 I'm going to call the meeting to order. First item is to review and approve the agenda and we have one change which was to move up the accessory dwelling unit program to write after the appointments so that will be something like item seven and a half. Which are the accessory don't. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so any other changes to the agenda? Okay, so without objection we'll consider the agenda approved. So on to general business and appearances. This is an opportunity for any member of the public to address the council on some topic that is otherwise not on our agenda and if you would state your name and your address and try to keep your comments to two minutes or less and that is true for other items throughout the evening if you try to keep your comments to two minutes or less. It's not a long time. Okay, move on. So consideration of the consent agenda. Is there a motion regarding the consent agenda? I move the consent agenda. I'll second it for the discussion. Okay, all in favor please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, great. Oh, I'm going to vote aye. Yes, there are only four of us. Super. All right, thank you. So on to appointments. So we have a number of appointments to make tonight. So we're just going to take these linearly as they appear on the agenda. So the first one is for the public art commission. I know we have a few appointments to make there. Now to be fair, just so you people are aware, we'll hear from all the people who are up for appointments together and then we'll go into one executive session to consider them all and then we'll come back and make all of the appointments at the same time. So any members of the up for appointment to the public art commission want to come introduce themselves? Yeah, come on up. I believe there are five applicants. Okay, yeah, that's fine. Yeah, if you'd introduce yourself and tell us about your interest in this commission. I'm Nathan Souter and I'm the president of Montpelier. Thank you for having us. I would confess I just pulled back into town from the day with the family. So I'm just hoping for a few months to prepare my thoughts. Would you talk into the mic because I'm this close and I can't hear you. Sorry, Donna. So I'm an artist. I have worked, I ran an arts organization in Stowe for 10 years. I've been involved a little bit in some arts organization work here in town, which I've enjoyed and I just feel very strongly about the power of art in public places and the community that is a cultural center. I think that's a powerful engine for our community and a potentially powerful piece of identity. And the more that we as a community support arts and culture, I think the healthier it will be and the more visitors will attract and the more residents will attract and retain. So those are some of my motives. I think among other things that I talked about in my proposal or application was about, I talked about communication and the need for people on the commission, I think to both to communicate well with sort of their own network and also constituents in general about the activities of the council of the commission. I talked about sort of strategic thinking and I think a commission like this, especially in its first years, will be doing some near term close business and then some long-term thinking about what the work of the council or commission should be and what it can be and how it might be funded and who we should try to bring in as allies to help move things forward. And I enjoy both that the near term immediate practical thinking and as well as the longer term, strategic thinking about how choices the commission might make in the first year will affect things further down. And then I also talked about process and I have a strong belief in practice that good intentional process creates good outcomes and leads to inclusion and also makes it easy to explain the choices that any commission makes to the public. And I think that that's important. If we're serving the public, we need to be able to explain what we're doing and how we're doing it and why. And anyway, so those are powerful tools and those are some of the things I would bring to the commission should I be lucky enough to be selected. Thank you. Hi, I'm Bob Ham. And my wife and I, Bonnie, been here and moved to Montpellier about two years ago and we're following our grandchildren here. And I've been installing and repairing sculpture for over 40 years all over the world. And I still do that. And I'm just thrilled with the city. I love it and I want to get more involved. And the best way I can get involved, I think is to share my art experiences. And I actually work with Nathan on the selection committee for our public art at the transit center. And it was a wonderful process. So I just want to get more involved. And I think to be brief about this, I think the best thing I can bring to our commission and to you folks is the sense of wanting to meet with other art leaders in other cities and really gather the best ideas. What's working in other cities to make them really vital art communities? Because as Nathan mentioned, I totally agree. In my experience, the arts have really driven communities. They've really become the foundation of a great community. So that's what I wanted to emphasize in my proposal is the effort to gather ideas, the best ideas and bring them forth. Any questions for these guys? Thank you for being willing to serve. Any other, thank you. You don't have to hang out here. Thank you for the coffee. And any other applicants to the public arts commission? Okay, so next is the tree board. And I know we have at least one person here. Yeah, do you want to come up and just introduce yourself? Good evening. I'm John Akulashik. I've been with the tree board as a volunteer starting in 2012 and I've had two three year terms. And so I'm up for another three year term. Continue working to beautify the city by the planting of trees and protecting the ones that we have and looking forward to battling the bugs that would destroy them. So, is that any questions for me or not? No question, but I just want to commend you again for your work on the Emerald Ashmore Plan that was above and beyond and we really appreciate it. Thank you. Any other applicants to the tree board? Okay. All right, the conservation commission. I think there's only one person and I don't see him here. So, we're gonna move on from the conservation commission. All right, that is it for the appointments. Oh, yes. Do you want to come up and just so that people get home and hear you? I've been curious to know if you can just read who on my career group is who are applying to the art commission. Sure. I suppose the same type of people. Sure, great questions. So, applying for the public arts commission, there are five people for four seats. Alyssa Dorske, Robert Hanham, Ward Joyce, Susan Rexford-Winston and yourself, you can suit her. And for the tree board, I think there were six seats for five and five applicants. So, that was John Asilashik. Did I say your name right? Close. No, okay. John A. I was taking notes, I think, okay. Steve Bailey, Sarah Hoffmeyer, Jeff Schuman and John Snell. And for the conservation commission, there was an alternate seat as well as a regular seat that were up and Michael Azchek, who was an alternate is applying for the regular seat there. I think that's it. Cool. All right, so is there a motion to go? Yeah. Pursuant to one BSA, section 313A3, I move that we go into executive session to consider the appointment of the public officer. I'll second that. For the discussion, all in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Oh, and I also vote aye. Oh, no, wait, I don't have to. All right, do we have a motion to come out of executive session? So moved. Second. For the discussion, all in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, I move that we appoint to the Montpelier Public Art Commission. Alyssa Dorske, Robert Hanham, Suzanne Rexford-Winston, and Nathan Souter to the tree board, John Akirashik, Steve Bailey, Sarah Hochmeier, Jeff Schumann, and John Snell, and as a regular seat on the Conservation Commission, Michael Azorchek. For the discussion, all in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay. Thank you all to all who applied and looking forward to working with you all. So, thank you. Thank you very much. Okay. All right, on, oh, so we're gonna jump now to the accessory dwelling unit program. So, Kevin, I'll let you take it away and introduce people, and great. Do you have a presentation? Let, you're not like predicting anything. We are in a presentation. You are, great, super. Good evening. Kevin Casey with Community Development and Tyler Moss and Richard Williams from Moss St. Housing Authority. Just to give a little background, Tyler and I started conversations about a month ago about this starting a accessory dwelling unit program. And this was an idea, this was a program that the city had, a very similar program, except that this program comes with a lot more experience. Tyler's been doing this for how many years? A while. A while? Yeah, a number of years in Brattleboro. And the issue before us tonight is asking for support. We are looking to apply for about $400,000 in community development block grant funds to the state. There is a resolution that needs to be signed in order to proceed with that. We have had substantive conversations with the state and they're very supportive. And this will help meet our housing goals and infill and energy efficiency and a number of other things that the council has been supportive of in the past. And so I will let Tyler explain the proposal and where we go from there. Just as an aside, the plan is for our grant match will be to use some of the community development block grant funds, or sorry, the community development, revolving loan funds