 So there's no discussion on the agenda for the coming election. Was that last month? It was. Okay, that's what I thought. I think I was doing something. I wasn't able to make it. We had to get it before ballots went out. If anyone missed the deadline for mailing your ballots and has passed, so make sure you drop it off at a ballot box or phone a person. Actually, that's not entirely accurate. If the ballots are received on election day or before at City Hall, they still get counted. That's something I tried to straighten out before they kicked me off of the Ward 7, Ward 4-7 group. Good to know. Thank you. Renegade. But the mail is slow, but in town, I think it'd be okay. Hello, can we come in? Sylvie, you are in. Sylvie, you are in. You're in. If you turn your... Start the video right down there. Start video. Start video. There we go. I don't know why I didn't start, but there you are. Yeah, thank you. Hi, Sylvia. Hi. That was me logging in on a second device if you could let me in. I did, James, because you had James' name. So... Yeah, that's perfect. It's okay. I'm going to turn the overhead on. Sylvia, do you want to hit... Oh, there we go. Never mind. Emma, remind me of your assistant's name. What's your name, assistant? What's your name? Ruby. Yeah, Ruby. Hi. She was trying to get me back. Jenna, what's your baby's name again? Lillian. Lillian. Hi, Lillian. I know. Waving is... I have another one who's a little bit older than you, who's going to bed right now, Lillian. She'll be going to bed soon, too. Lillian's was... Her presence was requested. Hi. Specifically, whenever I say NPA, either for wards two, three, or four, seven, she's like, I'm coming up. I want to go home. Aw. Hey, great. All right, folks, it's 7-0-2. Shall we just begin? Okay. So I'm going to kick us off. Welcome to Wards Four and Seven NPA. My name is Matt Krollber, and I will start off with ground rules, and then we'll go to the little round robin where we all announce ourselves. Basically, we want to be polite, listen to other speaking, respect the agenda and the process. We want you to share your opinions politely, treat each other respectfully. Have your questions prepared, as this is a forum of questions and sharing. And we just want to remember that in this digital format, you really need to be aware of whether or not your microphone is on. And if you're not speaking, please look in the bottom left corner of your screen and make sure that you are muted. You want to see the red line through the microphone. Otherwise, we can hear your television and your cat and your dog and everything else just a little bit loud. So we will start by going around the room and introducing ourselves. I'm just going to go down through my little boxes that I've got and I'll announce your name and let you. So I see Eric. Hi, Eric Corbman, Ward Four Steering Committee. I see Jeff. Hello, Frank Bozak, Ward Four. My wife, Bridget, will be joining a bit later. Jeff Clark. Jeff Clark, Ward Four Steering Committee, and Michelle Clark. Karen. Hi, I'm Karen Durfee. I'm in Ward Seven. Jeff Comstock. Yes, Jeff Comstock, Ward Seven Steering Committee member. I'm Robert Bristow-Johnson. I'm Robert Bristow-Johnson. I'm Ward Seven. Jenna. Good evening. Jenna O'Donnell, Ward Four Steering Committee member. Sarah. Sarah Carpenter, Ward Four City Councilor. Sylvia. You're muted, Sarah. All right, so Sylvia. Can you unmute Sylvia? There you go. Yeah, Sylvia Knight, Ward Seven. Bob Wright, Ward Seven. Thank you. Kendra. Hi, everyone. Kendra Sowers, Ward Four, and the School Commissioner for the North District. Emma. Hi, all. Emma Mulvaney-Sanuck. I'm a state representative for Chittenden 6-2, which is the southern portion of Ward Four and Seven and the west side of the Old North Inn. And this is Ruby. Hi, Ruby. Al. My name is Al Baluchi, and I am in Ward Seven. Carol. You're muted, Carol. Hi, this is Carol Ody, and I am Ward Four, and I'm a state representative for District 6-1. Kenan. Hi, Kenan Christensen, Ward Seven, and candidate for North District City Councilor. Lindra. Lindra Mordek, Ward Seven. Thank you. Liam. Hello. I'm Liam, the CEDA liaison. I live in Ward One. Burjit. Oh, I said that right. I'm Frank Bozak here for Bridget. She'll be joining me a bit later. Yep, you said that. I missed that. Chi. Oh, sorry. I'm Chi Wong. I'm in Ward Four. Awesome. Lauren. You're muted, Lauren. That is 10 Meeting TV, so they just may not- Oh, it is. Oh, I'm sorry. Okay, thank you. Steve. Stephen Hamlin, Ward Seven. Chris. Hey, Chris Bear, Ward Seven. Alexander. Alexander Stith, Ward Seven. And Marcella. Marcella Constantino, Ward Seven. Excellent. And I don't see any new faces on my screen. Have I missed anyone? I think Lee just came in. I just admitted her. Okay. Yep, I see her. She's connecting. Lee, if you could announce yourself, you're the last producer. Leecher Hewn, Ward Four. Anybody else? I think that's everybody. And I'll just remind everybody, we've chosen as an NPA to use this format, which is a personal Zoom format, and it allows us to do what we just did and interact, and it's the next best thing to being together and in person, and it's much more interactive, but it does have its faults, so we will do our best to not allow faults, but we're ready to move on. We have a moment for announcements, if anybody has an announcement to make. I mean, unmute yourself and speak up. Oh, hi. I just want to make sure that two things going on this weekend, that the BHS booster pride is doing a food collection at the shopping center, the north end of the shopping center, from nine to three. So bring your goods down, and as always, cash is accepted or you can donate online. They wanted to do that because we probably won't be collecting a lot of food goods at the polls since we won't be at the polls, so in lieu of that, bring it down. You can bring it to the polls, but they're trying to do a big thing on Saturday. And also let neighbors who may be interested, there's a food distribution at the Champlain School at noon on Saturday while supplies last, and anybody in need is welcome to go down there and get those foods. So thanks. Anyone else? Go in once. Hey, Matt. Yes. I do. I wanted to nominate Qi Wang for the Steering Committee. And if someone could award, from Ward 4, Jenna, maybe you could second that nomination. I did that, yes. And we welcome you, Qi, to the Steering Committee. Recent transplants from San Francisco and family has brought her to the area as well. So we're glad you can join. Yeah, I'm happy to be here. I'm looking forward to meet all my neighbors and also make some friends because I don't have any yet. So yeah. Great. Welcome. Won't take long at all. I guess I would also remind everybody of the raise hand function. So the Steering Committee members will be keeping an eye on the participant list. So if you want to raise your hand to ask a question, make use of that function. And I believe it should show up in the corner of your picture too. So we'll be watching for it. Perfect. Thanks, Jeff. So we'll move to elected officials. I see some familiar faces on my screen. And Sarah, would you like to start? Or Carol, would you like to start? I'm happy to start if you'd like me to. Please. Okay, let me grab my... So I thought I'd catch you up on what's happening with water quality. Vermont uses water quality standards as the foundational tool in its efforts to restore and maintain the health and proper use of its surface waters. And these standards are codified in the Clean Water Act and they're approved by the Environmental Protection Agency. They are used to assess the quality of water for drinking, swimming, fishing, boating, and habitat function. We have a bill in H-108, and that bill will clarify the long-time interpretation and practice that Vermont's water quality standards apply to all surface waters, including rivers, lakes, ponds, and very importantly, to wetlands. The bill also updates the state's Clean Water Act section 401 provision to help the state better manage large projects that may discharge to Vermont's surface waters, including projects subject to a federal permit or license such as an interstate energy project. So this is a very important bill and we're hoping that this will pass and be signed by the governor. Next is the Promoting Forest Health and Biodiversity. The Natural Resources Fish and Wildlife Committee is developing strategies to protect forest health, including initiatives to support and enhance wildlands and intact forests. Wildlands is a new designation here. Protecting the biodiversity of our forest is essential, and we're facing a moment in time when forest fragmentation, habitat loss, and the loss of connecting habitat and the introduction of invasive pest and plant species are severely impacting our wildlife, diminishing the abundancy, diversity in native species of wildlife populations. And biodiverse forests protect our wildlife, store precipitation during severe weather events, and are a cost-effective means of sequestering, absorbing, and storing carbon. And the committee is looking at how our neighbors in New Hampshire and Maine are supporting wildland conservation. I myself have been to a couple of national talks on that and will continue my work there. Thanks, Carol. Shall we move to Bob? We certainly can. Thank you. Government operations is like all over the map. I just picked out a day of our agenda. We started by talking about reapportionment because the feds have notified us that census data is going to be really late, so we have to figure out a new way to get into starting that process before we really have any information. We're going to use GIS estimated data, which I suspect is probably going to be wrong because it's old and so many people have been moving into all this construction that's happening in Chittenden County that I voiced an opinion that maybe we should back off on that a little bit because we have no idea how reliable the data is going to be. Then we went immediately thereafter into a discussion about candidate expenditures on child care when you're running for office. Prior to this point, there was no provision for people that have kids to be able to say I'm going to write this off to the campaign basically because there's nothing better than face-to-face communication. You can stay at home and sign postcards or you can go out and meet with voters. It seems like a pretty logical thing to do. After that, we jumped into who gets copies of the laws when we make them because existing statutes says they're supposed to be sent free to libraries and things like this and everybody in every state in the nation is supposed to have access to something that didn't really make sense. Talked about that for a little while. Then we jumped over to adding staff to the office of the director of racial equity. There's one person in that office that has legion tasks and every time I think she turns around she gets five more. We were talking about adding a data analysis then some other support person to the office. That was just the morning session. Then we came back in the afternoon and did another whole gambit of little snippets of stuff. All of this involves two or three witnesses coming in getting five minutes to talk about something and then moving on. The most significant thing that we're doing though I think is tackling the issue of the reapportionment because it's really going to impact us here in Burlington and here in Chittenden County. So I really hope we're going to get it right and going to try to do as much as possible to make sure that happens. Then we elected a sergeant at arms and threw out ballots for UVM trustees. It's just it's a really busy time. I actually think Carol, Emma may agree or disagree but since we're staying at home and doing this Zoom thing it almost seems like people are thinking you can be three places at once and it doesn't work that way. So I find myself on two computers at once trying to go be in two different meetings. It's really weird but it's