 Okay, being 6 p.m. Being 6 p.m. On Monday, January the 2nd 2018 we'll call it order the Windows key City Council meeting I ask that everyone please join us for the pledge of allegiance led by Deputy Mayor Brian Corgan I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and the duty of public, a roach of stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Okay, first up tonight is a gender review and we do have a proposal to shift an agenda item. We're requesting to move in the interest of some attendees, move item E up to it will effectively become item C. Item D, pardon me. Okay, so just switch E and D. So we're reorder that and have the Planning Commission Housing Commission goals report come before the FY 18 policy priorities and strategy update for housing. Help with the flow. Any other concerns in regards to the night's agenda in the ordering? Okay. So seeing and hearing none, we'll move on to public comment. This is an opportunity for members of the public to address council on items that are not on tonight's agenda. Remind you that there is an agenda in the back of the room. Also remind you we would appreciate if everybody can please make sure to sign the sign in sheet before they go if you're not on staff apart of council. Thank you very much for doing that. Are there any items that folks in the crowd would like to address the council about city business on items that are not on tonight's agenda. Okay, so seeing and hearing none close public comment move on to consent agenda. We have three items on for tonight's consent agenda. We have the city council minutes of January 16, 2018. We also have the warrants for payroll from period 1231 17 to 113 2018 and we have a job description for accounting clerk which looked like it had raised a few flags in the last meeting. So with that I would entertain a motion. Any comments questions concerns regards to the consent agenda. And from the public seeing and hearing none entertain a motion for the consent agenda as as provided to us. So motion by Brian Corgan second by Nicole. Any further discussion? Seeing none. I'll favorably say aye. Aye. And those opposed. Motion carries. Consent just as approved as president city update. Thank you. Just a few updates this week. We had a great arts in nature event yesterday on Sunday and 20 people signed up and go through that art in nature event, which was great. We also have 40 people show up for basketball basketball is really hot this year, which is wonderful. Lots of kiddos and families coming out. Also want to remind everyone that we are having a four on four dodgeball tournament on Thursday, February 8 at six o'clock at the school. So if people are interested in that and have teams they want to join, go to the city website and register for that event. Also on the community services front, there's a community service commission meeting on Wednesday evening here at 630. The main thrust of that agenda will be an update on pool with the pool engineer here to provide an update on the preliminary engineering. So members of the public are welcome to that commission meeting to come and hear the update on where we are with plans to rebuild the Myers pool. The next noise compatibility program meeting at the airport. This is the process that the Burlington airport is going through to look at to put forth a funding request to the FAA for noise reduction mitigation measures. The next meeting for that is tomorrow night at five o'clock at the airport. People are welcome to attend that meeting. If you're not interested in attending yet another night meeting, you can follow the progress at www.btvsound.com. So that's the airport code for Burlington BTV Sound.com. And I am attending those meetings as well. And finally we're having the first steering committee meeting on Wednesday morning for the community outreach program, which is the mental support program for the public safety department here. So the first steering committee will be next this Wednesday morning. We're talking about the MOU that we will bring forward to the elected bodies to sign to participate in that program as well as here updates on their hiring process. So we are moving forward with that quickly. I will turn it over now to council for council reports. Sure. So I don't have anything from the public safety commission realm. I think you all heard from the public safety commission members more directly last council meeting and we haven't had a meeting since then. But I did want to share I was down in August in Georgia this weekend and happened to meet somebody who is on the city council in Clarkston, Georgia. Which is a city that is about 1.4 miles square and sounds like they share a lot of similarities with Winooski. They've got over 60 languages spoken in that 1.4 square miles. They're in a period of economic revitalization like we are. So it's just really cool to make that connection and I hope we can foster a good relationship between that community and hopefully share some tips, tricks and best practices between us and them for how we serve what sounds like a pretty similar community. Thank you. I'm just going to make sure everyone knew about the commission meeting. I think we're good. In terms of some general items, I'll start by piggybacking on a couple things. Just mentioned around the airport. As we know, folks are back in Montpelier doing lots of productive things and making lots of great things happen. So as the governance discussion has progressed between ourselves and South Burlington and Burlington, we can report that we're having really good conversations. So Mayor Weinberger and Helen really and I are on a regular meeting schedule in regards to trying to find some progress towards maybe some governance reviews and a number of other items. So hoping to have some reports back on that soon. However, in the absence of some concrete action over the last year plus that the councils asked for some action around it from the airport. We have supported two pieces of legislation that are moving forward right now and dove ops and one in transportation around potential governance research for airport. And also around potential charter changes that could impact the amount of input other communities may have on airport operations and the way decisions are made there. So I'm going to make folks aware of that and also update you that in two days, Mayor's Coalition is going to have our press conference to outline legislative priorities. I'll be carrying the economic development banner and specifically in regards to tonight's topics around potential funds for housing stock improvement in communities that can be leveraged alongside communities, revolving loan funds or housing trust funds, which we have. So Montpelier's taking some attention back is, sorry, the legislators back in session. I mean, you know, like the global reference to being Montpelier, but we'll continue to stage with our representatives there and planning commission is Thursday. And just want to give a big shout out to staff over the last couple weeks and support in the past couple months of the Main Street revitalization project and the work that's been done to get us to the point where we made those alternative selections last week. Just that's been a tremendous lift to from the perspective of the Public Works Commission and the Planning Commission. So thanks to those bodies and all the volunteers that serve in those boards for doing all that work. I have nothing more to report than what you just reported for us, unfortunately. I'll set the night. Jesse, we have a plan in place to work on extension of the city manager's contract at the same time as we fulfill our obligation to conduct an annual evaluation with the city manager. So the timeline that we have set out is ambitious, but we have every confidence that we'll be able to pull it off so that the council can finalize both the evaluation and the contract at the last meeting on February 20th. The last meeting of this body as it's currently constructed. Very good. And, you know, just one more note to remind folks that over the next couple of weeks, they're going to next three and a half, four weeks. There's going to be a number of opportunities to learn about the budget. We're going to talk about the budget a lot tonight, but really encourage folks at home. And a lot of people just watch the update section to take time to sit down and watch one of the CCTV specials, one of the filmings of these sessions where you get to see the budgets comprised. We're also going to do a community dinner later in February date exact to be determined will be at the senior center at some point, giving a presentation on the budget. But not only is there the budget this year, but we also have the two ballot items going forward on that neutral impacted taxpayer bond around doing improvements at the wastewater facility and also the issue of participation in what will be regional dispatch. So encourage folks to reach out to counselors and city staff. Primary resources always good place to get information on topics like that as we head into budget season and hope you can catch one of those presentations coming up. Okay, and with that, we'll move regular items. So first up tonight item a we have approval appointment of Mary husband as an alternate to the full member of the Community Services Commission. So I think the memo in the packet was fairly self explanatory. But as you all recall, not that long ago we pointed Mary as an alternate December 18 to the commission in the interim got written notice from Fosal Gill that he was interested in stepping down from his role with the commission. And so Mary has asked to be promoted to full member. And given that not only do their terms align, but Mary, I think showed a lot of excitement and interest and things to contribute. I think we have great fit if we were able to refer into that full member role. And then we'll have two alternate seats that are vacant on the commission. That's awesome. Did you have somebody spring at the chair position too? We will find out on Wednesday that's on the agenda to see how much arm twisting I have to do. You're assuming people are like politicking behind the scene. Yeah. I don't know about this group. Yeah, we'll have that figured out Wednesday. Good. Any questions? We spoke to Mary previously as an alternate. Any questions for Ray in regards to appointment of Mary husband from the alternate to full member status? Questions from council. Any questions or concerns from the public on commission selection process? Good. So seeing and hearing none, I retain the motion for approval of Mary husband to full member of committee service commission. So second. Motion by Brian Sweeney, second by Brian Corey further discussion. Seeing and hearing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. And those opposed? Motion carries. Thank you very much. Thank you. We'll move on to item B. Champlain Housing Trust VCDP loan extension. So the next two items actually relate to the Champlain Housing Trust. So Heather's here, but Michael Monti who's the CFO of Champlain Housing Trust is also here. Michael, if you want to come right out and sit with me. To be on camera, Michael. So the Champlain Housing Trust is requesting that the city of Winnowski authorize an extension of an existing Vermont community development program VCDP funded loan for affordable rental housing properties at 53 through 67 East Spring Street that are owned by 1306 Spring Street limited partnership. And this is largely a courtesy and a formality as the Champlain Housing Trust acts as the administrator and the custodian of the funds. And the city has no legal standing or signatory authority on the loan. So what we're looking for really is just a vote of support for this. And you've received a memo from Amy Demetrius at Champlain Housing Trust as part of your packet. Although the memo mentioned specifically a resolution I've spoken with Amy and said would just a simple vote in support of this do. And she said, absolutely. That would be fine. You have any questions? I really have nothing to add. It's, you know, one of those quirky little things that we got and we intend to put a lot of money into these 10 units. Apartments plus ones and windows and cultures that I connected to. But that's going to be in a couple of years. So we extend the loan for now. We'll come back in two years with more permanent status for everything. So great. Well, in first and foremost, thanks for the work that Champlain Housing Trust does and the partnership that we've had with your organization. You've made a tremendous impact in our community in the region. So it's been a terrific partnership. And when that works, I had to see continue this agreement aside into the future. So thanks for joining us. And thanks for all your work. Thank you. Questions for Michael or Heather in regards to this particular item? Pretty sure. Any questions, concerns, comments from the public? Okay. So seeing and hearing none, I entertain an approval for we'll say the Champlain Housing Trust VCDP loan extension. Agreed. Moved. Motion by Brian, second by, excuse me, Brian Corrigan, second by Eric. Any further discussion? Seeing and hearing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. And those opposed, motion carries. And we'll move right into the services agreement with Champlain Housing Trust for 57 West Allen Street. So 57 West Allen Street is known as the Allen House owned by Champlain Housing Trust and operated by the Howard Center. Specifically serves low income individuals who suffer from mental health or mental illness. We have over the last few months done, we've looked pretty extensively Michael and I into this parcel and gotten legal opinions. Our city attorneys do say that this is a tax exempt parcel or qualify as a tax exempt parcel. So CHT was willing to talk with us about a services agreement, considering that we do provide a significant amount of municipal services to this property. So Michael and I have gone through and developed this letter of agreement and are asking for your support of it tonight. It has been reviewed by our municipal attorney as well. We're going to cover COOP about 9,000 a year starting in this first year and then escalate from there, which would make us almost whole in the municipal property taxes we would lose. So we are asking for your consideration. It is on as a discussion item for tonight, but asking for your consideration of the services agreement and any questions you may have. And Michael, did I miss anything? No, not at all. The key part of this is it allows us to actually go ahead and invest $100,000, $150,000 in improvements to the property. So this basically assists that. Once we do this financing gets different in terms of what we could do and we can go in to make some major improvements. So there's a good thing too as well for the property as well as keeping the city whole. So we thought this was a nice whole package. Great. We appreciate the work that your town manager has done on this so far. So thank you. Good. And just for those at home, 57 West Allen Street, just the two-centon summary of the property itself and what happens there? So it's a three-story SRO, single room occupancy. We do usually do single room occupancies now as much. We do have a few in Burlington still. We tend to do more efficiencies, smaller apartments. But we do have some. And this one works pretty well from who it's serving. A lot of high-income folks here, mostly very low-income, so much challenges. And again, we provide, we make sure we have some money from Howard there with services to continue to support the folks who are living there. That's onsite supportive services to the questions from Council for Michael or for Jesse on this. Any questions or comments from the public? So seeing and hearing none, this is actually on as a discussion item, I think given the lack of extensive back and forth on this one, we could put that into the consent agenda for next week. Thank you. Thank you. I'm going to come back more often. This is great. Anytime. Thank you. I appreciate that. Thank you very much. Thank you. I think we'll probably have a few reasons to have you back. All right. We'll move to item D, which is now discussion of the Planning Commission, Housing Commission, Housing Goals Report. We have Christine Lott and Kalisa Borden come up with me. Good evening. Welcome. Would you guys prefer to click yourselves as we go through the PowerPoint? I kind of would. Okay. Christine kind of would. Excellent. Thank you so, so much. Okay. So just to give a little bit of background on this report. In 2016, City Council received a housing needs assessment for the city from students of the UVM Masters and Public Administration Program. That was then passed along to the Planning Commission. The number one recommendation that was to create a housing commission. So Planning Commission made that recommendation and we convened a housing commission basically to look at overall goals and vision of housing in the city. What mix are we looking for? Where are their gaps? What do we need to fill in? And that will also, as the housing commission comes up with those targets and that vision that will also feed into our municipal plan in the housing chapter. In order to hit the ground running, city staff did targeted outreach to get some area experts in various pieces of the housing puzzle. So we convened a board that's comprised of members that includes representation from the Winooski Housing Authority Board, Burlington Housing Authority, Vermont Housing Finance Agency, Vermont Refugee Resettlement Program, the superintendent of the Winooski School District, a former city counselor and a professional data analyst. I'd like to recognize and thank members of the housing commission for their contributions of time and expertise. They are Robert Millar, Mike Oler, Anna Wagling, who's here in the audience. Hi, Anna. Bobby Arnell, Sean McMannon, Chris Melnick, Christine Lott, who is right here and will be presenting to you this evening. Leslie Black, Plumo, and our council liaison is Mayor Seth Leonard. So thank you to all of you. I'd also like to thank the planning commission who received these recommendations initially and give us some very insightful suggestions for how we can go forward. Our strategy has been... Oh, this is very... Because we've been on a pretty tight timeline, we stood up the housing commission in August. The first meeting was in August and there have been four meetings since then, one of which was meeting to present to the planning commission. We decided to strategize by examining rental housing first. The reasoning behind that is because there's such rapid development of rental housing in the city that that can quickly change what our housing stock is, whereas the home ownership market won't change so quickly. So we took the time to really focus in on rental housing. The housing commission reviewed and analyzed a broad range of data over the last few months and that is... The process to date is kind of listed up here for you. So the things we looked at were Winooski household demographics, comparisons of the Winooski rental market to surrounding municipalities, the number of existing subsidized housing units, affordability of our current stock by income brackets, housing targets developed in other Chittenden County municipalities, and potential gaps in our available rental housing. Some of the new data that we received this year from our landlord rental registry was tremendously helpful throughout this process. And as we go through this presentation, although we're not going to show you all of the data that we looked at, you'll be able to see some of the key points that were taken from census data as well as some of the key points that were taken from the landlord rental registry. And what we did with that is John Audie was kind enough to offer to me an opportunity to send out a letter to the landlord registry and ask them to voluntarily share information about number of bedrooms per unit and the price that they were charging in rent for those. So I had an unbelievable response rate to that, so we got some very, very good information from that and that will be presented as part of this this evening. Okay, so I guess what I'm going to do is I'm going to turn it over to Housing Commissioner Christine Lott first who will kind of go through our process and some of the high key points of the data that we looked at and then we'll go on to Planning Commissioner Palace-Suporin who will present the rental housing recommendations themselves. All right, Christine. All right. So the first thing that we looked at as far as the data goes is subsidized housing in Manuski. And we found there's, of the rental market here, 36% of the units are project-based subsidized and you can see here compared to the other parts of the other cities in the county, we're at the top end. I think the average here is around 22%. So we're pretty high above that. When you add in tenant-based vouchers, which again, compared to the county, we are outperforming there as well, we're looking at over 50% of rental units restricted to low-income folks. So after taking a look at that data, we then reviewed the landlord registry data which Heather described. Almost 70% of landlords actually provided this information to us. And so here's the breakdown of the information that we received. So we already know about the 36% project-based subsidized of the units that were then reported. We can extrapolate here that 24% of our existing units are market, 7% are luxury. So that's what's confirmed by the landlord reporting. 