 So I'm going to call to order the Winooski Liquor Control Board meeting. Please join us in the Pledge of Allegiance led by Deputy Mayor Hal Holston. Thank you. So we have just one item on the Liquor Control Meeting tonight. This is a first class, third class and outside consumption permit and restaurant license for the Fusion Cafe and Bar LLC located at 211 Main Street. And I believe our applicant is attending, yes? Oh, welcome. Bola, would you like to introduce yourself or say anything about your restaurant plans or correct me if I mispronounced your name? Excellent. Thank you. Any concerns from staff on this permit? All right. Are there any questions or concerns from council? Would someone like to move to approve the first and third class and outside consumption permit and restaurant license for the Fusion Cafe and Bar? Motion by Mike, second by Hal. All those in favor, please say aye. Motion carries. Thank you very much, Bola. All right. We look forward to seeing that new option on Main Street. And have a good evening. That brings us to the end of our Liquor Control Board meeting agenda. Can I have a motion to adjourn? Second by Jim, second by Mike. All those in favor, please say aye. Motion carries. I just realized that Brynn was joined and appears to no longer be joined. I'm going to shoot her. What's that? Okay. Thank you. It is 6.02 p.m. So I will call to order the Waduski City Council meeting. We'll start with agenda review. Are there any concerns about the order of the agenda this evening? So then it is time for public comments for items not included on tonight's agenda. I see two attendees in Zoom, but I believe they are both here for agenda items. There's no one present in City Hall. Meredith or Charlie, if you did have a public comment, not for an agenda item, feel free to use the raise hand feature. All right. So we will move to the Consent Agenda. We have the minutes from our Council meeting on October 4. We have the accounts payable warrant from 10.14 and payroll warrant for period 9.19 to 10.2. Are there any questions about the Consent Agenda? All right. Hearing no concern, do I have a motion to approve the Consent Agenda? Motion by Jim, second by Mike. All those in favor, please say aye. Motion carries. Thank you. So we are going to move to Council of Reports. Who's first? Hal, you're first on my screen. Can I start with you? Did not meet last Tuesday, as was planned. It wasn't broadly informed, so we need tomorrow. And I do not have a report this time, but we'll have to wait for our meeting. All right. Thank you. Jim. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Mike. Hello, everybody. I have nothing to report tonight. Thank you, Mike. Bryn, have you been able to connect successfully yet? Excellent. Welcome. We are in city updates. Can you not hear us? Is that the... Bryn, are you able to come off me? She says that she can't hear anything. Oh, no. That she's going to come to city hall. Okay. I will do my city updates. So speaking of city hall, I am here. You know, we are still not... We are still having mask requirements and social distancing here at city hall, but it is open to members of the public who wish to attend in person. And we are able to follow those guidelines. And we are starting to... We're going to make sure that myself or another member of council is present for meetings going forward until such date that we either go full in person or, you know, hopefully don't have to retract at all based on what's happening with public health guidance. Since our last meeting, I wanted to mention I was able to join the state director for housing and urban development and executive director of the Manuski Housing Authority to recognize a local resident, Habitra Katawoba for her time and volunteerism as a resident of the Manuski Housing Authority. There is a HUD program called Unsung Heroes of Housing that they were recognizing this Manuski resident for... She spent a lot of time and of her own time supporting the Housing Authority staff and her neighbors acting as a sort of liaison to help make sure that critical health messaging went out was received by residents. It was happening with operations within their building. So I just wanted to also share her name here publicly in recognition. I received an update from the acting director of aviation at the airport that they anticipate launching the public portal for access to the noise monitoring system this Friday. So we have a noise monitor here at City Hall. They have a couple others installed in the area beyond Manuski. And that noise data will become publicly accessible. They're gonna put out a press release on Friday that will have information for residents on how to access and we will share that out on our channels as well to make sure folks know how. Since our last meeting, the Finance Commission did meet. They approved changes to fundraising and scholarship policies which will come forward to us at a future date. And looked at last year's budget memo and budget book and offered input on how to make those items more accessible to members of the community. So I know Angela is using their feedback to make some tweaks to what we see this year and hopefully it'll be easier to engage with for us as well. Planning Commission met as well and continued reviewing parts of our gateway zoning and actually set a public hearing for November 11. That's gonna be an opportunity for public input on changes that are being proposed in the gateway zoning district. Following that public hearing, the Commission could make further changes. They could host another hearing so they could pass things along to us here at Council for further review. So we shall see. I was also able to attend a ribbon cutting at Park Terrace which is the new development on East Allen Street by Manso. This includes 45 units of mixed income housing that are affordable market rates and a few units that are managed by COTS for folks at risk of homelessness. There are both, there are Studio One and two-bedroom units there. So a project that meets economic, you know, economic affordability differences as well as household price differences which are goals in our housing. So I wanted to highlight that that is now a bit, you know, this has added some housing availability to residents in Winooski. Also of note, while that event was occurring, there was F-35 flyovers and I was inside of the building and it was notably quiet indoors. So I know that's a question I've heard as to whether new developments are addressing that, addressing that noise issue as they are constructed and at least in this case they were able to. The last thing I want to share is that I spoke a few meetings back about a task force in the legislature that is investigating changes to the people waiting in the state education fund system. So there was a study to, a study on our education funding and how to make sure that it equitably services all students. That was received in the legislature in 2019. This task force was developed to look at how to implement recommendations from that study. Hearing from leadership at our school district, they are not pleased with the direction the task force is going in and believe that should the, should the said recommendations not be fully implemented to update the weighting of people in education funding system, we may actually need funds in Winooski that we need to support our particular student body here. And so I have provided some testimony to that task force in the past and coordinating with leadership at our school on other outreach or advocacy that we can do to make sure that the legislature is hearing from Winooski what we think we need to support students here. And I wanted to bring this up for two reasons. One, they're hosting a, the task force is hosting a public hearing on October 29th at 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. It can be attended at the state house or via Zoom and I will share this information out in my mayor's update this week but I want to encourage me to share that it is important for Winooski to retain funding to support kids that need special education services, English language learners, folks coming out of families and living in low income and poverty. Those are things that the education funding tries to account for and what the study is saying we need to do more of. And I also just wanted to share this with the full council as well to get your support to continue advocating there and I'll follow up with you all after connecting with our school leaders this week. That is my last, the last piece of my update. I will pass it to Phoebe or John for city updates. It looks like a few John. Yeah, sorry, I do not have any updates. Great. I just have a couple of updates and they are related to Halloween. So we're still seeking volunteers to help support Halloween in Winooski and that includes for pumpkin picking on Thursday and Friday. So we're still looking for volunteers for that and to sign up for any of the volunteer activities you can email info at downtownmenuski.org and also visit downtownmenuski.org or slash Halloween. And we're also doing pumpkin carving on Saturday and Sunday the 23rd and 24th at the senior center and that's happening from nine to five. And if you can't make those carving days you can pick up as many pumpkins as you want to carve as long as you bring it back by a high level. All right, thank you. So we are going to move on to our regular items and first up is on for discussion. We have Charlie Baker here from the Chippin County Regional Planning Commission to share with us an update on our annual reports. John, Phoebe, I don't know if you have anything to add to that. I'll just add that we work pretty closely with TCRPC and their major resource and asset for us. Can't speak to Holly. Holly? It took me a moment to get pleasure here. Thank you. That's all I have. You're a great host. Thank you, welcome Charlie. Good evening, nice to see you all. And I always check to make sure that this is not about something that I ever reported to you about, right? Yes, it did. Okay, great. So this is, I think all of you who've gone through this before that, I think this is really my annual check-in, customer check-in with the city. So I'd like to raise a new view on the report and I'll show you on the small screen, but I can't see the fingers. So let me know if you're making a think that me or want me to talk. But the first thing to report is really just background. As the recompense mission, our board membership, it's a little bit about how we leverage your municipal duties to bring in taking federal funding to your community, your community, and at the bottom, it has your representatives on a core or a trans-particularized committee of planning and whom are by your committee. And I do want to thank you for your vast great participation and a lot you might be having. They're really valued members of the commission. Any questions for me just on the background? In the second section of the second page, I remember the project that we have done with the city over the last year. And I'm happy to get any feedback on how that has gone. Have you read any of the projects? Have you read any of the projects? Well, I will say that a lot of the work that you all support us with, like, Fonster Control Plan, the Elm Street stormwater, water quality planning, emergency planning, GIS. Like, there's so much work happening behind the scenes that isn't publicly visible that we don't talk about here that people don't see. That's actually really critical to our infrastructure, to planning and sustainability planning. And if I did my math right, there's like $200,000 in work that you all have done for us, so also helping with our fiscal situation here. So, I want to echo what John said, thanking you all for the ongoing assistance. I also will call out for Council, you know, the transportation impact fee is on there. CCRPC has done what we have asked to date. If we want to revisit that, that's something that we'll need to initiate