 Good afternoon everyone. Thanks for joining us for this special meeting the Board of Finance to talk about the FY22 budget and the first item of business is to approve an agenda. I would walk on motion regarding the agenda. I move to approve the agenda as indicated. Thank you. Thank you for the second presentation. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously and we have an agenda. I do see that's counselors Barlow and Carpenter are here as well. And I just wanna make sure that all the counselors know they're definitely invited to participate in this conversation in any way they choose. The next item on the agenda is a public forum. And I do see we have some members of the public here. Would any member present Tracy? Mayor, I know that Councillor Busher let me know that she was having difficulty signing up. I believe former Councillor Busher has signed up on or is listening in on the 3604 number. So I just, I had relayed to her that I'd let you know that she was interested in speaking. Okay, excellent. So great. Mayor Weinberg, I'd be glad to run the public forum. And I also see Jeff Nick would like to speak. So I'll start with former Councillor Busher and if other members of the public would like to speak on public forum, please just use the raise hand function and we'll come to you. So I'll just enable Councillor Busher. Councillor Busher, I believe you have to press star six on your phone. Yep, no, I'm set. Thank you. Thank you, Jordan. Good evening. Can you hear me? We can, Councillor Busher. Thank you for joining us. Oh, you're welcome. So I want to speak to the budget and I have a couple of comments to make. The first one is a request to you, Mr. Mayor to including your budget, a line item to prepare or groom cemeteries for Memorial Day. I think that, you know, there was coverage that Gary DeCarolis, who was a city councilor when I got elected in 1987 orchestrated a group of people to clean up and really spruce up a green mount where, you know Mary Fletcher's buried a whole bunch of people that really are significant to our community but more significant than that, some veterans. And I was really displeased to see how it had been neglected. And so I think that I know money is always tight but that's why I'm asking that at least a couple of weeks before Memorial Day, I would think we would be well served to make sure that all the cemeteries are welcoming for anyone who wants to come back and remember a loved one or a veteran. So that's my first request. Gary DeCarolis is a very thoughtful individual and I was really pleased to see the 20 people that helped him do that task. The second item has to do with crossing guards which you talked about and it seems that, well, not seems, it's the fact that we can't fill those positions and my concern is, well, if they're not filled how do children safely get across the street? And so I think that this is something that I think the city needs to tackle. It's not a new item, but it's time to resolve it. My concern is safety for children. So the crossing guard is another issue for the budget. I wanted to say that I also, since you are looking critically at this, tonight at the DRB, there's a project on Pine Street and lo and behold, they are going to add trees to their terraces. Like I wanted to have when city place first came forward. It helps reduce the heat from the concrete. Environmentally, it's really a sound proposal, but this is just one thing. I think that it would be well-served to have a broader view about what we can do environmentally besides transportation, weatherization, those two are big, but I think we could put other things in place that we haven't thought about that would make a difference for our city and our world. And so I'd like that to be thought about and at least initiated. The last thing that I wanted to speak about is, DPW and Megan Morrier did a wonderful job with a very difficult issue with the sewer bond and what she brought forward with water rates, et cetera. And I applaud them for all their efforts, but one thing remains unresolved. And she spoke about it, it's if a sewer line breaks. And this is far more costly than if a water line breaks. It's around two or 20 to $30,000, according to most of the people that have had this unfortunate experience. And it happens without, I know there's money in the budget to evaluate whether your sewer line's intact, it's about $250, but I still feel like there needs to be some resolution for a loan or a lien on the property because some elderly people, and I'm getting there, can't afford that outlay of funds. And so you don't wanna leave someone without a home because of this unfortunate experience. So I really hope that the city looks carefully and tries to solve that problem. The last thing, I lied, I had one last thing. The last thing is the direction you're moving with racial equity and inclusion. I support the broadening of this department. I feel like there's so much to be done. It was so much to be done before George Floyd. George Floyd just brought everything to a head, but the issues were there before, as we know. But I do want you to use the money wisely. The department is growing pretty rapidly, and I'm concerned that there's some overlap between functionality within that department and within other departments. So I don't, once again, I want us to be smart about how we spend our dollars and grow. I'm not opposed to having the department be eight people, but maybe it needs to move a little more slowly than you are moving right now. And so that's a difficult thing to say because it's not something that people want to hear, but I feel that I need to say it because I see some overlap in some of the functionality of the positions that you're creating and what currently is being done in CEDA or in planning or in city arts. And so I really feel that I hope you look at that carefully, Mr. Mayor and Board of Finance. Thank you for your time. I really appreciate it. Never an easy task to bring forward a budget. Thanks. Thank you, Councilor Bushert. Very nice to hear from you. Thanks for weighing in. I believe next up we have Jeff Nick, and if anyone else would like to be recognized after that, please use the raise hand function as the easiest if you're on the Zoom. Go ahead, Jeff. Good afternoon, everybody. Thanks for having me here or letting me speak. I sent an email out earlier. I hope folks had a chance to read it. And I apologize to Sarah Carpenter and Mark Barlow. I did not put you on that because I didn't realize you'd be part of this meeting, but I wanted to really impress upon the Board of Finance and the City Council in general to increase our police budget, especially as it pertains to downtown. And I don't want to get into the entire email, but I listed a host of issues that are unique to downtown and that we deal with on an everyday basis. And we really have always relied upon the police to help keep our street safe, fun, and enjoyable for everybody. Years ago, we had a officer that was solely responsible for downtown. And that seemed to go away. And then, as I mentioned before, Miracle Vale had convinced the restaurants and bars to go to 2% close receipts tax. 1% was going towards increased police coverage. The tax remains in effect, but we've lost that additional police coverage. So we really need to think about coming out of this pandemic as a street and quite thankfully the street is quite busy now. It's been refreshing to see, but on top of that, many, the bad behaviors have increased as well. Specifically, I'd like to point out, this has never happened before, speeding bicycles up and down the street, motorized, and of course, everything's motorized now as we motorized skateboards, something bad's gonna happen out there because we just don't have the folks out there to tell people you have to get off the bicycles. We did put up 36 signs, but yet we're seeing this. So we really need to think this through. And maybe it's been suggested that an ambassador program, because not all of these items need police per se. We've got rogue musicians and speed bicycles and littering and people blocking the pedestrian right away. Perhaps those things can be dealt with through an ambassador program, which we had talked about when we discussed the expansion of the downtown improvement district. So that may be something that we really should look at quickly here. I mean, at the very least, I did some quick math and the restaurants on the street, the 1% grocery seats I'm calculating could generate about $250,000 by themselves. So I think at the very least, if you don't increase the budget, at least you have