 It just barely turned to be 6.30 on my computer. OK, fantastic. OK, so we're going to call the meeting to order. I'm just going to say right now, I think the meeting is going to end at 9.30. Yes, we can do it now. OK, well, that's the goal, team. Yes, please do. OK, that's based on nothing. Well, don't be offended if I walk out during somebody's council report at 10 o'clock. So do you want me to time council members as well? You probably should, probably should. OK, first thing is to review and approve of the agenda. And I think we had a couple of changes. We're pulling one item off of the consent agenda. And Glenn, you had requested that. I mean, we can just say that now, I suppose. Which one did you want to pull? I'd like to pull the complete streets plan at OK off of the consent agenda for discussion. Oh, OK. And just looking at the agenda that was over there, there was some item that I think we, oh, no, it's already there. But we added that from the, yeah, it's on this agenda. But just to note that we are adding a discussion of the East North Branch properties. OK. So any other changes? Can we talk about the complete street item from the consent agenda right away? Sure. Great. So we'll take that up right just after that. So without objection, we're going to consider the agenda approved. So now it's time for general business and appearances. This is an opportunity for any member of the public to address the council on some matter that is otherwise not on our agenda. And if you would try to keep your comments to two minutes or less, if you'd say your name and where you're from. I'm Gretchen Elias. I live out off of Elm Street across from the pool. And I'm here tonight because I wanted to share some thoughts on transportation in and around Montpelier. And specifically, I'd like the council to consider charging some entity, some city department or committee or whatever the appropriate body is with looking at our transportation system and priorities and modes comprehensively as a system. And I wanted to say a couple of things about why I'm thinking that that's something that the city should be doing. Transportation is a critical issue for so many of our city priorities. We're not going to achieve our net zero goals if we don't address transportation. The parking issue downtown is going to involve transportation. And of course, that gets into economic development and making sure we keep the downtown thriving and enable people to live down there as well as work and shop down there. And transportation just gets at all of these things. So it's a really cross cutting issue. And there's no one silver bullet. It's not like there's going to be one mode of transportation that's going to work for everyone or anything single-handedly. And I think right now we seem to have a lot of momentum around this topic. I think that Montpelier Sustainable, the Sustainable Montpelier Coalition provided a great vision for what our downtown could look like. We have new projects coming on with the transit center and the garage potentially that are going to open up some new conversations for us and prevent us with some new choices. And it seems like to maximize all of those new opportunities we really want to be able to look at transportation as a whole. And the final thing I'll say in terms of my own experience is that for me, the circulator is a really important way that I can get around town without a car. And I learned in May that GMT is planning to cut essentially the parts of the circulator that allow for this commuting, the Elm Street portion and the Freedom Drive portion. And that's in their next gen plan that has been worked on for several years now and it's been approved by their board. And I was really upset about that and concerned and I reached out to a whole bunch of folks. I kind of did this like scattershot approach. Everyone I could think of, city council, city staff, a whole bunch of different people on a whole bunch of different committees related to transportation. And the answers I got gave me the sense that with one exception, Donna, nobody really knew the status of what GMT was planning. And there were even conversations within the city that were assuming that the circulator would continue to exist in its present form. And this plan had been going on for a long time. And I just think that that really brought my attention to the fact that there is an opportunity here to look at it more comprehensively and make sure we're connecting all the dots. Thank you, Gretchen. And just so you know, GMT is actually gonna be here next week at our council meeting. Great, thank you. I'm sure we're gonna talk further about that in the near future. Any other comments? Oh yeah, just to add a piece instead of weighing into my council report for this, the Monthly or Interstructure Transportation Committee, Gretchen, is going to be holding public hearings, whether that's in January, February, but they're now looking to pull together to have GMT aid there as well as a lot of riders and consumers that have a real lively public discussion on their routes and on mini transit. I'd like to be a part of that, so that's great. Okay, any other comments? I'll just very briefly, under general business note, this is our first meeting. We've had all the sound re-done. There's now new speakers in the back and new cameras. So we're high def now, right? Is that? So you all one in an upgraded room and you got it. Okay, all right, I'm gonna assume that there is no other public comment unless somebody jumps up. Okay, all right, so moving on to the consent agenda. Is there a motion regarding the consent agenda? And we're assuming that's minus item K? Yes. And there was a second. Further discussion? I just would note, I did not fully read item B, the agreement between city of Montpelier and Christ's Episcopal Church, so I trust that it is, that I would agree with it, but I have not completely read the agreement. Fair enough. Okay, further discussion? Okay, all in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, great, so moving on to complete streets plan. Yeah, go ahead. So folks like Larry and all, that year stuff just passed. Anybody who's here on the consent agenda, that all just happened, so. Thank you. Thank you for coming up from Pennsylvania. Yeah, you're welcome to stay. We're happy to have you stay, but just so you know that nothing like a Wednesday night in Montpelier at the council meeting. All right, go ahead. Is the continuation of the presentation in June by Stu Sorota, who was our consultant? Is that better? Okay. So this is the continuation of that. This is to adopt it. I went back and listened to the comments you guys had made back in June and made a few minor changes. Specifically one was to address Ashley's concern about parking. The map in the plan is a draft, so then that way it's