over the exhibits real quickly. I'll wax eloquent to one if I don't get going on this. Bruce, real quick. The first exhibit is an analysis by our attorney, Richard Brock, and which describes the acceptance of Maggie Steed from 1995 up to the time now. He would have been here personally, but he feels that he doesn't hear well enough anymore. But we did definitely beg him, he wouldn't do it. But he did ask us to deliver one message. He wanted this report to go to Mr. Gillis. That was very important to him. Exhibit two is a copy of the board census February 1, 1899. It shows the beginning of Scrivener Street listing the people that lived there. Exhibit three was a photograph dated July 1919, showing the Pioneer Bridge in the power plant in the neighborhood. There's exhibit four. No, this is all listed. Is that the email? And I'm excited that you're gonna see it. So let me get to what I wanna really say about this. And this is probably from conversations I had with Mr. Brock. So Bruce, I just- It's an email. It's very brief. I just wanna clarify. So is it your intent right now to introduce everything that had been sent out to us earlier that was in that list? So you're moving to admit all of that. I'm looking at this earlier by PDF. Yes. I've got a set of copies for the earning area. You don't necessarily need to submit it in writing or to give us all these copies because we already have it electronically. I appreciate that. It's very nice. I'm happy to give it to you. So we have that, yes. And it's- But they have to be submitted. Let me get to the whole point of what I would really like to say here. And it came a little bit from Mr. Brock. So I think there's, what are the overriding public interests here? Justice for one or all? Or windfall profits for few? It's really no more complicated than that. In February, when I offered to give evidence to survey to Mr. Gillies, he pointed out to me that I was free to give evidence, but the surveyor was free to ignore the evidence that I brought. And I understood. I would like to point out to council that the surveyor can advise you. Mr. Gillies can advise you. And you are free to ignore that advice. They will not bear the responsibility of decision. You will bear the responsibility of decision in the decision you make. Therefore, that decision is absolutely and entirely yours. I would encourage you to read and breathe in the Vermont seventh article in the constitution. The government is or ought to be instituted with a common benefit, protection and security of people, nations or community. And not with a particular moment or advantage of any single person, family or set of persons who are a part of that community. And that community has an indubitable, unalienable, and one of my favorite words, indefensible right to reform or alter government in such manner as shall be that the community judge most conducive to public will. That's a big responsibility and you gotta do it on your own. You have the, you have, you and only you have the indefensible right to decision in this matter. Godspeed. Thank you so much, Bruce. Is there any objection to the acceptance of this evidence? No. So we are going to acknowledge and accept the evidence that Bruce submitted. Thank you so much. You can, you don't, you mean we've brought it, right? Okay, thank you very much. Okay, did you, any other questions that you have? Nothing further to add. Okay, so everyone understands that this was your opportunities to submit evidence and there's nothing further to submit. Okay, great. So from here, the council is going to set a date to go into deliberative session and we have 60 days to come out with a decision. We'll do that in writing. We won't necessarily have a meeting to announce that but we'll issue a written decision about this within 60 days. And let's set the date for the deliberative session later on in the evening. Does it sound right? Sure. Okay. Thank you all. Thank you. Sorry. Oh, okay. We'll officially close this evidentiary hearing and we're going to go back into regular, a regular council meeting. Okay, phew. Thank you all. All right, so moving right along. Oh, and we're at 801. That is excellent. What's that? You're so great. Maybe I should tell people they're ending times ahead of time all the time. All right, so we have some presentations from Montpelier High School students. I'm so excited to hear what you have to say. I think everybody knows I'm a teacher. Maybe everybody. You have your pot physics quiz, right? Yeah, that's right. There's a physics test at the end. I'm just kidding. I'll make it very hotter. So I'm going to turn things over to Heather McLean who is a teacher at Montpelier High School. What's that? Yeah, sure. So my name is Heather McLean and I teach social studies at Montpelier High School. And the students have been working for a couple of weeks on researching some local issues that matter to them. And they created some nice presentations that aren't working with a projector. So I have to warn you, especially the first group had created their presentation on an online platform. And so they're going to do their best to present without that. And we did print out some statistics for you, but they might have to sort of shuffle through because they weren't planning to give you those. So it will just be a little bit. Do you want to try my laptop? We could take like a two minute break. I could use a break after that anyway. Sure. Take two minutes and see if we can get my computer to work. We've got tech gurus here. Plastic bag band. OK, two things. One, there's a microphone that works. Oh yeah, you got to get really close to it. That's number one. Number two, you should also say your names. I'm Aiden Murphy. And pass the microphone around as you're doing that. I'm Mia Preston. Quinn Mills. I'm Cypress Levitt. So the basic problem is that single use plastic is one of the main causes of most environmental problems today. The average American family takes home over 1,500 plastic bags per year, and only 1% of those bags ever end up getting returned for recycling. Many marine animals, such as sea turtles, mistake plastic bags for food. And scientists believe that about half of the sea turtle population has already ingested plastic. Plastic is not only dangerous for animals, it is also dangerous for humans. When plastic debris floats through the oceans, it releases toxic chemicals, such as PCB, that can cause cancer. Plastic bags are only used for an average of 12 minutes, but they can take up to 500 years to disintegrate in a landfill. So some of the constraints about having a plastic bag ban would be things like the alternative. If the alternative is paper bags, then paper bags, the process for making them, is not much better than what plastic bags do for the environment. And it's having to use canvas bags can also be rather costly for families. And it just can create hardship. So we sent out a survey to the school, MHS, and asked a bunch of questions. And one of the more important questions was how much do you really care about the plastic bag ban and would it affect you? And about 76% of the people care about it, and they would be affected in a positive way. And 94% of those people know about the effects plastic bags have in the environment. So they know what they're somewhat talking about. So we are asking the council to pass a plastic bag ban in Mount Pilger. Any other questions? Rosie and then Connor. I think I heard you say you sent out the survey to the high school. Can you just tell us a little bit more about who your survey audience was? We sent it to the students and the staff, all students and the staff. Connor. What do you guys think about plastic straws? Do you like them? Should we ban those too, do you think? Better for the environment as well. All right, yeah. Any other questions? Bill, do you think it's appropriate to talk about what our plans are from here? So we were in the background here, able to talk with our attorney briefly about what this might mean. So just super briefly, in Vermont, municipalities are not allowed to make just any laws, any ordinances that we want to. We can only make ordinances about things that the state has expressly given us permission to make ordinances about. And one of the ways that if we don't have the authority to make an ordinance about something is that we can basically ask for permission or give ourselves permission to make an ordinance like this through a charter change. So at this point, we could make the case that either as plastic bags or straws are a public nuisance or that they affect the health and well-being of the public. But that would be a tricky link to make. So one possibility is that we could ask our lawyer to make that connection for us. But that would be kind of a heavy lift. And it would take some time. Another possibility is that if the council is interested, we could work on language for a charter change to ask for permission from the state to allow us to regulate things like plastic bags. Thumb scale, if this makes any sense. This is good? OK. So can I actually interject with a legal question? Yes. So what exactly, I mean, I can't imagine it would just be like, we want to make an ordinance about plastic bags. What would that change look like that we would be requesting? Sure. I mean, actually it could be pretty simple as that. It could be that the city, in the charter, enumerates certain authorities that the city council has. So adding it could be something like regulating plastic straws and bags or something a little bit more better worded than that. But it would basically give ourselves that authority. We looked at a lot of different angles. We talked to the League of Cities and Towns. We talked to some other communities. Brattleboro has passed one of these. And their charter gives them authority to regulate solid waste, which ours doesn't. And so they use that. But the counter argument to that is actually when you get handed a bag at the store, that's not solid waste. It's not solid waste to throw it in the trash. So it's a kind of a slippery slope. And we looked at a lot of different angles. And what our guy said was, if you've got time, let's put together a good, well-written article and think it through and put it on for a charter change ballot. And then you have the community discussion. And so that was the advice as the safest way. So did you have a follow-up? I guess I would encourage, if we go that route, I would encourage that we not limit it to this one tiny thing, because I think that there are other things that we might want to examine in the near future, like single-use plastics, maybe. I mean, that's not saying that that's where we're at. But if it is something that we want to explore later rather than going through the same process, again, in 12, 18, 24 months, you can do it in one. I could picture us trying to find some overarching language that would be a little more general. And also framing it in a way that allows for the state to do whatever they want to do with single-use plastics, and that maybe we want to go beyond whatever it is that they're regulating. Does that make any sense? Yes. So one possible timeline moving forward from here is, let's say the council is into this idea. We could either direct city staff or create a committee to look at language for a charter change. That could then potentially be ready for a vote as soon as, let's say, November. We are already anticipating that we may have some vote in November, so that could be on the ballot simultaneously. If it's approved by the public on that ballot in November, then it would have to be approved by the legislature in the following session. And it's after they approve it, then we could actually go back and enact some kind of an ordinance change. I would imagine that we'd also want to write the language of the ordinance that we would like to have sort of simultaneously to the charter change language as well. So one possibility is that we could have a motion to direct city staff or the creation of a committee to create such language. Yes, Connor? I'd like to make that motion if possible. I will second that motion. Any further discussion? Yes, Chuck? I think it might be useful to have some clarity as to what the motion actually is and the things that I'm thinking of are plastic bags, plastic straws, and other single-use plastic items, like cups, cup lids, takeout containers. I'm not sure whatever else. But have it be fairly broad so that as we proceed to draft an ordinance, which I hope we will, that we're not stuck with having the ordinance that we want to draft go farther than the charter change that we get approved. Would you care to clarify? I'd consider that a friendly amendment. I'll have to review the video, but I'll figure it out. You'll figure it out? Well, maybe it's not so much an amendment as an explanation of intent. Sure. That's what I heard him say. Sounded like to me, but. Yeah. Right. Yeah. We can go with it. Are we feeling clear enough about it? Donna, do you have a question? That's fine. We can vote on that. I had a question for the kids. Go ahead. So my takeaway is that we'll draft charter language and then perhaps a basic language. And we have, whether we choose to do the charter change in November or March, we have a sufficient length of time to talk through a lot of different options and have community discussion. So I think it's, I wouldn't be too directive at this point it would be as we get into it and figure out where we want to end up. Donna, then Rosie, then Ashley. I would hope that staff would research other places that have done it, which was one of my questions for the students, whether in their research, they actually found places that did it and what kind of language they used. No. Can I jump into there are some representatives from the group, formerly people against plastic pollution, currently citizens against plastic pollution. It was renamed. And they've done some extensive research on this with other cities. So they may be a good asset working with the city staff on this. Great. Thank you. Rosie. So I'd like to be clear that I would like, I'm happy to direct staff to work on a charter change that would give us the authority to do this. But I feel like we haven't fully investigated what are the impacts on everyone? Who does this effect and how does that defect them? So I want to have