 Welcome everybody. Tonight we have members participating remotely so we'll start by asking the members who are remote to identify themselves. Donna, you're muted. Right. This is Colleen. I'm district 2 Councillor. And Donna, now I think we can hear you Donna. I'm very sorry for the eruption, Palin. I was trying to get unmuted by the official. Donna Bates, City Council District 1. Okay, thank you. With that, the meeting is called to order. I'll mention a little bit about meeting logistics. Anyone who's joining remotely, I would appreciate it if you would put your full name on display on the screen. And anyone who wishes to speak, please start by stating your name and where you live. We ask that everyone keep your comments to three minutes. And Councillor Bate will help us keep track of time. If you're here to speak about a particular item on the agenda, we ask you to keep your comments to that item. And anyone who speaks out of turn will be, or over time will be called back into compliance. And first item is to approve the agenda. Is there any, anyone requesting any changes to the agenda tonight? I have not heard of any. Okay, we'll deem the agenda to be approved. Next up, we have general business and appearances. This is an opportunity for any member of the public to address the council about any topic, which is not on the agenda for tonight. And as with other comments, we ask you to keep your comments to three minutes. We'll start to see if there's anyone in the room who wishes to be heard. Okay, why don't you just step right up and come on up to the microphone so that we can pick you up. Yeah, I have a petition. And when you start with your run, we just start by introducing yourself. I'm sorry, Ron Merkin, Barry Street. Thank you. I have a petition that I solicited. I have 70 signatures. Some people may think that 70 is not very impressive. On the other hand, I did not do this online. I did it in person, time permitting. So it's just if it is, we the undersigned be proposal for an overnight shelter for the homeless people in Montpelier's rec center. Not only is the rec center used by children for after school activities, its location is directly across the street from the senior activity center. Sixteen seniors live in apartments above the senior center. One is wheelchair bound. Three others need walkers to get around. At times in the past, homeless people have smoked marijuana. And unfortunately, some other things while sitting on benches in the outdoor park let in front of the senior center. Somehow marijuana makes its way up and through closed apartment windows. Clothing and paraphernalia have at times been discarded in the parklets. Every Wednesday, the senior center hosts open gym hours between seven and nine p.m. These times are reserved for youth and families. On Fridays, the closing is later 10 p.m. Where do you think the homeless will wait until they can get in? The parklet in front of the senior center, of course. Considering how long it may take rec center staff to get beds and cots ready after open gym players really leave. The the wait could last until nearly 11 p.m. Like everyone, seniors need their sleep. Something that was interesting when I was circulating this petition was that a few people brought up the subject of the fact that a bus recently was hit by someone with a gun. And they said that that was one reason why they felt impelled to be a signature on this petition. That reminded some of the others actually that I spoke with about the knifing incident when the transit center was doubling as an overnight shelter for a few years. Apparently somebody who was volunteering there was seriously injured with a knife. Finally, I wonder where the people would go who presently go to the rec center for sports if your your grant fund that you're trying to get is comes through. And that may lead to a total different senior rec center than we're aware of. I purposely abbreviated a lot of things in there because of your three minute rule, etc. But I do have the, let's see, I do have photocopies. Seven of them I made because I thought maybe seven counselors would be here that I would like to distribute to you. Sure, thank you. Can I just leave these around now or? Sure. OK, because I was supposed to be someplace else tonight. Well, I'm glad we were able to. You can't say what you can just leave when Kelly or Evelyn and they'll distribute them for you. So I have some of them. I'll be able to do it in case you want to. Yeah, yeah, just leave them with them. Great. Thank you. Anybody else in the room who'd like to be heard? OK, I'm looking at the people on Zoom and I'm not seeing any. Oh, OK, I wasn't seeing you, Donna. Speak right up. And that means you're going to need to be unmuted again. And my question is just about that procedure. How do we get ourselves unmuted when we want to make a motion, etc. Looking to Kelly and counselor stay unmuted. Yeah, is it possible to keep Donna and Pellan unmuted? Great. Thank you. So Donna and Pellan, you will remain unmuted while the members of the public are muted. And that should take care of that. Thank you. Thanks, Kelly. Thanks, Ron. Looking through the members of the public, I'm not seeing anybody else who's looking to be recognized. OK. Michael, it'll take a moment to unmute you. Thank you, Mr. Mayor and Council and everyone in attendance. I apologize. I got here late. Are you taking public comment across the entire agenda now or on a specific topic? And I would right now we're on general business and appearances. And this is public comment on topics that are not on the agenda. OK, so you'll take public comment as each item comes on. OK, I'll wait till later then, because I'm here for a specific item. Thank you. And I apologize for the interruption. Oh, no problem at all. Anybody else that I'm not seeing and maybe somebody else does. OK, time to move to the consent agenda. Is there. Is there a motion? I make a motion to pass it and send agenda. OK, any discussion? All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. All right. Anyone opposed? OK, thank you. Next up, homelessness task force status update. When you meet to the task force, this is my first appearance here before you. I appreciate the time in light of you all seeing the report, the feasibility report about Berry Street Rec Center. Last time you were together, we thought it would be useful to just share with you a basic update on what's happening in the community around homelessness. Just a caveat that these numbers are really hard to establish. The folks who are experiencing homelessness are typically very transient as they find their way. And so it's really hard for us to get anything really solid, but we could the best we could. I'm going to just break it. I broke it into two sections, really looking at unsheltered homelessness. These are folks who are living out of doors who have limited access to things like bathrooms, electricity, cooking and laundry facilities. And then also sheltered homelessness. And these are folks who are utilizing local shelters and state run hotel programs. The first just under unsheltered homelessness, our street outreach team has seen an increase in the last few years, but particularly post flood and is serving about 80 individuals throughout the area. They typically range primarily in Montpelier, but also serve some people in other neighboring towns. We are the flood in particular has caused a lot of hard times for folks to find good places to camp safely. And so the outreach team spends a lot of their time supporting people to find locations that are safe. There's also because of the flood, limited access to things like bathrooms, day shelter and other resources locally. And of course, you all know those things are starting to come back online and things have been getting better in town in particular. But that's been over the last few months, a high impact on people who are experiencing homelessness on the bright side. Our local faith organizations who historically have served lunch throughout town, although many of the kitchens were impacted, have come together and are providing lunches five days a week, all out of Grace Church. And that will continue into the foreseeable future. It's been great to see them collaborating, working together to provide that support and another way continues to serve folks with day space and meals as well. In terms of sheltered homelessness, Goods, Marit and Haven, where I work is our primary primary shelter, but we also have motels in the region that are supporting folks who are sheltered and homeless. And those counts that I gave you there are based on both the 2020 and 2023 point in time count. So in 2020, we had 260 people who were utilizing area shelters, motels or living outside. And in January of 2023, that number was at 446. And just keep in mind that that January 446 number is pre-flood, so that does not account for folks who have been displaced because of the flood. If you have a digital copy, you can follow those links to look at the point in time counts. You can also access the state's coordinated entry, which will also provide you some useful information. If you want to look at coordinated entry, just open in your browser and let it sit for a few minutes. It takes a little while for it to come up, but it's pretty interesting and gives a great snapshot. Of the three emergency shelters that are operated by Goods Samaritan that offer 61 beds, we remain nearly fall. We do have wiggle room and often can still provide shelter, but it's tight. And just a note on that, we wanted to share also that at Goods Samaritan, we have seen an increase in numbers of the guests that we serve who are over the age of 55. And that number stands right now at 40 percent across our shelter network or over the age of 55. If you you may have seen some national and even local reporting that shows those numbers are meant to stay steady or increase in the future based on our demographics. So that's something to keep in mind as you start forecasting what the needs of the city are on this issue. And then the last thing on that is just to say that across the board, the the needs of the folks who are that we're serving who are uncheltered are have really become increasingly complex over the last two years. A lot of folks with physical and mental disabilities, also medical conditions, neurodiversity, substance use disorder, whether active or in recovery. So that's just to say a lot of other support beyond shelter is often necessary. And then in terms of winter preparedness with the support of this council and the support of the city, Goods Samaritan will be opening a 15 bed shelter on Monday the 13th. That's just this coming Monday up at the Elks. That's that work is underway. That shelter will be open until April 30th. And another way will continue to be open, providing day space as well as meals weekly or all week long. And that's about it. Thanks, Meredith. Yeah, any questions? I know that HHS just released their new program designer, the regulations this week. How does that contribute to meeting the needs here in Montpelier? Yeah, so, you know, this is the as far as I know, it's the pretty much the typical winter support shelter that's provided by HHS. That'll be its conditional based on whatever the weather is doing. So I don't have it committed to memory, but based on whether conditions that the state has decided are would have an adverse effect on someone staying outside, they will be given eligibility to a motel room. I'm happy to send it along when there's also a the state also released a sheet that just kind of gauges capacity for each of the motels in different regions. As far as I could see, Montpelier and Barry region was in the kind of like, OK, we have some wiggle room zone, not super, super full. That's I just read that today, but I'm also happy to send that along. You know, I don't want to be critical of HHS. They're doing what there is what they have to do. But the idea that somebody would have to demonstrate that it would have an adverse impact on them to have to sleep outside in the winter is kind of mind boggling. Yeah. And I think what the task force will be doing in the coming weeks is starting to kind of gather a little bit of ideas and foresight for the future, particularly with our eye on looking at what happens at the on the April 24 deadline for HHS around the motel program. As you all remember, we were all anticipating this motel Exodus in June, and that was more of a the guidelines were changed, kind of in the middle of it, and it was a bit of a trickle. And and the impact was kind of harder to see. It was less all at once. But those guidelines are we're still up against another deadline in April, as far as we know. So we'll be the task force will be looking at that and starting to think about what kind of preparations we need to do for April as well. Thanks, Andy Lauren. Yeah, I'm really helpful just to get this snapshot, like word right now have been developing. And I think next council meeting will be looking at what the city is going to be asking the state to do to step up and do more. I just curious, given what sounds like pretty dire status, you know, is it already clear some, you know, like more peer support outreach staffing or other things that we should be sure to include in our asks of the state as we try to find resources to support people? Yeah, I mean, that's what actually our meeting on Wednesday is intended to do as we were going to draft kind of a short list of recommendations for the council really thinking about what are some kind of stop gaps that we could put in place that could be supportive? And what are some larger requests? I think shelter baseline is always the request people just need shelter. And I think the state's fully aware of that. They're under they're feeling the pressure of that April deadline as well. So I would be happy to pass that along as long as as soon as we develop that list as well. OK, thanks. I just I wanted to note one more thing, which I forgot to mention. I both another way in Good Samaritan, who have representation on the task force serve adults, and so it was a little harder for us to find more information about children and families. And so that is listed in here in the point in time count. But some of you may have noticed some some talk on Front Forge Forum in the last few weeks around some of the support that Heading Church in Barry does with children and families. And so I reached out to Heading Church to their outreach coordinator just to see what things were looking like on the ground over there. And they did say that they certainly were seeing an increase of parents and children who were living both in motels, in campers and sometimes in cars as well. She had also spoken with a representative in the month prior from the Barry School District, who said that they had seventy eight uncheltered children in the district. So just thinking not just about Montpelier as a and again, numbers are challenging. That is not solid. But I think continuing to think somewhat regionally about the issue, Montpelier is a center that people will come to from other places as well. And so we are definitely impacted by the neighboring towns and the experiences that they're having as well. Thanks. Anybody else? OK. Yes, sir. Yeah, I'm sorry, I didn't know where the meeting was. But when you step up to the microphone and introduce yourself. Thank you. Thanks. Yeah, hi, Denner in the top of Main Street. And I'm sorry I got here late because I thought the meeting was elsewhere. But if you're taking testimony about the the additional fees for short term rentals, that's not. Is that happening tonight? We will get to that. OK. Sorry to disturb you. It's OK. OK, thanks, Meredith. OK, next up, the Housing Committee. Proposal on short term rentals. Hello, everyone. My name is Rebecca Copans. Nice to see you all. I am a member of the Montpelier Housing Committee. I'm a longtime resident of Montpelier, Grubb here. And my family and I have lived on Cliff Street for about 15 years. I'm joined tonight with at least two members of my housing committee behind me. And then I know a few also are on on on Zoom with us as well. So thank you for everyone, everyone for joining us. Um, so, um, the Montpelier Housing Committee was created last year by the City Council. And we were given a pretty heavy task to solve this problem called the housing prices. The people who spoke before us before me really outlined how critical this need is and what it means to one family or five families or four hundred and forty six families who don't have housing in one player. And the Housing Committee was tasked with with this this, you know, housing, solving the housing problem, which is a big, a big task. And we really framed it in three three ways. One is what can we do in the immediate term? What is what can we do in the midterm, which is maybe two to two to three to four years? And what is what can we do in the long term, which is five years or more? And when we think about, you know, the bigger projects like Habitat for Humanity or the Elks Club, that's long term. We're not going to put housing on the ground with in with these major projects next year. So when we think about what we can do now, the low hanging fruit, if you will, is the short term rentals in Montpelier. So regulating short term rentals is an immediate step that the city can take. Our goal is to support people who who work here, who volunteer here, which is so critical after the flood, who attend our schools and who want to live in Montpelier, but just can't because they can't find housing. We the Housing Committee wants to provide opportunities for year round residents who who want to rent or own in Montpelier. And so our goal is to increase long term housing supply, which if we can increase the overall numbers, it'll drive down prices and it'll increase affordability as well. When we look at the short term rentals, people say, well, why this is such a small, you know, maybe it's just such a small number of properties that this would affect in Montpelier. There was a data poll in November, and thanks to Josh Jerome, 78 unique listings in Montpelier and of those 72 are unique properties that have short term rentals. Something that we really struggle with also as more cities and towns regulate short term rentals, investors look elsewhere, and Montpelier is increasingly attractive to investors. And so by passing this ordinance, we'd be sending a message that Montpelier is a place to live. It's not a place to buy up long term housing and take those long term houses off the market. So we've really broken down this proposal into two pieces. The first recommendation is to through a city ordinance restrict short term rentals to properties declared as an owner's homestead. So we're not saying that if you own and live in your home and you declare that your homestead, we're not looking to eliminate your ability to have a short term rental. A short term rental is something that is less rented less than 30 days. And over a year term, it's rented for more than 14 days. So this proposal would allow, if you live in your home, if you have a property that you declare as your homestead, you can rent out a room. You can rent out the entire home. If you have a duplex, you can continue to rent out half of your duplex or a tarplex as long as it's your homestead. What we're saying, kind of we're drawing the line in the sand with, is renting out a property that is not your homestead on a short term basis. And when people say, well, what would I do? You can rent it long term or you can sell it. But you can't rent it in the short term. Here are definitions just to be crystal clear. Owner occupied means the primary residence that the owner claims on their homestead declaration. A short term rental, I just went through, it's at least 30 days. Something this would not affect is legislator housing or traveling nurses. Legislators generally come for four months during the legislative session. So this would not apply to places that are rented to them. What this would allow is, if you have an ADU and you're rented out, if you have a cabin, I know there's one on College Street, that's on the property owner, that would still be allowed. So the homestead declaration, we really went back and forth for many months about how to make this very clear. And the homestead declaration is something that the state collects. Everyone has to, that owns a property, has to say where their homestead is. So it's easily verifiable. So I passed around some more specific details. And I just should say anything underlined in the actual proposal are suggestions that, as I met with city councillors, I wanted to be clear what we passed as the city council, as the housing committee. Anything that we passed is not underlined. Anything that is underlined was a suggestion from city council. So I just wanted to reflect what the recommended edits are in here. So you can follow along if you'd like. So we are proposing that you, if you were allowed to have a short-term rental, we would suggest that they become registered. That would allow, so in other municipalities that regulate short-term rentals, they're given a number and a registration number that they use when they're advertising their property. They put it on their, on the ad and then that property can be verified against registration. We are recommending that there would be a registration fee to help subsidize the cost of just the additional burden to the, sorry, do you have a plug? The additional burden to the city. Sorry. And so, and then we're asking, so at the beginning of this conversation a year ago, everyone said, they really wanted to know where, what the problem was that we were talking about. And we don't have the data that would show that this is a problem. And so we're recommending data collection on annual registration. So every year, if someone is re-registering their property, they would have to list the address that the property is, is that, the dwelling type, if it's a partial or whole unit, the number of days that each short-term rental was rented out in the past 12 months and the number of stays and the amount charged. And so it can give the city a better sense of what the problem is. Another thing that became very clear is there's not a great understanding of what compliance means for a short-term rental, whether short-term rentals have to comply with long-term rental codes. So this would make it very clear that you have to comply with all the other state housing codes. You