not formalized. Every single street has to be this way. Those are some of those typology decisions, will be policy decisions as we get closer. So this will be incorporated into the CIP process to say, okay, when we're gonna be doing a project and we're looking out, we'll start doing the assessments then to say, what will we need to make it a complete street so that we have a complete network? And that's where we went with this, was to try to end up with a network that works so that you don't have bike lanes that end nowhere. So this gets pretty close to it, but there will be, as time goes on, there will be discussions in the community, in the neighborhoods, as these plans are formalized. Question? Thank you. Glen, did you have anything you wanted? I'll say basically my reason for pulling it for discussion is only that I think it's important enough and I'm happy enough about it, that I want to really mark our decision of it on it. And I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that as a car-free resident and as someone who has lived my whole life without owning or driving many cars, not owning any cars, it's really important to me to see moves around transportation really broadly, as Gretchen was saying earlier, I depend on alternative modes of transportation pretty much entirely. And I think Montpelier is doing a good job of allowing me to continue to do that. It's a great place for me to live as a walker, but I think that the complete streets plan, just as a layout of all of the existing conditions and where we should consider moving as we change and repair streets, it's really something that I'm, I guess I wouldn't say I'm thrilled about it because it's not the kind of thing that excites me, but I'm very, very happy about it. And the end result, you will like it. Yeah, the end result, I can't wait, I want all the streets to change right away tomorrow. And really that's all I have to say about it. I just wanted to mark the occasion, which I think is a happy one. Further comments or questions? I think I would just use the opportunity to note that when the many members of the council went out to visit the cemetery last summer, spring, we all noted the lack of a sidewalk out to cemetery and then the neighborhood beyond the cemetery. And I don't, I think complete streets does a really nice job of prioritizing everybody, but just flagged that one since we're discussing it as one that we all kind of thought about at that point. Further comments? Good. Anthony Minona, live on Colonial Drive, a member of the Montpellier Transportation Infrastructure Committee. I just wanted to voice our support for this plan. I think it will provide a blueprint for Department of Public Works when they're working on roads to incorporate complete streets into them and provide safe biking, walking infrastructure for all users of the road. Important piece of the plan that I found is section 3.5, which is traffic calming policy. And I think it's really important that we start to look at ways to improve or slow down traffic, make sure that it's safer for speeds. It was really interesting reading about how, you know, the slower the speeds, the less dangerous, you know, accents maybe. And so it's, you know, just a really important plan and I look forward to having the implementation take place and having it be a blueprint for our city. Great, thanks. Further comments? Go ahead, Donald. Yes, just to mention that as Anthony serves on the Montpellier Transportation and Infrastructure Committee has spent a lot of time on this, as has Kevin, as has Corey. He might do appreciate the staff support. It's been a long process. It's been a long process. A very long process. But the end result is very good. Yeah. Okay, I'm gonna assume that there's no further comments. No, going once, okay. Motion? Move that we adopt the complete streets plan that was identified as Consent Agenda Item K. Well, second. Further discussion? On favor, please say aye. Opposed? Great, thank you. Thank you. Very exciting. All right, we have an appointment to the Central Vermont Internet Board as an alternate seat. And we have one applicant for one seat. And I know you're here. Would you like to address the council? You don't have to. Okay, fair enough. Oh, yes, okay. Sorry, I wasn't sure if I should have said this before. I'm Richard Littauer. I actually also applied for this board on Monday. The deadline was Tuesday. I see it's not in the minutes. I see my application isn't there. Unlikely, I'll get it. And the other guy's a lot more experienced. But just thought I should let you know that there's another person who would like to apply. Well, so yeah, we had an unexpected administrative outage this week or the person that gets those was out with a medical issue unexpectedly. So it's probably in her inbox and so. That would make sense. We didn't get that. We're sorry. That's okay, that's why I'm here. So no worries. Fair enough. I'm also here for the rest of this slide. Another fun Wednesday night. I know, I had a conflict last night. I don't know how to resolve this, but seeing as how the other guy is 21 years' worth of experience in Montpelier, you should probably just vote for him and then read the application after if you like. Thanks. Yes, Jack. I move that we postpone consideration of this agenda to future meetings. I also do a future meeting so that we can see the application materials of both candidates. We'll do it next week. Yeah, sure. I second. We need next week. Great. I guess that's a motion and it's been seconded. Further discussion? All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Okay, next time. Next week. All right, moving right along. All right, we have a presentation from the Silver Maple Group. So welcome, Carrie. Hi. Hi. So I do have some handouts, so I'm gonna go and bring these around. But there's two that are larger than one. So they have numbers on the upper-ranked corners, so that's when we refer to them in order. And I should also say that this is also primarily on City Park, so it's not really about the Silver Maple concept. I'm sorry, can you repeat that? Yes, sir. Maybe I'll wait a minute. Thank you. Yeah, that's it. And if there's others involved in the park, I have some extra copies. Okay, Silver Maple Group, we've been meeting for a little over a year, a little over a year and a quarter, a group of primarily over 55 who are looking to be able to build a small over 55 community in Montpelier. So I handed out this survey map because we've looked at a lot of locations and we feel that this location is probably the best in Montpelier. Obviously there are a lot of primarily terrain issues where we have challenges when it comes to anything that's relatively flat. So that is a survey map that the property owner, which is Fecto Holmes gave me and he's fully aware that this is gonna be