that conversation. And I think that we can, as part of a discussion on that charter change. So before we decide exactly what we're doing, I'm also interested in the idea of a ban versus a tax or a fee for bags. And what does that look like? So I want us to gain the authority to do this, but then be really deliberative in how we actually go about doing it. So I agree. My hope is that actually by going the charter change route, it will actually allow us some time to get lots of input from all the stakeholders. That's my hope anyway. We should plan for that along the way as well. So thank you. Ashley, I don't need to speak. Oh, that was where you were going to send it. OK. Great. Any further? Yes. Did have a couple of people from the group who had one minute sort of testimonies and just wanted to give them a chance if they could, mayor. OK. If they would like to speak, you sure may. Yep. It's really OK. No worries. Can you hear me? Yes, what's your name? My name is Joe Yoder. And we formed a group a couple of months ago called Citizens Against Plastic Pollution. It's just a few people in the neighborhood and that are just, we've had it, we're fed up. There's so much bad news out there about plastic. And what we've been doing is meeting and collating information, coming up with a better name. And I think what we're working on right now is kind of three things. One is to educate about the problem ourselves and other people, hopefully. We've got a lot of information about it. There's all kinds of information about the plastic problem. And then educate regarding the solutions. And it's not just a law. There's a lot of solutions like passing out reusable bags. Maybe businesses can sponsor them. I'm doing that with my business. And then we're also interested in trying for a ban of single use plastic bags and other things. So we're delighted to see what's happening here tonight. And you've got a pepper alley for you. If this starts to hit for a vote, we're going to rally the forces for it, for sure. Great. Super. Thank you. All right, so we have a motion that's been seconded. Any further discussion? All right, all in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Great. Thank you so much. Let the record show these four came in and can totally change the team. That's right. I appreciate your work on this. We're going to point at you. All right, who is next? Do we have the other high school? Oh, you have a new projector. There's a second high school. You might want to try this one first. And there's a second high school group. Oh, I know. I don't know that Kevin knows that yet. So Kevin, there's more students to present. What are you doing? Can you just try this one first, because it might be working now? Maybe not yet. They have a presentation. Yes, yeah. So I don't know your compatriot's name. Stu. Stu, there's more student presentations. So you're not quite next. Sorry. I know you're next. No worries. All right, who is next from Montpelier High School? A couple of things that were knocked. All right, if you would. So did you find the microphone that works? OK, great. So make sure you're passing that around. And if you would introduce yourselves. All right. So my name is Nathan LaRosa. And this is Evan Rohan and Sidney Dunn. We've been working on a project researching the rec center building and gym. And we've all played basketball for the rec. And we sent out a survey to grades 5 through 12 in Montpelier. And we got 147 responses to that. And we also sent out a survey to the wider community for three days and got 37 responses from that. Our research on this subject, we believe that the building and the land should be sold so it can be invested into a new facility that prioritizes ADA accessibility along with allowing the community to democratically pick out key parts and priorities of a new facility. Slide two, there is a graph. And that is from the survey that we sent out to both the community and the students. And 85% of them, roughly on both, had said that they had been to the rec center. And on the next slide, 37.4% of people said that they've only been to the rec center once or twice. 23.8% of people said that they go to the rec center seasonally for sports. And 18.4% of people have never been to the rec center. And this kind of goes to show that most people have been to the rec center, but haven't particularly been enticed to go back. And we're kind of drawing the conclusion that that might be on because of the state of it currently. So next on slide five, we asked the question of, do you feel like the rec center is in need of a renovation? And we got about 65% of people saying yes, that it isn't in need of a renovation. And this just shows how the student body and community understands that there needs to be a change in the current condition of the building. The next slide, one being there are no importance to the rec and 10 meaning very important. You can see how almost everybody on both surveys believed that the rec is either important or very important to the Montpelier community. Can I interrupt you? I'm a little confused about one thing. Why are there two side-by-side graphs? So the one on the left with the 147 responses was sent to the student body of MSMS and MHS. And then one on the right was sent out through French port forums to the community. Sorry, carry on. Thank you. So in the slides before, you saw how around half the student body and community have either never went to the rec or only have been once or twice. But if you go to the seventh slide, we asked the question, would you go more often if it was renovated? And we got almost the exact same number saying that they would want to go even more often to the rec. All right, so if you flip to the next page, it's just a little bit of an overview of some of our results. So we had 131 votes for an indoor pool, which would obviously require a new building. 100 votes for a full-size basketball court because the court at the rec currently is, I believe, regulation-width, but it is much shorter than regulation-length. We had 86 votes for a new locker room, which, again, would probably require a new building. And a couple more, 79 votes for a table and games room, which is currently at the rec, and 74 votes for a renovated bathroom. You can see the rest of the results on that page. Don't want to bore you to death with numbers. But we also interviewed the recreation director, Arne McMullen, and we, in our meeting, were told about the feasibility plan that is currently in place. And that ADA accessibility would be the main priority for renovation or a new building. And the building is the main priority of other recreation facilities, fields. And Arne said that there were 10,000 to 15,000 people that go in and out of the gym a year. And he also showed us to the Claremont rec building, which they had the decision, whether to renovate an old building of similar age to ours, or build a new one. And the renovations were expected to cost about $2 million. And the new facility ended up being built for $9 million. Before the rebuild, they had a 23% recovery rate. And with the new building, they had a 61%. They almost tripled their recovery rate. And granted, they got a very, very large grant. They got $3 million grant from their local bank. But they actually saw very good financial benefit from building the new building. And there was a very piqued interest along with that. Back to the slide. We had a part that was specifically in the communal survey about taxes. And so our first question was just simple, would you be willing to pay higher taxes in order to pay for the rec center to be renovated or rebuilt? And we got almost 90% of people saying they'd possibly be up for it. But then we still had around 50% saying they would definitely commit to having higher taxes. And who was asked in this survey? Was this still students? This was just to the communal survey. Front porch for them. Yeah, this was just to adults. Because you have it listed twice. So I assumed one was front porch. What was the other one? Yeah. The one with 147 responses is to the students. That's what I'm asking. The students don't pay taxes. No, they did not get that question. So on slide two. The next question is different. This question is different. If you answered no, is the second one. OK, thank you. Let me see. Thank you. And on the next slide, 78% of people showed interest if they did not want to pay higher taxes to pay a higher rate to use the gym. Currently, it's $1 for an open gym pass. For a resident. For a resident, open gym pass. And once again, 78% said that they would be willing to pay a higher rate to support the rec. So kind of the conclusion that we've come to from the data is that most of the respondents feel like the rec center should be renovated or rebuilt. Most of them saying that they think it should be rebuilt because of the amenities that they're asking for. We feel like one of the top priorities for the rebuild is the building being ADA accessible because it's one of the last buildings in Montpelier, I believe, to not meet those codes. And we feel like what the community thinks is definitely the right direction to go in from our research that we've done. Quick question. Sorry, yes, Ashley. So in your surveys or in your talks with the rec center director, did you kind of get an idea for who most often uses the facility, like by age or by resident, non-resident population or? We did not get a specific number on that. There also was jump and splash, which is a group of people who did a survey to the community who got 1,000 responses, who may have some information on that as well. OK, awesome. Thanks, guys. All right. Any other questions for this group? Yes, Glenn. A small question of curiosity. On slide five, I believe, do you feel the rec center should be renovated in the responses from the students? Apparently, one person responded, or some people responded salad bar? Yes, there was an other option on that question to say whether you thought the gym floors needed to be or that stuff. That was not a intended answer. OK, thank you. So just so you all know, we are looking at this very question and what we should do with it. So I think I know what your recommendation is, but tell me one more time, what do you want us to do? To use that money to continue to build. So we're going to get some kind of a feasibility study back with lots more numbers. And we're going to go from there, but thank you for this input. This is very valuable. I don't know what our timeline is on that decision, but. It was actually the groups meeting on Friday to get the feasibility study out the door. But yes, this is what council just set their priorities in dealing with this question. It was a high priority for this year. This is very helpful. Quite as definite as the plastic bags, but definitely something we need to take into account. So we appreciate your input on that. Thank you so much. Thanks, John. Yay. All right, I think we have one more group. Is that right? Heather, would it be possible for you to email us any links to these presentations? That'd be great. Thank you so much. It's OK. Take your time. You know we're not connecting to the present. It's not working hours. Oh, but they just wanted to do this. Yeah. Are you all ready? You're getting there. Yeah. OK. No, no worries. I'm Mason Echling-Gestofsen. And we are a group of students working on this. So far, you're not coming across at all. Maybe it's the way you're holding us. So you should speak a little louder. And how about the other folks? Can you introduce themselves? I'm Isaac Mandelsever. I'm Kim Gomez. So first of all, thank you for having us. So as you know, we're students from Montpiler High School. And we've been working on a project for our Global Issues and Perspectives class that consists of solving a problem in Montpiler that we think we can see that it's important. So we thought there are an indoor spark or an indoor public space for all ages. It would be a great idea, especially in the winter when it's too cold outside. And you just need it's too cold outside for hanging out. During our research, we found that there are currently feasibility studies being performed for potential construction of a new rec center. This led us to the conclusion that the best that we can do is attempt to provide a perspective of the students of this school, a place where most of the feasibility studies will not likely reach. The city center used to be a place to hang out, but ever since it became more business oriented, students have been increasingly removed for loitering. Currently, the only real option for students is the basement teen center, which is in this building. But unfortunately, it requires a sign up and often feels small and confined, leading many to avoid using it. Yeah, so we did a survey that we sent to all the students in Montpilier High School. And also, we did a survey that we sent to the town. And if you guys would want to see it, I can only give you a few examples. Funny? Precisely. That's the town, and that's you. I'll look at it and we'll pass it that way. Oh, they're both together. OK. Separate things. Two separate things. Two separate things. So after we got 53 answers from Montpilier High School students. And so we found out that 61.5% of the students of our school used the basement teen center less than once a year or never. And then the students that rarely use it, it's only 25%. Also in the same survey, we found out that most of the students often find themselves without a place to hang out around town during the winter time. And we got a 43.4% answer saying that they find themselves in this situation very often. And also we posted a survey in the front porch forum that I gave to you for the general community. And we got 43 responses. And when we asked if they would use a public space provided during the winter, 72% replied yes. And those who replied maybe were 25.6%. We proposed that this space be created as a part of the new rec center. We attempted to contact other spaces, such as the Atrium on 79 Main Street, Cine Center, City Center, and the current rec center. But unfortunately, they're not interested or not capable of running their spaces at this time. This project is something that many students clearly desire as well as people throughout the community. The addition of a space like this to this new building would