that we discussed at the last council meeting that will be reorganized, kind of giving us an opportunity with the flexibility I mentioned to fund a program like this or our match for the program. Can I ask you about that real quick? So is the, you have two numbers written down here. One is of the required expenditures, 50,000. Is that the match or is that the total? That would be our match. So the general proposal, the budget's still being worked on. So this is preliminary. Would be that the city would contribute from its revolving loan funds, 50,000. The state housing authority is planning on putting up 100,000. And then the state for my community development program, which manages the CDBG funds, we're requesting 400,000. All right, great, thank you. Sure. And Tyler, I'll let him take it away and explain what the program is and how we will be successful. Well, we're gonna be successful. So that's not even an issue. There we go. So my name is Tyler Moss. Thank you for having me here tonight. And I've been working with Brattleboro area affordable housing for the past six years. Think about it for a second. But for about five years, I've been running their apartments and homes program, which creates accessory dwelling units or ADUs. In the past four or five years, I've helped homeowners create 16 apartments. We have a 17th one work in progress right now in the Brattleboro area. And that's been, we are an all volunteer board. So that's very notable difference between what this program is, we'd like it to be and what the program is in Brattleboro. We've long thought that being able to devote time and a lot of additional money to a program, then we'd be able to ramp that up because there are people that want to do it. There is the need for it. But the time and energy to do it wasn't quite there. What we propose for the city of Montpelier is a two year program that'll help to create 10 accessory dwelling units in the city of Montpelier. It'll be a collaboration between the city of Montpelier, the state housing authority and the department of housing and community development for the community development block grant. What we would do is identify eligible applicants and to become participants in the program. And they would be, there would be an intake program through the Mont State Housing Authority, which is what we do a lot of, we're very well versed at that. And after that we would identify likely participants, go and look for projects and hopefully enter into an agreement with them once that we know that the financing is in place to do the project through different sources then we would move forward with the program. The way that financing would work on our part was so the Mont State Housing Authority has $100,000 to put towards a revolving loan that would be available to participants before the project starts. The way to start the project with money. So that's up to $10,000 per project. And after the project's completion, all costs that were associated with the project would be reimbursed at 50% up to a maximum grant of $20,000. So if you spend $30,000, you'd be eligible for a $15,000 grant, et cetera, up to $20,000. We'd like to see this program also spread out through the state. This is being looked at as a pilot program. And so it takes almost as much time and effort to make one pancake as it does to make 10. So this is going to be the start. And so we're hoping that we'll get a lot of the kinks worked out. We've worked out a lot of them in Brattleboro. And I know that there was a program here in Montpelier that some people will be drawing comparisons to, but I'd like to focus on some of what the differences are from what I know. Kevin will know more about that if there are any more specific questions. But mostly that was a loan for soft costs. So design and permitting costs, mostly, is what I understand. There wasn't as much construction. There were some, I think one of the general challenges that I've mentioned this before is there were a few factors at play. One, the maximum award was $4,500. And the original concept was to offset the cost of the sprinklers. And so there was a lot, it was administratively heavy for the homeowner and the reward wasn't that great. And also kind of looking at it historically, there's as far as staff on the city side, there was a tremendous amount of turnover in that period of time due to illnesses and people leaving. So there was a lot of turnover. So that program wasn't, there were elements of it which were great but it never took off. I think that what we have, and I had mentioned this to Jack at one point, was that between Tyler's expertise with this and the staff that we have in the department between myself and Chris Lombra and Mike, we all have enough experience in these types of things to help move the homeowner forward. So I think there's been a number of changes from zoning to sprinkler ordinances to other things that makes it so that the administrative issues that some of the homeowners kind of felt were cumbersome are kind of out of the way now. So. And this is not just for soft costs anymore. This could actually go for some capital. Correct. And one of the keys I think is the two pieces. So they're having money available for some of the soft costs for an architect who can provide that experience and the drive to get a project done. They usually will handle most of the zoning issues or building inspectors and things like that and take some of that pressure off of the homeowner. And then this capital coupled with the homeowner's capital, you've got enough money to actually do a unit. $4,500 if you've ever done home renovations. You might get a couple switches at the end of the day. So when you're talking about putting in kitchens and baths, you're talking a fair amount of money, but with the rental rates, even at affordable rental rates, if the homeowner is affordable, with this grant offsetting half your costs, you've got payoff periods which could be less than two years. So if you're a homeowner, and particularly if you're a senior homeowner, one of the things about this is that we are required under these funds that six out of 10 of the grants must be to somebody who is lower moderate income, meaning that below 80% of the area median income. One of the advantages is that if you are a senior, you're considered a presumed LMI. So if we have homeowners, which we have plenty of that are senior citizens over 65, they will qualify on the income basis. So when we talk about downsizers or people who are interested in this, this is a great program, and they can leverage some of their own home equity with this program and we get more units. So I'm excited because I think it's tremendous. I think the housing task force was very supportive. Like the idea and yeah, I think that it's gonna be something special. I think so too. And I'm saying the in Montpelier, the largest segment of homeowners in between the age of 65 and 74 years of age and the largest group of renters are those that rent one bedroom or studio apartments. So it kind of seems to lend itself to that. Also Montpelier has one of the highest median monthly homeowner costs in Vermont as well as tax costs, but has one of the lowest average household sizes as well and a lot of empty rooms and homes. So really that's why Montpelier was the perfect place to start this. And it's also a little bit regulation heavy compared to some towns in Vermont, which is good. That's what we want. We want people to look at it and have eyes on it. Some places don't even have zoning laws at all. Go ahead and build. So it's a nice place to start that out here. Sorry. Rosie, I've got some questions up here. Absolutely. So there was something in the memo about at-risk youth and I didn't really understand what was going on with that. Well, that's just one of the people that will target populations that might fit. They're usually going to have no income. So they would fit as far as... Per potential renters? Per potential renters. And the final decision for a tenant would be left up to the homeowner. We're hoping to find as much eligibility in the homeowner process and not in the tenant process. We don't want to force people to rent to somebody if that's what's gonna be the sour taste in people's mouths. You have to rent to this person who has no money. That's what scare people like. So the at-risk youth, I think part of it also, we're trying to target that is, the housing authority has recently been issuing vouchers for at-risk youth. They're coming out quickly and so there's a lot of people that will have assistance, could possibly have assistance through the state or through a voucher program made with a modular housing authority, someone that can rent using it. So it'd be guaranteed income. So that would relieve some of the worry from the homeowner. Okay. And then there was also a thing in the memo about the homeowner would be eligible for up to $50,000. And I'm wondering if that was a typo because you just said $20,000. I see third year. So it says $30,000 in, the $50,000 was as we hear the revolving loan from the city. Okay, I must have my third. And the $30,000 is the total amount of eligible grants and loans. We've clarified that in our proposal actually. So the initial 10 and then. So it's 10,000 and then up to 20,000. So they could use that if they got $20,000, say it was a $20,000 project, they got 10,000 upfront, they put up 10,000 of their own through a home equity line of credit or a credit card or savings or whatever, they'd be able to, they'd get 10,000 back on that and they'd be able to pay off their loan. So they would be at the $10,000 expense that's almost a year of renting a one bedroom at $800. And I'm curious about the decision to make all seniors presumed low and moderate income. That's not a decision. That's actually a standard set by the. Huh, okay. It's a HUD standard. It's