still fun. Questions? Can I ask a question, Bob? You certainly can. The regular two dollars though. All right, I'll send you the money. So it's going to be about the redistricting. There is this portion of ward one that's in the legislative district that's essentially the city of Onuski. There's another town that south of us called Rutland, Vermont and their life is much easier than ours because their legislative districts and their city wards are the same exact lines but we can't exactly do that when we have a legislative district that stravels a city boundary. And so what I'd like to just leave a seat in your head that when the nitty gritty dirty redistricting happens if people can pay some attention to the city lines and what might, I mean the city will decide separately what those city wards are but if they straddle the city line with any legislative district then it's going to be impossible for us to choose to have our wards coincide with the legislative districts like they do in Rutland and which makes their life easier. So it's just something to keep in mind when the lines get drawn. Yeah and as you well know because you've been involved in this stuff it's ruled by the numbers. Yeah I know but numbers get fudged a little bit there's that 10% thing. Yeah yeah yeah yeah but I mean like every time Hal introduces himself he's Hal Colston from Winooski and a little bit of Burlington. So yeah that's what it is. Down by Riverside Ave. Yeah yeah. Well if we do get a straddling of the city then all bets are off on the city redistricting because we'll just do it the way we did and what we did last time I ended up being the one drawing the map is we made it so that they had as little change as possible for the existing seven wards. Now there's eight wards but if we end up getting if we don't straddle city boundaries we could throw that to the wind and do something completely different like adopt the legislative districts as our wards and that might make life easier. So I'm done. Thank you. Lee has a question. Lee has nice answers. Bob thanks. Bob you said that you hope we should that it's going to affect us a lot and we hope we do it right. I'd like to know what's the big effect on us and are the senate districts going is the senate race going to change because they're not all coming from you know what I'm asking in your opinion what's the big impact and how do we do it right? There's two different questions I think Lee the first one is what's the big impact and I think you know Cambrian rise is going to be a big impact but it's not going to be something that's taken into consideration because it's going to be an after the fact thing a lot of the building there is going to happen in the next census period but you know we've had a lot of people move in to the new north end every component of Burlington is expanding in some degree so I don't have a prediction I suspect our lines out here are going to change a little bit but again it's all going to be in the numbers. Yeah but aren't you talking about the legislative districts not the wards? I'm asking you about the legislative districts how are the legislative districts going to change and what's the big impact there and how does it affect the sixth member senate delegation? The sixth member senate delegation is going to change because there was a statutory change last time I think that sort of dictated it how it breaks down is once again going to be depending on where the population centers of Burlington and South Burlington and Winooski Winooski I don't think has changed a whole lot because they're relatively confined and how much they can spread out but when you look at all the residential development that is going on say at the corners that where the pink concrete truck is that apartment complex they've added two buildings recently in South Burlington out by Timber Lane there's a whole new development project going in it's I think the ramifications in Chittenden County and in suburban Burlington are going to be greater than we might suspect I don't see things changing massively but it wouldn't surprise me that Emma says oh I used to represent you at some point in time because that that line might fudge around a little bit Carol and I might have the same issue with you know maybe we'll cross the river and go over into Colchester who knows a little little mystique so I don't know I just think that using the old data that is provided by the state that doesn't look at current real estate trends and things like that might might lead us into a an issue where we're underestimating change until the feds get their data to us which isn't going to be for a while thanks Bob just in an interest of time let's move on if that's all right and give Emma a chance great thank you hi everyone this is Ruby in the background so she has agreed to be quiet we'll see how this goes just in listening so I just I thought it was simple she did remember we're gonna work on this together okay so I thought I just I thought I would just start by mentioning a very quick passed by two of the most popular bills I heard about from constituents and that would be the first the it's numbered h171 if you want to look it up it's the child care affordability bill that let's grow kids has been advocating for and it's a very big systems change kind of bill that's working on making affordability essential pillar of trying to fix our child care system it also I'm excited to see around the professional trying to lift professional wages for early educators who in many cases are making pretty low wages in Vermont and it's sort of a catch 22 because tuition I will tell you because my younger one is still in child care is really unaffordable for a lot of families in the state so it's a really complex bill but it has a ton of support and it's spent a lot of time moving through the human services committee and it will come to my committee house commerce to touch on a small piece that's related to workforce development so it's moving I think it's probably some version of it will pass this this session out of the house and so I'm pretty excited about that and I know that's probably one of the top things I'm hearing from folks the other bill I've heard mostly from folks about is H81 which is an actually a collective bargaining bill but it impacts school educators so it's the a few years ago the state brought all the healthcare bargaining on onto a statewide level instead of in local districts and this bill went through the first bargaining round if you will and needed some technical fixes and one of them to make the system I think a bit fairer for support staff these are para educators and cafeteria workers and bus drivers and whatnot is that allows them to actually include other economic factors at the bargaining table it doesn't change what people pay it just changes the rules to allow bargaining to be a bit fairer for workers so as someone who supports organized labor I was pretty pleased that that passed the house and it's in the senate I thought I'd just wrap up on two other bills one big bill is moving it's kind of like a mini covid relief economics bill this week in the house that number is H315 there's a lot in that bill there's a couple pieces my committee worked a bit on around another wave of business relief grants I don't think the bill is perfect but you know democracy's about compromise but it's 10 million dollars to move to businesses that either did not receive any covid relief money through the federal and state programs that passed through over the last several months or received pretty minimal amounts and the reason I wanted to highlight that is that I know that women owned businesses and BIPOC owned businesses I've had some carve outs in the last wave although for BIPOC owned businesses in particular it was very hard for the state to find the BIPOC owners business owners we're working on that there's another piece I'll just mention in a minute where we're trying to do better just system wise for the state to really support BIPOC businesses but for this piece we have some technical money earmarked within that 10 million dollars to work on translation so language access technical support to help people who need to get their books in order to even apply and a little bit of phasing in the money so that it doesn't all you know dry up in the first week based on people you know rushing their applications and because there's a lot of economic need again not perfect but if people want to geek out on that one you can let me know the larger bill includes a lot of federal money passed through as well that go the lot of money is moving to housing folks without homes it's going some stuff to mental health some stuff related to the food bank reach up there's a lot of stuff in this bill which will help for Monters and I think we can still do more to help folks who are most most still feeling the struggles of this pandemic the last thing I'll wrap up on back to bypass businesses because again I'm on the house commerce committee so my life is a lot around business development and workforce development and economic development in general for the state is that we really heard through testimony that BIPOC businesses the state does not do a good job of tracking where they are who they are so they have trouble communicating and understanding what I think the needs of BIPOC business owners are in the state and so one piece that we're the committee has already endorsed the concept of and we're working out now the details is helping to develop a network so we're not sure what that is it should really come from I think BIPOC business owners to define but to be freeing up some resources to help stand up some sort of meaningful networking so really allowing these businesses to you know come together connect network help to advocate with the state to on where the agency of commerce can really be but more responsive and help to resource help connect with state contracts gigs that they could bid for etc so a lot there but if you happen to know any BIPOC business owners in particular please let me know because I really want to I've been talking to a lot of folks around Burlington including at CEDO to do this well there's a lot to learn and I think we the first thing we know is that we don't know everything so we're trying to really reach out thanks all thanks Emman we'll open to questions if anybody has any yes Matt this is Jeff going back to Bob Hooper's comment about reapportionment what's the can you remind us what the the variant standard is that or the you know percent deviation that's allowed between districts it's and Robert said I deferred to his past history 10 percent of the you know usually you're looking at a particular number that's digested from all the existing and where you can go between that but I think it's 10 percent of the average that you can go up or down okay thanks I think the largest one can't be more than 10 percent than the smallest smaller one yeah the smallest of them all and then you guys are more complicated because you have multi-seat districts yeah Sylvie I see your hand up yeah excuse me I wanted to ask Carol if there was a bill number regarding that forest biodiversity I do not have the bill number right here but I can get it to you Sylvie okay wondered if it had a bill number yet yeah may it may not I'll check on that do you know anything about the bill age 15 that your committee and House the Ag Committee heard about sometime last week about what in particular it's about to herbicides you go glyphosate atrazine and chloropryorophose I have not seen that but as you know I've been working hard on glyphosate issues and doing that with the Lake Champlain Citizens Advisory Committee and also with you with the city so but I'll check into that and get back to you Ms. Curious I know you say Sylvia just curious as to where where the bill is going but I can look it up on on the web okay see what what's happening with it thank you Lee I saw your hand go ahead I