to, I would recommend increasing it, but perhaps there's a program that we could start with for an ambassador program that looks at a different way to do this. But I also would implore upon you to consider increasing the police budget. It's very important for us. So thanks for listening and I'll let you figure out how you wanna do this. Thank you. Very good, Jeff. Thank you very much. Is there anyone else who would like to be recognized? Jordan, do we have any other emails or? Sorry, I was muted. I do not see anyone else who's wishing to speak on public forum. Okay, so thank you. With that, I will close the public forum at 546 and move to item number 3.01, which is a review of the results from the city budget survey, which there's a document that's been posted on Board Docs as well summarizing this. Over 800 people responded to this survey, which we initiated online based on conversations early in the budget process. And Catherine or Jordan, would you like to add any comments to the written summary? Don't have anything specific to add. Maybe if folks get a chance to look at the survey, if folks have questions, you could maybe answer those. Okay, very good. I think the summary lays it out pretty well. Overall, people really offered a lot of support for each of the areas we asked about. I think it is a useful snapshot. I'm glad that we got this feedback. We certainly, we put together a survey quickly. We take to heart the feedback about how it could be better designed for next year. But I think for an initial stab at this, we did very well. And we're certainly interested in how you have perceived it and any questions or comments you have. Okay, the floor is open for any discussion of the budget survey before we move on. Okay, and I will come to you in one second, President Tracy, do you just want to make sure I see a couple of other counselors have joined us and the floor is, all counselors are invited to participate in this discussion if you're interested. President Tracy, go ahead. So thanks for conducting this survey and really appreciate it. I think it's the beginnings of what could be kind of an expanded, more participatory, kind of budgeting cycle. So I really appreciate you taking the feedback to heart and being willing to put this together and seek out feedback. I'm curious as if there was anything that you feel like we need to respond to in order to change the budget coming out of this survey, like if there was something that challenged some of the assumptions that you all were making around the budget or some of the decisions. I'm not sure that there was anything necessarily that really stood out to me as being something that would change some of the decisions. I feel like it was largely supportive of some of the decisions, of most of the decisions that were being made, but just interested if there are things that you feel stood out to you and that we should change as a result. Thank you for the question, President Tracy. Here's my thoughts, and I don't know, Catherine, if you want to add anything to this. I thought, so again, I will echo, I do think, so first of all, I think the comments that an optimal budget survey would be different are fair, and I think future ones we will kind of learn from this experience and have more time and there will be improvements. At the same time, I do think you can, to me, I think you can read some conclusions into the data that we did get. Certainly there seem to be very strong support generally for the concept of returning to restoring services to kind of pre-pandemic levels. There was overwhelming support, it seemed to me, for investments in infrastructure. And I thought that was validating of the idea that we looked to do that with these one-time funds. We can test that again before we finalize decisions about ARPA, but I thought it was validating of the limited use of one-time funds that we have in the current draft of the FY22 budget. It seems like the public was strongly there. There was, I think, it was notable to me that there did not appear to be quite as, that the reports for the equity initiatives were still supportive and there was more, it was still supportive, but there was a, certainly a much larger, not supportive response on those equity initiatives. To me, that was not, you kind of frame the question, do we think we should change anything as a result? I don't believe we should change, should step away from the proposed equity investments we've made. I do think it is a caution sign from the public that there are questions about these investments that people want to, that there are questions. And I think it puts a responsibility on us to be transparent and to show the results that come from these, or in the conversation, the public is going to, ultimately we do have a gap that is going, we're gonna have to deal with in future budgets. Some of these equity investments have some real expense attached and ultimately I think we're gonna have to convince, the public is gonna get to weigh in and decide whether these become long-term investments. And so I think it's sort of clarity now at the beginning that the jury is still out, if you will, and that we're gonna have to show the value of this, but that's a challenge that I think we should take on and proceed with. Yeah, I agree. And it's hard to tell because it was a number of different initiatives, one of which was like the liable wage. So is it a feeling about a particular thing within it or is it a feeling about all of them together? So that's certainly feel that, hear that feedback. But I agree with you, Mayor, that I don't think that that necessarily should be taken as something that would change that those policies, I think we're still looking we're in a position of needing to show value for those, but that value I think is there and is needed. So thanks for that response. Catherine, did you wanna add anything to that? No, thanks for asking, but I think you covered it well. And I did just wanna echo what President Tracy said as well. Frankly, I went into this process with a little bit of a like attitude of just being afraid that the public feedback might not be coalescing or this could be an overly cumbersome process. But I do think that it is very useful and I agree President Tracy that it will be a useful conversation to refine and figure out how for next year we can build on it and find that sort of optimal place of public input in this budgeting process. So I wanna clarify that the official position of the administration towards a survey was not, oh, but nonetheless. It would not be official. Nonetheless, I appreciate Catherine's point. And yeah, I think there was a lot of really thoughtful. I mean, we've done our best to pull out some representative comments and add that a lot of people took the time to write significant comments. And it was 800 people responding to this survey strikes me as a very large number. So clearly there's interest in this. We're seeing a strong response to the police chief survey as well, which is one that we had, I think is a well-designed survey we're expecting good data there. So I think we're making, I think this season and COVID and these new tools converging, I think we maybe are growing as a city on how we use these tools. I know that the Talifa survey is out as well. So this, I'm excited about the potential for using these tools better in the future and appreciate the input from the board and counselors really encouraging more of this kind of engagement. Thank you. Councilor Jiang. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So about the survey, I mean, I think we have to maybe thank more couple of words that responded better. I mean, in terms of representation, four, five, six and seven, I believe they had much responders. But I was just wondering from your perspective and Catherine's perspective, if you feel as if this is a success, knowing we are a city of over 40,000 people, at least 20 of them will show up to vote. But if 800 people only responded, do you feel that this is a success? And can we use this data to say, to tell a story about where Wellingtonians are? I'm not an expert in kind of the, and I don't know, Catherine, if you have anything to add, I don't know how, you know, we have an email list of about, I think this went to an email list of about 6,000 people. And then I think there's a larger population that also received this, received communications about the survey through front porch forum. I think those are the two main vehicles for transmitting this to people. We could look into Councillor Jang, it might be an interesting to sort of compare that kind of uptake rate. My sense is it's pretty good for when you email a mass group like that to have a sizable percentage, I'm not sure 800 divided by 6,000 is exactly the right way to do it, but that's certainly, it's, maybe it's by 10,000 they got it through front porch forum as well. It's, I think it's a significant response. You're never gonna get overwhelming response to a communication like this. So I, to me, it was frankly, I thought it was a large number and that was a sign of real interest, but happy to hear other views on that and think about what a target should be in future efforts. But I think for a first effort, it was a pretty, it was a large number of people. I would simply add it was not only our first year, it was also, we decided to launch this survey rather late in the process. You may recall we had a press conference and some of the press decided to push the survey and some pushed other aspects of that press conference. And so I think we have some lessons learned and next time I would work with our communications director to really build up to the survey, to say the budget survey is coming and this is your time and how do we reach harder to reach groups? One thing that we didn't have time to do this year and we owned that that we would definitely do next year is having it translated into all the languages like we did with the police survey that could have been a barrier. So the lack of time here certainly didn't let us have the full outreach that we would like to, but I agree with the mayor given what we had to work with, it's certainly more feedback than we've ever had from the public and I welcome all of your ideas about how we increase that next year. Thank you. Yes, I think from my perspective and just someone trying to reach people, I think the response was very small based on the city and of its size. And I also kind of agree with one of the comments that stated that the questions were kind of misleading. To me, from my perspective, what this survey was intended to do is how do we use the ARPA funds? That's what I initially thought, reason why I requested it. To just say, these are a couple of line items that we wanna allocate ARPA fund into, right? And just allow the citizens to rate which one they think are the more important for city's money to be allocated to. That was my initial, but when I look at the survey, it was too late and it was already sent out. So I could not provide any other feedback. Yeah, so to leave it to that and thank you again for responding to all of these questions. Thanks, Councilor Jay. I do think there's an opportunity for some more open-ended questions like that. Again, we embarked on this as the FY22 budget was coming into focus and we have a charter responsibility to pass that this month and there were some key assumptions, key principles of that budget. It seemed that we, I think what the survey really did is test whether there's support for those principles. I think as we look to the FY22, sorry, beyond the FY22 budget to what we hope, we'll see where we land, but we think there's gonna be $10 to $15 million of the ARPA funds not committed yet or in that ballpark there, I think we can start that process with a more open-ended, still not completely open-ended because there's limitations on how we can spend the money, but I think we can have more open-ended question for the public about where they want us to put focus. So another opportunity is coming on this and we'd like to have the Council more included in the survey formulation on this next round. Okay, I'm going to not seeing any more hands at this point, so I'm gonna move past the survey and move to the further discussion, 4.01 further discussion of the BPD budget. I really, I'm not sure how much more is necessary if I asked Chief Mirad to be here. We have not gotten a lot of questions since Chief Mirad's presentation, was it just last Monday? But I just, it is the part of the budget that has the greatest, certainly the most sort of moving parts to it and had some significant, essentially new concepts in it. And then there was also some detailed questions that did come up in the presentation. So wanted to provide, just to remind people where we are in this process, we have one more meeting after tonight, next Monday of the Board of Finance where we will have kind of the term of art we've come up with in recent years is that we will buy that night, produce the CAO's recommended budget, full line item budget for in advance of that meeting and be talking about that as one of our agenda items next week. That will be the last opportunity really for discussion before we kind of attempt to incorporate all the feedback that we have gotten during the couple of months leading up until now and produce a mayor's budget that will be submitted on the 10th or the 11th in advance of your meeting on the 14th. So this is one of the final opportunities for discussion. There's certainly opportunity, offline comments, emails, still very much welcome into next week but we are getting towards the end of our ability to kind of react to your comments and attempt to incorporate them into the budget in some way. So in that spirit with that kind of frame of where we are in the process and where we're headed, wanted to bring up the police budget again to see if there was any further reaction to it, any further reaction to the $400,000 reserve for an expanded mental health response and the other ways in which we are kind of treating the savings that are anticipated in FY 22 as a result of the reduced number of officers at this point and to summarize that again, just to make sure like the way I see it essentially with that savings, which amounts to about $800,000, we are investing some of that back into non-officer personnel within the department, everything from an additional person to be working on public records requests specifically around body cam footage release and most significantly the dramatic expansion of the CSO Community Service Officer program. That's one big use of the funds. Another big use is this proposed reserve to help launch a significantly expanded mental health response and then there's still more than $200,000 left after that that is essentially being reserved for at least a number of months pending future city council action after we get back the results of the operational assessment and the other BPD study and are in position to make further programmatic decisions together about the future of the department. But we're sort of, you know, that's sort of an acknowledgement that that work is sort of pending and expected relatively soon. So I'll stop there. Any questions, comments, feedback on the draft police department budget? That's the, Janet, go ahead. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. This is not a question, but I'm just going to try to tie it with what we have heard in public forum from, I believe, Nick around the ambassador program that were identified within the DID proposal, you know, and was just wondering if that could be considered as part of the police budget or will the role of the SROs play that role to provide safety downtown and also in the waterfront? Thanks, Kasser-Jane. Chief Mayor, would you like to respond to that? So we do not have an ambassador program in the budget as presented. If you're speaking of the CSOs, the SROs are our school resource officers and they are not positions we will be able to sustain in the next year. The CSOs are the unarmed, non-spawn personnel whom we are hiring and will be training and then eventually deploying. I think the last I checked was today and I believe we had 17 total candidates so far. Obviously we're in the very, very early stages of intaking those applications and then we'll have to vet, we'll have to test, we'll have to do background checks, we will have to then determine who we hire and then we will have the training process. So it's a while for them to be ready to go and out on the street and on their own working but could CSOs be a presence on the marketplace? Absolutely. Thanks, Chief. And anything else Chief Mayor, that you wanna, okay, I see a question for President Tracy. So let's go to President Tracy, go ahead. Yeah, so I was just curious about the park rangers and how those job descriptions are gonna get approved and also just how they'll be deployed. I think it kind of dovetails with Councillor Jang's question a little bit and then the other question was sort of separate but really wanting to understand how you got to, for the other two figures that were cited in your slides they expanded mental health reserve and then also the reserve for implementing the