also true of the disabled. If you are disabled, you are presumed at one point. And there's, I think there's emancipated youth or something. There's a lot of people, there's, I think, so you're gonna use the preexisting definitions in order to grant out, okay. Sorry, what is L and I? Low and moderate income. Low and moderate income. And AMI. Area Mediating. Area Mediating, right, right. So I'd proceed your question. Do we need both a motion to develop and give you authorization to develop, implement or just a motion for the resolution? A motion for the resolution, because the first part of this process is once we have this resolution tomorrow morning, I'll open up the grant program and we start writing it right away because this is due April 16th. April 16th, and then for a June board meeting. The hope is, and we had a good meeting last week with the folks in the state who are very supportive of this idea, is that we could roll this out relatively quickly. So Stephen, if you could write an article on that, that would be great. No pressure. So it is one thing that we've discussed is that trying to get this, if we get the funding in June to hit the ground running because of construction seasons and a few other things. So I can help Tyler with that kind of the local connection with architects, designers, builders. Yeah, we wanna get the word out there a little earlier. We gotta be careful about how we get the word out there saying, hey, we got $30,000 to build an apartment. We're gonna get a lot of phone calls that we don't want. So it's gonna be, we're gonna have to think about our marketing strategy and how we're gonna do that. But we also wanna, this is the planning season for building, so people are thinking about it right now. And unfortunately, according to the Department of Housing for the grant, if they've even torn up a corner of rug, it's a project in process and does not qualify. So don't pull up the corners and put the screws back in the wall, mud up the holes. Thank you for asking that because it seems like this is a great program and we should just be moving forward. But I'm glad you brought up the marketing aspect of it because that was the one thing I was curious about. Cause it seems like this has a lot of just great potential and I mean, one problem that we can have is that you get too many calls. The other problem we can have is we don't get enough. And I mean, this is just me and I don't know how you all would feel about it, but like I would rather have the problem of having too many calls than not enough. And so I would rather lean on the side of really getting the word out there. And I'm interested in making sure that that happens and potentially we have Laura Gebarn here from the Development Corporation and if there's any coordination that can happen there, that could be great. But anyway, I would love to, I mean, my gut is to make a big deal out of this. But I... But we have to get the money first. Yeah, fair enough. Will you tell us when? Make a very controlled big deal out of it. Yeah, well, fair enough. Well, I think that there could very well be too much interest in it. And we will have to work on developing a wait list, which is another thing that we do a lot of. We have thousands of people on a wait list actually. We're working with every day. And like I used the example before, $20,000. We had a lot of, that's the average cost of a project that happened in Brattleboro was $20,000. There's a lot of things that happened that were already these sort of in-law apartments or a base or something that had been converted into a bedroom or there's a bathroom attached to it. So you're just looking at putting in a kitchenette. These can turn around pretty quickly. There's a lot of smaller contractors that charge very reasonable rates. And if we can get a $20,000 project, that's a $10,000 grant. So we still have more money. So what we'd look to, I think, instead of just giving back the money, we would look to extend the term of the program and to continue on doing it with whatever money left and then eventually ask for more. So I assume for more. Fair enough. How long will it go on for Poverty? That's hard to say. We'd like to see it continue. Whether or not it can go on with this level of funding would be... Well, I would just love to check in as it's going on to hear how it's going. And if you're getting too many calls or too few calls, that would just be good to know. And it doesn't necessarily need to be like a time when you come to the council, but just some kind of like an email update I think would be really helpful. Absolutely. Yeah, cool. So then this is a sort of a strange title because it's the resolution for downtown transportation fund grant. There's two, you have two resolutions. Okay. But it does talk about the housing authority within it. Which one? The housing authority or the state authority? Department of Housing and Community Development. Yeah. That's a different grant. That's different people. Okay. Then I'll use the language that's in the agenda. Are we gonna be signing that tonight? You said a resolution. I don't see it among our... It's right here, because we all have approved it yet. Okay. Yeah, John has it. I'd like to make a motion that we approve the resolution for the development of this pilot access dwelling unit program in Montpellier, Vermont. Exactly. Do you need more? No, that's probably, I think that's fine. So we're moving the resolution. All right, so for the discussion. Chris, yes, go ahead. Yeah, come on. Peter Kilman. I just wanted to say that as a member of the Montpellier Social and Economic Justice Advisory Committee and as a former member of the Montpellier Housing Task Force, I personally strongly endorse this program. It appears to be totally consistent with the goals of increasing the availability of affordable housing and doing so in a way that actually will be more dispersed throughout the city, which I think is very important for affordable housing. In addition, it will help homeowners, particularly ones who are feeling stressed by increased costs, taxes, and whatever, to have some mitigating income from this, using spaces in their homes that are increasingly too large for them to actually to generate that income. And as Kevin mentioned, it's particularly, I think important for seniors. And I recently taught a course at the Senior Center on aging in place and one of the big issues for people is that their houses are just too big, but they don't feel they can afford to do the duplexing or the creation of ADUs. So a strong endorsement. I have a lot of questions about details, but those will come with time. Thank you, Peter. All right, there's a motion to second for the discussion. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, thank you. We'll go forward to the jail. Thank you. Okay, the Emerald Ash borer plan. Welcome back to the table. Thank you. Do you want to introduce yourself? Hey, I'm John Akulovic with the tree board. Recently reappointed. Thank you very much for that. And just we're here to discuss the Emerald Ash borer management plan, the idea being that we'd like to manage the bug instead of letting the bug manage us. And it's a 10-year plan to try to do that. We can't stop the Emerald Ash borer. That's not gonna be possible, but we can slow it down and we can make it such that the impacts to the city and to private residents of the city with ash trees on their property are somewhat controlled. And the whole purpose of the plan is to lay out how we do that. And I'm not sure how familiar you are with the plan or if you had a chance to read it, it's about 20, 21 pages. But what it calls for is basically a survey on an annual basis of the trees in the right of way of the city to identify where the bug is spreading. Currently, we know that the bug was up at National Life. We know from examining the trees that were cut down at National Life that some adults have left those trees and have moved over to some other trees. We don't know if they just moved across the road or if they decided to take advantage of some wind and fly to other parts of the city. We'll know a little bit better in the spring when the leaves come out on the ash trees as to which trees may have been impacted Again, the bug's been around for a few years. You don't notice it right away. And so chances are it may be in other areas of the city. We surveyed the right of way trees last year with the tree board, parks and volunteers and volunteers are essential to this. We identified 450 right of way trees in the city. Looked at those, probably found about a half a dozen that were suspicious. Maybe a half a dozen to a dozen that looked like they may have something going on. Parks folks, Alec Ellsworth did a little branch sampling which is a way to look for the bug in living trees and didn't find any so far so good but we're anticipating the resurvey. This spring we'll identify some trees where they have been affected by the bug. And the plan again, it's a 10 year plan so it calls for removing about 10% of the ash trees each year on average. It may be that the first few years you don't remove as many because the bug hasn't taken off or we've been able to slow it but eventually the ash trees are gonna have to come down because they will die and when they die they become very brittle and dangerous. They break with the wind they're very difficult for arborists to remove because they tend to be brittle that way and they cost a lot more to remove once they're fully dead. So it's better to remove them when they're partially affected. So the 10 year plan calls for about 45 trees a year. And the other part of this is that on private property we've estimated that there's 2,700 ash trees on residential lots. I know I have at least four on my property. And so there are a lot of people that are gonna be affected by this eventually the bug will spread. So