just want to ask our legislators to watch for H 172 which bans leg hold and body crushing traps we got to do this it's awful it's awful what's allowed to happen out there to these animals and Massachusetts has banned all trapping it's banned in other places come on Vermont we got to do it it's heartbreaking you know cruel is a good word I'm not seeing any other hands with no other questions let's bring it to Sarah and do some city council okay first off I thought my colleague Franklin might be joining us tonight for his last well not as last NPA but as last NPA as a counselor but we've had a lot going on and he may have already gotten a better offer so I just want to thank him for his service to the ward the last two years it is a daunting task we hear a lot from you and so it keeps you very busy so thank you Franklin you tonight actually we're going to have a presentation on city place and so I'm really going to defer talking about that Jeff Glasberg who's a city's consultant will be speaking as well as Jesse Beck from Freeman French and Freeman who's doing some of the initial design work but that clearly has been occupying a lot of our time this last month as well as all of the things leading up to the election on Tuesday I actually hope most of you have all voted but we have seven candidates for mayor seven ballot items so it's really been a marathon run to get all of that out there and all of that information out to the various constituents I'm hoping we have a little bit of law maybe in the next couple of weeks and then we'll we'll be on to something new and you know we really have because of the ballot deadlines you know there's a lot of the initiatives have been sort of tied up for the minute and then we'll be looking at new initiatives I actually have been spending personal time I happen to also be the chair of the Vermont Rental Housing Advisory Board we're looking at a few statewide issues around code enforcement which Brillington luckily has its own department already most towns don't but one minor detail in that is been conversations about keeping better track of short-term rentals getting a short-term rental registry and Brillington's moving on a parallel track there is a joint committee between ordinance and the planning commission working as we speak and I think in the next couple of months we're going to see more initiatives around short-term rentals so that's sort of something to keep your eyes on I guess I'm blanking at the minute about other initiatives I think I'm glad to hear us talking more about and getting back on water quality I know that's a significant issue to all of us and particularly those of us in Ward 4 who live along the lake so I'm hoping we can get more attention relative to that and I'm happy to really answer any questions I can on any of the initiatives Thank you Sarah I have a question for the city council from someone that wrote in earlier this is Julie Hathaway and Julie's from Ward 7 and she said could we ask our counselors to comment on the letter that was submitted to the council by Fire Chief Locke on January 19th regarding police staffing impact on fire department service delivery and could you as counselors share the letter with your constituents because it's really difficult to find it buried in the Board Docks I am personally happy to share it with anybody and I I do understand Board Docks is not the easiest venue that's probably something we should work on essentially the letter speaks to the fact that he is concerned that if the police headcount diminishes that that could affect their staffing and their need for accompaniment for lack of a better word on some of the calls that they go up so it's really wrapped into the conversation around what's the appropriate headcount for the city as you know that was a divided issue I personally think we're moving a little too fast on that but the one thing we finally did which was slow was approve the consultant that we had agreed upon earlier in the year to do a full functional assessment of our department Karen can probably speak some to that but I'm grateful we finally got that out the door it won't be done until April and so we're going to see where that leads I think unfortunately because of the mayor's race we're just not going to see conversation for the next few weeks on revisiting this issue we need to I believe and we did approve and I want to make be clear on this seven I believe unarmed community service officers and community service liaisons and the hiring for that will start hopefully immediately and then I think in a few weeks we need to revisit the other issues that we've got on our on our plane around that if you want to pass my email on I can't quickly locate that letter but I'm happy to pass it on after after I find it to anyone who's interested thanks Sarah any other questions for Sarah or sitting down from the general I see no hands yeah Matt this is Jeff can I raise a point of order before we move on to the next segment that Jeff Clark and Jenna nominated chief for steering committee but I don't think we took the opportunity to let the ward for residents actually vote on that so can we do that procedural step I think we could why don't we come back to that in just a couple minutes let's give Kendra an opportunity in between Kendra and DPW can I come back to that awesome don't let me forget because I'm distracted but hearing no other questions I'm going to go to you Kendra thanks Matt I'm going to keep mine short because you guys gave us a half an hour at the end of this meeting we're going to talk about the ballot item we're going to talk about the school budget and we'll try to explain the school budget because it's always complicated and I know people have lots of questions so I'm not going to talk about that now but I will answer all your questions and go into great depth at the end of this meeting we are very excited that the downtown high school will be opening on time next week for Thursday for the first day of school for these high schoolers that really it's been a long haul since last March so it has been a big lift to get everybody moved over there the teachers have been packing everything and the desks have been delivered and so that is going that has been great right now it's school vacation week and people have been moving a lot during this vacation so we're very excited about that and we're really appreciative of everybody who has helped and volunteered and you know this is this has been really a community effort to get the high school downtown and I also want to thank our legislators once again for helping to get the money for the fit up for 3.5 million to get to help us to achieve that so thank you to our legislators for that so I think Commissioner Avanchik is coming and joining it later in the meeting and she's going to help me talk about the budget and so that's I think all that I'm going to talk about right now if anyone has questions let me know questions for Kendra raise your hand speak up Carol you almost faked me out I see no hands so I'm going to go back and let's put the power of vote to Ward 4 Chief forgive me I forgot your last name and this is number one so the it has been put to task for Ward 4 to vote so all in favor from Ward 4 that it's eligible to vote let us hear your yeas I'm seeing you watch I bye Renee I see a lot of good faces but I see no nays so I'm going to make the call that the yeas have it and officially now Chief welcome thank you excellent you're welcome so we are three minutes early for DPW and I'm not seeing Jenna Olson present you are I'm sorry Jenna I let her in she's here oh I'm sorry awesome it's okay Jenna are you prepared if we give you the baton three minutes early yep awesome do you need to share your screen yes of course you do bear with me I've made you co-host Jenna did I meet you yes great so my name is Jenna Olson I appreciate you guys giving us the time tonight I'm I'm joined this evening by Jessica Lavalette who is our customer care and finance manager I serve the water resources division as the water policy and programs manager so we're coming back to you tonight following a COVID related hiatus we started doing this outreach in the fall of 2019 you may remember that we had come to one of your NPA meetings with a big table of information and you know educational materials to talk about the initial launch of this project we were planning on coming back to all of the NPA's last spring we had NPA meetings planned for March of 2020 and then a global pandemic hit and we put put a pause on the project so we're back at it now rebooting this project we presented to Board of Finance the counselors to varying degrees at different venues that the TUC the DPW commission things like that and you guys are the last of our NPA tours to hit so I'll go through you know what our next steps are but for tonight our intent is to go through you know the the impetus of the project why we've been doing this you know why we needed to do this and then what the actual rate structure changes are proposed for the upcoming year so the tension the tension between our core values with the water division is a constant balancing act we need sustainable funding in order to maintain the infrastructure that is necessary to provide clean and safe drinking water to treat and then to treat and manage wastewater and storm water before it drains the lake but if the cost of that service isn't affordable then residents may not be able to access the water that they need for essential living purposes so when we started this project one of the first things we asked ourselves was how much does it truly cost to provide water service in Burlington who's using that water and are those users paying their fair share of the costs now our distribution system has to be sized appropriately to provide adequate flow to all of our customers but each of our customer classes is unique and doesn't place the same demand on the water system the infrastructure to provide the basic level of demand for normal residential and commercial water usage is represented by that smallest inner circle that you see and our pipes would be a certain size in the fixed costs for the chemicals and electricity to run the pumps you know all those things that are necessary to provide that clean safe drinking water would also be finite but what happens when we add things like watering lawns and gardens you know peak demand when our industrial users and a bunch of residential users are all using water at the same time well in that case we can see that next that next middle circle that our water has to be our distribution system has to be that much larger in order to provide water for both that basic level of demand and those extra capacity flows now that final largest circle represents fire protection and how large our system needs to be in order to provide flow for all the private fire services in the city if needed so all buildings have a water service to provide flow for domestic water and that pipe is typically one or two inches in diameter but a pipe that size is only one or two inches wouldn't be adequate for most institutions commercial and large multi-unit residential buildings that need fire protection so they either need a separate larger service pipe to provide fire service and retain the small domestic service or they have one incoming pipe that size large enough to provide fire protection and the domestic water services is then tapped off inside and reduced down to the appropriate diameter for those basic level needs now as we mentioned before as the size of the pipes increase so do the fixed costs necessary to treat and deliver the water so going back to the original question are all customers paying a proportional amount of the costs to provide their property with water the answer today is no because everyone pays the same rate even though certain customer classes require a distribution network to be inherently larger and they're the ones who benefit from it so Jess is