 All right, so it is 6.01, Tuesday, September 6th. I will call to order this regular meeting of the Wynuski City Council. Please join us in the Pledge of Allegiance, led by Deputy Mayor Jim Duncan. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Okay, agenda review. Staff is not prepared for executive session number nine on our agenda. Can I have a motion to remove that? So moved. Second. Motion by Jim, second by Bryn. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Any other questions or concerns about tonight's agenda? I was gonna suggest that we remove or remove consent agenda item E out into a regular item. And it could be at the end of the meeting just to keep the lettering the same if you want. Okay. Just so we can discuss why that removal's happening. Sure. Anyone wanna second that? Change. Second. Motion by Jim, second by Thomas. To move item E, we'll become new item O. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Okay. Anything else? All right. So we are onto public comment. This is an opportunity for attending members of the public. If you're here to, if you wanna speak about something that's not included on tonight's agenda, now would be your opportunity. If you are here for an item on the agenda and you can wait until we reach that, please do. So if anyone has a public comment to share, raise hand or use the chat. Mayor Lott, we're gonna start with Grace tonight. Grace, you're all... Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Hi, thanks for having me. I was hoping to be there in person, but COVID finally caught up to me. I just wanted to speak to Just Cause Eviction. I know that was on that agenda for tonight and I didn't quite get a chance to read the documents, but I just wanted to really encourage you all to take time to explore Just Cause Eviction and to ideally move it to committee to make sure that we can get it on the ballot for the March election. It's really, really important that folks in Wynuski, including myself, folks who are tenants, have an opportunity to vote on this. It's really important that we all get to vote on Just Cause Eviction and whether that's something we want. And I think that's something that we all deserve, right? Is to get a chance to use our voices and make ourselves heard as residents of this city. To me, it's really important that I'm able to know that I'm able to stay in my apartment. I think the fact that tenants are able to be evicted at any time for basically any reason, right? With No Cause Eviction, you can just be handed an eviction and you have no ability to fight that. And I think for me and for other folks who I speak to in the community, that's a really big cause of concern, right? That really affects folks' mental health. Housing is really, really crucial. That's really fundamental. And I know I personally will hesitate to report things that are broken or not working well in my apartment because I just have this fear that if I bother my landlord, I could be evicted if I come across as difficult, I could be evicted. Even if I'm just asking for something really basic, like something to be fixed in my apartment. And I think that's a fear that a lot of folks share. If I were to be evicted, I wouldn't only lose my home, I would lose my whole life that I've built in this community if I had to move outside of Winooski and I had to go live somewhere else. As I'm sure you know, there's a very, very, very low vacancy rate here. And so if I had to leave my apartment, I don't know where I would live. I don't know where I would go. I would probably have to move to a completely different part of the state or even leave the state. And I know that's a reality that a lot of folks live with. So I just wanna really encourage you all to take some time and hopefully put just cause on the ballot for all of us in March. Thank you so much. Thank you, Grace. And next up we have Suzanne. Hi, my name is Suzanne Blaine. I live here in Manusia and also on some properties. And I also wanted to talk about something that has a little bit different, so similar to different. So one of the things my husband and I wanted to do was put in a cottage in the backyard. So one of a lot of other cities, like, I'm not so sure, I don't know if I would say. So a lot of other cities and Vermont has like these amazing laws that allow for an ADU, which is a small unit, it can be attached or detached. And when you see has a really cool thing in our zoning permit that you can apply for a traditional use permit to put a small cottage in it can be bigger than the ADU, which I think has like 40% of the size of your home. So we've been through over three years of basically DRB meetings and now everything's in environmental support because of the way the conditional use permit works. So I've been to the planning meetings, planning board meetings a couple of times. I've been to you guys, I think one time about this and it would make it easier for people who are really small-scale builders and my husband and I do mostly all our work ourselves and all our permitting and design work ourselves. So this kind, to move these cottages, basically like you could put something above a garage, things like that, to move that into just a zoning permit would simplify the process and make it less of a turbulent application process. So it's one of the ways to add in-store housing without having in like massive apartments. Like I know the planning commission has spent a lot of time doing that and that's great to add housing, but these small-scale little buildings that could be like a garage or look like a carriage house is a way to add in-store housing but it's a little bit tricky to do that because it's not just like a zoning permit like you need the zoning requirements, you also required to do the whole DRB process which has been a really difficult process and also pretty, I don't know exactly the word but it's kind of like opinion-based rather than just fact-based based on what went into your meetings. The other thing that I brought up, I think about six weeks ago that hasn't been addressed yet is that we have a lot of language in our zoning codes in our ULUDR that doesn't quite match with the master plan and the way that character of the neighborhood is used and that phrasing is often used to keep development at bay and that was used against us by the DRB without any reasoning, just that and character of the neighborhood about any specific things that we can need. So that's another thing I think that the city council should think about asking the floor with its thoughts on the regulations. Thank you, Suzanne. That is something we could consider in the future. Oh, sorry, the planning committee told me I should come to you with the information. So I went to them. No, no, no, no, appreciate you for sharing that. We could direct a change to the planning commission in the future, but we can't have that conversation right now because it was a bad item. Yeah, yeah. Right, okay, thank you. Thank you. Paul, was there anyone else signed up in advance? Not this evening. Okay, Tom, you had a comment? Yes. Oh, can you state your name for the record, too? My name is Thomas Lockethel. Oh, and also come to the microphone, sorry. Well, I came here tonight to be in support of Grace who just spoke about the tenant issue. I think it's an important thing that it becomes more of an issue. And if it's, if I wonder what the procedure is to get something like on the ballot about this just cause eviction because I think a just cause eviction would sort of level the playing field a little bit for the people who rent here, which is a pretty good size majority of the people. I know 63% gets bandied about quite a bit. So that's a large percentage of renters. And I'm a renter myself and that is kind of scary to have that cloud over my head wondering, well, they could just decide they don't want me here anymore for no reason. And then I would have to be scrambling as Grace described. I don't expect some kind of free ride, but from personal experience, I know that a one month's notice to leave a place really leaves you scrambling unless you've got your ducks in a row. So at the least I would expect a greater timeframe from when a person is notified and when they have to leave, failing that, you know, I don't know what to say, but I think a just cause program or what a policy just makes a lot of sense for our time right now because of the pressure on finding houses, et cetera, and just the nature of our city with a lot of low income renters. So I just wanted to voice that. I was gonna come with Grace and I just heard she had COVID. So, you know, we couldn't huddle up to plan our strategy. So I'm just here to speak in support of that and to ask a question, how does something like that get on the ballot? Thanks, Tom. We will be discussing that later in the agenda and talking about the process. Are you sticking around this evening? Yeah, I'm gonna, I wanna see how this goes. Cool, yeah, we'll get to it. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Is there any other public comment from attendees via Zoom? I should say it again. You can use the raise hand or chat feature. Thank you all. So let's move to our consent agenda. We have our council minutes from August 8th, payroll warrants and accounts payable warrants, bank signatory update and event permit for Pine Grove Terrace Block Party. Jim, you were gone the last meeting, right? Okay, so let's just do council minutes first, are there any questions, concerns about those? Nope, do I have a motion to approve? She'll move second. Motion by Bryn, second by Aurora. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Minutes are approved. So items B, C, D and F. Any questions or comments? All right, do I have a motion to approve B, C, D and F in the consent agenda? So moved. Second. Motion by Thomas, second by Bryn. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries, thank you. So we are on to council reports. Aurora, can I start with you? Sure, all right. So a couple of things to report on. I'm gonna start with, we did have an August meeting of the Safe, Healthy, Connected People commission. It was ended up being held on August 30th, so outside of our regular cycle, but it was important, the commission and the commission chair felt it was very important for the commission to meet to review the COVID recovery grant for nonprofits, which is now later on in the agenda for council approval. So we wanted to make sure that was ready for this meeting. And yeah, that was the main thing with Safe, Healthy, Connected People this month. The Inclusion and Belonging Commission met for the first time on August 11th at 6 p.m. The second Thursday of every even month at 6 p.m. will now be the regular meeting time of this commission. At the meeting, the commission decided on their structure, including that they will rotate who is chair and who is secretary each meeting. The secretary is the notator for those who aren't familiar with the commission system. They also decided who would be the ambassadors to the other commissions, and those were then communicated out to the other commissions. I would like to note that we had one member who after multiple attempts from both myself and many, many attempts from Jenny to contact, hasn't really responded and that's now going to be item O. So we can discuss that further then, but we do have maybe one and definitely a regular member and definitely two alternates that are open. So if folks are interested in those positions and being a part of this work, I definitely recommend, you can find the application at whennewskibt.coxgov slash inclusion. Our next commission meeting is going to be October 13th at 6 p.m. in person at the O'Brien Center. I also want to give two shout outs. First to Jenny for just the amazing work that she did with the primary on August 19th. The turnout was amazing. We had a lot of people register for the first time in Whenuski that day and she just handled everything with professionalism and infectious enthusiasm. Just being passionate about the democratic process. So it was just a positive experience I think for both voters and the people working at the polls. She also purchased food from Whenuski businesses for the volunteers at the polls. So just really want to shout out the work that she did that day. Also want to shout out Ray and his team because today is the first day of school. So the summer programs are wrapping up and it sounds like a very busy, very successful year. So I'm thinking of kudos there as well. And I'm sure Thomas will touch on this a bit more that Whenuski Pride event is going to be this month, September 17th, which is a Saturday from five to eight in the park in the room. All right, I think that's it, sorry. Thank you. The Municipal Infrastructure Commission did not meet in August. We instead had a gathering of all the commission chairs. So we postponed or we did not hold a meeting in August in order to have a chance to meet with the commission chairs and learn more about opportunities to collaborate on priorities and mutual areas of interest. We are meeting September 15th. That will be a remote meeting because there are folks that are not able to attend in person but can join online. So that will, that information and agenda will be going out probably towards the end of this week or early next week at the latest. The Chittin-Sawed Waste District, they balance I believe and the city manager might be covering this at some point in your updates but the material recovery facility ballot item for that is printed and will need to be requested in order to participate. It's not automatically sent out if you are requesting an absentee ballot. So just be sure to ask our city manager court for that ballot when you're either voting in person before voting day or requesting an absentee ballot. Also with Chittin-Sawed Waste District, the Rover for Household Hazardous Waste Collection will be this Saturday, September 10th at the Senior Center and look for information and from Fort Forum and on the website for that information. So that's all I got. Thank you. Our planning commission meeting this Thursday, they have pivoted to looking at a strength and historic preservation in our existing land use regulations. Those meetings are virtual 6.30 PM, second and fourth Thursday. I completed attending interviews for airport director candidates for the city of Burlington. I don't believe a final decision has been made yet though. And I also attended the town meeting TV trustees monthly meeting where they voted to approve a budget for next year. We are still seeking a representative if someone is interested in public access television and representing Wendyski there. Please reach out. That is it for me. I have nothing to report. Aurora was correct. I am gonna talk a little bit more about the Pride event that will be September 17th. So they said it was it's 5 PM to 8 PM. It's gonna be in Rotary Park. I believe this is the first time Wendyski's ever done a Pride event. So we're all pretty excited about that. There's a really great lineup, including Drag Queen Story Hour, DJ set by Craig Mitchell, night protocol forming as long as no fun intended. Event that's open to all. So we're really hoping that everybody will come down to Rotary Park and just enjoy all of the events that downtown Wendyski and others are putting on. That's all I've got. Thank you. City updates. City updates, yes. So the raise grant for the Wendyski Burlington Bridge was awarded as you might have seen in the news. You might be hearing some rumors about timelines and so forth. So we're here to set that record straight as it's known right now. Things could change. So the grand funds have to be obligated by June 30, 2026 and spent by September 30, 2031. So that's the outside. The Vermont Agency of Transportation's target schedule is from now to 2025 to go through kind of the initial work, a lot of details there, including public outreach. From 2025 to 2027, assuming that it's a design to build a project, then they would be completing the final design and then awarding the contract. And April 2027 is when they would anticipate starting construction. So that's a bit