again, the plan is to slow it and maybe spread it out over many years as opposed to doing nothing and letting it take over our trees in eight to 10 years. And with that, I guess that's an overview. Yeah, fair enough. I'll answer any questions you may have. But just that I appreciated this, although it's very dense to read, but that you did mention like some places are trying those wasps and that you're gonna be looking at if the current substance that we're using is still good or something better. So I like that aspect that you're staying open to other solutions than the one you started with. Right, exactly. The idea is with the parasitoid wasps to see how that develops. It may be that you have to build up a concentration of those guys that's fairly large to have them effective because the emerald ash borer can produce 100 eggs per female. And you can see how that will take up exponentially if you're gonna do anything to slow them down. Right, you don't wanna create another problem whilst trying to solve the first one. Yeah, there's other things that are going on. There's still research being done in the US and Canada on other methods of control that we're gonna be keeping an eye on and seeing if it's applicable to the Montpelier situation. Just the other thing, I did pass this onto John Snell that I've had a constituent reach out really sensitive to wanting to make sure they're notified where they're going to be treating the trees even though it's not a spray. There's still people who are very sensitive and need to know. He copied me on that email and we will be a very sensitive to that need. John Snell, by the way, does pass along his regrets that he had a scheduling conflict. So he couldn't be good today. Good. Still on the injection for the 15 street trees. Can you tell me anything more about that chemical in particular? I feel like there's a fair amount of good information about the bad new nicotinoids, but I didn't see a lot about the relatively good stuff that we would use. It's called triage, emmemectin benzoate. It's the preferred insecticide for the emerald ash borer in this country. It will become an systemic insecticide in that it spreads to the roots, the trunk and the leaves. And the idea being when the adults hatch out, they go into the canopy to have a meal of leaves. And if your tree is systemically protected, delete those leaves and die. And so those guys are removed from the population. So that's the concept about the injection. And this is relatively targeted to this particular species or to beetles in general or it's targeted to the insects that will prey upon the ash trees. Yeah, you can't just kill one bug. The idea of being here is that we're protecting our ash trees long enough to have other trees grow and provide canopy. So it's a 10-year plan. We're planting more trees, maybe two to one for what we'll be losing, but it's not a permanent solution. It's a temporary solution so that we don't lose these trees which are our largest trees downtown right off the bat, and that could happen. And just to make it perfectly clear to myself, any insect, other insects included, that chooses to eat this tree will die. That's correct. That is very likely. Right. It's just that this is less dangerous for bees, for example, than eunuchs and noids. Definitely, yes. And most bugs that want to eat the ash tree will be EABs, and therefore we want to cut them away. Well, in all honesty, I have to tell you that it's been found that there's 100 different insects that are dependent upon ash trees. So when our ash trees go, all those bugs are out of luck, right? So we're doing this just to protect the catapes of the trees downtown. We know it's not gonna be a permanent solution. Maybe something will come along down the road. It's a 10-year plan. Who knows where we'll be in eight to 10 years? There may be something that we can do other than the insecticide. But that's the best alternative at this point for those trees now. And it's the downtown trees, plus any legacy trees that we may have in the park that are worth saving, like the one up at the old shelter, for instance. And I keep mentioning it. But green ash trees, especially, are susceptible, and that's most of our big trees downtown aren't even there. Good. Glenn, I was sent an insecticide brochure from John Snell that I can forward to Bill and get it distributed, because it gives you options of insecticides and talks about this. It's very helpful. I should point out that the insecticide, where we came to conclude to use, independent of the state, is the same exact that the state gave. We did our own research on these insecticides at the tree board. Everybody took an insecticide, went into the literature, and we came to conclusions. And then we looked at what the state was recommending, and it turned out to be exactly the same thing. Good. I was just glad to see that as the ash trees die off, but I noticed the guidelines in there about, you know, not gonna be replanting any one species in total. The diversity. The diversity, yeah. We're figuring it out, finally. Great, well, I don't have any other questions. So if there's any other thoughts, do we have a motion? I would move to adopt the newly updated Emerald Ash borer plan. I'll second it. Great, so motion to adopt this Emerald Ash borer management plan for the discussion. Oh, and budget proposal, I'm sorry. That's okay. Okay, great. All right, any comments from the public? Okay, all in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Great. Thank you all. Thank you, John. Thank you very much. Okay, and on to the zoning. So we've been hearing about some zoning changes here. So, and you do have a presentation, right? I have a quick presentation. Okay, so I'm gonna move. You get choices today. I do. Since we know Connor will not be back. He's been pretty bright. I don't know if we'll need to kill the lights. Put the lights on. That may actually, oh, you like moan. Whatever works for our audience. It's kind of all right. And it's going, it's for anyone who doesn't know me, I'm Mike Miller. I'm the director of planning and community development here for the city. And for the past year, it's just a quick history. So we are one year, a little more than a year into working with the new zoning regulation. The zoning rewrite was adopted last January 3rd. It was a complete rewrite. So even as much as you can proofread and get things ready to go, once you start using it, you start to realize there are a couple of hiccups here and there that need to be addressed. So we found many small issues in a couple of big ones. And that's what we're talking about tonight are the two big ones. The staff in my office assembled a repair list of about 100 edits, sent them to the planning commission and they have approved the fixes to the slopes and landscaping that we'll talk about tonight that are needed more quickly because they're having a direct impact on applications. So we're losing out on what we would consider a unintended consequences. These are good projects or projects we believe should be moving forward that aren't able to right now. So what we're asking is to review and have a hearing and approve an interim zoning change to fix the slopes and landscaping. And I'll go through both of those. It is, it'll be worn as an emergency zoning change because that is the legal technical thing in statute but it really is, interim zoning allows you to make a short change for a period of time not to exceed two years and we don't expect it to last more than a couple of months because we are already working to permanently adopt all the rest of them but that process as you are well aware from the zoning takes time. There's hearing periods for the planning commission and city council and 30 day notices to the state and so there are a number of things that just naturally make the adoption process take longer and we would really like to get these two changes through quickly and then they'll be back up with the bigger permanent adoption in April, probably May where you would start to see it. So really quickly the changes which you did receive strike out copies of. So the slopes change, if you took a look at it, there was not too many changes to it. The changes were actually in the two figures and the problem that existed was that in the previous zoning or in the current zone 30% slopes are prohibited from development. You can't develop 30% slopes but as it turns out, once we started working with developers and projects is we found these 30% slope just kept popping up everywhere in small amounts, retaining walls, roadside ditches and as written we couldn't approve making a new driveway because the slopes that are ditched on the sides of your roads are three to one slopes which are 30% slopes and they usually extend to the left and right more than 500 square feet so they would automatically prevent and it basically did prevent one project from being able to move forward. We hope that project will come back once the 30% prohibition is removed and it was simply because they couldn't put a driveway in. So what we did in this proposal was simply the current zoning says you cannot develop 30% slopes and what we did was change that to read that if you wanna develop 30% slopes it's going to require a hearing so that means neighbors would get a notice and it would require an engineered plan so you have to hire an engineer if you're gonna affect 30% slopes those plans get reviewed by our public works department and provide comments to the DRB. So it's a rigorous process that we would look at for these changes to 30% slopes. It's not intended to simply open up development of a lot of these 30% slopes. It's just meant to give us that opportunity, all projects that affect them will have to go through. And so the two things and then this will be all I'll have on the slopes and if you have questions we can go