be a large draw, encouraging more people to use the facility. We know that this was something that was already being considered, though we thought that we could provide some more information and hopefully persuade you to keep this in mind throughout the process of creating this new rec center. Thank you very much for your time. Great, any questions for this group? So my understanding of you correctly, there weren't any great, obvious solutions at this point. Was that more or less true? Yes. We contact, we email the city center if they would be willing to rent it. But they are concerned about the noise because there's people living around. And then we also email the space above the books there. Yeah, and they also said no because they're not interested in renting the place. So rec centers are our only option. Ashley, did you reach out to other communities that have bigger rec centers or bigger teen centers, I should say, than ours? Because ours, I agree, is pretty small. No, we did not. But that was what we were. I suppose if we wanted to pursue that more, we could do something like that. Donna, Jim? I haven't seen the survey. I just wondered if you mentioned about what time of day, what days were wanted? We didn't mention that in the survey, I don't think. Next time. The schedule would be the same as a park. As the park? As a park, like a normal park. It would be open every day, I think. Whatever the hours of Hubbard Park might be. Right. OK, thank you. Great. Well, I'm glad that you all looked into this, because this is also something that I think. I mean, it seems like the community does need something like this. So I'm glad you did some research into this. And I want to keep this in mind. I mean, one of our goals is to increase the park space for the city and thinking about what does that mean for the winter time? That's a great question. All right, thank you all so very much. Thank you, Heather McLean, for your support and all this. All right, so I want to do a little time check-in, because we are just going to have to jettison something. So I want to keep it to the things that are timely and essential right now. So I know the complete streets is definitely going to be next, but that's a topic that we had put off from previous meetings. So I want to do that. But I also just want to put a bug in your ear that we just got to keep moving forward on this. So that's one thing. Do we have the tax stabilization? I'm hoping that the tax stabilization will not be a long conversation. So I would like to keep that one. And I want to keep the water resource recovery conversation. But beyond that, should we need to do the pocket park? We need to do the pocket park, yes. Kevin, is the first time homebuyer thing have to go today? You can just prove it. I mean. I know, I think it's what's to next to you. I mean, it's timely in the sense that there are people waiting. My inclination is that that one might just have to wait. And I also anticipate that we were supposed to have a presentation from the community justice center. That is one I think that we're going to have to put off. It's not texted at her. I would like to put that one off, as well as the strategic plan. Like I have a couple of notes about that, I might just add them to my council report at the end. Just, my goal here, team, is that we are done by 10. That's my target, which really tells us, I'd love for this portion of it to be 20 minutes, if possible. And or less, or less. 20 minutes or less for this. I'll see you later. OK, great. Rocket docking. That's right. We've got to keep moving forward over there. Oh, sure. Take it away. Thanks, everybody. Kevin Casey, community development specialist. I'm here with Stu Sarota from Alta Planning and Design and Corey Lyne from the Department of Public Works. The plan that's being presented tonight is a combination of a number of years, the approximately two years since we received a grant from a combination of V-TRANS and Agency of Commerce and Community Development. It's called the Strong Communities Better Connections grant, which provided $45,000 of the grant, and we matched it with $5,000. The associated plan was actually a city council vote in 2016 or 15. And so this was applied for, and we received the funding from ACCD and V-TRANS. And Stu has stepped on in the last six months from Alta and kind of shepherded the project through the last really three or four months. And we're happy with what we've received. Thank you. Can anybody hear me OK with the microphone? OK, great. I'm glad you're here. It's great to be here. I'm sorry that I wasn't able to make it last month, and I'm feeling great now. And I'm really thrilled to be here. As Kevin said, I'm Stu Sarota. I'm with Alta Planning and Design, which is the firm hired by the city to undertake the plan. I'm also Alta's Northeast Regional Director. I'm actually based at Baltimore. And as Kevin said, I took charge of the plan several months ago. And this is my second trip to Montpelier, and I have to say I'm really enjoying your wonderful city. I am extremely smitten with it, and I hope to have more opportunities to come back and visit, but we're here to talk about the plan and to put things in context. A lot of people are not familiar with the term complete streets. And in our country, we're very fond of buzzwords. And this term complete streets is something that really implies something. It really implies that we need to do something differently that we haven't been doing. And you might think, well, how are our streets incomplete? Well, for the last 50, 60-plus years in the country, there's been a culture and a practice of building places around the car. And these two images could really be anywhere. Fortunately, there's nothing like this, especially on the image on the left here in Montpelier, but this is a very, very common scene where most places and most streets and roads are really filled with the car in mind and really little else for other modes, whether it's walking, biking, transit. And so there's really been a movement for the last 10 or 15 years to really start thinking differently about these things. Even in a quaint, charming downtown like Montpelier, which is very walkable, sometimes we can still feel like the car is certainly king, right? That streets are really made for the cars, and it can be challenging at times to find room for other modes. And that's what this plan and that's what complete streets plans are really all about. This is just a quick sample from other parts of the country. To date, there's over 2,000 in growing, complete streets, policies, and plans that are in various stages right now. The lower right-hand image, I think, is Burlington, actually. So there's really a lot going on. People are very interested in this. So here are some examples from other parts of the country where these sorts of transformations are starting to happen, where there is still plenty of room for cars and safe and efficient car movement. But these are places that are also welcoming and safe for bicyclists, pedestrians, and also transit patrons. So there are numerous benefits. I won't really spend time on any of this, but there is a growing and large body of evidence and knowledge as to why doing this matters from a health benefit and a public health standpoint from a fiscal and from a personal finance benefit and also social. There are many different social benefits. It's much safer, and people feel safer when traffic is not moving as fast and there are less crashes. So lots and lots of benefits of doing this sort of thing. So when we hit the ground running here, our team looked at many different aspects of Montpelier's street network. We looked at traffic volumes. We looked at speeds and also limits. We looked at both existing and planned bicycling infrastructure. We looked at the existing transit network. And we also looked at land use and the actual development patterns, where people are coming from and where they really need to go. And all of that fed into our overall analysis. And from all of this, we came up with a street typology. What does that mean? It means that as you can see on the map, every street in the city is color-coded in one of the different seven street types. And what these are, this is really the heart and soul of the project, where and don't expect people to read this at this scale, but this is a chart that shows that these seven different types are grouped based on the different characteristics and the different aspects of each of the different types that you have here in the city. And by grouping them, we can also start to look at how things can be looked at and changed over time. What kind of treatments can be done for each of these types? And so we've very much catalogued the widths and the lane widths and the right of ways and things that are sort of an optimal width and things that are sort of the maximum recommended. And down near the bottom of the table, that sort of bottom section shows the different pedestrian and also bicycle treatments that I'm going to be talking about briefly here that would actually fit and which would be appropriate for each of these different types. So let me just back up for one second. One thing to note about this table is that on the left-hand side, types 1 and 2 are the most sort of major roads, the ones that are, the ones that where cars move the fastest and where there's the highest volumes. On the far right side, type 6 and 7 tends to be the ones where there is the least. It's the opposite. And in the middle, there's that fine grade where you have more of the sort of urban environment within the core where you would expect to see more people walking and more people biking. So just to show some examples of each of the types, how you can see that the character of each of these goes from sort of major thoroughfares to major roadways to more medium-sized roadways and then to the more local and even rural streets. So if you take, for example, I've focused in on typology 3, you can read down there and see within that typology, that is the sort of aspirational roadway characteristics for streets within that type. And towards the bottom, where those dots are, those are the different treatments that would be appropriate within that type. So what are those actual treatments? I'm just going to highlight some of those. So these are things that we all know. These are pretty standard things, sidewalks and paved shoulders. And in the plan, there is guidance on each of these in terms of the widths and the sort of guidance that where each of these should be or should not be based on the different types. Also sort of standard bike lanes. But then we have something called advisory shoulders, which are still a rather new type. It's still an experimental treatment sanctioned by the Federal Highway Administration right now. It's really meant for local through roads where there's lower traffic volumes. And it adds dashed lines. It sort of creates a shoulder for where bikes can be. But cars, it really signals for drivers when they see people on foot or on bikes that they should yield. And then once you start getting into roadway types where there are higher speeds and higher volumes, the idea is really to begin separating cyclists so that they're not in mixed or shared traffic. So the treatment on top is called a side path. Sometimes that's also called a shared use path. And there's guidance for that. And then ultimately separated bike lanes, which are really becoming popular in many different parts of the country. There is a growing body of evidence, again, that really shows that many people who would like to bike, whether it's for fun or for getting to school or work or some other trip purpose, but who don't feel safe riding in the roadway would feel safe if there was a separate dedicated pathway. And it doesn't have to be off in the woods or anything, but it could be right parallel next to the road with only a minimal curb or some other kind of physical separation. And this just shows a graphic that shows how a dedicated bike lane can be inserted along the edge of the road that it's meant only four people on bikes that would be separate from the actual sidewalk. And so just to show this table once more, you can see that for each different treatment, going across that way, this one focuses in on the actual separated bike lanes and shows what the different street types would be, where it makes most sense. And this is a, I'll call it, a really general guideline here. So in addition to the overall street types, we also included in the plan other forms of guidance that aren't necessarily tied to the different types of streets, but would be looked at on a case-by-case basis and a project-by-project basis. Things like intersection crossings, crosswalk treatments, there's also conflict areas where there are turn lanes and you have bike lanes and use green paint or down on the right there, what we call bike boxes. So bikes can wait and dwell at a red light and the cars know that that's a space meant for bikes. We also include guidance on the traffic calming as well as transit. These are some images of the different traffic calming measures, speed tables and humps, as well as bump outs, diverters. And then also thinking about transit and the proper placement for transit stops. And I understand that you're going to be talking later in the evening about a potential FTA grade for transit-oriented development, which I think might have great promise here. I think that's a very interesting opportunity. And then things such as streetscape design, things like lighting and furniture and bike racks, as well as green infrastructure, which I know that you all have been working on for years and how that can fit into the actual street scape with stormwater areas that can also be extremely attractive amenities for the street. And this idea also of placemaking, which is how to use the public right of way and public plazas and streets to actually take back areas to sort of humanize and help calm traffic, but also to create more of a sense of place and to actually draw in more people to linger. This is a very vital concept in planning. We're doing a lot more of this. So there is some guidance there in the plan as well. And then towards the end of the plan, we also wanted to include several samples of how existing streets could be transformed