 Hey, how are you? Good. How are you just? Okay, so I would like to call to order the South Burlington City Council meeting on Monday, June 18th, 2018, and we'll start with the Pledge. Okay, item two instructions on exiting the building in case of an emergency. In case we have an emergency, please proceed directly out this door here on the side or the other door on the front side and proceed out into the parking lot where we will gather. If these doors are blocked, please go out through the lobby and out the main exit to the building and continue on to the parking lot. Tom Hubbard and I will be responsible for clearing the building, so head immediately out. Thank you. So our next item is a possible executive session to discuss potential land purchases and personnel issues. So I would entertain a motion to enter executive session with discussing personnel, possible personnel issues and potential land purchases with City Manager Kevin Dorn and financial officer Tom and Andrew Bullock and Paul Conner. All in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Thank you. An hour. Excuse me. Did you have a box account? Yeah, but I should be able to get. All right. So I would like to call back to order the South Burlington City Council meeting of Monday, June 18th, 2018. And we will move on to item four, agenda review. Are there any additions, deletions or changes in order of the agenda items? Seeing none, are there any comments and questions from the public not related to anything on the agenda? Michael, would you please come up and identify yourself for the TV world? Michael Mithang, Swift Street, South Burlington, resident since 2001. I have a comment or maybe some questions about the direction we're going with respect to the city hall and library. And since I've been involved in it quite a bit, I feel quite strongly about it and I'm fairly exercised about what's happened. So I think it best if I just read the notes that I made for myself, because that'll be a bit calmer. So go ahead. Well, the new City Hall and Library building was seen originally as the key structure and focal point for city centre. It was to be architecturally novel and eye catching, not just another generic municipal building. I participated in all the visioning workshops for this project. And at the end of the process, we had a city hall and library design that is exactly what we were looking for, a building which reflects our city's progressive values and future aspirations. We have only one shot at getting this right, and this is a unique opportunity to build something that we can all be proud of now and well into the future. We'll not have this opportunity again to choose a design for ourselves, because other buildings in the city will be, or the land is owned by developers and property owners, and they will choose the designs for those buildings. They just have to comply with the form-based code for city centre. The need for a senior centre in South Building was discussed at the visioning centres, sessions, I'll make you pardon, but it didn't rise to the top of the priority list at the end of the process. Option D, which is not shown there, was the one selected by the majority of participants and was a hybrid of option C, and I believe some features of option B. The sudden addition of a senior centre has radically changed the design of this building, and it's now referred to as, that design is referred to as option G. Option G is a compromise and lacks the well-thought out interior flow and the visual impact of the design chosen at the visioning centres. Option G design is just another shopfront zero lot line building, nothing special. It doesn't have the interesting street side visual impact of option D, which is what we chose. It was developed with no or very little public input, no visioning centres, sessions or workshops, which means the views of the many citizens who dedicated their time and expertise to this project have been ignored. And we sometimes wonder why there's not more civic engagement in South Burlington. That's why people spend a lot of time working on projects. They complete the project as required and their work is casually and maybe cavalierly ignored or dismissed. If we want the bottom for this project to be approved by the voters, I really believe we must build what the voters have asked for. Failing that for myself, I'd have difficulty voting for that bond. And I think the council should be concerned that there are many people, there were hundreds in these visioning centres, who may feel the same as I do. I can't say for sure. There'll be other opportunities to build a senior centre and recreation centre. A combination, I believe, is what we're really looking for. But the library isn't that place. I strongly urge you to exert whatever influence you can to stick with the plan that the citizens and the voters came up with. That's option D. Thank you. Any questions? I just want to let you know that next Monday night, we will be having maybe an hour and a half, two hour meeting, to discuss this further and that will be the only item on the agenda. So I would encourage you to attend if you can. I'll be in Toronto. If you can't. Well, you've shared your thoughts tonight, so thank you. I hope they will be helpful. So I just want you to know we will be discussing those things. Thank you. Okay. Announcements in the City Manager's Report. Tom? Sure. Not much to report on recent activities, but I want to say two things I'm doing this week. I did confirm the GBIC, CCRPC is on Wednesday at five to seven, so I'll be there down at the echo. I don't know if all, and more of you are going to attend and we need to warn it or whatnot, but, and I also want to say this Thursday is a dump the pump. Everybody gets to ride free on GMT, and I just want to remind people that the average household of two people can save $10,134 by going down to a single vehicle. So this Thursday is a bunch of promotional items, and there's also activities, giveaways and other fun things. Thank you. Okay. Megan? I was in Washington, D.C. I will just say I saw some pretty inspiring. No, I skipped the Congress, I went to Mount Vernon, and it was quite inspiring. Is that your first time there? It was my first time there. Yeah. It is cool. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Very interesting. So I can't think of anything. I'm sure I did things, but I've talked to a lot of people. I do a lot all the time. I've emailed a lot, but just like Michael, I did request this meeting for next Monday, and I thank Helen for there was quite a lot of emailing, and I thank Helen for putting the meeting up on the agenda. So I share the concern that the public did not partake in that process. And so hopefully we can have a large turnout in a week. There was a large turnout in February and March. So I think it would be really a shame if we lose that participation. That led to a beautiful design, really beautiful design. Okay. Thank you. David? From a week's perspective, I guess I didn't do anything really productive. I did UVM score this week. Okay. Tim? I attended the joint library meeting last Monday, I think it was. I also attended the Sun Carnival at Dorset Park a week ago, Saturday, and got to sit in Spencer? No. What's this? Chapin? Chapin's... It's Spencer Chapin. No, no, it's... Oh, Chapin Caner. Chapin Caner. So I get to sit in his Chevy Volt, which was interesting and, you know, high tech, very high tech, right? And I saw a couple of electric motorcycles, electric bicycles. Summers of the energy committee were there. G&P was there. Sun Common was there. It was really... It's a great annual thing to go to and just, you know, salivate over all these great vehicles that you just plug in and no emissions. I also spent about an hour yesterday dodging cars underneath Interstate 89 on Dorset Street, painting over all of the query tagging on these six or eight columns that support the bridge. So if you drive on Dorset, you won't see the orange spray paint anymore on those columns. So then I've asked VTrans for two more gallons of paint. They're going to give it to me pretty soon. Tim, just reminded me of something. That's all I had to report. I was in D.C., staying next to the Pentagon, and had breakfast next to someone talking about the F-35 and Tesla. They'll be unmanned soon, the F-35s. I just wanted to say that. Would the nuclear heads or without? I didn't get into that. I'm sure that was classified, but it will be unmanned. They probably should have saved that for an executive session instead of sitting next to you at breakfast and talking about it. They didn't know who they were sitting next to, I guess, but... Unmanned, huh? Two men talking back and forth about the future. So I just... I thought that was a little important piece of information I wanted to bring back. Thank you. Let's see, I went to the Library City Council meeting as well. I, too, had lots of phone calls and outreach so that next Monday's meeting could be kind of fully staffed and all the people who needed to be present for a full conversation could rather than try to do it tonight. So I spent a lot of time on that, and then I... There were two really, like, 15-minute airport commission meetings. One was... It wasn't in 15 minutes. I had to go in and sign something to... Sort of weird because the commission has no power, but we have to sign all these documents, and one that go to the Finance Committee and the City of South Burlington, one of which was to continue the airport director's employment. And I had never... Oh, and I did... I participated with Tim. We interviewed a number of people for the evaluation for City Manager, so it struck me that I had no idea how they evaluate the director of the airport, and I asked the commission and learned that there are some goals set. I mean, I was asked to sign this thing, and I had no idea... I mean, I signed it, but I did make the inquiry that I thought that the commission should have at least some information or report back about these are the goals for this past year. This is what we're achieved. Those kinds of evaluative oversight, I guess. So apparently no one has ever asked for that before, but they will include that. Did they used to have that? Well, I was told, yeah, the commission gets all the goals, but I've never seen them on a piece of paper, and they're developed by the mayor. So it's an odd position to have to sign something that says you're recommending or you're putting your name on something to continue the employment of a person that you've never evaluated, nor have you seen anything in terms of an evaluation of that person. Are you allowed to have executive sessions on this, in this council? Pardon me? Are you allowed to have executive sessions in that council? And the commission, I suppose so, but the reality is we don't hire and fire. So it's really would be kind of a courtesy to share that with the commission, and I think going forward it will be. But that's the irony of this commission that we... And maybe it's an FAA rule, I don't know. But we just sign these things to send off to Burlington without any ability to kind of analyze or review it, or even make a recommendation like yes. So why bother? Yeah, kind of. And also just reframe my question. If you went back 10, 15, 20 years, did the airport commission used to perform different functions? You know, I didn't ask that. And Gene, well, I don't know if Gene would have known he was on the commission. Well, the commissions were powerful. I guess they hired and fired. Which is, they did. But this is, this was just odd to me. Kind of, especially, you know, and so close to the efforts that we're making to evaluate Kevin. Because I think that's the responsibility of the council and you need to do those things. But anyway, so that, and then we had to sign a lease again. We say okay on a lease that then goes to the finance committee to really get the okay, and then to the city council of Burlington. So it's just sort of an observation that it really is a lot of, I don't know what it is. It's not really oversight. Refunctory? Kind of. It's interesting. If you didn't sign these documents, what would happen? If I didn't? I don't know. I guess I think it's something or to work to exert some authority on this commission to say, if we're going to be asked to sign this, we need to have authority for what we're signing. That is what I at least wanted to know if there was any evaluation. And could I see it? So anyway. So I think that's about all I did. City manager's report. Thanks Helen. A lot of scheduling things. First Sobu night out next Thursday the 28th. Hope everybody can make it up to Veterans Park. Josh Panda is the artist. He's great. And food trucks galore. Also that day at 11 is the market street groundbreaking. So the community has waited for decades to build its downtown main street. And it starts next Thursday over at right next to the central school driveway going into the parking lot off market street. There was a bill signing event scheduled for tomorrow here out in the lobby. The governor was going to sign the blockchain bill. I don't remember the bill number, but that had to be postponed. So it will not occur tomorrow. Alana and I are briefing the SBBA board tomorrow morning at eight o'clock here in city hall on just kind of a primer on TIF districts. And they're at your meeting with the SBBA folks two months ago. I was approached saying they would like to learn more about the TIF district, how it works, how the test works. So we're doing that tomorrow morning at eight a.m. Tom and I are right in the middle of our senior managers annual reviews. Those are going on this week and next. I have a Tinden County Public Safety Authority board meeting on Wednesday morning. Helen, you also went to DHCA the other day. Yeah, I did. I forgot. The Department of Housing and Community Affairs and spoke a little bit about the housing proposal by the Champlain Housing Trust Fund and the money that we gave and the work with Snyder Braverman. It went very well. They had actually very few questions, but they did say they were very impressed with how dedicated this community is in terms of affordable housing, having both a standing committee as well as a fund. And they said that's kind of unusual. But the project really hit, addressed all of the issues that they are interested in in incredible form. I mean, one of the takeaways that I thought was pretty interesting is there are 11 units for homeless in this. And that, what did they say? Quadruples the number of housing units that they have provided in Northern Vermont in this one project. Which project is that? The new one? The new one. Yeah. The one in Garden Market. Garden and Market. Yeah. So we're held in high esteem, I think. So that was nice. I'm pretty certain we'll get the money. Good. I'm sorry for that about that. My last thing then is that the Recreation and Park Committee just had a great meeting and had a nice tribute to Maggie Lukers who's going to be leaving us after just over, actually it's just over three years of service as our director. Thank you, Jennifer, for supporting that. Very nice. Nice. And she gave us all little pins. Yep. Put your pin on. That's it. Okay. Let's move on. Counselors reports from committee assignments. I guess that's what I sort of did that a little bit. Are there any, Tom? Really quick. The leadership committee of GMT met with Secretary Flynn last week. Great discussion getting his vision of the Transportation Secretary for the Scott Administration. He talked a lot about how he sees the future of public transit. He really wants to see an electric bus serve the Montpelier corridor. So we're working on that. We're also working on the next gen report. And we're also starting to talk to have a conversation with a task force committee with the SSTA to address the concern that's been raised by this body multiple times and how we can more efficiently provide those E&D and Medicare services. So that's an exciting thing that we're looking at. And we're also just engaging in contract negotiations with rural operators. Okay. Tim, did pension or? No. Okay. All right. Let's move on. Wheeler Park easement task force follow up presentation. Donna coming. Is Donna coming? I expected so. Okay. Well, yeah. Okay. Well, we're a few minutes ahead of schedule. If you need somebody else. Justin isn't here. Paul's not here. Justin again. We have the consent agenda. We