at some point. Thank you, Mayor. I appreciate that. And, yes, I'll keep moving forward. And there's a third section on the first day we've moved some of the projects that are in our transportation program, which mirrors the state transportation outlook program, and what's in that program, the dial-in amount, and what we know about timing right now, and you're probably as well aware as I am that some of that timing can be, but it looks like a lot of stuff is in really this fiscal year. So, it hasn't started at the end of the summer. It may be starting in the spring, so maybe in the fiscal year. Any questions on those projects? I'm not meant to answer any of those projects, but I'd be happy to do that. All right. I know there's much more detail about all those things, and I do feel good. And then, in our work program, currently, as the Mayor just mentioned, there's a traffic calming policy that still works under way in this fiscal year. And then the last few pages have a lot of different things that we've been working on without regard to any specific community fatality, and why it works. I'm just going to cut out a few of those and then see if you have any feedback from me on any of those or other thoughts. One is that we are going to try to have a legislative form again in early December. And so, if there's any issues you'd like to have put on that table or on that agenda, please let us know. And I have no idea yet what we're planning to focus on, but we have some familiar themes about smart growth and permit reform and other things like that. So, heads up on that. The next topic at the bottom of page four, which carries over on page five, is on public engagement and racial equity. And this is just to let you know and really, since the last time we talked, we've engaged with the debugging firm, CTRP two walks through some equity work internally. That RECO did interview to understand what our Minutes of Power needs are doing. And you're trying to, I think, have one eye for whatever we've developed and things that we do. If it can be helpful to other Minutes of Power, we will share that rather than just fully focus things internally. And actually, let me pause it. That's a big topic. I'm sure for Bernoucchi in particular, if there's any feedback for us on that, I don't have a lot to report yet. Although I should say, we are hosting a November 6th equity summit. I'm hoping you all get insights and are aware of that and let me know if you did not. I should be attending that, and I believe that our equity director has registered as well, so thank you. That's great. Thank you so much. And we are trying to get to other FIPOC organizations and residents that are trying to make sure that we're actually hearing from FIPOC residents in that. I think what comes out of that will probably set a large part of the agenda into what we work on in the coming months. And represent Colton. Yeah, Charlie, good to see you. I'm involved with the planning team and so it's really taken nice shape, so thanks to you and your team for taking this on. I don't even think I knew that. Thank you for helping. Sure, no problem. It was keeping you hidden in the background, but that's great. Thank you for helping with that. And then the other I want to touch on is building them together. We issued a press release a couple weeks ago. Kind of talk to you about including kind of the first five year building them together campaign. We set out with a target of trying to build 3,500 new homes or 700 homes a year with 20% of the affordable. We did end up averaging more than 700 homes a year. But really we did not get to our affordable part here. We really did a hundred and five affordable versus 140 on an annual basis. So, you know, which is in the whole room, we got 512 more affordable homes. In fact, I think we're going to look at the big picture data. It's still very discouraging. The housing market is not really that healthy here. They can be very low for rent full. Fife is certainly on the ownership side of gone out. You have the inventory for things on the housing market are very fife. So, we're looking for things that would be helpful for us to kind of push in the next five year campaign. Can you share any thoughts or ideas or even if there's a question you want to think into a little bit more. We are actively thinking about what to do. We started about five years ago asking, really, a big part of it was financial asking the state to do a housing boss. We did end up doing it a few years ago, of course. Now that seems like a small amount of money with the amount of federal funds coming. So, I do think the resources are going to be all about money for affordable housing. But there are definitely a lot of other issues. How do we get housing is kind of a missing middle. Where the private market is building high-end homes. The affordable homes are getting built because of our organization such as housing costs and housing authority and stuff. But the missing middle, the workforce housing is still a big issue. So anyway, let us know if you have thoughts. I do think I'm kind of curious about that a little bit about what you've experienced because you have certainly, I think, building a lot of homes and getting a lot of redevelopment. It's just driving by. I think it's important that everyone is working on their gateway zoning districts. I'm glad that we could help with that way back then. But any perspectives coming from where you guys sit? I will defer first to Jim or Heather if you want to share anything. I was going to defer to Heather first. Heather first then Jim. The numbers that building homes together have are not entirely up to date for Winooski. We did meet the affordable housing goal. We exceeded the 20 percent and exceeded our proportional share of those 3,500 homes. So I think something is working in Winooski certainly. And I don't want to miss that in the narrative of we didn't quite hit the affordability. Winooski did. Yeah, thank you for that. And Heather, I haven't looked at the details. That doesn't surprise me. That makes perfect sense. Any explanations that you can offer as you work with other communities about why you think you're able to use those targets? It's a combination I believe of form-based code. I think form-based code is absolutely working. It's less expensive for people to develop here. And that predictability that form-based code gives people allows to know what the costs are going to be associated with building housing here. In addition, I think there's strong political will to be part of the solution with more affordable housing. And that comes to gamut from these households who have been strong opponents for it. And this has been something we've been targeting for years. So I think across the board it's just something an important value for Winooski. Yeah, I think it's great to see what's happening here. Oh. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Thanks. I'll just add on. I think what Heather said is exactly right, like the ease of predictability and permitting. And we've also managed to max my loan to housing tax credit applications, like we are taking full advantage of what's available in Winooski. And Winooski and Winooski and the agencies support them in developing affordable housing for that. Those two things together, predictability and ability to maximize, to give maximum advantage of those resources that are available at the state-of-the-art level with developers and the finance agency identify as why we're targeting that target or treating that target. Good. Thank you. Yeah, and is there anything else that I'm not going to review on the back of the end of the report? Or Mike, I don't know if there's anything else you'd like to highlight from your view. Not really. But Charlie, maybe can you give a little update on agency? Or is there an update? Yeah, the last site, I'm hoping you've heard what I've heard, which I think is their plan to do some construction work in the spring, I think. But I don't know, I'm always afraid to put a date on it, not knowing if there's one more piece of litigation or something else that could throw a monkey-wrench in it. And I'm sorry, I'm assuming that folks on the council know what the plans are out there. And especially, I think it's important to reduce you because it will help traffic as well as pedestrian access up to the Aged 15 area that Shaw is in cost of that area. Okay. Is it okay? Have you been getting updates from Michael Roy, the trans project manager? Yeah, I see the 16 DDI emails come through. And John, you're looped in on that. Yeah, we were pretty close to them, especially with the main three project. So our understanding is they're going to be starting the utility work, some of the underground work next spring and retaining wall work and installation of the multi-use path that's going to connect up to like dog plaza. And then the following season is when they're going to do the heavy transportation work. Yeah, John, I think might even be a three-season construction schedule. Yeah, that's kind of what I've heard too. Yeah. So as these things are never easy, apologies in advance for the pain. It won't go along with it. But I do think it will definitely function off better than how it functions out there today. As you haven't seen it, mostly because I've seen Wellington City Councilor's copy, but I don't know that there's a gentleman at Wellington, Tony Redington, who's been asking to get re-looped out to do a few roundabouts as opposed to the DDI design. I don't have any sense of future. I'm just going to take him up on that suggestion, but just in case you hear about that from some of your peers, they're having some female traffic in the last couple weeks about that. But as far as I know, it's still on track. Well, I don't have too much time out of your busy agenda unless you have other feedback for me or other questions about other things. Yeah, Council can raise hand. Yeah, I have a question about the elders in persons with disability transportation program. Let's see, that's on page seven. I'm just curious if there's what the plans are for FY 22 or the remainder of FY 21. I'm just rolling to where that update is. Sorry. Yeah, I think this is mostly identifying that part of our scope of work with DETRAN is to facilitate the union partnership. I haven't heard much in the way of other changes coming. I think they're still, to be honest, recovering from the depression or ridership that happened because of COVID. I think maybe on that Yeah, how do you have a sense for demand? How is it advertised? I feel like I have heard requests and inquiries about transportation, especially transportation for persons with disabilities and wondering what type of communications outlets and outreach you that are utilized with the program. And then, in this is my hope that we're getting the SSTA number to call for ride, but if that's not something that's really publicly aware, I'll try to do that a little bit and see what the publicity on it is and share that back with you. Okay, thank you. Ray, go ahead. Okay, just to chime in on that a little bit. So we have a fairly low allocation through that program because there's a ton of advertising of that because historically we, every year, have had our kind of threshold. So we do a little bit of advertising for our senior center to focus context with there. Definitely some through age well, as Charlie said, through some of the other kind of more county-wide channels, but a lot of the advertising is really word of mouth. Historically, again, through COVID, and then folks from there get shifted over to some of the other county-wide schools of the money, so age well has a larger allocation because of the max requirement. So eventually, we've knocked down a lot of advertising there just because we haven't necessarily had the capacity through our specific schools to accommodate further usage at the moment. And this is, I think, a financial issue for most of our municipalities. There has been, the demand has