through it. What is not changing because there was an impression that we got from some people that we were not gonna regulate slopes at all. So as I pointed out, that's not true. We are removing the prohibition and replacing it with a requirement for engineering and hearing. And the second thing this will not address is buildable area calculations. And for people who are new on the council and may not know, the zoning had a rule that said we would calculate density based on the buildable area of a lot, not on the cost of the area. Parcel size. Because this is an interim quick process and it's got an abbreviated public comment period, the planning commission didn't feel comfortable moving it forward. So they held back that piece which is proposed to be changed, but it's gonna be, it's gonna go through the full adoption process. So the buildable area is not gonna be changed with this interim zoning change, only this requirement that says you can develop 30% slopes. That makes sense. So it looks like in the strikeout that you also changed the square footage that would be impacted. I'm sorry, I should have been clear about that. So the other thing that we did change were those numbers. What we looked at and kind of surprised us a little bit was at the threshold for engineered plans. So what was it? So the threshold for one, we thought the numbers were reversed when we finally got to look at them. So for example, less than 15% slopes, no more than 4%, a 4,000 square feet of land can be disturbed without an engineered plan. And disturbing 8,000 would require a hearing. So what it was before was reversed. So you would first go to a hearing but not be required to bring an engineer. And we kind of felt that we would rather have it the other way around where if it was disturbing, let's say 5,000 square feet, it's still an administrative permit downstairs, but Meredith would like to see that engineered plan. It's not gonna go to a public hearing, but you'll still need to provide that to Meredith so she can work with DPW to make sure that concerns about slope and slope stability are met for a 15 to 20% slope. So we just felt when we started to look at these numbers that they should be switched. So just to be devil's advocate, I mean, the hearing is free potentially. The engineered plan is not. So from the perspective of a potential property owner or developer, it seems like that could actually be more of a burden. I mean, you probably, depending on what project you're doing, you might be doing a plan anyway, in which case it's not a burden. But if you're not paying an engineer to design 20 feet of driveway, it might be. Yes. So the purpose for us switching those wasn't to save homeowners money or to save applicants money. The purpose on that one was simply to go and look at the logic behind when what would we want to see first as the threshold and as the disturbance is increasing from 3,000, 4,000, 5,000 feet, what would we want to have happened first? Would we first want to make an applicant go to a hearing without an engineer? Or would we first rather have them get the engineer and do the engineering work? And if it gets even more expansive, we would expand to a hearing. And that was the thought of where the planning commission was going. So it wasn't really about necessarily the cost. Okay. If you had more to say. That was it for slopes. Okay. Let's take this piecewise. So any comments or questions about the slopes? Good evening, Joe Castellano, saving street. Can you guys hear me? Is this okay? My only comment was, I know Mike's put a lot of work into this and I know that you've obviously had some pushback from some of the developers and builders and stuff. Is there any way you can write the language just to exempt what it seemed to be the issue like retaining walls of driveways as opposed to the blanket 30% not allowing building on over 30% because I think there's some concerns from a lot of people I talked to as far as soil erosion and water runoff and stuff like that. I think we tried to address it. What comes into an engineered plan is gonna be addressing a number of things including stability of the soil and the erosion control plan. Erosion will be looked at in a second section as well, so I think 307 is steep slopes, I think, oh, eight, I think it's erosion control. Gotcha, okay. So there's a second round of looking at those. We thought this was gonna be the most effective way because it does come up in a number of places and usually the solution to that, if we keep the prohibition in place and try to figure out how to work around it, we think it's gonna come back at some point. So that was our thought for going this way. And I was just curious, I know you mentioned one project couldn't be developed just because of a driveway. Do you know offhand just how many have been affected by this? We had a subdivision project on Spring Hollow that had issues with the driveway curb cut and had some other issues that came up with the 30% slope because they were gonna be managing the 30% slope by regrading the driveway. So it is a 30% slope, but the finished grade would not be a 30% slope, but they can't touch the 30% slope to not make it a 30% slope. Eventually the DRB was able to just take a step back and make some determinations, but I know the DRB doesn't like doing that as much. They would rather kind of have some of the flexibility built into the rules so they have the ability to kind of take a reasonable determination. And when something is just a flat out prohibition, there's very little gray, very little flexibility in a prohibition. Those were my only comments. The only other question would be, now you were proposing what a 4,000 square foot or an 8,000, I kind of got a little lost in trying to take notes. The slopes, what the table looks at is, as the slopes increase, so if you've got a 15% slope, you can't disturb more than 4,000 square feet. If it's 20%, it's 3,000 square feet. If it's 25%, it's 2,000 square feet. And once you're over 30%, it doesn't matter how much land you affect, you're gonna go to a hearing or you're gonna need an engineered plan. All right, there should be a copy of that. Yeah, okay, all right, thanks, show. Questions about slopes? Well, I'll just say for myself, I appreciate this explanation, and this is one of the topics that I had been very interested in in making sure that any changes that we make could do in protecting the land in terms of erosion, but I'm glad that that's covered in a different section. And I think having a public hearing makes sense and having an engineered plan is probably a good space for there to be gray, then give some good discretion so that we can have driveways, but also, there may still be situations where it's not appropriate. Yeah, and we've had one case where somebody was trying to build at the base of a 30% hill, so for them to impact the 30% at the bottom was not allowed, even though they really weren't gonna be, you usually think of it, oh, people are building at the top of the hill and you gotta watch about things eroding down. Well, if you're at the bottom of the hill, it's just as prohibited. Sure. Even though it's not really gonna go anywhere, and you're the one who's gonna be affected. Okay, great, should we move on, team? Okay, great. Okay, so this is a little bit more complicated, so I gave you two versions of landscaping and screening, and the reason for that is legally what we're gonna be proposing to do is to change the strikeout copy, which you got that's red, and what you'll notice is it's almost all red, so I just gave you a clean copy as well because it's a little bit easier to read, so you've got two copies. This is not a complete rewrite, but it is a substantial revision, and the problems with the current version of the landscaping and screening, and landscaping and screening, I should point out, comes up for any site plan, so within a site plan, there are a number of requirements you have to have. The only thing that's really exempt from site plans are single and two-family homes, so most projects will need to have a site plan, and many of them will qualify for needing to meet the landscaping and screening requirements. So the problems that came up with the current version was that there were a number of missing administrative rules that kind of came back that are, even somewhat just a little bit wonky, how close to the tree need to be to count as a shade tree. There was a requirement to have so many trees for so many parking spaces, but then there was nothing that says how close the tree actually has to be to count. 