 So the first thing is to review and approve the agenda. And. I don't think we have any additions, but I am hoping to move up. I'm 13, the equity action plan to be right after our board appointments. So that'll be more or less item eight and a half. Is the plan. Any other thoughts or suggestions. On that. No, I'm happy with it. Cool. Great. All right. So with that, we will consider the agenda approved. And so on to general business and appearances. So this is an opportunity for any member of the public to. Talk about any item that is otherwise not on our agenda. And if you would identify your name where you live and try to keep your comments to about two minutes, that would be great. So. Seems like kind of a small crowd here today, which is what it is, I guess. But anyway, any, any folks would that would like to speak on a topic otherwise not on our agenda. Shayna Casper has raised for you. Okay. Hey, Shayna, go ahead. I'm still muted. I'll be speaking just a moment, but I think first order of business is a big congratulations to Anne Watson. Thank you. Awesome. Thanks. Yeah, it was a good day. Beautiful day. All right. Any other comments. Okay. I can't talk to that. All right. So we're going to move on then. Okay. So onto the consent agenda. So is there a motion regarding, oh, hey, Bill, yeah, go ahead. Oh, and John. So could you, you can remove the women's suffrage. Event they're going to actually be canceling that. Okay. We got a voice, you know, with Jasmine out there was a voicemail left on her phone that we just retrieved. So that can be taken off the consent. Okay. Okay. And John, the June 12 minutes have vanished. I don't know. Elves got them or something. So they should be taken off the agenda too. Okay. Donna, the other change to the minute you actually attached July 14th, July 14th. I didn't actually do that. I did. I did. July 14th was only did the rate. The tax rate and that's the one that showed up twice. Yes. No, I know that I said, I didn't send out July 14th with the email I sent out. It's not listed in the agenda. Oh, I got you. I got you. Okay. The gender only goes till June 24th. Gotcha. Okay. Yeah, that should be on there too. That's not. Okay. So, I'm going to move on to removing a couple of items. And adding one. Is that what I'm gathering? Removing June 12th and adding July 14th. Okay. And also removing item D. Any other comments. Or questions about the consent agenda. Lauren, go ahead. I did have a June 12th one. That I don't know if it's the right one or not, but it had me listed as both present and absent. So I think I, if it was the tax rate one, I did miss that one, but just if you're fixing that one, John, for next time. Trotingers council member. Sure. I will admit I sort of cut short my. Oh, my third pass. I did my second pass, my third pass is where I get the crazy things. So I will fix that. Thanks. So Lauren, you'd be okay with approving that. If, if you were. That's correct. Yeah, just yes. Not present. Oh, this is absent. It's a June 12th is going to be removed anyways. Okay. Yeah, that was for next time when we see it again to. Got you. Got you. Okay. Okay. All right. Any other comments. Or suggestions, deletions, additions. To have a motion. So moved. Second. Motion to second. And just to be clear. It is. Without item D. Or the June 12th or yeah, the June 12th minutes, but adding. Was it June 14th or July, July, July, July 14. Okay. Just to be clear. All right. So any further comments. Okay. All right. And opposed. And opposed. Okay. Great. So. So that carries. So. Okay. We'll move on. Yes, Phil. I noticed Jeremy Hansen is on the call. And I just want to know that if he's on the call about EC fiber, I was letting know that the council just passed the resolution to. Let's draw. Great. If he's not. Yeah. Okay. So we have a few appointments to make. I'm sorry. I just wanted to make sure that we have a little bit of a, a little bit of a sense to go about this is to. Have all of the folks who are interested in being appointed. Introduce themselves for the various boards and committees. And then after we have gone through all of those introductions, then we as a council will. Go into executive session to discuss them and come back. Okay. So. Okay. So the first one, the community. Fund board. So as I'm. Getting that one up here. So. For that one, we have. Looks like we have two seats open, but one. Person having applied. Amy Cunningham. I see Amy. Not seeing. Oh, you, oh, you're here. Oh, hello. Would you like to introduce yourself? I'm Amy Cunningham. I'm a senior resident of Montpelier. And this would be my second term on the Montpelier. Community fund. Great. Does anyone have any questions for Amy? No. Okay. Donna. No question. Just to say you've done a great job. So I'm glad you want to come back. Thank you. It's a great group of people. I feel good about the progress we're making. Awesome. Okay. And so next is the. Oh, that's on it. Donna, did you have something else you wanted to. I have one for bill. This one had people who helped terms ending in. 2022, 2021, 2020. And I thought we sort of had slots and people. You know, took a slot. So they were all ending at. More even time. It seemed very strange when these different terms were expiring. This is administrative question about a committee and their terms. Oh, I see. So you mean the actual dates in those years or just the years? Cause I think we want to stagger the years so that there was always continuity. Okay. So the thing is that there was only like, there were several that was 22, like half the committee's 22. And I want a couple of 21 and one 20. So I think we should pay attention to that. An administrative question about committees, but it came up on this committee. Okay. Thanks. We'll check on that. The same is true of some of the other committees. So we can just look at all of them. Thank you. We have three spots open and we have one applicant. Which is Peter Lux and is Peter on the line. One. Phone number there. So. Peter, are you there? Nope. Okay. All right. And then the third is the development review board. And for that, there was a one. Vacancy. And there were three people. Applying for it. Abby. Gene Leon and Joshua. Kurt link. And I think I saw Abby. Abby. Would you like to introduce yourself? Hi, everyone. Good to see you. My name is Abby white. I am also a 15 year resident of Montpelier. And really pleased to be considered for this board. So thank you. Any questions for Abby? Nope. Okay. And just a camera. We got a message from Josh. Who said he does. He did plan on joining, but had an unexpected schedule change with his child care. So he was unable to make it. Thank you for that. And again, I think we have a couple of questions. And again, I have another number on. So. It's possible it's gene. So. Gene, are you on. Okay. Not hearing. Anybody speak up there. So. At this point, I think we probably should go into executive session. Is there a motion. I'll make a motion that we can go into executive session to consider the nominations for. The three committee. Positions. Second. Okay. This is not one of the ones we have to find. All right. So. So, okay. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed. Okay. So we are the council is all going to hop off of this call. We're going to join a separate separate call, discuss things, and then we'll be back hopefully in a little while. All right. So we'll be back. See you all soon. I'm going to. Oh, she says it's not letting her in. I don't know what that's about. I don't know what that's about. I'm curious. All right. Well, is there a motion to come out of executive session? So moved. Second. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. And opposed. All right. So we are back in regular session. And now I have a motion that we make the following appointments. We have a motion to come out of executive session. We have a motion to come out of advisory committee. Peter Lux. And for the development review board, Abby white. Second. Motion in a second. And the, any further discussion? Okay. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. And opposed. All right. Well, congratulations to all. Thank you for your. One of the things that we considered with the development review board was. So just to provide a little context and background. Thank you so much, Abby, for stepping up. All right. So we are going to move on to the equity action plan with the social and economic justice committee. And for that. Great. So we have a motion to come out of the. As part of the review. Some of the issues that we've. Shaina is here. Do you want to talk about this? Yeah. Gao is on as well. Oh, Michael's on as well. And I come on. And video, Michael. Yes. Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you now. Perfect. Video. I can start to be. Sorry. Yeah. There we go. Oh, there's that. You made it. to start or? No, I think that's fine for you to do that. Okay. We didn't plan this out quite yet. So yeah, Shreve and Cass were chemistry and Montpelier and chair of the social and economic justice advisory committee. As you know, we got $10,000 from the city to hire equity consultants on behalf of the city and want to make a proposal to enter into a contracted agreement that is with the proposals that would be with the creative discourses. And so wanting to start moving forward with this is better to be able to accomplish our goals of conducting an equity assessment for Montpelier stakeholders to be able to better understand opportunities and challenges and advancing social justice in the city's organizations and the community. And this proposal includes one hour remote work groups with city officials, formal and informed community leaders and Montpelier residents at large, an online equity survey to assess people's experiences of working and living and playing in Montpelier, interacting with the municipality and gather insights about the experiences of a diverse group of folks who live and work in playing Montpelier and the impacts of local government, particularly with regard to underrepresented or marginalized community members. And this contract that we're looking at embarking on is just phase one of a multi-phase, multi-year project that will require continued funding through the city and city council. But the Social and Economic Justice Advisory Committee is also working on a plan to solicit grant funds and donations from the large Montpelier community to continue bolster the work provided by creative discourses. So the full proposal is also included in the documentation that Cameron sent. And we were very excited about this and really hopeful that we can start working on this project as soon as possible. Anything to add, Michael, or anything, any questions from the city? You may notice that what happened in the the change in calendar because of the COVID is that what we thought it accomplished in one year can now only be accomplished in the remaining months of this fiscal year. So the other few parts of it have been moved back, we had really moved the calendar around and the creative discourse people really emphasize the importance of spending a lot of time on this first phase where we will not only be gathering information but we will be making contact in the community. So they were really reluctant to compress the calendar for phase one in order to really get a very strong basis for going forward with phases two, three, and four, I guess is the number. Thanks, Michael. Any questions for Michael or Shayna? Okay, I mean, this seems like a great plan and I appreciate that they're taking the time to do some information gathering to get to know us and yeah, just how how we can be better. So so I think what you all are looking for, oh, Jack, go ahead. Will we approve the contract as proposed? I'll second it. I was just saying, I think it might need to be that we're authorizing $1,000 to so anyway, Cameron, you're going to say something. Go ahead. I was just going to make a suggested recommended action that would be okay. So right now what we're doing is hopefully authorizing the city manager to accept creative discourses proposal on behalf of the committee and then give us permission to enter into a contract agreement that is consistent with those proposal terms. Yeah, I think that's what he said, isn't it? Yes. Yes, that's my second too. Yes. Right, perfect. So, oh, do you, I might be frozen. Can you hear me? Okay. All right, so there's motion in the second. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Oh no, I keep freezing here. That's not good. So like I didn't hear anybody say aye, just now because it's closed. Try again. I'm going to do it one more time for my own sake. All in favor, please say aye. Okay, great. And opposed. Okay, so the motion passes. Thank you and I'm looking forward to y'all getting started with this great work and I see hands from Donna and Lauren. Go ahead, Donna. Well, I just want to say one of a wonderful proposal and the material he sent us, but also there's one paragraph that really is really important. I think we have to highlight it for the community that this is about not just racism, but all the perpetual biases, sexism, heterosexual, classism, ableism, and et cetera. And I really want us to keep that broad focus. So I really appreciate the paragraph in here that highlighted that. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. And Lauren. Yeah, I just wanted to take a moment to thank the committee who's been working incredibly hard. And, you know, it's been a long time of figuring out how to move forward. And camera as Cameron as staff has done incredible work as well as the many volunteers and just reiterate my appreciation to counsel to in the community for approving this as part of our budget and maintaining it through these really challenging times. But I think this work is going to be really valuable for the community. And, you know, knowing the ongoing conversations we're having about racial and other kinds of social justice, I think it's a really timely and important conversation. So excited to move forward. And I think this, the consulting company is going to be great and has been very flexible with, you know, trying to make this work in a time of COVID when we have to be nimble and maybe do things a little differently and adjust it. So I appreciate that as well. Thanks, everyone. Thank you. Thank you, Lauren. Thank you, Cameron, and thank you. Same here. Great. Well, we look forward to creative discourse, creative discourse, getting into the work. So, and you all as well. So thank you so much. All right. So moving on to the next item is the Park Street closure. So for this, am I turning it over to Bill or Cameron or someone else? Hi. So we have been in discussion with the schools and I see Andrew LaRosa is on and can probably talk into this, talk about this more, more better than I can. But because you may recall two years ago, we closed Park Avenue for the playground, the temporary playground. And the school would like to do something similar to that this year for different reasons. It has to do with the way they're going to have to unload kids from buses and line them up due to COVID and the testing and those kinds of things. We're still working on some bus routes. So I think there may be, you know, there's still maybe stuff to deal with that. As far as the closure itself, I'll turn it over to Andrew to take it from here. So Andrew, it looks like so we're not able to hear you right now. It doesn't look like you're muted on Zoom. Right now. Yes. Now we can hear you. I gotta go through my phone. Yeah, as part of the AOE's reopening guidelines, we have to pre-screen all the kids before they enter into the building. So and that combined with the pod model that we're using at Union of being able to track kids and their interactions with each other's, we need to, before the kids enter, enter onto the site, we're going to take their temperature, they're going to go straight to their teacher or pod teacher. From there, they'll be escorted into the building and into their classrooms. So we have to stage 450 kids safely outside and we just don't have the space anywhere other than Park Avenue to do that. We'll be staggering the bussers and the walkers. So they'll actually probably end up going inside in two groups, but it's probably going to be some overlap. So yeah, we just, we need the space to do it safely. And then same thing with release times, we aren't going to just fling open the doors and then send people out. We're going to be releasing walkers. We're going to be releasing specific kids when they're getting picked up by a car. We'll be releasing them specifically. And also for buses, we need to queue everyone up and get them back onto the bus that they came from. So it's just a matter of space. Connor. I'm just wondering, school to school, are we pretty much having the same protocol? Do we have enough space for Main Street Middle School? I was thinking that might be a bit tight as well. Well, Main Street is a little bit different in that the kids are obviously older, so we can kind of tell them where they need to go. We're going to be entering into Main Street on either five or six different entrances. So they'll be spread out a little bit more. UBS will go through two. And it's more the control piece of that. The older kids, we can kind of tell them where to go and they'll get there. And the high school is a different scenario in that half the students will be going in a morning session, half will be going in the afternoon and they'll be entering in through two entrances. So that one's going to be again, they'll pass. That'll be much easier to control. Jack. Hi, Andrew. A couple of years ago, when we did the playground project, there was a lot of outreach and communication with the neighbors who would be affected. And I think that was part of one of the keys to the success. And I wonder if you could update us on how things are going in that area. Yeah, we've been in touch with John, the neighbor, directly across the street. He understands the need. We're going to work with his tenants to make sure that they have off-street parking in the winter time and just like we did last time, as well as the other neighbors up on Park Avenue. We actually, Bill and I were contacted by them this afternoon or maybe it was yesterday. But we've talked about some of the issues that we had last time and we all agree that we learned a lot. We'll just be a little more proactive on this. But they're all, I don't want to say, I don't want to say they're supportive, but they're not here saying that they don't want it to happen, though. I think they are supportive of an understanding of the need. And you told them that this is going to be on the agenda tonight so that we knew to be here if they wanted to be. Okay. And we've talked to them about you know, last time we provided a couple parking spaces on Loomis for the resident that was blocked and we said we would do that