could do consent agenda or may financials. Want to do the consent agenda. Item 16 is everyone. Okay. So we have signed disbursements and award of the Dorset Street East Water Tank isolation valves contract number one project and approved submittal of a grant application for the cider mill segment of the Dorset Street recreation path. Any discussion? Yes. Do we so that the grant was for $610,000 percent of it, right? Yeah. Is that construction cost or scoping and planning and engineering and you know, I mean, is that shovel ready construction? It's designed mostly. It's mostly designed. Right. Sort of like the bike path. Let's scope it. I thought of you guys. The guy with a backhoe. Oh, no. Oh, I'm you were talking about the grant proposal. Yeah. I'm sorry. The rec path. Yes. It is construction. Okay. It's some design, but mostly construction. All right. I was my mind went to the bridge. The water tank was $610,000. I think. Wasn't it? And it's a 20% match. The path was the path. Yeah. And we have 122. Okay. So any further discussion? Dorset Street east water tank. Is that that's the big one? That's a big one. It's called the east water tank on Dorset Street. Because there's no eastern more eastern tank than that. Right. Okay. That's to raise it. They're going to increase the water level inside the pressure. They need an extra pump. So the water gets pumped from Queensley Park Road all the way to that thing. Right. That tank. So they need an extra lift just to get it up a little higher. Right. But I am a water pressure in themselves. Yeah. Right. Right. Right. So more of water column in the tank needs more pressure. Right. That'll make some people at self point happy. Okay. Any other discussion? Okay. All ready for both then all in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Okay. What else can we do? We can do the new financials. Okay. How about financials Tom? So we're 11 out of 12 months down here. 92% on a straight line of accounting through our budget here. General fund right now just under 84% in the expense and just over 80% on the revenue side. We're going to finish the year on with health insurance about 5% over. That's a projection that we need to make health health insurance as you probably recall is based on the calendar year. So we start on July 1 and then we change rates and we had kind of built in about an 8 to 10% increase and we got a 12 as you know. So that that's part of it and then a few families expanded and added a little bit more to the insurance as we switch from a two person to family plan. So those were the reasons for that overage but 5% I think that's about $92,000 for us. So that's it's significant with the health insurance. All our operating transfers are complete. All our bond payments have been made. The note payments have been made except with the pension loan, which will show up in the June financials. The pension payment got made. This is the $8 million loan that will come out come out of the June financials. The PD computerization fund is about $13,000 over budget. Trevor is awaiting a grant award of at least $10,000 and we're just waiting for that to get signed and credit that back to the account. I don't think it will be more than $15,000 but it will be at least $10,000. And let's see on the expense side we still have a little bit of percentage on the local options tax that will be coming in the period of time between May 10th and the end of June to be credited to the current fiscal year and then July and about mid-August when we get that we'll be credited to Fy 19. We need about $507,000 to hit our mark and we've been just about that the last couple of years for this last payment. So we're thinking we're going to come in okay there. Planning and zoning fees and permits still remain strong. It's kind of carrying us along with the fire inspection which is currently at 86% which is really good compared to where we were last year. I know that Terry still has some other projects that he's going to be bringing additional money into June 4th so I think we're going to finish up pretty good there. Ambulance billing as well should be pretty much on on the mark with what we've projected and highway revenue is is up more than we expected so that helped us on the revenue side but essentially we're still in good shape. I expect we'll have a surplus at the end of the year and I think we'll probably by mid July end of July we'll have a good sense in terms of at least a ballpark as to how much that might be and we have our auditors with us now doing pre-audit work and they'll be here for the week and then back towards the end of August early September to do more substantial work. So on the enterprise funds sewer just over 93% on expenses 86% on revenue and the stormwater expenses are at 129%. Again this is based on projects that carried over into FY 18 and the revenue is about 91% on the stormwater fund. So all in all in good shape I feel pretty comfortable where we're at at this point. I'd much rather be saying that to you than what I was saying last year. Right. With concern so that's great. It still is pretty tight. I think we're going to be okay. Yes under the stormwater fund payroll service and testing it came out to be well over $10,000 as opposed to $880. Yes and that was a coding error which I think has been fixed in June. Megan I'll send you the detail on that. Okay and the second question I have was highway miscellaneous revenue. It was just a lot. Yeah. I was just curious what that was and yeah it's such a big number for miscellaneous that I always think Justin's yeah he's not here yet. Most of us from the state and one of the things that we're probably not going to get to in this fiscal year's budget is the adaptive signal control. So the large expense in there and the large amount of revenue that we carried from last year into that fund is not there yet and the way that works is that we would spend the money and the state would reimburse us for it and this is leftover money from the route to widening project and Justin's continuing to work with the state on when that money is going to be released. So we do expect to be able to do the project. We just haven't been able to initiate it as quickly as we want. And we don't want to initiate it until we have the we're certain we have the funds. We have the funds. It's the state allowing us to utilize their money for it and projects been approved. Again they're waiting for their final budgets and everything to get resolved and there you go. The timing of things so okay what's going on there. I expect we'll be doing tomorrow going on that hopefully today right into July because we had hoped that that would have figured out that started in the winter. Yeah at least into the spring. Yeah early spring but I have a question. I'll get you the detail on the highway revenue in terms of what some of the bigger items are because some of its road stuff. The bigger parts of it. All you had. That's all. Okay. Tim. So when somebody fills in line 6745 on the IN 1112 for Vermont I just made those numbers up. For that one line that says that you know if you purchase things and didn't pay sales tax you know total up what it is that you bought and put it here right. Do we get any of that money back? Or is it a 6% calculation? I believe that's the state sales tax of 6% it goes into the state tax revenue we don't get any of that. So we don't. We'll get the 1% but we get a 1%. We get oh right if they paid 1% we get our share of our 1%. Yeah but the question is do we. All I can tell you for sure Tim is that we should be getting it and we feel we are getting it. Okay. But to this day as Kevin can attest Andrew is trying to get detail. Well there's there's two components here. The state tax department and I think we're gonna have to make a road trip. So there's money that's remitted to the state by Amazon the behemoth right. But there's also money remitted to the state through income taxes you know and through the forms where they where they say I didn't pay taxes on this and here's that money. Correct. So do they take you know we're supposed to get some from the Amazon part right. Yes. The question is do we get any from the income tax part that's all. Those delivery trucks use our roads and they rely on our safety services. I mean because I think it's a 6% calculation so technically there's no 1% LSOP in that. So Andrew has inquired with the tax department and it's very disappointing response. We can't even get we can't even verify that that the businesses who would normally be paying in the sales tax or the rooms and meals tax are actually on their list. Well how do we tell us how do we do that. How do we get around this. So what do we I don't know. Well isn't that something we can ask our legislative exactly delegation and and I would think Burlington would be interested. I mean I'm just thinking of the the well they collected themselves Senate. Oh they get to collect it themselves. The state collects the tax for us for the $80,000 I think it is that we pay them in addition to the 30% that they get. Then they charge us a fee to collect the tax for us. Burlington collects it all themselves. Explain that again. He lost me there. So we have local option tax in sales and rooms and meals. The state actually collects that and remits back to us in theory. That which they owe us for our 1%. That's the businesses paying the state. Where in Burlington the businesses pay the city of Burlington that 1% that they owe. Yes. Well wait but somebody stays in a hotel in Burlington. That hotel. That hotel pays. Burlington. So how did they get that. It predated us. We came in under the the new authority created by the legislature after Act 60 for local option taxes. They had it I believe before and cut their own deal. Well regardless I do think there are. It's a charter. Yeah. It's a charter amendment in Burlington. The board only knows how. As is ours but it predated Act 60. Yeah. But it goes back. Yeah. But but I think we should that should be a question or concern that we raise with the legislators that we would like some accounting. Yeah. Right. I mean if you can't even get the list of the people who are the businesses that have sent in this money to the state. That seems we at least like to verify that list somewhere. Particularly when you have businesses that say like the Sheridan Burlington used to be or the Double Tree Burlington just to authenticate that those are actually South Burlington businesses. Is it too late for us to go back and ask for the authority to collect that money ourselves like Burlington is. I mean would that would that make sense. And is it easy enough to keep track of or is it just too big a job. I think if we were to do something like that Dave I think we should maybe combine that that position that we would need for that along with collecting our own billing to our own billing with CWD which we now pay them to do that for. So I think if we brought a couple of those different services in-house it would warrant a position to do it. Would it make sense to do that. And it would pay for itself. It would. I believe so. We're buying 80,000 to the state to do that. So we should actually make an effort here in between bienniums to get our legislators to decide what we want for a charter change and get our legislators to draft that and introduce it at the very beginning of the session as legislation and try and push it through right. That would make sense would it not. Yeah. Let's do that. There'd be a there'd be also a change the statute too. Well but it's a long process. It doesn't have to be. But I mean seriously it doesn't if we go in prepared at the beginning of the session and are politely persistent and aggressive about it and depending what the makeup of the committee is it's something that we possibly could make happen fairly quickly. Makes sense. And we should do it. Absolutely. Save us money. Get us more money. We'll come out of that. We're all looking for what's fair and accurate. Right. But short of achieving that we should be able to apply enough pressure to get information about who what businesses in this community pay into that. Send a check to the state that includes a one percent. As Tom said road trip right. We'll continue to pursue that and keep you posted as to the progress that we make. And I think made us going to going to help us too. Great interest had some conversation. Are any of our state reps on finance committees. Sirotkin was made. And made is not on finance. She's chair of something. But she's always on ways. We don't have ways and means in the house. But we have is Sirotkin still on. I think he's on finance finance in the Senate. He was. Yes. Tom. I had the same question as Councilor Emery about the hundred and thirty thousand excess revenue from highway miscellaneous. And then similarly in the stormwater fund miscellaneous were over a hundred thousand revenues. Just kind of curious. The stormwater is just additional grant money received. But I will get the detail from Justin on the. So send it to everyone. Thank you. One other comment I had is I just want this council to take attention to the fire department over time were over a hundred eighty thousand again. We only budgeted one hundred forty five thousand. But police we budgeted three hundred twenty thousand. So I'm just wondering for next year you might want to recalibrate that budget estimate. As you know we were down three firefighters. So a lot of that over time was mandatory fill in that we had to pay which is going to cost us more than regularly filling those shifts with the new people that we have. So when I looked at fire today combined all their salary accounts together at best they're going to come in about budget and probably at worst maybe about forty thousand dollars over in their total salary lines. Although salary line there's probably eight or nine of them put together. So you're saying the salary lines we're not going to expend money on are going to cover this over time. Correct. The best case scenario will come in about even. Worst case scenario we might be around forty. It's hard to say what June's going to bring us here in terms of those other salary lines that we can't predict but we know what the regular ones are. Okay. Great. Thank you. You're welcome. I think Mike said. So um let's see we'll go back to the Wheeler Park should um Mike can or we can do the committee report. It'll take five minutes. The committee report on what. Or is it. Okay well why don't we move on and do the Wheeler Park Conservation Eastman Task Force follow up presentation. I don't have a presentation but I can wing it. Okay. The task force met on May the 23rd. Initially it was an open public meeting but there were no members of the public there so we moved into executive session immediately. Most of the discussion centered on the prime ag mitigation areas which had come as a sort of after not an afterthought but is a bit of a surprise for the for the task force. In the end we did all come to an agreement and um I think you have. We do. The letter from Donna and it has your motion. Yeah um and and that's where we are and we we're anxious for the city to move ahead with finding and negotiating a conservation partner um and obviously these two ag mitigation areas uh will have to be part of that negotiation. My personal view is that the the uses to which those areas can be uses which are allowed are very much the uses which we have um described in the report for the natural area. So I don't think it will be a great leap to expect that a conservation partner will be able to live with it. Okay. No Jennifer. No we're just happy to see this moving along and as the statement says we're available to meet if if you decide that you need to inform us of other things. Will interrogate us. Okay. Comments or so so the intent to to construct a conservation easement that totally exempts the area occupied by the current ag mitigation areas. Say that again. So is the intent to craft a conservation easement that accepts or or subtracts out all of the exact area of the mitigation. Not not not subtracts out accepts as part of part of the easement. It would be included. It would be the concert that act 250 pieces would be included included. Okay. Leave the restrictions in place. Add more. Well look whatever it takes to dovetail or you know combine so that you don't risk any you know challenge to the active 50 easement. I'm just I'm not a