 It is Monday, March 11th at 6 p.m. I will call to order the liquor control board meeting. Please join us in the Pledge of Allegiance led by Deputy Mayor Thomas Werner. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right, thank you. So on deck this evening, we have a number of renewals. The last on sports bar, big seven main, average warehouse, sneakers, monkey, same as quick stop and Asian bistro. Wood, is Jenny in the room? Would staff like to let us know if there are any concerns with any of these renewals? You will approve on January 2nd for their outside consumption restaurant licenses. Okay, thank you. Are there any questions from council? Why did you vote for the rest? The Asian bistro one? I forgot to add the restaurant. Okay, so that'll be next time. That could be next time or make that an emotion that you're approving the restaurant license as well. We can have it back worn properly next time, but if you'd like to approve it so they can start operating. I'm fine with that. Yeah. Okay. Is there any public comment questions about this item? Okay, would someone like to make a motion to approve items A through G including a restaurant license renewal for Asian bistro? So moved. Second. Motion by Charlie, second by Aurora. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Was that everyone? Sorry. Yes. Motion carries. Thank you. Recording in progress. That is the end of the control board agenda. Do I have a motion to adjourn? So moved. Second. Motion by Thomas, second by Bryn. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Meeting adjourned. So it is 6.03 and I will now call to order the city council meeting. Are there any concerns about the order of this evening's agenda? Next up is public comments. This is faced for any members of the public who wish to speak on a topic not on this evening's agenda. If you are here for an item on the agenda, please try to wait for that item. We invite public comment at every agenda item. Is there anyone in the room who wishes to make public comment? Not at the moment. Thank you. And anyone on Zoom use the chat or raise hand for future? Okay. Seeing none, we'll move on to our consent agenda. We have our council and cannabis control commission meeting minutes from February 20th, payroll warrants from February and March, accounts payable of March and subsequent payout for September, October, November, December, and January. Are there any concerns on the consent agenda this week? No. Do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda? So moved. Second. Motion by Thomas, second by Charlie. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you. Council reports. Aurora, could I start with you? Thank you, everyone, so much who came out and voted. And we left me for a second term. My update for a Safe Healthy Connected People Commission is we are meeting tomorrow, March 12th. We are going to be in person at the O'Brien Center. The meeting is taking place at 5.30pm. We're trying to move our schedule to this earlier time to make it easier for the commissioners in attendance to attend based on their feedback. Items on the agenda include amending the commission charter to include the inclusion and belonging commission liaison as a voting member, as well as reviewing our scholarship policy and recommending any edits to that. The inclusion and belonging commission doesn't meet this month. Thanks, Aurora. The airport commission is meeting tomorrow, the 13th, on Wednesday, the 13th. That was delayed. It's usually the first Wednesday of the month, but it was delayed from March. Regular agenda items include noise complaints, progress on sound insulation, and updating the noise exposure maps. So that is in person, as well as online. If anyone is interested in sharing comments ahead of time with me, please send them my way. The infrastructure commission is scheduled to meet on March 21st, 6.30pm at the pool community room. We don't have an agenda set, but it will be noticed on all our regular social media channels and the website when that's ready. First, I'd just like to thank residents of Wanooski for electing me again for another term. I'd also like to thank everybody who showed up for all of our different budget meetings. It was really great to see such a turnout from the community to learn more about what you're all going to be voting for. Downtown Wanooski will be meeting next week, but I do want to let everybody know if you haven't seen on their social media that downtown Wanooski is participating in the Better Places project. It's a great opportunity for our downtown to receive some state funds. The caveat to that is that downtown Wanooski is fundraising for half of those funds. So if you go to downtownwanooski.org, you can learn more about the project and see what they're hoping to do with that money that they would fundraise in the grant. Thank you. All right, Charlie. The Wanooski Housing Commission met on February 27th at 6pm. The Commission reviewed updated landlord survey data, which is available on the city website now. The Commission also discussed the progress made on updating the Housing Trust Fund, and also reviewed a memorandum on replacement regulations and inclusionary zoning considerations to be presented to council at a future meeting. Our next meeting is next Tuesday the 19th at 6pm. There's an online option as well as in person here at City Hall. All right, thank you. A big thanks to the clerk's office and other supporting staff and our Board of Civil Authority members for pulling off another successful town meeting day. My one update to share is that I recently authored a letter to state legislators requesting that they look at the state statute that could allow a reduction in the Wanooski match share for the bridge project. We are continuing to reach out to our legislators and advocate for some forward action. That is all for me. We'll move on to