also have to have a fire escape plan, and you have to provide an emergency number of a responsible party here in Vermont. So it can't be someone in British Columbia, for example. Enforcement would be if someone is found in violation of the of the ordinance, they would be fined $40 a day, and it would be like a parking ticket would accumulate. And the rentals would be subject to inspection by the city. So we didn't talk about an effective date in the housing committee, but one of the counselors suggested we should have one. So I would recommend you give it three months to go into effect. So anything that is any rentals that are already on the calendar would give them time to move them through. And so this would go into effect the third full month after the council passed the ordinance. The second piece of the recommendation, which is very separate from this underlying policy, we do not want the underlying policy to get caught up in this more complicated proposal. So when we talk about housing, Montpelier, a big question that always repeatedly comes up is how do we pay for it? And we have a housing trust fund. So this recommendation would be to increase the local option tax, specifically on short term rentals, following Burlington's model of 8%. So an increase of 8% on the local option tax. We asked the city manager if we have, if we're allowed it within our charter to implement a tax, and it's not clear. And the research that I've seen in the last couple of days actually shows that it's, I believe it's just Barry and Burlington that do have this allowance. So you'd have to go, we would recommend you go to the city voters and ask them if they would like to pursue a charter change with the legislature. So this tax would, I just want to be clear, we're not taxing the person who owns the building. We are asking the people who come and visit our town to pay an increased tax. Owners can set up a gross receipts account with the city and remit taxes monthly. They are welcome to pass those taxes on to their guests. And revenue from the tax could cover the cost of administering the program and benefit the housing trust fund. And I believe that's it. Happy to take any questions. Thanks, Rebecca. Start with council members in person. I'll also point out for all of you in Zoomland who are watching council members scramble around, a message popped up on the screen that the battery is running out and that let all the council members to run to plug their computers in. Although I think it was the computer that was hosting the slide show that was actually running out of power. But anyone here in the room who'd like, on the council, would like to start with some questions or Donna or Pellan? Yes, Donna. Well, one of my questions and I didn't do the research was how different this is than how BNBs are treated. So it's my understanding that BNBs have our licensed have a zoning allowance in the city. And I would defer to city employers to make that to elucidate that. But that's my understanding. That might be something we want to look into and compare the two of their recommendations and what's going on there and balance that difference. I like most of the suggestions. Thank you. Thank you. So to be clear, it's in the definitions. The definitions are clear that it does not impact INS hotels and Airbnb's. I'm sorry. I know. And I also want to just, can I just say one more point? When we were taking public comment in the housing committee, I just want to have all the information on the table. Someone came to us that has an Airbnb in town. He used it to bring the rent down on his long-term rentals. And he said that by taking away this ability for him to have an Airbnb, it would impact the affordability of long-term rentals. We did talk at length about how to narrow the scope enough that it's very clear what we're regulating. Burlington has a very broad swath of what they allow and they do have an affordability clause. You are welcome to look into it and see if you would like to create that here. The concern is that when you start doing carveouts, it's going to impact the overall thrust of this project, which is to create more long-term housing. But I want to just raise that. Rebecca, when I was on the housing task force, we spent a bit of time looking at this question and talking about what the impact was. And as you said, one of the tricky things is finding data on what's going on. And as I recall, one of the issues was that all of the listings were listed under zip code 05602. And so it potentially took in places in Burlington, Middlesex, and so forth. Is that still the case or were you able to break that out more? So I would defer to Josh. He had a conversation this morning that gave us more clarity on the numbers. Hi. Josh from Community and Economic Development Specialists of the City. They are able to break it into just Montpelier boundaries. So there are post-compliance platforms out there and they're able to identify all the listings within a particular community. So yes. So the 78 or whatever it was, those are all within the city limits of Montpelier? Okay. Thanks. Any other members of the Council have any? Sal? What happens to existing non-Homestead short-term rentals? They are welcome to turn their short-term rentals into long-term rentals or they can sell. You hear that? What did she say? They're welcome to turn their short-term rentals into long-term housing or they are welcome to sell. But I feel like we need to draw a line in the sand and say that we are going to prioritize people that live here and whose kids go to our schools and who volunteer and who participate in our community. And I think a big part of just to give you perspective of why I joined the Housing Committee. It was because I was working with a refugee family and we had five families that we couldn't find housing for that live here that are embedded in our community that are so dear to us and we could not find housing for them for a very long time. It got very scary that we're going to have to we're going to lose these families that have been that have become so dear to us. And it's really, it doesn't feel like it is appropriate to prioritize investors over people who are beloved in our community. The last thing that you just said, the thing for me that is really striking about this is the the idea of people buying up an entire property with the intention of renting it out as a short-term rental as opposed to renting it out as a long-term rental as opposed for someone to actually be able to live there. And I think that I mean we haven't, again we don't quite have all the information but I think just from living in Montpelier it seems to me that we have a much greater need for permanent housing for people than we do for places for visitors to stay for a few days at a time. And we have hotels and we have inns and we have bed and breakfasts and I mean I would rather encourage more development of those for the people who want to come and visit for short-term and then try to keep as much of our housing available for people to actually live in as we can. So I think that I also think that just based on looking at Airbnb listings a whole lot of those 78 would be exempt under this because they are people renting out parts of their homes or their whole homes. And so I think this is a good balance of still allowing people who live here who want to make a little bit of extra money with extra space that they have to be able to do that. And at the same time try to protect some of our housing stock to actually stay as long-term housing. So my thoughts because I study the housing market continuously it's kind of a wonky thing for me but I haven't seen the trend with investors buying properties for this purpose. I know it's happening in other places. I've been watching for it. It's really hard to identify that that's a trend here and I do think you're right that a lot of the folks that have Airbnb's that are in their home aren't going to be impacted. So in the end I think we're really going to free up very few units. If our mission is to create more housing this isn't a great use of time in my opinion. I mean I appreciate the sentiment but it feels to me like it's a barely involved proposal and I think the cost to administer it really hasn't been looked into yet but it will take admin time and follow-up and I'm not sure the $110 a year fee is going to impact but it really costs. So I think that's something to be wary of as we look at our resources as a community. I think my favorite rental registries I think there are aspects of this that I think are good and would help. I think the safety code issues they go with the registry make a lot of sense to me but that's my quick take. Tim I've got a question for you that reminds me of when there's a real estate sale is there some declaration of whether the property is being purchased for homestead or something else? Not really no. So we even if we went and looked at all the real estate transactions in the last year or two we wouldn't be able to identify which ones are being bought for it. I think so. It's interesting because as we go to the sales every year Steve Twombly the previous assessor used to call me and probably other brokers at the end of the year because you really have to almost know the people and have a sense of what the transaction was so I think he would call for anecdotal information that way and we saw through interesting conversations but that's how it was gathered. So just to be clear every one of the in in our presentation every one of the pictures were investor owned short-term rentals. So I mean the one the last one is a three unit in College Street. It's three units that could be long-term housing. Another two are on it's a duplex on Berlin Street. Another one is house that I lived in when I first moved back to Montpelier in 2007 on the corner of Liberty Street. These are not figments of my imagination and even if we change five houses into long-term houses those are the five houses that my refugee families could have more quickly moved into. I think it is not doing our due diligence to say I don't know about it so it's it's something that we should just ignore. Okay thanks Berlin you'll be unmuted and then you can get in. Okay you should be there you go. Okay yeah thank you Mr. Mayor. So thank you for the presentation. What if this investor wanna sewage today or situation and have Airbnb. So in this proposal are we offering something better for them or you know they said okay since Airbnb's are like exempted I will just be one of them and I will not do anything I'm being asked. Thank you. They would be paying the taxes and they would be carrying that burden by themselves. I mean I don't know about all of you but my taxes are about six thousand dollars this year. That's a lot to carry if you're not living in the house and you're not subsidizing with rentals. So it's a it's a personal decision that each one would make. Thanks Palin go ahead and could we leave her unmuted. Yeah no thank you so my point is even if they pay taxes if they switch to Airbnb we will still not have available housing or units to our residents that's my point. So then we cannot solve the problem of housing. We are just helping investors to switch their profit from one thing to another that was my point so. I see what you're saying. Yeah I think I think the Rebecca misspoke when she said they could do an Airbnb but we do have a bed and breakfast as a licensure and and so someone could invest and create a bed and breakfast. So I guess you're going there. Thank you so Lauren. I generally like this proposal kind of just appreciated Harry's points. I mean it's good to hear there's components of rental registry and code enforcement that maybe could get unanimous support. I mean to me it just seems like there's this is the kind of problem that we need like many faceted ways to tackle it and this is you know likely a small piece but it seems like given the 0.0 percent vacancy rate you know every unit that we can bring online seems helpful and knowing how challenging it is to build housing and to you know take the other steps that we also need to be doing but take a while so you know and I think we could learn a lot from the data you know and I think we could always scale it so if we learn once we start collecting the data that there's better ways to approach it in terms of a policy or even simplifying it if it turns out it's not getting at a core problem I'd rather be trying to do this and trying to address the problem so I appreciate it. I guess one question just in the vein of like how does this fit within what you all are seeing so beyond pursuing projects for building new housing are there other policies is this part of like a package you all are looking at or is this kind of like the low hanging fruit thing that a number of communities are doing and could kind of be implemented quickly so this is kind of the first initial step just how this fits within what you all are thinking about. Yeah it's a really good question. As you know governments move very slowly and we have been in the housing committee you know we created the housing committee last July I said we can have this proposal to the city council by Thanksgiving of 2022 it is a lot more I mean just the wrangling around the homestead question or you know how to there's just so many questions and public policy moves like molasses in winter so this is one there's a bunch of subcommittees that are working on different projects um this is the one that I said this could we could do this immediately so let's do it now but yes there's there are others but this is the first so hopefully we'll see more. Thanks okay to be clear what's on uh go ahead Donna. You can make your statement first Jack. No it's it's fine okay good time after you. Well I was gonna actually make a motion that we move towards this and we work on a ordinance draft. Okay so that's a motion is there a second okay thank you now this teased me up exactly where I was going to go Donna which is that we're not moving this ordinance tonight but we are looking and we're not nothing's getting passed tonight but we are looking to see if there's support on the council to pursue the more an ordinance adoption process. I know there are people present in the room and possibly online who'd like to be heard on this before we before we vote so I'll start with people in the in the room who are interested in speaking to this topic and Dan do you want to step up? Thank you. Thanks Rebecca thanks Josh. Yeah thanks Dan and you're from Upper Main Street here in Montpelier and I want to offer something from the perspective of a homeowner who is who is renting through Airbnb. We have a garage building half of it is finished space when we the previous owners used it as an office we found out that after we purchased the place we didn't need it as an office and it was contrary to zoning regulations to rent it out to another author to somebody else then we came up with this Airbnb thing and we've been doing that for a few years. We're retired we're living on social security we're in a house that's too big we would like to stay in Montpelier we love the community as Tim can tell you there's almost nothing available in terms of small houses unless you want to be in the flood zone or you want to be at the bottom of Liberty street for over half a million dollars nice little ranch house there beyond our means so we would like to be able to keep the Airbnb operating we have it's a small unit we rent it for $80 a night very modest most of our rentals well over half are for just one night so we have a cleaning fee they have to pay that cleaning fee applies whether you're renting for a day or a month but most of them are very short-term rentals my concern is that although our rental fee posted is $80 by the time people our guests come in and they're paying all the various taxes and fees it's approximately 108 excuse me 151 dollars I'm very concerned by adding a what do we call it a yeah the local option tax raise of 8 percent I'm concerned that that increase will impact our ability to continue to rent the place for the modest fee that we do I don't want to boost the I don't want to bump our fees up because again we're attracting people good people you know that are visiting neighbors visiting family and so on and I'm very concerned that the additional fees will cut into our ability to keep renting the place which cuts into our ability to pay our taxes and stay in this house and and our ability to stay in Montpelier ultimately so thanks for taking that into consideration okay thanks anybody else here in the room who wants to be heard on this topic yeah I guess for my own edification like a point of clarification about where we're at the motion as I understood it only pertains to the the ordinance to regulate bear bbs I don't did you do did the motion didn't include the 8% tax issue right is it or am I wrong about that the motion was to explore it further explore the ordinance I wrote down it was to explore the ordinance so I'm just you know mr. linner was just talking about the 8% tax yeah it could be a charter change so I just I I just want to make sure that I'm keeping track of the right thing I think you're right I think there's a difference between the ordinance and the charter change is that okay yes certainly we can see we can I can clarify that the intention is to look at the ordinance and we'll deal with the tax later should the ordinance happen thanks okay right hi rick de angeles uh I live at five m in street I'm also the director of the Good Samaritan Haven I think it's very telling the first two items on the agenda tonight the first being the report from the homelessness task force and you know we don't collect data about how many people have been displaced from their apartments because of conversion to short term rentals but we certainly it's anecdotal there have been a number of those situations and there's no question that that end of the rental market is drying up I was surprised and maybe they had it but the Vermont housing finance agency just released a major report on the growth of short term rentals just came out a few weeks ago it's really stunning there was a dramatic increase especially in the last year in washington county alone over the last nine years but there's been an increase of over a thousand short term rentals okay so sure maybe a few of those units were built new but I've got to believe that most of them were not so I you know I would probably be in favor of a even broader brushstroke on this but I think this is a good start thanks very um Jessica hi I'm Jessica Hoparowski I feel like I had to speak after speaking in between both of my neighbors here I'm a renter on main street right between Dan and Rick and I really hope that you guys can consider this recommendation because this is really important as a renter that was looking for a new property to rent a little over a year ago I got really scared that I wasn't going to be able to stay in Montpelier because I could not find anything luckily I found a building that was a single family home that was now converted into three units and we're really grateful to be here my son is a successful student at the high school here but I wouldn't have been able to and I'm terrified to find out if my if I can't renew a lease again because there's just not rentals and um thinking about what Tim said not having maybe there's not a lot of people that are investing or buying investment properties for this we're such a small community that even if there's 25 houses that could fit maybe five a five member family that's a significant number in such a small community like we would probably most of us would know those people so I think that it's really important that we do limit our short-term rentals um and if it comes to a tax later just thinking about a quick eight percent on eighty dollars is not that much it's like seven dollars maybe a night so I think that somebody could take on that somebody that's visiting could take on that extra eight percent tax I don't think it's going to be too much but that's just all thank you thanks Jess anybody else here in the room yes Emma hi my name is Emma Zavez I live at three derby drive in Montpelier and I'm also the chair of the Montpelier housing committee so first I just wanted to thank Rebecca for her presentation and the committee members for their really hard work on this as she said it's been more than a year that they have been researching reaching out to other communities um talking to experts on this issue and crafting a proposal so that's that's a lot of energy and time and commitment um and and yes this is I think Lauren you asked this is one of many initiatives that we are bringing forth and you will be hearing more from us in the coming months um and I think that that is part and parcel of the fact that and I think you said this too that that there will be uh it's not just one initiative that is going to solve the housing crisis in quotes um we need all solutions big and small everything counts um and I guess um I wrote a bunch of stuff but I feel like everyone's already already said it which is great I guess the only thing I wanted to highlight was just that I think that you know communities across the country have been grappling with the issue of having a housing crisis um for for a long time now famously San Francisco New York City um also two communities that are regulating short-term rentals um where demand is high supply is scarce housing costs are wildly unaffordable and there is a huge unhoused population um and we're seeing the same thing happen in Vermont I was going back through some seven days articles on short-term rental regulation and one published earlier this year mentioned 14 different communities in Vermont um that have either begun regulating short-term rentals or taking the steps necessary to begin regulating short-term rentals um so famously we think of Burlington who's more recently enacted this um but many other smaller communities as well um and so while while we might not uh see as many short-term rentals yet or investor opportunities as Tim mentioned um I think that the tide is is just beginning um I think Montpelier is in a new place we have arrived we are in a housing crisis um we have lots of unsheltered people we have lots of people uh working here who can't afford or find a place even if they could afford a place to live um so we need to be looking at every opportunity to resolve the issue um so similarly I don't know how many