been increasing, and there are expensive trips. And so it's it's funnily, or funny, it's not even a word, it's I'm not sure it was designed kind of funny at a startup in Chidney County, the system. And so some of this talent is a part of the SFGA service and others are. It's not completely rational but it's also we now have, sorry I must be late in the day, I'm getting more frank with you. But it's, and we kind of dug into this a lot with United Way a couple years ago. And we really haven't come up with a better way to reorganize the system yet or have it work better. And this is just related to just how the transit system in general is supported by the property tax dollars from municipalities to do the match, which is I think what Ray was just referring to. And we are working on a study with GMT and D-Trans to bring back to the legislature about different alternatives for funding transit in our region and statewide. Just because it doesn't seem like the right thing to do to not offer a residence service out of this kind of a weird budget impact. So could we get to some sort of better place where it has isn't on the back of the property tax there to fund that system. But that is a bigger issue that's out there. Yeah, thanks for the details. I do think that there is there's interest out there for these services. And I'd be curious what kind of statistics or demographic data that is relied on for developing the budgets around this and coordinating services with GMT and FFTA. So just don't have to kind of go on any further with that at the moment, but just wanted to share that I've been hearing a level of interest there. I believe that. And Ray, are you able to share the situation with the city? I don't know. Yeah, I can definitely look into that. I think just to add on one other kind of wrinkle of the program is that based on the different entities that carry budgets, they set the parameters for their rides differently. So we have very restrictive parameters for the WBC program which are pretty much limited to medical trips at this point because again our budget is pretty small for the city portion. Other communities or other programs that have larger allocations have much broader parameters. So social trips, grocery stores, you know, trips to the mall to do the mall walking program in the morning. So it is to Charlie's point, it's a little bit of a patchwork and it's not the most cohesive for the customers across the county. It's definitely a program that I think needs to be looked at and I know Charlie said there's been a group through the United Way that's been kind of working with RTC to look at that the last few years. But I can definitely look into some of the little more detail on some of the data that we get. But because it's a small sample size it's, you know, one dialysis patient can really like skew the whole system because of the high volume ridership and like Charlie said, the trips are pretty expensive. So I can definitely dig a little deeper on that for some feedback. Thank you. Thank you then. Any other feedback for me or questions? All right. Thank you very much. I'm sorry. I was just going to say thank you for your time tonight Charlie and for you and your whole team and also to Mike O'Brien for continuing to represent us with you with the RTC. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, thank you. Appreciate it. And yeah, thank you Mike for serving, Mike's our immediate past chair now so it's all on our executive committee and very involved and also working on our equity leadership team. We also know them so thanks Mike and thank you all. All right. Have a good night. You too. Thanks. Good night. So we're going to move on to item B. This is on for an approval. It is an event permit for Halloween and Winnieski. I think Heather will introduce and I believe we have Meredith Bay-Tayak of downtown Winnieski joining us. Yes, absolutely. So staff has received our event permit application to the annual Halloween and Winnieski event and for the last two years that's been held in Rotary Park and the centerpiece of the event is 1,000, close to 1,000 as many of you can get. Lit jack-o'-lanterns in Rotary Park and that draws hundreds of residents and visitors to the center of our city every year. This year the event will be held Friday, October 29th on the day of October 31st from dusk until when it candles burn out and this is the first year that downtown Winnieski is taking a lead role rather than partnering with the city in a lead role so we're excited to have that and there will be a supporting partnership with the city so we kind of reverse roles here. We recommend approval of the permit and because the event is going to be sponsored by the city staff also recommends raising the $200 Rotary Park fee and you have a map that shows the Rotary Park being used for this event but there is an additional space request with this which is on Winnieski Fargo Way as well and that's specifically for the recreation park department to hold some activities for kids so I will have Meredith B. Hayek the executive director of downtown Winnieski to explain a little bit more about that. Thank you and welcome Meredith. Hi, I'm Heather so this is an event that's happened many times before and we're excited to bring it back as Heather mentioned we are going to be activating that space on Winnieski Fargo Way the hardscape just for two or three 10x10 pop-up tents we will also be utilizing a space near the river for projecting a movie and that those will all be under Jenny's purview from Reston Park so we're really excited to use that space to make it outdoors I think this is in part due to the fact that we're still in a pandemic and many children are not vaccinated but I also do think that utilizing an outdoor space considering the main portion of this event is also outdoors in Rotary Park I'm excited to see how this is received by this community and I'm really grateful to the city staff and especially Ray and his team for really working hard on this as always we're excited to be taking a lead role on this but we rely heavily on the city for everything so thank you thank you Hal I see you're here yeah I'm just curious Meredith what movie are you going to show or movies? Boris Karloff or I don't know I think it will be a family-friendly movie Ray can probably speak to the movie that's being cited I actually can't yet Jenny has made the decision but I will be on and people of all ages I'm not there's no Halloween movie with the return on Michael Myers come on I mean maybe next year any other questions from council looking forward to you guys did a great job supporting last year looking forward to seeing the new options added I will just quickly solicit is there any public comment or questions about this please use the raised hand feature in zoom alright so I am looking for a motion to approve the event permit as Heather described along with the the park fee waiving second motion by Mike second by Hal all those in favor please say aye aye motion carries thank you thank you all so much good night we are going to move on to item C this is another event permit on for approval I believe we have Steven Burbeco joining us as the yep and I'll introduce it quickly before turning it over to Steven we've received an event permit application for spooky street to be held October on Leclerc Street between Spring and Lefountain and effectively this is a Halloween for this wooden block party so they're looking for a street closure which is why it requires city council approval and Steven was also the sponsor of awesome awesome any questions or concerns from council sounds like a great event can I get a motion to approve the spooky street event spooky street event permit motion by Bryn second by Mike all those in favor please say aye motion carries thank you Steve have a good night all right we are moving on to item D this is our FY23 budget goal setting discussion that Angela will assist us with we are in a pretty good spot to start off given that normally our health insurance increases are between 10 and 13 percent and we are actually seeing a 7 percent increase for FY in 2022 thank you Angela I was going to say before we dive further into the goal setting just do a quick check if council have any questions about the schedule or if it looks good I think the schedule looks good yeah I don't have anything for you okay so let's go back to goal setting and do you want to just talk a little bit about the other assumptions baked in Angela yeah there's not a ton that we know yet we have made an assumption in our models so far that COLA for February to February will be about 3.4 percent that's based on some data that is from economic projections and then the grand list growth has been conservatively projected at 0.8 percent which is what we've historically used for this we will be sitting down with Eric Warwald and the assessors to come up with a more targeted number as we get closer to setting the final budget those few items that we've set out so far are projected to cost about $51,000 additional compared to the current year budget for a 0.73 percent increase but there are some unknowns the AFSCME contract does expire this year in June and will be up for negotiations so could have some additional cost implications the school resource officer is still under discussion with the school which is reimbursed to the city for about $55,000 so nearly a penny on our tax rate and then we have the property equipment down at 133 Elm Street that has the potential to leave the city and would impact our grand list value and I do want to call out something new in this memo at the bottom there you can see there's this new breakdown showing what an average homeowner, property owner is paying across services to give an idea this is something that we've talked about including the public presentation as well when we get towards term meeting day also want to add we had a discussion about this at the finance commission some general takeaways there so historically as a council in the last couple years we basically said we want to see level services not a reduction but not an increase while staying under the cost of living adjustment which is usually around 2% finance commission felt like that's a reasonable approach we've been taking we have already made significant investments in the main street project and the pool and on the other side of the tax bill the school renovation and that we may want to continue that approach we focus on leveraging ARPA funding for more short term needs and then taking the time to think about planning for the increased revenue with the TIF expiration in FY24 versus trying to add stuff in for next fiscal year so just wanted to share that general input as well I think the question tonight would be is that the approach we want to take or do folks feel like is something that we should be considering adding or do folks feel like we should be considering a reduction or a lower increase than our general 2% COLA target? Jim? So I'll weigh in on that second question first I think we generally do target COLA at least two times that I've been involved in this process we've used that as a benchmark that is going to be higher this year and with inflation with potential inflation as well I think we should be shooting for under COLA but I still think our historical increases in the high ones low two still seem appropriate as far as the target so in other words I wouldn't want to suggest that we shoot for COLA this year just because that I think adds pressure on pressure but I'd like to see us still maintain a level of increase that supports the programs and I know we're going to have some pressures from the pool and from some of these other capital investment capital improvement projects with materials costs so I want to leave flexibility for those I'm trying to strike a balance between staying at a historical low two high ones but not pulling up to 3.5 increase so that would be my initial reaction to that second question Thanks