city updates, Elaine. I have a very short one just to say that if folks want to see the official results of voting, they can visit the news updates section on our website at WanooskiVT.gov. Thank you to voters for passing the city budget and the bond votes. And on behalf of staff, I welcome our 2024-2025 council. All right, thank you. So our regular items first up for discussion is the fiscal year 2023 audit report. Will Angela be welcoming a guest? I will be. John Boulet from RHR Smith is here to give you their audit opinion for our 2023 results. Hello. Thank you, Angela. Thank you, everybody, for taking the time out of your day to listen to this. We audited the FY23 financial statements for the city of Wanooski. And I will just run through pretty much the major changes from prior year and a couple of the schedules throughout the audit. I'm not going to go through the whole document, but a few pages here and there we'll discuss. So I am going to start on page 24 of the audit. This is statement E. It is the income statement for the governmental funds. Basically, we have the general fund, TIF, a community development loan, capital reserve fund, and some other non-major governmental funds. So the major thing on this schedule right here is I look at the very bottom right. You can see the fund balance at year end is 8.2 million in totality. That's an increase of around 1.5 million throughout FY23. Last year, the fund balance actually increased 815,000. So year over year, watching this increase is always a good thing, especially two years in a row with over 5,000. After that, I'm going to move down a couple pages to page 28. And this is another income statement, but this one is for the proprietary funds, water, sewer, parking fund. Same goes here. Bottom right is the fund balance or net position with capital assets included 21.1 million. This is a decrease from last year of around 800,000. In 22, it also decreased around 639,000. I'm not too worried about this just because of how healthy these net position numbers are. So I would keep an eye on this year over year if we're seeing some negative changes in net position or fund balance. It would be good to get ahead of it, but with the healthy numbers that we're seeing here, it's nothing to raise a red flag or raise an eyebrow over really. After that page, just a little note on page 41. This is where we start our notes to the financial statements. On the bottom of page 41, this is where you can see total cash, cash on hand or investments, things of that sort. The 9.5 million is a $2 million increase from prior year. And I think a lot of that is due to the accounts receivable received before year end. So you show your cash a little higher. AR was down a little bit from prior year and that's where that balances out. Skipping around a little bit. We're going further down to more notes to the financials. Page 68. Page 68, 69, and then the very top of 70 is a breakdown of your restricted, non-spendable committed fund balances. So when we were looking at statement E, statement G, those total fund balances there, you can see this broken down even more for the TIF district, capital projects, anything that is basically committed for a specific reason can be shown in this statement right here. Next, we're moving to page 82. This is your budget actual throughout the year. It was very good looking at this, seeing that you received more than anticipated in revenues and you spent less than your budget expenditures were. These two go hand in hand, especially if they're both on the surplus side. It's a recipe for success. Last year, it was noted that the budget was overspent by 74,000. So it's good to see these things turn around. Since expenditures were under spent by 109, total revenue, about 90,000 more, it's always good to see that equates to around 200,000. And then further down in this audit, we have schedule A on page 87. When we were looking at statement E, there was the non-major portion of everything. This is where you can see that broken down. Schedule A is your balance sheet for your non-major special revenue funds, Justice Center, Asset Forfeatures, your JAG fund. The page right underneath that is your income statement. So basically, you can see the fund balances again at the bottom of page 88, an increase in every fund here. It's always good to see. And if we keep scrolling down a couple pages to 90, it's schedule C. This is your balance sheet for the proprietary funds, parking garage, on-street meters. And the page underneath that, 91, is the income statement again for the proprietary funds. At the bottom of that page, you can also see your fund balances and net position with your capital assets included. Everything seems to have go up except, I know this is where things were getting decreased, but I would say out of every single fund that the city maintains, the only negative fund balance I'm seeing right now is the on-street meters. And it's very immaterial, 16,000 really. It doesn't mean a whole lot, but I would just keep an eye on it, make sure it doesn't get too large. But yeah, one fund out of that many funds is really good to have positive fund balances. So next page 90, last comment I have is on page 92. So a couple pages down. These are the federal awards throughout the year. Last year, there was over $750,000 spent, which triggered the single audit. This year, $51,000, it was well below $750,000. So we didn't have to do the single audit this year. I remember last year was the coronavirus relief funds, tested that, no findings. This year, we didn't test anything. So that means next year, we will test if it's over $750,000. And yeah, we provided a management letter comment. I looked at the cover sheet that was provided by Angela. She hit the nail on the head there. Management letter essentially states that there's no recommendations for improvement at this time. Through