BPD assessment like what was the, I'm just looking for a little bit of clarification as to how you arrived at those figures and what you're seeing as the process going forward for how those funds will be spent. Great. Catherine's eighth chance, we can pull up that slide that shows, that might ease the discussion of it. I think a big good slide if we can come up from that, or the one, but while you're doing that so the park ranger positions don't, well I don't want to misspeak. I think we would be looking for the positions to be created through the budget resolutions that are passed. I don't believe we have detailed job descriptions at this point. And so I think to, frequently President Tracey, when we've done this in the past, the resolution often has created new positions but before we actually hire for them there's a additional step where we come back and the council weighs in on the job description and the financial scoring. So I think there'd be two sort of council involved steps once the passage of the budget and then hopefully fairly quickly after that approval of the job description and scoring. The position, and maybe Catherine help me out here. I know you've had more conversations than I have with Cindy about what these urban park rangers would do. They would be involved in a kind of like, I think kind of like we, national park rangers if you will, they would be involved in everything from helping people understand the parks, providing information, be serving being kind of a friendly face in the parks and being able to help out with sort of help people understand what they're looking for. Yes. Oh, sorry to interrupt, Mayor. Yeah, I'll stop and say, but is everything from that to when rules do need to be enforced in the parks? Also, you know, whether it's improper alcohol usage or fires that violate city policies or, you know, more serious offenses, they would be a first line of rule enforcement. Do you want to add anything to that, Catherine? Yes, I think that captures it. It's really some of the things that comments we've heard from citizens, dogs off leashes, some of the beach fires, things like that, that our officers don't have time to respond to anymore, could be handled by these park rangers. And they wouldn't be armed, right? No, definitely not. Okay. Is, are they going to be, have any sort of like CPR or medical training, carrying naloxone, like those kinds of things? Because I could see them being in a position where that might be valuable. I think that is a great point. I've not talked to Director White about that, but I think we should share that feedback with her. It may be already something she's thinking about. Okay, thank you so much. So now just to move to the other part of your question about kind of to dig into the numbers a little bit more, could you, my old eyes, Catherine, you could expand on this a little bit. Okay. So, yeah, there you go. And maybe scroll back up towards the top a little bit. So just to sort of show you how we arrived at this, she kind of compares the FY20 budget to the FY22 budget. We skipped over the FY21 budget since it was such a funky, you know, COVID constrained budget. So this sort of like acts like 20, this sort of goes back and makes a comparison to where we were in 20. I think we can stay, yeah, so that 20 is on the left side. We can stay on the right side, I think for this discussion, just talk through the assumptions here. This assumes that we basically, the top line assumes where we are now, 82 sworn officers, which is down 925,000 in terms of salary from the, from FY20 where we were at 105 authorized officers more like 95 actually on duty in that year. The overtime, and this is an important assumption in one, I want to make sure that we're, the counselors have a chance to question, Chief Murat about and understand here is we are assuming that overtime again in 22 will be up like it was in 21. This is because we at least enter the year with really not having made any, we entered the year trying to staff at the levels that Chief Murat has laid out with altered rotations, smaller rotations than before before the new cap, but still with as full a staffing, I should probably let the Chief explain this, but as full a staffing as is sort of responsible and reasonable with the number of officers that we have, and there will be significant use of overtime more than our historic use of overtime in order to staff those rotations at that level. You know, we at this point, I think an underlying assumption is that we are still attempting, we have not made decisions as a city with the council about major areas where the police can be disengaged and no longer responding to these 30, roughly 30,000 incidents. And so this is, they're basically I think, and I'll leave it there, that there's an attempt to a sense that we need to continue to respond to everything we have historically. So there is more overtime. The attrition shows that we are expecting 12 to 13 officers to leave over the course of the year. And it's sort of the way the numbers sort out, that attrition number, which is essentially money we're expecting not to spend sorts out to about seven, essentially another way to think of this would be if we were at 75 officers throughout the year, that's the way it's sort of the numbers sort out there. Seven officers being gone for the entire year is essentially the equivalent of that attrition number. And then there are some retirement savings as a result as well. So you add all of that up and there's over a million dollars in savings. And then we start, so that's the million dollars in savings. Then if we can scroll down, you can see that some of that savings is reinvested into the non-sworn positions. Again, that's the expansion of the CSO positions, a full year of the CSL position and this redaction specialist. I think that's everything in there. It's a little bit cut off, but I think that's just... Yeah, I think I captured everything there. So then that leaves you with... That leaves you with almost $800,000 in savings and then we take out of that the cost of the park rangers, this $400,000 reserve, which I'll speak to more in a second, and then what is left essentially to present to you the answer. One of your questions, how did we get to the 265? That's simply what's left after you do all that math is what's being put into that reserve. How did we get to the 400,000? Basically, here's the thinking there. We have received a proposal from the Howard Center for what would constitute a comprehensive mental health response program that goes way beyond the current street outreach efforts and it's sort of a first cut at this. It was a good preliminary proposal. It puts a ballpark number there of what the annualized cost of such a program would be in the million dollar range. It is my belief that there may be other parties who could help us fund such a program. Specifically, the state has stepped up and been part of comparable efforts in other parts of Chittenden County and elsewhere in the state and I certainly think it's possible that there may be interest from the UVM Medical Center, which also one of their major challenges is pressures that are put on them as a result of the current lack of mental health services and acute mental health services. Basically, our assumption here is that probably we ultimately there may be something approximately a million dollars for a program that's, you know, if we're going to try to do something comparable to the kind of cahoots Eugene model that is getting a lot of attention right now, it's probably in that order of magnitude. The city I think needs to play a leadership role in getting us there and certainly the council taking action and improving a large number like this, a $400,000 budget. I think we very much jumpstart those conversations. It is my belief though that, you know, we should be able to get other well funded partners to the table in the actual implementation and this would give us the kind of foundation to do that. I know that as a follow-up mayor, I know you'd had conversation around Brie around the idea of creating sort of standing up our own entity having to do with this support services and that there was some associated kind of direction and control that I think was that we had identified as being desirable in that process as compared to partnering with like an existing agency that has an existing culture and existing protocols. And so is the idea here to just work with Howard to set it up or would it be really to stand it up and then kind of evolve from there or would it be to kind of, this is going to be an ongoing partnership in