or actually retrofitted with some of these treatments. And at the top is just a sample cross section of an existing street. It's a four lane section currently. And within the same right of way, with showing the first option, it's possible to narrow those lanes and create a side path for pads and bikes, where currently there really isn't enough room because the lanes are so wide right now. So you can kind of reclaim some of that without actually reducing the number of lanes. Alternative two goes a little further, and it's what we call a road diet, where we go from four lanes down to three lanes, but you pick up a center turn lane, which can actually make it safer. And at the same time, you can add more room for bikes for a side path, as well as for a paved shoulder. And the second example that we showed at the top shows an existing two-way downtown section with very wide lanes, but overly wide. And if you think of this as the same width from end to end or side to side, there's a lot that can actually be done in looking at the first option. Sorry, I'm going to interrupt you. I just want to be conscious of the time. We're almost like two minutes. I should have said that after the first half, so thank you. So the first example shows how if there was a willingness on that particular section of street to remove on-street parking, you could add a separated two-way bikeway. With the second alternative, you could retain one side of the street as on-street parking, but also add bike lanes. And there's other things that can be done also, but these are just a couple of examples. So before you go off that, I do have a quick question there. How many of our streets in Montpelier have the width to do that? Well, so in this particular example, so this is modeled off of existing State Street in front of the Capitol. So there's the right of way there. And we actually measured the lane widths. They're really wide. And wide lanes sort of encourage cars to go faster. It's just a visual cue. But if either of those things were done, you could see that they're still adequate and ample room for the lanes. And all of those widths there are actually tied back to the table that I showed earlier. OK. Thank you. And then so in terms of implementation, working with Kevin and Mike and Corey here over the last year, we established a proposed framework in terms of how projects could be implemented. And again, it's a little bit too small to read on the screen. But it can either be done in a top box, A, through the regular O&M or operations maintenance, such as every year there's roads that are going to be repaved. And if they are minor projects like installing bike lanes, it's really just paint. So when you would go to pave those sections, that could be done as part of the regular O&M schedule. For more significant projects, B would be projects that would be prioritized through the capital improvements program. And then under that, showing the numerous steps that would be needed to get that from planning into implementation. And then finally, last but not least, we also recommend doing pilot and pop-up projects to really test out ideas. Some of these things might be controversial, but there is always trade-offs and pros and cons and trying something out and seeing if it works well or for a period of six months or a year to see how it does. And that's something that can also be tried. This is just a photo that one of the people on my staff took of Montpelier downtown when a parklet was installed, I think, within the last year or so. And this is the kind of place-making project or effort that can really show how things can transform over time. And so pilot projects can be a very useful tool. That's what I have and wanted to save as much time for any questions that you all might have. Anything that either of these gentlemen might want to add to what I've already said. Great. Thank you so much. Rosie. So I was a little confused during the materials. I assume that this is sort of a summary of other, like is there a plan for each actual street or did you just do typology and say this typology should do this thing? We were very deliberate working with staff to come up with street types and then show a couple of samples, but not tie it to specific locations. OK. And I don't know if anyone wants to add anything to that. But that was the approach that we wanted to take for the project. I'm going to interrupt here because I had the same question. I mean, this is an incredible document. I was very happy to geek out in this. It was so fun. And I really want to translate all of this work to some kind of a work plan. Do you know what I mean? How do we lay this out? It wasn't totally clear to me, sort of like Bill's question. So if we're designating certain typologies for streets, what aspects of these streets fit that and what needs to be changed? That wasn't totally clear to me. And what would need to be done? So coming from this proposal, what are our next steps? And I think that's sort of where you were getting at at the end with some of these things are easy. We can build them in. Others were going to need to have a more robust process around that. But the part of me that really likes to go deep with this kind of thing, I almost want to be able to see what is that list look like. And let's parse it out into this one's going to be easy. This one, if we want to do it, is going to take some time. Yeah, so if you do look at the map, there was, for example, a special study area. One of the pieces that we didn't include in this project was state domain. And part of that was a need to do, it really needs further study and a streetscape plan. And so you could apply a general typology to it, but it wouldn't take into account the entire unit of nature of those two areas. The idea was that when we have these typologies, it goes out and it identifies what your optimal situation is. So then when it comes time for CORE to do a project on the street, they may look at that and say, OK, this is this typology. Then what will it need? What are the existing conditions, the current existing conditions, and make the list of what needs to be done at that time? Excuse me, that's one pathway forward. That also feels very passive to me, like, oh, we're happening to do this anyway. Let's build it in. But if that's really what we want, then let's put it on the list and get it done. I'd rather be more active about it. This is me, personally speaking. But I think we also, does it seem reasonable to come up with that list of here are the things that need to happen to enact these things? Can I answer that? I think also Mike Miller might want to answer that, too. Go ahead, Donna, and then Mike. I've been on the committee. This is we've been working a long time, year plus. And I see it as a tool. And so it's out there to use every time we want. And if the city council adopts a complete street one as its guideline, let alone this report, then the staff would integrate it, I think, with the CIP. And then we're looking at streets and what we're doing. And we move forward in a consistent, very aggressive way. So the answer is kind of both? Yes. But we need to adopt. It's not a passive intention at all. It's being very aggressive in an affordable way that you can sustain. I would say that this plan is your kit of parts that you're used to begin implementing, moving forward. Yeah. OK. Mike? Yeah, so I just wanted to go in through a comment that one of the other things we wanted to do with this plan was to make sure we got on paper what our street types would be for every street. Because what we wanted to make sure, first of all, we would have an entire network. We didn't want to have a bike path that just comes to an end because there wasn't a plan for what was going to happen or no bike path is coming up one way and a bike path is coming down another way. We wanted to make sure we had a network so we could have a map that would say, you could know if you lived on Town Hill, how would you get into town on a bike? How would you get into town by foot? You'd actually have it on the map. It may not all be there, but we could start to go and look at. We really need to have a sidewalk here to complete this. We could do a little bit more of that gap analysis. The other thing we wanted to be able to do with this product with the map is to make sure that we didn't have a battle on every street. We really need to know how the network's going to look, and we can't go and have a battle which goes and says, we're going to have on street parking on this street and then halfway down when it comes time to pave the next street, on street parking loses and we have a bike path. So we have a bike path that goes to nowhere because it runs into on street parking because we didn't have a plan in place that said, this street, is this street going to have on street parking or is this plan going to have, is this street going to have a bike path? Because it can't have both. We don't have the real estate to have both on a lot of our roads. So we kind of have to pick it. And so part of the plan is we put something on a map. We can argue and debate and change it at some point, but the idea now is we've set out what we think it should be and now we can start to plan ahead to make that happen. And as opposed to street by street, segment by segment, paving project by paving project have a battle between parking interests and bike interests. So is it the intention of this group to continue to meet, to flesh this out? I think the plan is intended to kind of be wrapped up and it's, we hope it's gonna be more of a static plan, but it's a plan and it can be adjusted and changed as conditions change and as situations change, we're having discussions about whether or not we build a parking garage in the downtown. That could impact how we treat some of our streets going forward. If we decide to build a parking garage, maybe that on-street parking is not as needed. If we decide not to have a parking garage, maybe we need to have more on-street parking. So it's not meant to be fixed, fixed, but the idea is you would shift from one street typology, each type is meant to be internally consistent. So it's meant that if we adopt a type three street, it's going to be safe for a pedestrian. It's going to be safe for a biker and it's going to be safe for a car. You can't just mix and match parts because you can't put bikes next to on-street parking or you'll get doored. So you have certain things that you can put together in certain pieces you can't and we've thought about those when we put together types that work internally. Somebody could say, I don't like this as a class five or a type five street. I think it should be a type six street. That's a policy decision, but we know type five streets are safe and we know type six streets are safe. It's really becomes a policy decision as to how we want to handle it and those are some of the discussions we want to have. We've created a bunch of safe streets and we can adjust the map going forward but we've made a map so now everybody can say, I like this, I like how my street is designated or I don't like how my street is designated. Thank you. Ashley. The other thing I would just point out because I know that it's going to come up. Four of these typologies, five of these typologies include no parking at all and right now the only parking that we have in a lot of parts of town is on street. So I just wanna be mindful of that as we sort of think about all of this moving forward and I know that there are some big decisions for us to make about a number of different things and I think that's an integral part of the conversation because unfortunately we're still in a place where we need to have that conversation. Other comments, Jack? I get what you're saying that every street type like this is safe. One thing that I'm curious about because I think we all hear people complaining about the traffic in this little town and coming from a big city. You think it's a joke that people complain about traffic here and logically so but is there data on the street on whether moving to a system like this has any effect on speed of traffic flow? Well, I think that you can't make a blanket statement about something like that. I think that there is a healthy body of evidence that shows that there are demonstrable benefits for doing things like road diets but also not just benefits but that it also improves safety and that it can actually improve traffic flow. In the case of a four lane section that has no turning lanes is often higher crash sites because people get rear ended if there are lots of driveways or turns. There's a lot of evidence to show that things like road diets actually reduce the number of lanes from four to three where it's warranted, where it can work and where the volumes are within acceptable limits that it can actually reduce the number of crashes and actually have the benefits about introducing bikers and walkers and be able to improve access. I think everything is always about trade-offs. I think that if there's a certain project that might result in a little bit longer peak hour delay to get from point A to point B in the morning peak that might increase your travel time as a driver from say three minutes to three and a half minutes is that a worthwhile trade-off to get what you're gonna sort of benefit from? So I think that's also sort of a policy decision on a case-by-case basis but there's a lot of evidence out there. When you see what I was hoping you were gonna say was if you get rid of parking on one side of the street that actually enables traffic to go faster because you don't have people stopping for people who are parallel parking but it sounds like you are saying there is a potential trade-off and obviously three to three and a half minutes or three to five minutes is not. It can be a complex issue because if you take away on-street parking and it helps speed up traffic that may not be what your objective is. You might not want traffic to go faster. You want it to flow. You want it to flow steadily but at a slower rate to make it more acceptable more calm and even more so in a sort of downtown area. So again, there's no easy answer there. It's really quite a complex issue. And oftentimes there has been shown that by getting rid of on-street parking which has an economic value to those