33% of units are unreported because of the tight administration of subsidies. We know that those are market to market plus. We also received the rental information from landlords, which most of us were pretty surprised by this. The median rents in the area are well under the HUD fair market rates. So you can see here a couple hundred dollars lower in most of these ranges. Do you want to speak to the ones that didn't report though? Yeah, so most of the non-reporting units are from our larger rental projects. So the list is here on the slide, City Lights, Wool and Mill, Wundewski Block and Millhouse. Riverrun, which we know are luxury units, was included in the unit type distribution analysis, but not in the pricing because the actual costs weren't reported there either. So we also collected data on household sizes and income levels. So the key thing that we're seeing here is that even at like the 30% maximum affordable, 30% of income is the maximum affordable rent. This is still also well above the median rent prices that are being reported in our area. We looked a little bit too at like household size and unit size. You can see here that about 70% of household of renters, it's only one or two people per household, which also aligns with our existing units. It was about 76% are in the studio to two bedroom range. And then the higher and larger units, so we have like 13% that are larger households four and above and 23% of units left fit there. So we see some alignment there in the unit size versus household. Looking at the income data for the area, we also determined that 72% of renter households are low income in Wundewski. So that's 80% of area median income or lower. So we have 36% of our units project based subsidized, 17% voucher based subsidized. So 54% of rental units being restricted to those earning less than 80% AMI. And then we also found from the reported the landlord reporting data that an additional 36% of our market rate units are affordable to folks making less than 80% AMI. So that's 84% of housing units that are available to low income folks. So we're covering the existing 72% of the households that are low income. And what we're also seeing there then is like a pinch on market rates that are affordable to people making middle income. So again, this is a comparison of like the amount of stock available against the county in our surrounding cities. And in these project based units, those are completely income restricted. So they're just not even available to middle income earners. You know, voucher based follows the tenant so that could change, but that's still, as you can see here, a lower amount compared to the rest of the county. We have 12.5% fewer available units to folks making middle income. Oh, middle income would be people making 80 to 120% of area median income. So the key findings from all of the data that we looked at are that we're outperforming on our affordable housing against the region. We have a high level of low income households, 72%. 84% of our reported units are affordable to low income. Income restricted units for people earning less than 80%. Make up a larger share in Munozki than in our surrounding area. And market rate rentals that are available to people not income restricted is a smaller share of our overall stock. Like we see a gap there. Munozki also has a high level of poverty indicated by that, the amount of rental households that are low income. And there's growing income disparity between renters and homeowners. So the big picture story here is that we've got a lack of housing available to middle income folks. We have a sufficient amount to cover low income folks at this time. And so we're seeing that gap. And this is something that we want to address to prevent this income disparity from growing more in the future. Some things that we have also talked about in the commission are the importance of economically integrating our neighborhoods. So we want to deter this growing income gap. And we also want to avoid concentrated poverty in the way that the housing is distributed in Munozki. So we've done a lot of reading on this. There's a lot of research out there to show some of the negative effects of concentrated poverty. Lower quality housing. There's an impact on schools. A great impact on our children in the community. A couple of other common themes here are the access to healthy foods and a mismatch between jobs and location. Versus if we could get more economic integration in the community. This improves our schools. This improves employment outcomes. It's good for like economic growth. It's good for the kids and health outcomes. There are, there's a lot of information out there specifically around how economic, how concentration of poverty impacts schools and children. Encouraging economic integration provides, it gives children more examples, more information. You help spread resources better. And there's also information or research that just improving outcomes of children in schools has a correlation to the city's economic success as well and growth there. So the data story here is that we're looking to address this gap in our housing for these reasons. And I want to pass it to Pallas here to talk about the Planning Commission. Yeah, so we took a look at the target, target numbers set forth by some of our neighboring communities. So South Burlington and Williston had set 10-year targets. South Burlington had wanted the distribution you see at the top left-hand corner of having 75% of their rental stock be affordable by people earning less than 80% AMI by 2025. 13% for 80 to 120% AMI and 12% for over 120% AMI. So this is a goal that they hope to achieve by 2025. Williston, below that, you see 20% for the less than 80% AMI as their goal by 2024. You'll note our current numbers below, which Christine has already covered. Right now, as we stand, 84% of our rental stock is affordable by people earning less than 80% of AMI. So we're actually exceeding the goal in that area compared to the long-term goal for our neighboring communities. But where we fall behind is in that 80 to 120% AMI number where we only have 6%, as Christine mentioned. One interesting thing to note is just that it's not really an apples-to-apples comparison. The previous slide, just because Winooski has such a larger, a much larger share of rental house, rental stock in our overall housing to begin with. So about 60% of our housing stock is our rentals currently, whereas you'll see in South Burlington it's under 48%. So our share of housing is already, we have a larger percentage of renters. So the goals that the Housing Commission presented to us and that we are working on using as a framework as we develop the municipal plan, we'd like to maintain the current level of subsidized housing units in the city. We're going to look at ways to improve the existing housing stock and rehabilitate the subsidized housing that we already have being utilized in the city. And then we're really going to focus on ways to encourage new construction of housing that would target the 80 to 120% AMI group so that we can expand options for our moderate income renters and create more fluidity throughout the housing options throughout the city. And we'd like to expand and balance the available rental stock so that we can encourage economic integration, both in individual neighborhoods and across the city as a whole. Okay. And not that way. The next steps that we have ahead of us, I've kind of laid out for you for planning commission and for housing commission. The planning commission is being charged with considering a parking requirement reduction bonus as an incentive for new affordable units within the Gateway District. As we're developing impact fees for the city, it's possible to do a reduction in impact fees as an incentive incentive for affordable housing within what we're trying to target. We should be looking at considering minimum housing quality standards as part of the municipal plan, ensuring that the municipal plan encourages economic integration of housing in Winooski. And we're also charging the planning commission with defining metrics and a schedule for evaluating effectiveness of meeting targets. So what does success look like if we're actually effectively incentivizing that 80 to 120 percent AMI? For the housing commission, we're going to step into the next stage of reviewing affordable housing data for home ownership in Winooski. Evaluate home affordability and level of economic integration by neighborhood block group. Identify gaps in existing housing stock. Recommend housing goals and targets for home ownership. And once we have all of that compiled in combination with our rental targets, we'll look at making recommendations for uses of the home improvement loan fund based on both of those sets of goals. And we are happy to take questions. Okay. So first of all, thank you to those two bodies for a tremendous amount of work and the amount of work that was done in really short order. This is a project that we probably from a timing perspective didn't structure and handle as well as we would have liked to on the up front. And so on the back end, we were pretty demanding as a group to say we would really love to see some recommendations come out of this in short order and appreciate the time and thought that went into it and appreciate the comprehensiveness and clearly fact based data driven approach that was used to try to draw some conclusions to support or not support some of the proposals from a policy lever standpoint that were put before us. So just backing up the question for this body has consistently been an item that comes back to us on survey after survey is the appreciation of the composition of our community. The diversity that we support and diversity doesn't just mean people look different or eat different food. It's people who have different socioeconomic situations and conditions and people who have varied employment and people who are different diverse on a number of different levels and housing is one of the key ways that you support that type of diversity in a community. So we were handed a report that included what I would say are pretty standardized mechanisms and policy mechanisms to consider for potentially increasing or sustaining the amount of affordable housing existing in Winooski in addition to setting up a commission in addition to setting up monitoring tools. So part of the big push of this conversation has been, okay, number one, what are our goals? Prior to starting to gank on policy levers, we should understand what it is we're trying to achieve before we just start pulling threads and seeing what happens and having to react to that. That's not responsible, right? And so, you know, that was sort of step one, two in charge of what this group is. What do potential targets look like? And what do ranges, how can we put some context in the type of ranges we might be striving towards? And then two, what's the right potion, the right concoction of policies that then result in helping us get there? So I think you've got some, you know, planning commission, housing commission next steps. You know, what I'm thinking is too, this is the opportunity of council to hear that, listen to that and ensure that we feel like it aligns with the vision that we've been working and striving towards and it's your opportunity to nudge that as well in terms from a feedback perspective. Sound right? Have you had the opportunity to speak with any of the project people that are currently going on throughout the city to find out if going towards that particular group that you specified here would be more incentivized for them to go for that extra level of the building as opposed to what we were trying to do before, which was for the... It actually is the same level. It was 80 to 120 and that's mostly what people are developing at this point. I think one of the, and I'll talk about this a little bit in the housing update, one of the shortfalls of I think that incentive is that it's not well understood in the community, so people don't know what that range is. So they just go for it and get it through the energy efficiency, but they're eligible for it through the affordability that they're creating. So at 348 they would have been eligible through the level of rent that they're charging. At 325 they would have been eligible through the rent that they're charging. At 394 on Main Street they would have been eligible with the rent that they're charging. I think maybe developing some materials and making sure that we're putting that out into the community a little bit better and promoting it would help. Does the policy need some clarity to it or is it just not being interpreted properly? I think people are looking at the energy efficiency, and this is just my guess, I think they're looking at the energy efficiency and planning on meeting it anyway and feeling like that's an easier trigger to pull, but I think that they're not understanding that you're also already meeting this criteria, and so having those numbers a little more widely available for people will make them understand, hey, we're eligible this way too. Thank you. And if I can just add to that, I think that going through this process and really understanding the data and having the community come out strongly behind targets and goals will help ease that communication, will help tell our development community this is what we would like to see you respond to so that then they'll be triggered to pay attention to some of those incentives as well. I think we're seeing that quite frankly on the ground. I think we have developers who are very conscientiously looking to develop properties in that with a mixture of housing options within them or on comparable sites, so I think we are starting to see that, but the more we can kind of unify ourselves in the community of what we're working towards, the easier it will be for developers to help us attain those goals. You're saying that they're already fulfilling? A lot of what has been coming in recently is already within the price range of 80 to 120% area median income. And that's what we're trying to incentivize. That is what we're trying to incentivize. So we don't need to make one or both of those things more harder to achieve if people are meeting minimum like CVs code for the energy efficiency and then also meeting the affordability requirements without trying to and we're incentivizing that shouldn't we incentivize something that actually they have to stretch to do something a little bit more if it's the minimum requirement for them anyway, not incentivizing anything. That is a discussion for planning to commission to have at this point because they do have that target now. I think that's something that they should definitely be discussing and I think it will come up. Paul Dreyer and I have discussed a little bit best ways of incentivizing and whether it's pitting energy efficiency versus affordability that may not be our best way of going about it and actually reducing that the amount that people have to pay in parking may be a much better way of incentivizing by having more money available to create more units. But I certainly think the planning commission should be considering all of that. Questions? And I'm sorry I'm really not feeling too hot so bear with me. The data that you shared on affordability does that come from the survey that was completed by Landlord's or does that come from the rental registry program? The Landlord's survey was the rental registry program so we sent out a letter with the Landlord Rental Registry and they voluntarily sent back information. Right and so that's the one where a third of Landlords did not respond. That's correct. So the data on pricing is reliant on a voluntary survey, a third of which we don't know but I thought Christine that you had a statement that I missed that a third did not report but we know that 50% is restricted and you drew a conclusion that I missed it. Oh, the conclusion was just that we know that unreported units are not income restricted because that would be documented. Right. And we know based on the total number of units that 54% of them are currently either through projects or vouchers income restricted. So what remains has to be market to market plus. We don't know the exact amounts in there. And so like the 84% that's based on, you know, 70% reporting. It's based on 70% reporting. And of the group that didn't report, it seems to me that there's some conclusions drawn that in the absence of that third, that could have a pretty significant impact on the conclusions. So I'm just wondering, you know, house, whether that factor was discussed at length and what your view is on the validity of these benchmarks, current benchmarks as a metric for us to be relying on. Certainly I think if I may, I think that because of some of the ones that we know didn't report, that would bump up what that median price is. But I don't believe that it would bump it up in a huge way because we know that Riverrun is 72 units. I mean Riverrun is 56 units. We know that Riverhouse is 72 units. So we can put together what those are. Winooski Block is another one of the ones that didn't report. And those are actually priced at around 800 per month. So those are below in the 80 to 120 range or possibly lower than that. We know that we have 70% of our overall market, 313 total units didn't report. So we're guessing that a 70% report rate probably is fairly representative of the market as a whole because only about, let's see, 72 units, 56 units. Millhouse falls within the affordable range. We're not falling the luxury range. So we can make some hypotheses about that. There's some educated guesses going on with that. But I don't believe that it would bump up that median in a huge way. And we had to really, what we were trying to do with this is use real data that we actually had to the best of our ability. So it's not perfect data. Yeah, and I appreciate the effort that went into getting real information from landlords. It occurred to me when I saw some of them in the list which are pretty substantial units that they would fall in the 80 to 100 range. Concentrated poverty was raised as a concern. Did the commission look at where the subsidized housing units are located in the city? We did. And whether there's a concentration of subsidized housing in certain parts of the city versus not? This is a look at where the higher concentrations of poverty are. We also looked at the gentrification report. So that was one of the things that we reviewed pretty early on which gives some of that data. But in terms of this is where the subsidized housing is distributed. The green. Yeah. Larger circles indicate 50 or more units. And so when I think about the, as I'm reading the recommendation or hearing the recommendation, it seems to be that the development in the city which is largely going to be occurring in the gateways, that that be targeted toward middle income renters. And I just wonder whether there's a risk of ensuring pockets of subsidized housing in certain parts of the city and that the expansion of housing opportunities isn't available to all income levels. Is that discussed? It was discussed. We had, we went through a mapping exercise where I did actually map the single family homes as well just so we could do an overlay. But I think that as part of this next analysis, I'm going to be doing a pretty detailed analysis of which neighborhood, like block group by block group, which neighborhoods are economically integrated or closer. I would say that the city as a whole isn't very economically integrated because we're primarily a low income community. So we're not, you know, when you look at some of the strategies that are used by scholars and researchers in looking at economic integration, it's about a balance between low income, moderate income, and high income, you know, to a lesser or greater extent. So I don't know that we'll find overall tremendous areas of economic integration based on what I've looked at thus far, the place that's most economically integrated is our downtown. A couple of questions about how other people talk for a minute. Heather might have thought. On this map, there's, because the 50 units or more leave some gaps, you know, like for example on Main Street, I mean we know that there's no fewer than three different. Yeah, there you go. Yeah. Yeah, the rental registry by affordability with peace. I feel like that's a more accurate, I mean from a concentration standpoint, it's a good, but for us, I think, you know, 10, 5, 3, I mean those are all actually significant counts when you start to talk about, like you said, the block analysis. Yeah. Could you talk a little bit about some of the policies that didn't come forward and what was taken off the table during conversations? I don't know that we took, did we take anything off the table? And we did, we were looking at the unit size and that level of the housing stock, but we decided not to get into that as it's not, it doesn't seem like a crucial issue like hitting a point there anyway and it's also not a priority issue at this point. That's the only thing that's coming to mind for me offhand. Do you mean from the Winooski Housing Needs Assessment? Mm-hmm. I