of a ways away. And it wouldn't be until June 2030 that the bridge might be closed. So and the construction style that's currently still being considered is a lateral slide. So it would be built next to the existing and then split into place. So then by August 2030, if all goes well, then the bridge would be back open to traffic. So it's a bit of a ways away and plenty could happen between now and then, but rest assured nothing is happening for a couple years. Want to encourage everyone to mask when they're out and public. And this is because COVID wastewater data in recent weeks has been showing a bit of an increase. It's too early to tell whether it will continue to increase or not. But given that we're going into the colder weather and folks are sharing to gather indoors, that's just a prudent precaution that we all can take as I am not mass curling myself so that I can be heard. The September 3rd community block party behind the Bryan Center was a success thank you very much for all those who attended. It's great to see you all, you all. The 2022 Myers Memorial Pool season has ended. Thanks for everyone for jumping in to that. Thrive after school registration is now open. You can go to wunewski.gov slash thrive to sign up for that or call 655-6410. Ask about thrive after school registration. The Champlain Water District special bond vote is going to be held in person on Tuesday, September 13th from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. On that day, the only option to vote in person is at the Champlain Water District building, which is that in South Burlington at 403 Queen City Park Road. More details can be found at champlainwater.org. If you need an absentee ballot, you'd request that from the city clerk's office. And you might want to just fill it out in person at City Hall because it's probably too late to get it mailed in. Rethink Runoff is looking for volunteers to clean up Morehouse, Brook and Wunewski on Saturday, September 24th. Meet at Landry Park. Full details and are at rethinkrunoff.org. Thank you. Okay, we'll move into our regular items. And up first we have for discussion the Champlain Water District bond vote overview. Do we have a guest? Hopefully this is it. Are you from Champlain Water District? Yes. Please join us. We just got to your item. Excellent. I'm Joe Duncan from Champlain Water District. Oh, I got it. Oh, welcome. Nick Pion from Champlain Water District. Welcome. Well, thank you for having us. We're here for one primary reason that's to introduce you to the bond vote that we're holding on September 13th, but also an opportunity to put a face to it because there's a lot of new faces here in Wunewski since we were last here. And also it's been a long time since I've been here. I was a counselor in Wunewski back in 97 or 98 until I moved out in 2004. So definitely a different group here than there was back then. And also to a different clerk who I do want to say just thank you to Jenny for all of her help. There's been a long history of clerks in Wunewski. Well, Carol, I think for 40-something years. But Jenny has been instrumental in helping us through some of the bond vote stuff that we're doing. So you're very lucky to have someone like her helping you as a clerk. And a lot of respect to the clerks, given the fact that we are working through a bond vote. And I don't know if anybody knows all the intricacies of voting, but they do a lot beyond that. So thank you to Jenny. But the bond vote that we're looking for was we've had an opportunity through Senator Sanders to receive a potential 80% grant. They call it federal earmark. Essentially it's a grant. We have an $8.7 million project that we are looking at doing. It includes two items and includes putting a new tank at our plant that deals with disinfecting the water before it goes out to the users. We have two of them now. One of them is in tough shape and in need of repair. And that's what this one portion of the project will do. The other portion is is we have a water line that leaves our lake water pump station. So where we suck water out of the lake, we pump it up to our plant and we treat it. We have two points in that. We'd like to have two of everything. We have a one water main that comes out from the lake and it splits into two, goes to Red Rock Park. And then it bottle next again before the railroad before it goes to our plant. So if we ever lost service in any of those two portions of the one line, we would lose all water going out to the users. And so getting those two sections done, putting in parallel mains is critical for us. So that totals to $8.7 million for those two projects. 80% grant means we only have to pay back about 1.7 beginning about $7 million in grant. We need to bond for the entire project amount of $8.7 million. So that's why the bond article is for $8.7 million. But if you read the fine print of the language it says subject to reductions in grant and aid, that grant and aid would be the $7 million grant earmark. Our goal is to move forward once we have that, which is a formula will be done when they approve the federal budget. But it comes with a tight timeframe. So technically we have to spend the money in the earmark before the end of the federal fiscal year of 23, which is a September 30th of 23. So we found out in July we wanted to get on the August primaries. We missed the timeline to get on the August primaries. Looking at the November elections that are coming up, the timing just doesn't make sense. Nate could probably provide our information on this, but to get any materials that we're looking for this project, which includes large ductile iron pipe, we're looking at a 30 week plus lead time just to get materials. So the idea was to pass the bond vote in September. That gives us two months to start over doing a bond vote in November. Comes with some challenges, comes with some logistics. People are used to be able to go directly to Winooski or to Milton and do their voting there. We are choosing something a little bit off date to meet some of that timeline. We understand that it presents some challenges for voters, but there's a new absentee ballot process that came with Act 60 in the most recent legislative session and we actually are getting a lot of absentee ballots being cast. So ultimately the vote is held on September 13th from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. at Champlain Water District. And but anybody can request an absentee ballot and we've received several from Winooski. They can call us at Champlain Water District or they can also contact Jenny. We've given each of the communities that we serve a handful of ballots to handle walk-in as well as people requesting them directly through the city. So that's where we are, that's what we have. And I'm happy to answer any questions either about the bond or even about your water and what it looks like for you. Just so everybody's aware, we are the wholesale supplier of the water to most of Chittin County except Burlington and they have their own system and your individual communities take care of your own distribution pipes and we basically get the water to the boundaries of Winooski and then your team of water professionals gets water from there to your homes, bills you, does the billing, does all the maintenance of the system but we are basically your water source. One of the big things that we wanna share with the voters too is there's no rate increases part of these projects. We had a plan for these in our capital plan and we plan out five years what our capital products are gonna be and we had this full project for the Raw Water Parallel Transmission Main included in there. So getting both of these products to 80%, kills two birds with one stone. So we had this already planned so there's no change in the rate increase from what we've projected and we also have debt falling off here in the coming years from old debt retirement. So in our opinion, it's a win-win. Thank you. Thank you for the overview and sharing some context on the special election timing. Great. Are there any questions from Council? Is there a minimum requirement you need for participation? For the vote? For the vote, no. The way our charter is set up, it's basically you need a majority of yes tallies and it's tally from all totals of all of our eight communities that vote. So it's a simple majority based upon the tallies of all the communities. So if Winooski voted all yes and another community voted all no, you take the tallies of the two to find out where you are. Are there any questions from attending members of the public? Well, thank you. Yeah, thank you. Appreciate you guys taking the time to come in and talk through that with us. Any time. Your CWD board rep is Jonathan Stockbridge. So if there's any questions you ever have, feel free to run them through him or just contact us directly. Happy to help out. Sounds good. Thank you. Thank you very much. You have a good evening. Thanks for coming in person. Thanks, yeah. Okay, we'll move on to item B and this is on for discussion, the reappraisal process overview. Oh, I see a hand in the participants now. For a CWD? Maybe. The reappraisal process, not about the week. Oh, okay. And then we have Courtney on here still, right? I believe she should be. She would have preferred to been here, but she has COVID. She got COVID three days ago and is recovering from that. So I thought in the spirit of safety. I'm here. There she is. Thank you for letting us make a brief presentation on the status of the reappraisal. We appreciate the fact that you've awarded us the contract to do this project. This is either our fourth or fifth in a row. Reappraisal for the City of Onitski, starting back many years ago when Kermit Blaisdell from our company and Jim Trepe as your former planner were, you know, participants in the project. We try to contrary to what some folks think, we try to look at all the properties, look at the interior and the exterior, even though the City of Onitski is one of the few that has building codes. Some of the codes are particularly focused on the program that Courtney was part of with the inspections, the annual inspections of 25% of the apartments. And so there are some single family detached that we haven't seen in a while because they haven't either taken out permits or haven't done anything. And you folks understand probably as well as most that the market has just gone haywire in the last 24 to 36 months. So the timing in some ways is wonderful to do this to bring values up and in some ways it couldn't be worse because people are very apprehensive if their value doubles the way the market has or their tax is gonna double. And the answer is simply no, it's particularly for the municipal side but even for the first year or two of the schools. The rate generally, it's like a cease on the playground, the rate drops proportionally with how much the grant list grows because what's approved for the budget is what can be spent. So if we raise against a bigger base, then the tax rate drops. That said, the school bond and the main street bond are gonna kick in and they'll have an impact on the tax rate aside from what we're doing. But to the leads, if you will, Courtney's started in early last month working east to west and Courtney pipe in if I misspeak but she's got Florida almost completely done and is working in that neighborhood around St. Mike's off of 15 and has had great success both from Jenny and her staff. Janet in particular have helped line up appointments and the property owners have cooperated nicely. Courtney comes to the table with great skills, people skills and also this is her for three appraisals so she understands now the routine and trying to make people comfortable with what we're doing. Give them the option not to let us in if they don't want to, because it's their right not to let us in, they elect not to. But we prefer again to put everybody on the same playing field and so Courtney's eyes are important. We are moving from the residential to commercial we are gonna start in the very near future doing gathering information about the rentals and in preparation again for April 1st, 2024 which is the date of value for the reappraisal. We wanna have a really good handle on what rentals are and what a good what's called capitalization rate would be so we can convert the rental information to value that's realistic if the cost approach which is the bricks and mortar plus the land gets out of hand. Winooski is a very unusual community in the sense that there are very rarely is there a lot for sale, land, vacant land, everything is built up. So you have a combination of infill on Main Street and we style them through the form based zoning which has been highly successful but also you have just more pressure to understand how to allocate the contributory value of the different components of the building of the land. So I can ramble on for a while but I'm gonna stop and let Courtney chip in on what she would like to contribute. Hi, how's it going? I'll just, since Ted wasn't out in the field, I would say Janet mailed about 40 letters. I visited over 30 properties and I got into everyone except for seven of them so I'd say that's pretty successful. Everyone's been very welcoming. I know when we met in June there was some apprehension with people in the town and starting the whole reappraisal but everybody's been very welcoming. I am done Florida Ave except for two homes that I'm scheduled to go to next week and I am done Gale Street and then I'll work my way west. So that's it, I'm excited to be back in Winooski. So, mine is being sick this weekend but that's okay. Thanks Courtney. Do we want to move to questions? Where's that if you'd like, sure. I did wanna ask, looking at the different approaches to valuation and you mentioned the income approach for rental properties. I'm curious how that functions, considering like income from long-term rentals versus short-term. Whenever you do any of the three approaches you have to really understand and temper the factual information that you gather with what is realistic to the property. One of the facts that's come in for example is if it's a recent sale, what is the sale price? And to your point, you can get rentals that are long-term, you got great tenants so the rents are low and conversely the property owner may not be keeping everything up to snuff and the tenants are fine with that and we are. So that goes to adjusting the value by saying that the rents may reflect what's there. So you have to temper it based upon your knowledge of the market and the property. We still do inspections with the income approach and the inspections are important because you can gauge the quality and the condition of the rental property through that inspection. The larger projects that have multiple tenants or multiple units, we may do a representative sample especially if they were built all at once and they're fairly new. But a combination of the rental and the capitalization rate do come into play and they should be used carefully with that just as you would use grading for quality or grading for condition in the cost approach. The weakest approach for mass appraisal is a sales comparison approach until we get to appeals in front of the Board of Authorities and then we use that actively. But we did use the variations of the income approach in the last reappraisal in 2007 but we didn't have the building mass that we have now around the circle on Winiski Falls Way and then East Island and Main Street. It should be understood that some of our values, excuse me, using the income approach are set by state law. If it's qualified, affordable rental housing, we have a little choice but to use the HUD rents and the cap rates that are given to us. And quite often those come in, a substantial amount lower than what they would be if they were quote-unquote market rents. And that process and those won't change unless the legislature changes that standard for communities in Vermont. So I don't know if that answers your question, I hope it does. Yeah, yeah, you're looking at properties kind of independently. Yes. Not just like an aggregate. Yes. And