audit field work, we do a lot of our internal controls testing, making sure policies, procedures are all up to date. And in my eyes, it didn't case that the city has very sound financial policies and practices, and that is what Angela had put on this cover sheet. And I would say that is a very accurate statement. I've been auditing the city four years at this point. First couple years was under a coworker, kind of took the reins over from him. And it's been nothing but good news, progress moving forward. And I have no internal controls, internal control comments for Angela at this time. I'd say it was a very, very sound audit, same as last year. And I'd love to provide a little bit of context for some of the statements that John just gave you. He mentioned how we had a surplus in the governmental funds of 800,000 for FY23. That is specifically related to ARPA dollars. We did not raise $800,000 too much in property taxes that is related to grant funds that we received. And he mentioned that in fiscal year 22 that we had overspent in the general fund, those were over expenditures that the council had authorized to come out of reserves. So those were not things that the council was not aware of having occurred. So we're adding on that clarity. Kudos to you for another very good audit, for good work. And to RHR, thank you for continuing to look after our details. We did accept this report at a prior meeting, but appreciate the walkthrough and there's an opportunity if council has any questions or wants any more detail. Yeah, anytime. Appreciate you taking the time and working with my schedule as well. So I'm glad I'm here and able to present. Are there any questions from council? I don't have any questions. Just thank you as always, Angela, for keeping everything, keeping the ship steady. And John, thanks for your work. Thank you. I have a question about bonds and if bond management is anything that's looked at as part of the audit? It is, yes, long term debt. So we basically create an amortization schedule based off of what Angela provides to us. We then look at the documents and let me see if I can find it in the audit really quick. Because we basically, Angela does most of the work, we review and audit the work she does by looking at amortization schedules, agreements, debt payments, and bonds. Let's see if I can find it really quick. One thing that I would like to comment here is we were recently rated by Moody's investment services for our debt obligations for the Main Street project, the short term issuance. We received a rating of AA3 issuer with a big one short term rating. So those are both very favorable ratings from Moody's. They actually mirror those received by the city of Burlington, which has a much larger staff. Yep. So the bonds payable you're talking about are going to be on page 66. It's kind of just a summary of everything. But yeah, what we do, and I would agree with that note from Angela, debt payments or bond payments more specifically are all on time. No late fees that I've seen. These summary schedules and if you scroll above those pages, it breaks down between business type, which would be water and sewer and then governmental would be more just general fund and other funds that constitute as governmental. So, you know, there's some leases in there that constitute as notes payable. But yeah, no, nothing that raised red flag when completing the debt work paper. So that's all good there too. In addition, we have some pretty robust post bond issuance compliance regulations that we follow with the Vermont Municipal Bond Bank. It requires annual filings, not only of our audit, but also disclosures regarding the use of funds and the documentation that we maintain regarding our bonds. And I want to make clear that my asking the question is not a reason for concern or expressing any reason for concern on my end. We are going to be undertaking some additional bonds for the Winnieski Bridge and just curious about the way that's managed and the way that there's annual review of that. I've said it before, I'll say it again, I'm not an expert in financial management by any realm. So really just kind of curious. So thank you. And congrats on the double A3, I think, as though the term you used. Something good. Yeah. Any other questions from Council? Any members of the public who wish to make a comment or ask a question? No questions. Okay, great. Well, thank you all. We will move on to item B. This is on for discussion or approval. The Winnieski Falls East revised design. John, will you be introducing guests as well? Introduction. Paul, can you bring the bill forward to the panelists? Great. So before and tonight is the latest update for the design plans for the Winnieski Falls East project. So that's the City of Parking Garage, the hotel on the south unit, and the proposed housing on the north unit that has come before you a few times. So hopefully this is the last design review that you will see. The purpose tonight is we're looking to finalize this design approval and just make sure it's syncing up with Act 250 filing that we have to do to make sure that all the permits are sort of synced up before finalizing the project as it moves into the next phase of construction. So what you'll see tonight in these renderings and Bill can go over in a little more detail, but basically it's the same footprint and amassing that you saw back in the fall. I think September you all saw a version of this. So really the only changes are the facade material types plans. So kind of with that overview, Bill, do you want to give an update? And I don't know if we can show it on the screen. Paul, can you bring up those plans possibly? Yes, give me two seconds. I also have them. I have them available in order to if it'll help me to share. I just don't know how that works. Bill, I got you covered in two seconds here. Yeah, and