made public. So this is a 72 acre parcel. The Silver Maple Group is not looking for any much more than maybe 15 acres and probably even less than that. So I would propose that this be a City Park, the balance, so it'd be like 55 to 57 acres. I met with the Parks and Recreation Commission and they thought it was a great idea to have a park on that part of town, which does not have any access to city parks in that vicinity. It also has access to 302, which would mean access to the bike path. So wanted to just kind of explain where we're looking. So under number two, which is a natural resources map, that is a border of the property. There is some dispute over a section to the left and like a diagonal there. It's already deeded to the city from the Stonewall Meadows Condo Association, but the dimensions are in the process of being surveyed to identify exactly where that is, but it would not affect the total number of acres. So that is a, I just found this one through their website and how I did around the corner of the edges of it so you could see actually where it extends. Currently it's being used as walking paths and used by the neighbors and local. But it's on the market and the factos had said, well, if somebody comes up with a million bucks and they wanna build one house, we're gonna sell it. So that's kind of what we're up against. We are looking to build a small community as you can see on number three. We've been working with Jay Ansel for quite some time and he was kind enough to do a drawing. So I have a larger one, which is this and I can choose. So we're really looking at a very small part of this. So this is only a section of that map on the natural resources map. So it's ideal because not only do you have green space and recreation, but also have housing and it's a very small portion of that. You can just leave it over on the side. They'll probably pop it on the table. Oh, okay. So we're looking at the pocket neighborhood, which is very tightly clustered, small homes between 800 and 1200 square feet that face a common green. And because there are the over 55 housing, there does have to be a roadfront around the perimeter just to kind of a drive so that people have access to their homes. So there is this. And then what was originally proposed is number four here and that is the capital heights, which was planned by the Fectos. I believe they did get permitting at the time and it was in 2007, but it was for 219 units and that had a lot of pushback, which you can understand. So we're talking about maybe 32 units and not right off the bat. So the neighbors objected to it. There was a recession hit and it just never happened. But you can see the access that they planned. The green building on the upper left was supposed to be assisted living and then independent living and then private lots and then condos and apartments. So what we're talking about and one reason for bringing this out into the public is just to dispel any rumors that, oh my God, there's gonna be an 800 unit development going up in our backyard. But having a city park would be ideal for not just the neighborhood, but for us. And I also met with Ken Ballard, I guess it was who was doing the feasibility study on the rec center and mentioned to him, hey, you could put a rec center up there and you could have outdoor soccer fields and whatever you like up that way. With 72 acres, you could do it. So the, can I ask you a question about that? It's quite sloped, isn't it? It's not really. It's not down below. What's the elevation? Change. The elevation, it does go up along for 302 and then it goes up gradually. But they, we are, I've talked with Tom about city's resource infrastructure and there is gravity fed sewer and there's pipes, water pipes because that was actually planned because of the development. So if you look at that natural resources map, the first one, you can see some clearings and those clearings were designed so the Isabelle circle would actually be a circle. So there was a lot of planning that already went into it and a lot of backup. So those two clearing sections are the most buildable and they are slightly sloped but they're really not terribly sloped. And I did meet with Meredith about wetlands and there are no wetlands or no vernal pools and it's a pretty good piece of property for building on but not all of it. I mean, it's walking trails now. I mean, it's really a nice piece of property for activities and recreation. So just to kind of show you what pocket neighborhoods are about, Ross Chapin is an architect nationally who kind of came up with this and you're thinking like your backyard is now your front yard and your cars come into your backyard and your front face is the green and you're right close to your neighbors and the whole point of that is for socialization and aging in place. So many homes in the city just are not suitable for aging in place. It takes me two flights of stairs to get groceries upstairs. So it is challenging. And also we can move out of that and get the younger families in. So that's why I wanted to give you a sample of what it would look like and then the sample pocket neighborhood layouts. These are just from online. There are various different iterations of that. But it's really a unique opportunity to increase the market rate housing in the city while at the same time creating a city park. And is Jeff here? Yes. Hey. So just going to back me up on this because he was at the meeting with the Parks and Rec. The last piece is the appraisal. So that Jim Fecto gave me. It shows what the appraisal was in 2015. I spoke with Bruce and he agreed with us. I mean he was fine with him to let it be known. So we're saying Silver Maple, seven to eight acres. There's two phases as you can see on Jay's drawing where the initial phase would be 16 units. Say the second phase based upon who would be joining in would be another 16, but certainly no more than 32. Some of that can be intergenerational. Some of it could be, most of it would be over 55. So we're really looking to see if the city has an interest in being able to work with us in creating a city park so that we don't need 72 acres but the effectors will not subdivide. I've already been down that road. So, and it's also you don't want to lose the opportunity of being able to have a park in that part of town. And the other is the income tax calculation. So 32 homes that are valued at say hypothetically 250,000 when you get the municipal tax rate, about $2,500 times the tax rate. The income is $86,800 per year. Right now, the Efecto land is entire piece is generating $2,700 a year. So you're talking about a repayment in about nine years on $800,000, assuming that Silver Maple property would be say 200. This is, I have the paperwork so. I'm happy to send it to you. They're just my notes too. I'll get me