your mind with the Howard Center? So, yes, thank you President Tracy. I think it's a really important conversation and one that definitely, you know, looking to do this in partnership with the council and as, you know, there's been conversations between us over the last year and this tonight is sort of the next step in that conversation and I think it's going to be something we're going to have to keep working on together for a little while here. I am somewhat persuaded that it would be very hard for us to, I would say this, if we want to stand up a program quickly, I think the clearest route to doing that is to partner with an existing agency that provides mental health services. I think for us to create from scratch such a program would be very challenging and that's certainly what, you know, we've had some internal conversations and I think I'm representing the view of various people within the city that are kind of experts on this work and thinking that it would be a hard thing for us to grow alone. We certainly, the Howard Center has given us this proposal and is eager to do the work. They've been taking some, you know, I appreciate the initiative they've taken. They've hosted some community conversations as you probably know in recent months on this. They've certainly been thinking about this and are signaling that they would be interested in partnering with the city in this. Something we will have to grapple with and I don't think we should, we're not prepared to make a decision tonight or to make a full recommendation tonight but a decision that certainly the administration and the council will have to make together in the coming weeks certainly, you know, I think would be the first order of business as soon as something like this is approved is to decide whether we are just going to try to negotiate some kind of new contract, new relationship MOU with Howard or whether we really should be putting something like this which is, you know, a major expenditure and is out to some kind of competitive bid. And either way, I think the city should really do some hard thinking about what we're looking for in this program, what we want. If we're putting this kind of money into this, I think, yeah, we really want something that, you know, I think we really want to be very intentional and self-conscious about the kind of program we want to see created here. I have been in conversations with some community leaders about this work and they're eager to partner with us and help, you know, kind of inform either an RFP or a new contract. And so that's sort of where I see it now. I think there's urgency to set this up. I think it'd be very hard to do on our own. I think we do have a question of RFP versus sort of an expansion of the existing street outreach agreement we have with Howard Center. And I'm at this point undecided about which way I would recommend. Okay. Well, thank you for laying that out. I certainly appreciate that, that explanation. And I'll think about that kind of RFP versus partnership. It's really helpful to have that additional context mayor just as we try and try and build this out. I'm not sure just on just an immediate reaction that just a straight expansion of street outreach makes sense. I feel like we're looking at something, something that maybe has a little bit more, a little bit more of a multifaceted kind of approach to it than the current street outreach model. So I think everyone agrees with that. No, no one's suggesting it's just sort of an incremental addition to street outreach. But it's sort of, there is that existing relationship and it would be kind of an expansion, kind of building on that is sort of what I meant by that. But I think everyone involved really thinks there's an opportunity to do something quite, quite different here. And I do just want to say the council will have a formal role in this, whichever way it goes. Either you'll be, you know, approving an RFP in some form or, you know, there's contracts to approve it or not. So I just, I want counselors to know like, certainly the council is going to be very engaged in this. Okay, great. Thank you. Council, go ahead. Thank you, Mayor. I mean, I do believe that I, I am in total agreement with you about the $400,000 being allocated to an existing organization providing this service. I think what one thing that we need to enter is on the MOU, because between the city and that organization, we clearly outline that we want to pilot investing in, you know, such a critical need in the community. And I think, you know, what Max, Councillor Tracy is talking about in terms of a different agency that could provide safety and also all the CSOs, the park rangers, what number of community members we need to call. I think we need to start the conversation now to find someone or that can definitely start to support the city to think about whether or not it is a need to have a different agency and how it's going to look like. You know, I am in complete agreement, but we want to pilot this with Howard Centre and see the outcome while also providing critical data, data collection in this investment, I think would be key. If we're done with this, maybe I have a different question. Go for still the police, Councillor Jayne? Yes. Okay, go ahead and go to your question. Yep. And it's for, I think, Chief Mira and was just wondering about the CSOs and also the attrition. It seems there is 13 or 14 people or 12 will be leaving by within the FY 2022. I was just wondering about the hiring of the CSOs. You know, you mentioned there is 17 already. And will it be, can you speak in confidence that if we hire at least 20 and we leave, we lost 13 new sworn officers, will the police still have the capacity in responding to some call that are criminal and that are not critical, criminal? So thanks for that question, Councillor, but to clarify a few pieces of it, so the reason we're calculating attrition at seven is that that's what we can reasonably assume will happen. There are officers who may be eligible to retire. There are officers who we may expect to resign or leave for other opportunities, but until those things happen, we can't really know that they're going to happen. So we're factoring in this idea as the mayor put it of saying that we go from the 82 at which we were on April 1st to approximately 75 by the end of FY 2022. So that's the seven. The idea that that works out to the whole year costs. And of course, some of them will leave during other parts of the year and it may happen towards the end of the year or may go farther than 75 and lower than 75 before the end of the fiscal year, but it won't be for the entirety of the year is that those employees, the equivalent of an entire employee for the entirety of the fiscal year is that seven. And then I guess the next part of your question is, is those CSOs? When I say we have 17, I mean, we have 17 applicants. An applicant is an applicant. We have no knowledge yet of whether or not these folks will meet the standards that we will require and we certainly don't want to compromise standards. We have two CSOs currently hired. We are important members of this department and they perform important functions already, but we put them through their paces when they were hired and they are people that we, you know, we vetted carefully and then did background checks and trained. And so we've got to do that again with all these. So the 17 applicants by no means is 17 hires. We're authorized and we're planning to try to get six of those people that this council. So generously authorized in, I believe February, I presented in January, I think it was authorized in February to get those positions into the department sometime, six of them sometime in the first half of the fiscal year and the remaining four that were authorized by this council sometime in the second half of the fiscal year. We're hopeful about that. And the fact that we have 17 candidates or at least, excuse me, applicants, they're not candidates yet they're applicants and that those 17 applicants or 16 applicants, that's good news for us. Certainly speaks well of the desire that's out there and the interest that's out there, but we may get six of those individuals. We may get two of those individuals. We may find 10 of them to be terrific candidates and have to sort of push four of them off until the second half of the fiscal year. We don't know yet. What can we do with them? I think was the third part of your question. And that is, you know, where we're very hopeful that we will be able to offload certain kinds of services that are currently performed by police officers and