as that's queuing up, so Bill Nikhet is our partner on this. He's representing the real estate project manager for folks here. And John, I don't know if Doug is in the audience or if he is. Maybe we could promote him as well. I think I see a Doug that just joins. So while Paul is bringing that up, I just say hello. I'm Bill Nikhet and I think I know everyone here. I appreciate your continued consideration of our efforts here. And Doug and I wanted to bring these relatively minor aesthetic revisions forward because we've now arrived at a time in the project where we want to start we want to start gearing up for construction of the hotel and housing elements specifically. And we always imagined that at the time those plans were close to final, we would then return to Act 250 with an updated set of renderings and information that would in effect true up the project with the original approvals that we received back in 2020. So John's correct. We've been back in front of you two other times since then to kind of get your general approval of the design elements of the project so that we kind of knew at different milestones that we were in the right pointed in the right direction before finalizing plans. These plans we're sharing with you tonight are effectively substantially final in terms of what we imagined building. John's right. The scale of the projects overall hasn't really moved since last September when you saw them last. But we have added some material callouts and some made some changes to the housing building in particular to create sort of a different aesthetic feel than the more modern interpretation that we had just got back in September. And that was effectively just the internal choice on our part after looking at several different ideas. This is the one that kind of resonated the most with the ownership group. So with that being said, what we're looking at here is the west elevation of the building on the left hand side that white cube is CCV. On the right hand side that cube is the edge of Riverrun. The building on the left is the housing. It's five stories of residential construction over the podium with an entrance and lobby level that opens up onto Community Way, the new street that'll exist between CCV and the housing building. And on the right hand side of the rendering is the hotel. It's six floors above the podium, a total of eight floors. And originally was nine now eight. And the top floor of that building is all of the public space for the building as it was originally. So the restaurant in facing south, the outdoor seasonal patio. And to the rear and the other elevations, you'll see a set of meeting spaces that can be demised as one to three spaces. If you want to go to the next slide, please. This is what I call the the the back view. So this is looking at the project from it's the east elevation, looking at it from the parkland, kind of the most honest interpretation or what the project looks like showing the garage, you know, sort of unscreened on this side as it was originally the hotel on the left and the housing on the right. But this gives you an opportunity to sort of see in true form how the garage works. And you know, for those folks watching who are in attendance who haven't seen this previously, the the lowest level of the garage exits to the left to the south onto Wunuski Fallsway, that center level exits directly onto Abenaki Way and the top level exits on the community way to the right. So we're sort of using the slope of the hill to our advantage. Next slide please. This is kind of a made up view in the sense that this is the north elevation. This is what CCV would see from their building. There's there isn't really a public perspective where the building is viewed in this kind of way because of where CCV's building sits, but this represents the rendering of that building on that side. The building is effectively very similar on each of the five floors except at the top level. We've opened up that corner unit into a public space for all the residents within the building, including a little roof deck. And it creates an opportunity to kind of lessen the scale of the building at the corner and also have, you know, some some gathering space for people who live there, both indoor and outdoor space. Next slide please. And finally, this is the south elevation. What you would see if you were standing in front of River Run, looking up, this is effectively the the main entrance of the hotel. You can see the Port Couchere and sort of the garage being effectively 100% screened on this level. The elements that have the vertical elements coming down the front of the building represent the floors that are built out over the parking deck. And you can see to the right hand side as the grade drops off into the park that a portion of the building is built out over that hillside at the edge of the wetland area, as you may recall. So from a overall point of view, the footprint of this particular project or this particular execution, the way that it sits on the site and the scale and feel of the building, the uses is the same as it was in September when you saw it last. But from a permitting perspective, as most of you know, the original use of the North site was for commercial office building for BEIC. And so now that we have these plans in substantially final form, we will be working with staff to submit an updated package of civil and site plans and these elevations that will change that use formally at the permit level from commercial to workforce housing. And once those approvals are obtained, we will then bring those back to the city zoning office for revised approval at the city level. So those steps are things we're hopeful that we'll be able to file a revised package in the next several days, assuming of course that we are fortunate enough to have your approval. And we're currently hoping