10 feet, five feet, 20 feet. There really was no rule, so we kind of had some difficulties there. Just defining tree sizes wasn't clear in the rules. How to measure tree setbacks. There was some rule that said trees have to be within 10 feet, and we started to think of the street. We started to think, is that 10 feet to where the branches stick out, or is it 10 feet measured to the trunk of the tree? It just said 10 feet, and so there are just things that came up that just needed to be fixed. Rules, second thing, the rules were far too strict, and were very inflexible. Again, this comes back to the flexibility piece. So actual example, if your property was required to have 10 trees and 60 shrubs, and you had 12 trees and 25 shrubs, do you need to cut down two trees on your property in order to make room to plant those additional shrubs? I mean, it may be that's the case, and that kind of seems strange, there's no conversion for if you have, quote, too many trees, because a lot of us were trying to work on very tight lots, and I think these rules were designed much more for a suburban setting where you might have a cleared lot and you're gonna plant trees, and this is how many trees you have to plant, as opposed to working on an actual 4,000 square foot lot that's got this many square feet of building and parking lots and you've got the existing trees, it becomes very difficult. Which goes to the next point that there were no grandfathered property rules, so it became tricky for projects that were already developed to meet the new rules and no exemptions for certain applications. So for example, a change of use that changes nothing on the outside. So building just has a change of use from a doctor's office to retail. You're not gonna change anything in the outside of the building, but because you were a change of use, you would have to go through and make the landscaping changes to meet the new rules. So as we said, it was just a number of these ones that we really kind of needed to clear up. We didn't see them when we proof read it. So what did we change? So exempted projects that we exempted projects that are changes of use, just like the example we talked about, if it's already been developed in accordance with an approved site plan, we're not gonna make you go through if you're not changing anything on the outside. So if you've gotten a proof plan and you're doing a change of use, you don't have to change your site plan. We rearranged one of the figures to define trees. That helped that answer one of our questions. Well, what is a large tree? What is a medium tree? Well, we now have definition. We clarified that if trees meet two sections, they can be counted in each one. We grew planting specifications together. We added some requirements for plantings. We established general standards for street trees, parking, landscaping, screening, and total landscaping. So each of those four ones will go through really quick. So street trees, parking, screening, and total landscaping. So the general standards, we cleaned up the rules, made them easier. We required planting specifications. And this goes to street trees as well. We worked with John Snell to review the street tree requirements. We clarified the administrative rules, how far away can a tree be and count as a street tree. We added some non-conformity rules. We added some waiver rules. So it's a lot more flexible and a lot clearer now for what people have to do. With the parking lot landscaping, we clarified some of the rules again. We defined what shade trees are. Before, they just said parking lots. And so as administrators, we like to know what we're doing. Did that count the aisles between the parking spaces? Or did it just count the parking spaces? Did it count the driveways leading up to that? So we clarified it's gonna count anything that's impervious. That relates to those parking lots. And then again, we added some non-conforming language because we have some parking lots that just don't meet that today. What do those have to meet if you're non-conforming? Same with the screening. We added some additional clarification rules into screening. And we overall restructured how landscaping and screening was laid out. So before it was kind of mixed in, total landscaping was in the middle. We pulled that to the end. So what we're gonna have is street trees, parking lot landscaping, screening, and then total landscaping is at the bottom because really you might meet total landscaping just by the trees you planted on the street, the trees you planted for your parking lot and the trees you planted for screening. We're gonna have a total for landscaping and screening and what it really is gonna look at. If you were exempt from street trees and exempt from these other ones, we want you to at least have something. And for a number of projects, they may be exempt or they may be grandfathered and they may be getting a waiver. But at the end, we do wanna see some landscaping and screening and the rules that are in effect today were based on the perimeter of the building. So the bigger the building, the more trees you'd have to have. And it was kind of a odd relationship. The new rules that we worked out is based on impervious cover. So total impervious cover. And we use that as a factor and there was a lot of experimenting to come up with this. Take your impervious cover square footage multiply times 0.033 and that'll help you get to the amount of required landscaping you need. I could go over examples at the next hearing if you guys are interested. But that's how it would work now. Minimum planting areas are there and then we added some non-conformity waivers. So the idea was just this would be a catch-all at the end that we would be able to put in. It is complicated. You don't have to make any decisions tonight and anyone who has questions, more than welcome to email me questions or comments for people at home. M. Miller at Montpelier-VT.org and I can answer any questions people have on the landscaping and screening. As I said, it is a kind of a comprehensive rewrite. I worked very closely with Meredith who's our zoning administrator and Audra Brown who is our planning and zoning assistant to really try to work through these to make sure these new rules. We've got them where we think these are going to be effective in work and not interfere with projects. I didn't have a chance to read this entire thing but I'm looking at the street trees section of the utility standards, 3.203G2 and A says, large trees are prohibited where the lowest utility lines are 35 feet or more and B says large and medium trees are prohibited where the lowest utility lines are less than 35 feet and height. Why don't you just say large trees are prohibited whenever there are overhead utility lines and then medium trees are prohibited when the lowest line is 35 feet or below. That could work as well. Any questions regarding screening and landscaping? Rosie? One section 3203H where it's talking about parking landscaping and there's an exception. Parking landscaping shall not apply to portions of sites used for vehicle sales and that's one I just want to think about for a second because exempting car dealerships from a lot of these requirements is certainly a choice and we could decide that that's something we want to do in order to be able to have car dealerships but we could also decide that that's not a look we want. So I just want to flag that one. Yep, and I'll point out that is an exception that was pulled forward from the current zoning so that isn't a new recommendation. Certainly, as Rosie points out, that could be stricken but it would have an impact on a number of dealerships but that's again, that's a policy decision for the board. And so if any current or existing car dealerships wanted to make substantial changes that required some kind of a permit, they would have to also then comply with this. So it wouldn't just be for new car dealerships strictly. Correct. Okay. Yep, but as I said, I can go into that. That would be some people who are trying to, I throw out a lot of the planning lingo with the non-conforming in the grandfathered but that would be if we remove that then a number of car dealers would be non-conforming and then they would start to follow these. Wherever you would see like number five talks about non-conformities, we would be reading those provisions to decide their application. How would they be treated? Where in existing parking areas non-conforming with respect to minimum plantings but lack sufficient planting area to plant additional trees to DRB may waive. Some are all the landscaping requirements provided the applicant demonstrates that the development meets landscaper screening requirements to minimize visual impacts on the parking from the street or abutting properties. So they would have a burden to demonstrate to the DRB that they deserve a waiver from those rules. And if the DRB decides against it then they would have to remove parking area to meet the rules. Well, that's something that I think we could have some further conversation on because we're not deciding anything on this tonight. So we're gonna take this up again but that seems like that's something worth considering. And I'm not necessarily saying that we should change it. I just, I read it and thought it was interesting. I guess one thing to think about is future new car dealerships are hopefully likely to be electric car dealerships and maybe we don't wanna discourage those. So many policy implications. Right, there's exactly, if the current ones wanted to install a lot of EV charging stations and they somehow it was, if they were gonna do that and it required some kind of a permit then it'd be much more expensive if we required them to do this also. Yeah, interesting questions. They could have a green car dealership with rain gardens on the outside of it or something to create them. Sure. I assume the policy is that if you have a car dealership you don't want your inventory to be screened because you want people to drive by and see the cars and be attracted to buy in. Rain gardens are short. Yeah. And maybe, you know, maybe we would say that that's not that car dealerships could go other places in the state but also then people have to drive to them. So, fair. Okay, I'll let it go. Well, no, I'm glad you brought it up. That's good. Any other things to flag for further conversation or comments about any of this? And you can still bring stuff up next time as well, so. Mike, do you need them to set a hearing date for this? Yes, we should set a hearing date. I'm trying to see if I put that. We're missing a calendar bill. Oh. So, actually we've ordered one and the type that we like, we can't seem to find. So we're still searching for them, their back order. So I was specifically informed to tell you that if it came up, we're not ignoring the request for calendar. The one with the three months and then when you flip it still. Yes, yes. So we do have over there though, the upcoming meeting. So the 13th and the 27th. All right, next two meetings. The next two meetings. Do we have a minimum amount of time we need to have to notice the public hearing on it? Either one of these would probably be fine. I would imagine, but. Either one would be. It's currently tentatively on for the next meeting but you hadn't set that. Oh yeah, so could the right second from the bottom zoning public hearing. Let's assume that it's fine. We can double check. It just needs a 15 day notice and we're still in February, so. Yeah, but barely though. Tomorrow's, yeah, I might not be able to make it actually. 