again. So they understand that. One thing I think, Andrew, it's clearer now. I know, and I was out last week, so I know you've had some conversations. At one point it wasn't clear whether this was going to be all the time or just some time. And I think you know it all the time. The R expectation of the school district, school district is that the guidelines by the AOE that has been put in place will be for the whole school year. Now that may change, but we're interesting. We need that pre-screening through the whole year. Closures will include nights and weekends. Yeah. Yeah, just for safety. Every time we talk with Bob and the police chiefs, just sort of getting people in the habit of knowing that that road is closed versus, oh, I think it's open. I think it's closed. Closing it just seems safer just to get people in the habit of not making that turn. And we'll do like we did last year. We'll have a custodian or a teacher park their car in front of the barricades during school hours. So there's just a little extra buffer there. Now the other question I had, and again, I apologize. I know we should have covered this. You would have covered this last Friday, but I wasn't here on our normal weekly call. You're not doing the buses up on Harbour Street this year, right? They're all dropping. As I understand it, I know Livy and Spacey with the bus company are deep in the throes of figuring the buskers out. But as I understand it, we're going to be, the guidance prior to this was prior to the latest guidance that I'll have to go back and look at what they changed for the buses. But basically you were assigned a seat, you got on that seat, and then at night, in the afternoon, when you got back on the bus, you went in reverse order. So nobody has to like walk by somebody sitting in the seat. So with that all in mind, the idea is that we bring a bus on Loomis, park it, kids get out, that bus leaves a few minutes later, the next bus comes, and we'll reload that same way. So short answer, short answer is no, we're not going to put the buses up on Harbour Street again. Thank you. Well, Dan. Yeah, a couple questions. The fencing material, is this going to be similar to the Park Street closure before where there was permanent posts? Are we talking more barricades? More barricades. We're using a similar style that was put out on Langdon Street for a couple reasons. We get to reuse them again and we actually talked about the city about maybe being able to share them. We get to reuse them again. They're about the same price as putting in a chain link fence. And when it came to plowing and things like that, having just gives us more flexibility. We don't know how this is going to evolve. So it will be movable barricade, but similar to the ones that are down on Langdon Street. And will it be fenced in totally like it was before where you create that sort of enclosure? Or are you just barricading this? Okay, so it'll go down the sidewalk. Okay. And along the lines of some of the neighbour concerns, and you may or may not be able to answer this, and some of this may go to the city and to Donna, but I received questions from some of the neighbours about clearing the sidewalks with the plow and presumably with the new barricades, that will make that process easier. And that the plowed street snow and sidewalk isn't piled up in front of houses or drives. And so have you addressed those issues with the neighbours? Yeah, it's Jeff, correct? That's the neighbour. Yeah, that was one of the specific concerns was that snow bank. And really what it was last year was we ended up plowing, we dumped it up at the top, and it was a matter we got so much snow last year that everybody kind of got behind. So what we'll do is we'll just make sure that this year we don't get behind, and we make sure that there's an easy drive out of there. So that was a concern and we're aware of it and we'll be ahead of it, but yeah. And this question, the last question I think is maybe more for Bill or Donna, is with Hubbard Street, is that on the agenda to be repaved or reworked, especially the stretch from Liberty Street to Park Street seems to have really taken a couple of hits. And if there's more traffic as a result of this closure, is there as René thought to maybe doing some emergency, at least some emergency patching to help with this traffic flow? I'll let Deepin have you answer this one. Thanks, we're sharing a computer here, so apologies that we've had technical difficulties with that from my computer. So yes, we can do some patching that can ameliorate some of the concerns or not. We don't have a plan to do much more than that at this point. We can certainly engage in discussions. We want to create a safe situation, but right now patching would be what we would be looking to do. Okay. And maybe along those lines, actually, I'm sorry to ask one more question, but as René thought to maybe removing the on-street parking along that corridor of Hubbard Street, because I know when people park on the side of Hubbard Street, it really narrows that road and it becomes impassable as a two-way street, particularly in winter, but certainly in the, even in summer and fall. And if this is going to be a high traffic area, again, because of the blockage of Park Street, would that be on your radar? So, Dan, I'll jump in here. That also could be the preview of the City Council, if you think that's something we lived with that last time. Obviously, there were barricades up in the morning and the afternoon, but people could then park there during the days. I recall it wasn't no parking. Well, this would be on Hubbard Street, not necessarily on Park Street. The way it worked two years ago is that school staff went out and put barricades during the actual bus time, but the rest of the time it was open to the public. It wasn't closed all the time. I think the counter to that is when you close Park there's a whole bunch of parking that teachers and school staff and parents and everybody use and it's already a really tight situation for the neighbors and everybody else there. So, you know, we certainly could block off even one side of parking and I've been through there myself. You're right, it becomes one way and you have to kind of work your way through. I think usually for us, the biggest criteria is whether we can get an emergency vehicle through that would really prompt us to at least for us to propose action. And I don't think we've experienced that, but we can take a look at that. We can talk to our team. Okay. Yeah. Oh, that's someone else. I just want to support Dan that that condition of the road, no matter what's happening. Donna, if you can, I think I might be frozen. Go ahead, Donna. Yeah. That part of Hubbard Street, no matter what's going on at Park Ab is just in terrible condition. It's big holes that grab your tires. And so when you have just those four or five cars parked there, it's really bad year round the low and snow builds up. I really think we ought to look at it for everybody's safety as well as emergency vehicles. But a fire truck's not going to fall in that hole like my car will fall in that hole. Thank you. Does this sound like the kind of thing Donna or Bill or someone that we can look into and follow up on? Definitely. Okay, super. Any other questions or comments on this application? Okay. I was just going to say that, you know, I think getting all of these logistics right for the neighbors and for the parking, but certainly the, you know, the space that we need for our kids, I know our school administrators like are in this impossible situation right now trying to figure out how to make school work. So just appreciate the school administration and the work that's going into trying to keep our kids safe, you know, having two kids who are going to be going there, you know, knowing that they have the space they need to get the distance and have the screenings and all of that. So I'm glad to see that, you know, we're trying to make it work and, you know, make sure that we can get the logistics work for the neighbors and everyone as well. But I just wanted to add that in. Jay, was that again? Go ahead, Jay. Yeah, just quickly to add to that, because the buses are not doing that, one of the main things that we did when we set up the program two years ago, what the playground was, did the bus drop off and pick up up on Hubbard past, you know, up above the playground. And so because we don't have to do that now, there's still that parking available, which I think is, you know, which is a big difference relative to what we're talking about now where the buses will drop off closer to the school in the staggered way. So I think that that, you know, helps the process and it is not as much of an impediment to the neighbors for the school year. Yeah. And just to be clear, you know, my concern about the parking is really from Liberty Street to Park Street. That's where it really bottlenecks. The segment of Hubbard from Park to State Street, I think is more much more manageable. Generally, it's a little bit wider. It just seems to bottleneck at that, at that first segment. And I think, but I'm perfectly satisfied. I like the idea that, you know, we revisit it and just look into it. I don't want to necessarily start eliminating parking spaces if we don't have to. But it certainly is something that I think we should be keeping on our radar because I think it is the one sort of weak, weak link here as far as traffic flow. Okay. So is there a motion? Go ahead, Jack. Move it. We approve the plan. Okay. So there's a motion and a second for the discussion. All in favor, please say aye. And opposed. Okay. So we've approved the closure of Park Street plan. So thank you so much, Andrew, for coming to tell us about this and help us understand it. So great. Hopefully we have a safe school year. Absolutely. Absolutely. You got the best superintendent in the state right now working for you. Awesome. It's encouraging. All right. So we're going to move on to the stormwater master plan. And so for this, I am sort of assuming I'm turning it over to Zach Ardana. And Kurt. And Kurt. So yes, the three of us are going to present different aspects of the stormwater update. So I just want to sort of recap that we provided in the packet an updated memo so that a lot of the details you were able to look at and read prior to the conversation tonight. The last time we provided an update was in February of 2018. And I'll start off with some general information and then the majority of the details which I haven't been here for will be presented by my two colleagues. And then we'll take questions. So in terms of the stormwater overview, we have a list of and Cameron, do you have the I will share your presentation right now. Thank you so much. Can you see it? Yes, I can see it. Hopefully everybody else can. So in the stormwater update, the overview is that we have a variety of components that are in play here. The stormwater master plan, which was last provided in February 2018, municipal roads general permit initially applied for coverage in 2018. The roof drain study, which was completed last year, development of a long term control plan. That's the draft is completed. There's more work to be done on that. And the stormwater study state plan is the only part of the system that I've mentioned that is not included in the master plan. We are also partnering on the completion of work for these for the plan. We work directly with the Friends of the Wynuski, which has been a real positive experience for us. They have expertise, as you probably know, project development grant writing and they administratively support the city. They've served as a conduit in a number of instances for accessing funding, which has been critical since the stormwater program in general is not currently been funded in our annual plan. And we've also worked with the Regional Planning Commission on a variety of initiatives. So collectively, we're making progress. And I'm going to turn this over at this point to Zach. All right. So first of all, I'm going to start off with just a broad definition of what the stormwater master plan is. And it's an overview of both existing and future considerations, anticipated development with an opportunity to identify stormwater treatment and mitigation projects and efforts that will have the highest return on investment. The goal of this document is to support the city in improving stormwater management by providing a list of high priority water resource concerns and identifying some conceptual solutions that will support development and implementation in the future in a targeted manner. Some of the other components that were identified in the master plan include a review of our best management practices for street sweeping and catch basin cleaning, a priority list of problem areas, highlight opportunities to implement treatment in combined sewer overflow areas, present some conceptual ideas for the high priority areas that were identified, and review the available funding sources that were currently, that were in 2018 when master plan was drafted. Next slide camera. So in 2018, we provided a very similar list to what is here. And everything that you see in green highlighted in green is a change in status from 2018 to 2020. So we just recently implemented CSO monitoring systems in all of our overflow structures, which is going to be great because it's going to provide us with a lot of data that we haven't had. So it'll help us target areas for a reduction in CSO volumes. So that was just implemented in the past about a month ago. We're still in the confirmation and configuration phase with our consultant at this time. As we mentioned before, we since completed the roof drain separation study. And then there are a few projects where we have actually implemented some treatment. Old Country Club Road along the bike path, the new bike path, the BSECU parking lot that you've probably all seen on the little stormwater treatment area. The UES did some stormwater treatment as well when they redid their playground. We finished the design of the Hubbard Park system. And now we're, we've actually received a grant for that project. We had a hope to get into construction this summer, but due to COVID, it's kind of slowed things down there. So we're going to, we are hopeful that we'll be able to get an extension so that we can construct that hopefully next year. Chestnut Hill was the design had been completed. We have received some grant funding to do a portion of that project. And lastly is the Taylor Street brick arched lining and stormwater treatment that is currently being done as we speak. All right, so this slide is really, technical difficulties here. All right, let's try that again. So this slide is really meant to illustrate sort of the different projects that come up related to stormwater quality. There's always a surprise, you know, there's always a new issue. So, you know, the document really has to be fluid and the public works department really has to be able to adapt to new issues that come up. I'm not going to go through all these projects, but, you know, the ones that are really most aligned with the stormwater master plan is the items that involved actually treating stormwater. So that would be the Taylor Street reconstruction, which is active right now. There's forest pavements, infiltration chambers that actually clean the stormwater. Also one Taylor had similar features and Wheelock Street was identified in the plan as a potential stormwater quality treatment system. But there's other projects on here that are related to reducing CSOs and also erosion issues that come up, you know. You might have an offfall that's fine for many years and then you get one big storm and it starts to unravel and that has to become a priority for public work. So it's just kind of to indicate or illustrate that it's always changing, it's always adapting and new projects are always coming up that we have to address. Next slide, Cameron. Next I want to talk about the Municipal Roads General Permit, which was, we first applied for coverage in 2018. When the stormwater master plan was developed, we knew that we were going to be required to under our permit, but at the time we didn't know what that was going to look like. We have since been under, since 2018, we've been under coverage and now we've been working on the projects that were identified through this permit. So there was an inventory that was completed in addition to applying for coverage and not all of the projects that are required for us to under the MRGP program are identified in the stormwater master plan. So we wanted to take this time to talk about both components because they're both important to stormwater quality. This permit was required by Act 64 and it requires all municipalities to bring non-compliant hydrologically connected roads and outfalls to standards by December 31, 2036. Next slide. So roof trains are, a lot of them are connected directly to the sewer system and so they contribute to combined sewer overflows, which is obviously a water quality concern. We, two years ago we got a 50,000 grant to the Lake Champlain Basin program to update our roof train study. There was one originally prepared in 1995 and really the report looked kind of in-depth at the commercial, the large buildings with a fairly large contributing area stormwater to the sewer and just kind of a rough layout of some options for residential treatment. So through this grant we updated all the commercial buildings and the schools where they're at, looked at whether it would require internal or external work to separate them from the sewer system and it ties into the long-term control plan as Zach mentioned for eliminating CSOs. We're also able to purchase a smoke testing machine through this grant, which is a great tool for identifying these issues and sort of the last piece that we have to wrap up with this is to propose some ordinance. Resolving these issues will require going on to or working with private properties and now we're working on an update to the sewer ordinance now already. There's some updates that maybe we've done for managing, managing grease in the sewer system as well. So we will come back at some point to council and have some language for your consideration to include roof train separation work and tying in with that related to the, to the roof train connections is a long-term control plan. So this is a requirement of our wastewater plant discharge permit is to develop a plan to effectively eliminate CSO overflow events and that's going to require a variety of different things. The roof train separation work is a component of it. There's also some street separation, there's infiltration, there's capacity issues with our collection system and the siphons that transfer the wastewater across the rivers and we just wanted to mention this as again it's all tied into water quality it's not