that police officers currently do not have the capacity to perform. We do not have the capacity to meet all of the needs that are coming from our constituents. The public asks for us and there are times when we are not able to respond. That is why I implemented the priority response plan to prioritize the responses to which we always must respond. The others will be responded to when time allows, when staffing allows. Are the CSOs going to help with that? To minimize the number of instances in which we are unable to respond immediately? I'm hopeful that that's the case, but I'm not certain about it yet. We're going to work on that. And so, you know, one example is this. As we look at, you know, as we look at staffing for various kinds of events. In the past, we've had as many as 64 officers staffed at July 3rd events. And right now we are looking at about half of that or less. That's where we are with regard to staffing and with regard to sort of the picture of what we have available. The CSOs will absolutely be able to assist with that were they to be onboarded. They won't be onboarded by July 3rd or by an event like that. But those kinds of positions can assist with certain kinds of roles for a big event like that. And they can absolutely assist with incident volume when incidents come in. And so figuring out how that works, the degree to which that minimizes the instances in which our response is delayed or that priority three calls aren't able to get an immediate response, minimizing that. And also, you know, also minimizing the time period in which we have to really use this priority response plan. I would like to cast it aside sooner rather than later. But that is going to be a matter of bringing aboard these additional positions and seeing what those positions can do with regard to those kinds of calls from our neighbors. Thank you. I think one part of my question it has, when do you expect at least five or two or one of them to start the job? The timeline. Sure. So in the memorandum that I prepared for you all in January, I discussed that timeline as being something that really was going to be a matter of the fiscal year 22. It takes seven and a half months to onboard a CSO. And so we're at the very, very beginning of those stages right now. So basically August, maybe? No, seven and a half months from where we are. I mean, we're at the very beginning of that seven and a half month period of vetting and training and rather, vetting and hiring and training. Thank you. All right. I am not seeing any more hands on the zoom screen or from other panelists who have their cameras off. So if there's nothing more in the police budget, I will close this part of the item. Thank you. Thank you for your work on this. I think you've helped us. Clearly they out of some confusing, you know, a lot of the moving parts here. I will just note for the counselors or just to make sure everyone's fondness. I found it interesting today to see the BT digger story that as an alternative, unlike what chief mirad is trying to do with this priority staffing plan, the city of Brattleboro just announced recently that they are actually eliminating one of their three shifts entirely for kind of similar. There's, I think their staffing pressures maybe even more acute than ours at this point. They've gone from 27 officers down to 20 and they are eliminating one of their three shifts. So it just might be something that people want to take a look at it and you can see seeing this that we're not the only city grappling with these kind of issues. And I appreciate the way chief mirad is attempting to manage this. So thank you. And we'll close that item and move to number five on our agenda, which is any additional feedback or discussion on budgets. You know, just basically anything new that hasn't come up so far. You know, comments that haven't made or questions that are out there. Hopefully questions. I think Catherine, I think we've tried to answer any questions that have come in. We definitely are considering some changes and what we'll bring forward next week in response to some of the discussion thus far. I've had some conversations with some counselors about in particular net zero, you know, kind of climate items. We've got some feedback there that we could be coming forward with some, you know, additions to our changes. I got an email just today, I believe, about a possible modest increase in MPA funding, which we'll consider. What other, is there anything else you want to highlight Catherine that we're really kind of considering based on the feedback up until now? I mean, really though, the invitation, the point of this is anything new, anything we haven't talked about that people want to discuss in this forum at this point in the process? The only other thing I can think of, Mayor, is a request from Counselor Paul for an additional 15,000 for town meeting TV as they've been covering the NPA meetings. And I have included that in the latest version of the draft budget as well. So anything else? I am certainly open. Okay, I've got Councillor Carpenter and then President Tracey. Two items that I brought up, there's been conversations back and forth with Catherine and others about work on accessibility in the city, accessibility features. Most of that, or some of that would be capital intensive and may not be built in this year's capital budgets, but I'm just wondering, will that be an opportunity with some of the ARPA money to look at some of those issues as we go forward? I mean, in particular, in my neighborhood, the accessibility of Letty Beach has become significant. So I'm just inquiring about how though that might be brought to the top of the pile and whether ARPA is a forum to do that. So correct me if I'm wrong, Catherine. I don't think anything in ARPA has specifically called out accessibility investments as like a priority, a funding item under ARPA. There are certain, in fact, it's somewhat restrictive the language in ARPA about, you know, the only sort of clear green light for infrastructure investments, like literally in the legislation is around water infrastructure and broadband. That said, one thing that we, you know, it is my hope that we have a fair amount of discretion and flexibility in our ultimate ARPA decisions because ARPA does allow reimbursement for revenue replacement for lost revenues. And we do have millions of dollars of lost revenues in the last two budget years and likely this upcoming budget year as well. So it's certainly my hope that because that as we are looking at the uncommitted, let's call it $10 million that we think we're going to have left after this budget process that we are able to fund everything we want to or nearly everything we want to either because it is an item, what we want to do is clearly reimbursable by ARPA or because we essentially have replaced revenues and have essentially replaced and then have local funds. Once we've replaced lost revenues, those funds become local funds that we have discretion over how we want to invest. So long way of saying I am hopeful we will have a fair amount of discretion and it does seem that, you know, I think clearly capital investment, one-time investments is a high, you know, it's something that we, it's definitely one of our principles that it is supported. And so I definitely think there's going to be opportunity for that discussion, you know, as we move beyond the current budget into the next phase. Thank you. I would encourage us to look strongly at that. The other item that former councillor Busher brought up, which has gotten quite a bit of conversation this weekend and Chief of Staff Rodel is very aware of this, the need to maybe put more maintenance money into the maintenance of cemeteries. And so I just would ask that you speak to Director Wright about how that can get accomplished in this budget year. I don't know what the number is, but that it needs to be. My understanding is there is money in the budget for FY22 for the maintenance of the historic levels. And there was, we did have a, as the council knows, an impact on seasonal staff. As a result of COVID cuts last year, but that was also to have been restored, you know, since March. And so I don't believe there's a funding issue there. Thanks. Great. President Tracy, go ahead. Thanks, Mayor. So the first, I have a couple of different items. The first of which was the climate analysis, specifically wanting to just understand how different elements of this budget and specifically departmental budgets move us towards our net zero goals. This is something, you know, I think that we just need to clarify how each