businesses sometimes if you put a protected bike lane in its place that will actually increase access for the number of people and shoppers there. There have been studies shown that but I'm not saying that you should always get rid of it or you should always keep it. It's really on a case-by-case basis. And I guess hypothetically if you're making these streets safer for other modes you're expecting people to use those other modes if not as many vehicles are cluttering the streets and making it easier to get less vehicles. Glenn. Thank you. It's really neat presentation. And I don't want to draw anyone out too far but one of the most interesting parts for me was where you pointed out that one of the alternative samples was based on State Street. Hypothetically. Hypothetically. And it was really interesting to me to imagine State Street in those two alternate modes. I wonder if anyone would be willing to give an example of a really ripe spot in Montpelier for a change in this direction along that kind of line like imagine State Street being narrower lanes, bike lanes on both sides. Any other spots? Well, I would imagine that in the follow-up study that that will probably be part of that scope of work. I wouldn't, I don't think that we want to venture at this point because we haven't done that kind of analysis. Yeah. Donna. We actually do have the Main Street scoping that is looking at that for Main Street. That's what we're talking about. And if you put in roundabouts you don't, you get rid of the turn lanes so you have more space. If you do some angle or parking, there's lots of ways on Main Street you can make it look like that. And we have some concepts that are going to be coming from the Main Street scoping study. It feeds right into this. It's good. Get ready for it in August. Right. So I'm really excited about this. In my mind, we can't do it fast enough, right? Like I'm excited to get into it. So my understanding was that we were just hearing this report, but Donnie mentioned something about accepting this. I don't know that my interpretation is that we don't need a motion on any of this, but what's your thought? Well, I was going back from a statement from Tom that he said he really needed a statement ultimately from the city council adopting a resolution about complete streets as far as guiding DPW. And so I assume at some point the study would be accepted, whether it's now or not. I was surprised on the agenda that isn't brought up, but I thought we would want acceptance. Apparently the city doesn't have technically a complete streets policy. We follow state statute, but we don't have a local policy. We don't have our own policy. I mean, one hypothesis is that we could make a motion tonight and say, we accept this as the toolkit and we want to follow these guidelines as much as we can. Another hypothesis is that we wait and you could bring us a more outlined resolution that we could approve at a later time. I also think that just given some of the areas where there is no designated parking, I think it needs to be a much bigger conversation just because of all of the feedback that we've received. So I would not be in favor of any sort of motion or resolution tonight because I think it needs more public input. How do you feel about coming back with a resolution? I mean. Yeah, I mean, I think my general feeling on it was was that the presentation tonight would then kind of open up a period, which is why I didn't put a resolution on it. Now it's open up a period for public comment. Yes. And I think Mike alluded to this as well, is that this isn't a, you can adopt it as a complete streets plan that doesn't mean that individual streets or to Ashley's concern about parking that you don't adopt a plan just because of a single street or whatever. I'm just saying, because it's included in the presentation tonight, if the request is that we adopt the presentation, I mean, that includes a list of potential proposed streets. And I don't think, I think I would need to see the August report before adopting anything like that. I understood this, not to be the Bible of every street, but the ideal of every street. And hence, even within the EMTIC, the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, we discussed parking and we know we're gonna need parking, but the ideal is to go to this complete street vision and then say, okay, in this street, where are we going to have to make a compromise and try to not compromise too much, but to have an ideal, this is the ideal. So I just... So maybe bearing that in mind that there may be some exceptions that's not necessarily blanket, particularly considering parking. Could you all come back with a resolution that we could vote on? Maybe EMTIC should make a recommendation to the Council of how they'd like to proceed with this. That's resolution and plan a process for rolling it out. They're the ones that have worked with it and hearings and... All right, does that sound all right to everybody? Sure. I know the EMTIC would like a resolution from the Council on traffic calming too. So maybe we could do that together. Okay, great. Thank you so much. Thank you. This is really very cool. I didn't know if we were gonna discuss that now. I know we're hurt for time. Yeah, yeah. I snuck it in. I was really glad to see the traffic calming. Well, I know that the committee is looking for some sort of guidance on whether a traffic calming program would be accepted by this Council or not, or... Like a straw vote tonight or something. I think there's a real need for a traffic calming process. I think some of the questions that you outlined at the end of this, if I can scroll fast enough down there, those felt like the right questions. So what I picture is we either need some kind of a policy or process through which we can handle traffic calming suggestions or requests, right? So speed tables, additional crosswalks, et cetera. So I'm either looking at city staff or the MTIC group to come up with defining that process. And that's something that, when people from a particular street say, hey, we'd really like it to get speed bumps or speed table, that we can crank it through that process. And they get input from other neighbors or it's vetted by these four different departments or whatever it is, whatever that process looks like. I think that would be a useful thing for us so that we can equitably evaluate traffic calming requests. Does that answer your question? Yeah, that type of what you're speaking about takes a lot of time to put together. And I think their fear was, let's not go through that and then present it to the council and just not anyone be interested in it. Because it's, like I said in my memo, in the late 1990s, that's what happened. I would assume that if you gave us some check-ins along the way, don't come to us with the final draft, maybe with like a first draft, are we on the right track? That way we can avoid the, you've worked for six months on it and yeah. I think you're also asking, is this something that you want staff to pursue traffic calming as a theory, right? Like not just the process, but some total. Two separate things. So before we get to that question, are other people in straw-pull style here, just in favor of having some kind of a process? I think what you're outlining, the process by which if there's a request from the public, we go through evaluating that request would be really useful and I would be in favor of directing the committee to work on that, okay? And then the second question, what you're asking is me. I'm seeing a lot of head nods here, so that's good. The second thing that I'm hearing from you is do we want to pursue traffic calming just in general? And to that, I guess I would say, I'm in favor of complete streets plan. Beyond that, I'm not sure I'm in favor of traffic calming for the sake of traffic calming, except where it's identified that people need it. I don't know, other thoughts? It's a tool of complete streets. Yeah, Glenn. I'll say personally that as a chronic pedestrian, I'm almost always in favor of traffic calming and as a resident on Prospect Street, I'm specifically in favor of traffic calming on Prospect Street, so if that helps. Small data point. East state too. Yeah. I'm not sure I really answered your question. I think the committee has its guidance. Okay. The other just point about check-ins periodically, anything you want to put in the weekly memo about kind of the direction you're headed would be useful and then we can flag it and say, oh no, don't do that or this seems problematic, but without having to come and do a formal presentation. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Likewise. What are you opening them up to your office of all time? Oh boy, that would be a dream come true inside. My daughter goes to count you. Oh really? I'm done here. Half a mile from there. Okay, so just a reality check team. I'm anticipating an end time of 10.30. Just, that seems overly optimistic. Do you think? And yeah, I'm hopeful. I'm hopeful. Oh really? Okay. I figured 11.30. Okay. I'm gonna aim for 10.30 though. So moving right along, I think we are up to the pocket park discussion. Word, you're welcome to come up and- Backstabilization since they're here. Well, the word's here too, but- I guess I'm in favor of doing an order that's on here. Word, do you wanna come up and introduce yourself? You don't really need to say anything necessarily, but- I don't, yeah. So- I don't. No, I don't. I'm Ward, Joyce. And I've developed four different public space projects in Montpelier, starting with the pocket park, or excuse me, the parklet, which was the last slide in the complete streets. The parklet moved over and became the pocket park. Then I did Langdon Street Alive, and then Ann and I just did the Girhton pocket park. The pocket park that we're talking about here seems to me like a conflict between a landowner and a lessee. And I don't know who the lessee is. It's kind of Montpelier. It's kind of VTC. It's kind of me. And we appear to have an intractable situation where the Jacobs family's asking more than anybody seems to wanna provide. So $30,000 is a lot all of a sudden. But I wanted to thank the council, most of you are new for four years of support on this kind of project. I think one of our biggest victories was the pocket park program, which grew out of the pilot. So now that we have pocket parks formalized, that's a positive outcome of this. Did you say something? I mean the parklets? Parklets. Did I say pocket parks? Okay, no. I stumbled between these two. The parklet program is a victory or is an outcome of this tactical work. So the pocket park across the street wasn't meant to last 10 years. It was meant to last two or three or four. So if indeed it's going to be evicted in 30 days because the city doesn't wanna come up with more than $5,000, which I understand, so be it. It's gonna go away. It cost about $50,000 to put there or 40. Maybe it's worth about 40,000. And so it seems heartbreaking in a sense that it's gonna go away because it had the potential to be a changer for the city in terms of urban quality and vitality. But I think it's kind of an intractable conversation. And the bottom line is that if I don't champion that park, it goes away. And maybe that's a reflection of the fact that it hasn't landed on fertile ground. I don't know. I've been told by more than 50 people that it was one of the nicest public spaces in downtown. And yet, it's a short-term installation. And so I just wanna thank you all for, I wanna thank the city. I wanna thank Tom McCartle and everybody that's helped make these things happen. And the reason I brought up the parklet program is because it's just important for all of us to remember that these efforts do wanna lead to change. And so the parklet program was a great outcome. And let's hope that when Park Pocket Parks and Park Blitz and all these things come up that we continue to support them because they do make our city a better place to live. So I think we can talk in some general terms about this. But I just wanna say one thing. Yes. Jesse Jacobs did tell me today that he is interested in compromising. But he will not be specific, which is a little challenging. So his current line is 30, and I don't know whether he'd come down to 20. But he did offer an opportunity for a lower price, but not specific. I mean, I'm gonna speak for myself. I'm not interested in offering any more than we have already offered on a yearly basis. I am potentially interested in purchasing the land if we could do so for what is an appraised value and I would not wanna offer any more than an appraised amount. Does anyone have different thoughts? An additional thought. An additional thought? Yes. Is there any other place that we could move the park to? We're working on that actually. We may have some options. Yes, Jesse. We have an option, yeah. So along those same lines, when this came before the council in, it has come, the decision has come before the council before an executive session of whether this is a worthwhile thing to be negotiating on. So we have, this council and the prior council have discussed this. And I feel like this is a good use of a vacant lot, but if the landlord is saying that it's valued higher and he can get more for this lot, then we, the city would benefit from some higher use there. So if he can rent it or sell it to someone who would build housing or create some other public benefit, then I wouldn't want us to stand in the way of that by offering a higher rental price for it than it's worth. And I do think that we've done our due diligence than we are offering more even than the assessed value. I also wanna point out that we have this city hall park right across the street that is very close to the pocket park and with the amount of money that we would potentially put towards a lease agreement, we could do some really great things with that space and that could use some refreshing. So we own a piece of land that is very close by and we could do some cool stuff. Right. And I would say the best outcome is for us all to learn that public space improvements are of value. And so it's tactically a strategy to show us the value of doing that. So I accept that as a kind of surprise by the 40, 50 K to set it up to begin with there. If you were to take it down and move it somewhere else, are