Jim I would be supportive of that approach as well Yeah I agree I don't think we should be matching COLA I think we should be aiming for under it I think that additionally we were overspend with the pool and I kind of anticipate a second year that we probably will be closer to what we spent this year just getting again our feet under ourselves with that and getting things dialed in for a second season hopefully we'll see more revenues with things opening up but that will you know offset and I do anticipate you know Main Street I don't know where we are with getting the easements set in but any delays there could increase costs so again to basically support what Jim mentioned already is anticipating some continued spend round capital projects what's being below the COLA because I do think that that will put significant strain on our residents Thank you Other thoughts? Jim I think you've come up a couple of times over the past couple of years we've seen an increase focused on housing issues in the city and with ARFA funds coming through that have a potential support for additional money for that and I think the challenge that the housing commission has been identifying around coordinating amongst all these different programs and pulling all the strings together and we always just say right and Heather says yes and I think that's awesome and I think she's doing a great job and I just sometimes wonder if you need more help Heather so that's something that I would be interested in hearing from staff about is whether there's need for additional staff support for addressing our housing related issues in this kind of unique time where we have extremely low vacancy rates we have high demand we have a lot of interest in building and we have a lot of different ways that people are talking about so I think that's something that I would be interested in hearing as part of the budget building process is if there's some staff capacity potential increase there to take advantage of these funds and make the best use of them so given that the COLA estimates for February to February which are in our personnel manuals and union contracts we have a lot of union contracts is estimated to be 3.4% and our salaries and benefits make up 57% of our general fund budget in the event that having those integrated in comes out more than 2% is there a place that the city should scale back or should we present to you that number based on that actual COLA? I would want to see that number for sure if I think about areas of scale back I just don't want to come back to you with something that goes above 2.5% because of a salary estimated to 3.4 plus step increases that's level services I feel like this year we may have over committed on some recreational services I'm not sure if any if there's room there to reduce demand and how much that would on demand on the general fund and how much that would even make a make an impact offset but it did feel like this year we might have over extended our commitments in that area and sometimes having fewer programs that are more robust in quality that may be an area that we can look into for consideration that would potentially impact revenue as well the increased recreation program was related to the ESSER contract with the school so the school is paying us to provide the extra programming so it's not based off of number of participants it's based off of number of programs offered so some of them are number of programs but some of them are participant based but the more programs you have the number of children that participate also increases we build out over $19,000 for the month of August I might say including the things that are tied to ESSER and the youth programming and look more at stuff that targets adults I know also we obviously we haven't seen the capital plan recently but like in the past in there was re re-woodchipping the dog park for example so like are there less critical items in there you know we resurfaced the tennis courts recently that is also the sort of thing that you can defer potentially so I'm not sure what else is included in that I think that's something to be looked at and then public works wise like I know we do landscaping activity mulching things like that is there room for reduction there versus you know the more critical pieces of public works like street sweeping and road maintenance I think both of these suggestions are probably on a smaller scale of financial impact but also may have what impact if they're different right exactly thank you there are other comments from council questions I guess I want to put a plug in I know there's a lot of funding for housing coming our way but I think that that needs to be balanced with support for child care services so I would want to see that there's some balance in there to the extent that ARPA fund is able to be accessed for that federal and state funds are able to be accessed for that you know I Angel I don't know if you can answer this but I wonder if there's a potential to use a portion of ARPA funding to do that sort of coordinating and focused work across whatever programs or whatever we decide to engage the money for um child care is definitely something that is listed under ARPA but um we would have to be very strategic in how we deploy that funding since it's only short term money um if it's something that we want to continue long term we would have to think about how we could fund it after the ARPA money leaves Hal I see your hand oh thank you mayor you know as we get further um into these conversations I just think it's important that we remind ourselves that in my view a budget is a moral document it really speaks to what we believe in so I think it's important to keep that front and center as we make these decisions on what to cut or what to not cut so that it does speak to our values thank you is there any other specific feedback that would be useful at this stage Jim alright I can put my hand down and let that question be answered first I think that would be useful Angela did you need is there any other specific feedback that you're looking for nope I have feedback to compile something to come back to council with in December okay Jim and I think the only other piece so I went through the policies and priorities and looked at what was desired pending additional resources so if we are looking at additional funds a way to certain commitments will be covered with ARPA funds that we don't have to cover this coming fiscal year some of those recommended ones I think are the housing and options there will be fall under that but the other one that kind of rose to the surface for me because I know this needs to be a topic in the planning commission and kind of balances on the housing and development side is our natural areas management and coming doing some natural areas management planning with not only goals recreational use but natural resource values climate change preparedness I think that's the number of things that are limited natural areas could support and so if there's capacity to move that from a nice if we had additional money into a recommended category on our policies and priorities that's another area that I would see worth investing in I did have a question I don't know if there's clarity on it now versus about the funds that are allocated specifically versus funds that are being funneled through state agencies and opportunities to leverage that for some projects programming outside of our own direct budget process for the next fiscal year I'm not certain what's being asked do you have a sense of whether or not we're able to leverage ARPA funds being funneled through ANR and agency of transportation I'm sure there'll be some sort of grant opportunities for us to apply for but we have on our books two million dollars worth of ARPA funds to use so I guess what I'm suggesting is areas that we might be able to postpone or look to say if there are areas where you couldn't apply and leverage through the state agencies through grants that may be a place to look for some trimming for the next fiscal year Heather I saw your hand briefly did you have something to add I'm on the housing front those funds I immediately was targeting the state ARPA funds to supplement our housing trust fund and I went to a webinar about that and found that it would be excruciatingly difficult for us to be able to leverage those funds to get for that specific use although I don't know it's kind of a developing situation with what is being funded and what isn't but at the beginning stage they were really targeted to the type of non-profit affordable housing providers that are looking at 9% low income housing tax credits that don't fall into that category so that one piece of it I was looking at that specifically yeah thanks for looking into that Heather I think my thought is for other areas outside of housing anticipating and already seeing some programs being posted for soliciting applications is there any public comment or question on this budget goal setting topic okay let's move on to item E oh I'm sorry Jim sorry I just did want to note that in the memo it called out that council has raised a priority around sidewalks before we didn't explicitly address it in this discussion but I think that is also that still remains a priority I think it speaks to our need to support especially our seniors people with disabilities and mobilized moving around the city that that is a continued need so I didn't want that to seem like that wasn't important because it wasn't raised verbally here I wanted to concur with that in the memo yep good call alright so now let's move on to item E our priority goal update for economic vitality I will take the lead on this but I do want to say that this is an effort because economic vitality really runs the gamut across departments here so if there's further information that you need you may be pulling in other staff members this is the first goal update on economic vitality and this is an update on the FY22 priorities that were set by city council with the leadership team at our meeting in June and those will really guide our initiatives working toward economic vitality above and beyond regular operations for the coming year you'll see before you the standard matrix that we do that lays out all of the priorities and the status of those priorities so whether they are proceeding as planned lower than planned started but not proceeding well or not started yet and for all of the priorities that were set at our meeting in June they are proceeding about how many of them are proceeding as planned and the rest are a little bit slower than planned just for the community because this is the first of these reports I'll give what the priorities are redevelopment of 17 Abenaki Way that's the development that was proposed for a municipal garage VEC office building in a hotel on Abenaki Way implementation of the legacy campaign to celebrate our 100 year birthday implement grant funded wayfinding scope so installation of wayfinding signage in downtown in the parking garage complete a grant funded equity audit with a consultant firm execute the goals of our Vermont women's fund grant working communities challenge grant management and implementation seeking funding opportunities to retain businesses and support recovery from COVID expand our downtown designation and to evaluate and potentially rewrite our form based code incentives for affordable housing and for environment for energy efficiency so I provided you with a memo that gives you a narrative update on each of those items I'm happy to walk you through any of those specifics or just take questions whichever you prefer I think most of this we are familiar with the previous ones so we can do questions or comments can I call one thing to your attention that I and I apologize for not having said it in advance there were two tasks that were separately that are part of the working communities challenge that were separately listed under the state connected people