it's CSOs are mentioned in the storm water master plan but just very briefly and it is you know we feel a very important consideration if as you look at overall water quality for month failure. So we have completed the draft of the long-term control plan the state has provided comments back and we're currently updating the plan based on those comments and really what this plan does is sort of give us a roadmap we've identified funding based on the sewer master plan for projects that need to be done in order to eliminate CSOs it's going to take some time but just recently we're able to get the the automatic monitor systems in which allows us to see on our computer when an overflow happens the volume that actually discharges and where that water is coming from if there's multiple pipes entering the structure so it's a great first step and and I think you know like I said this is a very important piece of this overall water quality picture so just wanted to bring that into the discussion here. All right this okay so this graphic here is second to the last of our graphic presentations and it's placed here so that it identifies the collective efforts that are ongoing that we've been talking about and it's an opportunity for questions and answers before that concludes the presentation of what's next so if any of you have questions directly related to what's been presented or to the memo we're having to answer questions now. And on this chart here the stuff in green show indicates that it is a regulatory requirement so we have both the permit requirements for MRGP in the long-term control plan. Great so am I to understand that that's you all are done with your presentation then and which is okay? We have one more slide we can just do that. Okay sorry. So what's next for us is that in the fall we need to provide a draft update to the state of Vermont of our long-term control plan so we are currently going through those edits now. We have an intern working for us and she's actually been able to go through and address a lot of the stuff that has already been identified within the long-term control plan and the draft plan. And the next step is to finish up our draft and get it back to the state for review. In addition to that by the end of 2020 under our municipal roads general permit we have to have a stormwater management plan in order to be in compliance. So we will be we will be giving this it actually goes to regional planning who submits it on our behalf to the state of Vermont. So that'll be due by the end of 2020. And then the other component is development of a stormwater study state master plan which is we have these master plans for sewer and we have them for water and we feel that we need to develop the same thing with for stormwater so that we can tackle both the failing infrastructure and the treatment in a combined effort. Now is there any questions? Okay any questions for this crew? I have lots of questions and some ideas and comments but I'm going to save them for now. Is that on hand from Lauren? Yeah a couple quick questions. One I was just curious when you mentioned that you're part of what you're working on for the CSOs is a proposed policy just curious what the timeline of when we might see a proposal on that. So I think you mentioned the roof train separation policy is that what you're referring to the ordinance update for the roof train connections? That might have been it was yeah I might have been part of that I just thought that there was a tie to the CSO policy proposal just curious when that would be coming back to us potentially. So did that the long-term control plan hurt? Somebody wanted to tell him that we can't hear him. We can't hear you. Okay try that again. So the long-term control plan is it's a document that's submitted to the state as far as like our roadmap to remaining CSOs. It's not it's and it's tied to the funding levels we have in the sewer master plan and so as far as approval by council I mean I don't know it has to be approved by the state but it's I was more referring to coming to council about the roof train separation ordinance to approve some. That's what I was wondering about the timing of. Okay I would say this winter sometime I'd like to present that to council after construction season. Yes just a couple more quick ones. Do you know yet how the impending three acre general permit might impact like priorities or what that might change for what the city's going to have to do in the coming years and I mean I know the timeline on that is pretty long but my understanding is that it's kind of ready to go and could come out soon. I'm just curious what what that might do to change priorities or bump things up the list. Right um yeah the city doesn't have a lot of large properties contiguous right this the cemetery is probably one maybe helper park that could be impacted by that. I don't see a large impact from that rule for the city because there's not a lot of impervious areas associated with them but something we'll definitely have to address as it comes up. Great um just curious too how much in the plan is you know I assume it's all at this point like climate resilience is built into whatever standards we're looking at just curious how much the you know knowing that the world is changing and standards is that baked in at this point is there still work to do on ensuring that you know infrastructure investments we're making are going to be resilient to the future that. Right so you know almost everything is is underground so there you have some protection from elements there and you know the goal of most of the infrastructure work is to increase capacity you know the the that's really our um restricting factors the wastewater plant can treat a lot more water than we can get to it um so it's it's and our really our approach is to preserve infrastructure while at the same time increasing capacity so things like aligning the concrete pipes um with either epoxy or plastic so which will reduce the friction get it there faster but also preserve the assets are sort of getting two benefits out of the investment um so that's really the primary approach to how we went about the long-term control plan is is increase capacity while preserving the asset. Um did I see a hand from Dan at one point? Um you may have but I do actually have a question so I'm happy to. I had one specific question it just caught my eye in reviewing the slides uh when you talked about the road diet um what does that mean? So uh there's a for example on uh Greenfield-Darefield we had a road that was like 36 to 38 feet in width so when we reclaimed and redid the road you shrink up the amount of impervious area which is a really good benefit for stormwater quality because you allow water to get off the road and get and start absorbing through the natural features like such as grass or swales or trees rain gardens um when we say road diet that's what we're meaning uh so if you have you know a 10 percent reduction in impervious area there's other communities that have utilities that they get credits for those type of actions um so it's something that we don't necessarily have a credit or get any acknowledgement for but we still consistently when we can try to shrink up the roads it also helps with traffic common. And so it doesn't have anything to do with the solder sand mixture that you pour on the roads or the type of asphalt that you use. And I guess the I had a sort of overarching question is um you know what are the biggest impediments to implementing the next phases in the stormwater master plan? Is it money or is it uh sort of time and resources? It's a little bit of both so we have um that's kind of why we wanted to talk about the stormwater master plan the long-term control plan the roof drain study we have some kind of competing areas with their really all using the same funds. So you know we've talked about developing a stormwater utility so that we can dress all components of it um that's right now we're kind of you know we're lacking funding and resources to really capture all sides of of the picture. And when you say develop a stormwater utility do you mean sort of a utility district that deals strictly to stormwater that has its own budget or I'm sorry. It's like an enterprise fund that is related specifically to stormwater improvements and other areas that have been successful in implementing that I think there's five in all of the state of Vermont. They put a portion towards infrastructure, put a portion towards public outreach, put a portion towards stormwater treatment so it's a way that they can kind of hit each piece. So I'm gonna jump in here because I just want to clarify that so you're picturing a potential stormwater utility as being a part of the long-term control plan? Not completely. There are kind of two things that go together but not really within the long-term control plan. Okay I want to talk more about that but I realize I'm interrupting Dan so there's anything more you had there Dan? No? Okay. Donna? Yes it was about the road diet. Now is that going to be, I mean many of you will know the Berlin, Berry Montoya road, that was the road diet of reducing the car lanes but in the complete streets that we've adopted part of the road diet in neighborhoods of the streets you listed that don't have sidewalks would be to make sure there's some space created to be shared for walkers and bikers. Is that part of your plan? So we do consider that and that's why we work with Cory pretty closely to make sure that when we want to narrow a street down that it's not counter, it's not going against initiatives that are in the bike pad master plan. So we kind of work together in areas to make sure that if it's identified in a different plan or different documents that we're not just reducing for stormwater purposes but we're trying to be cognizant of all of the considerations. Right because there's road diets to reduce the car lane but to have space for other modes. Okay please keep that in mind. We do and that's I work really closely with Cory to make sure that good. Thank you. All the information provided tonight is very very helpful. Thank you. That's a great question Don and I think that's something for the council to keep in mind is that sometimes we have goals important goals and priorities that in some ways conflict with one another and you know and this is we've used this example in the past that you know one of the best ways to deal with with storm waters have more you know less impervious surface so you narrow the roads have more dirt and drainage and those kind of things but at the same time we have a policy of wanting more bike lanes and more sidewalks which really would call for widening and creating more spaces so while they're both great things to have you know I think we need to you know DPW is doing it right but I think it's just important for the council to remember that they can be at odds with one another even though they're both good so you know we kind of have to pick and choose this is a road that we're going to ought to keep the bike and ped lanes on this one maybe not so we can get more you know better storm. And Northfield Street is a really good example of that we wanted to put in uphill bike lane but what that meant is that it triggered us to do some stormwater treatment with that project so because we wanted to do the initiative and have that uphill bike lane on Northfield Street we created more impervious area which then triggered us to do some treatment of the stormwater. So would this be a decision in the future of these streets done by staff or are they going to come back to the CIP and then the council? Typically we use our planning documents to guide us so Cori works closely with you about priorities within the bike pet master plan so we use those documents to help really prioritize how what we need to do. If there was something controversial I'm guessing we would come back and ask for a recommendation but the ones that we've come across so far have been pretty straightforward. Thank you. Yeah I may jump in here with some questions unless other folks have some questions I will ask. So I dug up the 2016 stormwater master plan just to you know look at the things that were listed there because as I had recalled it seemed like I mean there was this incredible list of things to do and I just want to say like just looking at the list of things do you all have accomplished in the last four years it is awesome. There's it's an impressive amount of work for for even just four years so thank you awesome keep up the great work it's it's really encouraging. You know looking at the old stormwater master plan there were some projects that were not addressed in this and I think that's because they were private and I so it makes sense that like it's not it's not in our purview to make those kinds of projects happen but I just want to note them you know I mean some of the problem areas that were discussed in that 2016 plan were the the Jacobs parking lot sort of like behind I guess it's now rabble rouser so like behind there or the parking lot at Shaw's also like behind the Coulter's garden on the Barry Montpelier road all of these were private properties that need you know that need addressing and I I'm just so just before I jump in I'm guessing you all I don't know like I don't think we would have necessarily kept track of whether or not work had been done there but do you do you happen to know with like those three sites for example if work has been done no no work has been done on on those sites in specific I think a lot of the of our approach was doing some of the the easiest stuff first you know a lot of the stuff that was in that was public that we could easily tackle and then we also partnered with the friends of Winooski who helped do the credit union project right so we really rely on those partnerships to help get some of these these private projects done but there's also the funding issue that we don't really have funding for them so you know when we did when we repaved College Street at the time we had applied for a grant to do swales well we were already in motion to pave it and we didn't get the grant so it you know it kind of is what it is at that point I mean we had to pave it we had to improve the street but we missed the that we didn't get it didn't get funded so that's why we are bringing up you know kind of the competing issues in the funding discussion because if we don't get grants then it sometimes it prevents us from being able to tackle some of these things that were identified and so funding right now for these kinds of projects if we don't get grants would they be paid from like this charge can you you cut out for a second there okay so if let's say we didn't get grant funding for something I mean we have this like water sewer benefit charge does that go help to pay for some storm water improvements not at this time and if you were to develop a utility you could consider reallocating some of that but that's that would also have to be approved and you use some of the CSO benefit charge to pay for storm water maintenance work we have used some of that but not the full capital projects okay so I mean I so I'm very interested in the long-term steady-state plan for storm water but that does raise this issue of how is it going to be paid for and one of the options there is a storm water utility and just thinking about the the water sewer benefit charge you know if that has gone for you know maintenance of the storm water system in the past it seems to me that we should think about who is paying into that and is that the right amount because some players in the city are our bigger contributors to storm water than others and I mean and you could look at this from both a water quality perspective as well as a risk for erosion that kind of thing so you know right now the the water sewer benefit charge is based on property value right but I think about you know shaws for example maybe they don't have a proportionally speaking very expensive they have an incredible amount of asphalt and so theoretically I would suppose that someone with a lot of asphalt like that ought to be paying more into some fund that's going to go towards remediating you know water quality and and erosion and I also just for context I even just this week was approached by a homeowner who said you know there's this creek behind my house and it is eroding my property and I don't I don't have funds to to correct it I don't like I anyway so just thinking about how our private folks paying for water issues particularly in regards to erosion that we anticipate are going to get worse because of climate change so it would be great I would love for there to be a funding mechanism that both went to help with the maintenance of the the system and got us up to where it needs to be so just all that is to say something that would fund the long term plan but in addition to that might provide some kind of grant opportunities for private citizens that ideally would be self-defeating right because let's say you know a place that has a lot of asphalt like VSECU puts in a a swale or rain garden that that would then you know help reduce their contribution to to let's say a stormwater utility so this is something I've been talking about for a while and even just knowing that you all are like open to that idea I think is is really helpful and interesting and I think if we were to go down that road it could potentially reconfigure the water sewer benefit charge so I just want to put it out there oh hey I'm saying Lauren I just want to put it out that this is something that I am very interested in and would love to dig into with a small group of folks if if others are interested you know focusing on who's paying for stormwater management now and who should be and how do we configure that I just want to put that out there is like basically as a stormwater funding study group and yeah I'm not sure if I wanted to like ask right now like anybody else interested but okay so they're okay just interested and then maybe we can see if there's other public maybe there's other members of the public who might be interested as well fabulous great um a little little stormwater working group um I'm very interested in it as well I've attended a few conferences and seminars about the creation of a utility and what other communities are doing so just trying to get to learn how to do it and what that looks like because there's a lot of different ways that it can be done cool um all right um so I saw a couple waves there thumbs up of anybody else interested in talking about this I'm oh gosh oh there's too many of us actually because I think wait can we we can't have a quorum right um one two three four five there were five folks interested um so I might actually just bow myself out of this is that a good idea I don't know um let's well we can we can talk about that in a minute I'm