 Hi, everybody. Welcome. I'm John Coppans. I am our facilitator for this evening. I'm also a Montpelier resident. Live up on Cliff Street, so about a half a block that way. Two blocks, maybe. I got a neighbor from Cliff Street, Mr. Anderson. You guys are all hot. We feel lucky to be on Cliff Street, given what town has been through. I currently work at a bike shop in Burlington, Old Spokeshome, a non-profit bike shop. But before that, I spent five years working for the Vermont Council on Rural Development with Paul Costello. I ran the climate economy programs there. So I think that explains why Paul asked me to be a facilitator, not so much my bike shop experience and more my VCRD experience. I think Paul teed up pretty well what this evening is about. It's actually, this is a challenging session, I feel like. And here's why I think it's going to be challenging, is because we have someone taking notes for us. But what we don't have is big pads with those notes being visible to everybody. And the goal in this session, it's broken up into blocks. So we're going to spend 15 minutes talking about just sort of the lay of the land around city infrastructure. What's going on in Montpelier currently? Then the bulk of our time, 40 minutes, is going to be spent brainstorming ideas for what we think we should do as a city around city infrastructure. And then the last 15 or 20 minutes is going to be spent actually doing some prioritization. If I'm apprehensive about a part of our schedule tonight, it's that last section. Normally what VCRD loves to do is have ideas on a wall and you all have stickers. And we go stick those stickers. And that's how we come to prioritization. So what we're going to have to do instead is, well, partially we're going to have to go with the flow a little bit. My expectation is we're going to ask our scribe to sort of review with us what the ideas are at that juncture where it's time to make prioritization. And then we're just going to have to sort of, as a group, maybe we'll do a show of hands as we go through that list to try to narrow it down to two or three things that the group feels like are the priorities that we want to bring forward. It is important to note though that everything that we talk about tonight will be reflected in the notes. And those notes will be reviewed by the steering committee. And in fact, if something you say isn't prioritized tonight but is a common theme that comes up in other sessions, the steering committee may well pluck that thing. And that idea may come back before the group on September 7th when we get back together. So just know that even if whatever idea you bring to the table tonight doesn't necessarily come to a consensus decision by the group as a priority, there's other ways for things to enter into the process before the train leaves the station at the next meeting, I would say. So we have a couple of resource team members here. And I think it's only two unless I'm missing somebody. If there's a third after I introduce the two, please recognize yourself. But Eric Law, I'm going to let you introduce yourself and then after that. Absolutely. So Eric Law, community programs director, formally. I just left my position last Friday. So I think I'm freer to discussion. Going to private consulting down in DC. But I'll try to give the lens of federal, state, municipal sources of funds in this day and age, four month. So formally at USDA, we're all about right now. Yes, four and seven. Yeah, I'm going to put that as the first name. And Ben Montros. Ben Montros. So I am a city resident. And I work for the Agency of Natural Resources. I oversee the public drinking water program. So we regulate the molecular drinking water system among 1,360 other public drinking water systems in the state. Is there anybody else? Oh, yeah. Sorry. I'm sorry. Hey. I'm Haley Perrow. I'm Senator Sanders' outreach director. I work mostly on environmental energy and some theme issues. So hopefully I can be helpful to mostly your listen and take whatever back to the office. Thank you. Are there any engineers here? That's what I was going to ask. This is engineering problem. Yeah. Yay. Oh, thank you. We got some hands for so many years. So I think before we get started, I might ask, is there a volunteer who wants to read the description of, you know, there's these little blurbs. I don't know if some of you probably have it. But there's a little description for city infrastructure in your packet. Anybody want to just read that aloud? It might help us have a common sense of what we're talking about tonight. Any volunteer willing to do that? I'll read it, but I lost my sheet. Oh, here you go. Try on top of the paper. What's your name? City infrastructure. What changes are needed in Montpelier's water sewer and stormwater? Roads and bridges, buildings, dams, and embankment infrastructure to better protect the city from future flooding events? Are there other infrastructure opportunities in expanded district heating, dry storage for downtown businesses, or other projects that could reduce future damage to public and private property? Before we start, how do folks feel like that tees things up? Does that feel like it captures? Yeah. Not yes. And one missing thing, which is care and feeding of the existing infrastructure and assessment of how healthy it is, and let's fix it. So not just forward-looking, not just new, but existing. That part of the project could be, let's look at what we've got to fix it. So inventory and asset management. Yes, ma'am. Yeah, great. Other things in that description that you've, yeah? Hi, thank you. Yes, my name's Scott Muller. I've been working in urban infrastructure for 35 years. Some of the biggest cities in the world. Senior guides work at the UN, World Bank. So all-day urban infrastructure for me. These transformative challenges are not new. It's happening everywhere. I can tell you that one of the biggest success attributes is to not limit the discussion of infrastructure to hard infrastructure. Soft infrastructure is a really important part of that transition. Most of our government systems were set up for ecosystems and metabolism that was much different. Much different financial situations, management, accounting, transparency, accountability. All those issues should be looked at when you're talking about this rapid shift in infrastructure. So to talk about governance as soft infrastructure, to talk about the relationship between the state and the city and the accountability and the financial flows, all that is soft infrastructure. So I would caution against leaving that out of a intimate conversation with hard infrastructure. That's a helpful, I feel like, maybe framing and expansion probably of what we're talking about here. Thank you. It may not be official resource people. I just want to recognize our superintendent and high school principal are both here. I think they're fabulous in the name, but taking care of some of our really important infrastructure already, and probably schools that come into this conversation. Thank you. It's nice to have you both here. All right, so maybe we should get after it at this point. So what's the lay of the land in terms of long-compiliar infrastructure? And I will say, for resource people, it's definitely feel free to contribute. You know that. That's why you're here. But particularly in this, like, what is the current lay of the land? If you are familiar with what's going on, that's not to limit other people's contribution, but feel free to weigh in there. So what's the state of affairs for Montpellier's infrastructure at this point? Well, I'm not sure about anybody else, but I live in a part of Montpellier that had five feet of water in my basement downtown. And I know that the water, it was a overwhelming of