and so I have subsumed those into the working communities challenge and won't be calling them in the future so long as that's okay with you and just include them as part of implementation of the working communities challenge yeah and I think that makes sense given how the work of that grant and you know equity in general crosses boundaries like that I did you know that you brought it up I did want to say I saw in here that the grant leadership team in thinking about the equity commission is shifting a focus to potentially having an equity ambassador sit on each of the existing commissions and just wanted to share some excitement about that idea I could see real value in that and I've heard you know commissioners wanting more support in that area so that was exciting to me about here council have questions about any of these that they would like to have address I think I also wasn't surprised by what is delayed and what is not Jim go ahead yeah I was just going to ask maybe as if you did want to walk through the kind of status of the growth of the leadership or evolution of the leadership team and this kind of shift in focus on the equity commission I'd be just curious to hear more a little bit more background on that if there's anything more to share beyond what's written here I'm going to defer entirely to Yasmin because I have stepped out of that while I went out and applied for the grant I am now no longer part of that team so it has been fully turned over to Yas who is absolutely hitting the ground running and shepherding this through thanks thanks Heather Jim I just want to make sure that I'm clear on what you were asking are you asking about the development for new members coming on to the leadership team kind of the way that that has shaped or are you talking specifically about the talks that we're having around how the equity commission is going to be formed and operated I rolled both of those into the question but I think I'm more curious to hear an update on the thinking and discussion around the equity commission transition to equity ambassadors and kind of what what I feel like this yeah I'm just curious like what those discussions are what the kind of realization has been and kind of what some of the kind of power that you see in this and how we can kind of empower these ambassadors not only to like represent equity but actually take power and move what things forward in those commissions and with the council okay yeah that makes sense too so the conversations that we're having on that team specifically are around you know the current structure of the commissions and how you know if we're looking at equity work like you said we're looking at how it intersects with everything that we do within the city so if we have a separate commission that is just to be looking at equity that means that we're still going to have to be aggressive and pay attention to the work that every other commission is doing anyway and so we were trying to figure out how we were going to kind of build an efficient system to ensure that the work that each commission is doing is being brought to the table and that there's equity led for all of those groups and so we started you know throwing around different ideas on how to restructure kind of an equity commission it was you know something that came up on the leadership team and that I on the WCC leadership team and that I brought it to the city leadership team and we've kind of been bouncing it back and forth since then trying to figure out what the best model is going to look like but it seems like we are leading more towards having like a representative that is kind of a trained equity somebody who who has lived experience somebody who knows equity pedagogy you know sitting on each commission to be able to bring an equity lens to the table so that when you're considering project when you're considering work budget items things like that there's at least someone there at the table who has the experience to be able to bring that lens into that work and then the you know the tricky part is like the reporting structure there because we still are going to have to have some sort of you know some sort of structure where that team of people gets together to meet to talk about what the different initiatives are so that's that's the delay trying to figure out how we can make that efficient and not have to ask volunteers who are going to be in these positions to kind of double dip and have two meetings a month when they you know the expectations will necessarily mean you know for a traditional for a traditional group the traditional commission it's just one meeting a month typically I think a couple of them meet twice a month but so that would there would be a little bit greater expectation for folks so we're trying to kind of weigh that with how we can support folks to be able to do that on the different on the different commissions and get information back to my department and then you know to the equity or to the entire leadership team and then to council it's a little bit of a process figuring that all out yeah and it's great to think about what the burden is and what we're asking of people and I think I guess I'm hoping that the first thing I was thinking is how are they also going to then engage with council so that they have that direct line and access so that we can benefit and not benefit but make use of and build on the work that they're doing but I'd love to see the council liaison have an active role in supporting and then bringing that work back to the council too I think because yeah you can ask them to do two meetings let alone three or five meetings a month so I think that's that sounds really great thanks for sharing yeah no problem thank you Heather can you speak to the expanded downtown designation you know it kind of has just a short summary in here but do you have a sense for complexity timeline yeah so we have to do a four-year update and check in it's an eight-year designation we did that last summer where we report on everything that has happened in our designated downtown there's a bunch of statistics that we have to provide and during that conversation we met with both the head of the downtown program at the state and also with the head of the neighborhood development area because currently our form-based code gateways are all neighborhood development areas which provide some benefits but not a level of benefits you get from a downtown designation in that meeting I raised the subject of us potentially expanding our downtown designation there was support for that but one of the conversations was that something that might normally happen when we do our redesignation of our downtown so that would be another four years from now so I think there's more and there is a list to that so I think what I would prefer to do is speak with Gary Holloway at the Vermont program and see what he would recommend to us and follow his advice on that so you know there is a benefit and doing it sooner rather than later would be great but I want to have an understanding of how likely it is for us to be able to do that this year as opposed to holding off until we have to re-designate our downtown. Yeah I'd also be curious about pros and cons of you know the demand on your time and other staff's time to move that forward as well as the offset of if we would miss out on any critical funding opportunities available for the end of 2023 2024 when allocation of funding is required with the federal ARPA funds. Yeah I mean I think that it would with the ARPA funds I don't believe would be impacted there are huge funding opportunities that are associated with the designated downtown so you know we have leveraged millions of dollars because of that downtown designation in grant funding that would only we would only be able to apply for within the downtown so I think at very least if we were able to in some expeditious manner make it count towards the change the neighborhood development areas to a designated area I think would benefit by that but I definitely think there is some math to do weighing what kind of commitment we're looking at for my time to be able to do that versus doing it all at once with that re-opening our designation of a whole so definitely that will be part of the conversation. And how would that roll up to form-based code planning commission work and CCR PC work? It really wouldn't impact any of those it's really about getting that designation and that's making us eligible to apply for the program it would give some act 250 relief there are a bunch of benefits that come with the downtown designation but it wouldn't roll over into commission work it would primarily be it would be me and some of Meredith's time I believe putting that together. Okay great thank you. Are there questions from council? Any questions from the public? Again you can raise hand and zoom. Is there anything else staff would like to highlight or get feedback on? All right. Well thank you very much for this update. Let's move to item and F and get I'm sorry item F and get a similar update for the safe healthy connected people priority area. And I drew the short straw tonight so I will do the table set and what did John say I earned a morning off of changing chlorine tabs at the pool so thanks for that but happy to present this report to you all you know similar to the economic fatality approach I think tried to include some context here at the bottom with just a few words about the details of why we felt like the status was listed as it was there was one item as you'll see listed in red which I will probably ask John to speak to a little bit the regional dispatch piece since he's been our point person there I think again the pieces that are yellow are fairly predictably so certainly happy to answer any questions on those but overall I think a pretty good first quarter report for us thought that together and I guess happy to let John talk a little to the regional dispatch and then take any specific questions you might have. Yeah so good evening regional dispatch I listed as red the delays and the operational start-up there's several cities and towns trying to figure out how to how to become part of a regional much larger regional one entity type operation that has a lot of moving pieces there's a lot of needed funding for capital investment and start-up costs community is in a little different place as far as obtaining those those monies to do the start-up and so last meeting it was voted to delay the operational start-up to 2223 it was on track for 2122 so for Winooski that builds in another year I hesitate to say another year I believe it will probably be longer than a year for those start-ups there was another meeting this morning and the talk about federal funding it was been turned down through the FEMA grant there is some local communications money through Homeland Security but they will not fully fund the capital request it will likely be around one-fifth of what's needed so it's around $200,000 it's not small by any means but it's not nearly enough to fund the capital needs so again all the participants continue to talk through those pieces the next meeting will be in January for Region of the District A.G. wasn't the space secured already was there a delay in this or has there been a shift in the space that this was going to happen so there was a verbal commitment from South Burlington under manager dorm to hold that space I mean not charge and not lease it with the thought that this was standing up in 21 with the vote to delay to 2223 the city of South Burlington hooked up that free offer off the table and none of the communities at this point are willing to start to fund some of the operational pieces that would secure that space the executive director that sort of thing so essentially I don't know the status of that space but I believe it is on the market okay thank you G any other areas that you all would like some more detail on questions about again happy to answer those