lawyer right but you've got this easement that's on a block of land and you want to put an easement on a bigger block of land. The question is how do you construct that easement so the two don't you know conflict with each other even if they don't really conflict with each other because you're doing about the same thing. They don't conflict with each other. But leave it to the lawyers to figure out that you did something wrong you know if it's the state versus you know it's the municipality perhaps you know. Yeah but the the conservation partner whoever holds the easement has to accept the terms that apply to those 21 acres of the total package. If they cannot or will not that's a different story then those 21 acres have to be excised from the park which I'd hate to see happen and we would I mean we worked on this for a long time. In fact I'm unhappy and thinking okay this is all of a piece. So I'm pretty sure that an organization like the modern land trust would be able to accept those terms because they are similar to the other terms of use. Would that also preclude then that easement would preclude the possibility of expanding or taking any other areas for agmitigation right? Yes that's well that's in our resolution. Okay. We wouldn't like to see any more restrictions or encumbrances on the land. So we wouldn't have access in the future to saying okay we can do agmitigation with this property. Okay. Does it include along the um the water? On Gulf course the 21 acres. The 22 acres. Yes thank you. Yes. What about them? The wetlands. Does it include the wetlands? Yes. The conservation easement that you're recommending? Yes. Yes. Absolutely. And the 22 acres that were the subject of the land swap. So what's left to do is to have the lawyers hack it out? There's a lot to do I think in writing up the legal documents there needs to be a decision made by this council as to whether or not to accept the report of the committee and the follow-up report tonight. You need to let the lawyers know if there's anything that you differ with the committee in their report how things how you would like to have things handled differently if you do and then we would probably have outside council work on the actual legal documents somebody's done these before and there are plenty of people around I think who have done them and begin negotiations with with a receiver of the easement. May I make a suggestion that before you spend money on legal counsel you identify the partner that you'd like to work with and discuss these issues with them to find out before you start drafting legal documents whether they have any problems with it or suggestions. I think that would be... Well we're gonna we will want to have an attorney take a quick look at what the committee's recommended and just to understand it and and there may be some things in there that they have dealt with before that might make it easier or harder to to work on it with the partner but either way. Tom. Fully supportive of this community voted on it my question to Kevin and Tom is there a budget for this like yeah is this a large price tag figure the legal fees that we need to plan for or is this just part of what we regularly do with hiring outside counsel and so on? It in this fiscal year well we're already a bit overspent but there's not a specific budget for an open space acquisition it's part of the legal... We budget for it for next year and it happens over that time frame. Yeah either way it would come out of the outside counseling fees that we... You're not concerned that this is going to cost more than other engagements with outside counsel? Hard to say. Tom it will put it it's let's put it this way it's nothing that we anticipated spending money on but there could be something that we did anticipate that's not gonna materialize it's uh you know it's it's something that I'm sure will make it work. Some supportive of this but if it's a $300,000 lawyer fee then I'd love to know that but... It's complex but not as complex as we have an airport issue on our hand but that's quite a fee I just I don't know wow well you might be able to get this experience you might be able to get the easement partner to foot part of the bill if they've already I mean they've done this probably many times whichever land trust organization or you deal with they've probably got specimen agreements that you can submit that to your counsel and say you know this is the template but these are the things that are different. So say this off a few bucks that way. So what is the pleasure? Do you want to go forward with the next steps of what the legal... I'm with Tom I agreement I'm ready to accept the final report and recommendation. All right so we should have a motion to accept their report. Any further discussion? Okay all in favor signify by saying aye. I just want to thank the task force you guys for all your hard work and then do we need to no we just need to direct you we can do that verbally to start this rolling in the wheels okay do you want to vote on that or is it okay just to this guy's easements.org the direction enough to Kevin you need a vote no if the if the council pretty much in the consensus that there are there are going to be multiple steps here we'll be coming back to you with with updates on what we're learning in the process we haven't done this before but as Michael said the there are organizations in the state that have done this a lot so great good enough thank you thank you for coming thanks for coming and hanging okay item number nine update on the installation of new water meters and the possibility of a low use status change and we have charge charge excuse me justin rabidu good evening justin rabidu director public works um prior to i was at the office before i came over i was watching the video live like if you would like i can address the miscellaneous revenue question oh sure i'm watching this live wow so i knew when to get here okay and because because you can um grant some of our grant cycles well almost my definition any random grant cycles probably not going to line up with the city's budget calendar um after the budget was approved we subsequently applied and received a grant to help us to offset some of the paving costs of allen road which was back in november so it was unbudgeted unanticipated revenue we don't really have you've seen the budget there's not a lot of line items so that represents roughly 70 percent of that number um and if you also recall if you read some of our quarterly narratives people ran a lot of stuff over over the last six months and so there's a lot of insurance reimbursement for us to put back up street lights and traffic you know and this and that and we also um sold off a couple of lower end pieces of equipment you know for a few thousand dollars here and there and so i agree it's a big number but primarily because the allen road thing and then um insurance reimbursements and then the disposition of some smaller property but that's what basically represents that line item thank you that's a ton of stuff good so uh to the item at hand water meter installation is as you can probably recall or many of you know we've been plugging away for a while at upgrading these cities water meters to kind of modern technology for a couple reasons one we used to experience in the mid teens percentage wise water loss in other words we know how much water is coming into our system and we knew what we were billing 15 percent of it was unaccounted for generally kind of under 10 is considered acceptable we're down at about seven right now we anticipate because we know how much we've tightened the system in the past five years we anticipate once we complete this will probably be at about two or three percent of system loss so that's very important because it's just revenue that we can't make up for also secondly when it comes to reading a water meter now the new technology does not require the employee to actually physically access the meter with whatever whether it was a pen and a paper or some of the the electronic readers we now can simply drive by your property and download that so it's kind of a two two prong program since 2013 we have six roughly 6100 total accounts and meters in the system since 2013 we have installed about 3200 and we anticipate over including this year so this and then the following three years to install the remainder of the 2,900 or so that are left of the older models all of that has since this project started we have been allocating roughly a hundred thousand dollars a year for the purchase so we purchased the meters and obviously pay that bill but we have been installing them with the our water water division staff so we're doing the installs at no additional cost so there's some at least one year we installed 1,300 one year 300 you know there's kind of ebbs and flows and we anticipate having that done the remainder of them installed in fiscal 2021 so that's kind of the update on the water meter project you'll certainly see it in the upcoming budget years any questions on that before we talk about low low water usage yeah so when you install the new water meters did you do any comparison on the average monthly charges versus the old water meters did you find any significant deltas no i mean with 6300 customers it would have to be a decent sampling size to be you know statistically sufficient so but we did not do kind of a side-by-side comparison where's the water loss then excuse me that eight percent water loss you want to get down to two percent where are you usually finding it what are you attributing it where's the old older meters you know so a cubic foot running through a meter wasn't always reading as a cubic foot it was reading as maybe 0.7 cubic feet or 0.8 cubic feet or 0.95 so just the older meters weren't they were mechanical as opposed to electrical so then to his question wouldn't we expect our billings to go up if we're now capturing all the water going through yes but i can't tell you specifically without doing a kind of a more forensic analysis of hand picking i don't know maybe 300 or 400 accounts comparing to before and afters and then accounting for all the variables more people in the household less people etc but in general the trend continues to be positive in terms of our we're losing less revenue through the meters so you're capturing what you what really is the real revenue and you know no system ever and we don't we're not going to pretend to no system ever is going to get a hundred percent at the very at the very least there's a high you know there's a fire and you know we don't put a meter on the hydrant when we're fighting you know so there's always some water loss inherent to running the system but we think we're going to get down to a real low single-digit numbers which will make us happy and keep our water rates nice and and as i recall when we asked this a couple years ago you didn't think we could really think about a low use status charge until all the meters were installed am i making that up or did i i don't know where in your memory that is but certainly that's the two are unrelated oh they're unrelated okay however if we have better meters we have better data but generally they're they're unrelated what okay what i believe the chair might be recalling and tell me if i'm wrong in this memory is you were upgrading the software a year and a half ago and we you basically suggested that we wouldn't be able to look at new rate changes or low water usage of the new softwares and is that yeah okay and the software is installed now well how many how many dates kevin did we have for when the website was going to go live we've we've we've experienced more difficulties with our billing software um presently with champaign water district you were their largest customer in terms of billing they bill a very small 300 account system in colchester we're they're one month away from going live with the new version of software and working out all the bugs on a 300 customer database that only does water and sewer we have over 6 000 accounts that water sewer and a complicated stormwater billing system because of the credits and the eru's and condos so we want so we're not there yet however i don't think it's appropriate to expect us to kind of wait until because we were hoping with new software with a lot of bells and whistles and we could do a lot of what if scenarios but we can do all that and at that time we were hopeful based on statements made by our vendor that we would be wrapping things up shortly um but they've uh taken a while on a much smaller much more simple system so i can give you a little just a little bit of data on kind of low water usage um again we have roughly 6300 accounts over in the past year approximately 37 percent of our accounts have been billed at at least one time for low usage they've been billed a minimum 37 percent of our accounts have been billed a minimum at one point keep in mind that also includes things like irrigation accounts so the people that have lawn irrigation systems have a separate meter for that so by definition all those are going to be dormant and billing the minimum through winter months um rough roughly the way our low our minimum usage applies is if you use basically more than 82 82 gallons a day if you do the math backwards if you use 82 gallons a day um you will be higher than the minimum the state of Vermont tells us that they're just calling it a household now they've they've done away with bedrooms and people that a housing unit represents for permitting purposes and planning purposes 210 gallons a day it used to be and that that's unlimited bedrooms it used to be 150 gallons a bedroom so your three four bedroom house they used to make us account for 450 600 gallons a day what we're finding is people are more people more conscious about the water they use their separate meter for irrigation as well as the notion of a low flow fixture doesn't really exist anymore because all of the toilets now are kind of low you know they're doing a gallon of a gallon of flush or um on the high end so water conservation by both societal behavior and just the systems that are being built and installed um and I expect that 210 gallon a day number that the state mandates upon municipalities to decrease the next time they update their water and wastewater supply rules it's not it's not our number to change but we were getting more and more data that people are using for whatever reason people are using less water so 37 percent of our accounts are at the minimum and I guess my my feedback to the council is if you want to instruct staff to achieve a certain percentage of our accounts or um because water billing represents 85 percent of our water revenues I think it's I think the total system is like 2.7 it's a 2.7 million dollar fund uh customer sales are 2.3 million dollars give or take so it's about 85 percent of our revenues obviously that needs to be the same number at the end of any um rate revision so if you want to instruct us perhaps it would be appropriate during an upcoming budget cycle because depending on how involved this is it could cost some money to look at whatever scenario it is I worked in still we had a 10 tiered water system it's kind of exhaustive but they had 10 tiers of water users um so this can be as precise as you choose you can set parameters it's it's really hard to break out like what are the what are the kind of bare bones costs of running a system certainly we have our budget on the expense side um but you know outside of things like capital which you could probably even argue our expense of the ongoing system you'll kind of everything on the expense side accounts for when you turn your faucet on in addition to even if you're not in town you know fire fire protection so however the council chooses and I would suggest it would be a good discussion maybe in August September as we start priming our utility budgets to give staff direction on what type of outcomes what you what you would want to achieve um yeah 37 percent it's a high number you know and maybe our maybe our quote minimum needs to be uh more minimum but then the you know the obviously corresponding impact is the per gallon fee we'll probably need to we'll need to increase which which is fine we're pretty low correct we're the second lowest second lowest second you know I think frankly I think one of the other yeah we're second by