housing units it's impossible to know how many of the short-term rentals in the community would be affected by this um in terms of no longer being allowed but I think that every every unit of housing counts at this moment um especially because these units exist right now they're ready right now and could be uh long-term year-round housing for community members and finally I just want to say that I think that this is a an important moment for Montpelier to uh publicly sort of identify itself as being a community where people live um I think a lot of communities are struggling um with investors buying up houses and turning them into short-term rentals you can see that's your time oh that's my time thanks very much I hope that you will pass this proposal thank you thanks Emma I was just wondering if uh if the speaker would be able to see it but then I looked and saw there you were Donna holding it up excellent um so anyone else in the room who would like to be heard on this or is there anyone on zoom who would like to be heard if so please raise your electronic hand or your physical hand okay Mike thank you Mike followed by Dan and go right ahead thank you mr mayor um first of all thank you council members thank you committee members thank you members of the housing pass force um you know you all put in a ton of time on this and every other important issue that we face I appreciate it thank you um I strongly support the proposed ordinance um short-term rentals are like an extractive form of economic activity that will not kind of build the base that our town needs we need um we need long-term rentals so I I think this is a good step in that direction um I was glad that Tim said he's not seeing a lot of evidence of short-term you know rental investors yet in Montpelier although the data that Rick cited kind of cuts the other way but I would much rather see us get ahead of this issue than wait until it becomes you know the kind of uh extractive economic practice that actually erodes the the kind of basic uh economic infrastructure we need to have a prosperous community um you know housing being really at the base of that pyramid so um yeah that's it I strongly support the ordinance and thank you everyone for your work thanks Mike um Dan Kopak Kopak uh hi my name is Dan Kopak I live on Berry street and um I would also like to echo what the last speaker said um and thank everybody involved in bringing the proposal forward um I also strongly support um the proposals um Vermont has lowest um rental vacancy rate and the highest uh or the second highest overall vacancy rate do mainly to camp second homes and short-term rentals um so I I do think it's not just a Montpelier problem it's a it's a statewide problem um and I'm glad that Montpelier is is um considering taking um uh taking this proposal on short-term housing so I'll leave it there thank you thanks Dan um Diane Sherman it'll take a moment to get you muted you're unmuted and then looks like you should be ready to go thank you um excuse me my name is Diane Sherman I'm also a member of the I'm sorry my video is so red I'm not sure why that is um I'm also a member of the housing committee I'll keep this brief um I'm strongly in favor of this ordinance and the reason I wanted to speak is principally because this ordinance would have a direct effect on me um I've recently moved away from Montpelier simply because my partner has a job about two hours from Montpelier and so I now own a house in Montpelier which is not my homestead um and just to be clear I will be stepping down from the housing committee because I think it's important to have local folks on it so we'll have two vacancies for anybody listening um but I believe that there are viable options for folks who have second homes in Montpelier and long-term rental long-term renting them long-term is the most obvious one which is exactly what we need in Montpelier and we need long-term housing um another viable option for folks who do spend some time in their homes is uh renting as we talked about two legislators for the time period in which they are here and then to folks like traveling nurses and other folks who are in town for short-term employment engagement and so I do believe there are very viable options for folks who own second homes thanks um scanning the the zoom list and I'm not seeing any other hands propping up anything else or are we ready for vote okay the the motion is to pursue the process of uh in ordinance for regulating short-term rentals um all those in favor indicate by saying aye aye any opposed okay the motion carries thank you thanks for coming in next up Montpelier resiliency commission come on up then and while you're doing that I'm gonna see if I can get my computer plugged in because I look so it looks like I'm running out of power and Sal is back so Ben you're on thanks for being here great yeah thanks so much um my name is Ben Doyle uh I live in the um on Chapman Road just up the street and um I'm here tonight representing the Montpelier Commission on Recovery and Resilience and I just want to say thanks for having me and thanks for for your service and leadership uh at city council so I thought I mean you tell me what would be helpful for you but I was thinking maybe I just start with five minutes talking about like what is this commission where did it come from and what are its goals and what are we doing and then just to open it up for any kind of questions that you folks might have so I might just say a little bit about me um I'm the in my day job I'm the president of the preservation trust of Vermont which is a non-profit organization that builds community through the preservation of historic buildings villages in downtown and my previous role I worked at USDA Rural Development um which is a federal agency focused on rural economic vitality and so you know I was particularly interested uh after the flood of being involved in trying to think about community resiliency economic development community development how do we come through something like this um and so I was pleased to participate in the series of community forums I know many of you were there that were convened really by Paul Costello in partnership uh with the Montpelier Foundation Montpelier Live the city of Montpelier um you know I uh frankly kind of owe my career to following Paul Costello around and uh I probably participated in I would say 25 to 30 community visit processes with the Vermont Council on Rural Development over the past decade and I've never been to one like the one that was in Montpelier with that kind of engagement I mean I think we talked about almost a thousand people were involved in those forums which I found really inspiring and you know there were a number of priorities that were identified I uh I shared the list with you it's available online um one of the things that came up was the idea of the need for a kind of independent entity that could really focus on moving kind of these priorities forward you know that um it's great to have 24 priorities or ideas but if there's nobody there to do them you're not going to get them done and you can pick 24 things and get none of them done or you can pick four and assemble leadership around them and try to make something happen and so one of the priorities that was identified was the need for this commission and continuing the kind of work of convening the forums the Montpelier Foundation Montpelier alive in the city decided to form this commission put out a call for applications and people applied and were selected by the founding partners it's a 15 member commission the list of who's on the commission is included in the charge document which I shared with you earlier I'm actually serving as chair of the commission I was appointed as chair by my fellow commission members it's one of those things where it's um you know first prize is to be on a commission second prize is to chair it and but I'm really happy to do it and Lauren also serves on the commission and really brings an important perspective and think of the liaison with the council and Bill's been excellent in helping support and coordinate and provide information and context with what the city's approach is so in terms of the commission what it is and what it does you know it's uh we're not any kind of official authority or anything like that it's not a public governing body it's really a group of 15 volunteers with a variety wide variety of expertise and experience who are interested in helping move the priorities that were identified at those community forums forward and you know the way we've described it is using the members of the commission's knowledge connections and leadership the commission works to surface opportunities for public and private investment policy initiatives and action oriented partnerships that will increase Montpelier's resiliency I think if you look at who's on this commission there are a number of people who have experience in community and economic development work people who have had various roles in state government people who are involved in watershed management people who are currently working on those issues and save them on people in renewable energy or natural resources it's really uh and we have some you know some young people on the commission it's really a broad sector of people that have the expertise to try and move some of these things forward um and so what I would say is you know that's kind of what the commission is and I think what we're in you know we've had three meetings um and I just want to say right up the get go you know as the practitioner of community and economic development this is the work of decades not months or even years and you know I think we're really looking at this as a kind of long term uh this is not we're not envisioning ourselves as a long term recovery group in the same way that bury up his you know which is really focused on individual assistance and and kind of case management of people who have been impacted this is really I think more about long term visioning and project management and you know accelerating good ideas for future long term resiliency that includes like helping to stand up or support long term recovery groups that can help individual assistance but I just want to be clear about the distinction of what what we're talking about um I you know I think we think of ourselves uh at the commission if it works well can serve as an accelerant to good ideas it can serve as a kind of lubricant to ideas that have been stuck for a long time but that would make a a positive impact and you know again as a practitioner of community economic development I can say that the difference between communities that are successful and communities that aren't successful it really comes down to collaborative collaborative visionary leadership that's relentlessly optimistic you know and I think that the people on this commission love Montpelier I love Montpelier that's what we care about none of us have a political agenda or an axe to grind we just really want to see good things happen in Montpelier so I want to talk about what the commission isn't uh it's not an entity seeking to co-op the work of the city or this council uh we're not a body with a political agenda and we're not naive we know that this is going to be a long game and take a lot of work um but I think we we need to take that approach to address the challenges that we faced and so to get really granular of like what does this work actually look like you know I think we're again we've met three times I think we're figuring out we're taking a look at the 20 different priorities that came up from the forums we're taking a look at the community capacity and systems that exist right now and trying to kind of line up those priorities with the systems of the capacity or the people on the commission and think about all right how do we move some of those things forward so you know specifically what we're envisioning thus far are things like learning from other communities right talking to folks who experienced flooding during Irene places like Waterbury that had similar long-term recovery efforts learning from other communities about response recovery and collecting that information and and thinking about how does it apply to Montpelier looking for opportunities to share best practices and resources to build resilient infrastructure convening groups or people working on long-term individual assistance recovery um creating opportunities for future engagement I think one of the things that's going to be really key for this commission is you know like I said before we don't have any kind of official authority the only energy or power that's going to come to this group is through the commitment it has from the public right of I think people will see either it'll be successful or won't and that is that is the kind of authority and so we view it as like a real partnership with the community like we are trying to serve the priorities that they identified and so we have this real commitment to wanting to communicate and to collaborate with folks in the community that'll involve a series of kind of community engagement processes I think this work involves convening state federal philanthropic partners to find creative approaches to financing infrastructure and resiliency repair you know again a number of the people on the commission kind of do that kind of work on their day jobs and it becomes an opportunity to take that to our hometown also looking at opportunities for watershed restoration recognizing that the watershed is much much larger than what's here in Montpelier and that they're going to be really important partnerships across the Manuski watershed that are going to be important certainly folks like the regional planning commission are going to play a key role in that but it's important for Montpelier to have a voice and to be able to um leverage the opportunities that are here to further that work and to work again with you know partners like UVM who've already reached out that are looking to bring their expertise to bear to kind of open some of those issues and then you know I would say advocacy I think is really important you folks all have a lot on your plate and you know my experience working with the federal government is the Swiggy wheel gets the grease and you know I think it's really important for a group of citizens to just continually be advocating for resources and attention to help with the long-term recovery a very specific example you know yesterday a group of commission members along with Bill met with representatives from all of the congressional delegations to talk about the future of the federal building and the post office and the real kind of concerns of what's happening here you know I mean I think in some respects it could seem like a minor issue or a minor inconvenience but it's really not you know the federal building in Montpelier is the the premier symbol of the federal involvement in our capital and it's a real important symbol of does the federal government believe in this place or does it not and you know similarly the post office is the federal agency that we most naturally interact with on a daily basis and it needs to be downtown to demonstrate a commitment to this place and I you know maybe it sounds crazy but I really believe we could lead the nation with having the most flood resilient federal building and post office in the country and we should go for that you know and I would just say another kind of a specific example again is like trying to convene different community service organizations or community members who are interested in that individual assistance we've had some meetings with the agency of human services and FEMA talking about what that could look like and trying to identify other folks in the community that want to lead that work and then finally and you know I think perhaps Bill jump in here if you know I think we're going to talk about this perhaps at future meetings but you know I think one of the things that will be really exciting about this commission is when you bring people together that are doing different kinds of work in their day jobs or have different kinds of experiences these kinds of accidental connections can happen that really can create forward movement and so for example I've been involved in a project for a very long time down at five farm farm home way the building the property down by Agway the organization that it works for maintains a historic preservation easement on the house that's there in partnership with the Vermont housing and conservation board that has a conservation easement on that property I think you've probably been all I don't know if you all have but there's it's been a long challenging history with that property and it's kind of been an illegal quagmire for years and you know recently there was some you know really dangerous activity that that happened on that property and I think you know Bill can attest to the fact for years people have been trying to kind of crack this nut to figure out a way to move that property forward you know it really as a result of the commission it was an opportunity to sit with folks from the city to sit with the state hazard mitigation officer to look at that as a new kind of opportunity to think about watershed management you know there's 15 acres of property there right along the river that's in the floodway that has the opportunity to really provide some flood plain restoration and you know really as a result of conversations that originated around that table you know we've been able to get kind of all of the partners that are involved in that challenge including you know city management the an adjoining property owner the Vermont community loan fund that has a mortgage on that site my organization the preservation trust and vhcb we've all agreed that there's an opportunity here using the state's buyout program that we might be able to find a way to unencumber that property with the mess that it is right now and kind of move it forward as a as one piece just one small piece of a much larger kind of watershed question right and restoring that land to um to floodplain that it can absorb water and protect historic properties downtown Montpelier so that you know that's not an official project of the commission it's one that the commission might choose to support in the future but I envision over the life of the commission opportunities like that are rising um from the conversations that will be had around that table and from the partners and from the community that will share ideas you know I think that the last thing I just want to say is like none of the ideas that we have or the priorities that the community identified are going to be able to be moved forward without incredible partnership from the city you know I know a number of the city employees um kind of in a professional context and the great work that they're doing and that there are projects that they're a part of that I really feel like this commission again could help accelerate or move forward and would really I think we're all welcoming the opportunity to partner with you to be useful to the city and to the city council and as I said before you know I think all of us on the on the council are on the commission we're not naive but I think we're relentlessly optimistic and just really look forward to doing this work and I'd be happy to answer any questions you folks have. Thanks Ben. Thanks for everything you're doing for all your work on this and to you and all the other members of the commission um anyone on the council have any questions? Donna. I got a question from a constituent wanting to know how the public knows where you're meeting so they can participate. They were a bit concerned that everyone that's a member has like an official title associated with the situation and they don't see any general public people there so that's two questions I guess one is you're talking a lot about public involvement and partnership but at least one constituent was concerned that when they reached out they were told there wouldn't be open to public to your meetings so maybe you can clarify that. Yeah I mean we're not an official body of the city or like a city commission right or um the housing task force for example this is this is different this is a group of individuals who stepped up to be a part of this kind of task force and as such you know that we're not having we're not subject to open meeting laws we're not having uh regularly you know or I shouldn't say regularly but you know we're meeting every two weeks at this point and not all of those meetings are open to the public. We definitely do envision having at least quarterly large convenings where the community can come and be in dialogue with the commission. We're reporting out our conversations on a regular basis you know in various communication methods including front porch forum and you know we have a website Montpelier strong website there's a platform there there's an email address Montpelier flood commission you know and I would also say I know that there are a lot of people on the list of commissioners that have like official titles but they're all like our neighbors right and so I would really encourage you to to reach out to them and say hey what are you doing on this commission we want to know more I have this idea like we're really we really do mean it that we want to be engaged with the public but we also want to be able to have frankly pretty challenging conversations in a kind of safe environment where we can think about strategically and um and again you know we're not elected officials we're just folks that are getting together to try and and do something good yes very um thank you for that can you clarify a little I might have missed a little of what you've said because I was trying to find the website yeah um so I didn't find it going to the city or just googling but then when you said it was Montpelier strong yeah it should be much yeah okay yeah um so you've had some meetings um but you don't have like minutes from your meetings or notes from your meetings on here there's no I don't see any sort of summary of what you're what you've done at your meetings so far so how are you going to be communicated yeah they should be on there I'm sorry that they're not we we have been disseminating them through front porch forum and through an email list of people that um shared their emails at the community forums um but the idea is that they'll be