going to go through like I was saying the proposed rate and policy changes and some of the specific impacts and the affordability programs that we're proposing as part of this project and then I'll come back and talk a little bit about our next steps and then we'll have some time for folks to ask questions thank you Jenna so I'm here to discuss our proposed rate and fee changes and as you can see here we have six proposed rate and policy changes that are all considered standard best practice within the water utility industry additionally these changes do support our goals of ensuring the affordability of water while improving the financial health sustainability and revenue stability of the funds these changes are also meant to help ensure our customer classes are paying for services in a manner equitable to the burden they place on the system the items in green reflect changes made to our proposal since last March in an effort to mitigate impacts on commercial customers while still maintaining affordability benefits for our residential customers these changes are a direct response to the economic hardship caused by the pandemic so the first one up here is fixed charges by meter size we are proposing a fixed fee for both water and wastewater that escalates based on meter size beginning with five eight inch meters up to our largest size of six inch we have always assessed a fixed fee on meter size at one inch or larger but this will be the first time since 1996 that five eights and three quarter inch meters will receive one this proposal is important because our current rate structure is entirely volumetric which means our revenues can be significantly impacted by conditions out of our control like a cold rainy summer or global pandemic incorporating a fixed charge for all meter sizes will ensure a negative revenue that we can count on to provide stability for the funds this type of rate structures also viewed favorably when we need to borrow money and allows us to qualify for lower interest rates in some cases here in green we see a modification from last spring where we were able to achieve a lower charge for most meter sizes by modifying the calculation basis and reducing the percentage of our cost recovery the lifeline rate tier currently as I mentioned we have a uniform rate structure where everyone is charged the same amount for 100 cubic foot which is equivalent to 748 gallons the introduction of a lifeline rate allows us to define the water needed for essential life activities as 400 cubic feet and charge less for usage under that threshold so we chose 400 cubic feet because it's the median usage in Burlington and in calendar year 2019 54 percent of Burlington customers fell into that category and as Jenna discussed as we move to class-based rates the strain each customer puts on our water system is inherently different so it doesn't make sense to continue charging everyone the same rate this change allows us to recognize that difference while still providing support to our residential repairs we're proposing that all multifamily residential mix use and commercial properties be charged at a rate that is a midway point between the two residential tiers this does provide some relief because they're typically larger consumers and would actually pay more if eligible for that lifeline rate tier our previous recommendation did have mix use and commercial classes at a higher volumetric rate but you will see here we've decided for the upcoming fiscal year to leave them at that lower rate to mitigate any pandemic impacts we're also proposing a higher water rate for irrigation or cooling towers but have allowed an exception for community-based gardening initiatives like BACG or the Interval as we move to fire protection charges this change introduces a monthly fee for customers with a private hydrant or fire service that escalates based on the pipe diameter conceptually this goes back to our cost of service analysis where we are paying more to have a water system capable of serving should those properties need to use it and as you can see in green here we've decided to phase in the fee over five years instead of assessing the full fee in year one the Water Resources Assistance Program or WREP this is the change that I'm personally most excited about because it has the potential to make a real difference in the lives of our customers we are proposing to waive the fixed meter charge for residents of single family properties who can demonstrate they are at or below 185% of the federal poverty level and here is a modification from spring where we've expanded the eligibility to include any senior citizens living in single family homes along with non-profit housing developments providing affordable or senior living units next slide Jenna so these are the current and proposed rates as they exist right now as we can see the fixed charges are assessed on all meter sizes here the five eighths fee is currently proposed to be three dollars and thirty four cents for water and four sixty eight pursuer as we move down to the volumetric rate so we can see the single family residential volume metric rate was previously that uniform four dollars and forty four cents but we've got that two tier structure now so the tier one rate is for usage under four hundred cubic feet so from zero to four hundred and will be two dollars and forty nine cents per hundred which is a significant change from where it is now it's much lower the tier two rate which will be applied on consumption over four hundred cubic feet will be six dollars and twenty three cents per hundred and we will be able to apply this rate structure to duplexes but only if each unit has a separate meter as we mentioned earlier multifamily residential mix use and commercial properties won't be eligible for that tiered structure and we're proposing to move their rate from four dollars and forty four to four thirty six per hundred cubic feet the irrigation rate is currently a bit higher than the uniform rate but it'll be increasing substantially to seven dollars and forty eight cents per hundred this reflects the cost of providing service and sends a pricing signal to conserve water when use is not for basic needs the wastewater volumetric rate is proposed to go from six twenty to six oh eight for everyone the rate's the same for all customer classes because volume is not a primary cost of service driver for wastewater however the strength of wastewater is a driver which is why we tend to sense a monthly surcharge when an industrial user exceeds the waste strength set by city ordinance if we move to the far right column we see that private fire charges are proposed for the first time and they escalate based on size again these rates are monthly and they reflect a twenty percent of the intended full charge as they're being faced in over five years the combined water resources bill also contains two of the charges not included on this table you might be familiar with the storm water has been around since 2009 and it's assessed based on property type with single family duplex and triflexes home being charged a flat fee and all other properties are directly charged for the actual pervious measure the storm water rates are proposed to increase by five percent across the board next fiscal year and the water bill also contains a franchise fee charge that were required to pay to the general fund according to city charter it's currently set at three and a half percent of water wastewater sales next slide John excuse me customer is max so as part of the rate study we created a model that utilized consumption data from calendar year 2019 to calculate the estimated financial impact for each account however the model is just a projection so it's important to remember that future bills will vary based on a variety of factors like actual consumption the final approved rates city council vote on and eligibility for assistance programs so in order to help customers better understand how they might be impacted by the proposed changes we have developed an accounting impact summary request form that can be filled out online this will allow us to discuss why a specific bill might be higher or lower but also gives customers an opportunity to learn about our available credit and review programs and the related eligibility requirements for them initiatives like applying for a wrap or a stormwater credit along with requesting a meter sizing review or implementing some conservation strategies can all be considered and completed in advance of the proposed rate changes we will also be including data on post-covid consumption trends in our responses because the pandemic has significantly altered how water is being used we've seen an average increase in residential consumption of about 10% and a decrease on the commercial side of about 30% when compared to the previous year so this is a little bit more detail about wrap it will be the very first rate payer assistance initiative for water resources we intend to leverage existing state and federal benefit programs as our qualifying criteria in order to limit the administrative burden associated with developing our own income verification program this means that rate payers who already participate in programs like Lifeline or Three Squares Crisis Fuel SSI or rental assistance through section 8 can apply and simply use their proof of enrollment in that program to be qualified for wrap for one year or in the case of senior citizens providing proof of their age will meet that eligibility threshold I'd like to mention here that we're also open to adding additional qualifying programs to the rate assistance list and would encourage feedback about other initiatives that we could add to expand wrap's reach one of the more difficult challenges we face with implementing an assistance program is how to provide relief to renters who don't receive a water bill ultimately there is no way to guarantee that a landlord would pass any savings along and we're certainly not alone as most water utilities are struggling with how to reach tenants in a meaningful way with an assistance program we may not have the answer to the problem today but we certainly aren't giving up and hope to address it with future initiatives speaking of future initiatives we have also begun developing some additional assistance programs that address infrastructure and conservation needs these proposals include offering grant funding for condition assessments on sewer laterals availability of no or low interest loans for replacement of water services or sewer laterals rebates for installing appliances that conserve water along with availability of real-time water data to monitor usage and providing free tools to implement stormwater management practices like rain barrels these won't be all ready to roll out right in July but we're actively working towards them and now back to Jenna who'll go over our next steps and additional outreach thanks Jess so that like I was saying at the beginning the outreach that we're doing has been attending the NPAs we've gone to DBW commission the two the board of finance and we'll be working on targeted notification to our customers with fire services hydrants and irrigation meters over the coming weeks that will also be the period of time when we're meeting with our key community partners and our other large users we will be hosting an open house public meeting for all ratepayers on April 7th we'll start advertising that shortly there will be an ad in seven days we'll be posting that to front porch forum and to our Facebook accounts and then we also maintain a pretty robust online presence at the link that you see above on your screen that's where customers can review all of the presentations we've done to date and provide feedback via web forms and request an estimated account impact summary our continuous improvement process will be happening between roughly now and July so that's when we'll be incorporating the feedback that we're