the stormwater system. It was all stormwater that came up into our basement on St. Paul Street. And I know that the water needs some place else to go, so I know it's a much bigger issue than just, like, plaping it somewhere else. But I think that's part of the issue that certainly I'm concerned about here is that what's the future look like for people who live in these downtown areas, and the businesses, of course. What kind of guarantee or assurance can we get to? Particularly around the stormwater system and the insulturation, yeah, okay. Great. You and then come, yeah. I'll add to that in that you were lucky, because many people not only had stormwater, but had sewage in the basement that went to the end of the stormwater system. Yeah, race of godness. Right, so it's both stormwater and the sewer system had just too much. Couldn't handle it, but, Colin, and then you, yeah. The Winooski from the confluence of the North Branch downstream is obviously inadequate to handle the volume of rain coming in. That's not the normal river channel, but it was. That was channelized by the CCC back in the 30s. So we know that during that storm, recent storm, we had 21,000 cubic feet per second coming in, the main branch of the Winooski, 1,200 cubic feet per second coming in the North Branch. We need at least that much capacity to get the water out of town from the confluence south. And we're blessed in Vermont to have elevation change and gravity that became a harness to get that water out of here. If we give the, if we have a river channel that's great that can handle greater than 22,000 cubic feet per second. I just have a simple question, I guess. When, what is the extrication that is in the right place for the four sewer systems in different cities? Is it reasonable to think they wouldn't back up in the houses? They're not closed systems. I don't know. Do other cities deal this in some way if they can not have that back up in the house? That seems ideal. I'm curious kind of what the options there are. Is that a reasonable goal? Yeah, it's sort of a technical question and yeah. It seems reasonable, right? Well, and I know, I know that there's some separation, ideally, of sewer and storm water. Right, maybe Scott can- I'd like to make a suggestion that this group just adopt an informal Chatham House rule, which means people can say anything and you're free to talk about what's talked about in the room, but not who said it. Because there are a lot of officials here and there are a lot of people whose work this is that don't want to talk about the problems in their system. And I think if you can somehow establish an agreement of the participants that you're free to talk about what people discuss in here, but not who said it. Well, and in fact, no takers don't. Yeah, we don't attribute anything. So I'm glad you said that. That is practice here, for sure, yeah. Just one quick comment in reference to yours. CSR, right, combines sewer overflow. The city of Montpelier has been, for decades, trying to separate storm from sewer, but not all the way there, right? And most of our towns, I think it's safe to say, are still dealing with CSR. Certainly our larger towns, Ronald and Burlington, and Montpelier is no different. So it certainly didn't help. So you've been doing it for a long time, but there's been no solution? Yeah, I'm not the city of Montpelier. But yeah, I think the city has been, CSR was a huge problem. You know, in my former role at World Development, we funded a lot of the CSO combined with wastewater treatment upgrades. But certainly there's more to do. So. It means it's not all separated yet. The better project is being worked on. Correct, yep. Yeah, it's one of those where you resolve one point and there's other points for other points. And it's a big, big project with a lot to do. We have six CSO overflow structures currently in Montpelier. Six CSO overflow structures. I mean, six locations where when things get overwhelmed, they can overflow and go to the river. And that's down from the 90s, I think it was like 46 or 50 that we used to have. So we need a lot more? No, no, I think we need to get a zero structures that overflow to the river, right? And so right now the two big projects that we're doing is the State Street project that you see out here, which is removing about an acre and a half of impervious area that's directly connected to our sewer system. And then the other project is the East State Street project where we're disconnecting another probably acre or a half acre of impervious that's directly tied to our sewer system. Those two projects. Are you guys doing that before the flood? Yes, we've been working on this consistently for the last 20 to 30 years. Okay. And don't feel like you have to. Would you want to introduce yourself since you're here? Yeah, I'm deputy director for City Montpelier of the Public Works Department and my name is Zach Bodger. Yeah. Other things in terms of Montpelier's infrastructure? So others have mentioned some of the challenges with the floodwater containing sewage. Another pollutant was of course oil. And that got me interested in talking more about a resource that we already have in the community, which is the district heat system, both because those institutions attached to the district heat system and making use of that may have had less oil that was spilling into the system but also it was a way to reduce reliance on oil. It's been a challenging project. I think it's significantly underutilized but the great thing is it's there. It's working. It has significantly more capacity than the community is using. And I would love to explore more opportunities. Of course now we have the College of Fine Arts up on the green, up on the hill having sold some of its properties to Greenway Institute, which is looking at renewing some of the buildings and the idea of potentially bringing for example the district heat system up the hill, both for institutional access and I would say more importantly residential access but that needs to come with incentives. The upfront costs are huge both to organizations, businesses and residents but I think the benefits are potentially significant and it's right there. It's like right there, making heat. So. Great. And just to clarify for folks that what I heard there was both current state affairs we have an existing districting system and I think an idea for the future as well which was let's take advantage and expand the sort of reach of that district. The former school was on St. Paul Street which is really just adjacent to the service to the elementary school and to others aren't there possibilities right now unfortunately time is really tight before days get cold but to incentivize instead of rapidly replacing oil furnaces which is probably the most logical and immediate solution but wouldn't it be ideal if there were ways to tap into that system because to my knowledge it's significantly underutilized. Can I ask as we're hitting asset classes I was waiting for the first asset class of district heat. What is the state of district heat now after the storm? Is there any damage to our district heating system? As far as we know. Does anyone know that? Yeah. Individually the core system is okay but because it took mitigation steps when it was built but along the way you have all these pump stations that got flooded at individual sites. And are those pump stations associated with buildings that are being served or is it? Building is being served. It's the meter like most places lost their meters around the district heat systems all of their like internal piping so all of what happened at the building. At the individual's connections. Connection in the basement. Yes. Sorry, we didn't just, for my mistake, they were damaged if you replaced them