available on the website anyone else though so go ahead uh thanks Ben I I have a lot of faith in the wisdom of crowd so I'm there was a pretty big crowd in in those forums that we did and then to have 15 or 16 members of the coalition with such varied backgrounds makes good sense to me um you know every time something about development downtown comes up I think of what about you know what are we going to do with the river um where is that on the priority list I mean I I just feel like something I mean do we need to create a sponge or can we leave things you know what can we leave the way it is what do we have to worry about maybe changing before we build anything uh permanent um so I'm curious about where that is on the priority list yeah I mean I I think it's it's right up there right and I but I I just want to be really clear too that I think all of us are coming to this work with a sense of curiosity right like definitely a recognition I mean the two from my perspective the two major issues are like how do we adapt the buildings that we have in downtown and how do we reimagine our relationship with the river right those two things I mean and they're totally they're not siloed they're totally interconnected but um so one part of your question is where is that on the priority list it's front and center what the answer is you know I think is really going to take time curiosity and expertise that you know I I don't have right but I can listen well and there are other people on that commission you know as I mentioned the state hazard mitigation officer that's helps administer the FEMA and state buyout program for flood impacted properties or um we have somebody that is a floodplain regulator for the state of Vermont that really understands watershed issues so I feel like between the the expertise that's there and it's not that they have all the answers but they know who to talk to or who to convene to to learn more about what are appropriate things and you know it's not like the commission comes up with an idea of this is the future of downtown make it so right it's really about helping people understand the interconnected nature of all of these different factors that are at play and then looking for you know common understanding and opportunities to work together right I mean for me what I'm I mean just personally like I'm fascinated by the the recent proposals in berry you know around the governor's proposals about redevelopment of a neighborhood including park space and all of those kinds of things you know that's really a lot of that's contingent on private landowners agreeing to voluntary buyouts but here in Montpelier we have you know what 40 percent of the downtown is asphalt much of which is controlled by the state of Vermont which is one property owner you know and I think that there's some probably some pretty interesting ways to engage the state in rethinking how that land is used that really benefits everyone anybody else Jack there's one thing that I neglected to say that's super important this is a volunteer commission and you know one of our first goals is actually to hire a director right it's like I think a lot of us have ideas and what wants to do things but like operationalizing things like getting the minutes on the website and you know all those kinds of things and and and someone who can really kind of keep us on task you know I think the volunteer effort of this nature can burn out pretty quickly unless we have some some paid staff and so you know Montpelier alive and Montpelier foundation commission members individually we're we're working pretty hard actually to fundraise for this position and to hire you know someone who is a rock star and relentless thanks man I see iPad Steve um with his hand up if you could be unloaded can you hear me yes all right thank you Mr. Mayor and um thanks for the to the participants here I had the same questions that Donna and Terry touched on regarding the commission sorry could you could you tell us who you are oh yeah I'm sorry sure I'm Steve Cease I live on North Street in upper and out of the floodplain Montpelier and thanks to the commission I did have the same concerns that Donna touched on I was I've been trying to find any information about the commission when does it meet where does it meet is it can people zoom in is it open to the public and the the discussion so far indicates that really it's actually not open to the public I personally think that's a mistake I think that the the commission would benefit from the ability to hear from people who are not members of the group and perhaps to throw in other ideas or different perspectives I know that there is a very expert group on the commission but I really think that it's important to uh for taxpayers and and I am particularly interested in the subject to have some access to the meetings and to have some input so that's my point and I hope that you and the commission will think about this and hopefully provide more public access to its proceedings thank you thank you Steve I really do appreciate that and you know I think I'm not trying to make an excuse for it but you know we've met three times and we're we are still figuring out a lot of our our processes and I know that all of us are committed to really to service the community here and so community participation and perspective is going to be really important and I thank you for those comments thank you Ben is the is the job announcement and application process there on the no okay no we're reviewing the position description next week and actively fundraising including tomorrow to try and get the money to pay for it okay Lauren yeah thanks um just just first kind of in like one other thought that hasn't really been named about community participation is I mean a big way that I see the commission's work rolling out is in subcommittees the groups that are going to for example look at the watershed or look at the adaptive downtown and I am positive that all of those groups as you get into the topics um the hope like we collected the names of the community forums of people who signed up with interest in specific issue areas for example so reaching back out to folks so community engagement I think is very much a priority of everyone involved and kind of figuring out what that looks like for kind of a volunteer commission is still a trick but I do like that's a place where I feel like people have really been um envisioning a lot of engagement is once we're getting into you know right it's so far been kind of setting up the processes and structures of this commission and once we get into the meat of it and the the fun stuff of you know how we get towards solutions I think it'll kind of naturally transition to a more community engagement um phase but um I guess just just well I'm talking um so just for for the council in public as a person who kind of raised my hand to serve and be hopefully a liaison for all of you um you know and we'll be sitting here in a public forum every two weeks for um as council like very much welcome and you know want to understand how I can best be um keeping the council engaged and up to speed and bringing your ideas and thoughts um you know or bringing folks into the process so you know just open dialogue and welcome kind of feedback of how to do that effectively as we try to figure out structurally um you know want to make sure that we're as aligned and communicative and um you know everyone's aware of what we're doing and able to kind of be part of the process so things aren't coming out of left field between the commission for example and you know Bill's part of it too are participating he's on the commission he's um bringing a city perspective but um but yeah I would welcome from you know public and fellow counselors how to do that well um my role is actually the note taker I'm the minis the minutes taker at the meeting that's what my role is uh no I just wanted his point of information uh if you go on the city's website we have our our community portal with a bunch of projects there's a whole flood page portal and the information about the commission is all under the members the charge there was the commission did a written summary of the first meeting that's there I don't know we could actually post the notes if no we're actually we're going to provide written summary so whatever that you know whatever the commission wants we're you know it isn't a city official city body but we are using the city's website as well to be a conduit for them to put information out so enablen's been coordinating that so that is happening so it can be found there as well and on montalierstrong.org right so anybody else before we let let ben go home chris handcuff okay chris go ahead once you're unmuted still look still looks me can you unmute yourself now chris there you go oh okay can you hear me yep okay uh oh so if you have to do it at both ends you click something and I click something that's yes we have to give you permission to unmute yourself then you unmute you okay okay good another lesson in teamwork which is what I want to talk about I'm chris handcock and live on clarenin have I serve on my pillars recreation board I've been involved in various conversations about rec facilities over the years this is kind of a transitional comment because I would like to note the connection between community recreation and community resilience during the aftermath of the flood in july the barry street gymnasium was temporarily converted to a warehouse for externally donated supplies so that's one kind of connection our recreation facilities have the capacity to serve the community in other ways during emergencies um and uh if you think of a a bigger community slash recreation center of the kind that I think Hannah's dollars is going to be talking about and hello can good to see you one thing you can do is imagine all the different ways that that kind of uh building might be a vital resource during various kinds of future emergency situations um the more subtle but I think actually much more significant connection between recreation and resilience is the web of relationships that are developed through community recreation I'll just use my own example um my experience playing noontime basketball I've gotten to know I don't know maybe 150 people um more people than through any other activity that I do here in town um people from of more ages for more walks of life uh than I otherwise get to spend a lot of time with um I've made some good friends and good acquaintances but in a way just as important is the that I've spent some quality time with people that wouldn't be friends I might not even like them that much maybe I rub them the wrong way um even with those people I've had to work out a lot of issues how to function together on a team how to play fair as opponents uh I don't know you might have to play a contact team support to understand all the potential for conflict the need for cooperation um and even sort of community self-governance you know deciding who gets to who has to sit out who's going to play next and which rules apply in this game uh all that stuff um so I've probably actually I've learned how to be a better team player with with anybody that I might meet but in particular if I'm thrown into an emergency situation with anyone from that community or any group from that community we are way ahead of the game in terms of being a ready to work together to do whatever we have to do um so this is a topic that actually has been getting some attention actually over the years it goes back I remember reading something about recreation from like a hundred years ago that talked about uh this connection but uh I'm looking here at a paper somewhat relevant from the uh international journal of disaster risk reduction and they're talking about the connections between uh it's just part of this work of connecting the dots from recreation to social networks from social networks to resilience um but I think it's also a pretty common sense idea that in recreation we're getting to know each other better we're becoming more deeply committed to the people around us we're having fun together and we're practicing doing challenging things together um uh and so you know I I I would like us to continue uh to keep recreation in mind as a significant important value for our for our town even during these difficult times and at several recent civic meetings I've been troubled to hear from some fellow citizens some very dismissive comments about recreation and about recreation facilities as though recreation is frivolous or optional or something that just doesn't require any civic investment um community recreation provides many significant benefits to a community including supporting some of our most important values and priorities resilience is one of those thanks thanks Chris anybody else I don't want to overlook anyone who has something you want to say okay thanks a lot Ben thanks for coming in um now we ordinarily take uh our break at 8 30 but we have a couple of longish things coming up so I think we should take it now so we don't have to interrupt those those next items so 10 minutes and their next item on our agenda is the community center report with Ken Ballard do we have uh any kickoff bill Arnie Arnie this has really been uh their project so I'm going to hand it right over to you I just wanted to I just wanted to introduce Ken Ballard who's um we have as our consultant for operations plan and our study of the of the recreation facility and he's going to present the two options that he came up with on the opportunities that could could happen but this is strictly an operations plan not a actual physical facility plan so I will let Ken take it from there great thanks well good evening again I'm Ken Ballard I'm one of the principals of Ballard King and Associates we're a recreation planning firm and help communities develop these types of projects I'm gonna hopefully be able to share my screen here and I have a brief PowerPoint that'll take us through the high points of this so let's see what we get I guess I have to be authorized to share so it's coming okay I don't know if you can see can you see the presentation yep okay let me try to get this over to presentation now there we go okay so um a little bit about us real quickly we're again a recreation planning firm we've been assisting communities on developing community center projects for over 30 years and during this time we've completed over 900 project studies through all the United States we've worked in all 50 states and we have over 250 recreation facilities of some sort up and running around the country and the vast majority of those are public facilities and we've been involved in over 30 New England projects you'll see a few I'm listed there but we do a lot of work in New England on the east coast and really throughout the United States on these types of projects so it's what we do and again operation plans are our real specialty for these types of facilities so what were our kind of study parameters right we looked and it just is a point to we were involved in the last study that was very different in 2018 and 19 where we looked at the possibility back then of Montalier building some type of a recreation facility we looked at the existing recreation center that you have as well as a number of other facility options so this is a change in the type of facility that was talked about but we used some of the information that we had from the previous study so we updated the market analysis and that really looked at demographics and certainly from the 2018 time frame that we did the initial study till this summer the number of changes have happened demographically we also looked at sports participation trends as well that kind of gave us the backdrop then for completing the operations analysis you'll see there was two different options that were brought forward the architect that worked with the city and with Arnie developed some initial concepts in terms of what might be included in this facility we helped them refine that a little bit but that was the baseline for then completing the operations analysis and we looked at then some assumptions hours of operation fee structure and actually then itemized out the cost for expenses and revenues for the for the project as best we know right now so let's I'm going to go through rather briefly the kind of highlights of some of the information that we developed we identified demographically a primary surface area which is basically the city boundaries and then a secondary market which is much larger that kind of represents the trade area from Montpelier and where we think you can draw people on a regular basis to this facility you may well be able to draw people from outside of this but we're somewhat conservative and how we establish our market areas for these types of facilities so that's kind of in the reddish area we identified as that secondary service area again just a kind of an info graphic that's for the city only but it looks at some key factors and the reason this is important is this drives a lot of the decisions not only on what's included in the facility but also a lot of aspects of the operations plan from how many people are going to come to utilize it to what we can charge for fees and charges for different aspects of the facility to who is going to be users of the facility those types of things that's why it's important to look at so that's just kind of a summary info graphic if you will for the city and this is a little more detail to some of the characteristics we look for and we're looking for trends so we use the 2020 census data all this information comes directly from Esri which is a national demographic service that a lot of cities counties and even states utilize for a lot of their information but again we looked at census data from 2020 and did projections for 2022 and then projections out to 2027 when this facility ultimately would be built at that time frame so we're looking for trends we look at the population numbers not only for the city of Montpelier but also for that secondary market area you can see the secondary market is obviously much larger than the city itself and that's a good thing that gives you more opportunities to draw people to this facility we're interested in the number of households that are there the household size that gets at the presence of children in the home ethnicity makeup the median age median household income all those again are factors in how people utilize facilities and also their financial performance that's why it's important to kind of go through this so this is kind of one of the summary tables that we used in this process I picked out just a couple of different than more detailed information segments from the demographics itself one of the key things what we call a spending potential index or an SPI this is based on a national number that's 100 and so if you just took the United States as a whole the all the numbers for the SPI and all these different categories would be 100 so what it does is it allows us to look at spending potential for a variety of different types of recreation activities for a utilization of different equipment that type of thing purchasing of that by users within your market area we looked at not only the city but also that secondary market and also the state of Vermont you have you're in the 90 so you're slightly under the the national number of 100 but not still pretty high the secondary and city are pretty close in their numbers the secondary is a little bit lower but not dramatically and you line up pretty well especially in the city with the state even a little bit higher so it tells us that you have a decent opportunity from a fees and charges standpoint for how people are currently spending money on recreation activities and how you set your fees for this type of a facility and before we get off this page are those figures of how much is being spent are those based on direct information about people who live in the city of Montpelier or is it an extrapolation based on the national figure of 100 it's an extrapolation but it takes it takes that information that we had on the previous she here takes all of that into consideration the median household income levels so it is it is a utilizing the data from not only the city but also from the secondary service area and taking that data and then and then putting it together into this index and so it's a combination of a of real-world real-world data but also doing some extrapolations from that to get those SPI numbers I can't tell you it's a straight line but it's the best we can get for trying to estimate really what the ability is and where people are currently spending their money not only in the city but also in that secondary market and again the kind of the benchmark with with the state as well thanks we have another question in this table where it says average spent per person and yeah average spent per person per year can I just clarify so fees for participants sports where you're saying that the average Montpelier resident is spending $125 a year on participant sports yeah and some ways that shape or form now that there's a lot of factors that go into that so that that covers a lot of different things and obviously when you look at the average there's a lot of people that are spending less than that and there's also a lot of people that are potentially spending more than that depending upon what they're participating in so it is it is an average number and it does tell us that type of information but you know it's just one of the data points that's in there thanks okay yep we also then look at again some of the characteristics that we see by different age categories and what's occurring based on projections for using the 2020 census number through 2027 and what we're interested in is what's occurring here what age groups are potentially decreasing in size which ones are increasing and you can see here and most of all the growth numbers are in the older age groups now that's not unusual probably 90% of the United States shows growth in the 55 and over age categories as the baby boomers work through that those age cohorts and so you know finding seeing you know 50 51 even in the 80s is not all that unusual but it just shows an aging population base not only in Montpelier in the in the market area but also nationally what's going on but then we also see some negative numbers in that potential growth numbers and especially in the