receiving from all of our stakeholders reviewing validating and responding to those impact summary requests doing all of our ongoing QAQC with the data and making the required updates to our billing system and then drafting our water resources affordability program policy and making any necessary ordinance changes to the chapter 31 ordinance we'll be seeking approvals from city council and the mayor between April and June of this year and then implementation will begin hopefully July 1 so as of July 1st these changes will become effective and then they will be reflected on the August bills so we do have time to take some questions I know that some folks had questions about our COVID wastewater sampling as well I'd prefer to answer questions about this first and foremost but if we do have a little bit of time I can take a couple of questions on that I did talk to Jeff and I'm more than happy to come back to the NPA next month and talk more about that COVID wastewater sampling process if folks are interested but for now we're happy to answer any questions I'm looking for hands anyone have questions you want to end the screen share so you can see better yep hold on this thank you thank you thank you thank you uh much better there we go you can see more faces raise your hand dance I don't see anybody Jen I was wondering oops I'm sorry so Jen thank you send you a private message thank you Frank so I'll be following up with you separately but I just want to say that's really exciting the RAP program so huge kudos to the city and for you for putting that together that's really exciting we're very very excited there's a few other things I didn't get to talk about tonight that we're we're going to be doing we'll present at the April meeting but it's it's going to be really great for people I'm very excited and I will follow up like I saw the little chat perfect thank you yeah Eric did you have a question someone else had piped up Bob you mean me yes Robert okay that's fine um so uh is the idea of going to this fixed-rate structure to um save expenses on the the metering expenses I imagine isn't zero and so the UD we'd essentially be tossing the meters out and going to this fixed-rate structures and not having to have the overhead cost of of reading meters essentially whether we do it electronically or or not well we'll still have the meters the the fixed charges essentially to um recoup some of the the fees that we aren't now and so this is it this is a charge in addition to our metered charge that's going to be on our water yes it's in addition to the volume metric it is yep all right I I got it that's I I don't have a question left anymore oh okay I did not I misunderstood the meaning sorry and I probably have been talking too fast at some of these so I apologize but this is an this is a a fixed charge based on how big we are that's going to be added to our metered charge yes this is based on your meter size yep that's how it'll grow okay I thought I saw one more anybody else I've got a quick question yeah if I can jump in you said that the commercial usage during code that is down 30 and the residential which is no surprise because more people are home is up 10 I don't want to assume because one is down 30 and one is up 10 that were 20 better do you have a stat on actual usage is the city needing more water or has it decreased decreased yeah I haven't run the last couple months but you could there was absolutely the dips and trends you could see not only with our production numbers but with billable following the different stages of the emergency order as well so overall it's still down depending on where you are places like the university are still very much not where they were and is that a negative impact on the city if the city's not building for the water they're providing yeah I mean we had a hot summer so that was actually you know people do water more there's you know different larger irrigators that that was a little bit helpful but overall it's still down a bit and I could certainly follow up with you about some more recent numbers by customer class if you're interested I'm just curious that's me yeah absolutely looking in my faces who are the who else has questions representative Hooper thank you so do we have one supply line that comes out north avenue or is there more than how do we get our water out here in that that's a great question is I there's a couple different transmission means headed down north avenue the size is I one is on the bike path I know and what there's a couple on north avenue absolute the diameters I'm not quite sure of but I could certainly find out it's not critical but when Cambrian is fully developed are we going to have pressure issues that's no no our our engineering so every time there's a new development or any sort of redevelopment project they have to submit something called a capacity to serve request to our engineering team so what that involves is our our engineering staff looking at the capacity in both our wastewater and our water distribution systems and measuring that against the demand that a new development is going to put in and ensuring that we have adequate capacity to serve that development so Cambrian rise well before they put their first shovel in the ground had to obtain one of those capacity to serve requests to ensure that they had they weren't going to be placing an unnecessary or unreasonable demand on the system they will have a private pump station for wastewater and will be conducted constructing some offsets for storm water management but overall that development will not negatively impact water water availability to anybody else thank you it's surprising considering the number of units that are going to be in there that it wouldn't have some impact Alexander yeah i was wondering do you see the increase or the fixed cost and change to cost as a negative for driving more businesses in burlington as will it increase the cost of doing business in burlington or negatively impact the ability for more businesses to be drawn to burlington i don't think so because right now we already have a fixed fee for meters that are size one inch or larger and that encompasses almost every commercial property right now and the fixed fee itself is going to be a little bit lower than what they're paying now although we're reducing the consumption allowance in it so it depends on the business but i don't think it's going to be a game changer for anyone for most for a lot of the businesses they'll see especially the ones that are closed right now or that they're they're reducing their consumption it'll be a little bit less so the rate change won't affect them not the just the fixed but the rate change won't negatively affect people's perception of drawing business to burlington is the hope no not in my opinion yeah thank you lee i see your hand i got two notices today that burlington's dumping wastewater into the lake what's going on there was an issue at east plant it was a disinfection failure at our plant because a blower motor was reset and there is going to be more detail about that on the website but that was the issue it was it was an issue to the musky so I take it the east plant is the one out here no east plant is the one on riverside avenue riverside and it was yesterday and today it was one issue it was just that the report we had to report twice because we have to take we have to take samples at the time the issue occurs and then within 12 hours and so we had to report it twice it was only one issue though any last questions looks like some this is slightly political it has to do with one mayoral candidate how would you feel about the efficacy of merging your department with burlington electric would that help things or would that make things like nutty that's a great question I know at the office we have information about some previous efforts on that and I could certainly follow up follow up with you on the specifics I mean I think overall you know we're always interested in looking into suggestions of you know how we can best serve our customers and looking at the benefits and disadvantages of such a merger so it's certainly something to think about there is one question in the chat but councillor carpenter has her hand up as well and then we'll address one in the chat we've got about a minute more requests for a future meeting both for the folks in water but actually for carol as well I'd love to see us have a meeting on kind of the combined city issues and state watershed issues I find there's a lot of confusion particularly around the blue green algae problems and the big lake problems and the runoff from the Champlain Valley basin as opposed to sewer discharges and it's a complicated thing that I need we explain there's a lot of finger pointing at time around oh it's Burlington's fault but we have this big state issue that we've got to tackle so it's just a request for maybe a meeting later in the spring focused on the relationship between Burlington sewer plants and the lake Champlain basin issues yes I'd be more than happy to come and do a larger presentation we have a much bigger effort called our integrated water quality plan that is in process now we will be doing more outreach on that as the as the spring winds down so there's just there was one quick question that came in in the chat that was how do the reports and results from the testing at the wastewater treatment plants inform actions related to COVID-19 what are the actions associated with higher levels of COVID detection so really quickly that the the two primary goals of that testing is to just provide more data of city level total infections over time and then also serve as some sort of initial indicator of potential increases in infection rate which then helps inform decision-making by the Vermont Department of Health the city of Burlington's emergency operation center and other community stakeholders so the important thing to keep in mind is that you know those testing the testing that we're doing isn't actually detecting live virus it's detecting the genetic material of the virus so we're we're literally sampling for the virus's DNA in our wastewater just like you know human DNA just like we have DNA viruses due to their living organisms they have they have genetic material and so that is actually what we're sampling for is their their DNA and the wastewater and as those levels increase we can you know provide some sort of projection of when those infection rates may be spiking so again I would be more than happy to come back in April and talk a little bit more about that is very very interesting project and the our partner Go Agua has been really fantastic to work with so thank you so much thank you okay have a great night everybody thank you for having us Jessica and Jesse thank you very much for presenting yep and in the interest of keeping on schedule we're two minutes late so we're going to jump to city place and I see in our audience we have Jeff Glasberg Jesse Beck and Dave Harrington so I will turn the mic over to you gentlemen sure can can you hear me you can and I have given you screen sharing ability if you need yes we will need that so we hit can you see my screen now right yet Jesse hey William hello how are you good how you doing good it's a little late for me yeah right choice voting how did Kiskin then maybe while Jesse's queuing up we could ask one of the other presenters just to give us a little background about where we're at yeah this is wasting time yes sorry I'm trying to get my Mac to operate at home yeah I was going to ask you if you were on a Mac because that's a little that's a little harder Dave or anybody else want to we have Jeff Glasberg the city consultant here and obviously one of our owners and developers Dave Harrington it's William Fellows here I'm from Devin Wood okay as well as Dave and myself we maybe can say a few words as you know last night there was unanimous vote to approve the revised DA we were slated and