department and their spending is, is or isn't moving us towards addressing the climate crisis that we face. So just hoping to get a further clarification on that. Yes, President Tracy, you know, I want to acknowledge you raised this earlier and frankly, there was a little discussion of it on May 3rd. I thought we had done more than looking back than we had. And I think we owe you that certainly for next Monday's discussion, kind of comprehensive itemization of all of the climate related investment. So it is our goal to have that to you for the discussion next Monday. And even in lieu of that, we have gotten some feedback from other counselors on some additional ideas that we're looking to incorporate. I guess I will just mention here. I get certainly something that would help our future fleet electrification efforts of the city fleet would be the addition of several fast charging stations at different city owned properties. And that is something that, yeah, it will definitely make the implementation of, you know, this is coming. And this might be a good opportunity to do that. So we're exploring that either now or in the kind of, you know, the next stage of the ARPA budgeting, but I think that that is consistent with ARPA financing, that kind of investment. I'm not certain about that. And then the other kind of new climate discussion idea that I'm supportive of, and there has been some past discussion. It wasn't in our draft budget, but I think we should find a way to add to that would be a study of TDM, some kind of new TDM transportation demand management system that the city would, either the city or some other local partner would manage. This was discussed at the time when we were eliminating the parking requirements in the downtown and on transportation routes. And we did add some TDM requirements to the zoning process at that time. But I think certainly what I've said and I think others agree with is that really the burden of creating a new TDM system shouldn't just be on new projects. We really should find some way of creating a TDM system that could service the whole city and not just try to do this through kind of zoning extractions, but through some other kind of mechanism. And so I think there are some cities, not many, but there are some cities doing interesting things on this out there. Maybe there are more of these now, but I think it's still kind of early in this field. But I think there's enough else out there that we can study best practices and have some analytical work that could be the basis. So there will be some one-time proposal for a TDM system. And I think that's one of the things that we can do to make sure that the city is well-based on council feedback. Councilor. Okay. Yeah. No, I appreciate that. That's great. And I appreciate your willingness to just compile that analysis. I think that'd be helpful for the council to get in the public for that matter to get a chance to see the two other items that I was also interested in that I've heard as a result of community feedback were a desire for there to create, you know, more active intervention when sexual harassment or sexual abuse is taking place in our community. And this is something that I had reached out to steps to end domestic violence on just to get an idea of, you know, if that's something that they provide as a training, that's not really something that they necessarily are equipped to do, but they made a number of suggestions of organizations that also reached out to to try and seek funding off the top of their head. They, they suggested that if we were trying to do a larger community event or series of community events where folks would be able to participate and not have a cap on the number of participants that that would range with, you know, facilitation and planning and all of that around the $15,000 mark is what they had suggested. So that was one. And that's something that I think potentially could happen in collaboration with the new HR director, Durfee. I think that could be a really meaningful thing for our community to engage in. And I think it's really important for us to have that. This is something that the council has and the city has funded in the past as a result of the councilor initiative funds. That's that was a source of it before. I believe it was a $10,000 set aside and that that was something that was focused more directly on on bar and restaurant staff. As I've understood it from them and as I've seen like some of the work that organizations do would be more, more broad to include and invite a wider segment of the population throughout the city to to pass this information, these skills along to the broader community. So that was one issue. And then another piece that came to me from Charles Delaney, who is a member of the Nalhegan Band here in Burlington. And he had raised the issue of wanting to engage in a study similar to that of the ongoing study looking at the reparations as as connected to chattel slavery in Burlington's role in chattel slavery. This is something that came up as that committee was starting to get rolled out in a desire to see that happen. I think rightly the task force felt that they really needed to squarely focus on Burlington's role in chattel slavery and not look into these other issues that have to do with the lack of compensation for resources that were taken, whether they be land or other natural resources from native peoples in the Burlington area over time. And so this was something that Mr. Delaney had brought to me as a potential proposal for the city to engage in trying to get an understanding from him as to what that would look like. I've suggested something similar, at least in terms of structure, to the current ongoing task force because that seems to be working well. But it does seem like an important endeavor and it does feel as though if we're doing that we should be engaging in this work and really taking a meaningful look at this as part of continuing to better relations with Indigenous peoples in Burlington more broadly in Vermont. Thank you President Tracey. I appreciate you also sending an email on this second item earlier in the last couple of days I believe and I'll definitely review that and take your points here under advisement and certainly understand where you're coming from on the community by standard training and thank you for doing the legwork of finding a budget figure. So let me talk with Catherine further and point it. I believe that Mr. Delaney was just looking for a similar funding allocation as to the existing reparation study. Thank you. Are there further issues councillors would like to raise at this point? Yes. This question I think I brought it up last time or one of our meetings and it was specific to the condition in which Franklin Square is in right now. And I don't know if Mr. Mayor you had a chance to connect with DPW to see what is possible for at least this fiscal upcoming fiscal year. Thank you Councillor Jenning. I have had a conversation with director Chapin Spencer about your input and it is something that he is... I know he had some reactions and comments on and is doing some work on. I'm not sure I can... I don't want to speak for him here but I know we owe you a response on that and thank you for the reminder we'll make sure that there is... Make sure that gets... Your comment there gets factored into the budget and that you get a full response to that. Thank you. So the other question is specific to the significant budget increase FY22. The document that Catherine shared with people and I have one specific question about the language access plan. It was a one-time cost at $90,000 and was just wondering why it's just a one-time cost. Is it only to do the study and then determine what's next? I just did not understand why it's only one-time cost. Great Councillor Jenning. Thank you for... That was the next item on the agenda was to review that document. I think we may be ready to move to that. So let me just tee it up a little bit and then we'll get to your question there. Great question. This document attempts to... With all of the flux in the budget since FY20 I think this is a helpful document to understand where... When we come out of this period with these emergency funds what kind of budget challenge are we going to be looking at? It's not exactly when we're going to come out of this exactly. Certainly FY... One choice we will have to some degree is when we kind of sit down to figure out how we're going to use all the ARPA funds is whether we want to continue... We can use these funds for as late through calendar year 2024 I believe. One thing