 Good evening, my name is Richard Shear and this is a special edition of Civics Forum. Those are the shows around town meeting day, right before town meeting day, where I talk to candidates for school board, candidates for mayor, candidates for city council. I talk about the city budget with people who know the school budget and we pretty much educate ourselves as to who it is who would be in our municipal government representing us. This is a special edition because I have the distinct pleasure of introducing Jack McCullough to the city of Montpelier, although many of you know Jack because he's been around here a long time. He is my consular in District 2 now, Jack. Thank you for having me. Good to see you Richard. Where in District 2 are you? I live on Town Street. I've actually lived in the time I've lived here in all three districts at different times. And right now I'm on Town Street, which is a street that nobody even knows where it is. Okay, then where is it? I know where it is, but you tell us. Drive out Main Street towards East Montpelier and you come to a point where you could turn right to go out Town Hill Road and sometimes when you're waiting to turn there, you'll see on the left a steep hill with people coming down. That's Town Street. So Town Street's the place that people can't get up that hill during the winter. And slide down in winter too, yes. In terms of Montpelier, how long have you been here? I've been here in 35 years. We moved here in 1983. My wife and I moved here from Michigan, where I'd been working at Legal Aid of Western Michigan. And we moved to Vermont and we rented a house in Waterbury for a few months. And we moved to Montpelier in August of 1983. What was Montpelier like in 1983, except for there were more people here than there are right now? There were more people. It was, in some ways, a quieter place. There were not as many restaurants, not as much nightlife. People would sell these black t-shirts that said aerial view of Montpelier at night. And it was just black. There's a lot more going on now than there was then. On the other hand, for one thing, we could afford to buy a house in Montpelier in 1983. And the house we bought in 1983 we paid $35,000 for, which in today's dollars would be about $87,000. There's no houses you can buy in Montpelier for $87,000 now. There were businesses, a different kind of businesses in Montpelier than the now. We had three hardware stores. We had just for those who with short memories, Abishans and the next to Abishans was summers. Right. Where was the third? The third one was on State Street next to the river where Capital Grounds is now. And it was Nelson Brothers. And we had a shoe store, the leather store on Main Street. We had a grocery store, a small grocery store right on Main Street in Montpelier. It seems that there are more of the kind of businesses that people need to go to to get things they need. Our commercial downtown, to a lot of people, seems stagnant. You still see empty storefronts on Main Street. What can we do? What can City Council do to improve that? I do worry about the commercial sector downtown. I observe the same thing. You can always expect that there's going to be a certain amount of churn in retail space and businesses that turn over because there has to be. You're never going to have 100% full occupancy and it's probably not healthy for the city if you do because that means there's no place for someone new to come in. To have spaces that are vacant for a long time, to have too many spaces vacant, I think is not healthy. What can Council do to promote downtown business that they haven't done already? It's pretty hard. That's something that I'm really interested in learning more about, to see what the city can do to encourage businesses to locate in the city. One of the things is, as you probably know, I've done a lot of housing advocacy work. We've had a declining population. Getting more people into town and getting more people who can afford to be here is one thing that will encourage businesses to be here. We have younger people who want to be able to walk to work, walk to where they go, and businesses are one thing we can do. But I think the city probably needs to take a more active role. We do have an economic development corporation now and I think the downtown business sector is one of the things that they're going to be interested in. The economic development corporation was formed last year. What do you see them doing that they're not doing right now? I'm not sure what they're doing right now. That's something that's not what I've focused a lot on. I think that what we need to see is both an active role in looking for retail businesses but also offices. I've heard of other places. I heard of an organization that was looking for office space in the Barry Montpelier area. They called Barry and said we're looking for an office space here. They mobilized, they quickly jumped on showing them a whole range of office spaces that were available. I think they wound up staying in Montpelier but the city seemed to take a pretty active role in trying to help the business relocate down there. And I would like it if Montpelier could do that here too. Do you feel that the planning department is right-sized to do something like that? I think that a number of the departments and the planning and community development office is one of them, it's probably smaller than it needs to be. You hear people talk about, well, why don't we assign this new project, this new activity to one of the departments and it's always a trade-off, well, what do you want me to stop doing in order to take on this new activity? I think the parks department is a similar situation. There's a lot of talk about people wanting a new park in Montpelier, taking some of the open space on Saban's pasture and turning it into some kind of parkland. But there is a couple of price tags attached to that. One is the city going to spend the money to buy the land, to make a park. Another is, do we have the staff and the parks department, parks and recreation to maintain and provide programming for a park on that side of the city, which would certainly be a good thing. But so I think there are things that we need to do, we probably need to look at not cutting staff but where do we need staff that is inadequate for the jobs they have. Do you feel that the city budget has any impact on housing prices in the city, that we have the highest tax rate already? Would you be into considering lifting that tax rate? Well I look at it in a different way if we could. We have the highest