then I wanted to ask Courtney how your experience has been with tenants? Like if landlords are notifying tenants that you're gonna be there and they understand what's happening? I haven't, I had one reschedule and another one I went to last week, that was a reschedule but that was for tenants but I'm on Florida Ave and Gale. So it's mostly single family home. And then St. Michael's had set up some coordination but that was fine. Okay. I think probably when I get closer into town, into the city it's gonna be a little different. But I would say most of the residents, they're happy that it's taking place as I've spoken with. So, good. Do other folks have questions? Courtney, I was wondering, or maybe a good answer, how, for the residents who don't allow you into their home, how is the value of the interior assessed? If they don't allow me in, I had one person on Florida Ave didn't let me in and it was a more recent sale. So I looked on MLS if there's still information available on there or I just do the best to my ability. And I always try and do the outside, see for any deferred maintenance, ask them about interior updates. Maybe they've done the basement over and they explained to them that I really don't wanna guess on the inside of their house. And typically people are open to talking to me. So I haven't been shut down per se by a property owner in when you see yet if that answers your question. Yeah. Thank you. That's helpful. On that score, both Courtney and I did work through COVID the last 24 months or so. And we understand if someone has an immune problem or they simply emotionally can't allow someone in their house, there are legitimate reasons why we shouldn't go in or we should reschedule. And Courtney's being home tonight is a perfect example. But she and I both have contracted it and we're sensitive to others who are apprehensive. Thank you. As part of your records review, do you review city records? We do. We have to gain access to the land records and Jenny and her staff have been great about giving us access there through normal working hours of course. But once in a while, deed restrictions or what Eric does in his office can come into play conditions permits and that kind of thing. Anything else? Just another follow up. I believe I read that from the date of receipt of notice it's this 14 day window to appeal. Is that correct? When there's an appeal of value, you have 14 days. That's correct, yeah. To go to the. And those are business days or calendar days? We generally use calendar. And this might be more for Courtney. Have you had any trouble with language barriers with any of the residents yet? Making them, making sure they understand what's happening? No, no, not yet. I think again, cause I'm on Florida app and Gale Street. Are there plans for, I see what this letter to have. I may be just calling the sleep corpse office to let someone know if they need interpretation on the letter. I do have an interpreter as far as like on an app on my phone. I actually used to use it when I used to do work in Winooski occasionally. Unless they reach out to Janet and ask specifically, I mean, well, we would obviously figure something out. At least so the tenants now. I never ran into landlords not being able to communicate. When I worked for Winooski, it was more of tenants not knowing what was going on. And I really want tenants to know why I'm there as well. So thank you. Are there any questions for members of the public? Oh yeah, Suzanne, you had a question, right? I'm sorry, what was that? Oh, it was answered. Thank you. Okay, great. Elaine? So this is Elaine. I wanted to put a slight finer point on something that Ted said, which is that the city budget is developed based on the dollars needed with consideration on the tax burden. It is budgets are not based on, you know, property values as if like, if property values go up, then we would raise the budget. It wouldn't, we wouldn't be doing that. So changes to your property taxes owed the city don't directly correlate to your property value. Thank you. All right. We'll see no other questions or comments. Thank you both for coming in tonight. Virtually in real reality. You're welcome. We appreciate your work on this with us. It's our pleasure. Thank you. Thank you Courtney. And then Ted, are you staying? Our next item is the assessor's office areas and omissions. I'd like to leave, but I am staying. So we are on item C. There are seven requests to change the grand list after the formal grievances in the spring or early summer. We don't have the right to change the grand list without the city council's approvals. And of the seven, three of them are personal property that are uncollectable. We have, this is the most embarrassing part of a job to come in front of the legislative body and ask for you to change the grand list because we prefer to have everything right the first time. The personal property accounts, we roll them over unless someone reports to us that they have moved or liquidated their assets, the personal business equipment and machinery, or of course, once in a while that they have increased what they spend on the equipment and machinery, but we generally roll over what we don't hear. And so these three were rollovers that ultimately moved out of the city, those assets or that kind of thing. So that's the first three. We did inadvertently change the O'Brien Center to Champlain Housing Trust, and that was incorrect. They purchased a portion of the land from the city, as you know, because you had to sign off on it. And the value of that 0.47 acres is absorbed in the units that were purchased. Some of them have sold already. And we set up the individual accounts for CHT on the 20 that are built now and some of them are occupied and owned privately so that they could transition in there and help the people who are buying to their understand that they, although, again, because it's owner-occupied, qualified, affordable housing, it's less than what it would be if it were market value housing, they still are starting to contribute as owners in their own individual tax bills. So the 0.47 acres was absorbed into the 20 county units that were partially finished on April 1st, 2022. And I did not go through and calculate the value because it's impossible. They bought a share, they bought 120 of that 0.47 acres. So it's not a total faux pas on our account. But it is still my least preferred part of the job to come in front of you with my hat and my hand or I got my face or whatever you want. So we would like you to restore the balance of the land to the city of Onizki, and the 0.47 acres will become what we call an inactive parcel with no value because, again, the 20 people who are buying the units there own that. So that's five out of the seven. The sixth one, we don't know how mechanically that property value got dropped, but they were advised that we were gonna come before you after grievance process to restore it to the old value of 2021, which is a lot less than what they paid for it, but that's similar to what's going on in the city now. So the value that we wanna put in the grand list to create a tax bill for is exactly what the value was last year. And we don't know why it was goose egged out. We just can't explain it. There is good quality control. It's not anything that someone came in and hacked. It was either my fault or someone else's who does have access to the software. And again, I apologize or feel badly that we're coming before you for that. The final one, which is significant, is the one in East Allen that's qualified for affordable housing. We do the value reduction differently than in other municipalities. And we got a call from the cathedral folks who owned it and said, hey, why doesn't this reflect the change on the building on the right as you're going towards St. Mike's, which has been finished for a year or two. That did get the discount. I talked to the president or CEO of cathedral what explained to them what they had an opportunity in 19 and 20 when that was built and ramped up and occupied to grieve. There's no change in 22 to that value, but the one across the street was completely missed. So when we got a call on those two, I said, oh, this is not going to be a good night for me to go up from the city council and add that $900,000 value to their property. And they're aware of it. They were given the opportunity to come in and find out what we did. We sent them our paperwork, the background of what it would, it's exactly what we told them that would be in 2021 when it was finished because in 2021 I think it was 55% done. And now it's finished and occupied. So those are the seven. That's a thumbnail sketch of what we would like to do and you have a breakdown of each one. I'll try to answer questions. I don't know if I can be more embarrassed or tumbled by these errors and we don't like to do them, but we're asking for your support to change those in the grand list. Thanks for walking through those. I just want to ask about the first one, J&J's corner market, because there's a new business in that same location. Right. So does that like wash out with this change? We send the forms to everybody we know. Three or four years ago, we went online and we took everybody who was incorporated with NUSC and we sent out 150 new letters to people. Some people said, how did you get my name? And they just incorporated within NUSC address. One was a kid in high school who had gone on to college and graduating. He said, how'd you get my name? Well, you incorporated a business in NUSC and he said, well, that was to make some money during college and I'm not, you know. And so now what we do is we do a windshield survey of the city and if there's a new address, we send them a form on the February or so of the year when they've created. So they were not on, I don't know if they're in the grand list for this year to be possible. They would show up later though. But they would be caught next year. Okay, that makes sense. Does anyone else have questions? So just for some clarity and understanding. So for these entities that would have increased assess value is that the taxable income from that able to be recovered through the city? Yes. The two that are increased, one went from zero to 200 and change. And the other one that went up a lot, they both had the opportunity to come in and opportunity to come in and see what we did. And last Friday morning, I was here for the quote unquote grievance period. Nobody sent a letter or came in or called. The most significant one got all the background on how I had dropped the ball, if you will. And what the basis for their value change was and they didn't come in. The other people didn't say boo. And conversely for the properties graded, it's a much less value but are they, I mean, I guess if they're defunct, there's no way to reimburse them any taxable tax income, I guess. Well, the three that are going off, theoretically I suppose they could come back and say, hey, we paid 21. That's an abatement process through the board of abatement. And likewise, while the city, the mechanics of getting the city to pay tax on the O'Brien Center is something that still escapes me but I suppose the city could come back and say, tax bill was a little high. But the transfer to CHD happened after April 1st, 2021 before April 1st, 2022, so there was not an error in the 21 assessment for CHD or the city that I'm aware of. Okay, great, thank you. Any questions from members of the public? Okay, do I have, I'm not hearing a concern, so do I have a motion to approve the assessor's office errors and omissions? Second. Second. Motion by Thomas, second by Bryn. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Was that a wrong, did you say aye? No, not abstaining. Oh, okay, yeah, and Aurora abstaining. All right, motion carries. Thank you. Thank you, folks. Appreciate it. Have a good evening. That's it, thanks. Okay, we're on to item D. This is on for discussion or approval, the downtown Winooski memorandum of understanding. And I think that Meredith is already here. Elaine, do you wanna do any intro or is Meredith kicking us off? Yeah, I'll just read from the staff memo. So Winooski does have a state downtown designation, which provides Winooski access to resources and services for this economic driver that is the downtown. The designation does require a designated downtown organization. In our case, a downtown Winooski has been that organization since 2007. So you have in your packet read text changes from the last executed memorandum of understanding. Meredith, is there anything you'd wanna point out in this version? No, I just wanted to give a little bit more history on the memorandum of understanding. This was originally brought to city council in 2018. It was designed by city staff and the board of directors of downtown Winooski in 2018 in preparation for bringing on full-time staff for the first time. So now we have been reviewing it yearly and updating as needed. But it was very thoughtfully designed back in 2018 and has been reviewed every year subsequently. So we're just back here again to continue that process. And I do think that looking at other downtowns and talking to them, there are some memorandums or some contracts or whatever the agreement is between a municipality and a downtown. Some of them are reviewed yearly, but the memorandum or the contract is for multiple years. So that's something to consider for the future. But for now, I do think the yearly review makes sense. Thank you, Meredith. Okay. So we have the red line version here showing what has changed since last year. Are there any questions from council? Not as much as a question, but more of a hope for future, not this memorandum, but maybe the next one for the managed events and hoping we'll be able to add the pride event as something that Winooski does yearly. Yeah, absolutely. And that's something that is just a good point overall that we get to be a little bit flexible. So this memorandum of understanding is sort of the basics of what our agreement is with the municipality, but the organization is independent. We don't live within the municipality. So we are able to be agile and as capacity allows or as a desire to complete things allows, we can jump on things that arise. So, or sorry, that arise. So for example, the pride event was something that was not on the memorandum of understanding for last year, but we're glad to take that on. So I do think that the signature events list could be updated with that event in the future. Awesome, thank you, Meredith. Meredith, I wanted to ask, so there's the addition here of twice annual reporting provided by the year. What would the ideal timing be for you for that? That was a new idea that Elaine and I discussed. Just thinking, wouldn't that be nice if we could just have that document living in addition to this review? So my feeling would be that it would be offset from this review, but it could be something else. And that would be discussed between myself or my board entity staff to make sure that the most pressing information is presented at the right time, but it would be just two times a year as discussed by staff. And certainly like everything we would adjust it as needed. Okay, thank you. I like that addition. Yeah, I mean, it totally makes sense. Why wait for once a year to chat about it? Let's showcase all of our work more often. And can you give me some details or the thinking behind removing 5D, developed strategy metrics for evaluating effectiveness? So that was a line that was put in in 2018 because there was none. And so since then we have developed metrics as a board for the work that we do as part of the MOU, as well as work that we do outside of the MOU. So those metrics could be community feedback, a number of attendees, timeliness. There's various metrics and that is housed in various reports at the board level, but we would translate those during that twice a year reporting to the city as well. Again, back in 2018, the reasons behind this MOU were to be completely frank, twofold. One was to create this like beautiful document with clarity between the city and the organization. And