or we have in in as a parallel process we have gone to water to conservation board we've been to the DAB both of them passed us fairly unanimously if that would be the case and we are slated to see the DRB on March 3rd we've been talking with DPW quite regularly in terms of issues to do with the new streets that were being proposed and some of the changes that have occurred since earlier in January February of 2020 so currently for those of you who are not aware of where we were in January we had a number of public meetings in late January early February we presented the new design which has changed somewhat since then but it's essentially the same as it was back then and here we go there we go awesome miracle Jesse prevails and congratulations so you can see my screen so the first stop is I'm Jesse Beck architect with Freeman French Freeman and this slide will show you the design team and also the development team and on the phone you just heard from William Fellows from Devonwood and Dave Farrington from Farrington Construction is one of the local partners along with Scott Ireland and Al Seneca the project giving you a progress report on where we are in the process and everybody's heard the good news of the city council vote last night but we have gone up front of the design advisory board and the conservation board who has moved the project forward for the DRB presentation on March 3rd next Wednesday night the project is very similar to the one that you have seen before we are still maintaining the new streets of the new Pine Street and new St. Paul extensions the north side is on Cherry Street and the south side is on Bank Street highlighted is 67 Cherry which is currently the new home of the Burlington High School shall open up very soon and to the east you have the LL Bean and the Mall Block similar to before we have a north building which is has public access to the parking garages on both the east and the west it has garage entrances which is a change from before the garage entrances are off the new Pine and the new St. Paul and you can start to see the south building to the east of 100 Bank with its own lobby entrance and I think Jeff will want to come back to this to talk about the new streets and the Great Street program this will summarize some of the major components and program of the building the building is now primarily housing 426 units of housing including 88 affordable units we have no more office building to the south that's housing we have reduced the amount of retail on the street level to 41,000 square feet and the garage program has changed because of the changing planning and zoning requirements we are now working with maximum build for parking in a zero requirement for housing so we are going to be building 422 parking spaces in the center of the project and in the basement we have 350 bike parking spaces and we have short term as well which will be in the garage covered project was over a million square feet prior and now we've reduced and I'll show you the size reduction we're now down around 700,000 square feet this diagram is a slice through the site in the block going north to south and ghosted behind in that gray area will show you the reduction or the previous height and mass of the project so we are reducing the height of the building by 50 feet and bringing down from 14 stories to nine stories on the north and 10 stories on the south all of these drawings can be found on the city's website this also illustrates how the parking is inside the block and full length of the basement and we'll show you that there's retail both on the cherry street frontages and the bank street frontages which is the podium to hold up the housing so this is without the ghosting of the previous project illustrating the three levels of parking the parking is completely covered in the center of the block we're going to shift now to walk you through the floor plates of the building and on the right as a diagram with the red line showing you what level we're on but this is the basement level which is mostly parking structure with a mechanical in storage spaces to support the project fully below grade of about 200 parking stalls as we go up to grade you'll see the new streets to the west and to the east so the new pine using the great street models and then entrances to the parking structure the retail wrap like I said is around 41,000 square feet this starts to illustrate the loading docks we have loading docks to service the buildings on both the new pine new st paul into the south off bank street is it going to build around L.O.B I'm going to stand at so all these two levels as we move up the building there's another level of parking before we get to what we call is the top of the podium which is a structural layer so we have basement parking retail more parking and then the podium top and at the podium top is where we begin the residential floor plates and here you can clearly see the north building is a U shape plan and it's really built in two pieces you'll see a line down the center of the north building so we have a north west L shape against a northeast L shape into the south you'll see the south building south which contains the community space as part of the development agreement some roof terrace and you'll see the core elevators that will bring you up to the rooftop observation deck which we'll get to as we go up the building in the corner you'll see at 100 bank street so we're going up the building another level where we have the south building residential units some green roof we also have green roof over the parking deck the U shaped north building and as we go up another level you'll see the form base code has certain dimensional requirements to reduce the mass of the building so the building at this level is 75 feet wide and we go up a level it reduces back to 65 feet as a step back requirement to reduce the mass as we go up in height and that residential plate goes up four levels before we get to the mechanical spaces each building has its own mechanical space and mechanical systems connecting the north U shaped building is more green roof we are planning on photovitaic systems for the rooftops on the south building which is a 10 story building the north building is a nine story building you'll see the public observation rooftop deck accessed off bank street and the yellow elevator cores there will be a restaurant full service restaurant and kitchen and if we get to the highest point there's more photovitaic the mechanical space for the south building and off to the left you'll see the photovitaic array above the mechanical for the south building now we'll run through a series of renderings to give you a better feeling for the street views what the building looks like and materials and finishes how it orients to the street this is showing you the ghosted previous 14 story project and how we've reduced it in size so there you have the nine story north building so this is a view looking down cherry street and the new saint paul to the left the l l build l l bean building so you're looking south west the project similar to before is primarily a red brick building with a salmon colored brick accent glass storefront and bay windows to break up the mass and you can see the step back to reduce the height of the the mass of the building this view is looking southeast so you'll see cherry street with the bus the new pine street and the right this 60 foot right away between the broughington high school macy's building in our facade you start to look down the new pine street and you can see the garage entrance and the loading dock a closer look looking down new pine so you start to see how 100 bank influences the site a glimpse of how new pine goes underneath 100 bank at grade of the retail will turn cherry down new pine the bay windows the step back in the garage entrance jumping around to the south side of the site this is the south building which looks and feels different from the north u-shaped building here you can see 100 bank to the west the podium of the south building residential is a limestone a warm limestone look with a retail on the first floor public amenity space on the second floor we are looking northwest so you get a glimpse of what new st paul looks like a running up towards the ll bean building and the next view gets you closer in looking down bank street towards 100 bank the materials above the limestone is on the podium but as you go above and there's another step back that will be a centered stone which looks and feel like a dare limestone similar to what you see up at the you'll be on medical center so that's a quick look at the floor plates the site plan and the materials size and massing of the project which will be in front of the drb next wednesday night so we can go on to either questions or move on to have jeff talk about the streets we've got about five minutes left i would suggest that if we go right to questions that might be most useful okay that's a good idea i only have a limited screen with screen sharing i'm looking for hands can we stop the screen sharing so that we can see who's asking for questions that might be easier if someone has a question please pipe up bridget did you want to go here on your burden virgin can you hear me now yes we can thank you thank you very much for that presentation i found that very very helpful i have one question at the very beginning i think your first or your second slide the presentation included the number of housing units including 85 affordable housing units contemplated for the i think the north building but i also noticed that you said now is that number will that number change and under what conditions with the number change of housing units in particular any reductions in the number of 85 affordable housing units we have a commitment to meet 20 percent of the units that we build will become affordable so that's where that 85 comes from so that's the commitment and that's what we are planning i think bob was next bob hooper just a quick review it looked like you have more units than you have parking spaces is that true that is correct is that assuming somebody's not going to have a car in the winter or what well what has occurred is in the prior project we had parking requirements for housing uh retail and other uses in the building which uh resulted in the car accounts since then the planning zoning has changed to require that you build to a maximum so we are limited to the amount of stalls we can build in this project by planning and zoning we feel does that include to retail jeff jesse yes so which are yeah so we feel that the maximum which we are going to be building will satisfy the project and not everyone who will be renting in the building as far as units will have a car okay thank you sarah did you have a question no well i just kind of like and i think that's a um jesse brings up a good point that in the downtown zoning we have irrespective of this project are trying to acknowledge that certain developments will not be one-to-one parking that the whole point is that certain numbers of tenants would live there with out of car and that tenants that want a car the charge for the parking will be in addition to their rent essentially trying to attract folks that don't have cars are we assuming that all units are rental or are there condominium for sale units you have to ask the developer i'm assuming at this point in time they are all rentals at this point in time they are rentals okay lee i see your hand we lost some parking with the when the space was when the mall was demolished how does the parking the public parking that was lost figure into all of this i would defer to jeff on that one so i i think the question is asking about the the mall parking that was demolished correct and and so that was available to the public but it was not owned by the city and so i believe team city place your parking plan in the uh design we just saw is responsive to current zoning