younger age groups and you know again just kind of shows where your population's aging through that process so that again tells us a little about potential utilization of the facility by different age groups moving forward so we we had a lot more information than what I showed you but those were just some kind of examples but you know there's about 20 30 pages of data on all the different demographic characteristics but this is kind of the summary I mean the city by itself with an 8,000 population is really pretty small to support a really significant recreation facility and to really make that viable you're going to need to draw users from the surrounding area now that's not unusual most unless you're in a really large city that's pretty common place and they have a you know most facilities have a regional approach and a draw on with the type of amenities that you're talking about in this facility with indoor turf and indoor what we call hardcourt surface which are like basketball volleyball courts those types of things those typically have a more regional draw anyway so that secondary market then has a total population of almost 54,000 now we're getting to a you know a population-based size wise it's much better to support a significant indoor recreation facility and some of the other characteristics you have a reasonably small household size which indicates again a little bit fewer number of homes with children we kind of saw that in some of those previous charts but the secondary service area is a little bit stronger in terms of youth and closer to kind of what the state average is again the population is older and then both the state and the national numbers and we kind of showed you there the growth and decline in the different age groups and really the growth in those senior age categories. Median household income you're remarkably close to the national numbers again your expenditures for recreation trees are lower than the state but not really by much you're in those 90 categories especially within the city itself which that's not bad at all you're 90% of what the average is for the United States but your cost of living is lower than the national number is so that again kind of that mitigates some of that lower expenditure number by the fact that you've got a lower cost of service there compared to a national number you don't have a great deal of cultural diversity and certainly we recognize that you have people that commute into Montpelier and certainly during the legislative session there are a lot of additional people in the community as well so that's another potential user group for the facility. One of the other things we looked at and there's a number of different charts with this as well but I've just taken one of those and it's important to understand what's going on right now in terms of sports participation trends and these are ones that are put together annually by the National Sporting Goods Association and they track how Americans spend their time with kind of sports activities so these are a lot of different sports some of them endure a lot of them outdoor but kind of looking at what's going up in pop is in popularity from 2012 to 2022 and what's going down in terms of popularity and so it kind of tells you some of the trends that are there now one of the things that you don't see on there and most people are obviously looking for is pickleball and pickleballs off the charts in terms of growth it's simply not shown in there because they've only been tracking pickleball growth since about about 2017 so we don't have a 10 years worth of a data to utilize for the chart itself but it kind of just in this is way this is just national numbers so it's not directly relevant to Montpelier or to your market area but it kind of gives you an idea what's going on with that we see a lot of continued popularity and kind of fitness related activities some of the more popular team sports has shown small decreases over the last 10 years but still have really high numbers of participation so even though you may see by growth numbers or even slight decline numbers you look at the the numbers that are there and that represents millions of participation so just as an example of their yoga 22.9 that's 22.9 million people that participate in that activity so even though you may see small declines or this you know big increase increases you have to also look at how that overall number of participants look at it's a lot of people say oh man we're seeing declines in swimming but yeah it's still 48 million it's one of the highest participated in activities still in the United States so anyway just kind of some basic background information on trends that help us again understand what people are doing again then that's a national scan not even necessarily local so we use that information and then we also then took that based on the kind of premise for what the facility was going to include and there were two options for facilities that were developed and again this was coming from Arnie from the architect for the project in an initial development of what this facility could include option one is really a recreation center that includes again a large hard surface gym area by hard surface it means it's hard court which is really more the traditional basketball volleyball can use use for a lot of multi-purpose type activities as well also has some weight cardio areas a fitness group exercise space but also a large turf area and that's indoor artificial turf that can really support you know sports that you know typically are outdoor but when you get to this time of the year difficult to take place in there so it provides an opportunity for some of those more traditional outdoor activities to come indoor especially during the winter season and then there's some other support spaces in there from youth and teen activity areas to community rooms and then the necessary support amenities locker rooms office space lobby those types of things so the the recreation center is projected at this point from the planning model to be about eighty eight thousand square feet an option two to add the same amenities but added an indoor aquatic center which added about sixteen thousand square feet to the facility was primarily a recreationally oriented facility in terms of the types of amenities from slides and lazy river and those types of things as well so that then got us to about a little over a hundred thousand square feet for those two so that was the basis in terms of what are your slides stuck nope i don't have that in there in terms of the listing of the space so i'm just kind of talking about what these top two options were so the other things that are important to understand is we're basing the first year of operation on 2026 which again would be the earliest that a facility would open it could be later than that and probably in most cases would be again it represents full operating expenses and revenues some of those exist already and we'll talk a bit about that the presence of other providers will stay basically the same in other words we can't forecast if some other major facility came into the marketplace after after where we sit today and then it's recognized that the center will require some additional administrative staff and expenses to operate and maintain and again one of the really key things is this is based on what we call a written program plan or a written description for the facility we don't have a concept plan and the architect would have to develop that and so we don't know how that facility really lays out yet that could impact operations to a certain degree but it really the size of it and the amenities are the prime building block that really tell us what it's going to cost to operate in what the revenue stream will be from now and we certainly recognize that it's going to have to draw well from that secondary service areas we talked about before and again it's an operational budget so it doesn't include any debt service that would be involved for this facility just strictly operations we do have some capital replacement in the budget but that's about it some of the key assumptions we have hours of operation listed there those get very seasonally and again some of the utilization of the space within the like the turf area and the hard court surface area could be later at night for leagues or for rental space but that's generally the the hours that you'd be open to the general public we also then developed a fee schedule and this is also projected on at least a 2026 opening if not beyond and that's for basically coming in and utilizing the facility as an individual and we have different options on there for how you can access the facility and different again breakdowns whether it's an adult youth senior or family so we projected those rates and broke them down by a resident as well as a non resident an option this is for option one that doesn't have the pool and then for option two the rates are a little bit higher once we add that indoor pool with that so that's also the basis for calculating our a lot of our revenues it relates to just people what we call drop-in use of the facility itself so those are our assumptions this is the summary document when we and I'll be going through this in a little bit more detail but when we roll up all the expenses and all the revenues you can see that the first option nearly covers its cost of operation it has a shortfall of about 50 grand a year when we add the indoor pool that goes down and our costs for an indoor pool operationally are much higher than it is what we call dry space our need to lifeguard all of that is higher so we lose money and you can see you know it's a substantial dollar amount about 400 000 that's not unusual this also represents what we call the second full year of operation first year is a little bit tough don't know exactly when you're going to open also there's some things that are covered operationally by warranty and some other things so the second year is really a better baseline to start with so that's kind of again the the summary if you will and I can certainly come back to that so working with arnie we kind of developed then an actual operations budget we identified first of all staffing requirements and for any facility that's the lion's share of costs and we're from about 65 to more than 70 percent now of an operating budget is in staffing both full time and part time just to manage and operate the facility maintain it all of that then we have operating supplies which are reasonably small amount and we see the line items in there and again this is based on what we know is going to be in the facility and historically what we see is the as the the cost of some of these services in in your area of the country to accomplish that so you see that varies from about 170 000 to about 250 000 but that's probably the smallest part of the operating budget and the commodities or operating supplies and that's usually under about 10 percent this is the continuation then in the budget it really gets into contractual services and that now it covers utilities is the prime number as well as contract staff which are primarily instructors and officials for a lot of the programs and services that take place there and then you can see also at the bottom we have a capital replacement number in there that's not a sinking fund but it does provide some ongoing capital dollars for equipment and other things to keep the facility up and running and then you see the totals at the bottom which were again on that summary document so then we did the same thing for revenue we took that fee schedule that you saw earlier we looked again at the number of people based that we would draw to the facility based on the amenities that are included based on again just the size and the demographic characteristics of the marketplace and so we assigned then revenue and we have revenue worksheets for all of this that get us to the the fee numbers that will be coming in from the various forms of admission and then we have in there a big one on this it's much larger once you see on many facilities is rentals of and that's primarily of the turf area and also of the hardcore area as well but you know you're looking at over $200,000 just in rentals of that space and then we have below that projections on revenue from aquatic programs for option two and then for general programs which again is a big number and because of the amenities that are in there especially the the hard surface area and the turf area you will be doing a lot of programs and services in here so that's generating a lot of revenue and that's gross revenue and again we had shown the costs in those other categories under expenses as well and we have a few other things in in a forecast that are all pretty small under kind of the other category so that makes up again the totals for what we have for the costs of opera excuse me for the revenues generated by the facility itself a couple other things real quickly we talked about how excuse me staffing makes up a large part of the budget and in this case we've identified the staff that's necessary to operate this facility and we've identified the salary that those folks would be compensated at projecting that as best we can out three years and also factoring in benefits for those positions we've identified the number in there and the totals on that we've also shown the existing staff in there that's included in this operating budget and actually there's two others in here the facility maintenance form is an existing position and one of the facility maintenance worker is existing as well so you know that that's a big number in there from a full time staff of around 700 000 for option one and almost a million for option two and that's what we see is necessary to again to operate and maintain the facility as well as to provide the programs and services that are necessary within the center itself we then did the same thing for part-time staff and there's always a delicate balance in operating facilities between what's full-time staff and what's part-time and we tried again project out hourly rates of pay as best we can out three years or more we do have estimates for program staff at the bottom that are on an hourly rate of pay other ones we've shown that as a contractual service that we showed that earlier as a staff cost in another area so again the positions we've identified in here are ones that are typically part-time within that we actually built in a model for the hours that they would have in place per week and then calculated out again the number of hours or excuse me weeks per year that that position would be available for both of those we did factor in a benefit percentage for part-time and that really just covers FICA and unemployment and those types of things so again that's another large number anywhere from about 652 over a million dollars for option two and the bulk of the change in option two is the the amount of lifeguards that we have to have for that facility just to meet the code requirements finally then you know we you know we developed the worksheets that shows the revenue numbers from admissions in there in terms of how many admissions we expect to see on a daily basis how many 10 visit passes we'll sell three month passes we'll sell annual passes our annual passes are built based on for option one drawing from about 10 percent of the households in the city in five percent in that secondary market area and that's that's a pretty conservative number at this point for the amenities that you have in there and then we did the same thing for option two again when we added the pool on the number of daily admissions 10 visits three month passes and then also the month to month we're here now because we had the pool the number of households goes from 10 percent to 13 percent in the in the city and from five to 6.5 in that secondary market so that makes up again the revenue worksheets we also have revenue worksheets for all the programs and services it would be included in the facility as well and we also have sheets for rentals and so we tried to develop a comprehensive model as best we can on what we know about the project right now so that's kind of quickly through the operating plan for the facility and be happy to answer any particular questions you might have okay thanks ken do we have questions from the council tim are you getting ready yes sure um i guess i can have questions and then i kind of look at this and go it's all really a sophisticated guess and we haven't even decided to build a facility so um it's so questions ken when looking at your service area your extended service area uh and thinking i don't know where you're from um one from colorado yeah so i was thinking you have mountains too so you get it um i kind of looked at the nice circle you do around it but there's like some mountain yep ranges that go up through there and there's very distinct behavioral market differences on either side of the mountains so you may have some people on the more town side of the mountain on this side that might come this way but i think you'll get very few people on the other side of the mountains that are coming over here for a swim um and based on that because you have this nice big circle i really question your secondary market area in terms of who's really coming in for this and the other piece that i couldn't help but think about reading through the report is seasonal aspect of these facilities and having watched wedgewood first and fitness and different ones struggle over the years and work through our seasonal cycles and in inevitably probably like colorado when it's nice in the summer people don't go inside to work out as much they bike and get outside and and all those facilities are struggling for membership and reasons to keep the lights on and i don't think we would have any different situation with this one so those are two kind of concept questions i've got about your projections that i didn't seem to be taken into account well i think i actually our secondary market for the type of facility we're talking about is pretty conservative and yes i recognize that people have different ways that they travel you have some unique amenities especially in um the first option where you have indoor turf and you have indoor gym space it's just not readily available in the sizes that we're talking about and especially indoor turf so during the winter months that that will draw and we find historically that draws from a much large larger distance we know that people that and it depends upon what you're doing if you're if you're there for uh those kinds of activities you come from a farther distance if you're looking to come strictly to work out you generally don't drive as far um we factor that into our projections and we're known historically for our projections to be on the conservative side uh our you know when we do these studies uh our facilities once they're built historically outperform our operations plans and we like it that way uh you know that's everybody's happy on that so i i do feel pretty confident depending upon uh you know what you finally end up within the facility and the amenities that we're talking about in terms of size that you should be able to draw from that market area and even beyond that again we factor down the rate of utilization from that secondary market area to a much smaller percentage than we are from coming uh within Montpelier itself so it's on things like passes and other things it's it's less than 50 percent 50 percent or less on a lot of it so we recognize that when we get further away from the facility the rate of utilization drops so we've factored that into there as well um I'm talking about what your second question was uh Tim seasonal roof yes we also recognize that uh it does vary uh you know you'll you know you start getting at this time of the year you will get the highest demand uh certainly for the facility because people start orienting more indoor but we've also seen that uh for a lot of the amenities especially for the fitness has remained reasonably strong through the summer most folks will still want to do that they will do their outdoor things as well and and certainly we understand and in your area and as well as here in the west we do we get outdoors as much as we can we factor that in as much as we can but we also recognize with the facility it'll draw well same thing with the pool even though it's indoor uh in most facilities we find especially on a recreation oriented pool that uh July can be the third or fourth highest month in terms of utilization of that facility uh even when you compare in the easy months of January February maybe even March or or so that that's it's usually right in there the third or fourth highest so historically we it's drawn well because it's a known commodity during the summer so yep we recognize that more importantly when we get to that turf base piece of it and even the indoor gym things those are actually probably the most susceptible to the season alley especially the turf indoor turf piece where that one people go outdoor and so we've based our utilization rates on understanding that the that the rate drops off from about May through September or October substantially and we factor that into our numbers that we have in terms of rental and also program use so we try to factor those in as best we can um understanding the dynamics of the marketplace and certainly the the weather has a lot to do with that as well thanks thanks so uh these are extraordinarily large buildings um the the current building at the Alps Club is 15 000 square feet so this is five the small version option one is five times the size of the building I think yep um how are and of course debt services and in here how nope I realize this is an operational budget but how are these these buildings of this size and and even half this size uh how are they how's the construction funded without um without using tax dollars well honestly generally they're not um you know facility of this size would read almost always require uh at least a strong percentage of it to be funded through public tax dollars to get them to to move forward so that and most of them are done through bond issues uh through a tax increase to support that other times there's other mechanisms are in place and oftentimes you're cobbling together three or four taxing sources out of that and potentially using some other sources as well but the reality is for the lion's share