you talking a similar amount or? No, we could move it, we could move it less expensively and I think we would have support to do it. No, it's just that's the value of what got built there. That your original materials. Yeah, the materials, the labor, the design, and the land use, the donation of the land, the water. We had backhoes on the site. I mean, it took some money to build it. Jack, do you have comment? I just completely agree with you that we see, I think we all see the value of open public space in downtown. I was thinking when we were listening to the high school students earlier that one of my many brothers and a friend of his lived in the opposite ends of the town that we grew up in. And so my brother and his friend, Goober, just picked out a corner, roughly in the middle of the two spaces and say they just hang out on this guy's front yard. And they go and we'll meet you over at Rock and Ackerman and they'd be there just hanging out. And people need spaces like that to hang out. And I think we are gonna continue to value that kind of thing. I also agree with everything Rosie said. Okay, I assume that's all that probably needs to be said at this point. Other than we look forward to working with you in the future. And I hope that if the offer that we've made is not acceptable or if there's no possibility of purchasing the land for the praised value that we'll find another location for it, that it's not wholly going away, it's just changing form a little bit. Yeah, and I think it was a generous offer. Okay, thank you very much. Holding it there and see you again soon. Okay, thank you. Okay, so now the tax stabilization proposal. And Anne, we definitely, we're not doing Community Justice Center, right? We're definitely not doing Community Justice Center. After this, I don't think we're doing strategic planning either. So we have two more. Okay. Hello, my name is Shannon McIntyre. I am one of six owners at Timberhomes, Vermont. And we are planning to build a shop on Elm Street this summer and fall in between Pearl Street Motors and Vermont Tree Experts. And I'm here to seek tax stabilization. Love it too. So you have their request, you have the letter, the information that I prepared, great help from Jamie. And we just did this recently. So feel free to ask whatever questions you want. You do have to hold two hearings to open the hearing. Okay, so at this point we'll open the public hearing for this tax stabilization. So members of the public can come and comment, but also counselors, Ashley, did you have a question? Yes. How many people are currently employed at your business? We have 11 long-term people and four summer short-term hires. And so I'm assuming then in eight A, it's expected that the Montpelier shop will ultimately employ between seven and nine people. That means just staff retention as is. So that's not seven to nine additional positions. That's just the existing positions. It's not additional positions, but it's a move from our, currently our only shop is Inverter, which is about an hour south of here. And it's kind of like one of those places you can't get there from here. And a lot of people who have been working in that shop are hoping to move to Montpelier. So it's sort of a migration within our company. Oh, Jack. The biggest question I have is probably not a surprise to you, which is it sounds like you're probably gonna do this whether you get the tax stabilization agreement or not. Is that a fair statement? That is a fair statement. Yeah, it's a big enough project that tax stabilization is not a make it or break it thing for the project. It would be a really meaningful and welcome gesture as we go through this period of growth. And as our tax bill in Montpelier goes from it's currently $1,000 up to I believe it's between 13 and 15 is what's been estimated. So it would be a help for us as we grow our overhead, but we are planning to move forward whether we get stabilization or not. Are there any other types of infrastructure upgrades? So I think I've been pretty clear in my position about tax stabilization as not the best way to create economic growth in Montpelier. Are there infrastructure things that the city could do to assist your business or frankly other businesses that are interested in moving to Montpelier because I think that's what cities do. Cities build infrastructure and cities house people and cities create space for people to be. And so I'm curious if there are other tangible things that you could identify like infrastructure upgrades or space areas or sidewalks or things like that that you could identify that the city could do since that's sort of where I stand in terms of creating economic growth in Montpelier. The only thing that pops into mind probably because we just watched this presentation is better bike lanes out to our property on Elm Street. But it's pretty far outside the city so I can't think of anything else really that would affect us very much. Rosie. Will there, is there any possibility of any sort of public benefit to the space? I think you back up on the river there, yes. There's some, I know you're planning to build a building but there's some open land around there. Is there anything you're thinking along those lines or would be willing to consider along those lines? Yes, certainly. I mean we have been planning on building this shop for years and so there's been lots of talk about how to use more than half of our land is in the river corridor so it can't be built on anyway. And it's a beautiful parcel of land behind a knoll so it's sort of shielded from Elm Street. And there has been talk of the, at least the floodplain portion of our land going into conservation or being accessible by the public in some way. That's the major. So for, when you come back the second time, if you have further thoughts on that or anything more concrete that comes out of that that would be really helpful to me in understanding whether to support it or not. And in general in the past when we've considered these when there has been a public benefit like that that's much higher incentive to support the project so. Great. Glenn. Just to further parse that point that Ashley brought up earlier about employment and employment changes. The text in 8A is the project, the project can demonstrate to the satisfaction of the council that the project will positively effect in a significant way the number of employment opportunities in Montpelier. So I can read that I believe as there are no new jobs being created total. You're not adding people but you are moving people that you already employ from a different place into Montpelier. And whether that is an employment opportunity that is added to Montpelier and whether it's significant, seem like questions for us on the council. I don't know if that's a question to you or a point to bring up to the rest of the council if anyone has any thoughts on that point. Just as a point of information, not opinion. This is the only person around when this policy was free. It was intended to be new jobs coming into Montpelier. So that was a bright line, even if they were just coming from middle sex or a neighboring town, it would actually be in the city limits. No, I think the question of, and I think we tried to put that in our analysis of, is that significant, that's really her. It's just those are the words and you can make your own finding. And just to get a little more detailed also, we're intending on hiring three of our summer help people. On to help us build the shop and our, we don't want to get much bigger than 12, maybe at the outside 15 long-term people, but I see a sort of summer crew in our future pretty consistently. So I don't want to come out and say, we'll have 15 people employed in Montpelier, but we'll waffle between 12, 15 full-time people and then a small summer crew as well. Okay, so at this point, we don't necessarily need to make a decision. Any other comments for the public? All right, so I'll close the public hearing. If there's anything specific you'd like them to come back with for the second hearing, have you mentioned the public amenities? If there's anything else, any information? Now's the time to communicate that. Feel free to check in with city staff and connect with them on that sort of thing. I'd actually like to see how much you're going to be paying this seasonal workers that you're planning on bringing on board there. If you have like an hourly rate or if it was a contract, you know, it'd be something I'd be interested in. Oh, I could tell you. Do you want to know? Oh, that'd be great. The ones that we have on hire this summer and through the fall are making $18 an hour. Great, thanks. Super. No further questions, all right? So we'll take up the second hearing for this at our, I think it's our next council meeting. Two weeks. Okay, thank you very much. Thank you. Two weeks. Okay, and I think this is our last item for tonight. Did we decide we were or we're not going to do the home? Didn't Rosie pull something? Oh, that's right, we got to do that too. Yeah, it'll be passed, I'm sure. Did you want to do the, or we should do the? Do the what? The home buyer thing, Kevin's thing. I wasn't clear where we ended up. I would, I think I want to go with the wastewater, water resource recovery, facility presentation first. Cause I think we have some, that's a big decision for us that think it's going to require some conversation. So if it's not 1030, by the time we're done with that conversation, then maybe we could take that up. But I don't, I don't, it's not critically urgent that we make this decision about the home buyers program tonight. Is that right? Except for the people are maybe waiting. There's that Jack. But our next meeting is still before the fiscal year starts. So, so we could do it on June 27. I don't know what the agenda is already looking like for June 27. Yeah, it's not as well. So, cause it wouldn't take effect until the next fiscal year anyway. Oh, okay. Okay, let's do, let's plan on that. Okay, thank you. Okay. Take it away. Okay. So I'm Kurt Modica of Public Works. So I sent a memo out on June 1st that sort of outlined why we wanted to have this discussion here tonight. Basically, in order to progress the various aspects of the project to be ready for a bond vote in November, what we need from council tonight is which alternative that we presented on May 9th is the most preferred by council. So we presented a base case of just doing the aging infrastructure at the plant, the sort of middle case of doing some digestor upgrades but not maximizing methane production and then the largest, the biggest scope project which is really setting up for a second phase to utilize the methane for beneficial use. So, in the memo that I sent out on June 1st, we are recommending to go with the large two phase project, right now we'd only be developing phase one, phase two would really come after we're up and running. So we have an opportunity to measure the methane, we have an opportunity to really get comfortable with all the new equipment that we're gonna have at the plant before taking on an additional burden on our staff for running additional equipment and really just give us a little more time to vet out all the options. We've been talking a lot about CHP, there are a lot of other options for the methane. One thing that was brought up as a dryer that we did look at solids, biosolids dryer that we looked at early on in the project but I think it's worth taking a step back and looking at that a little closer. I really wanted to find a way to get it to district heat that's probably not gonna be economical but if the grant comes along between the next year or so, it may be economical. So I just wanna keep all our options on the table, move forward with the project. The phase one, get our equipment up and running and replace it needs to be upgraded. But we didn't wanna proceed with getting contractor pricing and setting up all our measurement protocol for verifying the savings that is in the contract with ESG, our consultant and really finalizing the contract itself with them. All that is gonna take time and we really need the next few months concurrent with our pilot test of the septage at the plant in order to get everything ready in November. So that's really just happy to answer any questions that everybody has about the various options that we're looking at or the two phases. Most of my questions are probably more for Todd. Financial? Yes. Hello. So I'm glad that you sent that memo out the other day about debt servicing and sort of our bonding ability. So can you explain to everyone that's listening who will listen, who's watching to all of us sort of what the impact would be? So if we approve the recommendation from DPW, what would that mean come time to bond in like PlainSpeak? So what would it mean in terms of when it comes time to bond? Like is there a complication because of it? Well, so we have limits that we have set for ourselves as a city. And I think I want to make sure, I want everyone else to understand what we sort of know about that. So prior city council adopted debt service policies that limit or intended to limit the debt service from a general fund to 8.2% and for the municipality as a whole to 15% of total revenues. The memo that I sent out to you indicates what it would look like by adding this larger debt when it would be 12.6 or $16 million into the total municipal graphic. We'd still be well within policy limits taking on either one of these options. The financing structure is not finalized at this point because we don't have a definitive scope. So I'd indicated that I was presuming a five year interest only payment with 20 year principal interest following. We could extend that out to lower our debt service ultimately at a larger cost. But there's different options and I don't really know exactly what rates we're going to do. We're in a strange environment right now. So that's another variable. But the cost of instruction continues to go up as well as we see almost daily. So, you know, those are just risks associated with this. Now as far as the policy goes, the city council adopted it to be a policy limit for itself. It can certainly change or limit that policy if it were to, as far as the bond bank or the outside sector is concerned as far as us exceeding that policy. That is a best