gonna I'm gonna pause that conversation let's come back to that at the end um other thoughts questions actually I have one other thing before I stop talking um I just want to note I think I said this to you Zach but um I know you're replacing the brick arch lining uh on Taylor street uh I would just I know I said this to you before I just want to say it again I would love to see any pictures if any exist of that infrastructure because I just think that would be super interesting all right we'll make sure we get some to you awesome thanks um other thoughts questions ideas uh Lauren and then Dan um no I just kind of piloted I'm glad there's so much interest in the stormwater utility idea um I think one one other piece that I think would be really exciting is um a lot of conversations like I've had with developers and others about how you could get creative about doing stormwater projects where you could pool multiple properties so that you could save money for you know individual people's obligations but get better stormwater outputs and stuff so I just think there's a lot of potential so just excited and sorry it's really loud at my house all of a sudden apologies all good uh Dan yeah I I guess I would strike a note of caution on some of this one is I I'd look to see what other municipalities in Vermont have done and where the authorization has come from you know because of the Dylan's rule state that you know other states may be able to do this because they have greater authority um I know that uh Morrisville has done this something similar with their wastewater especially with the breweries up there um and they've run into some some issues I think we just have to be careful if we start to impose these type of um you know utility charges that we create we make sure we don't um as you suggested you know uh cause people to lose incentives to improve the stormwater treatment on their own properties um or put people in a very difficult position where they have to choose between um you know improvements to the house or fixing a long-standing existing drainage system that predates their ownership and I guess you know it's just being in a river valley like we are water flows everywhere um and I think we just I think we just have to be thoughtful about any any approach in this in this uh in this direction that's all I'll say fair enough um it's a good call I mean I've also heard South Burlington has done something similar at least there's some folks that we can look at um be interested they have particular permission in their charter to do something like this well that that's that's what I would want to know is where they get the authority to you know what the source of authority is and the scope of authority and what they're planning what they what they do from it um you know because I'm sure it's six different versions of it if it exists yeah um so so Zach you said you're also interested in this yes um just to come back to just but you only you can have five at this um if we only had gosh we can only have three of us as council members on such a group um so who's like super excited passionate wants to do it now you're just going to back out who's up where we got Jay count me in Lauren uh oh I saw Lauren see into us I'm a frickin I was I just was frozen again did anybody else raise their hand Lauren okay so if it's if it's me Jay and and Lauren um Zach can I I don't know if I can say this but it would make sense to me um Zach if you're willing to like just email us and see if we can find a day to meet um does that sound okay yes it does okay we'll assume and Zach and figure out but yes staff will begin staff will set up a meeting okay okay fabulous fabulous well I think just just just to bring the last two items together you know the stormwater was such a guiding factor in the design of the new playground at union um and how we managed that because it was you know besides being a brownfield site but you know was such a failure in terms of what it was contributing to to stormwater in the city and um you know but not understanding necessarily what sort of guidelines the project was you know beholden to or on behalf of the city or if if you know this is sort of a time to establish those but you know it was a big project and um but it was and it was a real priority to it and it turned out to be a learning opportunity for the students to understand sort of the impact that that that you know sort of the place where their school sat you know made a difference to what happened in the city so I think that you know thinking about these issues on on that sort of scale is really important uh jack I just I just think it's a good thing to be moving forward and and addressing as I didn't jump on it as being one of the people who has to has to be there because I don't think I have to be there but I do think it's good that we should be doing you know because I still hear every so often from someone who lives in Montpelier or someone who doesn't live in Montpelier who will say well just don't build anything as long as there's sewer overflows going on never build anything in the city and I think that is clearly not a responsible policy or position to take but making progress on all the possible runoff solutions is a good response to that awesome um all right any other further thoughts comments okay um thank you all for putting this together I think this was really helpful um and uh yeah it's good to know how the infrastructure is under the streets all right thank you all right so we're going to move on to the street painting policy and for that I probably should turn it over to Dan that's where I was going to say um well you know it's um so there's a couple of different components to this um I drafted this up as a way for us to as a city council to have a policy for people that come requesting street painting um on the streets of Montpelier you know this was probably a non-issue uh six months ago it's now a hot topic um in the past 60 days um what this policy is intended to do is is create some sort of clarity first of all why the city is how the city is um is is functioning and it starts with the statutory authority and I'll just sort of walk through the street painting policy that uh the the draft and it starts with the statutory authority um which begins in title 19 um that says that all towns and cities um have general supervision and control over all roads within the city limits um this authority is subject to the general power of the Vermont agency of transportation uh general supervision of all which has general supervision of all transportation functions on state highways and concurrent jurisdiction overall class one town highways under 19 PSA section uh 1101 so the purpose of this policy is is really to maintain our primary obligation is to maintain public roads in a safe manner to allow citizens of the city and the general public to travel safely across and within the city's geographic boundaries this maintenance includes plowing sanding patching repair repaving as well as painting and repainting traffic lines and signals and so the idea of that is to really state that our main purpose of these roads is still to for safe travel and and transit they're right of ways that um are mainly for pedestrian and motor vehicle traffic um but you know we have had individuals and groups requesting permission to paint decorative and political displays in the public streets and this policy is intended to clarify that this is not an application process where people would have vested rights in it but it is a process for us as a city council to evaluate requests and to determine whether we choose to accept them or not because I think this is the what I suspect is that we're going to see more of these requests rather than fewer um and certainly now that the door has sort of opened now people want to understand well how can I paint something on my street whether it be state street uh Langdon street or Park Street in front of the school and so there's a definition section um then it talks about you know the estate authority and the idea is that um if if it's a class one highway or something where VTrans has concurrent jurisdiction um you know we would recognize that jurisdiction and that VTrans may have their own process of reviewing it and that the city would facilitate that and basically we're not looking to usurp or alter that relationship. The second section deals with public safety you know that first and foremost any project cannot interfere with the public safety of these roads um and create what I've termed an unreasonable degradation of pedestrian or motor vehicle safety so you know we had this discussion with the Black Lives Matter mural which is you know is it safe or unsafe for people to drive over it and so some of the issues that we added to that was to add grit to the paint to make sure that it stayed um it had texture that allowed tires to grip as well as you know noting that it was on a straight away and a low um low speed area so that the risk was not unreasonable. Section three talks about the request process and this is something what I've drafted here talks about the since we're not talking about an application or you know requiring the public to come forward with this um it's really about um you know do we as a city council want to take up any of these requests and so you know really the request to install the project should it should originate either from us as a council or um a city councilor who's approached about a project because I think at the end of the day we're ultimately looking to um paint things that are coming from and support the community that we represent um and so that reinforces that idea that we would um you know it would have to come through it would be sponsored and introduced by one or more members of city council for review and deliberation um if a private individual group wants to make the request you know they've they've got to approach a city councilor and get the city councilor to sponsor it and you know there's there's six of us plus the mayor seven effectively um you know one of us should be able to sponsor that and also then work with that group to address some of these issues um section four talks about project location um and just sort of setting out some of the I think safety basics um you know that we don't want it to be on the very busy streets so if somebody says I want to do it on Memorial Drive or I want to do I mean we don't have jurisdiction but you know the interstate obviously um that creates met a lot more problems and we want it to be uh and I borrowed this from some of the research that I did a 10,000 vehicle per day or less because it's easier to stop traffic it's also less likely to wear and it's just simpler and so we just block off those high traffic route two type streets um also saying that the project should be located in a mid block area away from intersections or markings leading up to an intersection project has to be designed to avoid interference with crosswalks and on-street parking spaces um you know and also noting that if if if we do get applications for residential neighborhoods that they carry different impact it's one thing to paint something on State Street or Landon Street it's another to paint something in front of somebody's house and I can see concerns about residents having um that something might you know either impact their daily lives and their house or property values or some other concern that I think is different than um in our public sphere of the downtown section five really talks about prohibited locations um areas that would be just really unsafe um so these are just portions of the roadway that include school zone markings or railroad markings approaches to signalize intersections within 200 feet as these typically enter turn lanes arrows and stop bars so wherever streets likely to have a lot of painting already we don't want to interfere or obscure that um crosswalks bike lanes and parking spaces unless a project can be designed around such features and we'll not obscure them and that's something I think we raised when we considered black lives matter project is you know making sure that that crosswalk was still delineated and clear um in that project um you know so it goes through some of these things section six talks about design guidelines and standards um and this is really uh two two areas that I sort of um guidelines are really things that we may consider as a city council and I just tried to articulate similar to the flag policy what are we trying to do here and why are we having this policy and so the guidelines are really about you know enhancing the community identity pride and unity the providing the highest quality artwork available promoting excellence and demonstrating diversity and barrier for media um so it's sort of these aspirational things that we would we would look to as we were evaluating this process project and so that someone who wanted to make a request could look to and say well you know this is why you should why you should adopt this and then the second part standards is really much more about the you know the the real things that we really don't want we don't want logos and commercial speech we don't want um issues with copyright we don't want you know someone's living image who hasn't given permission to do it um you know I I really don't want my face on State Street and if somebody wants to do it the guy asked me first um you know no images of the United States flag because that's inconsistent with our flag code no profanity or obscene material um you know project may not be designed to be located so it's perceived to be commenting on and modifying or altering an existing project um you know that the um there has to be an overall positive message um and and then it gets into um some I think more just the basic you know that the projects have enough grit to grip tires on the roadway um that they don't mimic traffic control devices um you know we don't have any wily coyote type designs on the on the street um you know the project the paint is applied in a precise and high quality manner I think that's something you know we really we didn't consider when we initially get granted the Black Black so I don't know but it's certainly something I thought about afterwards is like what if it's not painted well um what if it's uh you know what if it's their spills or you know people avoid and I think we we want to make sure that anything that does get painted because it is ultimately reflective of what we want in the city that it looks nice and so that would be sort of these standards section seven just talks about the review process trying to make it very clear you know that that the first step is to go and look at the technical issues with DPW with V-trans to make sure that you know we're not there there's there's not like some threshold issue the second step would be review by city council when we would take it up that you know at that point DPW and V-trans says we're all all set to go um this the third step would be installation how it's to be installed um and and also underlying the fact that you know these become city property immediately upon completion um you know holding any any group that wants to donate and work with us that we adopt for this this type of painting um you know that they they have we're clear about the standards and what we're expecting um and then after with the post installation you know that that any of this work is done in a clean manner people clean up they don't dump they're paint down the city storm water sewers you know that we have to put a utility charge on it for them um you know and that uh that the city you know holds the right to revoke the the project at any time and any reason um even after installation if we decide you know this was a bad idea and we want to paint over it we would have you know we just want to make clear that that's to anyone so that nobody's surprised about this and this is less about setting out necessarily anybody's quote unquote rights under this and more just in an exercise in in clarity and just making sure that we're all clear this is how we see this this is any requester who comes in says you know can can say oh i knew that because this is what the policy says section nine which is last section just deals with maintenance and repair which is if somebody's going to donate this to us they can't just donate it and walk away unless we want them to um but that the normal expectation would be that they would maintain it so that if somebody drives over and squeals their tires they would be responsible for repainting it or you know if it if some of the paint goes gets gets laid up they would be the ones who would work with the city um you know and again i think these are things that if this we the city choose to paint something it would we would effectively be doing this ourselves but if a private group wanted to work with us and we accepted that request this is what the expectations would be um and and laying that out so that's essentially and i apologize that's the prosaic walkthrough um of of this policy but the idea is again trying to make it very clear um make it very transparent as to what our expectations are um and what our policies um involving in this are so that if somebody wants them uh wants to make that request they don't have to guess i'll take questions now okay um thank you dan um uh donna i i'm just immensely i'm so impressed dan i'm just awesome i i do have some comments but it's just so inclusive and covers so much i'm really really impressed and pleased if i could ask a couple of questions of like section three and your request for process it talks about the project may originate from city council and yet over in section seven which you verbally mentioned the primary contact may obtain a must obtain a sponsor when you talked about section three you mentioned the sponsorship but here you have to get all the way to seven before you understand that it either originates with the council or it has a sponsor is that not with that no i'm joining together and that's that's that's a fair uh you know it probably i mean it says in section three if a private group or individual desires to have a project considered it must be sponsored and introduced by one or more members of city council for review or deliberation um is that that's the same language um yeah i mean that's okay okay i don't know if that if that satisfies i mean i can make it a little bit more clear in your section three you you do have a sentence about it but in section seven it isn't anyway it just when there's two requirements and they're not both mentioned i guess that are so similar about city council i just wondered if you didn't want to refer to section three and section seven but maybe that's just being nitpicky um likewise if i look at what we did with black lives matter it was really generated from a sort of a disorganized group