my math yeah we're second lowest in the in the greater community I just want to say two things so what I'm really hearing from you is 37 percent almost half of our users are not rewarded for water efficiency improvements that they put into their homes so if they're using under the 1 000 gallons per month cubic feet per quarter cubic feet per quarter which again the easier number is 82 gallons a day okay your shower probably you probably use 20 gallons of water filling your tub or taking your 10 minute shower just to get it down in the explainable metrics and the other thing I recall and this has been a three and a half year conversations come up multiple times is that we haven't adjusted or looked at our rate in some time so it's on it's due up to some extent I know this has been the rate structure back to the 90s and it's healthy to look at rate structures and to dive into it and I think this council's expressed that support in previous years so I'd fully support us looking at a way to incent financially through a more fair rate structure of water efficiencies in our homes but that that that's problematic right because if everybody drives down their usage that drives down their revenue you'll lower the minimum but charge up the actual well so there are lots of ways to break apart utility meterings right and billing so gmp and vermont gas have have already got this select up right what they do is they break apart the transmission charge the daily access charge and one of those is tied your usage then you have your raw usage charge then you'd have to have your stormwater charge on top of that right so so in order to to guarantee a base amount of money and I don't and I'm just talking at the top of my head here right you have like you know a transmission charge which says that maybe you're not home for six months out of the year but if something happened right you have this connection to water and the the water pressure is there it's ready to go right then you have your daily access charge you know which is tied your usage well that would be lower if you didn't use them much and then you would have your actual raw water usage right I'm not saying this what we should do it's just you know anytime you start tinkering right with the gears about what you charge people right you're gonna you got to still meet his expense you know his expense budget right and and what we don't want is we so a good water department right is one that is so some municipalities charge a lot of money for water more than we do and and you can see that right down towards the lake right and it's pretty expensive um I I our our water rates were lower like 10 years ago I think that it was less expensive and it started to come up as far as I as I can see but you've also asked at its stormwater too so overall it's a pretty good deal the question is how do you how do you you know motivate people I mean I think it sounds like people are pretty well motivated to not use as much water as they have been by virtue of just fixtures alone right that that's the point so I agree with everything you just said but my understanding of the current model 37 percent of our users are not rewarded for improving or reducing their water usage you can look at the other way different right the other way is they're not being charged more for what they've used well you know then I've got a hot tub all right and I am not motivated at all to not dump my hot tub regularly because I can just use my whatever it is per cubic foot so if you adjust the rate structure we are incenting or rewarding behaviors that maybe treat the water and don't fill their pool as frequently or will also justify the replacement of a less efficient toilet you know that $180 if it's going to translate to using less water that's a lower bill that our current billing structure does not motivate more water efficient fixtures and investments I don't know if I'm saying this well enough it just it makes a lot of sense to look at how we're charging to properly incent investment but the other way to look at it is that if you use the minimum or less right you're getting a pretty good deal in your water if you use more than that then you are being punished because you're paying more money for water right so it's just a matter of mindset about where where's the value in the water that you're using you know well it's not necessarily if you're using the minimum or less you're getting a pretty good deal because if for some reason you're not using any you're paying to not use any water at all you're paying the minimum well which is I mean there's so many ways you can look at this I have a piece of land in another hang on in another municipality um where I pay $188 and 40 cents a quarter because I just paid the bill um I have nothing on the land at all but I'm in the city water municipal water and sewer district and that's more than I've ever paid in a period in South Burlington so we're getting a pretty good deal um so yes you could you could tinker with it either way it doesn't make any difference to me at all most of the fixtures now are being designed for low flow so the manufacturers incentivizing lesser use I don't think there's a whole lot of incentive other than than the environmental feel good piece of it to incentivize people to use a lot less water because we don't pay a whole lot for it well we just spent $40,000 to increase the water pressure to yeah we did so I mean we we spend money on our water infrastructure all right well yeah instead the reduction or the more sensible conservation of that resource I think a different pricing structure is warranted to consider that's definitely possible you can mind that's a complicated but sewers based on the same exact consumption yeah so anyone that's reasoned and sewers more expensive so I'm gonna raise your hand on water has the same concern about sewer they should the a lot of the private utilities councilor barrett mentioned have a have a commercial industrial rate and a residential rate just again further illustrating did we have that no further illustrating the the myriad options and you had mentioned the rates did go once IBM's population they they basically drive the wholesale rate in the county and that's why 10 15 years ago the wholesale rate went up because IBM was using less but you still have the same system yes you're pumping less water out through it but a lot of those operating costs are fixed so that your memory is right that's the reason why so our you know we get passed along the 2% or so wholesale increase and we usually tack I know a half to one and a half on top of that locally for specific projects here my only point I'll stop talking after this we've got new software we've got new meters we've got new societal interests and focus areas and conservation I think we should I think it's well worth looking at it just looking at our current rate structure and see how it compares to other absolutely but what we don't want is people just building outhouses in their yard not gonna happen but not gonna happen probably not allowed it's probably not allowed is it it would be a nuisance if you look next to it um any more questions for um Justin try toilets don't stink just want to put that out there Barb would you like to make a comment it sure is you in for me uh barberservice I live in summer woods I want to thank you for getting to this point I want to thank you too you weren't here but I want to thank you for the work you did to help the dog park task force you were a tremendous help but we have patiently waited for the software and no whatever to come along as the person who raised this how many years ago and Tom sort of rolls his eyes every time he sees me and says we're working on it and I'm grateful to you for doing that but I am one of the people who has zero usage often but it's not so much just about me it's about the people that I've talked to in my neighborhood it's about senior citizens who are I'm fixed incomes for whom this is this is a large bill and they don't use all of that water and they would appreciate a little bit of help with that so I think it is there is a larger group than just incentivizing I believe in the environmental issue myself and this all started with a conversation about the energy prize and one of the things that we dealt with that but I think that there are some some other folks out there who would greatly appreciate the council at least taking a look at this and so I just want to say thank you for getting to the point where we can finally do it okay this sparks a much greater conversation about I mean Mr. Abadou understands how the whole system works right so there's water extracted from the lake it's purified it's sent to homes it comes back to our sewers and goes to our sewage treatment plant right so there's probably an optimum operating condition you know that involves the lake and the sewage treatment plants and the water purifying system and the transmission you know all that has to work together so the question is how much might it take to run it you know how much income do you have to track from the users of that and then build them fairly and and then keep the whole thing you know lubricated so that stuff flows in both directions right so so there probably are from some system elements here that we don't know about yeah you know it's fascinating that's why they're seven million dollars annually total the what is the two funds wastewater and water yeah they each taken seven million or seven million combined right since we have just in here and we have maybe three four minutes what happened in burlington with the overflow of sewage into the lake can you explain that to us as an engineer at least I didn't understand it from the news reports breweries right another reason why we need a pool I think if you were to prioritize the issues they were facing recently they have a large portion of their sanitary sewage sewer collection system is a combined system meaning their storm water rain water shares a pipe with this with the sewage pipe there's only one pipe in a lot of burlington that all goes to the main wastewater plant down the waterfront for treatment that's great you know 99 out of a hundred days however when you have heavy rain events and especially the really quick ones that send a surge in a hurry as opposed to the longer sustained rains the not only the collection system because they have backups just in the street of pipe capacity you have stuff bubbling I worked there for 10 years oh really um you also have a plant that is rated at a hydraulic capacity of six points something million gallons a day however during heavy storm flows the meters literally pinned that a hundred million gallons a day so at that point depending upon bearing the process this big slug infusion of rain water occurs you have a variety of treatment options none of those options are full treatment so you can you can you do the best you can with whatever the situation is at that point in time based on when the storm hit and when all the waters arrive that to me is that's their issue brewery you know the timing of industrial discharges was probably just coincidental and unfortunate in that it could a brewery was making a big batch at the same time there was a rainstorm well you know if your system is if your system has those vulnerabilities I don't think it's the breweries fault anymore it is then single family home on pine street you know it's just that's just bad luck then they had another situation where one of their contractors caused one of their manuals to get you know so there's the human error side of it too and their chief operator had made a statement about because of some of the high strength waste they were receiving the biology and chemistry of the plant was upset and it takes a while for that batch if you will to make its way through the plant and while that entire batch is in the wrong chemical or biological state there's not a whole lot you can do to reset it and so that has to kind of go through so it's a lot of things but first and foremost despite they had two multi 10 million dollar separation projects in the 80s and then again in the 90s where they took a lot of the old north end where they had these combined pipes and they created a sewer pipe and a stormwater pipe you know so ultimately that's the answer however do we have two pipes however what happens environmentally you know they've discharged I don't know x million gallons of partially treated raw diluted sewage into the lake that's ignoring the other 99.9% of the time when all of their storm when the stormwater from that entire same subsection is actually getting treated to the same level that sewage does prior to discharge you know so that's the reason why people initially did the combining of your systems because you could treat this is before stormwater was even really a thing you could treat your stormwater and create a really clean effluent as opposed to back in the 70s the old stormwater treatment was plop the pipe down at the lake you know so there's there's pluses and minuses of the system I don't think the pluses ever get talked about at all where a vast majority of the time they're actually achieving a higher level of treatment for their stormwater and they have they have a built environment that it doesn't have a lot of available land for traditional stormwater treatment practices they can't just go start digging big ponds everywhere because we'll take a look at the map it's a lot of green space so it's going to be kind of an incremental piece by piece unless they're going to bite the hundred million dollar bullet and separate everything but then once you separate everything you're creating all that new stormwater discharge to the lake so that's it's a tough position but it's basically the combined system so when we have overruns it goes into the the ponds what happens in our system when we have overruns of what system our stormwater system they're stormed just like today and yeah so when it rains a lot on your on your street and the catch basin out in front of your house is bubbling because the water can't go effasive that's just rainwater but none of that makes its way into a sewer pipe okay so our stormwater and sewer are separate they're entirely separate we we are not susceptible to the same type of situation okay but all that work that the utilities the stormwater utility's been doing to create all these new ponds right and collection points is dealing with that right you'll notice when we have these big federally declared disasters in the last nine years since i've been here very rarely if if ever are our stormwater systems experiencing major failures because we have you know because it's a well-designed system and so do municipalities not get you know fined for those kinds of overruns the business did they get fine they were fine a few years ago but it depends on the on the root cause you know operator error the town of shuburn was recently fined um so if there's operator error that can be demonstrated and repeatable again it's it's punitive because often this oftentimes the solution requires money so it the state doesn't really want to take away the one one of the things you have at your availability but if there are repetitive operator or human errors that are avoidable yeah you're going to get fined you'll notice that hasn't come in front of you either because no but burlington didn't get fined not for these events no because this is mother nature their system it's just the system but that just drives me nuts it's the system so they're just going to keep one of the one of the minor side benefits of our hadley separation or had the proctor sewer redirect project is that waste was going down right that waste was heading down fine street to the main plant so we're now removing 70 000 gallons a day of waste that could possibly contribute to to this factor but i just find it remarkable that they then can turn around and build 14 stories of apartments that flush into a system really good flow down good pressure um going down anyway um you know and they still have we live in a in a state that has rain events that cause the overruns and i mean i'm sure the new construction has two pipes but they still go into the same plant or plants that take care of all of the city and it just sort of boggles my mind that we can continue to build and pollute but anyway while the directors here can we