collective tax rate between city and school. What I was going to say is that encouraging housing development is a way to help reduce the burden on taxes. If we are able to have new families with children in the schools that mobilizes state aid to education, which should help some of the strain on the taxpayers. But doesn't it seem circular that the idea of raising the budget in order to attract more people in an actuality might attract fewer people when their property tax is such a differential between East Montpelier and neighboring communities in Montpelier? Do you feel that we have reached a point in taxation where we can raise our taxes significantly to gain more city services? I think there are some areas where we might need to gain more city services but my vision for Montpelier is really to have people have heard me say this a lot. I think Montpelier is the best place in Vermont to live. People want to live here. Why? We've got a population that's really involved in the life of the community. We have a range of ages. We have great schools. We have great active downtown. As we were talking about, I think there's more going on downtown than there used to be. People want to be here and they can't find places to move to. And if we could provide those opportunities, people would be here. Where is there empty land other than perhaps Saban's pasture over on Berry Street or Allen Goldman's land out on Terrace in that area? Where is there empty land to build on in this town? There's not a lot. There's some large parcels, as you pointed out. There are some buildings that are not being fully used or used at all that could conceivably support housing. Some of the upper floors in downtown, we're doing the French block, but I think there are other places in upper floors in downtown where they could be used for housing. We've got buildings like the funeral home on Main Street, which has been vacant for years. You can certainly imagine that being used for housing. But isn't that ultimately Jeff Jacobs' decision whether to use it for housing or not? The owner of that property. Oh, of course, yeah. The city is not going to, and I wouldn't want the city to go to individual owners and tell them, here's what you have to do with this property. What leverage does the city have then that's, is that leverage, neutral leverage in terms of not giving up funds, existing city funds to leverage or would you anticipate the city putting together packages? Like what? Helping with mortgages and things like that. I don't see the city supporting or underwriting mortgages for private owners, if that's what you have in mind. But again, we have spaces available, I think even getting into the conversation with the property owners with vacant property. Several years ago, I was part of a committee on addressing barriers to housing development in Montpelier and we had a series of recommendations, including addressing properties that are either being abandoned or being demolished by neglect and creating enforcement mechanisms so that property owners don't allow their buildings to deteriorate and become useless when they could be providing housing for people who want to live here. For renters in this city, would you see council revisiting having landlords put up their properties for inspection and pay for that on a regular basis? I think that that is something that's worth examining. In my years of working with tenants, it's very hard to get landlords to maintain their property. It's also going to be difficult to get tenants to complain about their property because they're concerned that they might be evicted if they do complain. One of the things that I've advocated for at the state level is a regular scheduled inspection system so every housing unit would be inspected. Could that be inherently inflationary on renters? And so far as it's like when businesses charge a business to be in their establishment, the costs that are incurred by them are passed on to the business. Isn't that the same with renters? There's always a cost and one of the questions that we would need to look at is whether the cost of the inspection program is going to be justified based on the scope of the problem. Tenants would certainly pay the cost. Not only the inspection but the remediation of the problem would be passed on to the tenants most likely. Everything a landlord does is ultimately paid by the tenants. Would that move make it more difficult? Are renters caught in a vice? On one end they have problems in their housing, on the other end if those problems are remediated they're paying more. It's a no win for the renter. I've heard that argument from landlords a lot and my concern is that there's a certain level of housing maintenance and safety that property should not be allowed to fall below and landlords should not be allowed to rent out properties that don't meet the pretty minimal standards and those are already set out in state law. Are there areas of the city but you spoke about some departments perhaps needing more staff, is there any area that you would offset that in? Is there any area of city spending right now where you can see an examination, periodically console exam and departments and it's a delicate balance, you know where you pick up sometimes you shed? Is there any area that you would see for possible cost savings or programmatic advantage? I think every area is subject to examination and I wouldn't say anything's off limits I can't tell you today that here's an example of something that I think we should cut because I don't know that there is one but I think every area needs to be examined for that. The Carlott project, the Taylor Street project, what was your thought on that? It dragged on for a decade and it's finally, they're putting shovels in this summer. What's your feeling on that project? I think that it's going to be beneficial to the city to have the transit system center and also to have additional housing there. It's been a tremendous effort by the city. I don't know what the city would have done, I don't know what the decision makers would have thought if they'd known this is how long it was going to take. The recreation department, is that properly sized? Recreation in this city, is that sized correctly? I really can't answer that, for years when my kids were using the recreation department they were signing up for the sports. I had a better feel for what was going on in the recreation department. I don't really know what they're doing now. The building is obviously a real mess. What do you feel about that mess of a building? Do you feel that a $5 