through. So there are challenges. There's the survey that needs to happen. The good thing about the survey is that it's going to take some time to do that and we're going to need the time to try to pull this together. Jim Fecto said, okay, I'll give you a month and I won't do anything with that land. Just see what you can do. Okay, it's a hassle, but we can do, we can do. And the financing or timing. So I guess the other question that Jay put in me is that is there any chance of modifying the KIPP district to include those 72 acres? I mean, I know it's up Berlin Street, but you just add, well, throw it out. You don't ask, you don't get. So does anybody have any questions? You made reference to this being connected to 302 and I had looked at the maps previously and couldn't figure out how it was connected to 302. There is a property that Jim Fecto owns that is right across, it's not the, it's kind of right in the middle on the right-hand side there. And he said that he would grant a right-of-way through that property to connect to 302. Is that the one with this room? That, yes, that's what they had originally planned. Yeah, that's probably easier to look at it on that map, on the Capitol Heights map. It's number four. Yeah, number four on the upper right, yeah. So just to be clear, you are asking that the city make an $800,000 investment in a piece of property in order to allow this development to go forward and to provide a city park. We didn't have any kind of introduction, so I just wanna lay all that, that's what the ask is. Well, it is to provide a city park, yes. And it is to, and they help us be able to acquire land to provide for housing because housing is a top priority for Montpelier and green space is also a priority. Well, you can have both for a lot less than a developer would go in and wanna kind of knock down everything and put in a couple hundred units and that would be it. That's what, that's the other option. Jeff, do you wanna, is there anything? I don't want to put you on the spot, but, okay. Other comments or questions? Yeah, go ahead. Some of this depends on people being interested in moving into this community. Are you getting good interest? We had five original households and we had a meeting on November 15th to try to introduce this concept in public and we now have 12. And we have not marketed this, we haven't gone beyond the original Montpelier downsizing group. So there's just a lot of people who don't even know anything about it. So we're ready for that, but everybody gave it deposits, everybody's ready to go, so far so good. And I know that you said that this is, you've looked at a lot of different properties and this is the one and I believe that. And at the same time, I'm curious to hear what you think about how far it is in terms of walking from downtown and even to get down to the bike path. It is a walk. It's probably closer to the bike path if you had the access the right of way down to that. But I've also talked to the transportation department and planning and they said, well, if you can get 32 homes down there, we can probably put a bus stop down there. So there are all the transportation options and especially in the wintertime and if this is over 55, people are gonna go walk into town anyway, even if they were up savings if that was even an option. So that's a challenge. And it's all about the terrain, you know. Other comments. And I've talked with Trust Republic Land and I've talked to the Vermont, I'm gonna get it down there, the Community Loan Fund, the Housing and Conservation Board and a lot of and the Vermont Land Trust and the Land Trust is very interested. TPL is interested. So we do have interest on that and the commission was very interested in having a park on that side of the town because there are a lot of residents out there that really don't have any access to recreation. So, does anybody else have any questions? I have some questions. Yeah, Jack, go ahead. So is the idea that the city would buy the entire parcel for $800,000 and then sell your seven acres or 15 acres of it back to you to develop or what's the overall speed? Well, Jim, Effectow had said that they want to sell the entire parcel at one closing and what we would do is we would have an agreement with the city that a closing we would purchase the acreage that would be suitable for, if you say it's $200,000, say for the two parcels there and then there would be funding from wherever the sources come from. I mean, I look at a $10 million garage and now you know a $1,000 park and you know, it's all a matter of what do we want? What do we want as a city? I mean, do we want to have both the green space and the housing? The housing is very challenging and affordable housing is being created but there's not a lot of market rate housing and a lot of us aren't gonna qualify for affordable housing so and we pay higher tax rate. So we're gonna have a greater taxes coming in, you're gonna have, you know, those of us who really need to have smaller homes, have smaller homes, opening up the town for being able to have younger families and there are a number of us that are coming from out of the city so you're gonna be creating more residents that are coming from outside. I got it. Did the groups you speak with talk about any financial avenues that they could contribute? The groups, you mean these groups? Yes. Yes. Yeah, yeah, I have talked with them about that. So would we all need to sit around the table and talk about the possibility if you've got just an interest nod from the city council without a financial commitment? Well, I know you can't make a financial commitment at a Wednesday night meeting but it is a conversation and the land trust was going to hopefully be here, they had two commitments that couldn't be here. I'm just kind of opening the door for the conversation is the big picture kind of thing. This is not a firm proposal. The sketch that Jay did is purely a sketch. It's nothing of a planning nature or needs approval or any of that but we're trying to find a way to be able to create the recreation part as well as the residential part. And yes, no, none of us are gonna have a million bucks that we're gonna go on by 72 acres. None of us are developers. I'd be interested in working with a coalition of the group. Oh, terrific. Sure. Oh, terrific. Yeah, that would be ideal. And the goal is Roger Christman at TPL and then I can't remember the name of the other folks that I've been talking to. And keep in mind, I'm just a resident. I'm not an expert on any of this. So you just do what you gotta do when you learn what you gotta learn. So I'm gonna jump in here and then for Rosie. So just so you know where I'm at, I'm very interested in this. I think it's really interesting but there are a lot of questions that I have. So I will also say that while I