and aren't operable right now? So I'm not the district heat expert by any way, shape or form. I just know that right now a majority of our users have issues with their meters and that they're looking to get those replaced and that the city is working to get that stood up before this winter season. The cities in short of replacing the meters that I'm sure are allowed for the building and the users that are forced to essentially just change their circulation pumps which is something you would have on a regular boiler. So you don't have to replace a boiler but you have to replace all of your circulation pumps. Are people looking at replacing them up higher? Not, am I not on a raise next? I work for three buildings downtown which is a color-covered library. We won't be replacing moving them because you could flood 600 times before it would behoove me to pay for the piping and moving it up above but the controls will be moved up. Yeah, okay. Yes, go ahead. But maybe that's something to put on our list. Even though the building itself in the heating system was improved when we made it or was they thought of flooding, the system isn't. So the system's not working. That's one of the major problems with the state buildings. So we need to look at what could we do to make sure that the things that you've spoken of that aren't working are up higher or something because those pipes are underground. Well, and there's different categories of stuff, right? What I just heard is there's controls that they're moving up which I think is much more expensive to replace versus maybe some piping and circulator pumps which apparently. But maybe that stuff is done in by the ordinary flood. How do we make it more resilient? Yeah, too much. We have a turn on it. I see a hand here. Yeah, thanks. I'm back. I'm President Caramon earlier and I really appreciate the comments of my neighbor here talking about our rivers and I hate to be a contrarian at any point here potentially but I'm not wild about our district heating system and I'm not particularly interested in expanding it. It was placed in an awful location and it's exactly the kind of development that I hope we avoid going forward when we want to look at flushing that water downstream letting it go out onto its historic flood plain that the heating system in all those parking lots, I hope that as a part of this city infrastructure conversation it's kind of embedded in the description but not as explicit as I wish it was. I wish we would also in this discussion talk about or I hope we will talk about the ways that we can multi-solve by restoring our flood plains, beautifying our city, making our failure to face the river for the first time and take advantage of this amazing location of the contrarian's particular rivers that typically you can't even see walking around town and all the things that that would do for our economy not to mention for public health and well-being on down the list. So I guess just to put in the plug for really rethinking our connection to the rivers and then from there zooming out and seeing how that can benefit so many other aspects of our town. A lot more to say there but. All right and let's just I think let's work on not like we're gonna have 15 minutes to do some prioritization and I think it's appropriate at that point to have a little bit of a debate about ideas that are on the table. I'd ask folks to restrain from that response to specific ideas at this phase and things if that's okay with folks. And I think we probably should shift. I see another hand but I think we should start to move more towards just free flowing ideas about what should we be doing around city infrastructure because we've got, I've got to keep time here and we've got to keep moving. So I see three hands, one there, yeah, Colin and then yeah. So a really key piece of infrastructure is the rice molding. Not in Montpelier but it's created for Montpelier and it's performed very well over the 100 years. Well, not quite 100 but there can be improvements made to its holding capacity, increasing its discharge rate at a safe time so it can recharge for the next rain event. We got lucky in this last one that a really big rain event went south of us while the dam was full. So I think we can figure out ways to drain the dam quicker to be able to handle more rain events as one after the other. So there's an idea, change sort of the operating standards for Riceville to maximize its sort of flow. There's a little bit of a rush over there in Hydro plan as well. So it's not just operating, it's also cement. The way you're presented is like the ultimate piece of infrastructure almost. So I think, yeah, okay, to be debated but yeah. Yeah, hand, Scott, I think you said your name. Please thank you, transportation. So at the mouth of the North Branch where the Shell station is, if you look at that from above, that's all fill and it looks kind of ridiculous and it's where the river pounds into and it starts backing up the Winooski there when it comes out. It brings up the conversation of the strode, right? The tension all along the street there of the street and the road and the speedometer and the commercial versus the residential coming into town. So if you're talking about that river going back to its natural course and being able to handle higher volumes of water, you have to have a conversation about where to get off the interstate and come into Montpelier. This is all blue sky ideas so I'm not holding back but it looks ridiculous as a planner from above putting gas stations right at the mouth of the river there. It's absurd. So John, we're getting some good asset classes now. Like the Shaquille, the Bricefield Dam, transportation corridors. Maybe you want to hit up on schools a little bit? Yeah, is there a hand over there or? Not my hand. I was raising a hand for that. All right, we'll work you out. Think about it, yeah, think about it. You say I'm being with roadways. I don't have technical knowledge but I know that more permeable roadways can be beneficial in increasing drainage and so forth. I also know that maintaining typical asphalt roads in Vermont is basically a disaster. As we all know, it's a real challenge. Is there any universe in which alternative road surfaces that are more permeable, maybe more open to change? I mean, I don't know, we could just have mud in town and mud and really celebrate mud season. It could be a unique attraction. Maybe, maybe not that, that's hyperbole. But I do wonder if there's a scenario where we can tackle both the really challenging conditions of our roadways and at the same time, promote drainage and allow for water to more naturally be absorbed into the soil. On your watch at that page, there are cobblestones which obviously between cobblestones are permeable. Which, it's an interesting aside that some roads in Vermont going up to the view of the Air Force Base in the Northeast Kingdom that don't get plowed, they're in perfect condition. And that road is 60 to 70 years old and it is impeccable. So it's looking at how do we maintain our roads more than how they're built as well. Yeah, go ahead. Just a quick feedback on Jack's comment and I think one of my big takeaways from our first meeting that we had was that we really need to be thinking of a regional watershed here and not just like the North Branch and the Winooski but what's the big picture in our big central Vermont area that we need to be looking at? So think regionally as a watershed, got it. I have two ideas I just want to throw out. One for the waterways when it's coming down from the hills and the mountains. Besides the rivers, we had everything was so saturated that nothing, there was nowhere for it to go besides the rivers but somebody told me about an idea of making like craters, small