requirements including that retail space correct correct and i would imagine you're much heavier on residential now than the previous mall plan with well i mean you keep talking about the residential parking but what about public parking there's much less public building well yeah this is a private development the parking allocation is according to planning and zoning for the development itself if we find out that we are not running spaces to the tenants of the building or for the retail uses that leftover parking will become open to the public for public use robert did i see your hand so um these 85 affordable units are they somehow distributed between the south and the north building or are they all in one or the other they're distributed in in the whole project okay are they functionally different than the market units no you will not know any difference okay that sounds that sounds pretty good it sounds kind of like what new york city is doing with some of that so then the only other questioner is about that space in between the two buildings where you have like a green roof what does that look like is that is that like a plaza where people can walk or is it just just a roof i don't understand what that is sure and we get a lot of questions about that because the developer is spending money to cover the entire parking structure where a lot of projects like this it's called a texas donut where the building is around and and you look down onto a park cars so in this one we're going to go to the next step by putting a roof completely across it a certain area will be green roof which will collect rainwater there will be some terrace for people to walk on there will also be a screened an area for mechanical equipment because we do need roof area to put mechanical equipment but it will be screened and then the other rest of the roof will be like a rubber roof that you would see on any building so it's kind of a mixture of surfaces and spaces but not an open plaza it's just you're saying some terrace but people aren't just walking around that green roof or anything like that people walk around the green roof we you know green roofs are really for collecting a lot of they're not meant to be walked on but it's no trees it's not I don't know what a green roof is I was wondering for was like the green roof that I'm speaking of is is there is the trace system it's about 12 inches deep and it's teetom so it's fairly flat but it is green looking you can see one out the airport we did a fairly large one out the airport and you can have walkways through it but you don't want to have a lot of people walking on these plants we can walk around the plants around the green roof and then there'll be more additional hardscape for people to walk on but it will be limited but it's not like an attraction where you actually jump in Robert because we're five or six minutes over I apologize the public space for everyone to walk on is the observation deck on the top of the south building thank you very much and I hate to cut everybody off because this is a great conversation but we must move on to the school board thank you Jesse thank you everybody for for joining us Sarah thank you for the time thank you for all the information much appreciated all right thank you and without further ado I'm going to move to our final presenter for Burlington school district I believe we have Kendra Sowers and Monica Bunchich ladies will you need Matt? Can I just make one comment if if anybody in the audience wants any additional information or wants to you know get a a one-on-one preview of this they can just reach out to us at City Place and we're happy to meet with anybody I see Karen's on here we we walked her through the the Macy's project the other day and we talked a little bit about City Place but uh yeah we're we're wide open for for anybody to ask questions and if they want to you know sit down look through a set of plans or whatever we're more than happy to do that check out that Facebook page it's a nice Facebook page I'm not sure what the Facebook page is but somebody made one for you Dave care for what you wish for Dave because we might just take care of on that but yeah I think there's a an inquiry page on our website which is City Place Burlington dot com and just plunk your name in there and we'll we'll get in touch with you and if anybody wants to see anything or talk a little more we're more than happy to talk Davey can you put that in the chat before you go I'll try so somebody can William can you do that I'll find it Dave thanks so much I'll find it someone already did it all right thank you at the very least we can put it on front porch form and Sarah thanks for all your help over the last week and it was a crazy week but we got through it and got our votes so thank you thank you gentlemen all right good night Monica and Kendra hi everyone my name is Monica Ivancic and I'm the ward seven school commissioner and I apologize for not being here at the beginning of the meeting so today I'm prepared to talk about the school budget which is measure number one on your ballot item and I'm going to go through some slides that were presented to the board on January 19th and we also have a one pager and if I get Kendra jump in if I get anything incorrect or you want to clarify additional stuff so I'm going to share my screen can everybody see this so essentially this is the summary of our budget what we're voting on and so the budget baseline is the budget is the money we're using this year and then we add and subtract from that and so the baseline budget growth that includes raises for the teachers extra money for benefits debt service on the $70 million bond etc that's at $2.8 million unfortunately Burlington taxpayers have to pay for the BHS downtown relocation and that is at well $2.4 million although subtract $720,000 of that because the state is funding us for the $3.5 million refurbishment that is almost complete our kids are going to be going to school there on March 4th and 5th and they're moving everything in right now as we speak the other big so most of this money here is rent the other big expense is almost half a million for Burlington BTC relocation and so we found the district found a reduction of $1 million in operating costs this is the money that the state is contributing but you know it's like they borrowed the money and then pay it per year so it adds up to this for the FY22 budget and then also the district found $360,000 in cabinet reductions so reductions in the main office central office so the projected budget increase is $3,580,000 which puts our total at $95 million just a little bit above and so that is 3.5% increase from our current budget and so let me move to can I just make a couple comments as well Monica jump in so I just want everyone to know that when we started this budget this year it was a really huge lift we had we were looking at a 13% budget increase which obviously is too high so 10% of that was about what Monica was just talking about which was increases to health insurance and wages you know that health insurance is a big problem for everybody and so that that was a huge amount and then 3% was the closure of the Burlington Tech Center and the Burlington High School due to PCBs and the relocation so that that 13% was what we started with and of course that was not acceptable to us so we looked for all of the reductions that Monica was just saying we also we also identified in addition to the 1.36 million in reductions we had a $4 million surplus because of course when you close schools you're not heating the schools and there was a lot of savings so we did take that $4 million surplus and with the reductions that Monica just talked about and we had a few more that we can talk to you about too that's how we got to to the reductions and to the budget that we're talking about today so I just wanted to be clear with everybody where we were and we also got the money from Governor Scott to take away the $720,000 per year which is 3.5 million total in the fit up costs so that was good news Thank you Kendra and I was going to just dive into some of the stuff you mentioned here so the 2.8 million of the baseline budget growth including half a million of the debt service unfortunately we got to support the bill to move downtown and then half a million for BTC relocations and in this 2.8 million is hidden the small increases that we are adding to essentially to our programming so 120,000 of that is support for our multilingual liaisons that help the district that we rely on heavily to communicate with our non-English speakers and our non-English speaker families and these liaisons they are actually more like social workers because they go into the homes of these families and they don't only help them with school related issues that their children are experiencing or forms for school but they also help them apply for unemployment you know DM licenses and all sorts of stuff so and they get called at all times of the day and even on the weekends and so currently these multilingual liaisons are on our nine month, 10 month contract and for not all of them we're going to extend the contract to 12 month and then another 100,000 will be for strategic plan implementation so right now we're in the fourth year of a five-year strategic plan and we are going to be coming up with a new strategic plan and we wanted to have money available to implement any changes that would be necessary and Kendra also mentioned the surplus so the FY20 surplus was a lot larger than in typical years because I think when we went into the pandemic and kids had to stay home a lot of the costs was running the schools were reduced and so we're using just over four million dollars of that to reduce the tax impact and like Kendra said when we first were I think in December the state sent out a letter saying across the state it's going to be a 9% increase in property taxes but for places like Burlington that will be a 13% increase and so we were able to reduce that down to under 6.88% in taxes and if I let's see we do have a one-pager that like if we were meeting in person I'd be able to hand these out and each of you could have your own copy but it is available online on our district website and essentially this goes over the money that I was just talking to you about and so the increase in the total budget is 3.9% however the per pupil spending so the ballot language is here at the top and you see the 95 million here the per pupil spending of 17,069 dollars and 13 cents per pupil is only a 0.89% increase in spending per pupil so because of all the factors that factor into how Vermont funds education this translates to a property tax increase of 6.88% or I think most of Burlington has an income sensitized so we're not paying directly the 6.88% of our properties but we pay the income sensitized amount so here are numbers for those other scenarios so this seems like a large amount and actually at this point the state has not set the dollar yield and likely this number is going to be a bit smaller because of the way the dollar yield works another disadvantage is the CLA common level of appraisals in Burlington as most of you know our property values are not appraised they're way below their actual market values and so that drives that tax rate up and so on the second page of this one pager is the explanation how we worked on this budget how the governor is helping us out by taking 3.5 million which is the fit up costs for the Macy's buildings to now be able to have the downtown VHS there and then just lists out the reductions and then the two increases that I discussed and so Kendra I don't know do you have anything more to add yeah I just this is really complicated and it you know the funding is extremely complicated for how we develop a budget and so I just want to go into a little bit more detail of how our budget goes from a 3.9% increase and how that translates to a 6.88% property tax increase because I think