there was there was no formal organization so how would they have gotten insurance you know that's something we could obviously wave um and that's that's a good question or we could use it our own i mean that was just something say the city can always choose to ensure if it's the city's speech okay well i assume that would the city would do it if it came from the city council but i wasn't sure if we just had you know a counselor sponsoring it from a loose group well so can i jump in here again i mean my view of this and and i want to make sure i don't misinterpret dance there's essentially what we're saying is anything that goes on the streets is from the city council now someone may ask us to do it but a counselor has to sponsor it and the council has to vote to do it so you know we're controlling that it's not the same it's just i'm getting a permit to go do this it's really the city is going to do it now we might let you paint it for us but it's still us and that's a little bit of a difference any this always the city right yes and i used in i used the word may is just primary contact may be required to provide proof of insurance and name the city is co-insured and you know i could imagine if you had for example um you know just a large uh project where somebody wanted to paint at various locations and they were or an organized group and they did have the insurance you know why we wouldn't take advantage of that right right no okay i got you good good and likewise when it comes to no logos is black life matter a trademark is it or something like that could it be challenged as almost a logo that's a fair question um you know i obviously i i was intending it as as as really you know avoiding like the Nike swoosh or something like that that was clear commercial speech right everything else there is about commercial or advertising but a logos and trademarks and you know slogans i just anyway i'd like to bring it up for discussion and the other piece was can the city if they're responsible for maintaining repairing then at any point we can say if this is going to stay on the street for the time we've given you you've got to come back and restore it or what we covered up yeah i i mean i think that would be up to us as a city council to decide um you know what i um so you know uh for example um you know if if they if the group that in the primary contact just disappeared um and it looked terrible we may step in and and and remove it um but i think it's the idea that you know it's trying to make anyone who's requesting this if if we if we so chose you know to make them sort of an ongoing responsibility because there was that question right after the black lives matter was was um vandalized well who fixes it and who's going to fix it and you know do we let um you know if somebody does some some type of you know either purposeful or accidental that that alters or makes it look less appealing i mean i think we face the same thing not on a public street but with a mural that um was installed next to hulios you know it becomes a question that fades after a year who does that fixing and i think all this is intending to set up is that you know we really want if somebody's going to go through the effort of requesting this donating this to us you know we kind of say well you know it's not just the one-off kind of thing we we would we would see you as as an ongoing partner and in its maintenance just as if just as if for example you know someone donated a monument um like a 10 commandments monument or something we put in a park and you know they would have the perpetual care of maybe cleaning it or take that responsibility and if that group folded up we would have to decide as a city what to do with that um but it would be that kind of relationship just as i think a lot of other people do and i don't know bill if if um any of the fraternal order of the police societies maintain that monument outside of city hall or if that's a city hall obligation no okay i just i know another it's a good point no it's it's well written on that thank you any other questions comments jack thanks thanks for all the work on this dan what i i'm just a little unsure i think i think we need to be very clear that anything that is banked on the streets is as the as the court said that we in the case that you and i both referred to in uh in our previous meeting it's a statement of the city government and we're we're saying it because because it's what we believe or whatever and so i i'm i'm just struggling with the idea of do we need something this extensive or do we need to say something much simpler which is the uh that paragraph right after the purpose where you say any project painted or installed within a public street is ultimately a piece of public art controlled by the city and is a statement of the city's values consistent with government speech and maybe not say anything else i i don't know it's uh that's the underlying question that i've sort of been struggling with in my mind um the other more technical question is especially when we talk about putting time limits removing it if the person fails to maintain it or something like that is how this might interact with with the visual arts rights act which um i don't know that much about but it it fests certain limited rights in the in the creator of a piece of visual art that the creator might be able to enforce and we see that it's that's part of what's been discussed both in the uh moral in burlington and the mural down at ipramont law school is do the artists have rights to either take it back and take it somewhere and you know reclaim ownership of the of the work or to resist an effort to to remove it or obliterate it so i don't know what the answers to all those things are but i know that those things do come up yeah i mean i if i can respond um yeah i think you're a larger philosophic question so fair one um and if i have any discomfort about this it's that um you know this is a longer um a longer draft than i intended it necessarily to be um when i started drafting it only because i think there were these issues that i i felt merited some reference um but um you know as far as time limits or maintenance you know maybe we want to um be more obscure about that i i was thinking about it more in line with the uh flag policy which is that we adopted this flag policy we said you know if we fly a flag we do it for 30 days unless we decide differently and i was thinking that you know if we wanted to set sort of a default of what we would consider some of these these murals you know we'd set it for a year and in some ways that would go towards the the vera um concern which is that you know i think the vera rights kick in when you create these these permanent monuments and my my reading my very very basic understanding of vera was that it's the um it's really about removal and the artist's right to the work after it's removed the thing about a street mural of course is that it can't be removed except by obliterating it um so unlike the murals on in burlington they're actually panels that can be um you know unscrew taken off the wall and and stored and re-displayed somewhere else um and i'm not sure about the the law school if they're quite the same way or further actually have to carve out the dry wall but either way if there's some way for that to um to be preserved i think you have to give the artist that ability to do it but in a medium like this where you're basically you know uh drawing it on the street and if this and if under the terms of what we we allow or we adopt uh for for being painted on the street is essentially something that is transient um that doesn't last forever um last a significant period of time but you know ultimately has it has an end i think there may be um my understanding of putting that in there was just a way of of you know cutting cutting those rights short because they were always understood to be limited but you know these are all fairer points uh connor well first off then this is a fantastic game it's pretty prolific could could never even have drafted more than a page myself i think um quick question um when you say it's like for a fixed period of time do you envision the council making that determination upon approval of the project or could that be an open question at the time where you say okay enough is enough like three or four months yeah i i i think it could be an open question i mean it's it's whatever we want to do it you know this is our speech has as bill pointed out um this is something that we're choosing to do um and this is just again these aren't necessary these aren't intended to create standards or rights and they're really intended to help us so that we don't have to reinvent the wheel every time somebody comes you know says hey i'd like to paint x y or z jay yeah then just a quick question just to clarify so something like what my purely alive did with rob his ink in the parking lot um outside of polio's that falls outside of this policy right that's because that's not a uh a public right away gotcha so that would just yeah i mean it's private property and it's it's up to the you know the property owner to be able to manage that process right great any other questions any thoughts okay well i'm also very grateful dan for all of your work on this this looks great i i think it's pretty thorough and um i think outlines great process so um for this actually so dan would you mind like i'm sharing your screen at this point cool thank you um and uh so just uh check back on this um this is not an ordinance this is just a policy so but we should probably still if this is something we want to do then it's probably something we should still vote to approve um so i'm just gonna check what our suggested language was here review and approve right so um is there any um motion regarding uh policy uh jack this is an emotion but it just occurred to me is that we're sitting here through this discussion that it might be a value to seek comment from the uh my pittier public arts commission um yeah potentially um those are too may have frozen your other thoughts on that dan are you uh jumping in i mean to make part of having this policy is if somebody wants to do a street painting these are the circumstances and the limitations of which they do it so um i don't particularly see that need um i'm not a lawyer i'm happy either way um someone wants to make a motion great if you would rather wait we can do and get comment from the public arts folks that's okay too everyone would anyone like to make a motion i certainly will make a motion we'll see if it goes or not um a motion to approve the street painting policy as presented is there second second you know and if indeed we find additional comments we can edit it i think it's a wonderful document right then and i i i think that it could be sort of you know something we revisit and modify if if you know we don't like certain policy or if the public arts commission says you can't do this it's going to kill us because we want i don't know we we want to put in fake crosswalks um and we have a good reason for it yeah okay so there's been a motion in the seconds um any further discussion okay all in favor please say aye hi hi and and a post okay so the street painting policy uh passes and again thank you Dan for all your work on this really great yeah thanks and okay and so we're gonna move on to uh the possible reinstatement of parking meter fees and for that i assume i'm trying it over to bill yeah and i think you well pretty much have the outline of this um we inferload our employees they came back in august although the return of employees isn't necessarily the the only reason to do this but clearly we're seeing some more activity downtown and we don't know how much of it is people parking there all day and how much of it is people parking because they're visiting so we'd like to cautiously roll out parking enforcement review it again in mid-september the idea of being we've already had sort of a warning period right now where people are only getting warnings if you were to approve reinstating the parking fees then starting next monday we would begin active enforcement but the plan would be for um for the parking lots to remain free and that would give us some sense of how many people are sort of parking all day versus people who are shopping downtown and we may need to modify that as we go uh we'd like to you know make this we don't want to create a disincentive for people to shop downtown in in this tough time on the other hand we have checked and all the other communities in vermont that have parking meters have already got theirs working have had theirs working we're the last ones to do so so we're not necessarily you know rushing in to take advantage of people but um we think it's time and again we can you know we turned it off quickly at one meeting and we could do that again but we're asking for your approval of our reinstating plan okay um so thoughts comments about reinstating parking meter fees uh connor and then dan yeah and i i think it's time i've spoken to enough businesses in town where i think there was i think like it was a good idea to turn them off um and i i think that did help our downtown uh business for a bit there but enough of them are starting to see people just sort of like language and like bill says in front of the stores all day there which is causing other people who need to get into town sort of parking pretty far away so i think it's time to turn the lights back on yeah i was just going to echo connor's um sent him as well i've talked to downtown businesses that people are ready that seems like an encouraging sign if you're talking to businesses and they're like no it's time that's good um any other thoughts or comments j well i'm just curious why um why do it differently with lots as opposed to on street or as opposed to just doing a blanket no ultimately that's a policy call and we don't have to do it that way we could we could just turn the lots on too i think some of it from our perspective was to try to learn something was to see how many of these were all day you know if it's presumably someone's parking all day in front of their store or their employee of a store or whatever or they're just an apartment dweller and they're taking it on street parking spot all day they'll move to the lot and we'll get some sense of then we'll get a chance to see what the actual downtown business traffic is now obviously savvy downtown business traffic people can move to lots it's also fair to say that right now there's no state employees in state building so all those lots are open and free so you know i mean um so you know the idea is in september we'll turn the lots back on this fall come we're trying to we're trying to learn something and also slowly do this so that you know someone complains about it being a hardship and say hey there's free lots so that's that's why there's no science to it if the council would do all prefer to just go turn everything back on we can do that too that was a great question and i you know it gives this the context of being sort almost like a phased reopening in that sense yeah that was i think again there's nothing there's no science to it uh jack um what is left to do to uh get uh park mobile running so we're working with them now um we've got to finalize our agreements with them takes them about two months to get everything set up and computerized and working with our systems um and then obviously all the stickers on the lot so it's it's an active you don't you don't need to do anything we're we're on it okay well is there a motion to reactivate uh dana uh yes i'm really glad that everyone supports this and we'll make the motion to reactivate on street parking meters and actively enforcing and issuing tickets starting august 17th which is next monday second hey there's motion in a second and we further questions discussion okay all in favor please say aye thank you aye and yes i have a follow-up question at that point we were told that the meters needed upgrading and there's a lot of cost in that so what's the status of that bill uh well it depends on which time you want to spend on it they do need upgrading it is expensive we're delaying it because of cost and we you know we don't know right now we don't think the parking fund can support it um the reason so the reason it needed upgraded is that the meters that we have now um use wireless they use 2g technology okay and we're told that 2g is good it was supposed to be gone by december 31 so our remote meters wouldn't work now we're told well maybe it's going to be in the spring so there's a little bit of a gamble you know can we put this money in the budget can we see how parking revenues are working can we see you know can we take a look at this one of the reasons for using for that actually prompted us to move faster on park mobile uh because that gives us another alternative for people to use instead of credit cards if for some reason our remote readers go that you know are out because 2g suddenly goes away people will still be able to pay by an app or put coins in so the meters can still do it's it's the the electronic functioning so yes yes they need technically to be upgraded we're taking a gamble here because of the financial circumstances to push it off till at least spring and get through the budget and see how everything's going thank you that's helpful um i i didn't actually ever ask if there were any no votes so anyone like to vote now i don't think we voted all yet oh we said we we did half of it we did the eyes yeah so and i'm not hearing anyone voting no is your chance to vote against parking okay so um all that the the motion carries and so we'll be reinstating the parking fees on the 17th um great thank you any other no other follow-ups to that okay uh so moving on uh we have some design review uh proposed zoning changes or updates i guess this is this is just an update right um this this is actually some information that's been sent to you yes okay so go ahead mike all right um so i'll just i've got a quick presentation i don't know if uh camera needs to share with me or if i just share myself um actually before we get going i just want to recognize it is 844 do you want to take a break this is also a second the last item break no break no i'm seeing no break if you it's a five it's a five six minute presentation so it's really quick cool though like the only documents that i have are from the agenda um so i can make it so you can share your screen so you should be able to share that now okay okay we're gonna we're gonna jump into it and if you need to step out that's okay um all right and hopefully that's good for everybody um so um for anyone um who doesn't know me i'm mike miller i'm the planning director for the city and i'm here tonight just give you a quick summary outline of two zoning amendments that have been sent to you