craters in the hills that are empty but when the water starts flowing and there's too much water, they fill. So it slows it. Not the rivers, that's a different issue. And then a completely different idea I have which I don't know if it's the right place to bring up but I think we should look at maybe doing like a high line like they have in New York City on state in Maine and it would bring a lot of people here. People, you know, and then underneath have pop-ups or parking or water running, the rivers running through it that we can look at and make the town more beautiful and have the river, yeah. So elevate and get the downtown level, somehow bring it up. And people talk about, you know, filling it up and having the second floors be the first, the level but I think a high line idea would work. The high line is in Manhattan on the railroad bed they turned it into a walkway, a greenway so it's and then all these stores have, and restaurants have popped up around it. It was quite a wonderful, I think, railroads that they just transformed into sort of a walkable, usable public space. Did they raise everything else so to make the stores look better? No, that's what's interesting about the high line is you're sort of like, yeah. You're up there, but the stores are still vulnerable. Well, I would say that we would do it differently, you know, so that underneath. Yeah, we won't be too literally. The idea generally is to sort of elevate and then use the space down below differently. Is that fair enough? Okay, great. Go ahead. Thank you. Yeah. I'm just, I think building on the same idea of the plan and the analogy of the highway and where you got the highway, I think 84% of downtown off-leaders parking lots, including right up to the waterway on both sides. I think the gas station on one side and the parking lot right at the other, right? There is an immense amount of land we've capped and made it so water can't go into that land right in the floodway. That water could be in our housing, could be in our green space, there's a lot of opportunities in that space that currently is being used for cars. Well, it used to be used for cars, it recently it's not used for much anymore, but it's used to opportunity. Great. Yeah, amen to that. And I wanted to just check in with our note taker for a second because I wanted to, I was wondering if you might define asset class because I don't know if, when I heard you repeat back a second ago, some of the categories that we're talking about, whether it covers everything that I'm hearing, so I just was curious. Well, so I'm hearing a form of the crowd, right? So state of the state, what's the state of our infrastructure? Yeah, yeah. The way I think of it is like schools, city infrastructure, state infrastructure, right? Our water wastewater systems, our district heat, that's where I was pulling from. Okay. So when he said state of the state, I'm pulling from our, what's the higher structure? And also what's the softer infrastructure that we don't have or want to have? Okay, that's great. So it sounds like, I mean, I'm hearing a lot about pavement. So I'm hoping that some of it in that infrastructure, there's something for impervious services, but various kinds. And I wanted to just piggyback on how to second ago that this something a lot next to Courtsbury right here is a fantastic location for an elevated plaza of some wonderful variety with shops that are appropriate. And gosh, so many things you can do with Montpelier. And I think the best solution to me to make our city more resilient is to get things out of the farm's way. So it's not just, the more that we can think about, right, natural disasters are natural to some degree, considering climate change is not outstanding. What makes them disasters is putting people in our things in the way. And so, as I'm thinking about the high school, my daughter will be there in, I don't know, some number of years. I would imagine maybe she could go to high school at the VCMA. Maybe that's where the high school could be located in the future. It seems like we're looking for a great tenant in that space and turn our high school into a floodplain or playing fields, you know. So just another possibility to roll over. And just to maybe identify a theme here, sort of the relocation of various things in our community to allow for the water to flow without inflicting some of the damage. Is that? It seems like we just keep rebuilding. We're doing. Car ahead. I just wanted to speak to the schools. There's already a conversation that's happening. It's happening very vociferously on front porch forum. I don't have an opinion about what the solutions should be, but I think we need to have a really thoughtful and gentle conversation about that as the parent of a rising ninth grader who's nervous when she hears things. So I just think we need to be thoughtful about it. And we need to have a conversation and maybe it could be somewhat student led as the schools get started. I don't know if this interests in that, but it feels like that's a long conversation. Just building upon, you know, BCFA. There is a city goal to start building out housing at the country club, which if irrespective of thoughts and opinions on that, if that project goes forward, you could conceivably see 300 homes that are potentially the most affordable in town. Each of those houses has two children. All of a sudden, the center of our child is a lot bigger, moves pretty quick. And I have some of this session from which forum we're about busing and how difficult did you get them to different schools? We might have 600 kids that can walk to U-32. There's a path there. There are multiple options there. I think the future of housing is also, especially the formal housing is interesting to look at. And at this point, I feel like the idea is there around sort of just like with other assets, let's say, the school. What do we do about the school? So let's not sort of, I think, continue to bathe it here because it's an idea that we can talk about as we wrap things up. Yeah, go for it. So I've been through four flood events in this town. And this one is different. It really is. You know, I'm not advocating for parking lots. I don't like them at all, but our ground was absolutely saturated and it didn't make any difference whether it was a permeable surface or an impermeable surface. The ground couldn't handle any more water when that rain event happened. So really, while the parking lots probably contributed some, it was minimal. It's not like Irene. It wasn't like this unbelievable rain event. When I see what happened, I just said, we have to go up. We have to go up one way or another. I don't care if it's Vermont Council of the Fine Arts Building or Higher Ground or it's just the second story. But everybody has to no longer view basements as usable spaces in Montpelier. They aren't. They're trash. There are places where water needs to come in and go out. And we need to build them so that we can hose them down. I don't know if people were downtown right after the flood, but I was there a lot and the yellow mustard, if you went by it on Wednesday, they hosed that place down, tile floors, the room was clean. It was like, you need to be able to go in there with a fire hose and just let the water come in. It's gonna be dirty and you gotta get it out. So we can't have anything of value down low. That should be apparent to everybody. And there are a lot of really responsible landlords who are already moving everything up. I mean, they've been through it three times. I just talked to Steve Everett. So everything of value in his buildings is going to the second story. And we need to encourage everyone else, even though it is a big nut, it's a big ask. They gotta do it. They have to do it. Otherwise, we're