am interested I'm also very skeptical. And the reason for that, I mean it feels like an incredibly large investment for 16 units of housing. I mean, I know that there's pushback to potentially more but we need a lot more housing and I personally would be much more interested in on the scale of something like 100 more units. And so that's one thing. But then that raises this question for me about like what's the right balance? I mean, let's say that we, well, let me back up. One question is, is this the right space for a park on this side of the river? Maybe. And with this opportunity, it might be. But I think that's a question worth asking. That's number one. Number two, if this is the right spot for a park, then what's the right balance of space for housing and space for a park? And I mean, I would want to actually go up there and like, check out what we might be potentially buying. To consider like how much of this would be useful or valuable as a park versus housing and what's the right balance there? In 2007, I guess it was, Kim did present it. And I guess he had so much pushback from the local neighborhood for 200 and some odd units that it just became unfeasible and it wasn't gonna happen for them. So it's a really trying to weigh, as you say. So that was the balance. So that was more than 10 years ago, right? Yeah, he said it was around 2007. Okay. And the recession had something to do with it. Yeah, no doubt, no doubt. And at the very least, it seems like a conversation re-opening, like worth re-opening. So at least that's where I am at right now. And the thing is, I would guess that to answer those questions, that's gonna take more than a month. And so I'm a little worried for your sake, right? Like if in order for us to have all the information we might need to make a sound decision, it's gonna take more than a month. Who knows what could change, but that feels like the reality to me. I mean, we said to the 32 units only to try to really keep it down to what was absolutely necessary for our group, but it doesn't mean that it has to be that. But you get into the hundreds and you start talking about the neighbors having a problem with that. But having a half in the park is helpful when it comes to being able to do this. And there is this survey. So I can't imagine that it is gonna be any action on the property until the survey is completed to really determine what the boundary of that park is. And that would ultimately be merged with whatever would do on this particular property. So, okay. I appreciate your time. I know I took more than that. Oh no, yeah. Well, I think Rosie had a question too. So that's okay. I mean, I really agree with a lot of what Anne said. And I have been a really strong component of a park on this side of the river. However, I spent some time looking at this parcel and I'm not sure that this park is one that is open to the rest of the Berlin street neighborhood because to get there folks have to, it's quite a steep walk up a hill for most of the folks living on that side of town. And I would be very cautious about this becoming kind of a private park for just one small neighborhood. The wonderful thing about Hubbard Park is that, you know, so many of our neighborhoods border it. And so it is a park for a lot of neighborhoods in the town. And I would want, if we were gonna make that kind of investment, which this would be. I mean, this is, a park on this scale is going to require a more park staff, more maintenance. It's not just the initial outlay. It's also the ongoing maintenance cost. And if we were gonna make that kind of investment, it would be very important to me that it was thoroughly accessible to all the folks living in the area and not just one small neighborhood. So I- I mean, there's a way of looking to see where the other points of accessibility might be. Yes. So that, those are some really critical pieces to me is if we were to go down this path, making sure that it was accessible from lots of different neighborhoods around there. And so that's something I would really want to apply for you. I agree with you on that one. Well, let's keep talking. Thank you. Thank you. I'm assuming there's no further questions. Great, moving on. All right, so the Montpelier Foundation, coming back to us again. Will, I had sent you some emails. Can I forwarded them? Yep, yep, we got them. So I was gone most of the time. Played telephone tag a bunch of times, we never had a chance to actually hook up. Well, thank you for having us back. We tried to address many of the questions that came out of the meeting at the last meeting regarding the makeup of the board, also the investments. And there was also a question about, what would the people who donated the money, what were their thoughts? And unfortunately, trying to go back to 25 years, some of those don't exist today. It's Vermont National Bank. Lola Akin was a big donator who's passed away. But the largest donator at the time was National Insurance Company. They gave the foundation $25,000 in Sentinel stock. The circumstances of that were that the, there had been a reappraisal in Montpelier at that time and National Lights taxes actually went down. And so Fred Bertrand, who was the president of National Lights at the time said, well, what we're gonna do is we're gonna take the money that we're not being charged by the city this year and we're gonna give that donation to the foundation. So that's where that $25,000 came from. The most recently, a large donation came from the estate of Allen Weiss, the amount of $35,000. And have talked to National Life, they had emailed me and said, no, we don't have an issue with it. Vermont Mutual was also a large donator originally. They expressed that they don't have an issue and Allen Weiss's son, Stephen Weiss, also sent an email saying that he does not have an issue with the foundation becoming a standalone. Well, I wanna thank you for addressing those concerns. I'm really pleased with the violas as they have been amended. So anyway, so I'm very comfortable supporting this and I'd love to hear any comments or questions from other people. Go ahead, Don. I have one, and it may be how I read it. I didn't understand the non-resident appointment. Well, the idea was that we have residents in Montpelier that was easy, but then there's a lot of people that don't physically live in Montpelier but spend the bulk of their time in Montpelier. And as we were trying to increase the membership on the foundation, we thought it would make sense to take people who are really vested in Montpelier. They may not live physically in Montpelier but are really vested in Montpelier and also make it available to them to be on the foundation. I guess maybe it was the way it was worded. It talked about with being Montpelier residents depending on whether or not there were