of public facilities in the United States they're funded with the the capital is funded with at least a large portion of it being through tax dollars it just seems to me that when we first talked about a rec building we were talking about renovating the rec center and there was a yep potential bill there of six or seven million dollars and we said well they're going to spend that much maybe we spend a little more and get a new structure right uh I mean the current price to build this is probably over 500 dollars a square foot which puts the smaller structure at 44 million dollars and the larger structure at 50 million which seems to me just completely out of the question um I mean I guess I would need to have a lot more information to be able to calculate how that would be feasible by any stretch of the imagination and to be honest we while we do the operations aspect we don't do the capital projections on what it will cost so that would if you go back to the architect and say so you know what what is it going to cost us to actually build this facility and obviously that's a really important part of this and trying to define you know how you're going to pay for that uh not like this and we've been trying to identify okay so if you do build it what are you getting what's going to be your financial obligation operationally year in and year out I mean the first option here you don't have a lot of the financial loss uh you're basically on a break even basis that changes when you add the pool and it's just a recognition now you have to not only fund the capital but you have to find ways to fund an operating deficit for the the second option we do have some local examples I think Colchester just built a community center I think the the square foot price was 541 dollars a square foot for that was a 15 or almost a 16 million dollar building it was 30 thousand square feet so it's about a third the size of the small small building here thanks thanks for your info sure just a perspective the lion lion share of this facility is in the two main spaces and that is the hardcore area which is a represents about 37 000 square feet so it's a large open bay gym space that can be used for a variety of different things and the other part of it is the the turf area which is about 22 000 square feet so you know those things together represent 60 000 square feet and those are for lack of better time they're they're just large barns um yeah I mean they're still big spans and everything else but that that's what's driving the size of the building is those two spaces that's you know I mean that's 75 of the space in option one thanks Karen yeah thank you um I have some questions about the revenue assumptions and so I'm just kind of scanning through this and they're you know like well the the numbers of uh that we're talking about um being very very high to me in terms of numbers of people as well as how much money would be generated and I'm trying to understand where this came from um so first a clarifying question you talked about the daily rates the annual passes how much money would be generated from that but then there's additional money generated for very specific programs right so are people paying an annual pass and then every activity they do on top of that they're paying for yes and no uh if you have if you have an annual pass your fitness is included and I think we showed that or it's in the report in the fitness classes your what we call your base fitness classes are included in your and your annual pass but other programs such as if you took swimming lessons or you played in a basketball league or something else those would you be paying extra for those particular programs on the other side people could come to the facility not by any time any form of admission that's shown on here and just strictly pay for that class or that program so you can come at it either one or two ways okay so so then for instance you've got um uh adult leagues like the 12 teams of indoor flag football of adults and um 12 teams of soccer and 12 teams of basketball with two seasons and and 12 teams of volleyball I don't we don't have this currently I don't think that anywhere around here I'm just not convinced there's a market for 12 teams of adult indoor flag football and then also um I mean there's just there's a lot of things on here I could point to get seen questionable to me there's an assumption that this will be four birthday parties every week all year long and other kinds of rentals are um I'm just a little unclear where all this is coming from maybe you could explain that well again what we find with these kinds of facilities is the not only uh the types of activities that you that you take place there but also their frequency and the dollar amounts that are charged and we look at that in relationship to um you know other facilities that are in the general area in terms of uh of what that might be so we typically will see these types of programs and activities one is we noted in there um is that these are representative programs only I can't swear to you you're going to run a league that's going to have 12 you know um flag and indoor flag football teams you know it may be more than that it may be less than that but you know we it kind of represents what we see in terms of overall utilization of the facility and the revenue coming forth out of that so I know the numbers look big with the facility of this magnitude in nature that's not unusual to see some big numbers in there in terms of what people are participating in and taking part in so you know we build the model and again we've done this literally hundreds and hundreds of times over the last 30 years for these kinds of facilities still taking a conservative approach to this um and and we know that uh you know with the amenities that you have in there in the market for those types of things since there isn't really indoor turf on the magnitude that we're talking about available uh you know that provides a unique market opportunity for those types of things so um yeah I mean we we especially on the program side it is an estimate in terms of the types of programs and the numbers that are there but it's not uh so much as it is on uh on some of the other aspects of it as well so you know we feel pretty confident that what you see programmatically is what's going to occur in there in some form with that uh and when we've seen that with these kinds of facilities so we know those numbers are not you know way out there in terms of what they're going to do I mean again we're looking at you know one one season of this one season of that so and those are what we see in those kinds of things it's like flag football it's only a it's only one eight week season and that's not unusual things like basketball and indoor soccer those have much longer seasons and typically you can play a lot of those um you know from basically three seasons from the time from 1st of November down through April on some of that stuff so you know that's uh we have a lot of experience with operating facilities uh ourselves as well as individuals uh before we went into business so we've kind of lived this aspect of this so and I I know the numbers look large and daunting but we feel that the you know it's realistic for what you have within the facility the market that you're in excuse me where are we going with this well it's like I was just looking down it's it what's going on here well we're hearing this presentation to and and then part of the end of it is the next what the next steps are right so are we there now I don't think well I want to make sure everyone has a chance to answer ask their questions okay hey that's a good good point um does anyone else have any questions before we cell read no I'm just looking at uh I pan to Steve oh okay Steve sees he's still got an old uh see are you still there I think it may be does Donna want to talk yeah Donna do you have your hand up yes and family I got unmuted you it's really very awkward could we not share the screen anymore all this information is in the material we got um could we go to non-sharing so we can be seen and see great thanks Donna but I also I mean I really appreciate the data and statistics and all the experience that went into this and to me it was a good resource going forward I really need to digest it more and use it as a tool for future decisions thank you Ken and Pelin I you're not you're not okay um and Steve you may be done okay I'm on hey okay you're on Mr. Mayor all right thank you this is Steve sees again on North Street um I uh kind of echo what I I don't know if it was this is what Tim Heaney was asking but I really wonder what are we doing we're talking about a recreation center that will cost tens of millions of dollars the city if it was a person we'd say we're just about broke we're facing incredibly daunting financial challenges of of a really exceeding priority ranging from our city water and and street systems to recovery from the flood on another front um the Times Argus recently ran a story about the new education funding formula in which the finance director of the school speculated that a few years out owners of a $300,000 house in Montpere could be facing an increase of over $3,000 in one year the city is really in a tough facing some really tough financial times and I honestly don't think it makes any sense for us to be talking about operational costs and revenues of a facility that frankly it just seems completely unrealistic for the city to consider going forward with a 53,000 person service area who are we building this thing for I just think this is not a productive area for the city to be spending its time and its limited resources even on even on this level of discussion we're spending a lot of time on something that frankly I just don't think is is reasonable to think is ever going to happen so with that I will um sorry I'm ranting a little bit but thank you for your time and thanks for listening thanks Steve um so I think if nobody has any questions or questions for Ken I think that brings us right back to uh to Arnie and what what the next steps are and and one of the questions that I have that Ken may not have the answer to but you may have the answer to Arnie is whether how a facility like this compares to some of the other facilities facilities in the area like uh what I still call Wedgewood because I never remember to change the name of the new of a new place yes I mean some of some of the some of the thought process here is we you know we are trying to come up with some kind of a facility plan we knew the rec center to renovate was going to cost six plus million dollars to not gain any more space so when we kind of we're talking about this we're like it started a ways back but we said let's take a look at some options with the idea that we could always pare down the size of the facility so the facility doesn't necessarily have to be this big but we figured let's start out with a with a dream and then we can shrink it down I think the you know if we're going to try to generate revenue you know through a facility that could you know create a lot of possibilities and Ken can correct me if I'm wrong but the hardcourt surface if we could you know do two to three basketball courts on a hardcourt surface that's AAU tournaments and a lot of things that only not only bring basketball and and opportunities and also I want to do a indoor walking track you know for health reasons because where do people walk in the wintertime in Vermont and not everybody's snowshoes or cross country skis my mother was very proud of herself she brought her snowshoes up to my house because she wanted to go snowshoeing I took her out in the flat part of my lawn she went 10 feet and she had enough you know and and we got to be cognitive if people are living longer and you know want to be healthier lives we got to give them an awesome opportunity for indoor walking spaces where where they can walk that being said you know we pare down the size of the facility and we look to the areas that actually draw the revenues like the sports related things the community aspect of it you know that we have some community space being that you know unfortunately the cost of a facility has certainly skyrocketed since the first time we tried to do a facility addition on to the high school which would in two basketball courts and indoor track I believe and I think that might have had an ice rink idea Tim might remember this was a million and a half dollars that was 30 years ago 35 years ago now you know we're at a lot of inflated things so so a lot of sadly missed opportunities have been missed along the way and now we're at a point where you know how do we how do we draw families to Montpelier we I mean we may not do obviously a facility this size but you know to have an indoor space a community center where people can participate I believe would draw families to want to move here I mean I know housing is an issue too but you know right now you know if you if you go around the city what are some of the things kids are able to do that are you know especially when you get to winter and they can't be outside all the time or you don't want them out in traffic you know so these are things that we're considering and again you know we're trying to come up with an analysis of an operations plan and this was us the model we based it on but Ken can correct me but we could pare it down you know once we know the size of the facility and everything else shrinks with it your staff size you know how many part-time staff you need so a lot of that stuff would be relative but yet you can still generate the revenues and the birthday party piece could be surprised how many people try to rent the rec gym for birthday parties and we have to turn a lot of them away because we don't have the space but needless to say we'll have two or three on a weekend on some weekends but so that's kind of the the thought process and you know how do we how do we make the capital city healthier for more people to have more we have a lot of outdoor recreation opportunity we have a lot of land with Hubbard Park north branch and now we have the Elks facility but we got a rec center on Berry Street that's not even accessible yeah I I think it's fair to to be looking at this because you know for years we've been hearing and and it's a fact that the rec center the way it is now is really not adequate to meet the community's needs and so does that mean we refurbish the rec center do we do we replicate it somewhere else do we make something that's bigger than the rec center but still not not unscope of what we've heard about tonight so I think it's a discussion to have we're not going to get there if we never have right discussion and right now I mean realistically um we do have a indoor space up at 203 country club but we don't have a gym you know so if we can create a facility where there's a gym and attach it to that building um you know it creates recreational opportunities and a revenue stream you know that people will come over you heard Chris earlier who who is on the rec board which I didn't talk to him before this meeting so I don't want you to think I gave many ideas but you know that that's community you know a lot of people today with you know with a lot of our cell phones and stuff and texting people don't even talk anymore and I was at a rec conference one time where they had a you know they showed a picture of this field you know and people asked well what what's happening out there somebody said oh it's soccer and then somebody said oh no there there's adults talking and at the end of it basically what it came down to is community you know you got everybody from different aspects of the community all together engaging as part of that so Tim when we look at this it feels like one thing I haven't heard mentioned at all but I think they're part of our community is the school I mean we have gymnasiums in our schools um back when I was in the school board years ago and you were working on the program where it was a little different structure the gyms were not over utilized in the schools we did buy them we maintained them as a community is there some reason it's not part of the conversation of how we do recreation and use the facilities that we own and you've got the civic center the schools there's other facilities around that are part of the mix and I think they all need to be considered not just something we build for us to run yeah um part of part of it um you know really since COVID kind of hit yeah is we don't have the access to the schools that we used to have and we tried um we have tried yeah we have tried and um and part of it you know is is either security reasons um or the fact that they don't have the staff to be able to have the evening stuff happening so so there's there's a few things it's not as easy as and so and it and completely separate district yeah so ownership issue within our community because we no longer own our own schools the problem so by by having a a city you know facility it's controlled obviously by the city and they get to the council would make decisions on how things happen and support and we'd figure out a revenue plan on how to try to you know I've never said that we would never need support from the city but the goal is is if we could get something that would happen that we could get a new facility and our appropriation didn't go much higher than it is right now that would be a huge win you know for everybody because you'd have a facility that's actually functional for many things one of the things I was told about the senior center many years ago is when they did the renovation the first thing they learned was within two years they outgrew it they had so many people coming into that space and the challenge also on on berry street is even if you could renovate that building which i think six million would be really brutal and i'm sure it's higher now but you're not gonna make the footprint any bigger so you can't really draw many more people and where do people park you know so that's another issue you know i mean people think a lot of people walk to that facility but most of the people that i've talked to that walk to the facility are parked further up berry street because that was as close as they could get to the building so so that's that's the challenge so yeah i would just say that you know it did echo what arnie said you have the ability if this is something you want to explore this is just kind of the first shot at that to scale this thing down and then you know you have to rework the numbers in terms of not only capital but and operations to get towards a financial goal of what you want to spend on indoor recreation if that's a priority so it doesn't have to be the other thing you can do is you can you can break it into phases and and say well this is what we're going where we're going to start and down the road we may add some more space later whatever that might be and that's not unusual for many communities to do that in this day and age so i i think just looking from arnie's perspective at it how do you want to at least in big picture terms proceed with this in terms of you know do you want to continue to study this do you want to to be scaled differently um you know yeah it's a big building and it's it's certainly a big undertaking uh there's no doubt about it thank you i really thought that your presentation made it made everything much more comprehensible than all the pages all the print we got and so i think that's good i think we need to figure out what happens next i i don't see the support for doing doing this yeah bill so i think i think the key takeaway from this is um when we you know entered into the country club road project and we identified the uses and it was basically you know recreation facility outdoor recreation and housing and we've moved the housing forward and we're you know about ready to move the community conversation about the recreation forward so now we have some information about you know size and scale so you know if forty four million dollars and eighty thousand square feet is too much then now we know that you know i mean it's out i mean not that we that's a surprise but i mean people get to understand the scale if you want because we all know people will want the things that were are listed in these things when we ask what would you like to see in a recreation facility we're going to hear we want gyms we want pools we want you know in our fields and we want the things and now we can say this is kind of the size and this is what they cost and this is what it takes to operate them and so we can have a more intelligent conversation as we go forward about what works and how we phase that so you know i don't think the intent was to come in to say let's do this it was to say here's here's what happens when you develop a facility like this you know there are some nearby Claremont i know Colchester and they're much smaller and you know we've talked to them i think Ken actually was involved with some of those projects and so you know this is definitely the beginning of the the process not the end it's just uh it's just uh when we engage the community conversation we can have some information to talk about as opposed to just a wish list i'm kind of plays the same place i was with the country club i just can't believe we just paid a consultant to generate this information when we haven't even decided as a community if we want to be where we want this you know the real estate decision has not been made as a community whether we want it in town or the country club is like sucking the air out of the room for everything because since we bought it everything kind of goes there but i really think it's a community in a master planning process and any that i participated in before people wanted this thing in town yeah well again so and they didn't want to lose like the country so there's nothing in this data that says it has to be at the country club i think that you know then then the size and mass of it becomes an issue is from the where we are in town with that fit it this this data wasn't based on it being in a certain location the fact what it can't be well it is if you want if we want to have an expanded and i'm not saying we do but if we wanted to have an expanded rec facility which has been a subject of conversation for years for years it's important to have a sense of the size and scale of what that really costs and so we can have an intelligent conversation