ask how the hadley road project is going sure it's progressing really well we are making our way up proctor kind of going from the bottom but now that rice is out for this this summer we're making our way up proctor we've gone down have gone down feral sorry feral and meadow and i would you know extremely accommodating residents god bless them it's not we can't do much without kind of raising an inquiry from the public but this very high level of disruption on at the very least just your kind of daily quality of life and peace and quiet has been accepted by the folks has certainly been access issues that people have been very patient with we are out ahead of ourselves with fliers and we leaflet the impacted streets or properties you know the friday before we're doing things so generally our activity shouldn't come as a surprise to folks but it's moving along really well we can have we'll be working all the way through october are we gonna have a valve closing ceremony whatever your pleasure it will will there be a valve to close and then like you know cut a ribbon there's a physical a pipe will be disconnected okay yes and so there'll be a pump down in the parking lot at the bottom of proctor at the but it will be in the parking now in the green belt in the green belt south of the park and that pump will send it back up to the jail yep up proctor and then south to the jail i think it does it is the muffin grinder going to chew that up too or is it just a jail that has they both will they both will and then you'll then you'll pump it back up to the top of sharpen road and then it'll flow to bar at the bay that's correct gravity i love it well please commend your department on being so thoughtful and sensitive with that neighborhood otherwise we'd all be getting lots of calls i only had one email and i just kept plugging in the way that this is a very positive thing and using humor and i think the person was uh saw the light well and i think there certainly have been things on front porch forum but it wasn't anger it was just what's happening yeah and you know we could answer it and absolutely usually we're like three years after we take the water study usually it's years after we say we're going to do something in this case we voted yes on march we broke ground and right they're not used to that type of governmental efficiency well it's a new day coming here yeah but thank you okay moving five minutes and we'll come so we'll break for five minutes and maybe we should go to 11 rather than 10 so that justin can leave if he's not involved in 10 and and paul still is right okay sure if people doesn't that make sense yeah i didn't see yes we're probably going to 11 anyway though right oh no not 11 p.m i think we're gonna i'm hoping we don't no we should be out of here in half an hour five minute break paul yeah okay sure it'll be here public meeting yes is it next monday yes yes it's a working session a working session i bet it was james benosco taller jennifer well we'll have um we'll be inviting um i have invited um jennifer murray um anyone on the library um board um parks and rec um holly holly i've asked holly to present kind of the her ideas about the the programming in this space and um see who else so so where did kevin's coming back right he just okay why don't we um like to call back into order the south brorington city council um monday june 18th 2018 and we are at um we're going to skip down to item 11 so then justin can go home and we're taking up recommendation and possible action related to the city sponsorship of the bike share program we have paul connor from planning and justin ravidou from public works good evening so the beginning of this i don't know probably two years ago um the led by the chitney county regional planning commission um and spurred on initially by university of montan champaign college um we started looking at the a bike share system that would work well in chitney county perhaps with a phase implementation so build some successes early and bring on some partners after the fact so just like any whether we're buying gravel or a bike share program there was a solicitation process five vendors um green green ride was eventually the selected vendor uh by a group that involved the the again the two universities the rpc as well as local motion um one of the important things was no one including bike included in green wide wanted to compete with kind of the existing recreational rental bike market that you see down on the waterfront and some of the the other bike stores this is really meant to be a transportation alternative as opposed to and you can look at the design of the bike it kind of speaks to its utilitarian nature as opposed to something that you're going to be zipping up and down a bike path on um so i thought that was very admirable of green ride to come up come right out front and say that they did not want to take over the kind of the global market if you will so what you see here are the two bikes with our primary sponsors i'm sure you've seen them deployed around town and neighboring communities um you can see the bike lock above the rear wheel then just above that you can see kind of the black it's a case that's where the the brains and the gps of the bicycle lies so it operates kind of like an uber but you know without a driver um you show up and the majority of the people are accessing it via uh they're the app from green ride and so you you preload your card and we'll get into a bit kind of what the rates are however for folks that um either can't or choose not to use a type of technology you can go and you can buy credits at local vendors and there's a process again in the same interface allows you just to type in your number um and you can use the bicycle um we understand that this is going to change over time or origin's destinations we're going to pick some spots that don't work and some others might reveal themselves to be good locations which is also why they don't invest heavily in front end bike rack building shower you know you don't there's not a lot of infrastructure involved with where these are housed in their in their locations because by design they're kind of meant to be if dislocation isn't working there's not a lot of sunken costs let's just pick up and move elsewhere um so that was kind of the background counselor chitin was in on some of the meetings as the process became a little more developed and as we started working with our business community and soliciting frankly host um you know where are these where are these a good good place to go so it's been in operation paul for two months so far so this is really sort of that there's two things that are really unique about this particular program one is that as jesse was alluding to it's really sort of the next generation in technology around these things so if any of you've been to new york and done the city bikes it's a great program but the stations themselves is where the brains are so you've got to bring that there's a lot of financial investment in the stations the stations here are literally just a green bike rack and so it's all uh digitally mapped as to when you're at home base so i sort of think of it as like when you when you play tag as a kid and you designate that lamppost as being that's home base and it's safe that's basically what they're doing in the back of this thing so they can change locations very quickly and i'll talk about that in a second the other thing that's really sort of unique about this and which the the green ride folks were really pretty impressed by um what's come together in this area is normally when one like this is deployed it's either one big sponsor or either a university or a municipality or a business that is doing a big deployment or it's a very small deployment of you know three racks and it's one you know one entity that's doing it um here it's three municipalities it's um two universities it's katana there's probably 20 plus different sponsors that have come together whether it's ben and jerry's or seven generation healthy living the umal others to sort of make this work in a way that represents the kind of community that we have in in the berlington south berlington monuski area where we didn't want to start with just two racks and we don't have you know one big sponsor who can just drop in and say you know we're a big bank we'll do all of it um do you want to speak about some of the locations yeah so we worked with um you know basically their experts came to town they have a lot of experience in this and we also talked to each community and some commercial businesses as well as each each um employees within each community is to try to identify where these would most likely have success over on on the north end of the map in right just past the river you can see in winewski and if you've driven in the traffic circle you'll notice on your right right as you enter winewski that's where their racks are just by the champlain mill um there's a lot of locations in berlington and certainly you can see them identified in the green shaded university or college areas then south brongton we're kind of looking at initially the airport and the dorset street corridor so one oh i'm sorry council chairman and um the two meetings i attended on this i just want everybody to know i i strongly advocated for the shelburn road the south that part of south berlington to be next on the docket and maybe you're going to speak to that next for the second so you kind of how does this all work other you know now you have these bikes and who's responsible we're not you know we our employees aren't running around fixing them they have a maintenance contract with old spokes bicycle shop out of berlington so they'll do things like charge batteries they will um they will reallocate and locate you know for example council barrett mentioned his love of gravity well it's conceivable to think a lot of these things might make their way down to the waterfront but who wants to puddle and back up a hill you know so old spokes will redistribute the bikes to their homes if they notice that they're too unbalanced also credits are given if you want to earn some bike share credits you can ride that back up the hill you know so it's a pretty innovative program and what we're doing now is again we'll get to the financial part of this in a bit but trying to find out where it would work and then if it's successful the initial term is a three-year contract if it's successful start adding other locations in south in south berlington and elsewhere like council chit mentioned on shulburn road so it's a it's kind of a fun you know it's it's kind of a fun process these these folks there's a lot of back-end technical data paul's going to show you one of the one of the maps we have but there's great great information and it will help us calibrate these origin destinations really well going forward so this map you see the little little circles the green circles there those are the various different hubs and the numbers in the circles are as of about an hour and a half ago where how many were at each station that's a live thing every time you go on has that information so they're able to track where each one is which helps it that they don't get stolen also but that also helps and we'll speak about it in a minute about how they redeploy them so i'm going to show some usage information in just a minute but they can be pretty dynamic about which ones are doing well which ones are doing poorly just briefly part of the green ride bike share program mission some of the key elements of it which i think we felt matches pretty closely with a lot of the goals that the city of south burlington has been advancing in terms of making our modal shift creating more opportunities affordable transportation enjoyable recreation all those things so how it works briefly as justin said you can reserve them online on your phone on the bike itself basically it's just there's a little you lock that's attached to the the bike itself it just pops out you ride your bike and you lock it back in you can also lock it at any other place along the way if you happen to be stopping for a cup of coffee at barns and noble and you want to and you want to stop in for five minutes there you can just lock up the bike there press hold and you can do that for a few minutes yeah the beauty doesn't have to always stop at one of the hubs you can stop at any location as long and then take the lock with you it's right it sits in the bike it's all designed it's integrated right with it yeah in just a few minutes and then what happens if so your meter's low your meter's running right yeah so the rate there's rate structure here um there's three ways that you can pay for it you can do a quick trip two bucks for 30 minutes if you're over that it starts charging a little bit of a meter beyond that so if it were 45 minutes i think it adds a buck to it or something like that you can get a monthly membership which gives you 60 minutes a day and then if you choose to go longer than that in before bring it back to a hub then um then you pay that or you can get an annual membership for $50 uh so those are the rate structures that photo is unrelated to the bike share program except that that's a lot of bikes on my car last year um i did not so ridership this is some information from the first two months the darker the or the the brighter the blue the more riders there's been this is uh as of today for the first two months so uh 1166 members uh just about 3000 trips 6000 miles have been traveled already and the you can see that you know the most popular areas have been generally near the waterfront um a fair amount of uvm campus and down uh and a little bit later usage in south burlington so far um so today i was on the phone speaking uh with the folks at green ride and had had an email exchange with them about a week and a half ago about how they're going to test out some new things so as we were saying it's really simple to move these things around so right now it's early summer students aren't at uvm they're going to be redeploying some of the bikes maybe even moving some of the stations to try out some other areas while there aren't students there to see where might they be catching on here in south burlington they communicated with us so i don't know if you see in the green ride uh bike share bike racks but they're fluorescent green and by complete coincidence we have a set of fluorescent green bike racks out front here so they um we were in communication with them a week and a half ago and they said well what would you think if we just had a had south burlington city hall be a a site that can just be added to it and somebody can drop off their bikes so if they're running an errand either from here they want to go get lunch or uh library staff wants to come over and come to a meeting or something like that and we said sure why not let's give it a try so they're gonna they're going to try out some different things um they're thinking about redeploying a few of the bikes maybe um separating out one of the stations that's um in uh there's there's two right near each other one at um healthy living and one at umal maybe separating them see how that works so this is intended to be dynamic and evolve and they can track the data minute by minute as long as it doesn't involve new bikes those are no cost alterations to the system so they pick up the bike racks and take them from the back of a pickup truck and move them or in our case there's already a bike rack right right yeah um so next stages of this um the the first one has 17 hubs and about 125 bikes or so as I recall uh the evolution is to go through three phases I think ultimately to be in seven communities about 300 bikes I think is the goal um and I'm going to speak to you in a minute about an opportunity that just actually presented itself today for us to participate in a no cost to the city of south berlington grant to help get phase two going but I know first we're here to talk about um city of south berlington's funding support so that's the yeah so right now we we are looking to again back to the timing of our budget calendar with the rest of the world um they weren't aligned here so we're looking to come up with $10,000 to represent kind of our year one contribution to this system um and to help us continue and like paul said we have a little bit more to share