it's where we all it's very confusing and so there's multiple factors that makes that changes that percent rate and I think it's important I want to kind of mention one which is the common level of appraisal and that of course is has a upward pressure on our tax rate right now the second though is what happens with our equalized pupils is it goes through these weights so I'm going to give you an example so if you consider a high school student a regular high school student as a 1.0 weight then the state adds additional weights so perhaps that that student is a student in poverty or that is a child who is an EL student that has special needs that comes from maybe a rural school geographically necessary school is what they call them so they get additional weights so they get maybe 1.3 so we know that it costs more to educate kids okay who need more resources so we can understand that so then the state takes these weights and that's how we come up with our equalized pupil so our equalized pupil does not mean the number of students in our district it's the number of students with this formula this weight associated with it these weights have not been updated in 20 years so what that is doing to Burlington for example where we have a very we have a lot of English language students and we have children in poverty as well is that we are actually paying more right to educate our children and we're not getting the amount from the education fund from those weights so that puts an upward pressure on our taxes it's an amazing amount of money and if we're have created a coalition I'm spearheading a coalition for the Burlington school board and we have a coalition of districts from around Vermont who are equally financially disadvantaged and we feel that it's an important advocacy role to help put this issue to the forefront and work with our legislators to fix the funding formula so we really appreciate our local legislators who are helping in this effort because it is a really big deal and we take our fiscal responsibility to our taxpayers we are one extremely seriously and these taxes are high and we also want to have equitable educational opportunities for Aubrey, Vermont and right now we feel like these weights are not equitable and so we are paying more to educate our students so that is how I feel like it took me a long time to try to understand Vermont's funding and and how budgets come but just I feel really like we did the best that we could with providing the resources for our students in this in Burlington given this funding formula that we're part of and so I'm really hoping that as a district we can continue to reach out to our legislators and talk about the need for updating these weights so that's how it becomes from a 3.9 percent up to a 6.88 percent so I hope that's a little bit helpful and I hope you know that we're working hard to try to change some of the funding systems because I am truly truly an advocate that this needs to be updated and we need to provide more equity for all of the students in Vermont so unless I know we're running out of time and it's almost 9 o'clock so Monica are you good if we just open it up for questions? Yes, definitely Kendra's been doing an amazing amount of work with this and a lot of this pupil waiting stuff has been in the news as of late we still have a room full who has a question somebody want to raise their hand while people are thinking I have a question if I could reach out I've always struggled and I'm sure everybody can relate to understand when you throw out a statistic of 6.88 percent increase or 3.9 percent increase and I remember a few years back there was a don't pass up a good snack Monica that looked great I remember a few years back there was like a 0.9 percent increase it was very very modest but it resulted in about a 7 percent increase because of Act 60 and Burlington's low 80 percent CLA so when we're talking about a 6.88 percent increase is that factoring the CLA in the Act 60 or is that equivalent to the 0.9 percent a couple years ago where we might see a 15 percent It is actually factoring the CLA and I have those that number for you because for this year the equalized tax rate increased is 3.08 percent for the CLA last year was 2.3 the year before was 1.7 and I think in 2019 it was 0.21 Matt so it has increased and once we do an appraisal of our homes which I thought was coming up but I think is coming up you will see that the actual percent change and go lower for schools but you're still going to pay the same it's just it just looks differently in the percent that we're saying but your taxes it's supposed to be a zero sum game maybe Sarah can help me with that but I believe that that is about the purpose of course if your home has really skyrocketed it won't be exactly the same but thanks sir and actually remind me you have a a mutual meeting because I believe that's all work to be done in April so we might want to invite John Vickery or somebody from the assessment office to have that conversation in terms of absolute taxes there's going to be winners and moors some are going to pay more and some are going to pay less that's really outside the discussion that Kendra's talking about around the waiting formula there's like probably a whole other meeting on that but it'll the discussion after re-appraisal really is related to the value of your home the tax rate is related to how much state aid we get from the state as well as our own baseline expenses thank you Sarah I don't see any other questions do we have one more there's one from Berkley so thank you thank you so Kendra just very very quickly the the obvious question at the end of your presentation for me was so where do things stand in Montpelier is there a legislative vehicle is there a hope in heck this session where where are we I mean I could ask our legislators maybe Carol could answer that I mean there are some bills that we hope one in particular that we hope will make it to crossover because of course you know the bills have to make it to crossover in order to have a chance this legislative session so representative Laura Sebelia has one and then Phil Baruth had one so maybe Carol if you want to speak to that there are bills and I know that my committee on houseways means is spends quite a bit of time on this topic sorry there is a lot of talk about how the the weights there's pushback in Montpelier because there are going to be people who there are going to be a lot of towns who will have their rates go up as a result and then there'll be those of us who would have our rates go down if the weights were to change so this is to be determined what's going to happen here I can tell you I'm working very hard very hard sounds like a hot potato it's hard Kendra and your also I just want to make one point is it is I just had a question maybe not a point but we secured the house secured 3.5 million dollars for the for the retrofit to Macy's but I don't I didn't understand all the numbers with the 750 and all that we separated the 3.5 out over like four years or five years in order to make it so that we afforded a taxpayer so it was like 720,000 a year based on the budget that's kind of how we were because if we didn't get the money we had to be able to be sure that we could pay it and it was too much to pay in one one yeah okay sorry that was confusing sorry Robert you raised your hand do you have a quick question very very quick so like let's say that my portion of my taxes for the school budget is a thousand dollars that's just a number I'm pulling out of my butt but that's going to go up to a thousand sixty eight dollars then because of the 6.88 increases that what the net result of the budget question is 600 it's hard for us to answer that exactly because your income sensitivity is on a sliding scale so I can't answer that but you could ask that I'm sure that you could ask the city clerk's office or you know I just because of the sliding scale there's no exact numbers gross tax but we're looking at a 6.88 increase correct somehow we're going to share that 6.88 increase among us if you're not income sensitized right right if you are income sensitized you're not looking at that all right yeah sixty eight dollars okay Kendra are other cities in your coalition increasing in similar percentages um I mean they're all over the place I would say a lot of people you know districts we're all a lot of districts are in crisis at the moment so yes um the state predicted the nine percent increase on on average yeah ninety thirteen percent is what the state but that ended up being a bit high so the state came back um there was more more money that they thought in the in the fund so they actually the that was a letter I think from maybe December and then they always everything's based on estimates in the beginning so everyone's doing the best they can and then we get the the final numbers so the numbers were a little bit lower which we were all appreciative of and I think as Monica you mentioned in the beginning of your talk it might even be lower still it is thank you then the six it is it's around it's around one percent or under and the yeah because a sales tax revenue came in very very high people purchase quite a bit of goods on line and um and otherwise and um actually because a few a couple of years ago the there was a decision the way fair decision that allows now states to collect to require places like Amazon to collect sales tax and Vermont immediately enacted legislation not everybody not all the states have so that we are collecting that sales tax our sales tax revenues what's pulling us through to go from that December 1st nine percent figure to under a percent now and um so that's so that's very good news I don't I don't know how that's impacting what what your number is so unfortunately for us there was a accounting error in the weights and so when we were building our budget we built it with that accounting error it which was not in our it was it was in our favor before and so it kind of this the money found from the in the with the sales tax in the education system and then the correction of the weights means that we're going to be maybe a little bit under what we estimate but not as much as many communities are now rejoicing in that information but we're we're less so unfortunately but we aren't going higher which is which is good and this is the other thing that until I kind of started delving into this is we build these budgets again based on these estimates so we don't even know until last minute and so that is why we say it's estimated at 6.88 percent because we cannot give you final numbers so even the whole process is um based on these estimate and last minute information coming in from from the state and there they have to look at all the revenue and that takes time so we we get it it's just just so everybody else knows so I do hope that you that you all will support the school budget and please know that we are doing our best in Montpelier and locally to do what's right for the children and for the for you our tax-ported payers and we appreciate your support that's why the ballot lag which doesn't say 6.88 percent increase it just talks about the total budget amount and the pupil spending because we don't get we don't get I'm sorry haven't even been determined yet we'll factor into the increase yes this is not the ballot language we would use but it's what we are required to put on the ballot just as well we're not hiding anything it's just that's what it is eight minutes over I'm happy to go another minute or two if anybody has any more questions I'm not seeing any hands raised Kendra Monica thank you do you have anything to wrap up or think that's it thank you thank you for your time your service and your energy it's a tough job thanks thanks Matt thanks everyone thank you well we will wrap up our meeting we thank everybody for their participation and everybody have a great night thank you thanks bye everyone good night bye good night