just throwing money down the drain. Just put a hand in the back and then, yeah. Why don't we're putting all these things in place? I just heard somebody say that for the last 20 years, we've been working on separating sewer from water runoff. I like us quickly to solve that problem while we're waiting for other things to happen. So, all right, that's a clear idea. And you got it. I'm really interested in the whole soft infrastructure question because I don't see any of these good ideas get implemented without an effective governance and implementation system. And I don't have an idea. I don't know enough about what's possible. It's also easy to decide engineering things in some ways, but maybe we could have a careful study of Montalera's governance system, the whole managed city manager thing. What is working? What doesn't work? What works in other places? We have cement for tees in the town. But it seems to be that that's probably a foundation under everything. Another idea is buy-offs for properties that are in the flood plank where the city should pursue that. I don't know what sort of money is available for the state or the feds. But I know that Northfield did that very successfully. I know that our mayor has already gone on record being opposed to it. I think we shouldn't take things off the table. And we should explore to see what sort of options and whether there's a possibility for us to go. I heard there's a room here. I want to be sure to bring the voicing. Two things that I thought I would hear about. One's actually a question, but we still have a high water pressure problem despite the fact that DPW and the city and the state have kind of agreed on the solution. The solution is an extended solution. We won't know really if it works for a couple of decades. The other thing is I don't know how close we came to losing the wastewater treatment plant. Does anybody know? I mean, the water was pretty close to the top of the road. What happens when the water goes over the road? Do we need to keep up that plan so long? There's some slight conversations right now about whether or not we should raise that river road up. I did a couple additional feet in order to make them a bigger dam so they get more protection. The road itself? Yes. Because right now, water came up to about the very top of the road shoulder, but never crested over and never made it. But that's what protected the public. Yes. And same with the public works garage. I mean, we were very close to having water in both of those buildings as well. In the town of Johnson, their wastewater plant was overwhelmed and everything's just going into the Lemuel River. Well, yeah. So I mean, that's why it's very close. Just to continue on, I mean, sadly, we're afraid of points around the water infrastructure. While we wait for the next flood to happen, water keeps on pumping down the hill at high pressure. I believe the state has the means on to their PSI water in the downtown. I think something like 20% of our water lines are past their service age. We have more water breaks than Burlington does. Those are things that aren't given fun, but are going to impact any of these projects. And we talk about BCFA or downtown businesses. That needs to be, it wasn't even going to be the flood distracted us. That needs to be packed on the radar that those investments need to happen to them. And 90 million dollar investment needs to happen to the next 50 years that is looming. And I guess I hear in that the current state of affairs has been an idea which is to robustly address the fix to the high pressure situation. Yeah, go ahead. Hi, my name is Jonathan, resident of the town, also civil engineer. I just wanted to mention flood storage, which I think was kind of mentioned, but wanted to ensure, just from the infrastructure perspective, I think, as mentioned, to look at a regional approach as far as the watershed. I think that's also an infrastructure discussion. I don't know. Maybe studies have been done since the 30s to see where more flood storage can be gained. But it seems that would be an important component. So if I start to be another dam, potentially, that would be more dams, more perhaps it's raising dams, perhaps there was the talk about trying to make some operational adjustments to the rights bill, that's kind of along the same idea. Great. John? Along the same line, I'm John Armstrong, engineer also. You mentioned in the beginning about the two rivers are greater than the exit. So are you saying that the river was channeled below Montpelier? It was de-challenged to return it back to its original corridor with a greater capacity. If it was expanded to a whole more water, that would eliminate what happened in Montpelier. So what is the proper was full capacity, and then the 1,200 cubic feet per second coming in from the north branch backed up. So if we had the release valve, it's just built right in. We get the hydrologists in here, determine what the greatest possible flood cubic feet per second coming in the winters would be. Add that to the residual in the north branch, and then add a margin for error with climate change. And it makes the corridor exiting Montpelier adequate to discharge whatever it is. 30,000 cubic feet per second would be a giant help. Use the reclaim those parking lots, the school ball fields, and get it out of town. I had a business in Montpelier that got flooded. But I live in Worcester, up 1,200 feet, and our road was completely destroyed. So it had nothing to do with the rivers. It had to do with the water running down. And I don't want to get out of Montpelier, but that's also part of the issue, is a lot of water. And it just destroyed so many roads and properties. So one is, I think it's really important that we build the structure so that when things like this happen, we can help people move to the next better thing rather than replace what they already had. And I think that's been said before, about getting the oil tanks out, getting better systems in terms of heating the buildings. And we have to be ready for that, because even with this happening in early July, we're not ready to do that for the heating season. So if this is gonna happen again, we'd be ready to get people set up with better systems right afterwards. My second completely different thought was, in relation to what you were saying about the basement, it does seem like we shouldn't be cleaning down the basements. I've heard two opposing solutions. One is let the water in, make it so we can clean up really well afterwards. And the other is fill the basements. And I'd love to have some engineering expertise on which of those is actually a good idea or not. Yeah. Well, maybe in that is an idea, which is like, that's a question facing many homeowners and building owners in town. Like what is the process by which we collectively learn and then share that learning and then provide the resources to sort of implement whatever it is that the learning brings. Is that sort of fine? Yeah, go for it. So we have a challenge here and it's different than the challenge in Berry. So Berry's fast water. And buildings get hugely damaged, but here it's like a bathtub. We just fill up. So I don't, I'm not an engineer and I don't know, but I think that we can let it come in and let it go out. That's just my sense, but something just happened where we have an investment in our wastewater recovery facility that everyone needs to understand how dynamic and astronomical it is. It's our biggest asset. And I didn't realize how close it came. So that needs to be our number one priority. Is protecting the wastewater recovery facility. If it's a berm, if it's raising the road, it needs to be protected more than I was just told it. If it came that close, that's a $50 million investment. There's