with you it's related but in an unrelated way about the next evolutions of these systems do you have an idea of what the other municipalities and universities have contributed to 10,000 small compared to what uvm has contributed in berlington right i think when new skis are going to be about half of that and um they initially were looking for they were initially looking for 5 000 of a location with what that came with a certain number of bikes so there's 13 locations in berlington and frankly 14 if you count the airport because they they still seem to want the airport in some instances um maybe we can convince them that they want that too you know so if it's somewhere in the three to five thousand dollar range per you know you know they'd be 30 to 50 thousand probably is my guess i don't know but again like like you mentioned they have partners there as well like the two universities that were all like already committed to this i was in this meeting wearing my uvm hat my gmt hat and also this hat not representing us and i didn't speak for the council but i i will say i understand uvm is pointing up a lot of resources for this um patma uvm um and and the title sponsors have put in big money as well i can't remember the number was it 75 it was yeah it was a lot yeah it was almost 100 000 i think so where's the money that people are putting their communities are putting in what's the money used for is that what's the money used for to buy the bikes buy the racks buy pay salaries vehicle i don't i don't so clear picture is what the big parts of what the money is for are the upfront expenditures of the bikes and the racks themselves the ongoing maintenance and redeployment that old spokes home has been is being paid for and um what they've told us elsewhere when these systems have come online the longer they're in place the more sponsorship it generates and therefore the less money they ends up being requested from the host communities so some combination of revenues and or additional sponsors might help drive down um any anyone host communities at a pocket expense as well so who's managing it there's a local manager that is uh employed by green ride bike share right yeah so yeah they have one of their employees is responsible this location they have the maintenance contract with old spokes and a staff member at the regional planning commission is kind of everyone's collective contact the everyone being all of those dots everyone's collective contact with bike share well a lot of cooks in the kitchen at various times sounds like it seasonality this operates from when till when year round yeah they they do anticipate having to just with lower ridership though they probably would not want to have all their bikes out there just for the sake of it so they will probably pull some out of inventory and then rotate those back through so the same bike isn't being exposed to the elements that's curious where do they store them where's the storage facility that's uh whatever their relationship is with old spokes how whatever they have identified for that and these are single geared bikes i haven't there are seven gear bikes but that it's on it it's on sort of a continual shift so it's it's it's really easy to use in that respect but it doesn't have a power it's not self-powered well the first ones are not but is it later this summer that oh yeah particularly with the change in elevation in burlington there might be some powers and you'll pay more for those uh the the people that are requesting them might yes interesting quite uh quite the thing so your map showed a lot of usage along the waterfront right and so i was curious i mean has anybody asked key rack and local motion if they're renting revenue is down since the deployment of these bikes uh well i good question uh i don't know that uh i don't know the answer to that question um it's i know that local motion doesn't put their bikes out until sometime in may so it's possible that some of this data is there was a month of sometimes nice weather um but i think that that's part of the part of what's great about this um detailed data is that we can see what's happening with this and what's meeting the expectations that were set up up front what's different from the expectations we can make a point to have the rpc person solicit the vendors the rentals companies and to the extent that they'll share the information with us well we can get it back to you can you get demographic information like it says that of the 1166 625 were non residents of vermont jimson county or of wherever and they were this you know demographic community as for a zip code right when so yeah we don't we don't know what's behind the dashboard though i do know elsewhere large companies some of the biggest titans out there are doing massive deployments of this in other countries they could give a they could give a care about the bike it's the user data they're after oh yeah so i'm not sure how much of that user you know but yeah we'll we can certainly try to find out where the users are coming from yeah i think that would be i think that'd be really interesting because when you look at the waterfront and you look at the location to the bikes um if if a lot of that is tourists um there is there is a potential issue of a municipality helping to pay for um to compete against private entities such as the ski rack or whoever else rents bicycles to make a living and then all of a sudden a tourist can get a bike really cheap um that's why i think that that information might be important it was almost all commuters which i doubt um then the then the local rental agencies wouldn't care but if it's tourists that could present um you know uh uh people to say that's not fair we've got a we've got municipalities competing with private enterprise and that can present a challenge um i just bring that up as a point i would add to that that um having um on a separate capacity served at the local motion board that the um the the the bicycle shops have been really really partners in all of the evolution in this area okay that's important to know all the kinds of that of so they've been with the um with the organizations as they've deployed um elements they've taken a i think a very um forward stance looking at this is saying building a community that that values cycling and outdoor activity is good for business overall and so all the different work whether it's um things like the causeway which is a public project or um the the the efforts that south brilington has made over the years or um that's really good to know paul that that the that the retailers have generally been involved and supportive that takes away that concern um but certainly this is the kind of day that we would love to be sharing with them and talk with them that would still be really interesting information to have and kevin as soon as we can get that bridge built across the interstates the utilizational skyrocket because i've got a feeling no matter what we do there's a major literally roadblock right there because you're taking your life in your hands on foot and on bikes to navigate that so maybe we should just speed that project right next to the reagan national airport there's a there is a bridge a cycling bridge it was very attractive well it makes a heck of a and as we know it's going to make a heck of a difference here one of these days sooner rather than later hopefully more information or you have a request so the request is to basically um instruct staff to to find and out or recommend and allocate the ten thousand dollar financial commitment um for this first year of implementation for our three locations or as like i or perhaps even two locations all right well i think it's pretty impressive that uh the gentleman that deals in snow plows backhoes heavy equipment machinery and big stuff that use a lot of gasoline would be pretty much in favor of this that's it does bike leans too that's right yeah it's a great program it really is okay excellent so this is defined ten thousand dollars in our budget not defined so is it for this fiscal year starting in july july first it's for year one you know we're two months into this you know so it's for so it's going to probably lap over two fiscal years but well is there support is there a we want a motion to well just just ask a question you know if this is ten thousand i mean what do we see going forward in the future for outgoing years and commitment in terms of dollars for that as well i think it's one time five thousand per node you said it was the general expectation so if more nodes come in then it might be a expectation of five thousand dollars per node it's not going to be linked at all to usage for maintenance purposes so i think if usage will be good in that i think the revenue the the types of bikes that you know these these bikes are built for rentals for very you know they're built in a very certain way so they don't anticipate a lot of kind of wear and tear um additional usage is probably going to be more positive for revenue than it will be detrimental on o and m of the bicycles i think if additional funding requests could come if we think as a community that we want more locations and buy locations it's not just existing bike racks with bikes reallocated new bikes new areas of deployment correct yeah i think nothing ventured nothing gained i mean we don't know quite where we're going in the future with this but if we don't give it a try um you know but i was serious when i say we've got we've got that major hub right out here if you're a student in the university of ramon campus and you want to go to trader joe's or you you've got a you got no easy way to get there unless you're in a vehicle and so yeah you'll be connecting two areas with existing hubs it it markets itself as kind of the first mile and the last mile of your trip or commute or in this case it would be just the mile yeah commute well i think uh even everything that's gone into it i think we have a we have a kind of a commitment on obligation to give it a try and see where we go nothing ventured nothing gained let's see where we go sounds like the count i'll move that way yeah that we do want to make a motion to a second okay any yeah i i i tend to think that it's gonna happen more in the future we don't know where we're going but if we don't get we don't give it a try that's silly so let's go okay um any further discussion all right all in favor signify by saying i hi we want to give you a part two of this came to our attention literally today so we were going to um i got the policy you want to read this question um we were uh an opportunity presented itself today um later near jenny you're going to be seeing a bike pad grant application for a large project right project that same granting uh funding cycle had pots for large funds large projects and pots for small projects after a fair amount of review and where we are in the cycle the city had not gone for uh not proposed a small project but we were approached today about the possibility of being the sponsor for um a element of phase two of the bike share program so the regional planning commission contacted us and said that they've been working with several entities other municipalities to get letters of support to submit a grant for 48 000 to buy the phase two bike racks the phase two signage and some of the other related equipment um the rpc has offered to do all of the paperwork um they've written basically most of the application already they also uh said that the green line bike share program would meet the entire 50 percent match what they need is a host community to be um to actually need an applicant because it can only be submitted by municipalities um and so we said that we would share this with council um we uh could if with your concurrence we could submit an application uh it's unfortunately due friday uh we can submit one with your concurrence and then follow up with all the detailed paperwork in uh that you've gotten your hands formally in the packet on monday or if you were so comfortable you could proceed with it um this evening but um so it's no call i guess it's good to go yeah it's no cost to the city right right we would be fronting money on a reimbursable program right just to be clear right talk to tom about this um so it it's no out of pocket to our taxpayers this is something we're already invested in sure virtually no time on our i don't think we should wait till next monday so we can't what you can do tonight i thought the whole council and possible action related to the city sponsorship of bike share program we certainly can that's our possible action right there it's definitely number 11 says possible action yes i would say that yes we move to approve yes grant application this is okay second if that if everyone's um happy with that yeah i thought i i read that as worn for action were you going to suggest another route where we approve this in a time delay or something no i i think if you read the warning that way this just came out today so i can't say that this was what was worn for tonight but technically you could probably do it under this the alternative is you endorse this with a vote and paul takes the endorsement to the uh cc rpc and you actually approve the grant on monday but if you feel it's adequately warned um that's your call i think it's part of the city sponsorship of the bike share program it's moving the whole thing forward so i think we can justify it so let's go i'm okay with that so we have a motion to um in a second i just just with the colleges and universities a lot of families pay stay in our hotels for orientation all these things and so the green mountain suites i mean i don't know where they where they say but i met a family that stayed at green mountain suites for orientation just in early june that would be nice to have bikes where these families could actually go you know because parkings they make it easier for families than they do for people but i mean it would be nice it was a beautiful weekend when they were here if they could just take the bikes and go so just no that's great discussion great suggestion okay thank you so all in favor hi hi great thank you thank you very much thank you yeah that's very exciting that's cool and anytime cc rpc wants to write grants for us yeah right tell him we're happy they want to do all the work that's good okay let's go back to item 10 acknowledge receipt from the planning commission of draft amendment to the land development regulations and accompanying report and consider consider warning public hearing on draft amendments to the land development regulations paul all right so uh you um just approve not too long go a set of amendments to the land development regulations but the planning commission's been hard at work and has another set for you um this round uh are uh an uh an interesting mix of things that um the commission was really pretty excited about um uh i can go through them super briefly if you'd like or you can just acknowledge receipt and um uh we can talk about them at your at the public hearing itself that you'd like to want a hearing so i'll leave it up to you i'm okay with just accepting them and talking about them at the hearing rather than have a summary that you'll hear a second time i'll move to want a public hearing from monday july 16th at seven seven thirty seven thirty seven thirty pm for the presented changes to the land development regulations you have a second i'll second it but i won't be here so can i say neither lie july 16th you're not here i won't be here i will be here i will be here i can't if i have to be but right now i'd prefer not to be huh well three of you here yeah we'll have three okay so comments okay um sure okay um no actually those were your highlights not mine yay all right okay yes have you asked if there's any other discussion i haven't yet is there any other discussion yes i have so i know you you you want to take another opportunity to go through this probably more detail but i just i had some initial feelings of of of feedback about the requirement you were removing the glazing requirement for the interstate ramp area right for buildings that but the interstate uh not the glazing requirement but the doorway requirement it's a doorway requirement right so it was it was uh one could interpret the regulation street to all the rules the interstate is a street in a form right