that the both the hotel and the housing project will effectively break ground, although of course they're built over the garage this summer as soon as the garage is able to support it. So we're hoping that there'll be no break and in construction activity that that will simply continue to flow forward. And that's why we're kind of in a place where it makes sense to finalize these things. So with that, I'll appreciate your indulgence. I do have on my side of the ledger, I can share from my screen any pictures about the original approvals or anything else you may want to see for reference purposes. Thank you, Bill. Looks very familiar to me. Are there any questions from members of council? And Deputy Mayor Renner, if you could please assist me. Yeah, just one question. I can't tell from the renderings if there are balconies that are proposed, especially balconies proposed as part of the renderings for the housing portion of the project. There aren't balconies on these units. What we've generally done at NETI in terms of how that tradeoff has gone as we try to create these public spaces at the roof that allow people to have a lot of amenities afforded to them up there. So there's usually associated with those fire pits and grills, things of that nature that we can control and sprinkler and kind of handle in an organized way as opposed to having an assortment of whatever sitting out on private patios. So that's just the design and sort of management choice that we've made. Yeah, I'm actually happy to hear that because I have fellow questions if there were balconies. So I'm always quite conflicted, Fred, to be honest, because from a personal point of view, I do like the idea of having one if I lose it in an apartment. But on the other hand, they do come with a sort of rather long slew of code issues and enforcement problems that we find that are just easier to solve that we can give people a single space we can manage more directly. Yeah, exactly. Appreciate it. Thank you. I have two questions. One of them might be a little silly, but how are all these windows going to be cleaned? Especially I was looking at the ones over. I don't know if that's going to be built in as part of the architecture to make that easy. I've seen that on some buildings. Yeah, I don't think it's silly at all. The windows in the hotel at the top level, many of them, the larger ones, many of them are set back from the main facade and they're facing out. There's a patio in front of them, so those obviously can be cleaned in the normal way. But there are services that provide, there aren't a ton of tall buildings in Burlington area, but there are enough of them that there are window washing services where people effectively repel down from the roof level to provide that service, and that's how we manage it in other locations. Okay, sounds good. Yeah, I was just really curious, what's the one facing the wetland? I can assure you it won't be me. Very fair. My other question, and this is just around the materials, just making sure that kind of fire safety was taken into, I assume it was taken into account, but I noticed it doesn't look like there are any staircases on the outside, so just wondering a little bit about that. Sure. Well, of course, these are all buildings that require a pretty detailed review at the state level, and of course the fire marshal reviews them locally, so the hotel has a total of three elevators in it, and as well as two egress stairs that sort of line up with the code, and the housing building has a single elevator and two egress stairs. Both buildings are in the garage, actually, are fully sprinkled in all locations, so that also provides an additional element of protection from a fire point of view, but yes, the hotel, particularly because it's a Marriott product, also goes through a very rigorous review at their headquarters to assure that it meets all of their standards, which in many cases exceed the base code because of their, you know, lots of experience, obviously, on their end in terms of what they have seen work and not work with hotels. Thank you, that's very helpful, I appreciate it. Bill, really great to see the addition of the outdoor space in the housing section, and really awesome to hear that you're going to outfit it with barbecues and other things like that. You had mentioned it a little bit, was just hoping you could run over again just the timeline of what we're looking at. Sure. They quite often hear from folks is when they're going to start seeing that building rise up, so. Right, right. Well, I think for people who are in that area, you know, it'll feel like the building is going up when steel starts to be, you know, erected. They're just finalizing shop drawings for the garage to start that particular erection. I believe the current schedule is for that to start in early May. And, you know, that process will get us to a point where hopefully we'll be looking to, so the garage project will construct the garage and the podiums. The housing would basically be the erection of the, you know, the wood panel system that goes up above the podium. We're hoping to see that start to evolve, you know, as soon as July. Now, that's our target. You know, of course, that's all dependent upon the garage finishing on time and everything being smooth. I think that building goes up rather quickly because the intent is that these things are fabricated offsite and then large panels are brought in with a crane and erected quickly. Right. The hotel side of things is a similar start point, but that's a more traditional steel and prefabricated concrete plank construction. So, you know, that will sort of feel more like a conventional construction. People might, you know, imagine what they've seen in Burlington, for example, over the last year, you know, with the different buildings going up there. That's great. Thank you so