two non-residents on the board. It was just, so there is some limit for some limit to non-residents. Correct, yes. But I didn't read it clear to me, but it was just legalese and I couldn't do it. Well, I'll defer to. And right now, I'm not finding the section, I've ordered it in my notes. Well, is it section 4.2 qualifications? Yeah, qualifications. So, I mean one, if there's just a clarification. Yes. Then maybe, I don't know if you have any suggestions there, but I mean, if that's all it is. While you're looking for it, Donnick, go ahead. No, it's right there and it means what you say, but what it reads is, however, no more than two non-residents who have demonstrated a strong commitment to City Montpelier may be elected. So, it's, who have demonstrated it anyway? It just seems a little warded. Would you look at the sentence for me, that's all, when you get back? Okay. Otherwise. All right, Glenn. Yeah, no, I was just trying to help. I think the sentence makes sense to me, I think, in that it's, they all are required to be residents except for the possibility of two as long as they've demonstrated commitment to. The mayor points to, yes. And you did a great job on it, incorporating the social responsible investments. Thank you for that. I have a suggestion on this point that we've been talking about, which is that as we learned last time, this is a self-perpetuating board, which means the members of the board would be electing new members. And so I think the members who are on the board would be the ones who would be evaluating whether these non-residents have this, a demonstrated commitment to the city. What occurred to me as I was reading this is that there's a broad range between five and 11 members of the board. You could conceivably be in a position where you have the board consists of two people appointed by the city council, two non-residents accepted by the board, and only one person who was a resident who was elected on their own right. And so what occurred to me was that it might make sense that at least five people on the board who are residents, and then if you want to go beyond five members of the board, that two of the additional members might be non-residents. So that there would always be dominated by people who are residents. I think that would be it. That's good. So for that suggestion, are you suggesting specific language, a language change, or is that, or shall we just like a... We will incorporate that. We can incorporate that. We will incorporate that language in. Got it. Okay, great. Thank you. Making this as simple as possible. I don't think we need to have to come back a third. No, I really ask, no, please. Oh, come on. I read the poll this morning. It didn't occur to me to talk about this topic. We were talking about the weather. Okay, further comments? Yes, Riz? My concern last time was about, you know, our responsibility to the folks who had donated previously. And I really appreciated you seeking out those members, or those folks, and getting some feedback. So I feel more comfortable supporting this with that feedback. And I appreciate that. Connor. I think if you love something, you're going to set it free sometime. So I appreciate all the work you put into it between the last meeting and now there. It's a volunteer board, so it's not a glamorous job fundraising either. So, you know, I think I have confidence you do the right thing. And if you start doing like private prison money to build parks and stuff, we can always create a competing entity, I guess. I'm there. I'm good. Would anyone like to make a motion? So I'll make a motion. I'll move to approve the Montpelier Foundation's bylaws and their request to become an independent public benefit non-profit corporation. I'll second. Further discussion? That's assuming Jack's change. Can we have another one? I've met a condition of the change, right? Yeah, the condition of Jack's change. And that's okay, Connor. And Donna. Okay. Yes, Ashley. I'm going to vote no on this. I really struggle when we take sort of public entities and transition them into private entities. And I appreciate that it seems like it's a done deal. It's just, it's a hard no for me. I think that there are lots of non-profits in the area who partner with the city of Montpelier. And I think that we should leave that work to them. But I understand that it looks like everyone else feels differently. So that's okay. I'll just say while we're discussing that I have qualms in that direction, but I think that it is, I do appreciate the work that has been done to change the bylaws. And I think that it's enough for me to support this particular case for sure. So thank you for that. Thank you, Ashley, for the care. Consistently, no for everything it feels like. But it's okay. All right. Further discussion? All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Nay. All right. Thank you. Thank you very much. All right. Moving on. So now Mayor, it falls to you to appoint two new people. That's right. Well, so we'll probably do that. Ashley. Yeah, right. Yeah, right. Thank you. Thank you. We'll let us know when you need us to do that. Okay. All right. Okay, great, thanks. All right, so the library up next. All right, welcome. Thank you. Thank you. I'm Tom McCone, Executive Director of the Library. I'm Rachel Muse, Library Trustee appointed by City Council. Thank you very much for having us on your agenda tonight. And there are a few things in your packet from us. And I don't know if you've had a chance to read them all or not, but we won't. Go through everything, but we'll answer questions about anything, or highlight anything you'd like. But there are two of the things you've received are a report that goes in the annual report. And that has a lot of information and in writing it this year. I'm really focused on the ways that this serves, that the library serves our community. People don't have these? Who said it was from you, Sue? I'm trying to ask for a name. Yeah, it was Sue said it, 835 this morning. When it's not in the agenda, it's always a little cumbersome. The, go ahead. Okay, I'm sorry that everybody doesn't have it right now, but the, I am glad that I tried to reach Jamie yesterday because, and then I ended up with Jane because otherwise you wouldn't have gotten any of it because I was working with Jamie on this earlier. So, and also the balance sheet for the library which also goes in the annual report. The, and two other items, index just a lot of statistics related to the library, and then a request relating to petitioning to be on the warning. So, we're not gonna go through all of those things but the two basic things are, you know, Rachel and I would like to answer any questions you have about anything in the documents that we sent or about operations of library, library budget or anything. And then the second