no bigger investment in the city. So we need to think about that. How to protect that. So the question now, would that facility flooding cost $15 million of damage? And that's a little hard to say. I mean, it would be pretty catastrophic. If it would be terrible, I didn't, it'd be terrible. And then do you- I mean, pollution is bad, it's a really bad thing. That kind of facility is worse. And our other facilities to raise things up as well as to put berms in, like what? Or is it just stuck to the ground that can't be moved? I mean, the, how the system works, it's the lowest point in the city that's how the sewage gets from, you know, all over town to its final destination. So the piping is very, that all of that stuff is set. So the only thing you can do really is to protect it more, at least more. Yeah. Two points. I'm really surprised that nobody has brought up a few years ago, Dan Jones 501 C3 about re-envisioning downtown, where an architectural prize was given some of the most prestigious firms in the world redesigned downtown Montpelier for free to convert those parking lots into public space. Thousands of people participated in that process. A huge amount of enthusiasm was generated and then nothing. And it's, all those designs should be revisited because it is a very forward thinking, cost effective way to rebuild downtown into public space and improving water. The second quick point is more towards helping steer the direction towards the self-governance conversation. Why didn't those plans go forward? You know, what happened to that? There was no receiving sort of put that into two hands in the ground. It shows up in schooling. It shows up in the right to housing. It shows up in a lot of aspects of Montpelier that you're feeling. The commercialization, the financialization of real estate in Vermont has sort of run havoc in a lot of cities unchecked. From the point of gerrymandering a TIF district across 22, 23 cities in Vermont that wouldn't pass a freshman level college city planning. To, in the last six, seven years in Montpelier the housing stock effectively hasn't changed only a very, very small percentage. It hasn't changed. But the ratio of renters to owners has changed by 30%. So there's many more second and third home owners in Montpelier. There's no institution that's addressing that so that school teachers can afford to live in the city where they work, right? That ratio in Montpelier is obscene. The same with public employees, right? They can't afford to live in the city where they work. You're saying there's more private homes that are owned? More private homes. So renters, there's more renters. Of the constant population in Montpelier it's shifted to renters by about 25%. In just the last five, six years. And that trend is active, it's not over. Worked like 55%, I don't know. Almost, yeah, a little more, yep. Yeah, there's ways to control that. The other cities are actively involved with. So what you're describing, just to try to add into an idea is this is in that soft infrastructure category of sort of having stronger policies that would address those sorts of trends, let's say. Like, I just wanted to try to- It's a lot of conversation, but when social norms get regularized they become institutionalized and these things become institutions. We don't have institutions yet around this issue of housing, around this issue of transparency and accountability, of ethics and governance, right? A lot of these mistakes we're pointing out we've been working on these infrastructures for 20, 30 years or a million dollars in legal debt for this failed thing or on and on. Here's the thing is something, this will come back to the group in a couple of weeks as an action item. How might we, what is the action item that is sort of within our control of Montpelier to sort of address what you're describing? Like, what is that, what's that like? Well, it's a sub-process of this, but it gets into good governance, which has its set of metrics, which can be looked at very clearly. It's another conversation, but it affects everything from transportation to schools to redesign in downtown, buying out homes. So sort of a re-envisioning and restructuring of governance in- The issue with Vermont is a small population and so the logic used to be that because these towns are small, they don't need strong mayor systems. They just need a council manager system. But if you look around Vermont and you look at some of the cities that have gone through rapid transformations, the waterfront in Burlington, the street in Barrie and onwards, you're looking at more of a system of weak mayor, strong mayor, systems of accountability, systems of transparency that are helpful to financing infrastructure. That, just one question. That public envisioning process on that for a month there. So the public envisioning process was circa 2020. Pretty recent, I heard about it. It was pretty long or a town long. Yeah, that was in the late 15th, eight years. Net zero month, you could refer to it as net zero month pill. Net zero month. Yeah, net zero month. That was right. I'm sure. That was gone. Yes. Just to go a little bit on the same theme of things that have been done already and then sort of dropped. After Hurricane Irene 2011, the State Department of Housing and Community Development commissioned a committee to come up with a plan to avoid what we just experienced. It's called the Vermont Economic Resilience Initiative. The word flood doesn't appear in the title. Maybe that's why nobody's heard of it. But it's like 800 pages. And just to give you an example of what's in there, there was confusion as soon as people started cleaning out their basements about stacking, I mean a simple thing, stacking the trash in categories so it could be picked up easily and faster. Guess what? It's in this report, a chart, tells you exactly how to do it. That was seven years ago. What happened then? I just chanced upon it. What's the name of the report? I'm sorry, sir. The name of the report. There you go. Vermont Economic Resilience Initiative, G-E-R-I. Anyway, we need to realize that this has been done before to a certain degree. We have a new circumstance, but we ought to look back at what's already been done. So I just want to second that. When I went to my business when I was allowed in, we all were just throwing everything out. Nobody told us anything. And you know, I would have to say, Montpelier Alive was amazing and all the volunteers were incredible, but nobody was directed by anybody on how to do it and to have protection. And people were mucking this stuff with no gloves, no mask, and nobody was telling us. Later, after we were all done, it was suggested that we sort it. Yeah, great. And we are at 15 minutes to go. And so it's time to coalesce. Just one quick summary to make sure we have in the notes is that, and that is financial financing and resources for all these things. They're saying like move your stuff upstairs. Well, who's going to pay for that? So, you know, we need to talk about financing all of these things. I just want to add a couple points of detail to what I already have suggested. So, to bolster the argument in favor of widening the river channel from the compliments out of town, 30 years ago, we had an ice jam flood in town. So if we take care of that river channel exiting town, we're also reducing the chances of another ice jam flood. You know, a lot of people probably weren't here 30 years ago, maybe were, but you know, totally different scenario from this one. No rain, just a backup because it's a narrow, not natural river channel out of Montpelier. And then to go over to Wrightsville Dam, and flesh out quickly, that once the water level reaches 665 feet, they have to shut down all of their turbines in the