um the planning commission did not want to exempt that side from the window standards from the architectural sort of interest standards right but also realistically having doors facing that side okay didn't make any sense so that's why i didn't see the door requirement i thought it was talking about the removing the the the glazing in other words i thought you were sort of removing requirements that the architecture facing the ramp had any significant okay aesthetic value to it no what's being removed on this near the internet interstate ramp is one the the doorway doorway to right now there's an internet interstate highway overlay district right requires a setback yeah yeah i saw the setback that's being removed um i can confirm that but that was certainly not the intent okay i'll go back and read it again but i just the the side that faces the interstate is almost as important as the side that faces the street with the exception of i agree with you on a door you don't need a door there yeah i would because we thought that that was the that was the sentiment that the commission had we we fought that on cvs and we had to really struggle with parts of that but anyway came up okay right okay okay yes yes sorry it's the same color as is your highlighting so the one with the 50 foot setback from the interstate ramp right away in the fbc t4 district and it says the amendment will have a minor positive impact on the provision of sage and affordable housing by allowing slightly greater site flexibility right so one of the requirements that exists um i of any set of amendments is to look at the question of um impact on housing um it's unknown as to whether any development that would occur within that little 50 foot additional area would be uh residential or non-residential because the transect zone uh teeth the the form base code area is indifferent towards use but if somebody chose to do housing it does provide a little bit more space on some tight sites near the interstate to um put housing in there so that's an awful place for housing i just have to say a paul we have no proposals to put housing in that area um so but why make it possible the site that had come to us uh expressing interest in this was in front of the holiday end um but it would be for non-residential use um so the commission could also have said it was neutral towards the subject of housing but yeah yeah i i just i already have neighbors and would start wanting a berm or not a burn but a sound barrier between the interstate so i would also agree with you yeah it's a huge noise now note that this is only the ramp to the interstate not the interstate itself so it's several it's a few hundred feet from the interstate itself here would this assist in 13 b is that what it's called or if 13 b were to happen would this make it easier this only applies at exit 14 14 okay so it only applies at exit 14 so there's really only five properties to which this applies um the corny hill property which has already received its approval for development the shared in property the holiday end property the cvs property and the hotel behind the cvs those are the oh and the and the university mall no not the university mall because that's past that's past the ramps so those are the only ones to which this actually applies i have similar concerns it just doesn't seem like a good place for residential properties yeah especially with children yeah a place to play right i mean and all my reading of no impact on noise highway noise is right up there it's not just military jets so i really well we can raise that at the hearing you won't be here though i won't be here would you want to write a little note yes you know like an email or letter to you or to the planning commission like i did last time well it's in it's in the council's hands now so yeah right it's me and then i can read it and clearly you have some supporters that's joe larkin's land or the larkin family on twoside is that is that the larkin land by the holiday and yeah they own that land the busiest intersection in the state when people drive through vermont to come to burlington i mean that's what they see so it's important yeah so part of it creates a gateway area of some additional architectural requirements and exactly that because it's that right it's that entry point okay one one more yes i'm sorry the last thing was the uh you were going to eliminate the requirement to to have no parking in front of the commercial properties like like in the south village i'm assuming is where that change was going um that's yes that's a cleanup that's there's that was um uh the regulations say that there's no parking in front of buildings there was a leftover item related to the southeast quadrant village commercial that was somewhat in it was it was redundant language because there was a city-wide standard that now apply there was a stronger statement about um not having parking in front of buildings so you so you're retaining the the ban on parking in the in front of the buildings or would this allow it in this small instance of a small commercial it would uh not allow it but not allow it okay because there's a city-wide standard that already says it's not allowed so this was redundant language and having redundant language that reads slightly differently is just a recipe for um applicants and neighbors and all sorts to say well why is it written slightly differently here so i'm just cleaning up that language okay well thank you we've set the date for july 16th at 7 30 i think we voted yeah oh we haven't voted sorry well that's what you wanted discussion is everyone ready now any further discussion no all in favor signify by saying aye thank you thank you thanks paul okay moving on to item 12 this is the mou between the city of south burlington and the city of burlington related to the noise compatibility program at burlington international airport and if you recall back in november no it was too sooner than that i mean earlier than that we sent yeah september 28th right that was their this this this is ours yeah and then they that was their response that's their response their initial response right um and then with all the different meetings that set Leonard the mayor of wenuski and i have had with the mayor of burlington um we convinced him to start looking at this um our mou with um with more than just we don't agree with it and so they um sent us this copy um and before we direct andrew to work with their attorney it seemed like it would be helpful for the council to have a discussion to lend some direction to that i think if you read through it i mean one of the i guess positive things is it kind of layouts lays out what each of the different cities um have to do which is kind of a change and includes wenuski but i think as i'm sure you all have read through it it doesn't say a whole lot it doesn't really do very much in my opinion anyway it's a lot of um like continue to work and as possible yes there's a lot of escape language i think so um i would like to get your responses or thoughts about it and what you know you want you what what we want to tell andrew to work on i think there's a lot to work on so megan you i think um well a couple things first only the city of burlington has officially expressed interest in noise insulation um and the residents have had some chance to look at the exhibits that they put up the tac committee is currently looking at what's available um so i think it's premature because i think the tac committee has not yet finished i mean especially the top of the second page where it specifically lists what the three communities have expressed a desire for uh i disagree i don't think we have expressed a desire for that yet and it doesn't include noise barriers sound walls glass deflectors things that we have expressed a desire for for many years um so and i also think that um what it gives to the city of south burlington in terms of just uh overview or site oversight is it's we have very little role and our mou clearly um gave us a little bit of a more prominent role where we were collaborating with the city of south burlington to come up with an implement an effective plan whereas here we may offer any public comments right all right on the ncp or nem at the formal public hearing or in writing during the public comment period so i find it to be this is nothing new this is what we have been actively trying to change for you know years um so i i find this to be doesn't pass my straight face test no i little one-sided but a little one-sided yes that's modestly saying yes so the one comment i have and i i don't know the answer to this um but the city of burlington gets an administrative salary offset from this the airport enterprise fund for i'm guessing some of the efforts they expend on coordinating these things when they use burlington employees to do the things listed in items a through k and the first bullet point the city of south burlington spends an enormous amount of staff time and attention resources on dealing with airport issues so i feel like this i'm not against this we need to communicate with them but i i would like to explore options to um recoup some of the costs we expend on this continual topic of great importance to this city um that our staff time is spent in in excess of what we spend on any other enterprise operating within our borders we don't spend this time on the umal we don't spend this time on other enterprises inside of our boundaries we spend an inordinate amount of time on the airport and if the city of burlington is set is is assessing the enterprise fund of the airport for that time that they're expending we should do the same and we don't currently get reimbursed anything for anything that we do nothing that i know of what what do you mean for the f any f the the big amount of money that we expend on staff time documented etc we don't get reimbursed for that but the city of burlington can because they own the airport and uh the da da da and so i don't see is this is favorable towards moving forward at some point in time with the regionalization of the airport to you tom i do not i don't know what the rest of you feel about regionalization i know tom and i are strong advocates of a regional airport and i just don't see where this gets us anywhere at all well i think i think david to um go back to our initial um purpose for writing the mou was to try to get some um agreement even though an mou isn't legally binding but to put on paper and to put into words that that both communities sign this agreement that everyone has said had said um orally to the press and in written statements that no one was um supportive of buying more homes and tearing them down as i recall that was really the impetus for this everyone had been saying this so we kind of pushed the envelope a little bit and said okay um mayor you know wineburger let's have an mou that states that up front why don't we just have an mou with one dot one one line in it and be done with it right there we go pretty much well i think well that and this is what they came back with and this is yeah it is and then wanouski has been part of this because with the 35 they're going to be impacted um pretty significantly as well so they're part of the ever-growing um issue around the fighter jets and the noise and and noise compatibility and buyouts and how you deal with that so they came back with with this so what is our so we can recommend cuts i think david's suggestion is a good one let's let's send an mou back to them this is the one liner we need yeah sign it right that's what i would see honestly and that doesn't then fly in the face of further progress towards regionalization or anything else and this has got so many holes in it anyway just skimming it i read it earlier right yeah i second to last where i was on the first page therefore be it resolved that the current administrations and legislative bodies of all three cities believe that removing existing housing now wanouski might object it's not their preferred method of sound mitigation within the identified patchworks in some of your discussions that you mentioned previously with the mayors about the kirby cottages are they not are they going to be bought back sold back not demolished i don't see any mention of that in here that is sort of on a little bit of a hold um these are brand new houses they're seven eight years old and yeah i i the the mayor has said to both seth and myself that he really he does not want to tear them down he would like to either move them i guess i think he would like to move them um i would like to wait for the noise maps and see if they're out you know outside the the um sound line and maybe they can stay there but um i think there's some issues with the f a a about that because they've already bought them so they own them also mentioned in those discussions they saw some utility in getting a mixer of counselors from wanouski in burlington and south burlington together because this is inefficient when we have these resolutions that take us months to consider why the lawyers are making money well there's usually the case this is an outside council they're all in house so they're which is supposedly why it took them so long to get to this that's why they were really busy with them burlington telecom that was pretty i mean i highlighted lots of words i mean i i agree with you it's like continue to work to transition from what the heck does that mean you know and attempt to comply with requests for presentations to the boards of the surrounding what is an attempt to comply to a request does that mean what means it might be possible or not possible yeah i mean we thought about it we thought about it you know explore adding a seat for this city of okay so what do we want to do i don't want to talk about this whole night last question i've had kevin your thoughts on this your resolution was very straightforward you wanted to stop the home buyout program the way to do that is you have an agreement with the city of burlington that they're not going to apply for any grants or accept any grants don't have anything to do with with the ncp or the f a a or what they have to be the the applicant and recipient of a grant if they refuse to do that they won't buy out and demolish any more homes that was the whole idea so the one liner that you're talking about really is what we sent to them it's more than one line but you know what i meant yeah so it was very simple it was very straightforward and it reflected what the leaders of both communities have both publicly said so we send it back our original oh we basically say actually we wanted to keep it as basic as this and right here's the wording we're reiterating and we hope you'll go along well the other go ahead no ours is going to say if we wanted to keep their language we keep one two three four five six seven warehouses that's a lot more than one line it's just seven warehouses and then the second to last whereas is our therefore clause what was the last on the first page so the second to bottom whereas on the first page is really what we want the therefore right that the current administrations and legislative bodies of all three cities believe that removing existing houses is not their preferred method of sound mitigation within the identified contours i mean we did put in language where we wanted them to come up with on the first page the second to the bottom whereas yeah i i think yeah i mean i i agree that's what we wanted i think the other piece that we were hoping for is that we could work more collaboratively that it it um so when you develop the um noise mitigation plans if you ever do that we have a greater say it's not just sitting at the meetings listening to the information making our comments and then they come back with some of the language this that is in this um resolution that basically says you know we um if if the f a a requires home demolition then we have to go along with that you know if there's a if there's a noise mitigation program that has to include tearing down homes then you know we're not going to say we're never going to apply for that and the reason why i think that's what we want them to do is not to ever say we're going to tear down a bunch of houses because the f a a thinks it's too noisy and what you just said i completely agree with and i i will be honest i lost confidence in the decisions over this