13 and one is 14, yeah. It's only 14 days from now. Usually hearings require 15 days. Well, maybe we should go with the 27th and the April 10th. But it's only going to require one. So it can be started on the 27th and. Oh, okay, I'm sorry. I thought it would take two. No, not to meet the zoning unless there's charter over rules, the adoption. So we're going to aim for the 27th then just to be safe. Okay, make a motion to that. Yes, was there a motion? I move we schedule a public hearing on this proposed ordinance for March 27th. I'll second. For the discussion. All right, so we're voting on the public hearing for the 27th of March on the zoning fixes. All right, so any further discussion? Just to thank Mike, what your comments were helped me put things on an orderly way. And when I go back to, we go back through with a very helpful, thank you. Okay. Okay, further discussion? All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay. Super, thank you. Yes. The only way I can get through it. Okay, so we are on to the public hearing on the proposed charter amendment. So I'm going to move back to my seat over there. I don't think we need a break. Does anyone else feel like they need a break? One, mine went at some point. At eight by eight thirties? Okay. Well, this might be the time to do it because the agenda's not that long. Oh. Just curious. What's that? I figured we had another two. I know, right? We're going to be out of here by then. We're going to get a short chat. We're just doing it for the executive session. Yeah, that could be, that could be good. Okay, so I'm going to open the public hearing on this proposed charter amendment. So I'll just note that the statutes require a public hearing, public informational meeting on proposed charter changes within 10, I believe it's 10 days of the vote. So this is meeting that requirement. You do have a proposed charter change on the ballot. This is a chance for anybody to ask questions to explain what the charter change is about. I don't know. Maybe someone wants to give a quick overview for the viewers. Sure. I could do that. So the proposed charter language is regarding energy efficiency in residential and commercial buildings and disclosure. And so there were three ordinances that were imagined to go along with this though it is relatively broad. And we invite a lot of public discussion to any before any actual ordinance is enacted and definitely want to be thoughtful about that process. So the couple of ordinances that we've talked about thus far. One is an ordinance similar to Burlington's where they have an ordinance that says that anytime a multifamily building is sold that a building must meet certain energy efficiency performance standards which is a that's a great time to be doing energy efficiency work. And as a part of the sale, it can be relatively speaking a smaller percentage of the smallish percentage of the total sale of the building. So that helps. And that's a way to also protect renters particularly from having to pay a lot in heat. So that's one ordinance. And then the another one that we've talked about is around home energy disclosures. So as a matter of as part of the sale of a home, one would hope that the energy information of that home would be available to the buyer. And theoretically that ought to be standardized. See like you wouldn't buy a car without knowing the gas mileage of that car. And though you and I might drive a car differently that gas mileage is standardized. And so the same, this potentially could be a similar sort of tool for homeowners that they have an apples to apples comparison of the energy assets of a home. And those energy profiles assessments typically cost only about $250. So again on the scale of selling a home that's relatively insignificant, relatively speaking. So that's a couple of them. Another one was just thinking about who pays for heat. So in buildings where that are not particularly energy efficient, one possibility is that the tenants are paying for the heat. And in that situation, if a tenant's paying for heat in a particularly inefficient home then the landlord has no financial incentive anyway to do energy improvement work in that space. And so one possibility is that we could say the landlord ought to be responsible for paying for the heat if the building is not energy efficient. So all of those are up for future conversations and we don't have necessarily authority to do those things now. And so that's what this charter would allow, or this charter change would allow us to do. So anyway, that's the long winded overview but the hope here is to provide better protections for renters and to increase the value of homes for landlords as well as rewarding good landlords who have done energy efficiency work. It'll make them or give them a competitive advantage if they've done energy efficiency work and we think that's a good thing. And then in addition, it's consumer protection for anybody buying a home. So there we are. So the public hearing is open. Any comments from anybody? Yes, welcome. On my way out, I just hope that in the next stage of discussion there'll be some serious thought given to the possibility of unintended outcomes. Specifically, if landlords are required to do certain things, what's to stop them from passing those costs along to tenants? And I liked reading what you said and what Ashley said, this is part of a larger conversation. And I think it needs to be more clearly communicated that what you're doing now is simply asking, I think, the legislature for permission to have that conversation. But it would help, I think, to be clearer about that at the outset, I think we could have not had so much to do about it. But that larger conversation, I think, might, for example, wanna include incentives for landlords to do this, carrot and stick. So I'm looking forward to that conversation. Yes, I fully agree. Carrots and sticks together are important. I agree, thank you. Further comments, questions? I don't. So just the one thing I flagged already before, but I'm particularly concerned about the impact on historic buildings. And so as the council continues this discussion, making sure to bring in the historic preservation folks and our committees and getting that voice at the table. Thank you, that's important. Thank you for that flag. Okay. Seeing nobody else, I'm gonna close the public hearing. And we don't need to do anything, any further action on that. Okay, so on to this parklet discussion. So we have a question about whether the parklets can be under construction prior to. Correct, this was really, we had a request. You know, as you recall, we spent some time last year on the ordinance and it says the parklets may be maintained and operated beginning May 1st until October 25th of each year. And the question came to us at staff, you know, can we start building it so that we can operate it on May 1st or do we have to wait till May 1st to start building? And we all had different opinions about what that meant how we might respond and we thought there was still enough time that we would bring it back and just, you know, this doesn't really necessarily require a formal action or an amendment, just a question of what your intent is or your policy would be on that so we can provide guidance. And then at some later point, we can amend the ordinance if necessary, but we just wanted to get a sense of if you all had any strong opinions on one way or the other. I have thoughts on this, but for you all first. I also have thoughts for you. Well, one is that if we were gonna allow people to take more time, I would certainly want to adjust the charge accordingly because they would be using up parking spaces during those times. I was also concerned by the comment in here that it took a number of days to take apart the parklet given that I think one of our requirements is that it be removable in an emergency. So if it takes that many days to deconstruct it, it kind of seems like maybe it's not removable in an emergency and that seems like a concern. I really saw the dates as that's when they can start, that's when they can take the streets and not before and not after. That's how I saw it. Jack. I agree with that. I think when we were adjusting the dates earlier this year, I think that one of the concerns we were balancing was how much time would those spaces be taken away from parking? And so I think the entire time they're taken out of parking service is covered in that type of period. That's... Do you mind anything, Glenn? I agree with what's been said. Which will hopefully give them motivation to make the assembly and disassembly really simple and straightforward. Now, they did say five days to assemble it. So that might be longer than when they disassemble it and reassemble it the next time. I also had similar thoughts. Perfect. That's ideal clarity. I don't think we need to talk about it any longer. Okay, great. I mean, you don't need a motion, so. No. Okay, great. So that concludes our regular business. We do have an executive session and council reports. Rosie, would you like to go first or last? I'll go first. Okay. I wanted to thank all of you all for being a pleasure to work with and engaging with me on some really dorky policy discussions and indulging me on going down some meanderings about car dealerships and all kinds of future policy implications that are very minute in the grand scheme of things. And I also really