the other reason was to sort of push the organization into this professionalized capacity. There had never been a full-time staff member. The board was incredibly passionate, but they had been operating as a entirely volunteer board for several years. There was quite a lot of burnout going on. So in city staff and the board designed this document, there was also a lot of wording put in there that was basically goal-based. So since we've reached that goal and we've actually identified metrics, that was removed and it was replaced with the reporting. I see, okay. So essentially they've been developed. Yeah. So I guess that helps answer my question is I was looking for like, what are the metrics for effectiveness? So I, and then reflecting like earlier this year, you shared a really great summary with visual aids and data insights. And I thought that was excellent. So, you know, I'd love to see that as part of the future report outs to council. And so that, for me, that was just like, well, well, curiosity around what are the metrics for effectiveness, but that you have that. For sure. And I agree that that infographic that we create, we create that every year. So that can definitely be a bonus, a bonus addition to the report, one of the reports for we submit. But I agree. I mean, I think that without getting too much into the weeds, you know, any metric can always be adjusted, but we did our best. A lot of them are qualitative, or I'm sorry, quantitative, just based on the work that we do, but I do think they're pretty thoughtful. So certainly the first time that we submit a report to the city council, there can be adjustments made to future reports if there are any questions about what those metrics are and how we chose them. Okay, thank you so much. Yep. Meredith, thanks for putting together this MOU, or doing this again on a yearly basis. I'm glad we get to do this. I'm curious if you have like one thing or one area you'd identify as like the biggest substantive change. There's a lot of like adjustments and I think a lot of them speak for themselves. I'm wondering if there's one that you feel is like significant from your perspective for how you manage the organization. I don't think that there is one red light, red item in there, but I think collectively you'll see little segments that are reflective of the changes on the city staffing side. Certainly the downtown music organization has always been, not always, but has currently recently been very aligned with the municipality in terms of the economic vitality goals and we worked with the previous CEDO very closely. And now that there's changes on the city staffing side, you can see that peppered throughout, there are just a few adjustments to reflect that our work is gonna be kind of the Venn diagram of our work and what the CEDO did is kind of moving together a little bit. I was pretty cautious and pushed back quite a bit on something just knowing capacity limitations, but I feel pretty confident that this MOU is very reflective of what our current work is. And to be completely honest, the changes that were made to the MOU last year were not as substantive as they maybe should have been. So a few of the changes here that are reflected are actually reflected of multiple years of kind of adjustments of what our work has been and what our relationship has been to the municipality. So that's what I would say overall is that peppered throughout you see that continued strengthening of the alignment between our organization and the municipality's goals, which I'm really proud of. It's not something that all downtown organizations have to be completely honest, there's quite a bit of strife in a lot of our Vermont downtowns and across the country. So I'm really, really happy that our organization, the city has such a great relationship and that we're really tracking each other in terms of what our goals are. So I think you'll see that reflected in these changes and potentially next year we'll have more changes or less depending on kind of how we see this next year through. Thank you. I was wondering if expanding the designated downtown came up in your conversation. Yeah, absolutely. And that would be done in conjunction with city staff. We work really closely with the state designating body. And so the downtown organization would certainly be at the table there, whether we would be leading that discussion or facilitating it. I believe there is a point in the MOU now that reflects that we would be a part of that moving forward. Okay, I tried to look for it, but maybe I missed it if it is. I can find it. It actually was in there before. Right, and was it not a red line? That's actually two I. Okay. I believe it. Yeah, support, okay. I was looking for expand, but it's expansion. Support expansion. You got tricks. Okay, yes, it's in this. Yeah, that was part of our priorities and strategies. So I'm going to make sure that we have that still in the MOU. Absolutely. Are there any questions from members of the audience? I do want to just highlight here. There's a couple of minor changes related to your website and also a new item exploration of a virtual jobs board for musky based employers, which is something that I've heard a desire from in our local youth community. So I appreciate seeing that here. Yeah, so we were able to secure a grant from the state of Vermont for tourism focus. And only a handful were awarded. We're really proud that we received one of those grants and we are utilizing it to completely revamp our website. So we're currently working with a Vermont based web developer to basically completely, our website has not been redone in a very long time. And we've been slapping band-aids on it for a very long time. Website is not an expensive undertaking. So we're focusing on tourism, but then we're also focusing on inclusivity and access. So we're working with another local marketing firm, okay, okay, to approach it from that lens and also make sure that our graphics and maps and other things that we create other content is more is accessible. So whether that's using really specific icons or it's using recordings or other translations, we are gonna be really focused on that. So as a part of that, we are talking to our web developer about the possibility of plugins or other ways that we can incorporate a job board or things like it. The current way that we would run a job board would be impossible to manage with the amount of time that we have, it would just the capacity isn't there. But I think with the new website, we could support sort of a self pop, someone comes in and puts their own information in. So we're looking at that. Hopefully it's not cost prohibitive, but certainly if it's something that we identify this year during this website update, and we identify, okay, the cost is prohibitive for us this year, but we know what to do. Then we could specifically fundraise for it in the future. So it may not happen soon, but it's certainly on our radar and will be much more functional with our new, or much more possible, excuse me, with our new functional website. I'd like to add to that. Meredith brought up a great point in terms of equity with regard to a virtual jobs board that was self serve for employers. It would be very likely that our smaller employers or perhaps our English, or what do you call it, limited English proficiency business owners would have trouble with that. So it's something to keep in mind that Meredith brought up in terms of expectations for a self serve version. So. Right. Knowing that even if we do have a plug in or I don't know who the other word would be, that would be self serve. There would likely still be some capacity and time needed to hand hold for certain group just to highlight, or just to make sure that we were being equitable, but knowing that we wouldn't potentially be able to capture certain audiences in an equitable way, which is always the priority. All right, any more questions, comments? Congrats on the grant. That's really exciting. Yeah. Thank you. It was very stressful, but very wonderful. Good job. Okay, does someone want to make a motion to approve the downtown Winooski MOU? So moved. Second. Motion by Thomas, second by Aurora. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you. Thank you guys so much for your time. Thanks, Meredith. Okay, we are on to item E. This is a commissioner appointment for the Safe, Healthy, Connected People Commission. Okay, I'm here. I have guests because of bedtime for the first night at school. It's coming to a crescendo here at the coffee house. So bear with me if there's any background noise. But happy to introduce Elise Carlson, Paul, she is here in the handy list if you wouldn't mind if we're over. But Mary and Aurora and I had got the team in the interview at least a few weeks ago for the Safe, Healthy, Connected People Commission. Had a great interview and feel really good about having her team. And yeah. I don't know if it's a good time for her, but she is here in the handy list. Hello, Elise. Hi, I've never joined as a panelist before. It took me a second. Welcome. Do you want to introduce yourself? Is there anything you want to share with the council this evening? Yeah, absolutely. So my name is Elise Carlson, pronouns are she, her. I hope it's been when you see now for about two years as a first time homeowner. I do have an education as well as a professional background in health care, public health, increasing access to health care services. And I'm really kind of looking to put that to use and impact the community in a more meaningful way. That's awesome. Thank you. Any questions? Anyone want to make a motion to approve appointing Elise Carlson to Safe, Healthy, Connected People? So moved. Second. Motion by Jim, second by Bryn. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you, Elise. Thanks so much. Okay, next up for item F, this is a Windy Scheme Memorial Library Committee appointment. Yeah, and I think Nate is here to speak to this one and Paul Lauren is here in the attendance as well. Hey, thanks for that. Yeah, we are here to appoint Lauren Reed to the library committee. Myself and the other members of the library committee interviewed Lauren about a month ago. We had some great applicants and Lauren really stood out for a dedication to the community and also is just a great patron of the Windy Scheme Library. So there you are, Lauren. I'll give you a minute to introduce yourself though. Welcome. Hi, yeah, I'm Lauren Reed. I am, I've been a Windy Scheme resident for a little over eight years as a renter and a big patron of the library. And so was excited at the opportunity to join board. Thank you. I saw that you're a regular library user as you shared. So that is excellent background. Are there any questions for Lauren? All right, do I have a motion to approve appointment of Lauren Reed to the Windy Scheme Library Committee? So moved. Second. Second, motion by Aurora, second by Bryn. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you, Lauren. So we are on to item G. This is on for approval, a Development Review Board member appointment. Welcome, Eric. Thank you all very much. I'm here tonight to bring forward to you an application for a position on the Development Review Board of Alternate for and recommend appointing Jordan Matt to that position. Back in the end of the fiscal year, the Kevin Lumpkin who was our chair, his term expired with the expiration of his term, he actually also moved out of the city. So we elevated one of our alternates, Elsie Goodrich, to a full member position which opened up the position of alternate. So this would actually be filling the remaining term of her position, which is why it's an appointment, excuse me, an appointment through the end of June of the end of June of 2023. We met the chair of the development, the new chair of the Development Review Board and I met with Mr. Matt a week or so ago for an interview and are recommending his appointment. And I will be abstaining from this. Jordan is my spouse. I also don't believe he could attend this evening. Correct. Any questions, concerns? Anyone want to make a motion to approve? So moved, second. Motion by Thomas, second by Jim. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you. Thank you very much. On to item H also on for approval, appointment of a commissioner to municipal infrastructure. John is somewhere right there. Good evening everyone. So we also have a really good candidate for the municipal infrastructure commission. So we currently have one regular commissioner vacancy, no alternates. So Bren, counselor Oakleaf and myself interviewed Michelle Metzler recently. She make a great addition to the commission. Unfortunately, our chair was, he's out of town, so he didn't have the opportunity, but did request that the counselor Oakleaf and myself go ahead and set up the interview. So yeah, Michelle will be great on the commission. So she is not available tonight, but yeah. If you're, you just wanna make sure, oh, there's one other thing I wanted to bring up. So the, I think in your packet, there was a note about one of the commissioners, he did contact us and he did resign the position so that that is all set now. So with that, looking for any feedback on the new potential commissioner. And I will abstain, I, Michelle's a friend. Any questions, concerns about this one? Would anyone like to make a motion to approve appointing Michelle Metzler to the Municipal Infrastructure Commission? So moved. Second. Motion by Thomas, second by Jim. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you. Thanks. Okay, let's go back to Ray for item I. This is on for discussion or approval. The Community Services Department Scholarship Fund Raising Campaign. Yeah, so with a bit of our financial policy back in November, the language there that now requires fundraising campaigns to be approved by city council. Typically that happens or will happen as part of the budgetary process, but given the interest we have this summer and full scholarship support, we wanted to get a little bit of a head start through punishing the coffers there and get some fundraising activity going for kind of a general scholarship pool for the Community Services Department. So the cover sheet here kind of serves a memo to highlight some items that we're accounting to implement here in a couple of months, maybe a little bit of season. Again, to try to get a little bit of a head start before that, I'm trying to introduce a fund for all of the community members to support scholarships for the community's core programs. Thank you very much. Questions from Council? I'm really interested when the pickleball tournament is going to happen. I thought you might be. So Robin and I are going to talk about that this week. I will say today, given the rebound from the summer and the pool closing yesterday for the season, there was not a lot of discussion about like big next things, but you should know what we're talking about. Wow, we've got a competitor here apparently. All right, can't wait. Any questions from attendees? Hearing no concerns, would someone like to make a motion to approve the scholarship and fundraising campaign? So move. Okay. Motion by Vren, second by Thomas. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you. Future. Are you got? Yeah. All right. Thank you, Ray. I am going to call a five minute recess before we move on to item J. So we will reconvene at 7.30. Okay. We are on item I. This is on for, I'm sorry, item J, discussion or approval of the housing initiative director job description. Yes. So again, just reading from the memo. So this is a new staff position within the city and the intentions is that it will, the position will research, develop and help implement initiatives that are in line with the city's housing goal and council's housing related policy priorities and strategies. The position will take over and expand the housing related aspects of the former community economic development officer position. It will not have enough capacity to do the expanded housing initiatives and take on all of the grant writing capacity of the former community and economic development officer. This position will not be limited to policy since housing policy is good at tweaking and limiting housing, but not good at creating housing, which is kind of the current need, which we do need to create affordable and three or more bedroom housing units and improve housing quality. So that's why the position is not limited to policy. It is certainly part of the position. So instead the position is designed to be flexible enough to work on a variety of needs. That's why it's called the housing initiative director. That would likely, as I said, include policy at times, capital attraction for closing the gap on lower profit margin housing is one possibility. For example, affordable and high bedroom count units have a lower profit margin or landlord and tenant education programming as council has been discussing, especially in this last year. The position is designed not to be a housing advocate position since that would become all consuming given the needs in the city. And it would restrict the person's ability to advance systemic solutions. We do still have the code enforcement team for complaints. The position would report the city manager would work with the planning and zoning and code enforcement teams and collaborate with community partners. Any questions on the title or scope? And I will note that the full year cost of estimated $90,414 to $95,741 for the position includes benefits. That's not the salary. I had raised this question over email about including in the position description things that the position won't do. And I guess I kind of want to address that now. It does seem unusual to eliminate things from scope as opposed to manage scope creep for the position. Just haven't seen that many position descriptions to say this position will not do these things. And I worry about creating future situations where the housing initiative director really should be convening a conference and thus can't because it's position description actually explicitly rules that out. Or if we have rearrangements to our building inspection team having update this position description if that responsibility changes in another position. So I guess I appreciate the need to bound the work since it could expand beyond the capacity of the person to do it. But I'm wondering if I get self concerns with including what the position won't do as part of the position description. Actually, yeah, so that's a good point. Now that you've discussed it in this venue it occurs to me that because you're approving the scope it would be wise not to limit the scope so that we don't have to come back to you if we want to revise that. So that's something that I would put in the initial job description which we can revisit as often as needed probably not more than annually. But if we left that out of the language of the scope if it changed it it wouldn't preclude that. So I would recommend at this point striking it from what you're approving tonight but not instructing the staff to remove it from a job description per se. God, so we can approve the scope, the purpose. That's what you recommend and change here. Striking the last sentence. Striking the last sentence from the purpose, yeah. So the purpose is more internal. This wouldn't necessarily be, that's gonna be a job description and then the job posting itself to kind of similarly thinking about this position not serve that kind of language. That's more internal facing than external. Well, so this is a, I think of it more about like nested, well I was gonna say nested umbrellas but I don't know if that's helpful. So this is the overall, like this is within the bounds of what we can do operationally. Like we wouldn't be able to go outside of this without coming back to you. So in terms of how we would post the job description, I mean some of these are rather detailed. I don't know that we would advertise a job with knots in it, we might, we probably discuss it during an interview process or an offer during the offer. This may sound like a silly question but is there a sufficient amount of work to fill an FTE? Yes. Well, I should say it depends on the initiatives but that's the flexibility of the position is if you can dream up enough of work for the year, then yes and I anticipate that there is enough at this point for this coming year and then with a good person, they would continually be able to develop a work plan for subsequent years. And is there opportunities for career advancement for this position? I see it listed as a director. I mean, we have a fairly, what do you call it, flat organization. So there isn't much advancement in general. There is the opportunity for changes in responsibility however, especially given the initiative title. Like it could morph over time depending on the person. They could change, we could even change the grade. So that would be the type of advancement. It's not necessarily in terms of title but it could be in terms of responsibility. Okay. And what was the thought process of you giving out a director title? Given that the organization is flat. Right, so if you look at our grades and what the titles are currently, that was the one that seemed to match the other ones but it is a little bit inconsistent as folks here have pointed out. So that was the initial thought is that they would be shaping the, like if you just look at it separately from the grades then, they would be shaping the direction that the housing initiatives would take, which to me is more of a director rather than a manager. And because this is a new FTE, will we need to increase revenue to account for this new position? No, because we no longer have a community economic development officer and they're budgeted similarly. And we're not anticipating refilling that role? That's my proposal is that we shift gears to this focus. Can you just say that we're not refilling the community? Economic development officer, correct. Can I just ask one more follow-up question? I think when we were meeting about strategies and priorities, we talked about the need for a grants and contracts manager. So given that it's stated here that this role will not, that will not be within scope for that new FTA. How is that gonna be accounted for? Currently in the budget, it is not. Well, I shouldn't say that. So for this year, there's a bit of savings because we're without either position, the CEDA or the new housing. So there is the potential to use that savings to contract out for that work. And I should say, well, I shouldn't say, but there is the option of the former CEDA person because they have the capacity and they have a very still, pretty current knowledge of the city to do those applications efficiently. Of course, that doesn't mean that you need to, we need to use that person always going forward into perpetuity. In terms of the, my thought would be that we would need to build that into the budget in future years. And, of course, that has to be balanced with everything else. I don't know if that will stay in our budget even that we propose to council. But that's, I don't see a way to do that without raising taxes at this time without having seen all the budget proposals yet. This seems to me to be an important and big enough position that you wouldn't want them to be doing non-housing related grants on a regular basis. Certainly, as other staff have pointed out, some topics are going to be indirectly related like economic development related initiatives and grants. So there could be a reason, there could be a justification for that. And that's covered in the indirect, indirectly related to housing grant applications and the scope. But given our recent example with both the CEDO position and with the equity director position, I'm concerned about overloading this position with too many responsibilities. I recognize grants are an important piece of it, but I don't know how you get a specialist and then settle with them with other topical areas that they have to understand in order to apply for grants to fully fund what the city would like to do. So with some of the goal, too, to increase staff retention with this work, hopefully both with housing and then possibly if we do create a grants position going forward because something with being burdened with two or things that should be two or three jobs as you burn out and leave. Right, that is part of the hope, right, is that we right size are the scope of the jobs that we have and are creating here so that there isn't that burnout and departure that's churn. In the memo, there's a line about there's not being a housing advocate position. So I just wonder, is there a mechanism for those sorts of concerns and complaints that housing advocate would hear to get to this person? Because I feel I'm assuming that they are gonna want to take what has happened with the city with its residents and use that for the initiatives that they need to inform. Right, they need to be informed. So the code enforcement program is one avenue. We do have the housing complaint form for a very specific minimum code violation type complaints. But yes, there is, there needs to be some sort of consultative process so that they're not just operating in a vacuum. But I would want that to be developed thoughtfully with the person so that again, they're not overwhelmed by trying to serve the community. This is the position that the equity director was in. Yeah, I think when residents here that we've hired a housing initiative director, they're gonna think this is somebody to help them directly with housing. So I feel like that will have to be message but also with this person. I don't know, I can see it being very, it might be difficult for them to not run into those situations with residents where they're seeking out their help. Right, like the equity director. And you are gonna get someone to care so it's gonna be hard. Well, I do like the, you know, there's a part here about managing stakeholder relationships and I think that is one of the like consultative processes. They're gonna hear from folks who are already in direct contact with residents here and use that to inform strategy. And also this is something we've talked about before, like there are existing organizations that will help residents that we are just not really coordinated with because we don't have anyone dedicated to doing that. Any, any questions from the public? I have a question, please. Sure. Tom, sorry. It's the order of mine. Thank you. It's so that folks at home can hear you. Mr. out there, is there anybody out there? There is actually. My name is Thomas Lockethel. My question is, is there a well-defined job description of the responsibilities for this person? And if so, could you give me a brief description of it? Yes, I roughly read it, but I can read the actual scope that the council has seen. Just for the bullet points, I'm just a little foggy on what they're gonna do. Right, so they would be researching, developing and helping implement initiatives in line with the Winooski's strategic vision and master plan as it relates to housing. So currently that means a mix of quality housing that maintains and enhances Winooski's unique sense of place and supports the needs of the entire community. So they would be developing and maintaining relationships with stakeholders, staff, the housing commission, develop quantitative and qualitative data reports and apply for and manage grants. They would be managing the housing trust fund, keep current with issues, housing related issues, and potentially supervise the work of technical contractors. And that's about it. Okay, well, is this a job that might evolve to have other responsibilities as well as like coordinating with different agencies, CHT or Winooski Housing Authority? Does it have any connection with Winooski Housing Authority? Yes, it definitely would be needing to coordinate and understand stakeholder perspectives, yeah. It's not really totally defined yet until you actually get the person in or how's that gonna work? Are you all voting on this tonight about whether to create this? Yeah, so we generally approve a relatively broad job description at the like policy level and then staff work out the details of how to operationalize that. So I mean, it sounds like a perfectly good position to have considering the problems in the city around housing and its availability. So I'm all for it, but that's all, thank you. Yeah. I just wanna say I'm excited to see this position. I've been hearing from the housing commission for two years that this increasing capacity for working on housing in the city has been holding us back from doing what we could do on housing. So I'm excited to see this actually coming into a written form. So thank you for getting it to this place and putting it before us. I do recognize it's a big shift for the city, but I think it's a good shift at the right time. And if we get a good person to this role, I think it's gonna be impactful for people who actually need help on housing issues today, yesterday and tomorrow. So I'm very supportive of this change. And I just wanna connect back to what we shared earlier in the meeting with downtown Meduski that some of the former CEDA role, some of that activity has been absorbed by that organization. That role did do some housing work for us, but we have been talking for a while about shifting to more of a housing focus, which is what this does. Also, appreciate the approach here that sort of opened the initiative-focused approach versus just policy. Were there any questions from folks on Zoom? You have a question? Comment? Is there just anybody online? I don't see any hands. Obviously the grants and contracts work that was done previously brought in quite a bit of revenue. Do we have a sense for what percentage of the budget was brought in with that fund? Angela, I don't suppose you have an answer off hand. I don't have a percentage number. A lot of the grants that that position obtained were capital grants for major projects that you see in your leverage funds report in the budget book. They were some pretty significant dollar amounts. We have not been able to utilize all of the grants that that position had obtained because of timing issues and COVID, but it was over a million dollars. Thanks. I do have a little bit of concern without sourcing, especially solar sourcing, solar sourcing without arc piece. So just want to share that. Absolutely, yep. I also add the decreased grant writing capacity, which is not great, but we are actively involved in several extremely large grant funded projects. Like I'm not sure how much capacity we would have any way to be taking on additional to be pursuing a lot of additional grant funding right now. So I think that's something that we should think about too. Generally hearing support, does someone want to make a motion to approve this job description? I'll approve the, because I'll make a motion that we approve the description striking the last sentence of the purpose. I second that. Motion by Jim, second by Aurora. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries, thank you. Thank you. Okay, we are moving on to item K, eviction protection policy. So this was initially brought forward by Councilor Renner at our last meeting. Jim, you weren't in attendance, but we're involved in the background. I have added here a high level sort of what outreach might look like if we were to pursue a no cause eviction charter change. And then staff, Elaine has included a memo here, you know, staff shared concerns about this at our last meeting. And so she has outlined what those might be. I wonder if you want to start by like summarizing that. Sure, and I'll actually respond to Tom's question first if you like. So yeah, to get a charter change done, you need two public hearings that minimum that are warned 30 days apart. So if you make, if council takes input and makes any substantive changes to the initially worn language that restarts the two hearing clock. So how long it takes is it depends. But at minimum, it would take two months. Plus you'd want to give hopefully staff enough time to get the ballots printed and then distributed. Also note that lengthening that time is you'd want an attorney to review the language because charter languages, that is your baseline document that dictates how we operate. So we want to make sure that it's all according to state statute, all internally consistent. So that takes some time too. So in terms of the staff comments, I'll say that a few of the points, so what I did is I looked at the Burlington charter change that was approved by the legislature and vetoed by the governor as a starting point. That's what it seemed like that's where that came from. So just using that as an example, I'm not claiming that that's where you would land. But as an example, I took each of the provisions point by point. A few of those I will say they were minor. So for example, language allowing a reasonable grace period regarding non-payment of rent, that's probably a minor thing. Those that require substantive work include making sure that we can develop defensible, enforceable definitions. Defensible and enforceable takes a lot of work. Those two words. So also assessing whether this would discourage landlords from renting to preserve two perceived risky renters. And assessing whether this type of language would discourage property owners and developers from developing rental housing. I don't think I'm making too political a statement to say that we all wanna make sure that renters who are doing everything fine are not subject to indiscriminate eviction. However, we also need to make sure that we're not having unintended consequences, which is just an overall common risk with writing charter language or policies or ordinances. So those are the two unintended consequences that occurred to staff that none of us I don't think would wanna see. Can I address those two directly? If those stood out to me? So I wanna start first with actually the second one. You mentioned discourage owners and developers from developing housing. This to me rose the question of do we want to attract owners or developers who would be discouraged by just cause eviction? Would we want those people to be built? There are so many owners and developers, I don't, and such a need for housing that I don't feel worried that we're gonna lose out on opportunities. I'm more concerned about people coming in, building who would do no cause eviction. So that to me doesn't seem like a major concern. In fact, might be a benefit. The other one that would discourage landlords from renting to perceived risky renters. I think this doesn't speak to an issue with this policy, but it speaks to needing additional, the need for additional rent or protection. So I feel so often we have that argument of protecting the assumed worst bad intention and just holding off because of that worst case scenario. But what we really need is some kind of movement forward. So it seems, I don't know, it seems counterintuitive to I get the risk, but is this not actually pointing out where a different protection would come in? So those were the two things that stood out to me. So my response to that from the staff perspective is that we don't know. So your first question is that a problem that we wouldn't attract people who would be discouraged by just cause eviction? I don't know. That's the problem. I can't advise you based on what we know right now. Would it be a problem? I don't know. I don't know. That's the problem. I could say that it was a problem or it wouldn't be a problem. Then I would feel comfortable as staff saying, yes, please go ahead. But I can't give you an answer to that right now. And I think we also have to remember that viewing this as a change that we make at this moment in time feels safer to me than it did when I first started on council, which was not that long ago, when we were definitely walking a line between being forward-looking and protective, but not so protective that we're pushing development to other areas. Right now we don't have that problem. There is more demand than there is supply. And that may not always be the case. Because this is a long-lasting, durable change, I think that that is a really challenging question to answer because we don't have to just answer for this moment in time. We have to answer it for the economic and market conditions we had four years ago because those can be four years from now. And so I don't think, I think right now the answer is we probably have a different owner and builder come in, maybe not later. And so I do think that that needs to, that thought experiment does need to happen. And that's why I think it is a really important point that, and I think from my understanding of the memo that was put forward last time, and still the issue to consider is whether we explore this further. I think that absolutely should be a question that we explore, that a commission explores in depth, in depth that the council explores in depth for the deadline if we're trying to make a certain date. Because it does have to last. It has to stand up and it has to hold up in a market when you can just assume that some developer will be behind, fill the gap with another lease. Yeah, I guess I think, I think it's important to keep in mind we have to respond to other moments and not just this one too. And my last point was that there are budget implications for staffing and for resourcing enforcement. So, and I will say that this isn't, I'm not, it's not my job to discourage you from exploring a policy. Like that is actually your job. Like you decide what's right for the city at this time and you ask for guidance on how to do it. My point is more about, this takes a lot of work to do well and you want to make sure that you understand because things will have to shift so that we can do this because it takes so much work. And I think, oh, sorry. Go ahead, Thomas. And just to reaffirm, and I think it was understood, although this is something that I agree we should look into. And we had set a timeline and memo when I think you should just, we set a timeline for a desire to start to get this conversation moving. If it has to take longer so that staff can do it right and everything can happen so that it can be defensible and whatnot, I would be happier for it to take a longer time than for us to just not do it at all. The timing I think now is when people are having the most problem, but if that's gonna create multiple problems for the policy and for staff, I'd rather staff take the time they need to get it done right. I just wanted to call out the latter section of your memo, Elaine, on the amount. Should we pass a charter change? Get our charter change approved. And then have to create new ordinance and procedures to be involved in evictions, which we currently are not. Like locally, we don't do that. That's not managed here. That is a huge lift and new initiative that would require us to remove something else that we're doing, right? And considering this outline and also what I put together about outreach, I believe that if we are gonna choose to focus on this, trying to target town meeting day, that means we're not doing work on the public building registry, which I feel like is something we have, we can make a greater impact in our community with that. So I've talked to some members of the legislature. It sounds to me like they're taking this up no matter what. So I personally don't feel like we should be rushing towards a charter change on town meeting day for something that is likely to be going through the legislature anyway, given the amount of effort that would be needed, particularly on the staff side, let alone the outreach work we would be doing. I did wanna share as an alternative, we have heard support from some community members for wanting to go on this. We can have a ballot item that's like an advisory, like telling us to direct the legislature that we want to see them make a move on this or the governor. So that is an alternative process that would something that I think would be more feasible to do on a March timeline than fully exploring a new process. Can you ask the question of both Christine and Elaine of if you have been contacted by any stakeholders? I mean, residents have reached out to me. I also have a standing meeting with housing providers and support organization members. This is another thing that I was thinking about is the residents who contact me about housing instability, the stories I hear are about their rent being increased to a degree they can't afford that sort of forces them out. It is not people that are getting evicted typically, which is why I mentioned in this memo too, like there are other avenues, legislative avenues or policy avenues that could be pursued that may have greater impact than the specific measure. In the housing bill, it excludes limit unreasonable rent increases to prevent de facto evictions or non-renewals, although this shall not be constructed to limit rents beyond the purpose of preventing individual evictions. Right, so we could support that legislation and get behind it without having to make our own charter change is what I'm saying. So thinking about moving if we can move it forward, how we would move forward, it sounds like there's potential risk to actually getting to a charter change because it could obligate us to do new work that we currently, well, I guess I would question whether this is a housing initiative and there is a person that will come on with capacity to do this. I recognize that it's not the right capacity for what you need in terms of dealing with complaints. But if we could end up obligating ourselves a significant amount of work, again, the charges, should we explore this more? And should we, and the charge that I think that Councilor Renner and I put into that memo was should we explore some form of eviction protection and what does that look like? And again, that answer to that could be a legislative position resolution that we put on the ballot. It could be a charter change that we put on the ballot. It could just be a letter we all sign and send to our local legislative leaders and we could do anything out of that recommendation. But the question is do we wanna do more work on this now or not? Like I think that's worth, I think that's worth a, like a straight basic, are we gonna do more work on eviction protections in some way or another or not? And I don't think it has to be like debating whether we're gonna get to an actual charter change. I think there's some power in that, but it doesn't sound like it's necessary. And it could be better to spend our time, less time on that in doing some community outreach, active outreach on this topic through the Housing Commission or otherwise, get some input that we then have and we can decide to do something with it or not in November. So I guess I just see that there are many ways forward. It doesn't mean that by saying we're gonna explore this more we're committing to one of these paths. It means that we're asking for a group to spend time fleshing this out. So we aren't having that debate right now. We don't have the information to have that debate right now. It's your memo points out. We don't have the information we need to have that debate. It would take time and work to give the Housing Commission information they need to have that conversation. But it does not need to be fully drafting an ordinance either. They could do a more limited scope conversations. We could direct them to only explore should we consider a charter change? Should we consider a letter? Should we consider a ballot resolution directing the legislature to take action? Like we could do all those things based on a recommendation from the Housing Commission. So I think just I wanna kind of pull us back from like are we gonna do a charter change or not? It's not the question. The question is are we gonna work more on eviction protections at some level this year or not? I think that's the question in my mind that we need to talk about today. And for clarification, I do think it's too late to get anything on the November ballot. Yes. Okay. Well, I'm sorry. It's too late to get a charter change on the ballot. Whether you had an advisory item. Well, I was saying November meeting was when we had to make a decision for a March ballot. So I wasn't saying the November ballot, and we have to make a decision by November about whether to put it on the March ballot if it was a charter change. So that was the timeline that was outlined. Okay. Did you wanna answer about an advisory item in November? No. Okay. But that clarification helps because I thought you meant in November. No, I'm sorry. I think as I related in August, I think there are things worth exploring that maybe may have lower barriers and a higher impact. I believe Burlington has a 60 day notice for rent increases and any change over any basically change to rental agreements. I don't know what it would take to do that, but I'd be interested in seeing like, are there some lower barrier actions that we can take in a shorter time period in addition to the efforts of exploring larger conversations of charter changes. But I would want to not get too headstrong into charter change conversation without, and basically not seeing the forest for the trees if I'm even using that reference correctly. But I think you get my product. So I am in agreement with you about should we continue the conversation. Yes, and I would like to make sure that part of that conversation is shorter turnaround time for changes that may have higher impact and less hurdles to get through. One thing I do feel like we should point out is that this wouldn't be working from scratch. Like I understand that Winooski is different from Burlington, but there was work done on this. So I'm a little, I feel like approaching it like it's this brand of thing that's never been done before. I, I don't know. I hesitate to without, you know, speaking to the folks in Burlington about, you know, their thoughts on Eleni who made that list with some really great points. What did Burlington think of those? What were their legal answers? So I feel like that's a point to think about. I also do want to ask maybe I'll be more pointed, Elaine, if you've been contacted by any landlords. No, the one comment I had in passing that you've heard already from WHA that you want to consider the impact of forcing a landlord to use just cause eviction when there's actually sometimes a rent or protection when you do no cause eviction because they can keep their voucher. That was the only comment I've gotten so far. And then to, in response to your Burlington point, fair point, I did make an assumption. I didn't ask them. I made the assumption based on their frequently asked questions about that charter change that they have not drafted their ordinance. They wanted this to come first. I'm sure there's been some work done on the back end and I could find out about that. But I don't think, the work that I'm referring to here, I don't believe it's been done. But that's not the same as knowing it's not been done. So coming back to your question or how you framed it about like making some forward motion, we don't have a housing initiative director yet. I think we should be waiting for that position to be staffed to tackle this so that the housing commission has support. This is a policy issue. When they are, the housing commission is in a position to be making advancement on the public building registry right now, cause we do have staff available to support that. And similarly, so once we have this director who's able to support the housing commission, I think we can revisit, you know, the order of priority, like eviction protection, what Bryn mentioned about if there's lower barrier stuff. You know, you've talked about like, they've talked about like security deposit and other smaller issues. I feel like that is a feasible approach where we could keep the conversation going on this, but like when we have the resources to support that. I wonder too, we're talking about some smaller bites in the bill as passed by the House and Senate. Section C, I'm wondering if the items listed there, which specifically touch on the negative impacts of the smaller landlords, the impacts of providing a reasonable probationary