thing will be our question relating to petitioning. Jack. I got a couple of questions. I think from the, from the index, there were some numbers related to use of computers and use of the Wi-Fi network and the 303 average weekly use of public computers, 1105 weekly patron use of Wi-Fi. Are those people or are those hours online? Oh, those are people. So the 303 are times when you come to one of the circulation desks and get a slip so you can access one of our computers for an hour. And so those are numbers. That's the adult library and children's library totaled 300 and three a week. The 100, the 1105 access times the people access Wi-Fi. That's when people bring their own devices and work in the library. So those are just, that's the number of log-ons. That's the number of log-ons and they might be on for hours, they might be on for 10 minutes. And it could be someone, does it go as far as across the street? I don't think it does. I don't think it goes beyond our property. It does go on our steps. There are times when we're closed, there'll be times I get there in the morning or there's somebody on the steps using the Wi-Fi. And on a similar point, it was confusion. I was, oh, never mind, I see the answer to that. I won't bother you with that one. Okay, thank you. Donna, I only saw one place that told me to the data from Montpelier. And you said around 3,000 had library cards and some 700 kids. In the past, you actually gave us a chart and one of your, think about an email. I have to open each attachment separately. So the one that's, the long narrative which you say is your library report. I don't find what we used to get which was this is what the city contributes. This is what other towns contribute. This is their percentage of users. This is their percentage of our revenue. Is that available? That is available. In the five years I've been here, that's not something we've provided. But we can, we can provide that. Yes, it has because that's where I got this statistics before where we were paying like 70% at only 43% of the users. So it was an important report for me. Yeah. The city clearly pays a much larger share of the cost of running the library than the towns do for a lot of reasons. And the city, if you figure it out and per capita basis pays more than twice as much as the towns pay. And the city uses the library enormously more in terms of the children's library. After school, we get some U32 students who come by, get off the bus at Spring Street and come over where we do. But the vast majority of children who use the library are from Montoya. And the afternoon we have children walking over from all three schools to use a library. And sometimes it is absolutely wild and there are just loads and loads of kids in good weather. Sometimes in bad weather they're outside too. But it's both inside and outside. It's actually, there is a group of parents who are scheduling the meeting at the library in January because they want to look at the issue of where kids are going after school. And it's an issue that we've periodically talked with folks at Union Elementary School and the Main Street Middle School about, and it's not their responsibility where the kids go. But, and the great majority of kids are great, but sometimes the volume of kids is a real challenge for us. So, but so the children there is one of the ways and the story times we have in the morning, it's almost entirely Montpelier families using that. And a lot of them walk over. And, you know, so it's very convenient. There is the issue of the buildings, the beautiful building. It's an important building in downtown Montpelier. It matters a real lot to all of us living in Montpelier. And it doesn't matter so much to people who are in Calis or Worcester or something. And each of the towns, they have their own buildings that they want to take care of. So as far as the issues of taking care of a building, that matters to us, but in people in the towns, it matters to them to maintain their own buildings. We use, in the narrative, I gave a lot of examples about it's not just the library services, but, you know, our meeting spaces are used by lots and lots of organizations. The great majority of those are Montpelier-based organization and Montpelier-based groups. And almost all of them are uses that are for free. We have a sliding scale. So if a handful of people want to get together and have a meeting on anything, they can come and reserve a space that costs them nothing. They wanted it all day, we'll charge them something. They want to go a couple hours, you know, it's nothing. But when businesses and state agencies or other agencies want to use the space, we do charge them something. The Democratic, Republican, and progressive parties use their spaces, we charge all of them. Same rate for everybody. But even when Senator Leahy comes, we charge them. You charge us? We, yes, we charge you, that's right. So Senator Leahy, of course, if you don't know, he's been a huge supporter of the library forever and a day. It's his childhood library. So another issue for us with whenever we ask for increases in the towns, one of the things I feel really good about is for the past three years, we have had all five towns supporting the library. That is a huge challenge because one of the towns was in and out for 20 years and only supported the library half the time and we worked really hard and we still work really hard. We work harder there than anywhere to get the support. We serve Montpelier and we serve the five towns in Washington Central Supervisor Union. To use the U32 analogy, U32 budget, I believe has never been voted down going back into the 1970s. And of course, originally it was just that meeting, but it's been by Australia about for many years. There have been years where they've been in one town or another, they've been movements against the budget. But the votes are all pooled. So if one town votes against the U32 budget, it won't make a difference. The U32 budget will still pass. In our case, we can't ask one of the five towns for an increase, we can't ask four. You know, we have to do it equitably. Last year we asked a 6% increase for everybody. And when we do that, we run the risk as if we lose one town, we actually have a net loss and we don't have more revenue, we have less revenue. So it's a real challenge for us. We, out of the five communities, we have two that are solid library supporters and we have a couple that are mixed and we have one that's a real challenge. So it's, as far as being able to get a larger share from them, it's really difficult for us. And we have board discussions, okay, well, how much can we ask and still come out ahead? So my understanding really, beyond all of this great data, as to why you're here is because you want an indication of whether or not where the city