don't think that we've taken anything off the table at this juncture. I think we've come up, the Housing Commission has recommended goals to the Planning Commission for their consideration as far as the policy piece. Mm-hmm. Are you thinking of a specific thing we discussed in Housing Commission where we took something off the table? No, I think it was just curious. Yeah. I mean I think part of this exercise is to make sure that we air it out, consider everything that's on the table, if there's something we're not going to do, let's say that we're not going to do it and then move on from that. And so I think from this body's perspective, it's important to understand that if they're accepting recommendations that inherently disable or deter from some of those future policy considerations that we've talked about. No, I don't think we took anything off the table. Okay. The other thing that I feel a little bit strongly on point one and two on the Winooski Rental Housing Goals, that's interesting is the word subsidized is used versus affordable. And I'm curious as to the thinking behind adopting subsidized there versus using affordable and whether or not it's... Yeah, I think that one of the things we were looking at is because we use subsidized pretty specifically there, that was because one of the concerns we were looking at is something that we've discussed here at City Council pretty repeatedly and that is the fear that people will be pushed out of our market and we've discussed it in terms of the lowest income, most vulnerable people being pushed out of Winooski. And when a certain amount of the housing, 36% by project is specified to be for that lowest income, most vulnerable population, then all of a sudden it pushes the place where people will be pushed out of the community to that place where the gap is. So our concern as a housing commission was that the people who will actually be pushed out of this community, if we don't create new housing for them, is the people who are right at 80%. The people 80 to 85% AMI are actually the people who will not be able to find a place in Winooski. And so you're looking at people who are pretty common in our market and who are working as paraprofessionals up at UVM who are new teachers, who are nurses, those are the people who will not be able to find a place in Winooski. So our concern was making sure that they had a place as well. Other questions? Just a quick one on this. Did firehouse data or anything tell us that subsidized housing specifically needs rehabilitation or are we just kind of assuming? We discussed that. I think that that was a concern that was raised by one of the board members of Winooski Housing Authority. And I think anecdotally there is some evidence that that may be some of the older aging housing stock and may need some attention. So I think that's just anecdotal at this point in time. And we'll talk a little bit more about firehouse in the housing update. But we will use data to kind of drive where we're putting those funds. Also maintaining stock of subsidized units. I do think, you know, that concern was couched in a lot of previous discussion we had about the effects of gentrification in the community. And I think for looking at that vulnerable population of residents, increased cost of living within the community as a result of changing housing stock is also something to be concerned of and something we'd have to, you know, it would be different discussions that are outside of just stock discussions. But I do appreciate prioritizing that goal to ensure that those aren't members of our community that are getting pushed out. I did have a question about, it seems like there was a lot of discussion at the commission about economic integration. Was there discussion, or in that discussion was there anything about not just ensuring that we're creating economic integration with where units are in the city but economic integration within units for specific dwellings within those units? And if there are ways that the city can incentivize that, if that is something that is desirable to achieve? So mixed income developments is what, yeah. We didn't specifically get into that. I think one of the reasons that we were really looking at economic integration in the city is based on the outcome of the economic development strategic plan as well as the marketing and branding initiative. The quality of schools is repeatedly raised as an issue for why people move out of, young families move out of the community. And so trying to address housing in combination with schools is really what we were looking at with that. I certainly think we're open to looking at ways to incentivize mixed income developments. Yeah, I think it's taking that principle or that value in kind of extraction. Yeah, putting it right in one building. Yeah, absolutely. First to move in that direction. Yeah, and we do have some new developments being proposed at this point that do follow that model. Okay, great. This was specifically a look at rental housing. Correct. Did the conversation of affordable single-family homes start to come up through any of this? It did. We decided to really try to focus on rentals at this point just because of the rapidity with which development is happening. But that is the next thing that we'll look at and then we'll pull that all together to report back on the whole. So there are not specific targets that are being recommended here, correct? That's correct. So I guess I have a couple points about sort of framing and messaging this whole conversation. I'm a little challenged sometimes when we compare ourselves to other communities within Shetland County. We aren't like other communities in Shetland County and that's actually, I think for many people, a source of pride in that one of the reasons I think Seth alluded to earlier, we celebrate our diversity and that comes from a number of different reasons, but one is that we're very affordable and that ought to be celebrated. That didn't come through as much in this presentation. It came across as though we were somehow out of line. So I just want to caution future presentations from making it look like perhaps we're on an extreme in a way that's not something that should be really elevated. We're outperforming is what we're outperforming. The language says outperforming, which I appreciate, but some of the charts and graphs could lead people to draw a different conclusion. And I'm also, when I look at the targets in South Burlington and Williston, again, and as was made clear, our housing mix is totally different from those communities, so it's difficult to even compare. Is it the reason they were selected because they happen to be two communities that have set targets? Has Burlington set targets? I wasn't able to find them in, these were set in a very similar format, and so kind of we were using this as a precedent to look at how we might go about doing it, but I definitely appreciate what you're saying with that. I can look at other ones and pull other ones in or we can pull this way of looking at it out. I think this was really meant to be a way to frame the conversation with the housing commission from the beginning that we had something we were working toward and a clarity of understanding of what we were trying to do. They tend to update regions of the city and do focuses on specific regions. But by their wards or whatever. Correct, and so the most recent one that was issued there that I'm aware of was the downtown core, which hadn't been updated in five years and they actually bid out getting somebody to come and do specific areas of the cities. So I mean, Chittenden County is like the least affordable place to live in Vermont and probably one of the least affordable places to live in New England. So it's challenging for me to use the county as a benchmark because, and I understand there are good reasons to do that and I also think there are other communities in Vermont that may look more like us or other parts of the country as Eric discovered that would be more useful to help me understand given who we are and who we've said we want to continue to be looking at communities like South Burlington and Williston doesn't click for me. So that's just commentary. The piece I'm really interested in is these numbers have to add up to 100, these percentages, right? The math problem. We have, you know, 84% now according to the best information we have. Is the recommendation to reduce that number and increase the 80 to 120 and if so, by what amount? Or is that, I didn't see where we get into those numbers in either the process or the recommendations. Well, number one, there's no reduction of housing because we're not getting rid of any housing. Right. There's an addition of new housing that is in the 80 to 120%. So that would change the percentages. Yeah. But it depends on how much housing is created. Right. So one of the reasons that we didn't get into very specific this number of units or this percent is because with, especially what's going on in our gateways, we have no way of predicting how many of those properties are going to be redeveloped or what the total is going to be. So if we were to say a total number of units, we can't gauge our success like that when we have no control over what's actually developed. So we use this as a starting point, but definitely it's not losing the lowest income units. Well, not the lowest income. It's shifting the percentages. Yes. And it is the case that, it's not like we have new land to develop. Right. So housing units are going to be replaced. So there could be a reduction in the number of affordable, if you're using those three tiers, units, not just percentages. I would just say that just from the zoning philosophy perspective of what we were trying to create was in addition to create, I mean, it's not just creating density. It's creating good dense land use and best use of property and land. So while true, I think the idea has always been you could displace units and that's a conversation from a policy perspective that that's a tool that you can use, that when the affordable units are displaced, you've got to replace them. But the idea has always been the single family home that's been shopped up and has probably three units can become a 24-unit property. And that was the idea of that. So I think the concept for this to me has always been there's the baseline of what exists. What do we want to do with policy to try to drive what happens to the net new unit creation? What numbers should we be aiming for in terms of how the creation of new ones look? So I think I try to make it constructive is like the baseline affordability, subsidized units, if there's a recommendation not to pursue policies that are going to significantly increase those, which I would also add does not mean it doesn't actually mean you couldn't net increase them. You could also set a companion policy that says the city will engage in one off subsidized unit like we're doing quite frankly right now on two different projects, right? Where we are talking about creating net new subsidized units. It's about those net new ones versus the conversion and replacement of those humans because this has always been about the zoning philosophy. It's always been about adding people and adding density and using the property. That's what people you know, what's the composition of the community going to look like five, 10 years from now as upward pressures increase costs. Well, and that is the pricing. Biggest highlight for me on the planning commission's goal five under next steps is defining the metrics and scheduling for evaluating effectiveness and meeting targets. I feel really strongly it does need to include not just new unit development. You know, especially if we have a focus on new unit development and the majority of that unit development that we're encouraging is in the 80 to 120 AMA and our focus is on evaluating percentage of new unit development where on the spectrum that falls and we're missing those units that are redeveloped that as a market has proven and owners find that there's an attractive market to redevelop and change what their existing housing stock was what that turnover looks like for our overall housing stock. I think it's really important in the takeaways I got from the initial the data comparing us to other cities is not that we should use that as a benchmark for where when you ski should be I think that's the community vision we all come by and it actually gave me the other impression there is such a low percentage of affordable housing available in neighborhood communities if that stock dwindles then there aren't places for people who are displaced to go and by affordable I don't just mean subsidized units I mean including that up to 80% AMA. The hard part about the up to 80 is that there's a gap between subsidized this is and then you get into smaller versus capital A affordable units there's there are not policy mechanics that easily impact how that inventory is managed and how those rents increase or decrease you know short of you know doing what large cities have to do which is you know they they mandate rents right they do rent control the way that we actively participate traditionally from a housing policy level standpoint the way you most actively participate in that range is by trying to influence inventory by managing what new stuff is coming online and trying to provide programs that support the continued affordability of those programs and by that you mean you try to find opportunities for people to maintain those homes in a way that's affordable be it a loan program or grant investments that help people do those improvements without having to take on additional debt results and increase that service and increase the tenants so I think that's what gets back to this conversation around inventory and what new units are coming on so when the goals come back it's good to have you know we want to find tools to you know to maintain what's there as a cornerstone but what's not right now in those rental housing goals to be really clear is the large scale pursuit of policy that results in new subsidized units that tend to be subsidized or deeply subsidized right now and I think that's something we just need to be very transparent about and understand as you accept this document we're moving forward that then that's what we're asking from a policy level standpoint can you restate that I mean I'm pointing out what's not on the rental housing goals and it's what what we're being told is maintain and focus policies on new unit creation around this 80 to 120 AMI that's really important because what again is not said there is we're also saying we're not going to make that a primary focus like I said doesn't mean we can't have a one off policy where we give as a performance piece to the city manager you know we engage in at least one active conversation around a specific property offering you know additional subsidized housing opportunities but we are leaving that out under those housing goals right now it's just something we need to be comfortable with and understand and so what we're just to restate that with this document says that I'm still not clear what role we have at approving or accepting or whatever giving feedback is that this calls out subsidized housing units which is not the same as units available to the less than 80% AMI population is that correct? correct, yeah so it appears to the document appears to privilege the 80 to 120% population over folks who don't we're not eligible for subsidized housing but who are below 80% AMI that seems to be the prioritization of this document and I would say that I think that's not consistent necessarily with some of the statements we've made in our vision statement which talk about an affordable livable diverse community 80% AMI is the tipping point for being considered low income and eligible for most of the subsidized housing in the city right, but we don't but we have more housing units that serve the less than 80% population than are subsidized considered subsidized housing and so I think one of the priorities at least that I've tried to articulate is maintaining the level of affordable housing and if we're defining affordable I'm not sure how we're defining affordable because it was a surprise to me to find out that our affordable housing incentive program and form based code is actually the 80 to 120% category that's news to me and perhaps it was conveyed it just wasn't contextualized the way it is so nicely now I understand it but that's a big shift I think from what we've talked about and so I thank you for calling that out I'm interested in what others think about that and I'm also interested in what role we play in the continued pursuit of some of these goals or whether these goals can be refined so 80% of AMI is 52,750 do we know what percentage of do we know what income level subsidies cap off at potentially if x% of our stock is affordable so we're saying below that 80% of AMI we're using that definition of small a affordability what percentage of our housing stock exists between subsidized housing and that cap on what we're calling affordable so to the best of our ability let's see yeah that's the slide that shows you so 687 units are subsidized units and then you've got the additional 379 that are market units that are affordable to below 80% of AMI so I guess that does seem that's the paradigm shift that Councillor Mace was just referring to and being confused about what we're defining as affordability seems like the term we've been using market rate in the past that's what's confused me it seems like in this discussion those terms are interchangeable whereas in the past I think the discussion was that there was a difference between what we're considering affordable and what we're considering market rate that's a tricky C to weigh into because they all mean different things and they're defined differently for different reasons and to go back to your original question is there's no simple answer to draw an income limit based on what we consider subsidized because subsidies can mean different things depending on the type of subsidy where it's coming from what the benchmark is different programs have different AMI cutoffs for example and so that that just gets really complicated you know going back to the I mean I don't know if this is helpful but there are I mean you can do deeply subsidized versus subsidized versus affordable units I mean there's different tier breakdowns from a data perspective that you could get very specific into because it's almost sounds like you're kind of curious as to what like it sounds like you want to understand if there's a further breakdown of that number of the blue there is no not as much I'm less interested in the blue because I think there are known entity there are known quantity what I'm I want to make sure that I'm interpreting this the right way and that is that those 379 units that are not subsidized but are currently affordable for folks who are below 80% may know you know the policy goal appears to be will maintain the 87 but if those 379 units are replaced by units that serve primarily 80 to 120% not only is that okay but that's a goal of ours and I and I have a problem with that and we're saying out of this where we want to where we want our policy levers to incentivize growth is the orange bar that's above what we're considering affordable so in that 80 to 120% which is not what is the city we're defining as affordable which I do find really interesting too because if we look back we always like to look back to that strategic vision statement where we have quality affordable housing right in identifying what our strategic vision of what we want to encourage in the city so I could speak to that a little bit so you're saying here that 84% of these are affordable below 80% but we also know that 72% of the population is making 80% or less so we already have 12% that we could shift up to open up more to people making 80 to 120% and but I don't know that we I believe that we weren't intending to shift existing units we were talking about expanding new development expanding more so there are more units available to people making 80 to 120% and that's not just about new people moving in that's also about people that are currently low income trying to move themselves up and having housing available to them if somebody becomes disqualified for subsidy where are they going to be able to stay in this community I appreciate that and I think you could tweak the language to make clear that we're not just talking about maintaining subsidized units maintaining the current level of affordable and affordable is now going to be defined as what I would say so this is a very light critique so take it that way what I think is some of the slides are inherently defensive of some of the data that's there like this is trying I understand what this is trying to do but I can also understand why there was a cross using there if it's more proactively showing the piece that we want to see grow that's a way of I think capturing that just from a because to me this is this is making the point of hey this is why we came to this conclusion right versus proactively there's a way that I can take a flipping this around in a way that visually says okay now I see what we're trying to expand in just a different way but the policy doesn't you know