period after initial occupancy, again, limit unreasonable rent increases. There might be some items there that again, maybe there's language and maybe research already done that are touching on these quote, lower lift with a high impact. We also may have the opportunity, should the state, should the legislature pass this for like just the Burlington Charter Change, like last year, of them seeing how they implement it and then being able to piggyback off that versus creating from scratch like you were saying of potentially they've already drafted some ordinance. Especially as it relates to their definitions because quite a bit hinges on what those end up being adopted as. I have a concern actually in that Section B, the ordinance of exclude from just cause for some of the items under it. Those in need of substantial renovations that preclude occupancy and worried with 300 main that would actually, once we're not actually do what we wanted to do with that included. Right. Would it be sensible to bring this bill language to the housing commission to have that conversation about like what should they, what would they like us to focus on? What would they like to focus on? I mean, I think that was the core ask is do we want the housing commission to explore some form of eviction protection? This could be it. And the questions that were in that August memo should they explore some form of eviction protection? Should we explore the Burlington model of eviction protection if not should we do something else? Like I think those are the three questions that were posed in August. I think I heard from this body in August we do want to explore eviction protection. My interpretation was that this evening's question was specifically about a charter change. But I think it's, you know, we just had that chairs meeting in service of commission work planning. And so if that discussion hasn't happened yet, we'll probably not, because you don't have staff support right now. It would be a good time to like leverage this language and talk about. I think it's a reasonable ask of the housing commission to put this in front of them and have them discuss it. They will have no more, I mean, I think that we also have the staff memo is really helpful for raising some of the issues that have already presented out of this bill language and they could have that as well. I don't know that they need additional. Given the composition, I don't know that they need additional data to have that first pass at it. And- Of priorities. Yeah, like it's more of a priority than work. Cause I think that the choices between the public building registry and eviction protections, though I'm in favor of exploring this aggressively, I've, the public building registry has to take priority in my mind. So if the housing commission does express that opinion too, then that would be, I think a pretty clear signal to us on what we can accomplish and what we have set and address the staff capacity piece as well. So that'd be my preferred method is put those two to them if we can in this August or the September meeting and hear back what they think is feasible. I don't know, but I think, you know, I want to look to their city manager cause you are staff support for the housing commission at this point. And presumably would play that role or at least part of that role at the meeting if we were to meet on September, talking about this. Is that, does that feel like a setup for a successful conversation that we can use to move ahead? Yes. Okay. Does that answer your question there? Yes. Okay. Sorry, I got there in a long one, did I? I do want to pause and see if there's any additional public comment. You want to come up? I did come here to talk about this after all. I'm just wondering what if Thomas Law can tell, I just wonder if someone can clarify for me about the governor's veto on the bill in the legislature this past session on this issue. Was that specifically for the Burlington change, charter change? So it wasn't a statewide thing. Okay, thank you. Another thing, I just would kind of like to get a feel for what the urgency is. What are the people in the city, the renters, the landlords? How much urgency is there on the part of renters who want this to go through because of the inflation and all the rent this year? I'm sure there's a lot of people who would like to see this go through. I'd like to know what the opinions of the landlords are. And I see a possible negative unintended consequence of this. If you do try to push something through on a charter change, it might make landlords want to lock in higher rents right now and that wouldn't help anybody. So I see that as a downside. You got to consider that that renters could, landlords could push back against this pretty hard. And if there's any way to piggyback on what other people have done, like Burlington or other places, I think that would be great. Maybe stretch out the timeline, but still push the needle in the direction that it needs to go. That's about all I have. I'm not informed on this very well, except on an anecdotal basis. So I'd just like to hear your thoughts on, how do the general public hear? How do they really feel about it? And is it a democratic issue as far as like the majority should have to say about it? And how does that fit in if you did put it to a vote? What would be the, I mean, I think we could probably guess that it would pass. I know that there is a sense of urgency around displacement. So it's eviction, it's increasing rents, it's being sort of forced out through just bad situations occurring. And so the public building registry is one avenue. So that relates to how we enforce, housing standards, which we've been wanting to work on for several years to improve some of the quality issues in the city. And I think advancing this discussion to our housing commission helps us figure out what is the approach to the other issue, the stability issues. Like we, I think what we're discussing here is, we're not in a position tonight to say we should move this forward to a vote on town meeting day, but we should have further conversation with our commissioners and get more of that information from tenants from landlords. That's reasonable. Thank you. And that chemistry of course, we talked about the public building registry. And I think I'm glad you brought up like, really it's our housing quality. Like we haven't done that policy work on housing quality. And like we all know what the code word is, it's just public building registry because that's what it's called. But I think for the broader discussion, we're really waiting to potentially impactful pieces, housing quality work, eviction protection work, which may both be needed and we've heard about both from residents. And I will say personally, I've heard a lot more in the housing quality side, which is why it's one of our enumerated policy priorities this year. One of the reasons that I think it's even, the just cause of eviction is even closer to my mind is a close friend of mine just received a no cause eviction notice. Considering that they were using some of the rental assistance, but it's now coming to the end at the end of the year, it makes me really suspicious. And that's part of the urgency, I think. Knowing that that assistance is coming to the end, along with the protections against evictions being lifted, if we're gonna see some of the most vulnerable people that are affected, I can say personally that I did not apply for rent assistance, even when I could qualify for it. But because of that same fear, that would let my, in this case property manager, know that I could be in a, I don't know, give them some kind of worry that I would not be able to make rent. And considering that she sent out an email to all her tenants to vote against the Burlington, yes, we were in Monuski, but we were copied, vote against the just cause eviction in Burlington, even strengthens that worry. So those are kind of some very personal things that is bringing us to the forefront. And I think it's fairly obvious, a lot of people that people want policy action on protecting renters, there are multiple policies that can probably be enacted and explored and I think the housing commission should really focus on doing that. And I'll express that, I feel duty bound to share words from the housing commission that they don't want to work on things that council won't do anything with. So I think, I guess I'm asking that, whatever we get back from them that we respect and then work on those things as well. And I actually don't know where that'll end up. So I'd be very curious to attend the September meeting, but I think it's helpful to know that we, I sense that what I would communicate as a council liaison, so I'll check this with you all, that there's interest in both of these. There's a feeling of urgency in both of these and we're looking for their guidance and on which to focus on given the current landscape we face as a city. And that seems like a fair charge and to report back to the council by our October meeting then, we would get information back with that, right? I would say that's fair and just ask that Elaine make sure that resources are understood and the ability to pursue each path. And then just to emphasize like, they're making recommendations to council, but we're not obligated to them. We hear them. We hear them, but again, like, yeah, okay, I can hear that. I also can commit to bringing forward, I can't say for the next meeting, potentially one after, but every year I have partnered with the Burlington mayor on a breakfast with our shared legislators. I don't know what that will look like this year because now we don't have the same overlap as before, but in that have put together like legislative priorities. And so that is something that I can bring back to this group sooner than, I think last year didn't have until December, January, which could be the basis for like additional advocacy, right? So even if it's not moving forward, some sort of specific policy, there could be an advisory vote. There could be like us doing a resolution or a letter or something more communication on this front. Was there any more questions or comments from our attendees online chat or raise hand? Do we have clear clarity then on what is moving forward to our housing commission out of this conversation? Thank you all. Okay, let's move to item L. This is on for discussion approval, the COVID-19 recovery non-profit grant guidelines. Yeah, so my regrets for not sending the red line version before today. So there were quite a few changes I'd say from the version that you saw at your last meeting. We had an external reviewer look at it and then also safe, healthy, connected people, as Aurora mentioned, did have some changes to make. The one, I feel like it is important to highlight is that they wanted to make sure that unregistered, unincorporated associations were also eligible. We do have a few. Actually, there's a commissioner who is a member of one. I don't know if they have, you know, exactly eligible if they would be eligible for other reasons, but that is a type of organization that he was familiar with. And so when he raised that, the rest of the commission definitely was interested in making sure they were eligible. There was some discussion about, you know, the reason why you have that is there's somebody other than city staff or not equipped to somebody who's looking to see that they're actually a charitable organization that they've met all the criteria. In this case, opening up to that means that we don't have great ways to check. There are some questions that we have worked into the form that the commission looked at. So you could give a reference, you could give it a beneficiary or somebody who's from a third party who's familiar with your work that we could staff could then follow up on and just make sure that they're doing what they say they're doing. A staff member other than someone who's filling it out. Again, these are not fail-safe, they're just options for that. So that's one big change that I wanna make sure that the council is aware of. At that, that I do feel like the Safe Public Connected People Commission really put a lot of thought and worked into this, which I think considering that our initial run with the small business, they weren't the people who were reviewing those grants and feel comfortable or like they could use the kind of ranking system in a way that was productive. But I feel like coming out of this with the Safe Public Connected People Commission are feeling like they can really use these documents to do the work that'll really benefit the city. Some of the other changes were about accessibility. So for example, a verbal report can be requested. And then there was something similar to that earlier, which I'm not finding right off. And some of the changes were cosmetic, like broke the organization types into a bulleted list so it would be easier to look at. Those are the main things I think that are worth mentioning, but happy to answer questions on anything else that you spotted. That seems significant to you. I will say I appreciate a lot of these changes for the clarity and accessibility. I don't have concerns with most of them. I am uncomfortable with allowing unregistered, unincorporated organizations to access this program. Groups that are registered nonprofits, there is a mechanism in place to address potential fraud. There is nothing like, this feels high risk to me that we're potentially putting, I don't know. You could get a reference, you could check what activities they're up to, things could look good, but if something turns, whoever's in charge of that organization changes and something fraudulent does happen, there's no way for us to find out or address that because they're not like a registered organization. I think some of what, if I'm remembering correctly, and Elaine, please correct me. That was talked about that a lot for exactly that reason. And I think the feeling was that this could possibly be a little bit of a pilot to see if opening it to those types of organizations would work because it's not a huge dollar amount, as well as the, including the six month update provided in writing or a verbal request to try and meet those concerns as well. So having that, and that would be applied to everyone. So it would be equitably applied to have that six month check-in. But I think that at least was what I recall the commission settled on. Has, I'm gonna ask a question, I think I know the answer to. Has our legal counsel reviewed this? No. I also feel uncomfortable with unregistered on a corporate for the same reasons as the mayor. We want to ensure that we are supporting our nonprofit organizations while at the same time not putting our taxpayer dollars at risk. And building on that, I'm not comfortable with the addition of section two A, the second closed circle that says organizations that have provided, currently providing, and my discomfort is with or will provide services. Given that this is COVID relief related funds, I think that considerations should carry over with the same way they did with for-profit organizations in the city as they did looking at existing organizations rather than the sort of organizations that are looking to establish themselves or looking to access funds that aren't previously serving our residents. So I have, I could be swayed, but I have discomfort with that as well. Could I comment on that one? Sure. So I don't have an opinion on that just to be clear, but for your consideration, there's two pieces. So there was a recommendation by your finance commission to consider a different grant for businesses that started during the pandemic. So in that way, it sort of mirrors, not exactly, but somewhat. The other piece is that, so that maybe this isn't how you intended it, but my interpretation of this grant program is that it's to help not the non-profit recover from COVID, but the community to recover from COVID, whereas the business one is for the business to recover from COVID impacts. So in that case, that could be a consideration as to why you would want to allow organizations