million, $7 million recreation facility is merited? I can't answer that, I can't answer that without study. So you would possibly support increasing our capital borrowing by five to seven million for a recreation center. I don't think that's the message that anyone should take from what I'm saying. The message that people should take is that any expenditure, especially one of that magnitude is something that would need to be studied before we agree to it. The city council established years ago a bonding limit. It's an advisory limit, but it's been set. We have the methane project at the water treatment plant. We have the parking committee recommending a parking garage at state and main. We have a recreation facility that's being studied to five to eight million dollars. That would blow off the lid of that capital borrowing. Would you be in favor of changing capital borrowing to make it possible for the city to go beyond established limits? I'd be in favor of evaluating each one of these questions and determining whether the value to the city was sufficient to justify the expenditure. So it is possible that you would vote to change the city's bonding limit? What I would say is that we need to know what the city's needs, what the benefits to each of these projects are and whether they can be justified. In terms of the city budget for the last six years, they've tried to benchmark the budget to inflation. Would you favor that kind of benchmarking to inflation? A few years ago, the city had a series of workshops over at the high school and brought in people from all over the city to talk about what their priorities were, what they would like to see the city doing and what direction we would like to see the city move in. And I don't know if you were at one of those workshops. People were given little dots to say what was important to them. There were not many people who were saying the city should do less and the city should pay its workers less and the city should reduce the size of our staff. And so I think we need to pay attention to what the needs of the city are. And I think we need to be very responsible with the taxpayers' money. But we also know that taxpayers seem to support having an active city government. Do you feel that there's any sort of connection between low school enrollment, which we have now, and the highest collective tax rate in the state, or one of the highest collective tax rates in the state? Does that have an impact on younger families moving into this district? I think the primary impediment to families moving into the district is the cost of housing. And I don't mean the property tax. I mean just the cost of getting into housing. Is there anything that we can do to change that cost of housing? Even if we were to add on the margin 10, 15 different houses, wouldn't the demand just instantly chew that up? I think that there's a limit to how much new housing the market can absorb by year. I think we need to. The council has established a priority for developing new housing. The Regional Planning Commission has established benchmarks for not only Montpelier but other towns in the area to help support the anticipated need for additional housing. We've got the new zoning ordinance, which does. How was that? You were attentive to that, I imagine, having an interest in housing. Did that end up the way that you thought it would end up? And were you happy that it ended up where it ended up? I was more than attentive to it. I was working on it for many, many years. Well, bless those people, because I was going to say this was a multi-year project. It was a multi-year project. The other night, I joked to the council that I spend more time at council meetings than anyone who's not on the council. Might be a little bit of an exaggeration, but I spent, and other people on the housing task force, spent many years working on that project to create conditions for new housing development. One of the things that we see that I think is, so generally, yes. Could there be changes in some of the details? I'm sure there could be. And I'm sure that as we have experience with the ordinance that was passed, there may be things that need to be changed or that make sense being changed. But one of the things, as we talk about developing new housing, that we have in the city now is the ability for homeowners to subdivide their homes, to create apartments or turn houses into duplexes. And I think that that's something that could make a difference for people. We have people whose kids are grown, who are now two people living in a 4,000 square foot house, which is bigger than they need and maybe more expensive than they want to be in. But they also love their house and they don't necessarily want to move out. And so if they can subdivide that house and enable a family to live in the house with them or in their own home within that structure, that's a housing opportunity for people in the city. And we've had in Montpelier the first time home buyer program, which has enabled people to buy in the city and bring children into the school district. And in the long run, I think bringing young families into the city is going to be a good thing. I don't think we should be... I don't want to have Montpelier be a city where most of the people are... Where the senior center is booming. Well, I think it's fine for the senior center to be booming, but I don't think we want to have a city where you and I are the... Everyone's our age. One more on downtown, revisiting downtown parking. That's something that people are constantly complaining about in this town. How do you view parking, particularly parking in downtown? As I think about the development needs in the city, I always say that we have tremendous excess capacity for almost all of our infrastructure. Parking is one area where we don't have excess capacity. And I think we probably need more parking. I know that people talk about we want to have a walkable city. We don't want people to park right away, but I think about, for instance, the proposed hotel downtown with the parking structure right next to it. I think that if we... Within the TIF, so that it's paid for by future tax revenues. Potentially, yeah, and that'll have to be more fully developed, but I think if we see that happen, people will come to visit Montpelier, they'll park their cars in the parking garage, and they'll leave them there, and they'll spend all their time right in downtown. They'll be spending their money at our downtown restaurants, they'll be buying things at our downtown stores. And without the parking for the hotel, that's