hydro station because they're not, the turbines can't handle greater head pressure above that. So right when we really need to be able to get water out of the dam, and we have the greater potential to generate green electricity, we shut it all down and we reduce the discharge rate by 20%. So if we have the ability, through a public private, with Washington Electric Co-op to invest in new turbines, they can run right up to the full head of 685 feet. And we can turn it off and on, shut it down as the rivers are flooding, or potentially flooding, once the rivers have proceeded, turn it right back on and increase the discharge rate by 20%. So we're then recharging the retention capacity for that next rain event. If we got lucky this time, it didn't come. But in the future. Cal, I'm gonna just pause you there because I think that falls into that more general idea of like at Wrightsville addressing the operations such that we're sort of maximizing the flood control potential. I just want to make clear that I'm not suggesting building a new higher dam. It's just a turbine. We now need to decide on some priorities as we get ready to go upstairs. And so I'm actually, I'm gonna ask for Eric's help because Eric actually has some, this is, I'm giving Eric an impossible task. But I think it's a team effort here that Eric and I and frankly all of you will do. Like I think we want to coalesce a lot of different ideas into some key themes and make some decisions about what you all feel like are the priorities of this group. Let me try with a couple of categories that I feel like I've heard that I feel like are very much related but distinct. And you tell me if I'm getting this right or wrong. One is about the water itself and sort of allowing there to be space for that water to do sort of what it needs to do while sort of minimizing damage. So like that, and I'm trying to categorize that as one thing versus something that is related but distinct which is that we essentially relocate and elevate things out of harm's way. Those feel very similar and in a way very related but also distinct. One is about sort of to some degree, Riceville and the River Channel and what we do. And one is about like how we use our physical space particularly our physical space that is exposed to flooding. Do those feel like two sort of distinct, I know there's a lot of overlap between them but do those feel like two distinct areas of action? I'm seeing mostly nodding heads. What's that? The dam seems like a serve to me. The dam actually feels distinct from those other two. Yeah, so I'm gonna, I'm worse off here, I think. You'll tell me otherwise, right? So relocate, dry proofing, wet proofing. I heard Paul Bovarez and another architect from town and they had an excellent VPR but I think that's the second one. Relocate, maybe upgrade in, dry proofing, right? Wet proofing, we raise everything to the first four not use everything in our basement. Definitely distinct ideas, I got that captured. And then there's a heavy emphasis on soft infrastructure which I put into lining the corridor. River management, totally different, maybe the ultimate piece of infrastructure. That's a constant theme I'm getting from the group especially the right half of the team. Can you add that we make the river a nice place to be? That recreational asset which that piece, yeah. Although can I just say, I think we just merged two different ways of thinking about soft infrastructure which is, I think you're describing sort of the ecosystem and the waterway, whereas I'm here and you use the term soft infrastructure to talk about governance. You can say green is the second. So green is actually maybe what we mentioned by that second category. Whatever I said to you. And then I would say another sort of theme we've heard here is this one around soft infrastructure or we could say governance more simply, do we have the government that can get these things done for us and can lead us through to these new opportunities? So that's I think a third is we would say governance there. I would agree. And can I also come back for you? What's that? I really think our number one priority needs to be the wastewater recovery facility. I mean, it needs to be number one. And it's not because of anything other than the amount of, we have invested in this facility and how close it came to catastrophic consequence. Not only the federal government's invested over at 35% last year. I know. And we want them to invest more. Which by the way, hasn't met zero. But we're actually making them more sustainable. Yeah, no, I was just trying to be a huge... Wait, but it's okay for us to have some big ideas and some relatively narrow ideas that we're prioritizing here. So... And is separating the wastewater from the overflow just in that fall in that same category? Because we're protecting the plant from all this water. Yes, I would definitely say this. So we would say the CSO goes into... Yes. But that really is something that they've been trying to deal with. We've been trying to deal with for decades. And we are dealing with it as much as the citizens of this city are willing to pay for it. I mean, we're all paying a huge ticket for this. So we all have to recognize that there's bills to be paid for separating stormwater from our sewage system. It's priority for how you spend your money. I agree. I couldn't agree more. I would prioritize it. But that's been a discussion that's been going on in the city for 30, 40 years. I mean, I will say it seems to me there's two distinct things here. Totally. One is protecting the wastewater plant and the CSO, the separation of stormwater. And so, but I'll look to you all, because if you merge them to some degree, they get a little bit less impactful. Whereas if you call them out as individual ones, so like, do you all show hands? Who thinks those should be one topic? Raise your hand. Who thinks that you want to consider them as two distinct things? Okay, so that's pretty clear that we would list the CSO separation. I'm not sure if I'm even saying that. CSO is already at its own going, right? Right, it is at its own going. It is ongoing, but you all could decide here that it's really important that we do it quicker. You could say that tonight. You could say that belongs at the top of our list, the separation. Can I suggest it will seem illogical, but combining the wastewater treatment center and potentially the district heat plant together in that they are both huge investments that have been made, existing functional resources that we rely on extremely heavily in the case of the wastewater treatment center and maybe less than we could in the case of the district heat plant, but they are there, they function and they cost a lot of money. So can we look at these as existing resources that we both need to examine, protect, utilize, care for? I mean, I think the answer is you can. You can do whatever you want. Strategically, my advice to you all is that again, you lose some impact if you lump those things. So like, district heating is a standalone thing and I think we should sort of entertain it's up to you, but it should go on the list for you all. The district heat infrastructure is owned by the state. That's it. It worked, it is not vulnerable. The wastewater treatment plant was vulnerable. The history of these locations is not vulnerable. Well, okay, let's not, all right, we gotta, we actually, what am I missing to provide, I mean, just go ahead. We're missing, can we look at the plans that all those people who are very talented did for the town? Let's just say, bring back net zero, Montpelier plan, that's its own. And I would say it's different from governance a little bit. Like, I heard that pretty, at least my years, we're hearing revisiting good planning that's already