from the planning commission the actual hearing for these two will be on the 26th which is two weeks from now but i want to give you an outline of what you've received so far so you have a framework to kind of do your reviews so tonight we'll look at just the history 50 000 foot view of the design review changes um also what changes are being proposed for the design review boundary and finally take a look at some small changes on pioneer street to two parcels that are due to some non-conformity issues and then i'll take any questions but again we don't really have to take a lot of them if um because the the public hearing is really in two weeks it's really just going to give you guys an outline so um some of you will remember that the planning commission had proposed some big design review changes in the process that led up to the zoning bylaws when they were changed in 2018 and those changes that had been proposed found very little support so the planning commission coordinated with the historic preservation commission to look at some alternatives and the HPC took these up in 2017 and started by reviewing standards from around Vermont around the country and they hired a consultant land works to help with the rule development um in the early process and what they came up with really six um six goals to the new rewrite including trying to make applications predictable and decisions more defensible and this really came as a result of um the current rules that we have fall short of some Vermont Supreme Court guidelines which are what we refer to as the JAA and golf decisions um for example one rule in our design regulation simply states that the design review committee shall evaluate plans based on the location and appearance of all utilities that's all our regulations say there's no guidance that goes along with that and that really falls short of what um is is required for for basics on regulations um applicant has no way of knowing that they're in compliance and reviewers have no basis to approve or deny an application um so really that was the one of the primary driving forces of making these changes some other considerations uh that they've looked at were to continue with design review and not move to historic design review the state law differentiates between these two and the historic preservation felt design review was was more appropriate which is what we had been doing um they chose rehabilitation standards national park service has other standards but they chose rehabilitation standards as our level of review um and we wanted to more flexibility with clear exemptions and options for administrative permits not everything needs to go to the board and we should build those off ramps into our regulations as as we did in the rest of the zoning and that has functioned really well for the city so far over the past two years that we've been using the new regulations and they felt the development of review guidebook would be needed now the guidebook hasn't been made yet because that would be an expensive process and we really need the regulations first um but once these rules are adopted they would start moving forward on on developing a guidebook so that we would really have um some help for reviewers and applicants so um the core changes i'm not going to go through all the changes but first just so everybody knows this is a total rewrite it's a strike all in replace of the existing design review rules um what you see here is is how they organize the changes um they created one set of rules for historic buildings and how you can make changes to those buildings and a second set of rules for non-contributing buildings uh the current rules kind of mix them together and it makes it awkward for decisions especially when historic rules have to be applied to non-historic buildings so this setup is going to work much better having a set of rules for each of those groups um and the new process steps as discussed there'll be some administrative approvals and some increased exemptions so the boundary changes was something that the planning commission worked on um the biggest concern again uh we try to avoid being arbitrary and our current boundary that we have for design review is is the definition of arbitrary it doesn't follow any boundaries it's not the national historic district not zoning boundaries um and we wanted to change that these what you have in the second bullet are just some of the the guidelines that have to be met the design review must include the designated downtown and it cannot include the capital complex and where the planning commission went with their work was they tried to match it to the neighborhood boundaries that are in the zoning um and they had to make some exceptions but they feel the the boundaries are much more reasonable um what you what you have in those boundaries um so where did they end up um mostly it stayed the same with you know that we didn't make any radical changes to the design review boundary um we kept in VCFA but we have removed ccv um it was always uh complicated and difficult to understand why certain buildings were were put in design review ccv all by itself was put in um and this is proposed to be removed national life has continued to stay in um but the boundaries were cleaned up to match their parcel lines um we added the north street of berry street out to granite street currently only one side of berry street was in design review which was kind of strange we added downing street which is right down on berry street near down near main street at the short little short little street um we also added the rest of the crossroads neighborhood which a lot of people refer to as gasoline alley so this is over the dunk and donuts and those um what we had what we have today is um I think one of the gas stations I think goes out to school street but the rest of those buildings like cumberland farms are not in design review so if you're the first gas station you're in design review if you're the second gas station you're not in design review what we said was we want all of those in design review we added the redstone building and the rest of the redstone north neighborhood um and we wanted to point out that there are three parcels on terrace street which are the first three parcels the they um are being rezoned in this as well to residential 9 000 the neighboring district as a part of this to move them out of the redstone north neighborhood and um they were originally in because they were part of the national register historic district in 2016 um when it was updated in 2017 or 18 when that national register district was redrawn those three parcels were removed and so in this zoning we're just going to clean that up so all of redstone north is in the national register district and that's why they're going to be added into the design review district so that way the neighborhood matches the national register boundary and now matches the the design review so the last piece is the pioneer street proposal um so this was discovered there was um through a discussion of a possible application for project um on the barrett's the barrett's uh family own the trading post building and a number of um and all the property on the other side of the railroad tracks as well to the river so um all of the self-store units um the the the growler building there uh the dispensary building so those are all in the same parcel um and they also own the vacant there's a vacant parking lot that's been used to sell cars for a number of times well they they have a proposal to do some um do something on that and the 2018 zoning changes put them into the riverfront district which made 12 of 13 of their buildings non-conforming as well as a number of the uses and the same was true of the laser wash car wash which is the abutting parcel um these parcels abut the eastern gateway district on their eastern edge and if these parcels were in eastern gateway then all of the uses would be conforming and most of the buildings would be as well uh the area was never directly discussed or considered during the rezoning process in 2018 so the planning commission felt it was appropriate to revisit the question and the planning commission reviewed a number of possible solutions and eventually approve a narrow change for only the lead between the railroad tracks and river street and uh so that's the the training post and the vacant um where the where the auto sand used to be and the laser wash so just those parcels would be shifted to eastern gateway which would allow for a certain amount of redevelopment of that parcel and again i can pull these maps up if you want to look at them um but um that's the the quick quick summary of what you have and the hearing again is in two weeks um and we can review them further at that time or hey mike i'll also jump in and hi i'm curvy keen i'm the chair of the planning commission and uh i just want to let you guys know that i'm available to if you have any questions about what our thoughts were uh because these are three pretty big topics that represented months and months of work from us so i thought you should i should at least be here to bounce questions off up if you want thank you curvy that's great anything more mike if not that's okay oh that's it i mean i can pull up maps or other things if people want to go and see those but that's it so i have a couple of questions slash concerns um but i i may hold on to them here uh and let others go first any thoughts questions or um concerns from council uh go ahead dan yeah let me just maybe understand when the planning commission adopted the rehabilitative standards from the national um uh park is preservation um why was that standard chosen as opposed to the other available standards i might have to dive in deeper with uh if meredith was here she assisted historic preservation they drafted most of those rules um it's not the rehabilitation standards are not the strictest so there are others that are that are stricter than the rehabilitation standards um right and i just want and that's actually my follow-up question if my understanding is the rehabilitative standards are really rather than a preserve at all costs it's a preserve to the ability that you're able to rehabilitate something that has fallen um you know to disarray or or rot to the extent that it's able to be rehabilitated within a sort of economic spectrum is that yes yeah i believe that's that that's what they were they were looking for so um and there was a lot of discussion about that going into it um um you know issues such as as windows and how do we handle you know if there are 100 year old windows and you want to replace them you know is is the obligation really to preserve the 100 year old window or is the obligation to make sure that the replacement window would not negatively impact the historic character of the building um which would mean yeah you could remove those and replace them um in the rehabilitate rehabilitation standards let you remove those old windows and replace them with a lot of conditions you have to replace them with in-kind materials so you can't replace them in vinyl and fiberglass you'd have to replace them with wood um the the wood and sash uh the all the fenestrations have to match and so there's a lot of those similar requirements but the answer the question of can you replace your windows is yes you can replace your windows had a different standard been picked it could have said no um you you have to first ensure that you know you can't rehabilitate that that window you have to preserve it that effectively yeah and it's the difference between um you know the the you know at the higher standards you're looking at the george washington slept here and we really want to make sure we save everything as opposed to um we have uh excellent historic architecture um and there's a lot of historic character and historic integrity and what we're trying to do is maintain that historic integrity to the greatest extent possible and i'll make sure that meredith is available in two weeks she's on vacation this week but in two weeks um she'll be available and as i said she helped draft these rules and she might be able to fill in some of the nuances a little better than i did yeah i just i don't understand because i mean right now we have sort of an economic hardship test um where you basically have to show that there's no way to rehabilitate in something of a you know without creating some sort of economic hardship um which i i think is a higher standard than what this rehabilitative standard is it's a little bit lower and and i think it's sensible like the example you're talking about on windows or you know some of these features that if you replace a in a hundred-year-old window with a more modern energy efficient window it's a win-win because people chances are people won't be able to tell from the outside um but i guess i'm more concerned about some of the bigger architectural features or if somebody has um you know an outbuilding or something that has a historic character and they don't want it because they want to pull you know turn it into apartments and they want to pull cars into it um just how that how that standard would necessarily play out yeah a lot of it's going to be case by case um but your the the requirement for the for the cost um does still apply to demolitions so the those demolition provisions so if somebody said you know we wanted to demolish part of a structure that's historic or an entire structure that's historic that's going to still have that higher bar you can't just go through and demolish the building um there is a that that high bar still exists for that piece but for the elements and yes your your conversation that you've experienced through the drv process is one that that we wanted to make sure um through the through the public hearing process what we heard a lot from the public was there wasn't a lot of consistency over time so people who had applied in the you know early 90s would get a different answer than people in the late 90s and people in the 2000s and they felt if the rules haven't changed there shouldn't be this much difference in how the rules are interpreted so we wanted to make sure that and and this goes to there wasn't a lot of guidelines so we wanted to answer those questions up front you know can you replace a window can you replace the doors um and what would be the requirements if the answer is yes um or what would be the conditions that would have to be met in order to be yes we shouldn't be having it unknown until you get to the drv or the drc um so my understanding um of the rules and my understanding um working with meredith is that these new rules are pretty clear about the fact that you can replace these but they have to be it's it has to be replaced in in kind and that's that'll be the you know the fuzzy term that drc will have to be dealing with is when people go and apply um is this replacement in kind in in kind is that has very specific definitions of the materials and the appearance and the looks and the size how it how it sits in the frame so a window shouldn't be moved out or moved in in the frame it should sit in the frame in the same place so it has the same appearance as before because sometimes new windows are larger smaller than the pre-existing ones sure well i'm really glad that you um specifically addressed windows and that was my first thought um was can people replace um single pane with double pane that kind of thing that so that seems pretty satisfactory to me the other thing that is on my radar is um roofing materials and uh just thinking about how you know there are some roofs that require more maintenance and um you know could someone replace um slate roof with a standing seam roof and i mean that's that's not an in kind i don't maybe it is maybe that's an in kind change as long as the pitch doesn't change and the shape doesn't change but probably not i mean what's what's your thought on roofing material they they have specific conversations about roofing materials and things such as um slate roofs so they have um and even with windows if there's a window that meets a certain classification then it may be required to be kept and fixed so um i try to think of an example i over i think one of the old insurance buildings there's this fan window of stained glass um and that's a historic window it's a hundred year old stained glass window no you can't replace that you will that that's a unique feature of the historic building and it's a part of that building and therefore that is when you have to take the first step of trying to um maintain it before now if it's falling apart and falling out then it may not be repairable and it'll have to be removed and and replace in kind as best as possible slate roofs that i think fall into that same category as a historic material and you have to try to maintain the slate roof now if it can't be maintained for whatever reason then that's initial for the drc and potentially drp to address if there's um if there's a need to remove a slate roof and replace it with some other materials um how about uh asphalt i mean would that be considered historic if you've got an asphalt roof and replacing with an asphalt roof um i in fact i think that may go under one of those categories of exempt activities or administrative permits if you wanted to upgrade your asphalt roof to standing seam probably i would i'd have to go and say that those a lot of those questions are ones we would have to just look at on a on a permit by permit basis you know i doubt the asphalt would qualify as historic if it's historic if it's asphalt on a historic building and it's going back to standing seam it would probably require a permit i would be very surprised to see the drc not approve a shift in that direction but i would imagine that you know again very specific questions are always ones that i would leave to meredith to go and kind of well fair enough i mean my um my reason for asking really the the bigger philosophy is that i i don't want to create any impediments to people um doing energy improvements to their home first of all and second of all um you know i mean gosh the standing seam roof is just so much less maintenance um that in the end it's it's just like it's a great investment um so i hate to tell people that like you yeah you want to do the best longest lasting thing for your house while you can't um that's that's just a tough that's a tough thing to say um so that that's like my only um hesitation around that but it sounds like like i'm not sure that i could genuinely say that like a standing seam roof is also more energy efficient i mean i guess it is with respect to the like you know it's less energy to keep it you know maintained i suppose over time but um but is there any well i guess if the windows are like a historic feature um anyway other other than that there's no reason why people wouldn't be able to