I do have one I just have to locate the section do other folks have questions while I am trying to find my note go for it Bryn I'm curious about the tower ladder replacement I'm it's hard to tell from the summary if there's plans to put out an RFP for that Angela can help me out but that is a purchase that will have to go through a big process absolutely absolutely would require it and in addition we do need to explore financing in order to make that acquisition and is there is there a reason why we like for insurance or other reasons why we would need like a brand new truck versus seeing if other municipalities out of state are retiring a truck that might need our needs so I think all options are on the table you know buying a specialized piece of equipment like that used comes with risk not we with our last purchase we did buy a demo and save you know almost $200,000 on that purchase by buying a demo so you know those options absolutely are on the table and the best interest of them is to thank you question for chief Hebert welcome the update in here mentions the PD has filled two out of three open positions recruiting is continuing for the third position back in April we had you know you had shared having three excellent candidates that you wanted to hire with the third candidate why is this third position open sure good evening everybody so what happened with that third candidate is he's still interested in relocating to Vermont he's currently a Florida resident his due to some family health issues he was unable to relocate immediately they're trying to navigate that to see if there's some other living arrangements for that family member to allow him to move but that's what happened with the third candidate so it's still this is not really a change in a situation it sounds like the staffing scenario has not changed there's some delay with this one candidate right and you know there's no guarantee that he'll even be here we're still actively recruiting we actually have two more fine candidates that have trying to navigate through the process to get through the basic testing into the police academy and hopefully one of them will do that by December 1st so to my recollection the conversation in April I've been to add a third position specifically because of the candidate pool um so I do see a difference here like if the candidate pool has changed why do we still want to move forward with renew hire so the names have changed but there's still our two top candidates are both from the BIPOC community so we're still looking to diversify the police department just different people and the reason that we would still follow through on this third hire is we have the anticipated retirement of detective Niece sometime between I think realistically he said January 1st and May 1st is when he's anticipating retiring he's going to be his replacement okay thank you for clarifying that sure I wanted to note on the last page the welfare check updates I certainly have heard a bit about the new default space and I've I've seen increased foot patrol down there and additional public work staff working on cleaning up some of the litter down in the area I think that goes a long way to make it feel like a safe space for all residents and business occupants to use and utilize so just appreciate the responsiveness to that so thank you for capturing that here thank you appreciate that yeah I think this is something to call out for members of the public who aren't sure what we are doing to address those concerns that the PD was really actively involved I can do a little summary if you'd like sure okay so through front porch form and some other social media avenues I'm sure most people know that we have a small homeless population that's kind of congregating between the parking garage Champlain Mill underneath the bridge and bus stop it's a complex issue these people are not only facing homelessness but some have mental health issues substance abuse and alcohol issues obviously they're homeless which is a whole other issue and a lot of the complaints that we have are pretty benign public urination things that make people uncomfortable but not necessarily high level crimes and what we try to do rather than ticket these people as we try to go down and continuously not on a daily basis but I'd say several times a week that we're down there and we try to interact with them and just remind them of behaviors and if they want the bus stop to stay locked in a place to get out of the fold that they need to act in a certain way and not make people uncomfortable we do want to use those services and encourage them to discontinue the inappropriate behaviors that make people uncomfortable but when you're dealing with people with some mental health issues their behavior isn't something that they can always control and it makes people uncomfortable and that's why we try to have as many contacts along with the community outreach team with these people as often as possible to support them thank you for that it's a great challenge that your team faces and something most of us don't have to address on our own I have one more question on one of the updates on here probably potentially for jazz under the WCC work the part about develop and executing a plan for commission outreach for membership and appointments just wondering if there's any like specific challenge may just be capacity or support that would be useful to help with that effort and I can jump in too while jazz is getting online here I spoke a little bit about this last week in preparing this you know I think we've had some good luck with recruiting membership for commission so we've seen a lot of those seats that were vacant early in the year fill which is great I think one of the things that in a few instances we're still struggling with and jazz had done some analysis of what we're doing with the membership with IBG as part of our equity audit is that the commission still are not getting to the point of being representative of the community from a demographic perspective which is why we left that as a yellow so there you go and yeah I'm going to hand it to you from here sorry I just stepped out for a second just go ahead and repeat the question for me yeah I was just asking for if there's specific support you're looking for or is this more of a wait and see what the audit reveals before making a plan yeah not currently because one part of the audit is actually community engagement like stakeholder engagement in this process so once we are able to I kind of really identify where the gaps are there and kind of where we're falling flat when it comes to recruitment and getting people engaged with the city then we'll be able to take their recommendations create a strategic plan to address it so that is kind of a wait and see situation okay that makes sense thank you are there any other questions from council on this update anything else staff is seeking feedback on or wanna have it? I don't think so any questions from the public I guess one more question and Jim I think you might be able to speak to how are the conversations going with the school resource officer when's the next meeting for that sure and John feel free to jump in as well since you've been all the same conversations I've had so they are continuing and we've had it seems like the consultant has had a challenge in securing participation from students and to some extent teachers and I think there was a bit of a question as to why this was happening but I got the sense from our last meeting that part of it is a bit of fatigue on the types of questions that are being asked and that the school board has already done a process for this discussion and there's a sense that maybe some of the teachers and students felt that they've already answered this question around what safety and security is and so for us to ask that question again isn't really motivating for attendance on how the conversations have progressed we had a good discussion with Chief Heber and Jason Officer Dider and Sean McMahon and Superintendent they presented their materials and we got to dive into some of the kind of mechanisms that they have and we had this stakeholder listening session last week I think the group seems to be pivoting towards what models of safety and security could not include an SRO might be and putting those up as potential options to discuss and using that as a way to engage people in a new conversation that hasn't been had yet so I think that's where I see this process going the timeline is extremely tight and the likelihood that we can actually have fully vetted models done by the time November 15th reckoned due date comes by is pretty much impossible so I think the group has more work to do if the group decides to recommend this there could be more work to do beyond the November end date that's my read on it right now but John I don't know if you have a different take on that yeah I agree with that I think we'll know for city budget purposes what we're going to need to do but I think like Councillor Duncan said the work's going to continue as we're just sort of diving into I think some of the meat of this discussion looking at the different models that could be implemented but then having to circle back with the school and Chief Heber and others to see operationally how does that look where the costs so it's not something we're going to have a I don't think we're going to have the full recommendation by November but it'll continue yeah and the superintendent will be in touch with us by that right after following that 15th deadline so that we know for budget planning thanks I appreciate the update anything else before we move on to item G I would like to call a 5 minute recess so may we reconvene I have 7.36 let's reconvene at 7.41pm oh I am muted okay alright it is 7.41pm so let's reconvene the Winnieski City Council meeting we are on item G in the regular agenda this is an update on the City Manager hiring process so what you have before you is a memo where I have attempted to capture what we discussed at our last meeting about how to move forward with this process and then I also just wanted to update verbally you know we had when we talked about the hiring process at our last meeting we had basically instructed staff to come back to our next meeting so this one two weeks later with a recruiter recommendation but after speaking with our HR director about that like it wasn't viable so we have extended that timeline we are expecting in December to get a recommendation from staff on a recruiter to engage so in the interim I just wanted to make sure that you know what I've outlined here reflects what you recall from the discussion and how you want to see this um hiring process proceed so you just said so aim to bring recommendations November 1st this was in the memo I thought I heard you say December um I might have typoed it yeah where does it say that yeah it does say November 1st staff should be bringing us a recommendation for the first meeting in December that is December 1st so that's a typo that I will ask to have corrected thank you Jim so the next step in December 1st we would get a recommendation on a recruiter to engage to then begin the process so we would be waiting until then to take the next step yeah so and and I tried to capture that here too like we talked about working with the recruiter to establish a realistic timeline and maybe get input on our process so I think that's also if we go with a staff recommended recommendation like engage a recruiter then we can have some follow-up with them to really finalize what the process and timeline look like like a more firm level than what we're talking about here and CVS your hand please thanks um and I just want to clarify that um I have gotten quotes from a number of executive search firms so there is a possibility that we will be able to bring around a recommendation on December 1st but as Christine mentioned there is a lot of back and forth when talking to those