practice, but our legal authority to borrow is significant according to state statute at least. And it runs, don't hold me to this, but about a hundred times our grand list, which is in excess of $8 billion, we're at like 30 million right now. So it's so far beyond the scope of anything that we would ever. We just took our breath away. But the purpose of the policy was to have a responsible outlook for both the current users and the current residents and future residents and not strap future generations with a whole bunch of debt for a current project. This does have the benefit of lasting 25 plus years regardless of which option you choose. So I think the debt will advertise appropriately with the project itself. And it has the potential for significant upside down the road as well. I did not factor in the revenue gains that we are predicting for this project in that graphic. So I took total revenue that we know as of today increased that by half a percent each year going forward, but we're actually going to have a greater revenue source assuming everything comes together. And to our lower net payment if you look at it there. And a lower net payment. So there's variables right now where this, just in common speech where this would impact us is if we didn't change the policy took on a $16 million debt here and then wanted to build a $15 million recreation center. Then we're going to be really starting to look at are we amending our policy or are we doing something different with the financing? I personally and Bill Chai-Min look at the TIF district financing slightly differently. If that were to go, if we were to do something with the TIF district since the bulk of that repayment will come from education funds that we wouldn't have had access to anyway, that doesn't seem like it would necessarily be appropriate to count within the existing policy. So, and that's a council decision that do you want to separate TIF related debt or to separate the portion that is not covered by the increment and include that in your policy decisions? And if that's... Let's wait out of your... Our conversations. Those are options that... And just I think pragmatically speaking council should be aware of that though. And my understanding of the TIF proposal was, so we go ahead and we bond, regardless we have to pay it. So it's sort of whether it, whether that the Ed fund actually ends up covering it or not the city is still on the hook for those payments. And then that would in practice get added to our debt servicing totals. It would, but we then have to also increase our revenue. So the revenue for TIF is actually coming from education taxes. So that, if I'm using a baseline $15 million total revenue we really need to up that for the school portion that we would be gaining. So it would change the graph and I'm happy to go through that exercise. And I think probably, we've been talking through different options and not to get too to the minutiae here, but one, probably the logical solution is if there is some push in the front years, if it's not fully covered, then that difference it's not covered with the end fund and the other revenues coming in. But that would count that against our debt policy because that's coming from the general debt, but to the extent that it's covered through it. We have to create a TIF fund to do this. So we have to track if the monies go into it, the payments come out of it. So if anything's not covered by that, then it's a three-quarter baked thought, not a fully baked thought yet. Yeah, it's very hard to hear the conversation. Well, I will try and speak up. So moving away from the financing side of things. So I understand that you want direction from us tonight and then there's a go or no go at the end of August or sometime in August after the experimental trial phase has happened, which they're going through right now. And I really appreciate that you're experimenting and trying it out on the ground and I think that'll give us a better decision. There's a couple other things that I want to throw into that mix in terms of what we look at before the go or no go point. One piece is I understand that the engineering team hasn't, the operator, have not been able to go view one of these existing projects that have gone through this already. And I understand that there is one in Niskeuna, New York, so it's not particularly far away and I would like to have the team go see that. I don't think it would be a particularly costly investment given we're talking about many millions of dollars and I think that they could probably get a lot out of going and talking to the other plant operators and seeing something on the ground. So I would like that visit to happen before that decision point. The other, another piece that I would like to have a better handle on is this court case. I am concerned, we think we've got a good case and we think that we're not gonna have our limits adjusted, but I'm concerned that if the outcome doesn't go the way we want it that we would have made this extra infrastructure upgrade assuming that we would be able to process more incoming product. And if those limits are lowered then we wouldn't be able to do that. The math starts to not work and we would have made this huge extra investment that if we're able to bring the inputs actually nets us a positive budget impact but if we're not able to bring the inputs if we lose that court case then we're on the hook for so much more. And so I know we can't cover every possible scenario but I'd like us to have a better handle on when we think we're gonna get a resolution of that or what do we do in that circumstance before making this decision. And then the final piece that I wanna make sure is addressed is the potential need for a generator upgrade. And currently we have a backup generator because we can't afford to have those plant operations shut down in the event of a power outage and that backup generator is sized for the current needs of the plant. It sounds like we think that there would be enough energy efficiency in the upgrades that it wouldn't need to be upgraded but I want to verify that and make sure that that's included in the math that ESG is on the hook for in terms of making us whole. And I don't want that extra cost of upgrading the generator should we need to to fall on us instead of on ESG. So those are kind of the three main things that I wanna make sure that we get resolved in addition to going through this trial period before we have the go or no go. If all those are resolved correctly or in a positive way, then I would be happy to support it. And at this point with those caveats I'm willing to support the phase one as you have suggested. I'm just touching on the permit question. Sure. I don't know if this is the one that works. So on the permit issue, so in the agreement with ESG they're not, the project can't increase the effluent limits that we put out. So whether or not we did this project and our limits got dropped, for some reason through the court appeal, we'd have to do likely a significant upgrade of a different style, potentially. But we can't, the issue is we can't, our aging infrastructure needs to be replaced before the court cases resolved. So we can't wait and see what happens to that court case before we make a decision as far as moving forward with one of these three options. My concern is that the aging infrastructure input costs, the amount we're spending is, would be significantly lower than the phase one input cost. It's just that we think we're gonna make up phase one in so much extra income. And if we can't, then we would be better. Our bond payments would be the same or more. But the point I think what she's saying is that if our effluent limits were dropped, then we might not be able to take in that extra income which makes the net bond payments. In other words, it might be, if we thought we were gonna lose the court case, would it be smarter to just do the basic eight instead of spending this money and then not getting the offsetting revenue? If for some reason we then couldn't meet the new effluent limits. Or is that a completely different process that we'd have to do no matter what? That's what I think. Right, and it would be a completely different upgrade. Under either ageing infrastructure. To lower, if for some reason our effluent limit was significantly lowered by permit, we would have to do a completely different style upgrade to the plant, whether or not we took in the high strength waste or not. So it wouldn't get us away from doing that upgrade if our permit limits were lowered. We'd still have to do it. Would the upgrade, I'm assuming that the upgrade would have to be more expensive and bigger if we were processing more incoming products? I think it would be pretty similar because of the way we structured the agreement with ESG and that they can't change our current limits. So that's just, I mean, you don't have to resolve it tonight but that's one thing I need to know before August, so. I understand, okay. Ashley, I guess sort of hearing it rephrased that way. I mean, lawyers and the court process take forever. Realistically, we probably won't have a decision for an extended period of time on this issue. Is that fair to say? I can't say for sure. The last one took, I think, 10 years to resolve last time our permit was appealed. Well, boy, that makes me complain a lot less about my job. So, I didn't really, I'm a little, the 10 years is kind of surprising. I figured you would say like two years. So it sounds like at least one part of the project is substantially the same. Like the aging infrastructure pieces has to happen. And so, is it, and I'm only asking, and I'm pretty sure I know the answer to this, but is it something where it could be a conditional, like if the state approves, you know, and if the court decides in favor of Montpelier, then we would proceed with the other piece if the court decides against raising the limits. I think it would be difficult to get a contractor to price out a project like that. And Larry's here for me, I see you can speak to that, but. And I think I sort of, like if I were the lawyer in the room, I know what I would say, but I think it's a fair question to ask, especially given the 10 year, I mean, if we're gonna be litigating this for that long and. We don't know though, I mean, this is the second run at the same issue. And so, you know, the courts have all seen it, and there's a Supreme Court decision now that there wasn't before, and so who knows. Right, it just seems like it might be a prudent approach if there were willing parties at the table, it could. Sure. So Larry Doyle, DSG, I think part of the answer would be, you know, Kirk mentioned that there would be an upgrade cost either way. So if the phase one project weren't done, the facility would still be subject to some type of an upgrade as it would under the phase one project. So I think one of the things we could probably get back as an answer is what's that delta, right? You know, is it a $100 change under the basic project and $150 change in general powers? And I'm not sure, I know we've looked at that, but I think we'll revisit that and see if we can come up with an engineer's probable estimate of cost. The upgrade will have some benefits to the plant in terms of its flexibility and ability to handle and treat certain nutrients. So there are some upside advantages to making the digesters work and digest. So it's kind of a balance, you know, there's a number of factors in, but I think we'll crunch through some of those numbers and provide you to get an answer back. Other comments, questions? Okay, so I guess I'll just weigh in that. I'm happy to support your suggestion. Part of me is a little sad that we're not going for phase two right away because that's, you know, go big or go home, right? Like, let's do it up. But if phase two is something that maybe we can consider further down the road, fine, let's get some success. There's lots to think about. It's still a lot of money, fair enough. So we need some kind of vote on this? Probably, right? I think this is going to form our design decisions. Yeah, check. I'll make a motion that we approve the plan of the Department of Public Works to proceed on the basis of doing phase one, recognizing that this isn't the final decision on what's happening. I'll second that. Any further discussion? Yes, Glenn. Just to be clear, are we talking? I can't hear you, Glenn. Okay, sorry. To be clear, are we talking phase one energy neutral? Is that the? Yes. Okay, all in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, great. Thank you all. I know, right? It's only 10.07. I like your choice. Oh my gosh. Is anybody still here for these other things? Probably not. One possibility team is that we could continue to not talk about the strategic plan. Or we could, because it's not 10.30. I'm fine, letting it go. Plus, we have to talk about MIAC. Oh, that's right. Yeah, so with regard to the strategic plan, I don't want to open up the whole can of work, but really all of yours, my goal tonight was just sort of proof check what you did. So if people have had a couple of weeks since we did this and you've read the plan and if anybody really wanted to make a case that something should be drastically different, we wanted to have that opportunity because we're putting work plans to each, specific efforts that you'll see at the next meeting and we just didn't, we want to make sure it was still matching. So if people are happy, that's the end of this agenda. I hit a few things. See, I gave you too much warning. Yeah, yeah, right. So I can run through this really quickly. Nope, okay, just kidding. Rosie says no. I just, we got it in these at 10 o'clock. No, I'm with you. I'm with you. We'll take it up next time and... Make it the first agenda item next time? Sure. Sure. We're gonna set a date for the hearing. Oh, right, well let's do the MIAC thing first and then let's set a date for the... So MIAC had proposed a number of changes to their by-laws. As I was reading through the by-laws, I noticed this one sentence that says, nominating new members, current board members will nominate and propose all new board members to city council, which is not how we normally do things with most committees. It sounds like that was a carryover from when the organization was an independent organization. I did have a chance to check with the chair of the committee and she said that actually this hasn't been their practice that they have relied on us to advertise for vacancies. So she didn't have a problem with us just striking this. So I would move that we adopt the by-law amendments as proposed by MIAC with the addition of striking the sentence, nominating new members, current board members will nominate and propose all new board members to city council. I'll second that. Any further discussion? All in favor please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay. Thank you. That was a good catch. Deliberative session. Deliberative session. So one hypothesis is that we tack it on to another meeting. Another hypothesis is that it's its own separate time. I don't have strong feelings about this. What is? To do it at a separate time. Separate time? Do you want to pick like a Wednesday that we're otherwise not meeting? Well, we're also running into vacations too. That's inevitable. After the 27th, I've got two weeks when we're not, when I'm not going to be here. And that's why we, it's one of the reasons we took off the 11th of July. If we have a light, it's not as light as it used to be, but if we have a lighter agenda for the 27th, it might not be a bad thing to do on the 27th. I don't think we do. I mean, it's lighter than tonight maybe, but we also just pushed a couple of things from tonight and we're starting with a fire department tour. Too short. 