we will want to discuss is whether we want to be setting some of these funds aside to help with budget gaps anticipated budget gaps in the upcoming fiscal years. But at some point we don't expect federal funding at this level to be permanently part of the Burlington budget. So we committed as sort of a principle at the beginning that when we were suggesting using dollars for... We didn't think it was quite right to say we will not use any of these dollars for ongoing costs but I do think it's important that anything that we communicate now and discuss now and make decisions that we're taking that might lead to ongoing liability what is our plan for that? As you can see in this document a lot of the ongoing costs that we're proposing either that were added to last year's budget that we're keeping or that we're proposing adding we do have some thinking about how this at the same time also clearly if the budget as it's currently being discussed is passed there will be some future tax liability for it. So that's sort of the background behind this document and Catherine, so I think to get us to sort of the punchline on this if you scroll down towards the bottom of this you can see we've tried to capture all the major additions and if you scroll down towards the bottom there is about four and a half sorry, five and a half million dollars worth of new investments that are ongoing costs about almost four million of it is in that column D that there is either a known ongoing funding source for or a at least a reasonably strong idea about potential funding about 1.6 million we don't have I think it's at this point we don't have a lot of confidence that we're going to be able to find some kind of non-local funding source for that so and a lot of these are the equity initiatives so I think we should be clear eyed about this that if we are going to be making equity investments at these levels ultimately there is going to be some local cost to that although that may be something we can avoid certainly for the upcoming year we're not proposing a tax increase for this maybe it won't be necessary because what I was saying about ARPA funds in the next year or two but ultimately we are looking at structural costs being added here that we will probably need to find local funds for ultimately to cover where is some uncertainty about that and I do think the relationship between the federal government and local governments where once back in the direction of at least the pendulum may be shifting back towards us getting some significant federal funding for various local needs and we'll certainly be watching carefully I know racial justice is a major priority of the Biden administrations and I think there may be some opportunity for some of the racial justice our racial equity inclusion staff positions ultimately maybe there is some federal partnership opportunities that will become part of this structural budget I definitely think that's possibility with the public health positions I think coming out of the pandemic there may well be an opportunity and we're watching this very closely to get federal funding for local community health positions going forward so that's one of the things that we put in column D is that possibility if you were to scroll back up we don't have to do that but that's what this document does it lays them out into those two different areas and I hope the council finds that helpful and welcome any reactions to it in terms of I'm a little confused by this to Catherine is it really spending $1000 on an assessment or I thought this was the implementation yes it is perhaps and I apologize for that but there has been a lot of input and what there were kind of two requests there was an initial $40,000 for the language access plan from Brian and that was based on the analysis that he had done and then there was an additional $50,000 and I think that's the assessment piece of what needs to be happening moving forward then there was an additional $50,000 request from director green and that was for bringing sort of all of our documents for the public up to a base standard in terms of translation as a one-time cost of course there will be ongoing costs as we continue to roll out new things but sort of a one-time investment so there is a thought that $90,000 may not be enough moving forward but we will have new information after this year so I put that in one-time costs simply because that's what we know for this year and we will have new information after this year not because we are not so if that's too confusing because we will have ongoing costs I'm happy to move it as the mayor and I were discussing today some of these are very nuanced that we're not going to continue language access it's just that we don't know what that cost will be moving forward or what that will look like I hope that's clear Thanks Catherine that is helpful let's talk about it more before we finalize that number I don't know if you have anything else you want to any other reaction to that Councillor Jang I think it's clear thank you any other thoughts or reactions to this document and again I want to acknowledge I think this got posted today and we're not really doing a comprehensive review of it now I would welcome I would welcome Councillors if they do have an opportunity to look at it further following tonight the door is open for email questions feedback on this as well but you know yeah so you can see a lot the reason why we say there is funding for about $3.6 million of this is a combination of there being the public safety tax dedicated public safety tax increase that was intended to cover the ambulance costs and some other public safety costs and the then you can see BPD you know as we kind of walk through we are seeing savings in the police budget paying for some of these new investments and then something we actually haven't really talked about a sizable number here $480,000 that row 8 how do we have that label Catherine that's like economic it's like economic team economic recovery team some of these are different costs and they that we have been covering well we did cover in the general fund budget last year the current year and as we've discussed we are envisioning covering them again in this key economic recovery year for funds beyond the church and we are seeing a lot of changes in these funds I don't see these as being general fund costs long-term or certainly not all of them being general fund costs a possible way that this expanded services could be sustained is if there is an expansion in some way of the downtown that would be one way that's a possible way in which that's a possible source for this and I think a discussion that I'm making this as distinct from the idea I am not as I think I've said before not envisioning reopening the debate about some kind of nonprofit improvement district but I do think it's still in my mind at least sort of on the table that we might think of an expansion of this successful almost 40-year-old church tree marketplace some kind of expansion of services and expansion of the geographic area may allow some additional revenues to be generated non-general fund revenues so that's what's envisioned there for new services like the RRC if we have some kind of ongoing kind of constituent service 311 type service if that were to kind of become permanently part of what we do there would be that would be something that the enterprise funds would help pay for and it would be one of those sort of overhead items would be billed out to other departments to the non-general fund departments and that usually ends up paying for about 50% of the costs that's what's indicated there similar with that's the same kind of thing with a couple other items and then as I mentioned we are hopeful about potential permanent federal funding in a couple areas too so just trying to get y'all oriented to that I think it's an important document one they know that was requested I'll leave it there and again you know open it up are there any more I think pretty much the end of our presentation night so open it up one more time for questions on that document or anything else the council would like us to be thinking about at this point alright good hi again welcome any feedback on that offline do you have any final thoughts before we close out tonight no I think that covers it thank you so much great yes thanks everyone for spending an extra evening on this we will look forward to further discussion as we kind of head into the home stretch here on the budget next Monday night and then we'll have a conversation then take care everyone have a good week thank you