executive search firms about the scope and the planning and there's a lot of information sharing even before we get to the point of getting a sort of robust proposal so there's a lot of back and forth that goes into kind of the early stages but the December 1st is a at the latest deadline so kind of I guess I think answers my what my next question will be but is this a an issue of timing and our scheduling especially you don't have multiple options between November 15 sorry November 15th and December 1st so I would have run a 2nd November meeting is and our 1st December meeting is like if we met in between that would you have a recommendation ready or is it that you really need until December 1st? I think it would be it's possible if we met between those two dates but we could have a recommendation ready alright there's some commotion here I think my kind of leading to that was if there is a need that council comes back in between that like I don't again I don't want our process that they state the timeline if we don't have to so if the only thing that's in the way is our meeting schedule I would hope that you can potentially consider a special session for that action and obviously that's up to you madam there but yeah if Phoebe tells me I feel like we're ready to present you with something then I can solicit the rest of council to see if that's possible I yeah are there any other questions does this memo look good so I wanted to make sure we had a general update there don't need any votes on this moving on to item G this is on for discussion approval this is an interim city manager appointment so Wendy would you like to come up and join us so at our last meeting in executive session we met with Wendy Harrison a candidate for it looks like I'm pointing at you over here she is a professional town administrator and provides interim service as a career and so after speaking with her working with staff council we had a chance to meet with Wendy we have put together an employment agreement to bring her on to be an interim as we complete the permanent search and hire process to bring necessary capacity back to staff you know it's already been four months plus that we've been without someone in that role and Angela can confirm this but I believe the rates and everything that are in here we can cover this with what we had already budgeted for the permanent manager position that is correct in addition to the hiring firm so this is not news to anyone on council but would like to give you Wendy a moment to introduce yourself to the public thank you mayor and hello council and staff and members of the public my name is Wendy Harrison sorry I can't be fully I'm the masked person I have been in local government for 25 years in Vermont I've served as a town manager as a village manager and as a town administrator I've also worked with a housing trust in Wyndham County I live in Brattleboro I'm going to be commuting on a regular basis I'm also very active in transit which that came up today I serve on the local transit authority most of my career was in Florida where I did local government management as a profession and then I also served as a council member in the town of Jupiter which was good experience and I think it helps me to help councils one of the roles that I would play here is to give the community time to make a thoughtful search for a permanent manager so that you don't need to be in a rush it's a really important process but I do I appreciate the opportunity to to be here I've I've admired Winooski from afar you're doing some really neat things I expect to learn from the community and if you have any questions for me I'm happy to answer them thank you council any questions for Wendy or about this agreement or I was wondering if it would be worth mentioning area of focus during this oh yeah so the interim role Wendy is going to be covering sort of basic government operations keeping things on the tracks with the city with City Hall and then she will also be able to help take the lead on the budget planning process outreach and discussions and planning and town meeting day and all resident voting and supporting the clerk's office with that outreach and preparation we can also as needed add additional special project and initiatives to her plate but those are the ones that we discussed basic for starting out are there any questions from the public alright I am seeking a motion to approve the interim city manager appointment of Wendy Harrison so moved second motion by Hal second by Jim all those in favor please say aye aye thank you yes thank you very much so we are going to move on to item I this is on for approval this is a municipal planning grants resolution there are two of these Heather and I suspect they're related they are related so we have applied for municipal planning grants for various initiatives and received them for the past five years so this one is the standard one so I am requesting approval to apply for the municipal planning grant in the amount of $22,000 the match for that I would plan to do $3,300 which is slightly more than what's required of the grant application but it gives us extra so it's been a practice that I have taken up over the last couple of grant applications and that is already included in the proposed FY23 community development budget the CDC budget so we would utilize the grant to allow the continuation of our equity policy work specific to housing by allowing the city to hire a consultant to develop an equitable housing plan for Winooski so this really builds on the FY22 council priority goal of looking at housing quality issues in the city which we're just starting so specific concerns that have been brought up in the community are things like the absence of incentivizing multi-bedroom housing for larger family sizes and looking at ways to pose systemic gaps in access to safe healthy and affordable housing so what we have going on right now with the equity consultants IBG one of their focus areas is housing so we will use the results of that to then feed into this consultant's work and maybe that we work with IBG again on this to take a deeper dive into housing equity have any questions about that thank you Heather so like reading through this and the next one about bylaw modernization I I feel like we have this information it's in conversation we talk about challenges that we know exist and we know what our goals are it feels to me like we've kind of had a capacity gap in being able to bridge that versus like a lack of information I think it in some cases that's true we haven't delved into housing quality issues at all on the housing commission and one of the things you know we've taken it a step at a time working through different issues I would I suspect that we're going to find that there are big things that we need to shift in order to address housing quality just based on the fact that we have some of the oldest housing stock in Chittenden County and you know on average 20 years older than Chittenden County as a whole so I think that probably there are some gaps here that we have not yet done to discuss and there will be some things that will emerge from that but I do think that there are some things that we need to do to address that but I do think that there are recommendations on changing I also think that sometimes having an external set of eyes bringing forward recommendations to some of our boards and commission may help to really make the case for making some changes so that's my hope here Thanks I do think that I think that absolutely will come into play here as well One thing I've had about that is that it would contain some of our housing quality issues will overlap with that and there may be a substantial portion of that circle that won't so this grant presumably allows us to take that public building registry discussion that's outside that circle that you could see coordinated through this That's exactly how I'm envisioning so there are multiple priority areas within the housing work plan this year that would really fall under this and kind of be synthesized by the consultancy here When you say action oriented steps are you thinking like recommendations that would come to council on changes to policy and ordinance that would specifically address some of the shortfalls that people have already identified as the mayor was pointing out that we know what some of the gaps are these would actually be like this is how you would change it and it would be a slate of things so it wouldn't just maybe some of it would be bylaw changes to our zoning some of it would be ordinance changes I think there's a bunch of different things that would work in conjunction to assist with those Are there other council questions? Any questions from the public? I'm excited about what I'm hearing in detail Can I have a motion to approve the municipal planning grant resolution Motion by Bryn Second Second by Hal All those in favor please say aye Aye Motion carries item J bylaw modernization grant resolution So this is a new opportunity that's being offered in FY 22 So the Vermont Department of Housing and Community Development has $500,000 to grant to municipalities for land use development and zoning bylaw updates in support of pedestrian oriented development pattern that increases housing choice and affordability within smart growth areas which we absolutely are So again, based on the housing commission and planning commission's interest in looking at zoning bylaw updates to support the development of multi-bedroom units and affordable housing in Winooski This request would be an application for the bylaw modernization grant and the grant would again be utilized to hire a consultant to work with the community the housing commission and the planning commission to develop recommendations and draft language for zoning changes that would support the Winooski master plan housing goal So I think really part of this is facilitating a community conversation about our values and about how we could go action items that we could change in our bylaws that would support those values and you know we charge planning and to a supportive extent housing with bringing us recommendations for updating incentives to increase housing that meets our goals more than two years ago it's been a long conversation there's been a bit of struggle there so I could see this being helpful in ushering that process along Yeah and also what I would ask working with the consultants that they use the zoning for great neighborhoods publication from the state which specifically covers bylaws that we might look at and then work with the planning commission on draft language that would work for us in Winooski based on community feedback and I think that will create a level of comfort that might allow this to move forward in a way that it has passed far Yeah and a lot of our regulations kind of align to pieces of that zoning for great neighborhoods already a well well research you know recommendations that have come from the state of Winooski Yeah and the housing commission is I have been charged with drafting a memo on behalf of the housing commission to the planning commission calling out and highlighting the specific areas where we're already doing well and areas where a deeper dive into our bylaws might be helpful and what specific action items are useful so we're kind of starting the ball rolling from the housing commission and this would be taking the next step with that Are there any questions from council on this one? So you said Heather that this is a new grant, is that correct? Yeah that's correct so I think this may be one time funds that may be ARPA I know that this is the first time that this has been offered and I believe it's a one time situation and I did not mention but I have included a match in the FY23 community development budget for this but if we are if we actually adopt the bylaw changes as a result of this the match is forgiven Is there a timeline of when that adoption would have to