about it and if we if we if we want and i'm saying we the community not we are sitting on the table necessarily if we want all the things we have to know exactly the kind of size and cost that's going to be so then if we talk about okay yes it should be in town where are we going to find 88,000 or 50,000 square feet downtown right so i think it's it becomes a reality check are we going to you know there was talk about building something up by the pool area okay well we're going to put you know what do you put there and you know maybe there's you know you go through you say part of the conversation could be are you want to pull we already know that that we've now know that that it's going to cost us 400,000 a year operating you know net loss and operating so maybe what you know maybe that that brings us some data about should we pursue a pool or maybe it tells us we can't do this without regional partners so we go to we say all right we're not going to do this unless we get all the neighboring towns to come in and contribute you know it gives us the information to develop a strategy about how to go forward which case then a regional location makes a lot more sense because it's got to be available for people so maybe it is entry club road because you know Berlin berry and others would have your access to it so i think it's just provides us some information important information about what we can afford because i you know i agree see i mean the first thing ken said in his study was city of 8,000 can't do this on its own i mean that was the number one line and i think that's the biggest takeaway is you know we if we're thinking about this being something that's just from my appeal here then we've got to think completely different and you know we can't forget that we were looking at all the other stuff but the number one thing our consultant says is don't go it alone or at least don't do something like this alone and so it's all part of how we go forward so the plan from now is to do about a lot more community engagement yeah which is where we're getting in really having to hand the whole recreation community conversation in regardless of location that's the next up okay i think we are at a conclusion of this discussion unless anyone has anything else they want to jump in thank you ken sir thanks for doing this no problem happy to do it thanks our thanks our next up building a repair and flood resiliency proposal why would be mine are you about about to share share something or okay and well i'll let someone else start with the questions i just want to mention that you know this is the type of contract we would normally put on the consent agenda but just given the flood damage the importance of it the fact we've been asked we thought we put it on the regular agenda just so no one in the public thought we were trying to sweep something through or anything but you know there isn't anything extraordinary we followed our normal process we did think you know there's but we just want to make sure the council saw it and had a chance to deliberate okay tim sorry to be the one that keeps doing this so just trying to understand this because this is a large contract it's a consulting contract and it's actually not doing any repairs this is planning and moving forward right so planning and so designing yeah so it's planning and designing the work that needs to be done including weighing the option so what FEMA told us is that they will not fund repairs until we've evaluated you know mitigation versus prevention and you know what are the optimal solutions most cost-effective that will give us you know they don't want to come back and pay for this again basically so is this package that we're presented with the base level of FEMA information we need to produce or is it yes no it's above that we because yeah because we want to also know stuff for ourselves and including changes we might want to consider now they may be too expensive to actually do we've talked about but you know if we're going to be tearing our building apart we ought to put it back together the way we want once and not multiple times so but this is doing the you know I mean like if we're going to put a new bathroom in those kinds of things do it now while we're when we get to the construction fees but more importantly we won't get FEMA funding for replacing or mitigating or preventing if we don't do this because they'll say it wasn't properly grounded and they were pretty clear about that that this is yes sort of well so anything we do that's anything that we choose to do that's not flood prevention or mitigation or something like that that's just our choice but anything we choose to study that's not I mean in the word this is a this is an evaluation that creates options and design and a recommended design and why that's recommended why this is the most cost effective way to do it and there is there a is there a limit there to what what I mean if we said we want to put on a third floor FEMA's not going to pay that portion of the evaluation I think the I'm just getting back to Tim's question of right not if if we wanted to put on the third floor because we just wanted a third floor no they're not going to pay for that if if the consult you know if the if the study process said the best way to put this building back so that it's flood resilient is just to open the basement so water can flow through it and add a third floor that's then that's then they would say okay that's a flood okay you know so right but I think the question that's being asked and I think and I think you were clear about this but the question is being asked is that the study that we're buying FEMA's paying for or yes and the only issue with you know Tim's asked us a couple times and I wish I could give you a really hard answer it's going to be at least 75 and possibly more um you know it's it's like looking at voodoo but it's somewhere between 97 and 75 percent so I keep saying 75 percent so that we're on that end of it but depending you know the state is contributing some to some of these repairs and some you know they fall into different buckets some are you know was category A in some of category B and yeah okay so this is coming next so depending how you fall there's different levels of reimbursement but yes this is this is FEMA funded for the purpose of putting city hall and the other two buildings back together in a way that it our flood resilient just I might and when it's done we'll be able to construct the building because we'll have an approved plan and then we'll do the construction with FEMA money instead of our own Kelly and if I might um just within the RFP that we put out we did do three levels of review so the first is just to put it back the second is to improve for flood resiliency or to put it at a standard of resiliency and then the next is to improve we did learn since we put the RFP out that it's likely that we would be eligible for sort of that second tier at least because of just our code structure and bringing everything up and also where the different flood lines ended up you know coming into the building and so that would be taken into consideration so that it doesn't happen again um or at least we're prepared for it and we want to make sure that we are you know sort of batting down the hatches so that then next time around we're solid and we can hopefully you know stay downtown in an event like this okay any other questions from members of the council I want to make sure everyone has a chance to be heard I had some questions when I first looked at the report because the um there was a quite a discrepancy in the in the cost among the bidders and I was thinking but but the evaluations were very close among two of them and uh that I wondered how that you know when I could possible it seemed like there were two different projects um but it turns out the committee uh brought brought the the candidates and then interviewed them and um and unanimously uh selected uh Stevens is the recommendation so the the follow-up that I felt was needed was done I think okay Tim I know you want to be heard I want to I think this is an appropriate time for a motion and then we can have further debate on that motion so so we want to move that we approve the uh contract as proposed by by the manager I'll make the motion I'll second okay okay Tim I'm just struggling with this thing I mean it's it's a lot of money um and I think a lot of the things that need to be down are pretty common sense and we know what we need to do so we're paying somebody a couple hundred thousand bucks to tell us what I think we pretty much know what's going to happen everybody else in town is dealing with this without the luxury of this kind of a study um and I think a lot of people are doing well with it uh trying it just feels like with the need out there in the community if you could magically just put the money where it needs to go I know I'm still encountering people in that aren't in their homes that aren't getting help from FEMA and we're sucking this money out of the system I know this is like philosophical and not this man but it really bothers me when I talk to people on State Street who can't get into their homes and getting no help or people on Elm Street and we're I feel like wasting this money to some degree I just don't think it's a good spend I think we're being mandated to do it through some process through FEMA I usually don't like being told what to do so that's my venting but I just think the choices are wrong and we're playing with it you know I hear that and I think you know the choice is we could do what we want to do and spend our own city money and do it at whatever pace and make our own decisions and we would still probably need to hire someone to help us do it and um you know I hear you loud and clear I wish FEMA covered all the commercial buildings and all the residents I mean this you know I I you know those of us around the table don't make the FEMA rule so I you know I I think I want to be I just want to clarify I appreciate the frustration you know we're not sucking money that could be going to somebody else this is money that the federal government has determined goes to municipal governments or governments in general to restore what you know essential services that is not available to homeowners and commercial buildings you know I think it would be a different story if we were sort of trying to get ourselves in line ahead of you know more needy people I would I probably wouldn't be agreeing with you but I think ultimately you are whether you believe it or not well I don't know who else can get the money for public facilities I I mean if there's a case to be made for it I'm we're open to it but it's you know they so I mean that's the choice if we want to do it on our own we can that's really up up to you all but it's going to cost us money so from somewhere uh I mean you can literally move the elevator up in City Hall for the cost of this program I mean it's that much money is there another way to do this study for us I don't think so not to meet the FEMA standard okay that's I mean that's you know I mean yes you're right if we were just if we weren't worried about meeting the FEMA standard then right we but you're right we have to we certainly have to deal with the elevator we have to deal with it you know we've got to figure out whether you know trying to seal off water entry versus you know you know mitigation versus prevention versus this that the other thing I think you know we were talking you know our consultant is planning to work to the 500 year flood not the 100 year flood so that we're really taking the extra precautions which I think makes sense and you know we would have to hire professional help for this even if we were not doing it this way I mean we you know it's it's it's you know someone needs to know what we're doing we have an old complicated building and I know you do too I do I know and so so what you're saying is the evaluation and the design have to be done someone has to pay for it and this is an opportunity if we want to if we it has to be done this way if we want to be eligible for FEMA funding for the construction that's what I want to be clear to say I think that's clear enough does anyone else have anything else to say before they before we vote on this so Lauren well I think this is more to the frustration Tim is naming that than the motion like I think the motion I I think we should pass it I think we should move forward it is extremely frustrating the hoops that the city has to jump through the individuals that businesses are having to jump through I mean businesses weren't even eligible for FEMA funding and I know that we're the legislative policy team was looking at what can we be advocating to state and and I'm wondering about too like federal when I do think we need to be capturing like what is what are the failures here that the community seeing and I know like there's so many conversations you all are having but kind of broadening that conversation a little so that we're actually advocating for the changes I know after Irene a number of things did change and some hoops that people had to jump through aren't there now it's maybe hard to believe because that is like it's actually better according to a number of people so I do think some advocacy could pay off to make it better for people in the future and advocating for some state help for some of these gaps that this kind of but I think for this motion I think we should do it but certainly I can tell you when I've had the opportunity since the flood to talk to members of our congressional delegation one one of the things I've been saying is SBA loans are not inadequate the response to this does not put people back where they need to be grants not loans is but yeah the three members of our congressional delegation don't control this so I I just I guess I just want to add that I do understand the frustration that Tim's expressing but but I think it's I mean it's not really much of a choice and the information will be useful beyond the projects that we have to replace I'm going to learn a lot about resilience that we would have to pay for somehow with our own money that we can apply beyond beyond these structures so to me we we we we we were spending money that we would have to spend anyway maybe and this was I believe this the Stevens proposal was about a third of the other the other two proposals so it's it's definitely the low bid and yet a pretty comprehensive response to the RFP given that we we we do have a choice but it's not a good one I I think it's it would be foolish not to not to do it okay any other councillor want to be heard before we vote Donna just real short and I'm not don't mean to defend FEMA but all of us want government accountable we want the government to give their money away in good ways and I do think FEMA's attempt is to help us truly spend the money to mitigate they've given money in the past that haven't been maybe used as wisely so I think their intention will help our us and our consultant to really work on the higher plane of resolving future problems not just the ones we've seen but anticipating so I think we have much to gain from it thanks Donna all right are you ready for a vote if so all those in favor signify by saying aye aye any opposed no so we need to take a roll call um Lauren Tim Sal Perry uh Pellin aye Donna aye all right we'll pass the motion five to one next up you're staying up here right Kelly building repair and flood oh FEMA damage inventory yes yeah um so uh what we provided in the packet was the submission to FEMA um that's our most up to date sheet I actually do have a little bit of an update since that point in terms of the percentages of completion um but I wanted to take the opportunity to kind of run through that list with you and to go through um some of the categorical uh pieces um so I'm gonna go ahead and share my screen with you working on it um and then just run through a few slides and then take some questions and comments and then share kind of some next steps on how we'll brief you going forward because it's a lot of money you know so um here we go I am starting this thing here okay so I think that looks good for everyone um so just starting right off the back here this is what we were alluding to earlier with uh some of the FEMA public assistance categories and you can so we've got it split into two areas um one is the emergency work and one is the permanent restoration work um and so uh on the side of your screen with the numbers um you can see how our projects are broken down by these categories um so you can kind of see you know we've got um some spending at the top there but the the larger spend is down towards the bottom in um item E which is buildings and equipment which is really no surprise just given the damages that we suffered during the event um and so in the proceeding slides I'll get into each of these items um and talk about what the projects are um but just to run through each of the categories and what they mean um so A is debris removal B is emergency protective measures those are both emergency work um the permanent work C is roads and bridges D is water control facilities E is building an equipment F facilities and then G is parks recreation and other facilities um I will note here that there were um instances where um some of the work that we did previously during Irene really held up and also um some of the work that public works did around prevention really helped us in some of the areas associated with um you know whether it's our uh water control facilities utilities or bridges um so we didn't lose as much as we could have um but still nonetheless were at um over um so it's 11 million or so a little bit more than that um and damages right now and so this is the list um this is the list that we're going to be working on this is like the first capture of you know what we've got um so just moving through and I think we can see this sorry if it's small um so just starting with debris removal um we're about 585,000 um you can kind of see where we're at um I will note that with the silt and construction debris we're about 70 complete um in this area we're still going to see a little bit of that for a while um because there's some residual silt and such that's you know washing with each rainstorm into the bike paths and such um public works is aware of that and working on trying to you know remediate um any of those pieces but we are making some really good progress there the other areas that we're still working on are um vegetative um river debris um and so we noticed some of that around the bridges um and we're working with the state to clear those items um up um but then you can also see some of the other um catch basin cleanings and inspection we're about 30 um complete there um but you know it's on the list and we're getting afterwards just not um done yet so what we'll do is we'll brief you on this regularly so you know where we're at um with each of these categories um so the next one is emergency protective measures and you can see the percentages here are much higher because these are all associated with the emergency event um and so some of the things that you see here are some of the stabilization and remediation efforts that we did at the buildings um so when we brought in um pure clean to kind of gut and dry out the buildings that's what you're seeing here so that comes to the tune of 727,000 or so um and then you can also see on a note over um and the spark column just the prioritization of these items and so these are all pretty high there's a few lower items here on this list but are still going to be um done like the recreation center and senior center that are itemized here um some of that is associated with you know either storing supplies and maybe needing to resurface a floor um or you know um reclaiming spaces once they've been you know no longer occupied um so for the senior center for example you know we've got one uh city department still there but otherwise we have come back to city hall so uh moving on uh to roads and bridges um so this uh is about $390,000 um Marvin street slope uh failure at about five percent that's a medium category um looking at the north field street head wall is another area that we need to focus on we haven't done anything with that yet um but will um and then we've got um we did have reports of um landslides or retaining walls that you know just there was some um just just from the storm you know things uh we're sliding for lack of a better description um anyway uh so we're about 25 percent there so we're looking to shore things up but it's prospect street hill street um some of the steeper elevations and then moving on to item d water control facilities we've got a storm water on north street and prospect street um and then some other uh areas that are noted um and I can get you the excel file if you wanted to see more of the description and it actually is in the packet um and then we've got Berlin a dam um just looking at uh remediation or maybe removal depending on um you know how we go with that that that one actually is mostly complete and when we do a briefing we can get you more details on exactly what happened with that project and so those are the kinds of things that will come forward as we refuse that you know exactly what's happened um but I just wanted to get you this higher level so that you could kind of you know run through it's a lot to look at all in one spreadsheet um so breaking it down just makes it a little bit more digestible uh so then moving on to category e with buildings and equipment this is our largest category by far um and so you'll note that um we've got city hall fire pd and you get the rebuild and then contents of those buildings um itemize and the percentages on this are pretty low because we are um working the process um and you know trying to get things in order to be able to then move forward um some of the areas the records restoration piece I do want to highlight um because we did send records off-site to be freeze dried and so in the process of you know um finalizing that process and then you know seeing what we've got that can be saved so we at least to have things out on off-site we'll be bringing things back on-site and so we'll share more details about that and what those items are once we know a little bit more um pretty interesting not the kind of interesting that you really want but you know um here we are so um another area that just to