what the target is doesn't change and I think that's the important piece for this conversation here in the acknowledgement of that and I think that so I I definitely understand that where the recommendation at looking at moving forward is not to change what our housing stock currently is it is to incentivize a specific type of housing stock in newly developed housing if that is the direction that the city goes in and the focus is on the 80 to 120 what's really important to me is so whether or not that's changing the existing housing stock what it is is changing the composition of our city as a whole when we look at it in broad context and we need to be able to look back frequently and that goes back to that agenda and those metrics to say where are we okay did we go too far did we hit this plus we need to make sure to change our policy so we're incentivizing to continue to build in that under 80 percent and I do think it is really critical that we keep up pace with incentivizing the addition of new affordable housing as well so I appreciate that there might be other levers alongside what we're doing to incentivize new growth to make sure we're engaging in those discussions as a city so that we're not only building out exclusively within a certain type of stock and then because of the stock that we have we're so small and you know a few 100 unit that comes online changes our percentages pretty significantly because we have such a low amount of housing stock and that can really change the face of our community so quickly I'm just going to briefly add from the planning commission's perspective presented with these goals .4 Heather I don't know if you want to go to that page of the housing goals the expand and balance the available rental stock and encourage economic integration of neighborhoods and the city as a whole I read that as we need to be thinking across the spectrum and we need to be putting in specific adjusting the policy levers so that we're getting that full spectrum so I do think that there was there is a conversation specifically about our lack of rental stock in the 80 to 120 range but I think at least when the housing commission presented this to us we saw that as a shortfall but not the entire picture or the point of the presentation that's one of the points but I think .4 here is really the biggest point which is that we have to develop recommendations based on looking at the spectrum as a whole and having a more fluid distribution of rental prices so that people have the ability to move and that we're not like polarized on the low end and the high end and that anyone who is living in our community who might increase their income or want to improve their living situation has nowhere to go away so we're we want to look at the whole spectrum and I think that that's stated in that goal but I do think to that point the vulnerability for people who increase their income that we need to look for stock elsewhere would not be people that are increasing from the level of subsidy to non subsidized because if we have 80% below the AMA but 72% of the population within that there's enough stock below the AMA for people who are moving out of the N2 still being underneath that 80% I keep saying AMA but I mean AMI but it'd be people who move from 80% AMI to 81% AMI because that's the am I correct is that the data that I'm telling you? That was the concern that we had. So if I can step us back just a second out of kind of the messaging and toad and some of these details I think one of the framing that we have done early on the staff level is talking about and forgive me for not trying to channel Paul Dreher which is a really bad idea but that affordable means for our can mean for our community affordable for all of our residents and that looks different across income levels and one of the ways we stay in affordable community is to have some the higher end development so we can keep our tax rates low and have other housing stocks be more affordable. So to just think about affordable using that term as generally as I can to only think about that as a certain income level or housing stock and below I think misses the opportunity to think about our workforce housing and our middle income housing and our young family housing and again to Palace's point kind of creating that spectrum of options that allow people to move here in graduate school or out of college or as a young working person and stay here through having children and having a family and having some options and so I think we need to think about for at least for a staff when we think about diversity and affordability it's across that life cycle and across that experience in our community and not just for a stagnant level or a stagnant population. And I think we've kind of got off a little into the weeds of the data because it's a very data heavy presentation and I just want to remind us of that kind of larger context of how we create affordability at all income levels. Well so let's also get us focused on what outcomes these guys need from us tonight in terms of feedback and to that point of ok what's the goal, what are we trying to achieve we have for us before rental housing goals what we don't have are those numbers right these are general policy directions and I think that's a question as to whether you know you've got in here under the Housing Commission recommend housing goals and targets for home ownership whether or not you see a future of applying coming back with a particular percentage and saying we think 50% of net new units should be we should be trying to influence the market to give us this and we think this percentage should be this and maybe is that somewhere you think down the line or is that not a productive way of approaching it in your minds So I think ultimately that is a council prerogative you are the policy setters you are the one your policy extension boards can do that work and present options to you but I think ultimately it's your call whether you want to task us with setting finite targets and bringing those back to you for recommendations I do think that we've talked about this a little bit in the past about this work rolling into the master planning work so certainly we are going to if we decide to well we will go in that direction but if we decide to let that public process play out with these goals those are targets, numbers, values our community can vet over the next couple of months with the master planning process but it's really your prerogative how specific do you want us to get are you comfortable with these do you want to send give us back and to get more specific you are the policy setters so in terms of maintaining current level subsidized housing units I think that's pretty clear rehabilitate existing subsidized units we've talked a lot about the different types of loan programs and or partnerships that can take place to help with some of those activities I think it's once you get down to encourage construction of 80 to 120 AMI to talk about our expectations as to what that benchmark looks like and what success looks like and whether we want a number recommended to us I don't think it's productive this body this evening to try to come up with a number out of thin air and then expand the balance available until start to encourage economic integration as a whole I think what would be really helpful is to take a step back and talk about these are our goals what underneath this are the bullet points of what are those different policy options that come as a result what do the potential ingredients look like does that again I'm trying to get this to some productive outcomes for these guys as I said at the table today of what the expectations are coming back and I do think when the rubber meets the road we need to have something to measure the number three by we can say net new units we want to see X percentage Y percentage what it's not okay in my mind to do is to say we want to increase them one new unit gets built and we'll call that a success that's kind of cowardly planning I don't think it's a bad thing for us to take a shot at something and be afraid to reach for it how do we do that based on the proposed properties that could be going through the same process could be a percentage of new units that's something we discussed when we did the presentation to planning commission rather than coming up with a specific number of units that's saying we'd like it to be success would be this percent of new units are between 80 and 120 percent from a regional housing goal perspective that's exactly what was done right so you know building better homes anyway there's a regional effort around affordable housing right now where the goals were we want to see this many net new units created and we want this percentage to be serving this population or this socio-economic demographic just some people but so I appreciate that and I think that would be really helpful for me is to see what is the recommendation that emerges because if we're framing it without percentage of what do we want to use our policies for what percentage of new units coming on do we try to aim for with these policies just having that goal of we want to encourage the impression that I got left with is that we want to put all our eggs in the basket of as much every single unit we want to try to get in line being in that 80 to 120 percent am I and so I think having a percentage breakdown of what do we want the goal for new units to be not only tells us what's the recommendation for percentage of new units that are 80 to 120 percent am I but by virtue what is the percentage of new units we are encouraging we want to hit being subsidized and what's the percentage we want that's below 80 percent am I that's not subsidized right I'd like to see it's pull out first first of all not sure where we landed on the use of subsidized versus affordable I think we heard that they felt like it was very intentional and there was a reasoning behind it right and so what's our response to that I think that the my response to that was to say that number three is typically the way that that's achieved or pursued or the 80 percent is by trying to induce the market to build additional units and that it's not about retention as much I think for terminology's sake so subsidize is specifically whether or not through one program or another that people are there that rent is being subsidized as opposed to affordable just meaning above subsidy below 80 percent of average median income right the 30 percent threshold of what's affordable for the area what's the average person capable of paying how it's calculated doesn't matter but the idea being what this is saying is 80 120 you could say I want to see some percentage two at 80 to 60 you could also ask for that and ask if they I think the more appropriate way given the amount of work and thought gone into this is to ask them to look at that to see if setting a side by side layered policy that specifies between those two different AMIs from a goal perspective makes sense I think we're also making a decision of what our goals as a city are and what are the policy leaders to accomplish those goals so I'm hearing that people want numbers and targets yeah percent of new units work as opposed to specific numbers just you don't know how many properties are going to develop well so I would say yes if we're looking at how do we want to use our policy to encourage growth in specific areas and what percentage of that growth do we want to be X Y or Z then looking at new units which is what we have control over is important I it's really important to me that we couple that with a feedback mechanism for when we analyze what our overall stock including existing stock turnover etc might be so that we can reevaluate those policy mechanisms and that's embedded in the gentrification tool that Heather's designed from a policy point so I think that that's just a reinforcement of the importance of that and kind of gives also direction on a really targeted focus maybe in the future of that data to say we got to make sure we're looking at that and I think well I think to that point I think it's also given the importance place on that I think it's important to hear if there was any thought given in regards to weighing the policy around you take your place and whether or not that's something I was just going to say we haven't looked at policy at all policy goes back to planning commission so certainly we've discussed you saw in the recommendations there are a couple of policies that are called out as the next steps but that's certainly not the whole range of policy that can be considered so we're handing it back and saying this is what we think is the vision now look at policy so I would be interested to see what the recommendation comes out as what percentage of new units you would want to incentivize towards being 80 to 120 I would like to hear from my fellow councilors and I don't know where folks stand for me it's really important that in those percentage goals of new units that some percentage does include subsidized housing units as well that we're not saying no we want to exclusively encourage only the growth of xy I'm not saying that should be our focus but that I don't want us to say we're prioritizing building a housing that fits this range that means for a while Winooski is not engaging in conversations around new affordable big A affordable subsidized housing units I think we're definitely as a city I've been in conversations about big A affordable housing but I will say that in terms of the Winooski housing needs assessment the recommendation was that we have enough subsidized so this actually follows what was said in the Winooski housing yes in percentage of stock maybe but if we're saying why you the profile of our community and what our community looks like from a vibrancy standpoint then that changes if we're not also continuing to build out opportunities to maintain that percentage as opposed to the number or to maintain so as we're growing we're not yes we if we want to slant how we're growing but we don't want to neglect growth in one specific population but the goal is not to maintain the current percentages now I would prefer to see a balance in those 3% to AMI not 3333 33 but not 85% 6846 and 10 either I think I think that's how I read this report originally before tonight coming into this I looked at it as yes majority of the incentivizing would go into that 80 to 120% only because that is what's needed to bring that balance somewhere a little bit more like Jesse said affordable for everybody that means affordable for low income affordable for middle income affordable for higher income and I get I 100% agree that we need to be really protective of the affordable stock the subsidized stock whatever you can add all those words in that stock of units right now I think we'd be very protective and make sure that we don't lose it and I on a policy point I would be for exploring not you must replace what is there I think that's kind of in my mind how we really mindfully and like respectfully of our current mix which again what makes this place so special I think that's how we do it respectfully but still bring these percentages kind of into each other where like I said I anecdotally hear from a lot of people around that you know the one of the challenges for living and staying in when you see often comes back to the school whether it's true not true perceived whatever some people believe it's true in some sense of the word so if bringing these these gaps in a little bit and then allowing people to go from you know being lower income or just being new to living on their own or whatever drives people to a new ski and keeping them here so that they can go up in a level in housing stock or buy a home I would love if somebody could actually buy a condo so you could like be at home and have it be affordable and not have to send to a fixer upper but like you know like having that that's not a rehearsal well no but like having that progression like that natural progression beginning to stay here I think is what in turn and it looks like this report agrees that is what's going to like help the school system become more solid in that there's not as much you know transient out and back of when you ski that people actually get to come here stay here like all the way through like I'm going to come and rent and I'm going to buy my first house and then my kids are going to go to school here and then I'm going to like downside as to a high end unit down in the water like you know you can go through this full and then we float it off into the whatever but I think that you know bringing that mix bringing that middle range mix up is really an important piece of the puzzle so I definitely agree with all this that said and I appreciate the discussion around affordability and that is in our mission and vision and I think it's really super important but I think having that mix is also the way that you get people from start to finish in when you ski I think there's another piece of the story that's missing too if our 80 to 120% housing stock is this pinch that causes rents to go up and so if we're bringing down these new units and we're expanding that range it's easier the way the market fluctuates it's easier for those rates where they're at if we're having this much of our stock as subsidized and then there's also enough folks willing to pay for luxury units pay those rates then you're going to end up with nothing in the middle and more luxury units because that's what the market is going to be asking for so this is just another point of why you want to have like a balance across all three ranges okay so we've got a little feedback there I just want to quickly open up to see if there's I think in terms of the housing goals the first housing goals sheet I think that gives enough framework to work with to start for the next conversation it sounds like this is a dialogue not a one stop type thing which is good I just want to open up any concerns regarding next steps any comments in regards to those yes I just have a comment I guess in question about the minimum housing quality standards or I guess a caution I am reluctant to use terms like quality of life and quality because I think that's can be pretty subjective and we ran into this I think tension a little bit when we looked at the ordinances of year plus around bedroom size so I just want to caution the planning commission to make sure that there's if that's a direction you're going to go that work with representatives of different you know constituencies cultures classes you name it to build a definition of what quality is I think it was more life safety what we were discussing here using the firehouse software to begin with but that's a very important point to consider when it comes to quality of life and it sounds like we're giving the housing commission a next step of housing and planning commission a next step of 10 percentages of growth if so at a next step of having the housing commission look at some of those policy mechanisms we talked about before around mixed income housing and then also have the housing commission look into what they may or mentioned you take it you replace it just in regards to redevelopment and you know I don't know we're engaged in this discussion now around new housing stock so I think it's okay to look at those potential policy recommendations or at least look at you take it you replace it recommendations after once we have those discussions out of the way since that's more about redevelopment of existing but I would really like as we're looking at policy incentives that encourage new housing stock and what that's going to look like does that include something around mixed income we've been perceiving the policy piece to be the planning commissions realm the housing commission sets the broad vision and the goals and that can change if you feel that that would be more appropriate but that's the way we've been approaching it thus far I think as long as we're looking at it I feel you know wherever the appropriate home is yeah I think just yeah I think number six maybe with the planning commission is just if there are if there are also policy levers that are being taken off the table I think we need to be really explicit about that and that's what we're talking about that mentioned inclusionary zoning is the common tool used to achieve what you're talking about those policy recommendations if there's anything being taken off by the planning commission either because they're considering some other things right now but they'll they're just being backburner and will be considered later if we could just get an understanding of how that policy analysis is going to go because you know what's good is a lot of these mix in issues so it's good to see housing you know tinting these conversations quite frankly that's a good thing but there's also just some policies that aren't listed here that we know were part of that conversation at some point so again if they're going to go off the paper it's not necessarily we're not saying that's bad or good we want to hear what their thoughts are on it we just want to acknowledge when we're moving something off certainly other questions thoughts feedback we want housing meeting a month really just thank you yes because inform this conversation we appreciate all your time and effort thank you