happen in order for the match to be forgiven? It would be by the completion of the grant so generally it would be if we received it in January it would be in FY23 it would be probably May of FY23 It feels like a tight timeline It is a tight timeline but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing considering that we want to be moving this forward so I think that's more an incentive at this juncture And is 25 the max that you can apply for? Yeah So is this primarily just to ensure that I'm clear with what the intent is primarily to facilitate a community conversation? I think it's to facilitate a community conversation that I think is necessary for for us to know which pieces to move on and to feel comfortable moving on those pieces but also to draft language to assist in drafting the language with the planning commission so that there's a comfort level that we aren't opening all kinds of strange loopholes and that's something that I've seen previously is a concern that in moving forward with any draft language we may be opening ourselves up to all kinds of unintended consequences so I really think that facilitating role is important I appreciate that I definitely think that there would be concerns so I think anticipating that and addressing that head on is an opportunity like this Any questions from the public on this item? Hearing no concern would someone like to move to approve the bylaw modernization grant resolution? I move Second Motion by Bryn, second by Jim All those in favor please say aye Aye Motion carries, thank you Next is item K This is on for approval This is a Winooski small business loan application Yeah, so this has been warned with an executive session in case you want to get further details there's confidential bank records that are included in the materials that we consider as a loan committee but we have received a loan application for a tier 3 loan those tier 3 loans are considered higher risk loans and they're really the purpose of our loan program in general we try to be the lender of last resort for people who don't have access to traditional forms of fit so the council appointed loan committee met on October 7th to evaluate the application based on the program criteria established in the policy guidelines for the fund the committee recommends approval of a $30,000 loan the loan application was for $60,000 based on the scoring the scoring on the evaluation criteria came in at 50% score out of a possible 100% which is the bare minimum in order to be awarded a loan we've set that threshold as a committee you must have at least 50% of those points in order to be awarded and so we've aligned the the award amount with that 50% and come in with a recommendation to approve a $30,000 loan for hype nutrition and with this loan program there's no there's no limitation on the number of times you can come back and ask for another loan so our recommendation would be that should the business need additional funding after completion of one successful year of payments they could come back with another application for remaining funds if they so desired right so it's time for any questions from people if Heather if someone asks a question that you think should not be addressed publicly please let me know and I can yeah we don't really want to talk too much about personal financial situation business owner financial situation but at a high level if you have questions happy to take those and I'll let you know can you speak to the structure of the loan program the which piece of the structure so clearly there are at least two tiers a tier three and tier four yep sure sure there are two others how are we backing that what are you know or just a little bit more detail about the program structure yeah absolutely I apologize so we established the program in 2016 and there are three tiers that banks refer to tier one tier two and tier three loans so initially we only were really looking at supporting tier three loans and those are about amount of you know credit worthiness and risk the tier four that came in is at the beginning of COVID when I rewrote the emergency I rewrote the program to create the emergency bridge grants for businesses during COVID when they were shut down so many of our businesses were shut down so we just called that a tier four because we already had it we already had a tier system so that's not really related to the tier system that's used by banks but so we generally fund tier three and tier four and this is not eligible for a COVID emergency grant that business did not exist in Winnowski during the closures for COVID so this is a new business so we went back to the original tier three loan so if they didn't qualify for a bank loan then they come to our program and we consider them as a tier three and is this a zero percent interest loan is that the director? No it is not it's giving them access to a loan that they wouldn't have access to otherwise okay so it is not we're not paying down interest on this as we would with the tier four loans as we did with the tier four loans okay bye yes considering it's a high high-risk loan what is the protocol if the loan is not paid back? yeah these are all high-risk loans so for one of the tier three loans that we give it's a high-risk loan so nothing different here and we have had a business default on loans so we have in our MOU with Opportunities Credit Union they can perform a service for us trying to collect on those loans we have not done that in the past generally they will do I think it's 60 days worth of collections and then our fund will pay off that loan so it's all credited against our our funds so currently I also did not say that currently we have 206,627 dollars and 86 cents available in the fund so it's nowhere near used up but they are all high-risk like so there's always a possibility that they won't perform and there's really no protocol to lean wages or anything to get the money back correct? I mean we could technically pursue all avenues but I think that it has been the city's perspective that these are risks we're willing to take in order to support people having a leg up and starting businesses so it's not been really our our perspective that we want to chase people down when they are already having a business failure so how many loans have we given out since this started? do you recall? I don't know off the top of my head it's a handful it's probably about 10 Angela do you know since the most recent iteration we have granted I believe three but one declined oh yeah the tier three you mean emergency loans we've given out several of those as well I'm just looking for a track record are they more success stories or are they more just handing money out they're more success stories than not they're perfect yeah most of the tier four COVID relief loans have been paid back in full already we only have one outstanding and then the remaining tier three loan that was issued is currently performing that's great good thank you any other questions Jim? general like how many loans have ended up in this 50% scoring eligibility range right like they usually we have many of the both meeting higher scoring eligibility the both are higher we have declined emergency loans to at least one business that scored lower than that so we have applied the threshold in the past generally they've been higher than 50% any questions from the public if there are no more questions from the council somebody could make a motion to approve this small business loan application don't move motion by Hal second by Mike all those in favor please say aye the motion carries thank you thank you very much onto item I also on for approval this is the Winooski small business loan committee appointment yeah so in meeting to review this with the loan fund committee it occurred to me that I would like to have the committee director be part of the staff contingent of the small business loan committee so if you'll recall the charter set up the committee slightly differently than some of our other committees so that we would be able to maintain a forum just with staff members when there was less interest from the community and participating on this particular committee and part of the reason for that is because it has needed to consider loan application so in this case it's been about it's been over a year since we last met so it doesn't keep people engaged in the way community members engaged in the way that one might hope so it's tough to keep people available so what I am recommending is appointing our equity director position and yes as the equity director now but the position as an ex official member of this committee as a staff alternate thank you any questions or concerns from council I just wanted to be clear on terminology so in one place it says ex officio in another it says alternate and I just want to make sure are we using those terms synonymously no ex officio meaning by role by that role and alternate so that role is an alternate on this committee as of the way that the charter is currently written rather than a regular member because we had specified that the other ex officio position so the planning manager the finance director and the city manager are regular positions and we still have seats for alternate it would have to be coming in as an alternate unless we rewrite the entire charter for the commission for the committee any other questions does someone want to make a motion to approve the small business loan committee appointment a move second motion by house second by brin all those in favor please say aye motion carries thank you we are on to item M for discussion or approval our fire marshal position description update chief still here welcome back so I'll just quickly introduce this so as noted in the cover sheet we have a vacancy Liam Keating resigned and so consistent with our compensation policy we looked at the job description and the structure of that role and chief audience and a lot of analysis in terms of what will look best for the department and we have presented this updated job description for a fire marshal to you for approval and obviously chief body is here and can answer any specific questions that you have about this job description Mike hey chief is this position going to be offered in house and you're looking outside as well so following our general hiring practices this is posted internally first and then externally will this change in job description have an impact on the budget so that's addressed on the cover so it's neutral impact we looked at hours of this position days of the week that this position would work and we were able to shift some of the time staff monies particularly the PDM staff that we bring in for coverage and apply it here I feel that will bring a more consistent staffing model than what we currently have I see the rank it's ranked as battalion chief isn't there a battalion chief on payroll now so we have a part time battalion chiefs that answers nighttime calls so it's not unusual to a battalion chief usually leads a specific division of a fire department for the part time battalion chief currently is suppression when there's a fire call he responds this position would lead the fire prevention community risk reduction be the lead on those efforts lead that division if you will any other questions any questions from the public alright sounds like someone might want to make a motion to approve the fire marshal position description updates second motion by Mike second by Jim all those in favor please say aye aye motion carries thank you brings us to the end of our regular agenda we did have a potential executive session warned in case it was needed for the Manchester hiring process but we did not need to use that so we will be skipping that and that brings us to the end of tonight's agenda so I'm looking for a motion to adjourn it's almost motion by Mike second by Bryn all those in favor please say aye aye motion carries thank you everyone and have a good evening night good night