make energy improvements to their home no in fact compared compared to the rules we have now it would you certainly have many more paths to get there um in fact we've you know meredith and i have talked about and we talked with the hvc and they they did understand that um it would be technically possible to go through and say remove clabbered siding to insulate a house and replace it with new clabbered siding as long as it was in kind it would you know it would have to be wood it would have to have the same fenestrations that were on there before you'd have to have the same clabbered width and it would have to be you know there's a lot of things that would have but under the old rules you really couldn't it was or it was much harder to to make that degree of change um the rehabilitation standards as we said really are looking at that ability to replace in kind and that would allow opportunities like being able to get in to make insulation um to to replace windows or doors and and we're really going to be trying our best to maintain in kind the appearance of the buildings obviously hpc and probably the design review committee are going to want as much as possible to try to maintain the historic integrity we don't want to lose you know we don't want people who's pulling off the scrolling you know artwork off of the you know the underside of their eaves and replacing it with new um we'd rather keep the historic as as much as possible but the new rules are are much more flexible about allowing that in situations where where it really is necessary to do okay thank you i thought i might have seen a hand from dan yeah i i mean i guess you know i i sort of respond to to some of that i mean i at least in my experience the on the d rv and the drc was that bigger concern was not necessarily energy efficiency or doing those type of improvements but shortcuts people would take in renovations or work that would cause a degradation of the building you know so for example having a mansard roof is an expensive proposition on the house and it's far easier to just turn it into a giant box and we have a couple examples in montpellier before the drc where they did that and so you know that that's the kind of or people taking wooden windows that have lasted for 125 years and replacing them with a lower quality vinyl window that you know eventually warps and gets out of shape within you know a dozen or so years and so i mean i i i think that these standards as long as they're you know the sensible replacement of things like a window or a roof where you're going and it's not a i mean even slate slates of really i mean we're still using slate and i guess the example that i i think i want to think about like roof replacement materials i i used to have a tin roof on my porch that was you couldn't replace it that just didn't make it anymore it's now rubber roofs um and it served the purpose of a rubber roof in the 19th century or something um so there was no way to replace it you had to use a different type of material um but i mean these type of i i think it's anything that gears people towards thoughtful replacement um you know is is good because of if we don't there's too much of an economic incentive to cut corners on some of these things and replace and not saying everyone does it but it's just it's out there and if you're doing uh a buy a building to rent it for profit you're going to be looking at those bottom lines and that takes away the quality of these had these properties and these houses over time fair enough thank you um other thoughts questions um i i guess i'll just also speak for myself and say in the proposed boundary change on pioneer street um i am interested in just diving into what the uh allowable uses were in the river uh corridor zoning um as opposed to the eastern gateway um just thinking about like what the intention was uh potentially for including um i mean maybe it was an oversight um but i i also um yeah i mean i i also question like if what's the best use on that property and it's not unconforming and that i'd like to consider that carefully if they uh the planning commission really um chewed these over quite a bit so the riverfront is the same zoning district that runs all the way down berry street so it really is um that that high density residential mix use um multi-story buildings um pedestrian oriented that intent as is your riverfront district and um what eastern gateway is is is your area out on route two and out on route 302 um which are more auto oriented um and it's not necessarily that we want them to remain auto oriented oriented forever but that's really where they are now and the issue kind of comes up with this we've got a car wash that's nonconforming and is a single story structure and we've got a vacant parking lot um there isn't a sidewalk on that side of the street it doesn't have the pedestrian access um the um self-store units the the small warehouse mini warehouse units are nonconforming in riverfront they're not allowed in the riverfront district this parcel's obviously now in the riverfront district so all those uses are nonconforming and can't be expanded um the uses historically that have been here have been they've had sold cards on that parking lot that's nonconforming now so really as you kept looking over the possible uses for the Barrett's as to how they would redevelop their their parking lot um a number of uses that they have used are now nonconforming a number of uses that are there nonconforming um they recognized that if they did build something they would have to build to our new um there are higher design standards now for eastern gateway than previously so they would have to do if they did self-store units or if they did something else there that was eastern gateway and auto oriented that it would have to meet that higher design standard and they recognized that but um they would like to at least have the option to be able to build either additional self-store units or some other possible uses on that site and the planning commission's concern was looking at the whole parcel was they looked at that lower area next to the river um and they felt that they really did not want eastern gateway and any auto oriented things relocating down there they didn't want any auto repair they didn't want aiming down by the river so that's why they split it at the railroad tracks and said only that part between the railroad tracks and river street out to pioneer street only that wedge of a piece would be shifted eastern gateway i'm curious for others thoughts i i i'm feeling pretty split about that myself and but leaning towards not like i we need more housing um and is storage the best use of that space and uh and i know that the net zero mont peeler plan is not our zoning but i believe it that proposal had housing down there and um so and you oh sorry yeah go ahead sorry the main reason i wanted to come tonight was to talk about this now the main thing i wanted to convey to you was that the planning commission was not enthusiastic about any of the solutions on the table and that may not come through um we have like the suggestion that you have is it was a four to one vote but it was at least two or three of those votes were really mixed um we we were also considering uh so so we this is the split the parcel so that so that part of it is eastern gateway now another solution we were thinking of was to for this neighborhood only not all of the riverfront but just for this neighborhood only to allow storage units and to kind of make a tweak to the zoning that way but what that would do is possibly allow some other parcels in the neighborhood to feasibly have storage units too so there were some members in the planning commission who were concerned about the disadvantage of that approach i didn't i didn't like all of the um possible uses that would be opened up with the with uh the eastern gateway expanding but i was at least happy that we weren't expanding it to the entirety of both of the parcels that we were at least limiting how much eastern gateway and of course the third solution was do nothing and considering almost all of the uses on the parcel right now are no longer allowed at all not even as you know conditional uses we felt we felt but we needed to try to do something to work with the property owners even though we also most of us i think shared your vision that this is a great mixed use buffer between our downtown and the eastern gateway and that's kind of what riverfront currently is so the do nothing from a long-term plan planning perspective is great but we we wanted to work with the landowners so that's the full background and what have how we dealt with this and we talked about this over the course of three meetings two of which were hearings and the the first time we didn't have four votes for any solution so then we tried it again the next week and this one had four votes but again there was some voter remorse afterwards too so so so i wanted to give that context to to our suggestion well thank you that's really helpful context others thoughts on this or any other parts of the plan nobody nobody wants to comment uh jack go ahead i'll just say i think it's a good thing that we have this informational meeting in advance of our hearings because this seems like something where i'm going to be paying a visit to that area with an eye to what what the zoning is just to get a better sense of how i feel about it yeah and i'll just um say too i mean that's an area that would be a bike path now for the shared use path extended basically through savings pasture it makes it proximal walkable bikeable to downtown and you know that that for me sets it at a different place than just being auto oriented uh potentially it has that possibility um which i really like um any other sorry i know i'm making things there but uh jay go ahead no i just want to agree with jack that um yeah this having this information now is incredibly helpful to give us some time to i like you jack i want to go out and walk walk it and see it and try to understand the context and understanding the different zoning that's happening in the space that is happening and um just to think about how we could manage it for the for the long term i think is is going to be really helpful so i appreciate not having to just be putting in a position to have to decide right now without having that the time to be able to understand and and see it and think about um uh you know you know possible scenarios for what you know what the best path forward is so thanks and um look forward to doing that look forward to a further conversation around it connor did i see a hand no okay any other thoughts questions comments okay um well thank you mike thanks for and curvy for helping us understand the context for all this and i guess we'll take this up again um as a first potential reading is that how we would call it for the 26 technically the um under the the charter doesn't actually talk about this so we actually follow state law on the adoption of zoning and so it's actually only requires one hearing but you guys can have obviously as many hearings as you want um it is already warned as a hearing for the 26th um and for anyone who's listening who's interested in taking a look at things these are all on the website uh on the on the front page down at the bottom you'll see design review public hearing um and the documents are all in there including pioneer street is in that um is in that same file so it'll have the the maps of the two and it'll have the draft written changes for the design review and um the the rest there's one for design review and then there's one for changing the rest of the zoning because we kind of have to incorporate it in so there's some adjustments that happen as a result of that so um and if anyone has questions you can contact me um my email m miller at montpelier-vt.org if somebody has questions or comments we can certainly have them so thank you uh done i might just have a little concern that this is august and i know it's a strange august because people's mindset is still summer so we're doing this i don't feel comfortable just having one hearing in august and likewise do likely impacted property owners get notices of these kind of changes so in the planning commission process every member of the design review district and their hearing was in march so they're they're hearing predated covid and then we kind of came to a crashing stop and had to hold things for a while but every person in the design review district was sent a copy of the changes and a notice of the public hearing and uh informed about the process um we did hear from a number of people um a lot of a number of them supported it um some of them uh didn't but we tried to reflect as many of the changes and comments that they had um and uh we had a second hearing uh a couple of weeks ago so they actually we they actually planning commission actually held two hearings because we just reached a point where these design review changes have been ready for um six eight months now and we really felt they're an improvement over what we have and we really wanted to start to move them forward so we we did warn another hearing um and and then included the pioneer and in the pioneer we contacted um the laser wash and and the parcels there well I appreciate that and definitely your comments and Kirby's comments being here I haven't been paying attention to the planning commission but I'll get back to you so I'm better aware of these things happening I've lost track thank you so yes and you're allowed to you know um for for new members of the council your you you can have as many hearings as you want in fact when we did the zoning that was adopted in 2018 um people who were on the council then remember you got to see me I believe it was 22 times in 2017 for us to get that adopted so we can we can do this as long as you'd like okay well to be continued on that then thank you again um for helping us understand the background any other comments questions thoughts for these two okay all right thanks again um all right do we are going to move on to our COVID-19 update and for that I assume we're turning it over to Cameron yeah so um you might have seen it's quite a long one this week because we haven't met as a full council since um July and so there's quite a few updates I'm not going to read the whole thing I'm gonna stick to the highlights um uh obviously in this time the governor has made it mandatory to wear a mask starting August 1st the state requires that masks are now born in public spaces in wars and outdoors when social distancing is not possible this order applies to everyone over the age of two and he does have a few medical health exemptions um this one is pretty important and I don't we've tried to spread the word on this but I think it's a really important one is that the state does have resources available um funding-wise to help renters homeowners and landlords make up for lost payments in the face of COVID-19 um these programs uh started in July uh July 13th but are still available through ACCD we have these links available on the Montpelier homepage if you click on the COVID-19 update button um but we've also been trying to share that through social messaging and so if you guys know of anyone who needs the assistance those are programs that do exist um the governor did extend the state of emergency until August 15th um they did confirm that the school would be opening August 8th and that sports would be allowed and practices would be allowed starting August 8th for school children but they do have to wear masks while they're playing um there is also another line of funding available for folks if they do not have the ability to connect with internet lines in your house there are grants available to individuals to help you extend telecommunication lines to your home um so that is through public service Vermont um so if you go to publicservice.vermont.gov they do have a COVID-19 line extension to help people connect to the internet the governor did extend the amount of folks who could be inside buildings for our businesses downtown or other businesses that can now operate at 50 percent of approved occupancy um they did also expand the eligibility for economic recovery grants for businesses now owner operators can apply as well if they could before so that is also through ACCD and can be found on their website um they also announced funding for child care programs to offset pandemic related expenses and losses that is through the department of children and families and then um not really sums up the state updates but um the city updates really haven't changed too much our senior center has pulled back a little bit on our opening plans so we're we're even slower now at our our opening plans for the senior center so right now that includes opening the actual building to foot clinics only for a little bit and we are offering outdoor and zoom lunching together so make sure to check out their website and their weekly report on that and then we have been continuing to talk to the can groups and not failure mutual aid so that's still going we still meet pretty frequently and we have seen a pretty significant upswing in interactions with our social media about um uh COVID-19 and I think it has to do with our prioritizing sharing the state's campaign hashtag masks on bt they have a lot of really great new graphics and are sharing a lot of the cdc videos that sort of explain to folks um what's going on and what the newest updates are so we feel pretty good about our communications right now so that's a summary does anyone have any questions Donna go ahead it's it's not a question but I I do appreciate you doing this in a summary form because we get it in our packet or set directly from you but for people listening it's really good that they you highlight these things so it's a little tedious but I appreciate you doing it thank you yeah uh anyone else okay well thank you so much Cameron um and so I think that is the end of our regular business super exciting um so on to council reports I'm going to go in the order we always go in so I'm gonna start with Donna okay well again I'm gonna go back to Cameron she's been covering for Bill when he's out playing around in vacation but she's also really been helping committees who are starting to meet with setting up their zoom meetings and I've made her the queen of zoom meetings referring all committees to her and I appreciate that you're doing that and I want to thank voters who turned out we had nearly 3 000 voters which John Odum says is high he's going to talk about it later probably uh for a primary but I was got the job of cleaning the voting booths and I put my cell phone in my pocket and I didn't start work until three from three to seven I did nearly seven thousand steps it's almost three miles running around that little space I thought okay that's what we