not going to happen. I've got one question. It's the most uncomfortable question, but it's the elephant in the room. And that's the controversy surrounding your appointment. In retrospect, when Anne knew pretty much that she was not going to have opposition in January, do you think Anne should have stepped down at that point and said that she's going to leave her console seat and then had two elections in district two? In retrospect, do you think that would have been better? There are two answers to that question. One is no. I think that we wouldn't have been well... The city wouldn't have been well-served to go that three months with that vacancy on the council. And two, the other part of it is that the appointment process that was followed is the process that is set for it in the charter, even if... Right. From that point on, we all agree that that is the process in the charter, but do you feel that just at that point in time, it might have been a better decision for her, for the town actually? I don't. And part of it is that even if she had stepped down earlier, there wouldn't have been a special election, there would not have been... No, there would have been two district seats. No. But one of them would still be a vacancy which would be appointed by the council because the charter provides for council vacancies to be appointed by the council. Now, if you're asking, should the charter be changed? Okay, should the charter be changed? I don't think so. I think what we've seen, this was unique. This process was unique in my experience. In the last five, ten years, this is the third council vacancy that's been filled by a council appointment. And the previous two didn't have anything like this level of acrimony. There was Angela, Terry, and Sarah. This would be the fourth. Angela was the one I was forgetting about, yeah. We never saw anything like the acrimony that we had this time around. And that's why I was asking the question. The acrimony is upsetting to me as well as you, as well as everyone, and like to get beyond that. Oh, yeah. This isn't what anyone hoped. I think that naturally I'm pleased with the outcome. But the process was not really consistent with the kind of community we hoped to live in. You and I live in District 2. How can we bring District 2 back together from this kind of acrimony at this point? What can be done to pretty much heal District 2 so it doesn't become a perpetual campaign all the way to town meeting day? Well, it'd be unfortunate if that happens. My job now that I'm on the council is to serve all the people in District 2. And that's what I'm planning to do. And my hope is that my track record will encourage people across the spectrum to support me. You know, I think of myself as I was going into these council meetings as kind of the ultimate what you see is what you get candidate. Because I'm pretty well known for my public activities in the city. I think people know who I am and what I stand for, and I'm not going to change. Now, you're known in this town for housing, but you also work with legal aid. What about our police department? Are there ways that the police department could be improved? From your legal aid perspective. From my legal aid perspective, most of our clients don't have. I'm not aware of legal cases that most of our clients have with the police. I can tell you that a few years ago when the proposal was to deploy tasers in the city, there was a committee to study the issue. I didn't get on the committee, but I was very vocal in my opposition to the deployment of tasers. A couple of reasons. One is that tasers are portrayed as not being lethal weapons, whereas in fact they are lethal weapons. And a certain number of people based on medical conditions or how they're used will actually die as a result of having a taser applied to them. That's typically a small percentage, but the other big concern I have with tasers is that if they're out there, they kind of lower the threshold for the use of force. I don't think we want that. I don't think that it's justified in the City of Montpelier. The Council people are, as you know, sitting in Council, that's not the only time that's spent for Council people. There's time in preparation, but there's also time sitting on organizations as a Council member. Which organization would you want to sit on? Which outside organization would you want to be the Council representative on? I'm kind of the new guy. So you get the low part of the totem pole. I may get the last pick. I'm not really sure. I know that one of the other members of the Council, Rosie Kruger, has indicated that she wants to serve as the Council representative to the Housing Task Force. And I think that's a great thing because she's very interested in the issue and has already given us some good ideas. I'm open to pretty much doing whatever. I know the Council has a seat on the Library Board. That they do Montpelier Live. You get a seat on any number of commissions, boards, public safety. I was just wondering if there was one that just caught your eye. When Connor came and spoke to me, he said that he wanted Montpelier Live. He wanted to work on the City's image with those people. You would stay away from housing. But other than that, is there another one that would just catch your eye, assuming another Council person weren't interested? Well, the things that I'm very interested in are public safety and also the library. And those are two things that I don't know what a potential role would be, but they're things that I'm interested in. And I just have one final question. We have some friends who are interested in moving to Montpelier, and they don't believe Sandra and myself. Why should they move to Montpelier? What's your opinion? Well, it's a funny thing. Probably 20 years ago, you and I had this conversation, and I told you how great it was to live in the City of Montpelier. And this is a great place to raise a family. My children have had a great community life and also a great education living here. I think that Montpelier has some really unique characteristics, partly because of being the capital city, but also because we have great people living here. As I said at the beginning, there's a lot of people who are involved in making the city the great kind of place that it is. And people want to volunteer at all kinds of things, and I'm a real booster, real cheerleader for the City of Montpelier. Fantastic. Jack, thank you so very much for coming to see us. You're welcome. Thank you for having me. This is our special edition of the Civic Forum. Thank you for watching.