that haven't provided those services yet to apply. On the other hand, to your point, there's no requirement to prove that that's how they spent it. It'll be a narrative. So there's the update as a way to check and balance that, but yeah, just for your consideration. Like an example might be the shopping bags provide if they applied that they would be providing a new service that they haven't issued. Right. Yeah, I was just thinking they already have, but the money would be for, well, yeah, they actually already did provide those. But I could see a difference between I'm an existing organization and I'm starting to provide a new service versus I wouldn't be comfortable like, I'm starting a brand new organization to address issues. That's the latter is more what I'm discomfort with. Gotcha. So I think we could do like some sort of word change there. The pre-existing that will provide services to them. Gotcha, right. Pre-existing organizations. Yeah. And I appreciate that the goal is for benefiting the impact of the residents, but this is so open-ended that may not actually be what happens. I think what can sometimes happen with, I mean, first, this isn't technically taxed, anything that came from the taxes. It came from taxes, just not specifically. Yeah, on our local taxes, right. It's government money. Well, we'll pay it sometime. Yeah. Yeah, and your grandkids. But I think one of the things that came up and really stuck with me from the conversation that was had, especially from one of the community members, our commissioners, was the way that how he was worried that how it was set up would disadvantage. And I think we saw that with the small business application that this did happen. The way that it was before would disadvantage specifically, especially American organizations and mutual aid, which we've seen a lot of community coming together, but they might find navigating some of the things or how it was phrased before more difficult. So I know, again, part of that was just thinking about accessibility. So I guess there's part, for me, balancing, making sure that we're equitably serving our residents versus what I feel is a smaller risk of the money. I feel like that's a smaller risk to me than, say, not being able to serve an organization that is currently doing really important work. And I also feel like I wanna point out that one, right, that they are gonna, the commission's going to go through and rank these and then we have the ultimate say too. So we're gonna get their recommendations. So there are additional checks and balances for those concerns too. So if there's a specific organization that submits, it will either through them or through us might be flagged anyway. Yeah, at the initial outlay, but who's gonna monitor if things go awry later? There's two check-ins. I generally just don't feel it's appropriate. We are entrusted with community dollars and giving them to an entity that doesn't have any oversight beyond us. I don't think we will be able to provide that kind of oversight in lieu of there being another structure. Because I would be interested to know what type of organizations those are that aren't incorporated as a 501C3, and like is this really, yeah, and I mean any organization and even an incorporated one can kind of go belly up and just see if it'll come run away with all the money. But yeah, I do have a concern is why would you not have been incorporated in some capacity if you're providing charitable services? Well, there's a little bit of a process. It's not huge, but if you're a limited English proficiency person and you feel confident in your partners that you're doing good stuff, you might not bother. So for example, Nusky Mutual Aid, I don't know if they ever incorporated or registered. The Congolese Association of Vermont does not have a 501C3, but they are state registered. So they would be eligible under your original guidelines. I think the one that we heard about was the Nepalese Association, and they don't have any status. So the bank account is held by an individual for them. Which is terrible. There's no checks and balances there. That's like a huge red flag we would never do with our own finances. I get like what's underneath of that, but I don't, in my position, I don't wanna be supporting handing money to a one person bank account. But I've said my piece on this. I also had questions about extension. I'm used to having clarity on what a reasonable extension period is within, that's provided upfront, and rather than having more subjective extensions potentially inconsistently decided after the fact. That's fair. Off the cuff, six months. I will leave it to you and the finance director to decide what's really there. I think we need that for approval tonight. Would it be sufficient to say that one will be defined by any other comments, concerns, issues in here? More question about the six month update period. If we get an update and they haven't done what we would have liked them to have done with the money, what is the repercussion to that? Is there anything? Yeah, it would be a matter of coaching to make sure that they can meet it. And if not, we would be advising them that they can anticipate returning their money at the end of 12 months. So it would be a stern talking to, or a coaching talking to. Is there, given the flexibility with the reporting, is there expectations around what a satisfactory report would be composed of? Yeah, it. So give, for example, when I was a contract manager, there was a deliverable for a certain amount of money. And the deliverable that was given was, deliverable that was given was insufficient for the amount of money that was provided. So saying it was, you know, two paragraphs for $10,000, would we consider that to be sufficient? Yeah, the way this is written is prioritizing access. That means that a lot of it is being left up to the judgment of the staff person. So that would be rare me, is my assumption. So, you know, that's something for you to consider now is if we would want to see something or you would want us to be more codified about that. But because the priority is access, it is purposely not codified in this proposed draft. And I understand and appreciate the thought process that went into that and for my interest and consistency's sake, and at least having a discussion now rather than after the fact of what do we consider to be a satisfactory report? And I don't have to answer that, but I at least want to pose the question. Yeah, it's a good thing to discuss up front for sure. I mean, that's a fair question. What I'd want to see is if it seemed to me that they were on track, which is vague in the extreme, but that's what I see as reasonable for something that we're prioritizing access. I don't know how to define that, right? Like I don't have any good suggestions myself. I think you could make some like data requirements and other things, but not everyone may be able to provide that too easily. I feel like in like an RFP situation where we know what we're trying to get, it makes sense, but it's hard to do here where we're being pretty open-ended about what we're letting them spend on. I'm willing to defer to staff's best judgment on that. Okay. Thank you. It might be something that you have a couple of different options for too. I don't know if that would be better for access. For the reporting or the? Yeah, for reporting. Like a narrative of data. Right, so yeah, that is an option. So verbal can be requested, writing is an option, and actually even another kind of reporting is acceptable if it's discussed in advance with the city and there's a written agreement that, yes, this will be acceptable. And for me, it's just ensuring that the intent is met of the city and the goals of having these grants offered and made available. So I think we have a point of contention on whether or not to allow access for unregistered, unincorporated entities. I would like to put that to a vote before we move forward with the overarching document. How? I actually never voted on that, not a motion there. Sorry, I had a one final thought and this was something that I think I brought up, but and I worry about the staff capacity for it, which would be instead we have in their organizations with a nonprofit fiscal sponsor that is state registered, which would be if it is an unregistered, unincorporated charitable or mutual aid that we might be able to get them in contact with someone that they could partner with or would be willing to partner with. But again, that's, I would put a lot of work back on the city, unless there's like a resource list, like reach out to, yeah, my concern would be more like connecting them with someone who isn't necessarily gonna provide them very good service. It would be the same thing as recommending any private company for any service. Yeah. I mean, I like the idea in theory, but that would be the concern. In practice, okay. I think if they pursued a partnership on their own and came to the city with a joint application, that's different. Yeah, that's, then they would be eligible, right? Yeah. I believe that's only the, what Aurora just mentioned. Yeah, like this, you have a fiscal sponsor, then that mechanism is in place. Right. And my clarification is like, rather than the city providing partnership matching, the entity without the status eligibility says, pursue a partnership and then submit, essentially a joint application. Right, I think what, I mean, I'm assuming that part of the suggestion is to provide a level of service to the folks that might otherwise, might actually pursue that, but don't know who, but yeah, as I've responded, I don't know that that would be, we wouldn't necessarily be able to serve them well. So given that there's no like state sanction on profit, that doesn't even make sense, you know, non-profit that does that. So yeah, to your point, that arrangement would be possible here with the current guidelines. So we don't vote in the negative. So what I'm gonna ask is, do you support including unregistered, unincorporated organizations? Those in favor? Those in favor of including them? Of including them. Say I if you're in favor. Say nay if you're opposed. Nay. Nay, okay. So we will strike that. Do we also need to vote on the additional language of the will provide service? We can include that in the full thing, I think, as a text in it. Okay. Because I thought we were all in agreement on that. Maybe we're not. That will provide some, means you're a pre-existing organization. Yeah, pre-existing, thank you. Yeah. Mom, I'm gonna. So two text changes, right? Yeah, yeah, okay. That and then the defining the extension period. Should we move to a vote? Would someone like to make a motion to approve this with those three changes? So moved. Thank you. Second. Motion by Jim, second by Thomas. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you, Elaine, and thank you to our commissioners. Indeed. Thank you. Okay, we are moving on to item M. Oh, the city manager performance summary. This is simply, so we did a review of Elaine's performance so far as part of her probationary period and her contract at a prior meeting. And I just summarized the outcomes of that discussion here for the public record and for us to refer to in the future, that any questions or comments about this? It is on for approval. Yeah, we do want to, I do want to have it accepted, like you guys agree that this is a good signature, yeah. Okay, who wants to make a motion to approve? So moved. Second. Motion by Bryn, second by Thomas. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you. Item N, strategic vision goal update. Okay, so there are, again, the categories are must do, oh, this is for the all category, not goal specific. These are cross cutting. So there are three categories, must do, recommended, and new pending additional resources. There were 10 must do items, five recommended and one new idea. Of the must do, seven are proceeding as planned, including one that hasn't started yet, but that was planned. Two that are slower than planned, they are both that are related to equity. Those are slower because of the departure of equity director, but we are still making some progress. And then one that's slower than planned, the ARPA allocation discussions, that's been about my availability, but Paul is stepping up and I anticipate we'll have this on your next agenda as planned. Cross and fingers there. Of the recommended, some of it will happen in the spring as anticipated. And then others are slowed again because of the equity director's departure. Any questions about specific items? I think surprising in here to me. Sounds good. Tracks with what we've been discussing. Any questions from the audience? You can't even see them. Not having seen them. Sorry. I thought you're yearly meeting. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, this is an update on progress from that. There's no questions, we can move on. So we have an item O from our agenda review earlier. This is former E in the Consent Agenda, removal of commissioner, from the Louisiana Commission for Inclusion and Belonging. Jim suggested we pull this out because there wasn't any context about why they were removal. Yeah, so this is specifically for a member who, for lack of a better term, has ghosted both Jenny and I. Jenny thinks she's made so many outreach attempts to this commissioner. They're really, I'm like, we let her know that she could be ambassador to the commission that she put as number one. And I've also made some attempts, but we've just not heard back from her at the email she provided and don't really have other ways of contacting her. She didn't show up to the meeting as well. To either that or Jenny put together, what was that, in July? I'll like a brief get together schedule time and she didn't attend that either. Didn't pick up her binder that Jenny put together with all the information. So it really is just as happens sometimes. Someone applied, was approved, but has been a no-show otherwise. So it's just, yeah, removing her so we can move on with hopefully recruiting another member. And this is part of all of our commission charters, like we can remove, as council, we can remove people for non-attendance. Same for the council, too, so. Watch your sick days. Watch your sick days, yeah, exactly. Okay, can I have a motion to approve? Oh, I'm sorry, yeah. I will say that the equity director at the time when she advanced the original slate with the commission chairs did find their application interesting. So you might say, you might even be explicit if you so choose that if it turns out that they changed emails or whatever that if they were interested in getting that you would be open to that application. She did fill some places where the other commissioners. Perspectives, yeah. So can I have a motion to approve the removal with the understanding that we would entertain the appointment of this person in the future? So moved. Second. Motion by Jim, second by Aurora. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries, thank you. Okay, so that is the end of our regular agenda. We have worn an executive session for this evening. I am looking for a motion to find that pursuant to Vermont State Statute 313A1F, Confidential Attorney Client Communications made for the purpose of providing professional legal services to the body that we should have this discussion in executive session. Yeah, seeking motion for that. So moved. Second. Motion by Jim, second by Aurora. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. So I'm seeking a motion to enter into executive session inviting Elaine Wong and is Bob joining us? Bob De Palma, anyone else? Nope. Okay, that's it. Motion? Second. Motion by Jim, second by Thomas. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. We are going to enter into executive session for this discussion. No other topics will be discussed. We'll return from executive session solely to adjourn the meeting. Okay, we've reached the end of this evening's agenda. Do I have a motion to adjourn? So moved. Second. Motion by Bryn, second by Jim. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you. Thank you.