much. Yeah. Everything looks good for Act 250. You're asking me? Anyone who would like to answer the question? Yeah, no, no, I'm sorry. Sure. I mean, from our point of view, this is a relatively, you know, it's a relatively minor change because the garage remains in the same footprint. So, Act 250 is principally concerned with environmental impacts. And, you know, because the things that are touching the ground are effectively not changing, there's actually very little that needs to be updated there. But I've been doing this long enough to know that I'm sure there'll be something that'll come up we'll have to address. But the hope is the original filing here was a minor amendment to the previous plan. You know, as most of you know, there's been a lot of development permitted on that site for more than 20 years. So, each of these things represents kind of an incremental change. And the last, the addition of this entire project was deemed a minor amendment. So, of course, we would imagine this to be minor as well. Great. Well, thank you. It looks great. I know everyone's looking forward to it. Well, we appreciate your continued support. Certainly hope the housing component will be favorable with the amendment review. Yeah, certainly an approved use. And as we all know, it's much needed. So, I think we're quite confident. It could actually, in theory, be pursued as something that doesn't need an amendment at all because affordable housing has certain special treatment with Act 250. But because this has already been approved as a mixed use development, we discussed it with staff, and it seems more straightforward to simply file revised plans for everything rather than to cut it up into pieces. Great. Thank you. Looks like we're all good on questions here, Christine. Any questions for members of the public who are attending? If you're in the room, raise your hand. If you're on Zoom, use the raise hand feature or the chat. No questions in the building. Oh, Mere, I do want to just call out to you. It looks like Doug is on as a panelist. Doug, did you want to add anything? I guess, okay, I can unmute myself. I didn't know that. Sorry about that. Yes, I want to say that we're getting more and more excited about this hotel and the housing, but specifically on the hotel, Marriott has over 6,000 different hotels around the world, and we're working towards having this hotel, Nwanowski, be the first all electric net zero hotel in the world for Marriott. And that's through a combination of geothermal and solar. So it's quite exciting for us, and we're looking to again do something quite special here, and we appreciate everyone's support on this project. All right, thank you. Do I have a motion from council to approve the Wimiski Falls piece revised design? So moved. Second. Motion by Thomas, second by Bryn. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you very much. Thank you, Bill. Thank you, Doug. Thank you. Thank you very much, folks. Okay, we'll move on to item C, the sun for discussion or approval, local resources advisory board appointments. Eric will be introducing and I think a couple of our applicants are also in attendance this evening. Yes, thank you very much. This is an item on for appointments of membership to the local resources advisory board. As you may recall back in January, you approved resolution establishing the local resources advisory board to review projects that are covered under the newly created local resources protections regulations that were also approved by council and became effective at the end of February. So we put out a call for applications for this board. We received five applications. All of the applicants are qualified to serve on this board. So we're looking to appoint those members to the terms to one and two year terms respectively as outlined in the cover sheet. So I know Doug Johnson is in the room tonight and I believe Sue, Brian and Matt Shown are online tonight as well. So if you have any questions for any of those folks or for myself. Thanks, Eric. It does look like a very qualified group for this work. I would invite Doug Matt or Sue if there's anything you want to say, please feel free. Doug, here in the room, you could come up to the mic for the other folks raising hands in. You also don't have to speak. Well, I'll just go ahead and say thank you for giving us this opportunity, first of all, to form this advisory local board, but also to allow us to participate. We're excited. I'm excited. So thank you. Thank you. I think I see Matt's hand raised. Echo of that. It's really a great opportunity. I love spending time on Winooski and I really look forward to getting to work on this council. And Doug, glad to have you back around. Any questions from council for any of our applicants? Oh, you're up. Yes. Hello. Welcome. I'm not an entirely silent guy. I do want to say something about this. I think it's a great group of people, myself, not included in that statement, but it is an area that I've been extremely interested in for most of my adult life. So I look forward to being able to serve in this kind of capacity for as long as the city wants me. Thanks, Doug. Are there any questions from members of council? One question. Eric, can you refresh our memory on the roles that we had approved the expertise that we were searching for that wasn't included in the memo? Yes. So in the resolution specifically that created the, sorry, the charter that created the advisory board, we're looking for expertise in the fields of historic preservation, history, architecture, archaeology, and related disciplines. Great. I should also mention that we have five members that have applied. Those are the only five applications we've received. There are two additional alternate spots that we can fill on this board as well. So if other folks do apply, we will continue to solicit membership for those remaining two spots as well. Great. Good to know that those alternate spaces are still open. Yes, absolutely. Okay. Is that, Mayor, is that something, someone from the Inclusion and Belonging Commission would be asked to be a liaison? No, because it's not a policy advisory commission. It's a more regulatory, like the DRB, the development people. Great. Anyone else have questions? Well, thank you. Yeah. Thank you for your interest, all. Do I have a motion from, do I have a motion to approve the appointments to the local resources advisory board? So moved. Second. Motion by Charlie, second by Thomas. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed or abstaining? Motion carries. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Okay. Moving on to item D. This is city council orientation. All of you were here last year. So you have all seen these materials before. I won't belabor this. I will just say the orientation has a little bit of updated demographic data in it. And I also incorporated our engagement and equity assessment tools into it. Elaine, are there any edits that you made that you want to highlight? No, I wouldn't say so. Okay. These are included in the packet for your reference. Please refresh yourself on them if you haven't already. Anyone have any questions though or comments? Okay. We don't need to approve that. We are on item E. This is appointment of Deputy Mayor. I would like to make the recommendation that Councillor Renner continue to serve in the role of Deputy Mayor as he has for the past year. If someone is in support of that, I would entertain a motion to nominate Thomas as Deputy Mayor. I gladly move to have Thomas as the Deputy Mayor again. Second. Motion by Bryn, second by Charlie. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you. Thanks everybody. Moving on to the Council Rules of Procedure. Again, this is same things that we have seen in the past here as a refresher and also for any questions or if somebody wanted to change anything. Do Council have any questions? Okay. Do I have a motion to approve the Council Rules of Procedure as is? So moved. Motion by Thomas, second by Bryn. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Moving on to the Conflict of Interest Policy. I believe this is the same as last year as well. Can you confirm a link? Correct. All right. Any questions about the Conflict of Interest Policy? No. Do I have a motion to approve? Second. Motion by Aurora, second by Charlie. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you. Moving on to the Council Meeting Schedule. Is there any concerns about the proposed schedule? I'm curious why we're moving why it's proposed to have the strategies and priorities in the late June. I had discussed that with Elaine and wanted to have that after tax bills go out so we have a better sense of the impact of our votes this year. I'm not sure it's going to be, I'm not sure if the timing will quite work for that, but that was the goal. Right. They won't have gone out yet, but it will be pretty close to that. So it's because of the uncertainty about the statewide ed taxes. They, when I contacted our district advisor at property valuation review, which is the state body that sets the ed taxes, they indicated that they were still thinking it was going to happen at the usual time. I don't know how that's possible, but that's what they said. So just trying to maximize the amount of opportunity for them to set that before you all meet as context for affordability in the community. So May 9th is the usual day when they pass the yield bill at the legislature and then once that's done they can calculate the education tax rates. I do see a hand raised in the Zoom attendees list. Yes, hello. Can you hear me? Yes, welcome. All right. This public comment already passed for not on the agenda. So our open public comment was at the top of the agenda. I realized I did just move through several items without inviting public comment. My apologies. Okay. So please go ahead. Please go ahead. Okay. I can speak off the agenda. Could you hold until we adopt this item? Yeah, that's fine. No problem. Okay. Thank you, Andy. Did council have questions or concerns about the agenda, the meeting schedule? Yeah, I'm just unsure if it doesn't really, we're not going to have the information that we need by the 22nd. Does it make sense to really have it that late? I think we, go ahead, Kristen. I was going to say, I think we're giving us a better opportunity to have the information. It's not guaranteed, but we, but there's a chance that we will have it. That's what I was going to say. Yeah. I understand where you're coming from because I do feel from conversations between us that we have a desire to get to setting priorities and strategies like next week. So I understand the concern that it seems late to me as well. I like having more information, but if we may not have it, I do wonder if we just want to have our meeting ahead of time. I will say that Elaine and I are doing some strategizing at the beginning of April for how to approach this session this year. I would like more time for staff to be able to get information together since we're kind of looking at the conversation a little differently from the past. Timmy, I think that's a better reason than waiting for the information for the state. And then just thinking about that date and the residual time impact that it can have. So it's not just what comes before it, it's what comes after. Often we're asking the commissions to set a work plan in July. And I am curious if it's anticipated if the commissions or desire to have the commission stay on that timeline or if it's expected that a June meeting would delay the work plan development as well. I'm sorry, I also just have to throw a wrench in this. I'm not available on that day. I'm kind of getting to that. Like I can be available, but I cannot be available. I