buyout program when the curbie cottages were enveloped in that additional plan those are brand new how homes that were built with sound insulation standards that weren't part of the original plan so it's very valid the point you're making and that's what we're trying to accomplish so i i don't know if we want to include um a therefore that um and we can include wanouski too both wanouski and south burlington will um be part of the um decision making process for grant proposals to the f a a that's it for noise mitigation that's it and that's just and it's more than just sitting at the meetings and having the public hearings yeah it's really shared decision making and and you know which if we had a regional airport it wouldn't be an issue that is correct they don't they may not be in any easier conversation but it wouldn't be we wouldn't just be bad mathy burlington they don't want their hands tied in any way oh they don't obviously in any way i just want to say it took 14 years for vermont to be accepted as the 14th state in the union things take time and i think that the regionalization can continue to be discussed and what happens if we don't do anything here we have passed many resolutions here that the city of burlington did nothing with so we have the option well public opinion does have power yes it does it you know it holds sway and and there's there's value in generating positive public opinion for your cause always because obviously there was a public opinion involved in a march vote in burlington right right and the answer to your question davis they will do what they will do in our neighborhoods what they choose to do in our neighborhoods anyway well unless unless there's something okay then we you change the governance or you get them to agree that the the applications or the programs that they apply to the f a a for money to do mitigation are determined by the the communities that are affected and burlington is not a community that is affected maybe that's a big bite for them to take off how about just we agree to you know we believe that second the last wear ass clause and okay we got one win now the next time around well maybe we break it down maybe we okay i mean i just if you wanted if we want to send back something that's like this is what we originally gave you and then here's another way to achieve that we could add that or negotiate that kind of language i'm just putting it out there but if you want to i i think andrew just needs to know if we're gonna i think what you just said how it's go simple or here's what we send originally and here's another way of looking at it and put it in whatever legal language you need to andrew and let's send it back and if they agree to it fine if they don't so we're gonna do both the no more home buyout and the the decision making structure another thought i don't share i would like to have the decision making structure um beefed up so that the communities who are affected by get some say sure get more than some say it's this is what we want yeah i think that's that's more what we want than than i mean i'm asking that the home buyout is it's not my dream but um or i'm not saying it is my dream but i mean who knows what the future holds we can't hold these people hostage right um so i think it's it is the decision making structure that is what we're that's what the resolutions were about so we could make that our you know our hill to fight on another point following up on what dave said the lawyers are making a ton of money i love the notion you mentioned of of a mixer or maybe even it's a subcommittee i mean if if dave and helen or tim and megan if two of our counselors got together with a subgroup of the burlington city council and just started to have a conversation about where we are with this talking through lawyers i could see value in that we've tried there's always value in yeah going to the lawyers until you absolutely have to good lord well we can certainly um i can't remember when we're meeting again but um sometime this summer i can certainly go back to with that we'd really like to um have the councils the three cities have some counselors having this conversation maro is is a little uncomfortable i think with that although he did say he saw he could see some value in having um a larger conversation so he didn't shut that door and say absolutely not so i mean i i i do think that's helpful maybe kurt right or possible yeah i'm interested current chair yeah yeah usually the current chair to chair yeah well i will call him he's busy tonight or tomorrow but but i you know and i think the wanouski council or seth would like to be a part of that too so what do we gain by passing this resolution i'm not passing the burlington you mean no i think what we gain is we continue to have a conversation with them by passing there i mean no no no no no no sending back or um are well we've read this we understand your position but this is we still actually don't really understand their position do we oh of course we do it's they don't want to give up any any any power at all any power and they don't want to be um put in a box or a corner by the f a a to have some even though it's an m o u and you can get out of it i mean there's language at the end that says you know pending any situation you know like the f 35s or something really i don't know crash and the houses need to be torn down because they're i don't know poisoned or something um yeah you can you can get out of it we gave them that opportunity or option so it's not like we said forever and ever do you want us to try based upon some of the comments here try to put together kind of on a consensus around the core principles here and maybe some more background in the whereas in in a cover letter and get it back to you to review prior to a yeah let's try and keep it basic and simple yep uh-huh so that means taking their counter proposal and weighing pieces of it that we like you know and then and then reiterating the parts of ours that we don't want to lose and and fashioning a new resolution that we would send back to them with some wording is that what you're well so a lot of the whereas is were similar common yeah so those are common if we're if we're if we're trying for the last one but why don't we uh why don't we so you have it in advance and just see if if it's going the right direction that's good but i i agree with you just to reiterate what people are doing it's not mlu is like yeah right i know we're going to the same meetings uh um sun will come up tomorrow morning that's right sun will set tomorrow evening well and it also annoyed me that it's just when new ski in south burlington who are exploring transportation network modifications to support airport um operations yes they tell us we got a job to do you right why aren't they part of that i mean so okay thank you yeah and thank you tom for providing this okay moving on to item 13 review status of volunteers for city committee yeah this is just a quick update for you you have the spreadsheet that you hopefully are more familiar with uh we're getting applications in it works the same way it has always worked people in blue are incumbents people in black are new applicants there's a couple of new committees on here um the dog park uh we'll have to rename that the dog park committee and the economic development committee um but anyway uh we continue to advertise i think okay or was the last week the last week of advertising well the application deadline is now passed with that past i think on friday so this is what we have so far it looks like on the new one the economic development committee we have five people are interested but we needed seven so we're short there we short i mean i you know i haven't had a chance with a ruler to go across we're short on the energy committee that's a big committee how many seats are on that you go up to like 15 i don't think it's that many tom but it's i think it was nine nine or 12 i think we added a couple at some point yeah because they they had a lot of work they were doing all that work and before we start you know looking at dog park the economic development committee also is a new committee and we don't have enough right that's what i said there's only five there the energy committee staffs themselves right so yep more or less so occasionally alana will do something for them and that's or we'll provide something for them it's an attractive model as we think about the two new committees attractive to me you know what can you put another column in there that says number of people on committee between the volunteer committees and the number of people needed number of people on the committee members yeah we can probably there's a lot of committees and i have no idea how many are on each committee without falling off the edges of your big paper already we're making it smaller so we can we can't see it at all right but it's fine the way it is yeah did you get what i'm asking yeah that's a simple that's a small column that we can put it's just an extra column it'd be the first column all right and then we did have a conversation that and we felt that if people were already serving and were re-upping we wouldn't interview them is that right and there and i think that and if there was no competition right so if there are two slots open and two incumbents and they apply but if there were a third non-incumbent apply then you wanted to interview all of them okay time to go yeah we are we're almost done okay not too many people want to be sextant huh david's open wide open david so when you finish tom tom tom wants to be a sex son he just wants to pick out a good plot that's right okay what's good on a resume so any other the only thing i my stage so i just wanted to hand this out so you you would have it thank you um and um depending on what you decide on meetings in july we should think about an interview schedule too okay um item 15 possible appointments to the chitin county regional planning commission clean water advisory committee so currently in the transportation advisory committee too currently and historically you've appointed uh these are two committees of the regional planning commission they generally are staff um in the past you've appointed tom to petro to the clean water advisory committee and justin to the um transportation advisory committee they and this is an annual thing that you have to make appointments to so so we can just appoint those two again if you wish they're willing to serve and they are experts in it i think that sounds great let's do it i don't like it go ahead to appoint tom dphro to the chitin county regional planning commission clean water advisory committee and justin rabidu to the chitin county regional planning commission transportation advisory committee second okay any further discussion all in favor signify by saying i i okay thank you is there any other business just to reiterate what we said during our pause here that's to get the word out through um front porch forum um and emails for next monday's meeting right i would really like to attract back the folks who are here in february and march truly a follow-up to that work okay do and are we going to determine meetings in july tonight i've got a rundown of what you all submitted okay for the meeting on the second three of you have indicated you could be there helen megan and dave on on a potential meeting on the ninth which isn't currently scheduled only two of you could make that tom and dave on the 16 four of you can make it helen tim tom and dave dave said he doesn't want to though but dave i can't if i have to that's just howdy and on the 23rd a meeting that hadn't been scheduled but is a monday uh helen tim and dave could make it so none of the meetings have everybody the 16th has four of you and the second and the 23rd have three of you i just want to say in years past i five years ago on the ninth it's just you and tom the second is three 16th is potentially four but the 16th is already a special meeting so that's not a council meeting 16th is a normal council meeting oh megan can't make dialing in for the early august meeting i can yeah i can um the august meeting i could call in i guess i'm dialing in the first august meeting first august meeting yes you didn't go that far i know well what is your pleasure i mean if we take the month of july off we will not be able to make any of these assignments appointments it seems like we at least have one meeting don't we have to do some of the financial stuff and warrants and things July 2nd is right before a holiday so i would move that we not have the July 2nd meeting we do have to set the tax rate yeah do a five minute meeting to do that over the phone right what's that over the phone um if it's warned jim condis told me they used to dial in for yeah and to set the tax collection dates when do we have to do that uh early july certainly by the 10th i think so it's got to be the second or the ninth does that have to be a warned meeting to set the tax rates yeah enter it into never and then get the mailing out a month ahead sooner the better actually yeah i see well can we do it on the second yes and call and we'll uh and just do a call in tim and tom will not be here yeah do you have a corner you'll have three we have a corner you'll have three tax rate oh and just do the tax rate only the meeting next week we just have is a single purpose meeting right we can't set the tax rate next meeting we couldn't take 10 extra minute five extra minutes and do it right i don't think we're ready yet yeah i just soon have that sort of a straight sort of public caring about the library and not yeah although i guess at the end we could have 10 minutes of stuff but if it's not going to be ready we can't do it you have a form on the second okay so why don't we meet on the second limited purposes do you want to give charlie night off bank that recording uh thought you guys um if if there isn't much to do on the second then that's fine with me i just don't want us to get caught with um because megan's gone the last three weeks right megan yes i may call in on the second rather than because i'll be at the lake and then if i have to come back i got to drive you know 65 miles each way which i'll do but i may just call it that's been done well then let's make it real short if it's just the tax rate on the second that's fine and there may be a couple things like a warrant a warrant or two um business hours you guys can get out megan what's your what are your days like uh the second i am going to be gone uh during the day oh okay so i'm sorry about that that's right we can we can i will be here on friday during the day the 29th yeah i don't think we're ready if you get a call for a five-minute meeting would we be running i'll be in tuesday during the day but i don't know if that's a day off i'll be in thursday during the day are you here but are you here monday the second evening yes in the evening yes yeah if we do a regular time do it at 6 30 and if i'll be here whichever i could okay i should i could be enroute on a light rail well this these generally this isn't a or a controversial issue the tax rate no yeah so we just have to have a vote on right that's all over can we give proxies or not um no okay just thought i'd ask right all right so we will have a meeting on the second and it will be just to set the tax rate look it's short all right okay and then the 16th we have four people we have a hearing and we have the hearing so we will have the meeting on the 16th and we'll do some interviews and i won't be watching because it will be early morning where i am where will you be rance oh nice for you can we wave charlie for the second it was crazy for me i couldn't do it from london yeah i i don't yes please uh yeah i think charlie we do not need you to be here for the second but we would for the 16 okay all right is he going to be here next week uh actually that would be for there's a way for you or somebody from the team to be here on monday next week this coming monday which is what is that i think that would be good to have on yes yes that would be great the 25th yeah since that's the fourth monday that's usually not an issue okay yeah if you could come on the next monday the 25th then we'll let you off on the second all righty all right so there's no further business all in favor all right you're going to france for the whole month three weeks