both very much you're welcome oh yeah I'll open it up absolutely and I think we'll all go back and watch this and create a list of what the deliverables were because I know the topic that always becomes an issue for the public anything else from council well just I think the work that you all are doing on the housing and planning commission is so important this is the future of Winooski and it's the housing commission's work is brand new so I'm so glad we created that commission yeah now open it up to the public comments, questions, concerns yes I don't believe that the version of the PowerPoint and I would caution the council to make policy decisions without having the balance of the housing second phase of the homeownership component to that point you're saying ensure that homeownerships a part of that of those goal discussions yeah in the battle has it has yeah sure just for the camera those watching absolutely right what's linked on your agenda isn't the full slide deck we kept some in there for reference but if you go to the city's website to the housing commission to the folders with the documents you'll see all of the presentations back through the course of their meetings that has a lot of data in it so please feel members of the public should feel free to dive into that other questions comments concerns to the public so Tom gets I had a question did you guys look at the number of things that are currently affordable or subject to long term housing subsidy components I can see that that middle section is currently affordable there's no way to know if economic conditions change that could quickly go away and so I think that that data would be helpful to understand yeah well obviously there's a limited time it's not necessarily permanently affordable it's usually about 20 years of affordability for the subsidized units and Seth you may be able to jump in here and help me a little bit with that it's not my area but I know 36% is what's required to be ongoing affordable units right now but I don't know where it is in the stages where it is any of those are in their stage of succession potentially so there is a list maintained by a number of entities that maps out in the state where expiring affordable housing units are located and there's a coalition of funders that gets together and talks about okay we know this is coming up what are we going to do with it I'll just be really blunt here's the thing with housing is the loans are actually never paid off right so there's a lot of leveraged loans done along one deal and then there's a refinancing of those programs and projects time after time again all of these projects will rely on future financing being available mostly at the federal level that will allow a new owner in some cases or the entity managing them like the housing authority to do a new loan on the project to make improvements as soon as they make improvements on the projects then they're subject to another round of not perpetuity but a lengthening of those to that point one thing I was going to tag on to the end is it's probably just time to have Ed come in and do an update on their on their project and that would be a great thing to throw out to him on whether or not Manuski has any concerns about the retention of the current subsidized units and just hear if he's got any updates on specific threats so I think that's absolutely relevant to that question too so we talked back at you for was that okay for your question the biggest part to me are those market units that it was 20 some hundred units that are considered a format those could disappear quickly and I would just hate to see a policy that said okay we're shooting for 80 to 120 percent I guess there's the potential to rate so if you bring a bunch of 80 to 120 units on then the people that have units that are in that below 80 range are seeing the competition in that high price range and they're able to like raise the price of rent because competition is there for that level maybe reinvest in the the properties so that they can be in that next kind of like looking for that next income model so I guess the constant feedback of the change in the market I think is really important to your point I really appreciate that point a lot and thank you so much for bringing it up concern as much because one of the gems I think Kristen brought up a really good point that I think that there are people right now that are renting down they're renting units that are that cost less than what they could afford that 8 percent that still exists that are in renting units that are under that 80 percent but likely have higher incomes so I don't know as we have those pressures we need to worry about as much so thank you for that point as well just a quick again context benefit I know but what happens is there's an adjustment of fair market rent and the vouchers don't have a set value on them they adjust from the baseline rent that somebody's charging between that and fair market rent so owners of properties in areas where rents go up are actually further incentivized in most cases to keep the vouchers in place as much as they can and fight for it because the vouchers are worth more to them and frankly in a sad way without having to do substantial changes to the property they usually get an increase in income based off of the increase in fair market rent that's actually a positive pressure to some increase in the median rental so I thought that's worth cool so anybody didn't have that the whole thing we're going to talk about housing all day so this is actually pretty fun thank you guys very much thanks for all the work any other questions or comments before we close this item public perspective okay thank you all very much thank you thanks for your time great job great job okay policies and priorities strategy update housing so this is our regular I'm going to leave this up just because we're going to get to it again in a minute our regular goal update our second goal update on housing don't pay no attention to the slides in the interest of time and our familiarity with these reports at this point I'm wondering if we want to just respond to any questions that you all have instead of walking through it just a reminder that the background presentations for giving context to what was what goes into each of these data points and what makes a checker an X is available online oh we're on did you hold it to the I'm sorry I'm sorry we're not going to I just call out items and keep going pardon me color coding for the results also available if you want to send back on that questions or concerns from council before we move on there's a lot of text there to read as well questions or concerns from the public so seeing and hearing none thanks for all the work to push forward on this and there's a lot of great things happening and we appreciate you guys working with that priority I just have a question about the or the welcome package is that going to be available in multiple languages or how what how's that going to be reflective of the community that we serve that is the intention and actually Paul our new communications coordinator has been doing a lot of work and looking into better ways of getting translation and has had some success with that I will say that we haven't spent a ton of time on the welcome packet to date because he is deep in the midst of doing the annual report and the community services spring brochure so we're not going to be really actually looking at this for a few months but certainly that has been very much on his agenda and he's been I believe has had some breakthroughs with getting us better translation services I also worked resources at the school district folks that have a lot of experience translating those kinds of documents great you don't need to look too far great it was good and I think there also may be you know we've had Ray and I have had conversations with them to perhaps do a different kind of welcome packet so it's not necessarily the same kind of packet but it's actually using their orientation process for new families coming into our community and going to them and meeting with them so it may not be a traditional kind of welcome packet as much as a welcome meeting lunch training it might look different for different populations any other questions or concerns yeah sorry we're here questions on just the Home Improvement Loan Program and an upcoming Resolving Loan Fund for Code Life Safety Improvements excited that we're going to update what we have and add those things I was just curious when I was reading the packet and wanted to look at the Home Improvement Loan Program and see you know was it attractive in its current design can we I think that may help us in getting people to use them as at least having access to them somewhere I got a folder that had two pieces of paper in it that's what I have on the Home Improvement Loan Program but Angela has extensive files of all the loans that have been given I'm just more concerned from a customer perspective if I'm a homeowner and want a loan I don't know anything about it and can't find it on the web that's because currently we're not doing them we have to rewrite the whole so it's completely shut off right now so that's a complicated question with a long answer so there's an agreement with Champlain Housing Trust to administer the program so technically somebody who is interested would go to Champlain Housing Trust we have significant questions and issues with the way the program is designed it needs to have a complete redo so about two years ago we really decided to stop sending people there while rebooted I would consider it currently not in use a loan was made two years ago to do a roof and that it was done in a way that was very patched together and that experience in part informed us that some attention needs to be paid here okay any progress on the other one for the Code Life Safety Improvements is there any more work put into that or still just kind of idea fingers at this point the firehouse that was contingent on completing the fire updating the firehouse software and having that ready to roll which it now is live they've done the back end on that and set it up so that we have people going out and doing inspections live with the iPads and we're gathering that data I believe that because the cycle of our inspections is a four year cycle to get through the whole city we're going to have to set something up initially with an expectation that will be revising it on an annual basis to make sure that it's adequately reflecting the issues that we're finding in the field so the first data that we'll get from that will be in June is that correct so as of today we're live so the first report out we'll do in June and look at what we've compiled kind of a learning process but we're in a place that we've never been certainly with the program and being able to collect the data and understand what it's telling us is there any surprising needs over and where the needs are I mean we're just starting to use it you know we have checklists built and like I said they're out we're actually doing the physical inspections with them the residential ones 59 points that we're checking on the checklist so there's 59 data points on the initial and we can change those as we move and as the housing commission does the work you guys set policy we can shift those and we've never been able to do that so now it's just we've got to click some time up to the clock and allow that data to be compiled we have had some useful conversations about the potential for piggybacking some of these programs so for example Burlington lead program is really interested in getting fully involved in Winooski and spending out funds here so the possibility of making accessing some of these funds contingent on having already gone through the lead program for example is one way that we could start to approach this so we're leveraging multiple funding sources to get as much, get a maximum impact thanks Alicia was talking about her place earlier any other questions questions concerns all right thank you thank you for the comprehensive report very appreciated now we'll do gentrification monitoring update okay so in the interest of brevity I have used this is the first update on the baseline gentrification data that I presented to you in August of 2017 I use the same criteria that I used last time same methodology that I used last time again this is a response to the Winooski housing needs assessment recommendation that we invest in gentrification monitoring urban planning standards define gentrification at a census tract level therefore this analysis has been done at a census tract level criteria to meet gentrification status have been developed based on an approach used by Lance Freeman he is at Columbia University and is considered one of the foremost scholars on gentrification the indicators of gentrification analyzed in this report were drawn from Winooski housing needs assessment in addition to an urban planning literature review if we can go to the next slide Jesse any useful discussion of gentrification should start with a commonly understood definition of the term so the purposes of the gentrification reports that I am doing here I am using the Brookings Institution definition which defines gentrification as the process by which higher income households display significant numbers of lower income residents of a neighborhood thus changing the essential character and flavor of the neighborhood I am not going to go through data point by data point like I did last time with the full charts what we are showing here is the gentrification indicator scorecard from the August 2017 analysis and that data was taken from in most cases it was 2010 U.S. Census data versus 2015 American community survey although there were certain points that I looked at from 2000 until 2015 in August a check mark means that we met gentrification criteria and it is divided out into track 24 and track 25 which are the two census tracks in Winooski and X means we did not meet gentrification criteria so there were four places where we met gentrification indicator criteria they were in median income in track 25 renter and homeowner disparity in both tracks and an increase in high wage jobs with a corresponding decrease in low wage jobs in track 24 you will see here between 2015 and 2016 data we only meet criteria for two of those so it appears that we are not meeting the criteria for gentrifying I believe what is happening in Winooski is we are vitalizing rather than gentrifying and based on scholarly approaches to looking at gentrification I think the data speaks for itself here my recommendation would be that we very carefully continue to monitor things like incoming rental units and where those fall but maybe put the full gentrification analysis to a six month cycle that's great and just the other observation I think on top of that is I think anytime there is a check mark there it's a great opportunity to send the alarm bells off when we are looking at those policies too yeah other questions, comments, concerns for Heather so is the comparison I am just trying to help me she wants you to explain why we went from four to two is it because you are looking at two different time periods so that this is looking at between 2016 and 2015 the data sort of what changed from August to January that has us with two fewer well I think it does have to do with the time period because I think that the most significant changes that we had that may have leaned toward gentrification were actually between the year 2000 and 2010 well I'll push back a little, I think the form based code has the potential to do more to push certainly there is potential for the development because the downtown development specifically called for the inclusion of affordable units was that is not the case in form based code so I guess I just want to caution against making statements that gentrification isn't an issue this is old data when you think about the development in response to form based code so 2016 data is going to respond to the new units that are being developed in the gateway districts which is for me where I'm really interested in what are the pressure points being created by implementation of form based code rather than development of the downtown I think the jump to using 2015 and 2016 comparisons get interested certainly closer I mean even the initial data we all pointed out 2010 to 2015 there's a lot of different things it's hard to define any particular thing so hopefully going forward with the regular it should be more consistent and we shouldn't see big fluctuation like that I will say that in looking at income disparity between renter and homeowner in the year 2013 we had a $54,000 difference between a median homeowner and a median renter whereas that has dropped down to a $38,000 difference in 2016 so there was this and now it's doing this so I think that we're moving in the right direction now nationwide that's a trend people with higher incomes are renting longer oh yeah certainly there's national trends happening here yeah the questions are concerns on gentrification and of course this should be known as the housing meeting any questions, concerns from the public again this is something we've asked in order to be regularly completed okay so seeing and hearing none thank you very much Heather you're off the hot seat we appreciate all your work and time thanks okay we're up to item G FY19 capital improvement plan see you peace so I'm going to start down this path but I'm going to ask Joe and John Chote and John Audie to come up as well since they all have significant CIP items so I'm I'm going to go through this a bit quickly because while we wanted to really focus on the CIP is the last kind of individual presentation of the FY19 budget process we have to talk about a lot of these items and other presentations so having said that so CIP there are several governing documents that dictate how we are to establish a capital improvement plan it's outlined in state statute sorry charter the council recently approved a CIP policy in 2007 there was a citywide vote to increase CIP funding by 5% a year we have an internal CIP procedure and we have the asset management system what we use internally when we're identifying projects are the criteria established in your council policy as well as the we have historically looked at this 5% vote increase I will say that that do people know what I'm talking about this 2007 vote okay so that is something that we have implemented each year since it is not something that we actually are legally obligated to do and I would say moving forward it's a level we need to look at because while it is a significant increase every year I don't believe it's actually getting us to those preventive maintenance levels that we need to be funding to maintain our infrastructure so it's a forewarning of what we might talk about in future years so our process to develop this CIP for FY19 was we prepared this at the leadership team level and formed by the strategic division areas and the priorities we have heard from you over the last year for the FY20 CIP that you'll see next year our intent is to have that informed by the asset management system that we continue to build out and follow our internal adopted procedures which means we will go through a review process internally that actually will pick up starting in about a month and a half to develop the FY21 and then that those recommendations will be reviewed ideally by a finance committee and the public works commission in advance of coming to you during the budget cycle. So these are the CIP related FY18 accomplishments again I'm a little bit flying through these because you saw the most of these on the public works presentation a few weeks ago and then we have this presentation breaks out the CIP is presented tonight differently than in past nights across funding sources, across enterprise funds so this is the roll-up of the CIP general fund supported budget please do note that at the end of your presentation that you have in front of you is an updated full document of the CIP which is different than the one in your budget books so when you're looking at that please look at the one that's in the presentation tonight so what is included in this general fund budget I'm going to turn it over to the chief to talk quickly about the big ad as you heard me talk about well you've heard us talk about a couple of times now we are recommending the prioritization of replacing a fire truck with the CIP over some other general fund expenditures so Keith if you want to give us a quick update on what we're proposing. Yeah so as this says this is a replacement of 1991 something that remains in service this is a used truck that was purchased trying to buy some time several years ago and it's to the point where it's not safe to be to be using in service so it has remained out of service for upwards of three months at this point our truck set is two pumpers in the aerial I think the city's realized that it needed to address specifically the fire truck issue for many years and there was no plan this is usually a couple year process to even speck a truck like this for a department so it led us to look at what we refer to as demo units a lot of these big manufacturers take these build these trucks and travel around other departments and the proposed truck is a demo truck