should we should say volunteer to work at the polls and exercise but it was really wonderful seeing people they were all very positive for voting so that's that's all I want to say thank you great thanks Connor all right well uh again big congrats to yourself mayor um watch the beautiful zoom ceremony on facebook live and uh a warm welcome to the first gentleman of Montpelier's Acre of course I'm glad to have him as long as he doesn't run for city council or anything from district to where you know very happy to have a couple of thanks yeah I worked the day before the election and like Donna said uh uh John did an amazing job it was like I think it was like playing a different sport for most elections uh just given me given the number of mail-in ballots and and I'm sure you violated some child labor laws with uh Zane there but Zane was in every day just working his tail off and did a really good job uh another thank you to our furloughed employees coming back um we really appreciate all of your sacrifices um but also want to extend a thank you to the uh employees left behind to her uh in many cases doing multiple jobs there and just just keeping the city afloat there so very grateful for that um last thing and I would just speak for myself I'm pretty close to being ready to meet in person if we could uh start configuring the council chamber to make it safe and everything I understand leading by example um but I think so much goes into this these these meetings where you know it really does help uh look across from the other people and you know have a conversation and looking at a bunch of squares on the screen there so I may be a bit old school on that but with with about that some point from the near future transition back so thanks very much thank you uh uh Jay um yeah just quickly I'll uh Connor I've had similar thoughts about being back in back in chambers and thinking about how we could make that work uh make that work safely um and and leading by example and beyond that just thanking John and and all the volunteers that I think uh given the unique challenges of yesterday it went incredibly well it's great to see Donna Donna there just chasing right behind me right after I voted cleaning up it was great so thanks to thanks to all of you appreciate it okay thank you Dan um I'll echo the other councilors um sentiments on thanking and congratulating everyone um the three things that I that I wanted to raise um in addition were um you know the newspaper had an article about how the state of Vermont is going to extend its remote working through the end of the year I think we as a city have to think about what impact that's going to have on us um and if that gets extended into the long term and thinking about our planning and um what we can do for our community because that's going to have an impact on retail on restaurants on our tax base um if there aren't as many people coming in um and I think we should put that on a radar maybe not obviously next meeting but I mean just sort of in our in our on our screens the second thing is you know obviously I think the the public restroom idea I would like to see that come up in the fall to have that conversation because I think it's it's resonated and it's something we really should you know start to start to think about there are no easy answers but they're still it it clearly is of import and um the other thing and I I feel these are all just putting things back on our on a radar screen is the Central Vermont Public Safety Authority and whether we are going to do an appointment to that or you know recruit somebody for that and I know Donna you're really involved in in in that and um but it just seems like I think we've we've let that languish a little bit and we should um again put it back up on the radar screen as it were that's all thanks everyone I just to fill up on the public restroom thing I think we have it on the agenda for is it the nice or yeah so just a note excellent then I'll take that off uh all right super uh jack right Donna I didn't know your job was cleaning the boarding booths I just thought you were the bouncer um I'll pass tonight uh okay uh Lauren um yeah just well first of all apologize I was in and out with my video I was having really bad internet um tonight so I think I got most everything but apologies for that um just wanted to echo uh appreciation too and um you know it was great to see so many volunteers out and community members making it happen and John and the team were working incredibly hard so nice work and also uh congratulations and appreciation for all the candidates who stopped up to run it's not an easy thing to do and so thank you to some people willing to serve um in our state so thanks to everyone who who ran for office yesterday oh um and the only everything that I was hoping to bring back up for you know maybe conversation this fall as well as we started a conversation in kind of probably February or something about um the PFAS issue in our league um is coming to our wastewater treatment facility a really interesting conversation and kind of left with a bunch of lingering questions about monitoring and what we could do and I would love to revisit that you know when we can of you know what what's happening with that and what our options are to make sure that we're ensuring safe water in our city and that's it and congrats Anne thanks um all right so I also want to thank John and the whole C. Clerk staff for their great work make election and their adaptability and trying to make it work in a strange time and I'm also glad that folks brought up the desire to start meeting in person that was also on my radar so to that end I wonder if we couldn't just do a little bit of measuring of how far away the chairs are from each other and see if that is sufficient oh it's not sufficient okay um even so maybe there's a way well come up with some proposals I don't I didn't mean to death to be negative that's okay I'm happy to just have that immediate answer of like no it's not six feet um but even just knowing that like if we go back if we're in a different um configuration that is okay um but if we do go back I think one of the things that I would really like to continue is to have this kind of venue um for interaction available to the public because there may still be people who themselves don't feel comfortable coming out in public and two I mean you know even just thinking about the whole like population that couldn't to start with you know if they are uh homebound for whatever reason um just being able to give them this kind of access I think is um is incredibly valuable so um hopefully there's a way to I guess I guess some create some kind of a hybrid uh but then if someone wanted to participate if we're in if we're in a in-person session and someone is in this venue and wants to participate someone would just need to be um you know monitoring to make sure you know there's some logistics there but hoping that we can um navigate that to be able to meet in person so that potentially could be as soon as the 26 um how how are you all staff feeling about that possibility so I'm gonna I'm gonna hedge this a little bit because I'm gonna talk to the team tomorrow morning but perhaps we could have a proposal for you on the 26 for how this would work and if you thought that was fine you could adopt that and don't be for subsequent meetings because you should probably adopt the rules of how it's going to go uh you know maybe we could just have you know you sign up for either all online or all in class you gotta choose um well that's a that's a fair question um other folks who didn't talk about that how are you feeling about the possibility of meeting in person I guess if we end up having to wear a mask I'm not in favor of it oh really okay if you don't have yeah I find the mask very limiting in in reading and communicating with people more than this venue that's where I was coming from too I would love to be back doing meetings in person um if I'm in it if we're all in a three or four hour meeting wearing masks yeah it's hard to say that the payoff is worth it although I know the clerk's office for election yesterday had some of those clear face shields which I guess they're not supposed to be a substitute for a mask they're supposed to wear both but uh okay well that's that's fair um so I well I do things to things to talk about um but hopefully that's something that we can at least have some kind of a plan for for next time um and then we can have a more robust conversation around it um I think that would make some sense uh so that's we are also trying to devote most of the next meeting to police system right you're not we'll do that maybe we'll do that at the end unless I don't know unless you all are need more time with it for some reason um or it seems like the kind of thing that's just going to take too long to discuss um the only other thing that I have on my radar as well is I'm just thinking about how the state has their own health order right now to wear masks and we have our own health order to wear masks and so I just wanted to put that you know raise that flag to see how people felt um so in a sense it's redundant but it also may provide just sort of like a double layer of like no you really got to do it uh like just politically speaking you might be good to keep it um but again it is redundant is anyone interested in either in either repealing it or keeping it um uh Lauren and Jack or Dan sorry um well one thought is just I mean I could see the state one going away sooner than we might be comfortable so keeping it just on the book so it's there and we could you know keep having the conversation but um that would at least mean we wouldn't have to repass a new one if it got repealed we have control over when it ends then yeah okay just to be clear to a point we ours is tied to the the state of emergency right governor's overall order where he said he gave they gave guidance on masks and said towns and cities can have stricter requirements if they want so we adopted a stricter requirement now that now they have the statewide one but if the state if the state of emergency ends then our authority to have one ends and right now it's extended to august 15 to saturday but i saturday so it could run out pretty soon actually and i bet he was he usually announces that the friday before so we're the Friday closest so we'll probably find out friday okay uh dan yeah i'm just picking back on both of the comments i i think it's it's fine to keep in place um the state supersedes it but if the state goes away as long as there is a state of emergency still in place it's we can then make that decision fair enough okay thanks for um that quick temperature check on that uh their team um um all right uh john you are on mute man there how's that better that's great uh thanks for all the kind words uh they really go to staff and the enormous amount of volunteers that we've been able to turn out over the last few weeks we've been very flexible but really i mean all i do is run around freaking out that something terrible is about to happen so everybody else does all the work it's great so thank you all most of you all were there helping out at some point during the process and it seemed to work so great i'm gonna take a vacation well deserved we all get in november right oh yeah yeah i mean we'll see what november is gonna look like um it's supposed to be an all male election it sounds like i'm saying no male it's getting that's getting banned um which will be a totally different thing all together i mean we were finding our way this time because it was different than we'd ever had it and i know it could be even stranger so just see how it goes i called most of how this one was gonna go wrong um let's see if i could do better on november fair enough we'll keep us posted as to how we can help um all right bill i've got a bunch of things none of them are particularly long but i do want to kind of tick through them um first i just wanted to publicly acknowledge the loss of jessica sanderson our employee at the senior center it's the first time in 15 years maybe that we've actually had an active city employee pass away while they were working i think the last one was erin sanders who was a dispatcher police department passed away from cancer um so jessicas was much more sudden so huge loss there great person well liked at the senior center and they're they're scrambling to fill that so our thoughts go to her family and her co-workers uh secondly glad that you adopted the street policy we do have a new application that will probably be on your agenda next week or so for it's very similar to the one we had before for painting over labor day to painting justice for all same applicant so that will be coming up so there's that uh wanted to talk quickly about those kind of things um we had a meeting today you know realizing how much turnover we've had in key positions and how much we're going to have we had a meeting today to start sharing knowledge about some of the big events that we had in my pillar since most of them didn't happen this year so the new chief new you know people uh you know don't know about do a good fest in july 3rd and all those things because they didn't occur so we were transferring some of that knowledge and i just i just want to provide a heads up on two things one you know as these events get bigger um the costs to the city get higher and we may want to think about whether we want to assess fees but also need to think about just the resources that we have to provide the safety services you know i know one hand there's a a cost about defunding uh discussion about defunding public safety services but we also as we expand these things we're really um you know we don't want to get them too big that we can't cover so i mentioned that and i think in light of that we're seeing you know we're seeing a slight change in tone of some of our uh civic civil disobedience activities you know we've always had a lot of protests we've always had a lot of marches and those kind of things um but you know just the last couple we are on the mayor's wedding day we had some pretty ugly confrontations on the state house lawn between the sort of group that was demonstrating to support the police and people that came to counter counter protest and there were a lot of tough conversations just last week a group you know digging up the state house lawn to plant things in that case the Montpelier police didn't get involved but nonetheless um you know that was a little bit of a destruction of public property that we haven't seen so you know we don't know what this means but as times get tensor and these issues get bigger i just put that out there that maybe seeing a new change if you know people aren't feeling that they're being heard they may get more active so just a concern uh one more thing on public safety we were a little bit curious about you know we're talking about the downtown and the shops and the people whether whether that had what the impact it had on our services and um you know one of the things we often see is that we because we are only a thousand people and we serve all these people we have calls so we asked our public safety people it was the simplest thing to do to compare the last four years from you know march mid-march when the quarantines basically started until now what their calls were and you know on fire and ambulance calls are exactly the same as they've been the last four years even with the lower traffic and anything else police was down but down from about a little over four thousand a year to a little over three thousand a year so yes you know they're down 25 but there's still that's still a lot of activity in that time period so um it was surprising to me how much you know how many calls and things are still going on given the fact that you know we don't have it had shoplifting we haven't had people downtown we haven't had you know people falling on sidewalks and getting hurt needing an ambulance and all those things that drive our services so just it's good to know that we're still an active community and that we need these services while even even now just also want to note that last Thursday was Jasmine Lam's last day so she's I think somewhere in Canada right now on her way to Alaska last we knew so we are down to keep you know that person in our office so Cameron and I and actually Jasmine Benson has just come back to work from her maternity leave in public work so she's going to help us out a little bit but just be patient we may we may have a few drops along the way on the good news is with the deadline for applications it's Monday we already have 90 applications for that position in in total last when we hired Jasmine we're 25 just as a comparison so certainly a different labor market now that's for sure so we're obviously looking forward to getting somebody great new but if you know someone who's interested there's still time to just get tough competition so that's all I have can I jump back in there's but uh March power passed away recently um very um unexpected I think I didn't hear about I mean those were closer to her knew that she'd been very ill but it happened relatively quickly and March you know she's um she's a former city counselor she's been so active in the community for so long so active in the state she was one of has been one of oh a justice of the peace for years and is certainly one of the was one of the most active and dependable uh JPs that I've ever worked with so you know a lot of us were really really crushed to hear that and um so I just wanted to make sure uh I mentioned so many there's so many folks in the community knew her and appreciated her thank you March had one black mark on her record which was that she was in the city council that hired me but other than that she had a long distinguished career in public service um and I would be remiss and you know I try to keep it my comments just to Jessica was an active employee but I should note since we're doing this uh Sheila Pembroke's passing too Sheila was a long time uh clerical person at the fire department handle all the ambulance building and had a lot of physical disabilities and issues the whole time she worked and always showed up never complained got the job done kept those guys in order over there and uh you know as they know it was the first female employee at the fire department still there are men now except for Chris Hepburn part time but we have had EMTs and firefighters and female firefighters since so it's a loss and obviously um part of the large Pembroke family are married into the large family here so don't want to forget Sheila either thank you yeah please uh pass along our condolences to all those families um all right well thanks everybody and um hopefully we'll be seeing you in person in a couple meetings maybe we'll see all right thanks everybody see you later 955 956