20? Too short. What, what's too short? Notice for next Wednesday for me. Oh, you mean the 20th? I'm like booking like two or three weeks out. So what about the 20th, oh gosh, the 27th is a regular council meeting. We've got. The next Wednesday is July 4th, fire tour. Yeah, definitely not July 4th. I'm available, I don't have to work. I mean, the next time would be July 11th. Can we do a doodle poll? Yeah, I want to do that. You know, I think the other thing, I mean, I'm just going to say this out loud, but you know, it may not take that long. I think that's right. Yeah. We could probably have an executive session tonight. So, let's do a doodle poll. Doodle poll. And maybe it'll be a, we could always do a call-in. We could do a conference call. I'll be down for, okay. Everyone's got the evidence, right? So when we do the doodle poll, maybe we could just keep in mind that you don't have to be physically present. Like, or would you be available for a call-in even? And it sounds like that's not Ashley's favorite thing, but that's okay. Just like in-person. The conference calls are terrible. I'm sorry. It wasn't terrible. We'll find, we'll find something. We have a new conference phone, though. I mean, I'd like to just argue for speed in general. I think the sooner we can get it done within the 60-day limit would be my preference. Yep, I agree. Okay, so doodle poll. We'll get that done soon. All right, wow. And it's only 10-12. Oh, council reports. I don't remember where we started. So we're gonna start with Ashley. We'll go that way. Hot seat. Okay. I have two things. One, I've been given the discussion we've had in the last few weeks of the Parkland ordinance and some dissatisfaction people have with it. I went through one period where two days in a row, the first thing that I was thinking about when I woke up was writing out proposed changes to the Parkland ordinance. So I thought, and I didn't do it the first of those days. So I thought, well, I should actually do that. And so I've been figuring out what I think would make sense to make it a more standards-based and rational approach. And I sat down and talked to Rosie about it a little bit, talked to Bill a little bit. And I think that I'd like to, I'm gonna continue to pursue having, planning how we could restructure that. That's the one thing. The other thing is something that I'm really struck by tonight and Stephen brought this up, but every time I've been in a meeting when there's any significant number of people here, there are always people in the back saying they can't hear what's going on. And it really seems to me that people are entitled to come to the city council meetings and hear what's going on. So I don't know what needs to be done to improve the sound system so that all of the discussion from everyone is audible. And I know part of it is speakers need to understand they need to get right on top of the microphone, but I would like to have some discussion or ask staff to look at what can be done to really make the sound system work for the people who wanna hear what's happening in the meetings. I can't hear over here half the time. So basically if you face one another, it doesn't come across. Yeah, and you have the summer when you have air conditioning and you get that going. I'll just tell you that I agree and actually my first note that I wrote here was what happened to our sound system overhaul. So we will be on this, Sue texted me about it earlier tonight, we'll be on this first thing in the morning. We did talk about moving it closer. Well, there's lots of things we could do, but I think it's a constant problem needs to be fixed. I would like to put in a plug, even besides this for the sound purposes of moving these closer, because in order to be heard, you have to lean over and it's really uncomfortable and awkward. Better mics or different mics too. I mean, like we may need to think about it. I don't, yeah, I don't wanna have to lean. At my conference, they had some really cool mics that do all kinds of things. Can't hear you. Oh, I was saying at the conference I was at, there were vendors there with amazingly cool mics that did all kinds of things. High priority on the strategic plan. Sorry, yeah. So this is something that I've talked with Bill and Tom about a little bit and given our experience tonight, dealing with a city government a hundred years ago that didn't quite follow the right paperwork and now we're trying to resolve it again. I wanted to mention to the other counselors that we do have a little bit of an unresolved issue with Ledgewood Terrace and there's a number of different issues, but that street has not been fully accepted as a city street. It is being maintained by the city and there's some other unresolved issues and that have meant that it's not been fully accepted with regard to ownership and it's certainly a complicated situation and there hasn't been a sense of urgency about fixing it, which I completely understand because we're maintaining it, the property owners don't really have a reason to be upset with us at this point, but I also want to not leave it for people a hundred years from now to figure out. So I just want to flag that for the rest of you so you're aware of it and hope that at some point we can get that resolved. I'm into it. Sweep it out. Nothing to say other than I will be at Baguitos tomorrow morning, 8.30 to 9.30 and I look forward to seeing anyone who feels like coming. We've had good turnout the last couple of weeks and I'm really enjoying it, so thank you. All right, so I'm picking up a little project. They started a few months ago, trying to establish a sort of free walking tour of Montpelier to sort of capture the history and culture of the place. I see it as a real missed opportunity when we have hundreds of buses coming, they step out, take a picture of the state house and they hop back on the bus. So if we could have a volunteer driven sort of set, you know, tour of the town where you say, oh, this is a great restaurant, you know, why don't you like pop in here? I think we could do it for free, maybe working with the senior center, but I'd really be interested in talking to the people who have good stories or anything about Montpelier, but sexy it up a little bit, you know? Not that it's not sexy, but it's a, and I got some great materials from Paul Carnahan and folks who have done it in the past. Historical one. Yeah, but historical, you know, General Lafayette gave his speech here, this type of stuff. So any input is appreciated on that? I would volunteer to help with that. You'd be a good guide. I want to ask Bill if anyone was going to the building of a sense of place? Laura from MDC is, and I'm not sure about Dan Groberg. I can't, but... Dan, okay, I really thought it would be good. The other one... The one last year was great, but definitely I know for sure Laura's going. And yesterday, did anyone go to the hub, community hubs? I did. Did you? Because I wanted to, and my granddaughter's graduation. The three of us there had a great discussion. So you're going to share that with us because... Like I said, the three of us. Oh, just the three of us. Oh, too sad. Okay. It was a lovely drive to Hartford, though. Yeah, yeah. And I just want to get back to Ashley and ourselves about the committee on committees and on social justice, economic justice. If we're going to go ahead and put the community workshops in the fall, we've got to do some planning this summer. And I didn't know if you were chairing that committee too, but I just put a plug in. Well... It needs to be on the agenda. And it also came up. We had our CAB meeting. So I guess I do have something to say. We had our community advisory board meeting for the CJC the other night. And I had to leave a little bit early, but I think that there are a number of things. Yvonne and I are going to sit down at some point, hopefully pretty soon. Just have to camera out my work schedule. So that we can kind of put some things together that I've been chatting about for a bit now, civic discourse forum, and a couple of other things that came up as well. I'm really interested in those. So think of me, please. Yes. So I have a couple of things. One is I want to invite you all to the official opening of the Gertin Pocket Park, which is next Tuesday at five o'clock. There's going to be ice cream and music and just hanging out in a cool space. So please, if you have time, put it on your calendar. Five o'clock next Tuesday. Graduation is this Friday. So congratulations to all the graduating seniors. Very exciting. Another. And you guys are all welcome to tickets. And if you don't use them, you're welcome to give them to me. Sorry. Can I just say that out loud? Oh, I mean, I should have said yes. I'm sorry, Bill. Let me know if you need some. So that was one thing. Another item is I did end up getting a chance to meet with Phil from the TW Wood Gallery. Did I tell you this already? I think the answer is no. I think I've not told you this. He had picked out some art from the gallery that he thought met the goals that I had outlined. And so sometime in July, this art is going to come down and be switched out for some art that just represents different people, which I'm pretty excited about. It's black and white. So just prepare yourself, you know, black and white. Doesn't have to be up forever. No, and that's the goal. We actually even talked about maybe leaving that up for most a year. And then we can look at switching it out again, et cetera. And just want to also point out that there have been some really fun groundbreaking and ribbon cuttings lately, like celebrating the opening of Rome and Onion River Outdoors. That's exciting. We had a great groundbreaking for the Taylor Street. There's some really exciting things happening this summer. And I'm, anyway, it really is great. So anyway, just excited about all that. I'm going to miss this art. And I guess I'm the only one, but I love these things. I come in and look at them sometimes. No one else is around. You've had them. You could probably put them in your office. There's no space in there now. So what have I got to say? It sounds like there's a little more interest from you all about the non-citizen voting initiative thing. So let me just tell you where that's at. We're finally been barely busy in the office, but there's finally a meeting of an ad hoc, self-defined working group to try to narrow down what some of these proposals could look like for a ballot. And it does sound like there's probably going to be a special city meeting on concurrent with the November general election. So probably be working towards putting a charter change on there. And there's a few different ways it could go. So I'll let you all know. But if you're interested, it's 5.30 next Friday. What is that, the 22nd, I think? Yeah, next Friday, the 22nd. I just mentioned that I found out when we were sitting here that I finally got my quest to add more letters after my name. I'm now a certified municipal clerk. So it's my CMC to go with my CH and my ADD and all that other stuff. And last thing, I keep thinking there's going to be some kind of gathering, but I never hear anything. So if I warmed up the grill in my weird little yard on St. Paul Street and just sent out a date, would you all come? Sure, try. OK, well, I will work towards. Bring you some buns. All right, that's great. It's not a big space. And my house is weird. It's sort of slowly sinking into the ground where the old sewer used to be. But it should be there. It's time to get us to come look at the old sewer. OK, I'll give out an email, and I'll check with Carrie about a date. OK, I'll try to be brief. Just we do have a hearing with the state on Tiff on June 28. I think I'll let you know that we've had some good conversations about the parking garage. Hopefully, we'll have something to present to you some point in the near future. And lastly, I did send you an update on one Taylor and just looking to see if anyone has any objection or has any concerns. If we consider the option of selling the parcel that we didn't sell on May 15 when we were going to sell it. Hold for it. Go for it. We're not committing to it, but I want to make sure that that's a mix because we might need to do it. I just ran into someone downtown today who said, when's the city going to tear down that building? We just went in it today. We just we haven't done it that long. Sue and Todd and I just went inside it today. Take showers after we inspect. Oh, dear. Oh, I bet you it must. Soon. OK, that's all I had. All right. All right, so without objection, I consider the meeting adjourned. Thank you. I'd love your help on that one, too. Yeah, happy to. Can't wait to end up going home with all of this. Is this the kind of thing where everyone has to walk off with their contract? Have our little things. So that we did. We won't get stiff.