will not be here. So I need it. I need it either before or after. Elaine, did the leadership team, did you all look at other dates? I actually didn't run these dates by the staff where I was trying to aim for trying to maximize the possibility of having the rate. So I don't know that there's ever been a year when we had every single person there. Although that's ideal, we can try to get that input ahead of time. Do you want me to do it all up? Yeah, perhaps for this evening, we could adopt this schedule without that date and then do a follow-up doodle with Council. Would that work for folks? Yes. Do you want to include May 2 or just June Saturdays? I prefer June. I feel like May is not going to give us enough time to plan. If you all are meeting in April. Do you have another Council meeting? No. The rest of the weekends in June are all besides the 23rd. Here in June is preferable to later in June for me. Yeah, I can do of course the 8th or the 15th. For the purposes of this agenda item, would someone like to make a motion to approve the City Council schedule without the strategies and priorities date? So moved. Second. Motion by Charlie, second by Aurora. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you. I'm sorry. Andy, can I come back to you? We just have a couple more things and then we can get that's fine. I'll keep listening. Okay, thank you. Okay, so next up item aye. This is our declaration of inclusion. We previously adopted this as Council pending how many day election results. I just wanted to bring some of these items back so that whatever body was formed today, we could re-adopt this. Are there any questions about approving once again the declaration of inclusion? No. Do I have a motion to approve the declaration of inclusion? Second. Motion by Aurora, second by Charlie. All those in favor, please say aye. Motion carries. Thank you. Similarly, I have for item J our equity assessment tool wanted us to just look at this again and re-agree that we want to keep using this tool. Any questions or comments? No. Would someone like to make a motion to approve the equity assessment tool? So moved. Second. Motion by Bryn, second by Thomas. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. And then item K, the city council community access engagement procedure, same thing. We still want to stick with doing this outreach to folks in our community. Are there any questions or comments? I just want to say thank you to everyone who has engaged in me trying to find different ways for us to get out in the community. It's been a good way for us to connect with folks who don't usually come to these meetings. So thank you. Do I have, oh, these are, they're not, that's not an approval. Okay, but we have all just said vocally that we, we want to continue. And then finally item L, this is on for a discussional approval. This is a resolution recognized in March as Francophonie Montemune must be. And I have this on here at the request of the Alliance Francois is hosting an event at the school district. And they wanted to include a proclamation. It's not one we've done in the past, but specifically for this event I want to. Any questions from folks? No. Okay, do I have a motion to approve the resolution recognizing March as Francophonie Montemune? So moved. Motion by Thomas, second by Aurora. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you. And we'll invite Andy on who was late for the public comment portion. Andy, please. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak tonight. I had a speech here I wanted to read. I'm calling for the council to pass a resolution condemning the rise in anti-white hate. We have a right to address our grievances and regardless if you like or not, it's your jobs to hear those statements. White people are sick and tired of being attacked, robbed, raped, murdered. You can learn more at gtvflyers.com and go on tv.tv. I want to tell a story of Shannon and Christie. Shannon Christie and Christopher Newsom of Knoxville, Tennessee. They were a happy couple in their early 20s. They were murdered on January 6, 2007. The horrors started when they were carjacked and taken to a rental house. Both were raped, tortured, and ultimately murdered. Shannon died after hours of sexual torture. She sustained a severe head injury and had bleached four down her throat and had her body scrubbed her with DNA evidence. Christopher was sodomized with an object and raped by a minute of one perpetrator. He was then taken to a set of railroad tracks where he was forced to walk barefoot to a location where he was murdered. He was blindfolded with a bandana and gagged with a sock. He wore only a shirt and his underwear. After his murder, the kidnappers were set Christopher's body on fire. The criminals were, you guess it, four black men and a woman. A diary was found in the rental house and here is an entry in it. Last night was one of a kind. We stayed with a frat cat that is cool as hell. It snowed a little bit but it's already melted. Let's talk about adventures. I had one hell of an adventure since I've been in the big Tennessee. It's a crazy world these days but I love the fun adventure and lessons that I've learned. It's going to be a long interesting year. In Northville, Michigan, a group of blacks lured a white family to a home with a Facebook marketplace ad. They then proceeded to hold a one-year-old baby and the father at gunpoint while they raped the mother. You tell me how this is acceptable in our country for a woman to be raped by violent criminals. Just this week, at East Hazelwood High School in Minnesota, a white teenage girl was beaten by a black savage. All right. Sorry about that. We are at the end of this evening's agenda. Do I have a motion to adjourn? So moved. Second. Motion by Bryn Second by Thomas. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you all very much. Thank you.