happened. And that looks like it's got a couple of forms here. The long one, the net zero. I mean, there's slight. So that sort of a category is not just net zero, but other good plans that have happened for Montpelier. There's also a different kind of resiliency as well for the architecture downtown, resiliency and reutilizing the utilities that are connected and how do we change that? That's an immediacy thing right now as the buildings are being restructured. How do we fix that? Many folks, you know, the yellow mustard flooded, but they closed it out because it has a concrete slab. They filled their basement already or they didn't have one. Getting rid of those stone foundations, bringing utilities up, I think that's part of downtown resiliency and that's what I'm a little at. Well, I think it is in that we kind of lumped it into the relocate, which we also include. I think it's a dry proofing and wet proofing. So maybe we're guilty of lumping. I think it's a totally separate thing because I think that has to do with city planning and zoning and approvals as things get built, not the city being, not the actual function of doing it. Okay. So I would say that's part of it. Do folks agree that that should be its own distinct idea that you all consider? We actually have to get to voting on this. The idea is essentially through code to require people to rebuild in a more robust way so that the water doesn't inflict the same. It's very happy. Yeah. We actually do. You can't build without raising up. And you can't do substantial improvements without. So that, I don't think there's nothing moving towards it. I think back to zero, the longer strategic vision is still a unique thing. That could be disserted for selling. So where are we going in 50 years? Was what that was about? Are you just happy fingers and change downtown enough? In the decade, but longer term, what governments do we need to have a bigger vision to have a resilient downtown that looks like one of those huge ideas? Does code, just for clarification, is code hit rebuild? New build, yes. Does it hit rebuild though? Yes. Totally. I forget the name of it. South River, what is the city, right? The train is getting ready to leave the station. So here's what we have to do very quickly. I'm gonna try to read through what I heard is the ideas. And you all get to raise your hands only twice. Are we going back upstairs with how many priorities? Well, I'd say we're gonna see based on how well things coalesce. I would say anywhere from two to four priorities. We can't have all of them? No, you can't have all of them. Sorry, that's a hard thing. So you can raise your hands twice. Read the list first, so we don't have to read it. I'm gonna read the list first. That's quick. Was flood storage infrastructure within, or what's that? You've got to wait for it. Can we combine them all now? No, I shouldn't use it. We can't combine them all. Let me just try to read these. Under a lot of spaces. Okay. I would say it's a lot of stuff. Here's, relocate is idea one, which is essentially moving things, buildings in particular, outside of the floodway. Yeah, rebuilding to me or relocating can be up as well as out. I'm sorry, up or out? I mean both of those. Thank you for clarifying. Yes. Green infrastructure was another one which is much more about focusing on the water and helping the water move such that it does less damage. Governance is a third. I think we've sort of talked about that. Waste water plant protection is its own. The dam, I think is what I heard from you is that should be its own thing. And that's both operations and a little bit of investment as well. There's also the watershed buffer, right? There's ideas about trying to slow the water into the dam. Sure. Yeah, so dam and watershed, we could say. Yeah. CSO separation, districating, and net zero Montpelier and other sort of visions for the future. Yes, what's that? What if I, we really gotta make a decision here. Why are we living now? Isn't that the next step for the next group to? Well, our job tonight is to come with three or four things. All of these things will go before a steering committee, but I think we are stronger if we narrow this list. If we can't, then I'll go upstairs and read them all. If you guys say, we should not narrow. I'm gonna narrow. But don't feel like you have any votes. All right. You can have any of it down without governance. So wait, wait. We're just gonna do a show of hands because it'll help us all know how we feel. Okay? All right, just see one last hand. Well, so I guess I'm just concerned with the part of this is that I think there's a thread here that's kind of missing, which is maybe the net zero terminology just really throws me out because that means a lot of different things. I think we're talking about re-envisioning Montpellier's downtown. Sure. Yeah. And green infrastructure is like a tactic for re-envisioning Montpellier's downtown. And so are some of these other components, but I'm not quite hearing in there something that is about actually kind of getting at I think with the vision. I really wanna like the vision piece that I think is missing to me somewhere there. Well, so if we change that net zero Montpellier, which was a vision to a more general re-envisioning sort of Montpellier's downtown, does that, is that a, yeah, we've gotta get upstairs, guys. Well, it was a lot of visions. Yeah, there were like 15, like, were you there when that happened? And some of them happened. Right, some of them happened. All right, let's just go through this exercise of show of hands for these. I'm gonna change that into re-envisioning Montpellier's downtown as a small. How do you go so good? You get two, all right? Honor system. Wait, wait, wait. You said the two. We're going, Paul, we're going. We're going. The target has been opened. All right. Wait, wait, you did say if we don't agree on what you're saying all of them. Right, so let's go through this exercise and the final decision can be, John, your job is just to read them all and not narrow. And that's a final decision. Oh, come on, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Easy, easy. All right, first, the first one is this concept of relocating either up or out, moving our buildings out. Show of hands for that. I'm quick count of three. Thank you. Good. I got to tell you. Degree in infrastructure. Much more about focusing on the water. I'm seeing one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10. That's okay. Don't worry about that. Governance. I'm seeing one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Okay. Waste water plant protection. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. Geez, you guys, you're spreading them all. Damn, plus watershed above. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. Five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10. I'm using my CSO separation as like a new media, like moving ahead on the list. All right, there, we have something off the list anyway. A districating two, okay, and re-envisioning Montpelier and the down cap. See him. Might go to five, five, four, five, six, seven, eight. I know. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, All right, so, I guess here's what I'm hearing, which is we have, well, we have the water infrastructure, governance, wastewater plant protection, the dam and the watershed above, and the re-envisioning downtown as five clear things that got over five holes. Everything else really didn't get to that point. You'll still get all seven. They will all go on the list. And it sounds like protecting the wastewater plant is low-paying fruit. I mean, it's, it's ground, well, it's too, it's, well, when you feed, they turn and eat it, to raise the higher gap road, to increase the dam. We can even,