highlight is the trash receptacles for instance um so we we have replaced some of the trash receptacles downtown we haven't replaced them with new and so you know as we go through you know what we've done and the tasks associated with that there may be further discussion um and I don't want to really gloss over sort of city hall is by far the largest here um and you know these are estimates you know so that number I think may be a little low just based on we had four hundred dollars a square foot um when we were looking at kind of sort of estimating the damages for city hall and whether or not that's an accurate number we'll we'll see as we go through the process and so this is kind of a starting point kind of what we've you know put out there but we'll we'll kind of evaluate as we go and then utilities this is about a million dollars and um you can kind of see you know what we've got here the district utility we are working pretty actively to try to get the meters and fiber optics back up and running but that has been just delayed by you know being able to get things up and running we do anticipate that towards the end of November we will have everyone back online but we might not have the metering capacity online so we're working on that traffic signals and the like we have been able to put some measures in place and make some of those repairs but we're at about 60 percent so there's more to be done there and so we're just moving on to something that's a hundred percent complete I should just highlight you know something that is happening um the the sewer main um collapse on main street has been you know taken care of it was an urgent thing obviously got that done very fast yeah yeah so that's good um and then you know we've got another thing of note here that's at zero percent the still high is the water meters um getting some of those meters in has been problematic just with you know supply chain issues and such so we're working through the list um but these are the items that are on the list and this is where they sit categorically within the FEMA eligibility's um and then item G is the last on the list of categories for public assistance so this is the tune of about 500 000 um we have made progress there are still some areas that we need to continue to make progress on um but we've uh captured these items and we'll be working on doing the work I know some of the work has has been like for instance at the cemetery they were really proactive and you know getting um some of the the drainage cleared as the storm was happening um and then also you know fixing it as they went so that's underway um and then dog rear field there there's been work there but there's still work that needs to be done um and then there is there are erosion and washout on some of the trails that um we've got material but then we've got to start to work to get it back in place so that's the end of the list um but what I want to kind of sort of end with is that we'll come back with an itemized status of each of those projects I mean some of them are complete and we'll just let you know how they were completed um when we kind of cross them off the list but others will have you know a more intensive process like City Hall for example and so um we wanted to make sure that we briefed you on what the FEMA lists look like what the total amounts were and you know what we've got for projects on the uh the categories the alphabetical categories are those FEMA categories yes and what's the difference between you know a category A and a category G from FEMA's point of view so in that particular instance the the first set of categories would be emergency related whereas the sort of latter part of categories is more sort of a restoration repair make permanent kind of categories um does it affect reimbursement if at all are we known uh so we'll see um but these categorically there are different percentages for reimbursement they would be up to sort of the bulk of the 75 percent at least but then depending on what it is it may be eligible for more matches some of the reasons you know I think we all hate the fact that we can't just tell you specifically but that the state also puts in some of the matching money and it also depends on them I think the biggest difference between the first two categories and the second is you have a lot more than me way with the emergency you know they don't have that like like the City Hall right just we just talked about right you know that you're going to really build us back we're going to pay for it you're going to follow this process to make sure you're doing it right the stuff you do while it's raining or like the next day they're kind of like yeah you just got to do what you got to do you know make your best efforts and they're less it's it's less of a prescribed process so that's you know things that fall under emergency like the debris removal and we come in and you know so those sorts of things you know the the actual response of people that were you know those kind of things so so that's really their difference is their standard of review as terms of eligibility is response is one thing in future reconstruction and mitigation is you know a higher standard of process and at what point do they apply their standard before used well in certain things we've completed it but for stuff that we haven't completed that we're still oh well once once it's once it's in the list you have years to get that um but do they do they predict the amount of reimbursement they don't they don't evaluate the amount of reimbursement until it's done then they say well and then this right so we're just assuming 75 percent do this thing that we we don't typically reimburse I mean do they give us any inclination of what their criteria is before yeah so all of this I mean well actually I'm I mean you actually know more than I don't say I was really the expert all of that we have a FEMA officer and who is you know these are all called projects and they're probably so these are however many projects we just yeah I'm looking at this right and so you know our FEMA officer has been working with Sarah the categories each one and go through and tell us you know yes this is something we fund this isn't this kind of thing so the stuff that's on the list we've gotten indication from our FEMA official that this is something they will do uh that they'll is eligible but they don't give us the any indication that that last 20 no because some of it some of it's them and some of it's the state and they don't have any control you know it's our copay right yeah okay Kelly I thought this was a great report again this is is way more comprehensible just that list of the tiny print of every individual item should we what are you thinking like reporting once a month or what um yes I think what we thought of was putting you know kind of a written an easy to read written update pretty regularly that made me quarterly coming in and doing something like this I don't you know yeah I don't really it's just an information and it's for the you know I think it's good for the public to see the process but it's not really I think if nothing else you get to see the the scope of what your city staff's working on you know it's in addition to all the stuff we want to get done we're about to go into budget all this stuff there's 11 million dollars it's worth the projects that we're doing even if FEMA's paying for it it's still community stuff that's got to get done not yet a lot of focus is going on so um you know and it's good to have some of them they get crossed off the list so more of them will be coming soon yeah I agree it doesn't make sense to make Kelly come in every meeting or every month and she'll be here he'll be here anyway I know but you've got other things you can you can be doing and talking to us about any other questions before we move on thanks okay thanks Kelly I'm assuming we have no other business we move on to council reports um hope other business good question because it feels like we're drinking out of a fire hose here there's all this information coming at us and deal with this but still trying to figure out so we're going to these reports we've got this budget process we're going into and we still haven't set our own goals or priorities it's coming to that okay that's what it's on the part of city manager's report good but yes that is the proper question yes everything's behind manning's just behind what we normally do is because of all so council reports starting online with Donna and then Pelin Pat Donna's passing Ellen Pat passing Carrie Sal I have a report on the energy committee who submitted a recommendation to the housing committee on the criteria we talked about for energy efficiency and sustainability in the RFPs and the evaluation criteria and they liked what we gave them they're incorporating it and we're looking at maybe a collaboration between the two committees on a more detailed spec that we can apply to future housing development so that was pretty good news great project good for the city I think Tim Lauren mayor's report well it's it's kind of hard to hard to believe how time goes these days it was it was it was one week ago that I was standing out on stone cutters way watching our firefighters fight that fire and it was everybody talked to was talked about what an incredible effort it was and what a great accomplishment it was to limit the fire the way they did and to prevent it from spreading to any of those buildings which we could have easily we could easily have had that whole whole row buildings go up lose the co-op lose the store at rk miles lose the other businesses and so our fire department I give them tremendous credit for what they did all the neighboring towns who who came out great work to everyone and you know we're still facing what happens on that site and what how we deal with our financial losses but to do all that without any loss of life or any injuries just phenomenal great work for to our fire department for doing that and I think that's all I've got and now city clerks report I should probably say something just about tomorrow night BC meeting tomorrow night we had on we have on deck six names six hearings three reports to be received one of those hearings it looks like they've worked something out with the assessor so should just be five and three don't know how long these reports will take because now we started you know I've made a point of getting the reports out to people early so presumably they'll come in and want to comment so I have no idea what to expect but after tomorrow there is a two week break before we do it again hopefully in some of that time you get caught up on some of these inspections and maybe are too big things that are still hanging out there Jacobs and Downstreet might materialize some and if all goes as planned then all goes well we could be in a position to start the abatement hearings in the middle of December which will go more quickly since there's no committees that have to be formed it's just quasi-judge shall come in make point here's your here's the decision so anyway we are back to senior center tomorrow night we're back to the senior center and six thirty right six thirty we go to change that yeah and we've we're only doing it will continue as we go forward and orca sounds like we'll be covering us as we go into the board of abatement too we're going to be the senior centers except for the first Thursday's of each month because otherwise we'd be competing with a lot of music and that might be entertaining for orca but not so much for us yep okay uh city managers report thank you um I have actually a fair amount tonight um so speaking of senior center next week we will be at the senior center because the school board will be in here um probably the same room we were in when we met there last time um I think I think that's where we are upstairs am I I'm looking over at my able body be up same rule upstairs got it uh and so the good news is since I was perfectly teed up by council member heaney because we didn't table anything and put anything off we only have two key items next week they're both important and both um policy based one would be our legislative agenda which are uh most of our committee got together this week and we have some outlines and I'll try to get a draft out to you all tomorrow to look at um and then maybe I'll send it to the whole council but if we'll do the best we can and then finish the strategic plan which we originally we're going to try to do tonight but it actually so we you know we'll have the full evening to try to at least nail down the big point so you're right you know we may not have everything done and kelly's been doing a lot of work with um department heads on some of the work plans that would back up some of the ideas uh knowing that things still might change but um so there's that uh the following meet meeting so that's next week's meeting the following meeting uh we will be December 13 so we you know we have the Thanksgiving break in the second thursday that's when we will be presenting the budget um I think we will also be having um the folks from VLCT that Vermont League of Cities and Towns that deal with federal funding to come in and give us an overview of what's available how cities and towns uh in access says thank you for that list that was great uh so um just so we can all get an update on on that but just so you know just to you know we had a budget conversation um we've got the the due date for and again this is all well the 12 13 date is the date we would normally deliver the budget but our process is also pushed back just like the council goals every you know we're we're going to be doing our work after Thanksgiving we usually are pretty much done before Thanksgiving but we so the deadline for requests from departments isn't until next week um but even just taking what we do and rolling it over assuming we paid you know put the capital play in where we think it ought to be all those kind of things um we would be up eight or eight hundred and twenty thousand dollars above CPI or 1.2 million dollars above no tax increase that's before request so just so people get a sense of the challenge we've got ahead of us um it's real and so yeah more money more money to be talking about um those are those are big numbers now obviously you won't you know we'll have it pared down by the time you get it but um just so you know the order of magnitude uh moving on to the next thing FEMA um we just got a draft lease today um haven't I haven't seen it yet Josh was reviewing it um it was classic federal we think it's quite long um which we don't we're not we're not happy about but again I haven't seen it uh we did generally agree with them on terms we'll see if a lease that they provided us actually agrees with those terms as I think I mentioned FEMA FEMA is doing the project but GSA the government services administration is actually does the leases so you know we talked to one FEMA says yep we'll do all this GSA says we can't do all that and we say but we said we wouldn't do it unless we did this and so it's been this whole big triangulation of trying to get it done and um so we got the GSA lease more to come on that but I think we're getting to the finish line uh the shelter as we've mentioned the shelter at the country club road site starts next Monday um we are trying to resolve concerns from the the daycare that is our tenant up there uh who you know I get it they've got concerns um and we've been meeting very regularly with them country club it with Good Sam and they've been meeting with each other to try to allay concerns but that's that's been taking up a lot of time reminder more to the public that's still watching but also the council that winter parking the alternate side parking starts next Wednesday or the 15th so one week away we'll be trying to get that out um technically for city and state Friday is a holiday veterans day is actually Saturday but the observed day is Friday just so you know uh photo we took we took one shot at a photo and we were missing a couple of people we thought maybe we'd snap one tonight but we're missing a couple of people so do we want to try next week just at the senior center yeah let's try it come a few minutes early and try to snap a picture even if it's just inside that room it's not the most scenic site but it's good to have everybody unless you really don't want to be in the back of the annual report I mean we could do that if we could arrange it we you know if you if you want to I would I think it would be great actually to do it in the basement of city hall and I think but we would we'd have to figure out a time we have to manage a time that's not not so if you would like us to try to find a time between now and then for the basement of city hall we'll try in the fall back position will be we'll do it at the council meeting assuming everybody's president in person how's that thank you okay um lastly just quick follow-up you know on the housing ordinance you passed tonight to go to go forward with that I thought I just make sure I'm clear we're all clear on how we want to proceed with that we had a few sidebar conversations normally what would happen when the council makes a decision like that is we staff would take the recommendation from the committee that they gave us as you know we got legal I got a legal opinion what we shared with all of you it's mostly consistent we'd probably ask the attorney to take their proposal and put his tweaks on it and then bring it back for a first reading for you all which you can then change it however you want it becomes your document to do with as you will and you can have as many readings as you want until you have a final reading and approve it but normally we have at least two I think the real question is when when do you want to do that just knowing that we have budget coming at the next several meetings but we I mean it doesn't budget doesn't have to be the only thing you do but it does tend to take up the bulk of the bandwidth for a meeting but one reading you know and I suspect this is going to have some conversation this isn't going to be a oh yeah this is routine let's so it's up to you but um let's talk okay at our weekly meeting and all right figure it out the mayor will guide us through learn so assuming you're able to come to terms on a lease but then pretty soon any idea then it's like what the timeline is from there no I do know that the state is you know and I think has taken care of like all their permitting issues so I think that's all set to go um I you know they've been doing some preliminary testing up there I really don't know I don't I I would think I would think they would have been higher more highly motivated to get this done faster let's just say that but they don't seem to be so I really don't know how fast they can turn it around once they're there just quickly since we did talk in broad scopes I think the things there's nothing hugely different than what we talked about way back at the first meeting and I took my guidance to be as long as it was generally consistent that I was okay to go ahead just so you know the key issues is we're trying to make sure we've got control at the at the end so that it's our decision whether it continues it doesn't happen to us that we have control that and the main issue was the infrastructure improvements and where we ended up on the water line improvement was they really didn't think they could do it but they are willing to pay us the dollar value for it and that is about eight hundred fifty thousand dollars when we got a final estimate so that will actually be there so when we said there would be no lease rate there actually is going to be a lease rate it's going to be the amount of the water and the good news is if it gets extended then that lease rate continues even if so and that took a you know and that's actually been a big snag because technically that creates a value for the land which is more than GSA is willing to pay but FEMA said that's the way we'll do this so we've been trying to work that through so I think I think we got there and how we can do it so and and you know and then this is just more of an aside just anyone who's ever dealt with the federal government knows this but you know FEMA is telling us oh it's a it's a going to be you know they're going to be there for 20 months because by the time we get these things done we know they're going to need at least 12 more months so you know the minimum time this is going to be is 15 months it's more likely going to be 18 so we're just like well fine do us a give us a if it's 24 months just give it 24 months lease lease rate blah blah blah blah mind you so they could have had 24 months at $850,000 right this is a total lease but GSA doesn't do 24 month leases so they only do 12 month leases because they can't guarantee and we said well we're not taking a lease that doesn't pay us our full money so now we are going out like a 12 month lease for $150,000 so and if it extended we did agree that we'd only take half for the other 12 months so still another $425,000 so they're going to need 24 months and it's going to cost them an extra $425,000 you you drive a hard bargain go yeah exactly so I you know it's just been interesting so that but those are the kind of things so really it was the close out you know we have the option to say everything's got to go and when you say they can't do the water line in other words they're going to put the water line in they're going to give us the money to do it but they're going to actually put in a line that's they're put so they're putting in the water they're going to put a water line from the existing water line into their buildings and they're putting in fire suppression all that's they're going to give us enough money to do the everything large 12 inch water line that we want they don't need that extra volume we've figured that out but they'll give us the money but yes but we can do it when we're ready to do it or plus 400,000 well that's I I I get to see what's actually in the lease yeah because because you know we talked we've talked about a lot of options so we'll see which one they came up with maybe they figured it out and anyway so I just want you know there will be no surprises it might look a little differently than we have but it's all basically the same as what we talked about verbally don't know what's in right and that's my list all right thank you and we can we will be adjourned at 10 22 p.m. thank you all