it's never seen fire it's never operated out of emergency scene but it has traveled around to other fire departments the department we did go through our needs and what we feel the city needs are as far as operational and the ISO ratings and what we need to maintain ourselves and then we tried to take a look at the future how is our job going to change in the future I hope to in the future really taking into consideration going to a two truck set I believe this truck is step one of that so when we replace the aerial it is quite feasible that we will we will roll operationally into a type of truck that will allow us to go to a two truck set here in the city and operate how we are and meet the future needs and the ISO we will go all day talking about fire trucks but as long as it is not housing it changes the taste we did talk to and appreciate four major vendors working with four major vendors trying to get to a point of finding a truck anyone can put a truck here in the city Sutphen has been here in the city for 24 years we have some comfort with them with their vendor the type of truck how it is held up for us we are looking to fill that gap this is immediate delivery with this model if we were to spec a truck again we would be looking at two years of talking internally what that is getting all the pieces worked out replacing the order would be 12 to 16 months to deliver that truck I am here to tell you depending on another truck that we are solely depending on I don't mind when we had two old trucks there is a little bit of a comfort zone to be down to a 25 year old pumper not all that comfortable here in the city there is a lot of risk and we are depending on a pretty old truck this is more of an immediate delivery depending on favorable votes 60 days after town meeting that truck could be here in the city just to be very specific about what we are looking for the truck in its entirety costs $473,000 we are recommending that we use $100,000 FY17 fund balance and $137,000 from the FY19 CIP is the down payment and then the chief has negotiated this lease to own option with the manufacturer the annual payment of $275,000 for 12 years at a 3.99% interest rate so it will not be a bond vote this is using the leasing policies that the city has had several years of experience with so to be clear in the budget on the line item that includes the debt service it's not included in the debt service line not in the initial year not until I actually have a debt service but we are carrying it there right now just so we don't lose the expenditure in future out years so just to back up where is that that lease payment in the budget is it in the current debt service or in the fire so in the CIP under vehicles and equipment fire there's new 2019 pump or rescue down payment that's the total amount and then in FY20 you start seeing the 2019 pump or rescue lease amount what you're seeing in the roll up also includes other equipment that is annually replaced in the fire department so in the roll up that you're looking at what fire line item is both 42590 42590 includes the 27 just to keep any other questions right now for John specific to that issue got some kind of global questions but any questions from the public keep going so the next two slides detail out the rest of the general fund proposal highlights so you see we have our debt service from past years that we will continue to pay and we are recommending some equipment purchases for FY19 including a dump truck for public works that Joe can talk about the vehicle lift that you've heard us talk about before that will allow us to do maintenance on all of our vehicles the lease payment for the police car and camera equipment we're also carrying 93,000 for street and sidewalk work which will include the paver and tree work we've talked about in the TIF district as well as sidewalk repairs throughout the city and then several smaller amounts for building upgrades finally in the general fund CIP we do carry capital for the TIF district and we are recommending 45,000 to fund the potential power upgrades at Rotary Park which is something we've heard a lot about where the law lighting and the downtown street lights should I keep going just a quick question on the street pavers is that something we intend to put out for bid to have done or is that something we intend to try to do ourselves well initially Ryan Lambert and myself were going to get our brist and engineer involved to figure out the best way to solve our problem with the groups coming up through the pavers we have done some research and we have a couple options but we don't know how viable they are we don't really know the cost yet so we're just barely getting into that now so I can't really answer what we're going to do about it yet but we're in infancy starting I guess my only concern and reason for asking that is that in the past we've done put on the board that we're going to have these projects done and collected the money and put the money aside for them but we haven't had the ability to get those jobs on ourselves so that's why I was asking if it was going to be done by a vendor or whether we're going to do that ourselves well any slabjacking that we do in the city that would be by a vendor and we now have the capability of doing a lot of our own concrete work in the city sidewalks and curvy where we didn't have that capability before we've hired some people who have that knowledge and we've actually gone out and done a lot of our own work since then so some of that work will be done by us but within that is the tree and pavement work that we're running out of which direction to go in yet because we don't know how much it's going to cost and we only have a couple of options that we are looking at right now thank you this is also an area where we have reduced our expenditure plan for FY19 to cover the expenditure of the fire truck and other priorities so we're anticipating doing less street inside walk work in FY19 than in past years just in the interest of full transparency so I'm just going to make a really global comment and that we we do continue to put instead of having the the CIP fund act as a staged investment where we then spend money at a certain point it's being used for a lot of debt service a pretty significant portion and we're adding to it and I just I want to raise that flag as a community I think that's a really important conversation to have because we're taking away from our capacity to save for the future by using it for debt service to make payments for things now that will be retired but I think philosophically that would be a really interesting thing for us to take a look at when we get to that these conversations around debt management and our capacity to do that in general and get a sense just whether or not that's a good practice I mean I've always questioned it and I'd hope that at some point we could pay down the existing debt in there to the point where it wasn't there anymore and start to use those funds for for capital improvement savings and then transfer when those new debts came when there was a bond you know I understand why the city did it but I don't think a street bond frankly is an appropriate place to put here in the capital improvement I think that voters should vote have to vote on that and decide to make those improvements and understand impacts taxes that's my personal reflection on that I think from a values perspective I do want to acknowledge that we are adding additional long-term debt into the capital improvement fund which means we're saving less for something we're forwarding it out of here we're borrowing money from ourselves for the future from a stream of payment I didn't come up with a solution I just brought the problem and I mean the solution's more money right but you know I just had a mechanics and practice standpoint you have a flinch of question so I think having debt service that's funded past capital having it in the capital budget is an appropriate place to put it because it presents that complete picture of how we as a community have invested our tax dollars I think the question perhaps more the question you're trying to get at is what is that level we as a community need to be investing to do the regular preventative maintenance we need to be doing to maintain our infrastructure and if we're not thinking about it from that perspective and thinking I think what we've done historically in the city is thought about it from the perspective of what money do we have available and therefore what project should we do as opposed to what's the work we need to do and how do we fund it if we can switch to the ladder where the debt service sits it's what's the investment of the dollars into the infrastructure that we're making yeah I guess philosophically I would differ a little bit from that and that I think as much as possible it's a good idea to get debt off on its own and have this be able to build capacity for future projects if humanly possible and separate the debt service off if that's possible if that's possible and maybe it's not and it certainly won't be for a number of years for a lot of these longer term notes but most of these are very short term notes there are five year equipment notes I think the longest one would be the fire truck at 12 years the only thing that is long term on here is the 2012 street reconstruction bond that was a 20 year bond yeah but we blend right we're paying some vehicle leases out of general fund operating budgets are we not? the only leases that we are paying out of the operating budgets are the operating lease for the electric cars that we do not own so everything here has ownership rights in the end from a cap it has to do that from a debt perspective to reach that anyway from a deficit level okay from different islands okay other questions for the rough and roll so here you see the roll up of the water fund CIP or actually this is the complete water fund CIP the highlights of this this is pretty straightforward are included here some debt service a portion of the payment for a utility truck and a small contribution to reserves and the exciting one is the wastewater and stormwater CIP you see the full spreadsheet here it's also at the end of the presentation in a slightly larger format and John I'm going to turn this over to you we had a pretty robust conversation about this during the budget process I'm not sure I can add anything other than we're looking at the wastewater improvement bond vote in March the intent is to put forward a request for the 1.2 for the headworks and the 250 for the addition building addition garage in the same vote probably the repayment of that won't be through the clean water SRF just the headworks portion mainly because we could call out a local contractor cheaper than a somebody was building a wastewater plant to build a building like a garage so that wouldn't be reflected in an SRF loan it might not be subject to the Davis Bacon wage rate, the US Steel things like that so I think we could do it cheaper not as an SRF loan but I've asked the question of the state and our engineer just to confirm that other than just going blank through each one do you folks have any questions about any of them? I think to your point we went through this also too so just as a foreshadowing that at next week's meeting you'll see a resolution that you have to approve in advance of a bond vote for your consideration heads up that that's coming thank you John so the final one is the parking CIP again we talked about this briefly during the parking presentation high-level highlights from this fund our additional investment in signage an access control that we saw that we heard the need for as part of the parking study and our annual preventive maintenance to maintain that garage we have a summary here of what we are proposing for use of reserves to fund this comprehensive CIP so we are pulling reserve funds from a couple of different pots and then finally just to acknowledge that there are some very significant emerging issues on the capital front one new public works director starting in a couple of weeks a new CIP procedure for implementation and FY20 that will actually with John Chaudh's leadership build out a better internal vetting process before they come to you we have the main street revitalization project and potential facility discussion on lever street that we have for seeking additional funds for Myers pool conversation the impact fee study conversation we talked about it last week's meeting we are seeing development up east Allen street that may require some infrastructure updates as well obviously we don't want to lose sight of city hall in the O'Brien community center the chief talked last week about potential impacts for the police department if we go to regional dispatch and some small capital investments that will be needed in this building small issues, small emerging issues CIP questions the cake that sometimes comes largely baked from past years from an investment pattern standpoint and what we have been saving towards and I think the items that have come up that are new this year or that are being addressed we have kind of talked at a lot of length regarding the mechanics of how we are addressing those in terms of bumping up the fire truck to being something that we always had a number four but never putting money inside towards the head works project and again I think we have also talked quite a bit about use of reserves in this area and what those reserve levels are concerning the risks standpoint am I missing anything I would just like to add also that I think once we get the full picture of the CIP and the planning out process and we also go back and reconsider as to the percent that we are asking for from the community as far as the annual increase goes because that never may not be the right number for what we actually need I think it is important to re-evaluate that and put that in front of the community as a whole and see what their opinion is of it I think it is important to with that conversation like you said be able to tell a story and explain why exactly and I just I want to point out that that was done and it is interesting council sets the tax rate I think it is an important conversation for us to have that is a non-binding that was a non-binding resolution that was put on that ballot I don't know how it was worded but the fact is is legally we are not bound by it so regardless of that I don't know if this is honest to give a very compelling case to people if we are going to increase it questions, comments, concerns this is about to be the shortest CIP presentation ever because I think of what is coming next and I think also we have talked through quite a few of these items leading up to this which is good we are not trying to get all those nice lay out of the budgets okay wow you guys are off easy okay, thank you very much so with that I am going to ask for a three minute recess and we will reconvene at 8.36 that is the report about the chief I turned the heat up tonight it was set to 60, 60 degrees and of course it was 15 last week too we will reconvene the city council meeting and pick up our agenda where we left we just completed the capital improvement plan and we will move on to the administrative service proposal so with the FY 19 budget I recommended to you one of the recommendations I made was to reduce the officer with the leadership proposal budget and reduce the office manager position to 30 hours a week following that recommendation we have actually received two resignations from our front office staff both of our part time staff have resigned to take full time jobs so with any staffing change there is always an opportunity to look at how we provide services how we provide services as effectively and efficiently as possible so we have gone through a process with the leadership team and the administrative office staff team to look at how we best staff moving forward and this proposal is a result of those discussions so what we are recommending is to go from five employees two of whom were recommended to work 40 hours a week and the other three to work part time to an amended proposal to have four staff to all work full time and are fully benefited it's the same number of hours of service for the public so it's not a reduction in that service area and we believe that this is the best way to provide services and we can do that with the four bodies instead of five it does have a financial impact that you see in the memo so in totality it's a $29,000 add to the leadership proposed budget we have found based on that staffing level approximately $7,700 of that will be paid for through general fund transfer according to our policy we are recommending with the discussion from last meeting about the treasure position and the reduction of duties to move some of the funds currently allocated to that position to the administrative staffing for a balance of $12,167 so that has a $5.42 $42 on the average property tax payer in the model you will also see the purposes if we approve this model with the budget the purposes associated with each job title that will change slightly I also want to point out that the changes that will come with this is essentially the staff will be three of the staff will be continue with the title of City Clerk or Assistant City Clerk and they will take on the responsibility of supporting the council and doing the minutes of these meetings which will free up Angela's time to do more higher level financial processing for the city so you will start seeing new faces here at the table and that is the proposal I'm not necessarily looking for action tonight but it is something you will need to weigh as you have your other conversations about the FY19 questions are specific to this item not the budget impact please we will pick that up when we do the rest of our items but about this specific portion of this issue is retaining service to the public well and frankly I think from a retention standpoint we've learned through some other positions some success that taking two part time positions and getting them into a full time one provides additional consistency and retention opportunities you're saying you want to take the impact of this to the budget in the next item is that what you're suggesting well I'm saying it's part of the financial conversation we're having at the end tonight is all so if you've got questions about it specifically to this we're not treating it like a sole cut in ad it's part of the overall budget I guess is what I was saying that's part of the proposal that we're going to talk about the larger proposal so I guess my only question is I'm a little bit confused about the difference between the leadership proposal originally and then this because the leadership proposal was to reduce the hours right so it was going to be so the leadership proposal was to reduce the total hours of service so if you look in the memo the box on the left has the leadership proposal budget so it reduced the office manager position from 40 hours a week to 30 hours a week so it was in reduction in 10 hours of a week that is and that we are maintaining that cut but with different bodies I read this wrong I didn't read that as the leadership proposal I read that as what it was before I looked at it wrong so thank you clear questions, concerns, comments ok very good we will move into any questions, concerns, comments from the public so seeing and hearing none we will move into requests to use FY17 fund balance so fund balance historically we have looked at in a one fellow allocated all out we are not doing that this year we are coming to you with specific asks for needs we have in the moment but leaving a balance there to respond to emerging needs in the future so here you see the request of use for fund balance that we have talked about throughout the budget process so Angel put together the summary of what the decisions made thus far with the FY17 fund balance for a remaining amount of 517,000 so tonight we are recommending the allocation of 100,000 of that to fund the down payment of the fire chuck that you just heard about for the CIP presentation 15,673 dollars to fund the rest of the CIP general fund gap and then to fund the municipal planning grant grant match that we got for master planning which we had carried in the operational budget but taken out because it is a one time expense not an ongoing expense that would leave a remaining unassigned fund balance balance of 395,500 so still allows us some flexibility for the remainder of the fiscal year if emerging issues arise and this is on for a discussion item but will be on for a vote at your next meeting as it does have budget implications with the rest of the FY19 budget is currently presented. Questions? Concerns? It leaves it leaves a balance again I think these are conversations we generally had in regards to fund balance usage are there questions? Concerns? Okay. Is there any hearing none? Any questions or concerns from the public? And seeing and hearing none we will move on to tonight's final agenda item which is discussion of the FY19 budget discussion and direction So clearly I made a strategic error by putting this last on the agenda I need to tell you a joke or something so this is our attempt really there's no additional information here but in the interest of coming to you as prepared as possible next week with a final budget amount