wanted to thank the city staff and that has been one of the real pleasures of doing this job is getting to learn how everything works within the city and taking all the tours and meeting all the staff and really learning what an exceptional staff we have. And the folks doing some of the thankless tasks that the rest of the city doesn't really see but we really count on. So that has been a wonderful opportunity. I hope that maybe someday there will be a month earlier day and everyone in the community will get a chance to take those tours and learn from those staff what they do and take some time to appreciate that. So that's, you know, I leave this knowing so much more about my community than I knew before and having a much greater appreciation for it and knowing who to call whenever I see something. So, and I also wanted to just express to you all that I'm not going away. I look forward to maybe someday in the near future participating on some committees and doing something that's a little bit more at the level that I can afford out of my time right now but it's, I certainly wanna continue to be involved. So you'll probably see me looking for a nomination to some committee at some point. And that's it. Yeah, so trying not to be too emotional about this but I never knew Rosie until she was on the council two years ago and it's been a great pleasure of being coming before the council and working with Rosie on the council. I think you're a model for a public servant and I'll really miss you a lot. Thanks Jack. Glen or John? Thanks Rosie. And I'll see you soon I'm sure. And anyone else who would like to talk with me tomorrow morning at Baguio's 8.30 to 9.30. I have really been enjoying that time especially recently and I'll also mention I've been going occasionally to another ways community meetings that they have once a week on Monday afternoons. I'm hoping to continue doing that. I'm really excited about learning more about another way and I think they're doing fantastic work so I will be talking more about them in the future I think. Yes Rosie, thank you, thank you. You've applied not only your unique style to the city council but broadening all our awareness for details and it doesn't mean that I can change my ways but I'm glad you were here and that you've added so much to the city council. I truly appreciate that you recognize the staff because I too think that the community needs to know more about our departments and our staff. So I will keep the Montpelier day in mind and that you're willing to come back. One thing that I really pleased me with Nancy Sherman when she got off the council, she came back and was on committee after committee and so I'm glad that you're not gonna just disappear. You're allowed a little rest, okay? You'll come back, you have a lot to contribute. Thanks Donna. So my favorite Rosie story. Is this a roast? Well, I remember the vacant lot ordinance and I was a city councilor sitting over there and I remember you didn't like the vacant lot ordinance. All right, it's not vacant lot. It's the nuisance building. Nuisance building, thank you. That's the one, vacant buildings I was thinking. But anyway, and you had all these reasons why it was not great and we ended up changing that ordinance and amending it in all these different ways but reasons that you had suggested, like this is not good for these reasons and in the end you didn't vote for it. But that to me was like, sorry, maybe this is not a great story. But that to me was like so just wonderful that you were willing to say, here's why, here's what I believe in and here's detail-oriented why this could be better and why this is not good as it is. And I think we ended up with a better ordinance in general and I thought you have always just dissented with respect whenever you did and I think that is incredibly admirable. And so I'm so grateful to have served with you and look forward to continuing to have you participate in things. So thank you. Thanks, Anne. Yeah. I think it's a good example. You win when you don't even win the vote you wanted but you influenced it. I mean, I wish we hadn't passed it. But anyway, I was very grateful for that and just all of your contributions. And I guess I would just, there was one other thing I wanted to add which is that I'm working on this office space just beyond this wall and so I'm hoping to have office hours in the near future. So that should be good. Yeah, so anyway, that's it for me. Well, first I want to say I know I missed a curmudgeon over here but I hope you know that I really appreciate your contributions here and I know what everybody does and you're going to be missed. So it's good to hear that you're going to be staying around. I should also mention a couple of things that are more boring and businessy. Early voting is virtually non-existent compared to other elections so I don't know what that means. We're working against the trend there. I do still have some needs on election day. There are still a couple of people here who haven't signed up or who are, to the extent they're available. I know that everyone here is available so I would encourage, in particular, strictly speaking, I've got seven slots left but really the one to four slot is where I need one more to feel safe. Let's see, beyond that, what have I got? I don't know if you all want the quick 411 on last November's past charter changes because this is the week they're all happening or you just want to wait and I can tell you what happens afterwards. I know you've got a lot to talk about yet so do you all want to hear what's going on? Yeah, sure, yeah. Okay, there's hearings on both of them in house government operations this week. The hearing on plastic bags is going to be Friday and we've got a few folks who are going to be coming in to talk about that. I'm not hearing a lot of pushback on that at all. I'm not hearing much of anything at all which is sort of interesting and peculiar. I don't know, looking at the list, I'm not seeing that there's going to be anybody really coming out against it so I think it's probably looking pretty good to see how it goes. Non-citizen voting is a little more complicated because the Ledge Council, what we understand is that they were initially preparing to suggest that it is unconstitutional in regards to the Vermont Constitution. Now we have several attorneys, or a few attorneys, a note on our side in this, Dan Richardson of course who helped us draw it up. Also Peter Teachout has weighed in in favor of the constitutionality of the proposal and the two of them have been in discussions with legislative council and I think there's going to be a little bit softening there to create less of a stark report so I think there will be a little light there that can shine through that may enable this committee which I have a feeling wants to pass it to pass it. We've got a lot of folks who are going to be testifying in support. We've got the city clerk from Tacoma Park, Maryland who they've been doing this for years and who is also going to be able to testify in support of the plastic bag band because they've been doing that for years. So but anyways, that's where we're at basically. Is that also hearing on Friday? That hearing, sorry, that's going to be on Thursday and 10 o'clock is set aside for the committee just to hear from legislative council and I'll have Sheila there to take notes and then it's going to be everyone else's turn 345 which is a very odd time especially since we've got a lot of people who are going to want to weigh in on that but that's where it's at. Now it's changed a few times so that seems to be where we've landed. Okay. So I'll start with the easy stuff first. Just some of you may have noticed last couple weeks I did this thing called Meet the Manager at North Branch Cafe, Stealing Glen's idea and the coffee with the cop. We had very small turnout but interesting conversations I believe wasn't able to do it this week or next but we'll probably try to do it at least monthly after that just one more way and maybe change some times of day to the morning doesn't always work perfectly. So but had some interesting conversations. I think our projects are all moving along as expected I'm going to do that. So I'll join the chorus of Rosie fans. It's a measure of my appreciation that I came back from DC so I could be at your last meeting to say this to you in person. I have had worked with over 30 city council members in my tenure here and probably 40 if I count all of my various jobs and I've in no disrespect of the other folks sitting around the table but have never worked with someone as diligent and responsive and thorough as you and it's you've made us all better. You've made our staff better and I mean that in a good way. We sit at our meeting saying what's Rosie gonna ask but it means that it makes us think more. So you have upped the game of all of us. I appreciate it. I appreciate that when you first came on we were talking about things and I said I really want to have regular check-ins with council members and immediately you got in touch with me and said okay let's set up a time and since then every Monday at noon we've had a chat or virtually every Monday and I found that to be very helpful. Just sometimes we just laugh about stuff and sometimes we get into really heavy duty conversation but we got a good chance to know everybody was at and it was I always happy to do it with anybody. So thank you for your service to the city and I echo council members McCullough's comments that you are what public service is all about and it's been a privilege to work with you. Thanks Phil. Okay so we have an executive session to go into at this point. So we have a motion and we are not going to be taking any action in public afterwards. I move to go into the executive session soon to have the one DSA session which will be finished on June 1.