to vote on in advance of town and not forcing Angela into life at any of these spreadsheets we want to have a conversation about your inclination about budget additions or subtractions you like us to cost out or in advance of coming to you with that final number next week So we receive those numbers of 2.16 from the so the additional ad line 2.16 percent we receive the changes from budget cut ad of 1.19 percent the first thing is where do where do we fall now with the update that we just saw from the admin piece on those percentages did you guys bring tonight updated I did not do that you probably could do it quickly if you want to keep chatting ambidexterity 6,000 divided by 6,000 okay so I think the goal here is to try to suss out if there are items they're going to come up they're going to cause the potential math to change historically as a reminder the way we've done this is we've brought the cut out list in the last night and sometimes you shuffle things around we try to do it the meeting before to see if there's you know there's their baseline things that we want to set as a foundation of that conversation but this is to try to kind of up that a little bit and get some of those items on the table and to start to take a temperature too of what these percentages look like and part because if you know somebody says by gosh we're going to cut it off at 1 percent you know and and I really don't like this this and this about the difference between 1 percent and 1.91 percent right and I'm just going based off of you know where we work in leadership proposal and additional items so that those adjustments can be made this is also my time to remind you that this is your budget and each line item on this is your budget and we did things a little differently this year and we have a leadership proposal and we have a proposal before you that is reflective of what staff believes is the best way to execute the goals that we've laid out for them but in the end each line item of this budget is yours and if there is a particular piece of it while we haven't found that to be a great methodology of budgeting going through each item and hacking each one out to be particularly good particularly useful methodology I think it would be a really good time to bring up if you've got any issues or concerns in regards to the items that were baked into the budget staff and contingencies etc any items that were added prior to the budget coming here if you've got an issue with any of those items and then you know probably most obviously the items that are on this you know the expenses between staff and benefits and others and additional revenue projections that we have in the the sheet that shows you what was done to get to the net zero budget and what was done to from the leadership proposal and then what the final outcome looks like okay so are you guys hooked up to this projector could you can you bring the proposal up sort of like now that since there's no line item budget well I think to want to see the leadership proposed budgets that summary sheet that PDF it's got the items listed of what was and maybe just that access to that drive in general in case there's some specific questions wait don't do it yet my internet connection appears to be very slow this is where it's fun this is where I get to look back and forth and say okay everybody what are our thoughts what do people number one I think it's you know you've got before you well it's not 1.91 it's going to be something different it's 2.15 percent you've got a 2.15 increase before you and I think it would be great to see on that sheet too what that net impact the tax prayers look like that's being considered so that I probably don't have you said it was 2.15 2.15 percent previously we had that with the additional ads 2.16 was $48.62 to a 225k home so pretty similar yeah I'm curious as to a cent perspective too what that would look like I mean I know opinion raises we can get there pretty easily I can help simple excel yeah so I don't have the live spreadsheet of okay can you throw that out now so we set this out we did make a strategic or not to I mean everybody said they wanted to keep things as close as possible to you know zero and that's always what we enter into right we don't enter in with I think this is a really good year to go up by 6% but at the same time I guess maybe the first question is how people what their sense is of you know whether we feel if the 2.15 is it's going to be that middle proposal and then I guess subsequently 2.35 5 or 3.7% so I'm sorry I don't have the live right there well this is this one it's a PDF though yeah but the question is I mean they just baked in a new proposal so have those numbers been run in coordination with this so that if you take the leadership budget and just add on the 12,000 for the administrative support it's an increase of 2.15% is that what you're looking for yeah I think what he's looking for is how many senses there on the tax rate rather a percentage I mean I want to like we need to be able to talk and what's the percent increase what's the impact and what's the cent if you want to take a one minute break I can go download it for my docking station cool and we instead of recessing while you're doing that I think too this group can keep talking meaning that some of the others of you are going to have to start talking I'd love some feedback and whether I mean from the 2. where that's going to look like percentage standpoint do people feel good about what that accomplishes from a proposal standpoint are there specific aspects of it that are concerning this is a different we've gone about this in a different way we spent less time in this budget process looking at specific issues and considering them in silos and spent more time looking at an overall budget perspective so that's the best way to start the conversation and sort of looking at that overall well I think if we're going to go to Bond for some of the project that we're looking at trying to do I think we need to be cognizant of that on the tax side of things there's also the other facet with the school that is out of our control we also need to be cognizant of that some of it's within our control what a lot of it is about I think your 6% request is probably out we know where the school board is in their process budget discussions that we can try to recall we've heard early numbers but we do not hear I haven't heard anything at all we can ask if that's a conversation if anybody had had it at this juncture Jesse's any closer contact with Sean that's only one piece of the puzzle there too school boards do their work for the legislature response that's really up in the air right now we're really just looking at the column that's the 1.91% or are we looking at this well now it's changed well I know that 1.91 has changed to 2.15 that's a question right it's like very early numbers 2.9% the difference the additional add pieces that's another question I have on this admin piece because we reinstated office manager here I'm assuming that that's actually yes I don't think that's a correct statement 2.15 I think it impacts the no it doesn't because of the salary savings with the second position going away we used most of the savings from that salary to reinstate and then we used the remaining piece to start giving additional hours to the other part-time position but we didn't have enough to also give benefits and so these are the items too that have been put in front of you the reason also if there are specific issues on the general fund budget details that people you know want to bring up want to have issue with um you know that's that's also open I mean there's again you have the sheet with it's got calm in I guess I'll call it shows if something changed significantly what was it if there's an issue with that great if not I mean if somebody wants to bring a specific issue to that we're not going to go through that line by line tonight it's just not feasible but what we can do is if you've got something that from you know something that was cut or something that was added you've got significant concerns about that's why we had them do that percentage change spreadsheet for everybody you know certainly having that information or those concerns now or ahead of the next meeting as much as possible would be very good um press to be able to have the detail about it to be able to easily adjust talking about it now would be good from a value perspective but then if not then it's really drilling down to the issues that are presented in terms of what staff represented is where the hard choices were made I'm sorry but it's not seeing how it could possibly be at 2.15% when this suggested if we added $108,000 on top of the leadership proposal that would only lead to 2.16% so we'll clarify I generally was prepared to support the leadership proposal that didn't have any concerns or I think a lot of difficult discussions occurred and hard work and creative thinking and to get to that point I'm concerned about the magnitude of the leap based on the $12,000 added to me so Jesse I was just saying I don't help me understand by adding $12,000 leads to a 2.15% tax rate increase versus adding $108,000 which only takes it to 2.16 that'd be additional on top of that's right thank you it's been a while since we so this is a 4.3 just under okay $48 plus $48 so it's an additive exercise I was confused on that too it's not just a 0.2 difference in the original proposal between $1.191 and $2.15 that's the difference between 2 and 4 basically so it's hard I have some challenges only because I feel like some of the initial cut suggestions are a little wacky like the cutting the public works director as an option it feels like it was put in there to just hold that money because it's like I can't imagine this body coming and being like cut a director position when like in a budget of whatever the department has that there can't be if the number the department needs to find is $30 that would be the initial go to so I get stuck a little bit because obviously especially now we just hire a public works director like that's just an example in here but like you know it's just challenging to even start to make any sort of recommendations on how to adjust this because it feels like there are items that were put into like it seems like it doesn't seem realistic totally so if I could I respond to that yeah absolutely so I can understand why you feel that way it was not done as a placeholder of saving the dollars we went through a long process with the leadership team to come up with the hundreds of thousands we had to cut to get to the level tax rate budget and the decision made specifically about that position is that we have two strong leaders in that department who had demonstrated their ability to keep the operational wheels on the bus and instead of looking to cut another position in that department or in the city that we were more interested if that was where we wanted to go if we wanted to cut to that level of figuring out how to continue with two operational leads as opposed to cutting a CDL driver or another police officer or another staff person in the city it wasn't made lightly it wasn't made as a 9 o'clock at night for lack of a better word a threat it was really what we felt like we could cut and operationally continue to function as a city it definitely is a sacrifice as you heard me say on the first night it was the one I was the most anxious about but it was not meant as a and so an option for you if you really wanted to see us have additional funds is to direct me in the next couple of days to go back with staff and look for $30,000 of other funds to cut that's not that position you can certainly challenge us to do that and we can do that this methodology of doing it of having a leadership proposed budget is always going to inherently put those questions into the process it just is as to whether the proposals have been structured in a way to yield an outcome one way or the other which is I think essentially what you're concerned about and I mean we hear the process and the thinking behind it that's our job is to ask questions to ensure that that's not what occurred and that's not what happened so I think that is a lot of this opportunity I mean that being said I think that for me puts me in a position where with I was feeling more comfortable with the leadership proposal obviously before it went up so that to me means that I don't know exactly if we start jockeying for items here like has been in years past but that's what it comes down to a lot of times I look at this list and I'm trying to figure out where to trim to keep it down and it's hard when it's just this list and you're starting to there's nothing in years past there's often things that jump out more the more obvious cuts even if everyone doesn't agree on them so I don't know what I'm trying to say at this point but for me I feel like I'm not totally comfortable just increasing the leadership proposal and accepting that accepting the 2.15 again it sucks to start to think about this it's almost like a sense that we're playing over because we're looking at a full budget and thinking about cutting $16,000 out or something that's not a lot of money but I really think that it's also the respectful thing to do the taxpayers is to continually scrutinize every dollar that's spent here and I personally had an opinion on where I wanted this to come in and I think it was pretty open about that as low as possible in the beginning so I think for me I'd like to cut it back down under 2% and if I have to start to look at this list and say what are the things there the list confuses me a little bit because it's a new format I like it but it's like I have to look at it a bunch to figure out what's actually staying and what's going but then does that mean that the library circulation assistant goes like that doesn't feel good either but at the same point we've also staffed up the library over the past few years and does that mean it's influx and can be staffed back down I'm trying to look at this and see what other things are on here does that make any sense I don't know how everyone else feels about adding anywhere it should be and how we get it to a point that is acceptable I would just say from a functional standpoint that's a risk that staff runs when they put a budget forward in this methodology is that well no I'm just going to finish that you number one you could bounce back and say I want this number you go back and give me a recommendation of what you think that gets you that number or you you basically pluck something out where we haven't gone through the same priorities conversation and discussion but that's an inherent difference between this budget process and the last is that we haven't spent as much time talking about where does this rank in terms of priorities and how is that I mean that's just reality we haven't spent any time there we could ask those questions we could ask them to talk about value of things or you can propose to impose your own value on it and say you know I feel like this is a place where we could we could sacrifice and see if there's a conversation to be had there I don't want to make it seem like I think I know better than the directors of our departments and the manager of the city which pieces should be or shouldn't be cut necessarily because I'm not in the department all day so I guess my preference personally would be to get a recommendation from staff on how they would propose getting this back down to under two percent but I don't know what that looks like because this was a because if this was the best foot forward initially and it's going to be one of then I guess we're into a prioritization conversation because if this is the best foot forward then it's these items won't change but if things have moved and there's other recommendations and I'd be open to seeing another proposal for how to get that back down and if the proposal is what we got we're standing behind our our initial leadership proposal then I wouldn't I personally think we need to get into that nasty I would just say this is what we got elected to do and it is our budget it is what we put forward taxpayers it's staff's job to operate the budget and to own it and to execute it in a way that meets the needs and services of the community so it is important that we listen to the professionals I think the group has been very respectful and responsible in that manner and listened to the great very smart professionals that we have here I'm just, I'm trying to empower and bolden in some way to say like this is the one opportunity that you do have over the course of the year to have that conversation and it's the one time you get to have it so I don't think you should remove something off of the the table if you've got something to say about it due to deference because I think that we give lots of deference and do a good job of that generally is about it I think so anyway and respect the professionals that are here but this is one that when we pass we should feel good about as being ours only sorry there's my very hard speech I want to jump I'll shut up the pending impact is sorry pending impact 2.15% what the hell that translates 2.05 so it's this it's not in that he says thank you it's because we're so close to that's 2.0 0215 2.15 yep you're welcome baby so am I hearing that your interest is to try and get to a 2.0 threshold I'm interested to get back into 1.9 you like that number? well I mean I think that generally you know again it is a powder it's correct again I'm interested to get it back down to the initial level of that leadership proposal if that means between 1.9 and 2 it's I'll be fine with that giving out a little band of flexibility but yeah that's I mean again personally that's what I'd like to see as a taxpayer I feel good about having a less than 2 percent increase I think that's a good space to be no one else agrees then no one else agrees but I think it's hard to be to confront the ad at this stage in a way that bumps us over a marker which may or may not have actual meeting with people but I think when you talk about this meeting as we we started to talk early on about keeping the increase as well as possible and certainly aligned with the cost of living increases can you remind me what what the where I should be looking for where the CPI or whatever the measure you were using to compare this growth to growth and cost of living so we're assuming a 2.2 percent CPI in this budget I think that's right because one of the directives we gave was or goals we gave was keep it at or below CPI so I'm just that's a different question when I just answered so we looked at CPI when we built the budget in November and it was at 0.19 we have seen it was 2.7 this fiscal year so we to build this budget so based on the salaries and benefits calculations are based on a 2.2 percent cost of living increase the CPI from October to or November to October was 1.9 percent but you know it's rolling and it's been 20 upward when I ran the numbers in December that was over 2 percent and that's just the CPI all items from the Bureau of Labor Statistics so I do apologize for the late administrative proposal I think whenever we learned of one of these resignations today from a management perspective whenever we have a vacancy it's important to look at what are the creative things we can do to most appropriately staff and the budget you're seeing in front of you is a budget we built in November and it is it is really unfortunate and it's timing and we certainly can go back and find the next couple of days figuring out how to get it back below 2 percent you can give us direction where you want to see that done with three scenarios of where we might find that because I agree with you it is a last-minute addition but I felt an obligation to look at it because we do have these vacancies we could also just pull that addition and say staff at your previously recommended levels and look to higher two part-time staff there are lots of different options for us to consider to get back under that two percent I think that would be my preference would be to ask for I like the idea of three scenarios to get there and and some of the three what you might recommend for that particular position no to get this back to one getting below two percent okay so that's an important threshold to you as well I think given the fact that CPI has been between 1.9 and 2.2 the two percent marker is feels numerically significant it feels significant whether or not it is happy to be happy to debate with everybody here it was 2.1 December to December I'm going to I'm going to verbalize something that has kind of different implications altogether it makes me sick to my stomach that we're going to prove a budget at some point here in the process that's going to use reserves towards operational expenses in any way shape or form and I just want to put that out there because it's creating an inherently structural issue with our budget that has impacts it does nothing but kick hard decisions down the road for us what are we specifically doing what areas are we specifically doing hold please hold please so on December 18th packet we gave you a memo where we are using reserves in this budget so it's probably in your email from December 15th or in the packet for December 18th so we are using OCC reserves to balance the as we moved it over to the general fund to keep the general hold the general fund harmless we are using it for the fire equipment that we've talked about tonight we are using it to fund the safety we are using funds in the TIF budget because we are not paying ourselves as much for the CDC sorry two different things we are using in the CDC fund because we are not paying ourselves the full amount of our obligated payment so we are using it in the TIF budget to meet our debt service ratio and we are using a small amount in the meals program budget of the community services fund and in the thrive budget to fund the thrive director which was moved out of the general fund and that's probably the one that I feel like is how much was that one so the other ones I can come to peace with because either their one-time cost or like the OCC has been a structural issue or we have ongoing long-term plans for addressing them like the TIF budget so next year you're starting with a $37,000 budget deficit on the thrive director position and again the rationale behind that was that is a position that's really solely a service delivery system that is an enterprise fund itself so to the extent that we are have have special revenue funds where revenues should be paying for expenses it's our obligation to figure out how to make that work and part of the discussion was around freeing up some of these time to increase participation in the program so I agree it's something that closely if you support it it will pay attention to and I think there was a discussion and rationale for why that wasn't necessarily a risky and I would have concerns about cost always going out in order to which I think would be likely the concern coming back to the discussion next year if increased enrollment doesn't actualize in being able to fund the additional cost to the program moving that position over but the chances of getting $37,000 of additional revenue is zero I mean that would be pulling a rabbit out of our hats yeah pulling an elephant out of our hats I mean that's just all that is is handing ourselves a decision to make next year I'm fine with it yeah I bet you are you know from going through the budget there's things that I think we probably would have talked about quite a bit in the leadership budget in terms of whether or not we would have parsed them differently just that practice in and of itself is something I have a real issue with and I think I just if we're going to improve the budget with that I want us to be really upfront with that I mean this goes back to a three to two vote that happened to users two, three years ago right I mean right back to that same conversation but I just would challenge us to artificially keep a tax rate down and building a structural deficit because a number sounds good to us I struggle with that so if it's three cents it's three cents and we do the right thing on the budget I won't say the right thing that was very poor choice of words I apologize for that but we accurately depict the financial situation or we go that route soft on the blow for one year and stay at 1.19% because it you know even better 1.19 1.91 thank you so I just throw that out there for consideration and an option well I think that's good feedback for Jesse to consider when you're looking at three proposals you know restructuring the administrative team well that might make sense you know does that is that the high I think when you're thinking about operational cost being sustained by reserves that's a very good point and I think we should try to stay away from that as much as possible so is that direction to put 38,000 back into this budget as well that would be three quarters of a cent so if you were at let's say you just took the straight literature proposal you'd be at you'd be at three almost exactly I mean I felt the idea with this 37 for the Thrive Vector was that it was going to be a year for this position with freed up time or whatever to try to increase enrollment isn't that isn't that strategically why that was looked like that to flesh itself out not trying to kick this can down the road for you we're getting ready to get a dose of honesty no I mean it's the same answer I think that and I will own this decision that when you have special revenue for funds so the intent of the city is that the cost of this program is going to be borne by the revenues coming into the program that is my obligation to have the program support itself so to the extent it doesn't we can use general fund taxpayer dollars to subsidize that program but that is a different value statement than saying we're going to use the revenues from this program so the reason it was taken out was to say we're going to treat it as a special revenue fund as it's established we're going to have the revenues match the expenditures and we're just going to try and figure out how to get there and if we can't get there then that's it if we can't get there then they're different do we have the right staffing level do we need to expand do we need to staff differently there are other questions we can ask if we can't make that happen but as it's been set up as that kind of general fund taxpayers be subsidizing it you can make that determination you can say right now we want the general fund taxpayers to subsidize it but that's different than having an enterprise fund in that case we should probably pull it into the general fund over time I'm not saying we do that this year which is what happened with OCC except for in that case we were given a special little pot of money to subsidize the building and help it flow and we just drew off it to the point where it was financially insoluble over time from a long term perspective for clarity the thrive and other community service programs are ruled into the general fund for financial important purposes it's not actually okay I don't know that what I said was guidance to put $37,000 back in the budget maybe that's what's what but I think it's I feel like they're named now get it over with what about a portion of it there's already a portion of it if I could just get like 15,000 back in for our kids well I think the risk I think it is I don't know it wasn't kicking the can down the road in the conversation I think it is I think it's setting up a really difficult conversation next year where we have to decide whether or not we cut staffing or increase program costs to a program that we as a body has said is important to be available for members of our community or simply continue to subsidize it from reserves instead of asking for it from the general fund I mean there's still doesn't mean you have to increase rates it means you can continue to increase rates but it's like like Jesse was saying essentially the same thing it's do you want to see if the program survives and subsidize what you need to or you want to ask for all the money up front right but there's I'm no offense but there was an inherent issue with that because it's not a special fund it's not it's actually not so it is it's already being supported that's mine it's already being supported it's not supported by tax it currently is with the position being one third funded out of the general fund but just because I roll things together for financial reporting purposes does not mean that they are subsidized by the city we have a number of things that are that we do roll into the general fund rental registry gets rolled into the general fund that is fully self support it's a way historically this city has chosen to track self supporting program areas I'm not confused as to what those are what was the original thinking behind having general fund contribution as a director in general isn't it because there's a lot of general fund type work being done by that position isn't that the I remember voting on that so I just balance back to it that's one way of compartmentalizing the argument but that is general fund work I guess is the way it's always or it should never have been done in the first place right so it's we made a really you know we made a fill soft layer in the first place and structuring it that way and we should never structure it that way or it's getting general fund contribution for a reason and there's a basis for it so I don't know this still doesn't help me I guess if people are comfortable with the use of reserves I'm going to drop it as I've always been willing to do one of these conversations discussions I have a just a question just to go back because the conversation was quite a while ago but what is the impact to ability of staff to dedicate time to looking at childcare opportunities in Winooski with moving it over to Thrive is that diminished capacity to do so I mean I think it's very interesting yes I think that's the capacity I think requiring the Thrive program budget to flow that salary cost as you said more on program size and how it's scaled up and I think that's going to impact on a more community level system normal work that to such a point I think was part of why because your position got flushed out from a pair of part-time and seasonal directors on your own position so but let's also keep in mind that the time she is spent on childcare has been grant funded time it hasn't been Thrive revenue time nor general fund support time in theory it should have been grant supported time and so and there wasn't a vision for that work to continue past that grant exploration or right and what so since we're still in the midst of a discussion around the promise communities grant what's the trajectory how much money's left there how was that going to be spent if we were moving this position entirely over to Thrive what's and if so how would that money be spent if there wasn't a person to spend it because we're having the Thrive director be entirely in the Thrive realm have we found so I know there's the discussion about additional grant funds to fund Turb I think that was here yeah we've had some conversations about the possibility of extending funding sources outside the promise community grant to support and continue to work for that position on the promise community project the promise community funds for that position inspired in December because the budget is currently constructed and I think because we're trying to make our court an operator we've been hesitant to minimize the amount of funding for the healthcare center in the being of kind of how our security is positioned so it's a conversation we've had in the past but I think the soft public decision has been we want to keep as much resources for getting that service as we can I think that answers my question that the money we had from promise communities grant ran up in December for salary yeah okay thank you is there anything also just because I kind of just threw a wild card in there like from it's not on the sheet forward the standard proposals in front of us is there also anything from the right column that anybody wants to bring up or I guess I would say fight for particularly hard I mean right now we're discussing budget proposals that eliminate for example our contribution to the Winske Valley Parts Parks District does it eliminate the contribution entirely doesn't it it keeps us at the same level it doesn't lead to additional yeah you're correct that's a good point but I guess is there anything on there that anybody wants to talk about bringing over if you're going to start as the 1.91 baseline it seems so insignificant but at the time we were going over the budgets and we talked about the police not getting the cameras on the vehicles and to me stood out as and it's kind of a minuscule line I know up there at $2,000 but there's been a few occasions over the last couple of years where we've been doing a lot of work we've been doing a lot of work we've been doing some over the last couple of years where that would have been a very handy to device that and place potentially get that from money from a drug seizure or something right if we got that we could potentially put that towards cameras if we wanted because that would be equipment that we wouldn't otherwise have isn't that like the stipulation on that money or something so I mean more drugs less but that's the point that there could be money for these it's not saying like what I'm saying is like with the amount of you know I'm just answering Seth's question was there anything else that stood out to anybody and that was one of those things that stood out to me as being relatively important that seemed to get brushed aside pretty quickly yeah I was just trying to say that I don't think it's necessarily brushed aside like it is right here but if it's as crucial but I think there could be money for it kind of depending it's not guaranteed but magic money every officer has a body I feel a lot more involved but we're not going to have cameras just Polaroids but every officer has a body cam body cams are already done this is just the vehicle two vehicles I think the so with the admin proposal that changes and makes that 1.91 not exist the discussion is really different for me were that not in the mix I do think just as a value training for professional development that $8,000 line is something I would want to have some more discussions around I think it's incredibly important we invest in our employees not only will that create increased quality of services for our residents but it will increase retention and I think that that is important for us to that's an important value that I have I don't necessarily looking at that full amount but I do think that that's a discussion I would have wanted to have had we not been thrown into this position of now discussing that administrative proposal let's erase that we were like okay the leadership proposal is at 1.91% let's look at these columns that would have been an area where I would want to have some discussion around now's the time to do that I mean it's there's nothing special about 2.15% I mean it can be 2.3% or round number so if it's in the past what we've done is you put that in there and kind of it's a temperature take of how that matches up between the other things and on the list but this one but so these two want 1.91 where are you coming from well we got at some point in time we got to send these people to look for a number and that number needs to be agreed upon by all of us so they can't come back with and I said three scenarios to get us below 2 to get below 2 1.91 and 2 how about you Eric are you sick too no lost my voice in my daughter's basketball game it's a perpetual winter do we fully spend that training budget every year or does this seem like this is one of those backwards ones actually that I use this spreadsheet because it was easier than trying to quickly updo the other one so this is an $8,000 that we had in the level services budget put in in addition to what we're currently carrying for professional development so this would be $8,000 more than we have this year which we as a leadership team think is important but when it was weighed against other things so this would be level funding professional development from last year understood and this is the first year where we've done a pooled training budget so we aren't really sure how we're going to come out at the end of the year when it was previously siloed within departments the training budget was not fully spent but we did not have somebody that was going through an administering city-wide training so we now have Julie that's looking at full city-wide training for things that we need and we've done a lot of those so I guess where I sit is I would be I'm very interested in the concept of coming back with what sounds like there's interest from the other counselors on what could three options to get under 2% look like and I'd be super interested in looking at what your recommendations on that might be I don't necessarily feel beholden to that but I think it's an important discussion you know I think under 2% is a lot more palatable more because there's the threshold of moving from a whole number to another whole number but I don't think there's necessarily anything that is magic between 1.98% and 2.08% or 2.15% but if that's the will of the counselor I would be really so I feel on board with seeing what some options might be I'm happy with anything below three I'm comfortable at the 2.15 level I'll say that I'm not comfortable with how we got to the 2.15 level I would like that to be re-evaluated I think there are other things on this list that I find to be in my own personal opinion to be more important than funding an admin position or I'm not sure is it a secretarial position I don't really know what the role is but I think you spoke before about the possibility of going back to the two part time positions and having that come out at a zero impact and I think if that's an option and we can use that $12,000 toward other options then I think that's like maybe toward thrive then I think that's a better use of that $12,000 than what we're really talking about but I am comfortable at the 2.15 level do we know what it would look like so if we were to take if we were to take that $12,000 to do what Ryan has not been talking about to pull some of thrive back in to the general fund what percentage of staff time that would allow that individual to contribute to more broadly services for youth etcetera what would happen what was it roughly what percentage would the $12,000 buy of the thrive position because I think in addition to the concerns that Seth Races about using one time money to fund ongoing expenses what we are also losing is the ability of that staff member to contribute to higher level discussions because they have to be 100% focused on thrive because that's the way that's going to work right they're magically going to stop doing everything that they were doing and only focus on that the way fund accounting works of course it is I hear you I respect that a great deal from a theoretical standpoint I think that again goes back to deciding yeah it's a hard portion of a principle to argue I'm hearing that there's some support for above $1.91 that $2.5 or $2.16 is not unpalatable to everybody is that a fair statement yeah I wouldn't say it's unpalatable I just want to know the best way to get there and you don't want to be part of that decision you want that to be presented back correct so I think instead of just saying three at one particular level I think there are some people here who are fine at the $2.1 range yeah I feel comfortable there it sounds like there's three potentially at that range that are comfortable we're going to get down to that we generally have unanimous votes on budget so we can change that so well I'm just saying if we're going to have scenarios constructed and brought back to us that if three people think you know $2.1 is a tolerable $2.15 $2.16 is a tolerable place to be that we obviously also see proposals at that level too or scenarios at that level as well so you're looking for three scenarios at $1.91 and three at $2.15 I don't care how many are at $2.15 I haven't heard anything specific that people have highlighted or they need to see different scenarios at $2.15 are there different options $2.15 what I've heard is staffing the admin or subsidizing thrive so there's at least two is there a third specific scenario so I would ask but if you're going to challenge us to do this let the leadership team think about what they would consider the most important to add back in that's fine let's bring something back though that if we if there's a desire to get specific that we have flexibility on that I mean right so what I'm saying is that what I don't think is okay is for us just to have those with zero flexibility next time I think that we need to have a model that will allow us to make adjustments if that's what people would like to do that makes sense proposals make the proposals as you guys see fit I think you've been given the two value pieces that people are concerned about right we still need to play Tetris a little bit on our own well I think what you're saying is we might get these proposals and then we start to pick pieces then there could be an eye when somebody is like we'll wait a second and if you can't move on so I think it's fine to for you guys to do that with just the understanding that again it could come down to us saying we have an issue with that and we want to we want to talk about it to change it 2.16 I'm moving down to 1.01 I guess you better call this before we're running yeah before he gets any more I guess I just don't see a lot of broom to go to Brian Corgan's point earlier there aren't a lot of items where I can look at it and say oh that's easy shaving to start getting our way down there without drastically impacting services to residents I think there are other ways to find it to be clearly honest I think that's what we're going to get in these other proposals I think it's important I look forward to looking at it and then I guess the other thing I well nah that's fine okay any other questions, comments, concerns from council questions, comments, concerns from public thank you guys for all your work very much appreciated thank you okay and with that we have completed the city council agenda for Monday January 22nd 2018 I would entertain a motion to adjourn motion by Nicole second by Brian Corgan any further discussion we can see none of those in favor if we say aye aye and those opposed motion carries almost said by Nicole or April