council's gonna be willing to put you all on the ballot without the otherwise necessary signatures. So I would love to just steer the conversation in that direction. And is there anything you want to say particularly about that before we open it up to questions? Sure, thank you. And that is a crucial point for us. The, in the years when we had not asked for an increase, as far back as I am aware of, the council has always put us on the warning. So what's different this year is we are asking for an increase. So we're asking you to make an exception. It would be an enormous help for us at this time. And in one of the documents, which we may not have all seen yet, we emphasize that we're working on, in fact, tonight you approved the initial step to help us with a $75,000 grant towards a new elevator. It's a project that could cost up to $200,000. And it's part of a broader effort with a number of building things that we are raising money for. We're very actively working on that right now. We are not gonna come to the city or any of the towns for any money on that. We've got a complete plan on this and we're working on this and we have a consultant working with us. And over the next couple of years, we're very, we're already in good shape as far as how we're off to a good start on this. But we have to raise a lot of money on that. So one of the things that'll happen is if we need to take a month off to petition, it really will cost us a lot of money. Okay, thoughts from the council on this? Connor, go ahead. What's your mechanism for collecting petition signatures now, do you canvass, do you have it in different stores? Oh, all of the above. Oh, yes. A lot of walk-ins at the library, of course. We're lucky, we have close to 700 visitors a day there, so we can capture a lot of Montpelier residents there. But as a trustee, I go door to door. I spend a lot of time standing in the cold outside of the farmer's market. And we hit every popular location in town that we can. We hang out at Hunger Mountain Co-op and other locations like that as well. Other questions? Ashley? I'm in favor of just putting this on the ballot. I utilized my public library a whole lot growing up. We didn't, you know, that was sort of a thing that we could do that didn't require money as long as I returned my books on time. And it strikes me that the library isn't Montpelier, which I think is really great for the community because, one, it brings people here, people who may not otherwise have access to the tools and resources that exist at our library, but also because I think it adds to our downtown. I think that it brings people in, especially younger folk after school. And I know that it can be overwhelming, but at least they're at our library. Unfortunately, there have been a few incidents in the last year, one quite serious incident. But I believe that this is the kind of thing that our community should be focusing on is really sort of fostering those opportunities for learning and development and places for families to be, and so for me, this is a huge yes. And I wish that we, I hope that the council feels similarly, but I just, I feel like this is what my role as a city councilor is, is to promote those kinds of things in our community, and maybe not so much some other ventures. Thank you. I totally support this. I think it's, Kellogg Covered Library is a tremendous asset to the community. It's recognized as a great library. I believe it's, there's only one library in the entire state that has a higher annual circulation than the Kellogg Covered Library. The voting results year after year show it has tremendous support among the voters of Montpelier. And I think we should do this. Donna. Well, actually I'm gonna be the no. And that's because in my six years on the board, it's almost every other year you come with an increase. And we make these small, very small organizations who do not get enough funding through the Montpelier Fund. Community Fund. Thank you. Community Fund account do signatures. And they don't have nearly the access you do of most huge number of voters. So I don't think it's fair to let the big system not do what we ask little systems to do. And that $20,000, I want more housing. I want more public art. I want other police officers. So I think the voters need to say yes to this asking beyond the 350,000 we already have in the budget. So I'm gonna be a no vote. It's not against the library. It's against the process that you're asking us to cut short cut for you. The total is 350,000. Pardon? That 350,000 includes the increase. I think she's talking about the bond payment too. Okay. Yeah, but we have a lot of money in the field. Yeah, that too. I'm gonna add it all up. I mean, yes. And if it goes to no, I think I would like to offer my services getting more signatures. I understand the same process for everyone that Donna's talking about. And I think that for me, that balances out partly with what Jack pointed out and what you point out in the letter about the overwhelming long term support from the residents for the library. So I think we can put you on the ballot first. Rosy, I feel very conflicted because as a voter, I will sign your petition and I will vote for this. And I really believe that the library is very important in the services that it provides to folks all across the spectrum, the socioeconomic spectrum are really important. It is our default day homeless shelter in many communities and I'm sure in Montpelier as well. And so I'm very, this is a good thing. I believe as a resident that we should put money behind it. However, I'm very cognizant of this process that we have set up because we have limited resources. And if we say yes to you today about going around this process, how can we then say no to Central Vermont Home and Hospice who is also a wonderful organization who does wonderful work or any of the other wonderful organizations that come to us and do have fewer resources to collect signatures. And I would be willing to give that one time yes if it was a one time yes, but it's not because everyone else is gonna see, okay, well, we can just ask the council and not have to go do those signatures. And then our system that we've set up is broken. So I'm feeling very conflicted about this and I don't know. In terms of the one time, this is the only time we've asked for this. Because you're going. It's the only time we've asked to be put on the warning when we've asked for more money. I'm sorry, I've been here when you've been here before. Yeah, I think probably before Tom's time, but yeah. I have never asked you for this before. I guess what I'm struggling with is the public good that this actually serves, like literally every single day. There are 700 people on average that walk through the door. And I appreciate that there is a process by which signatures can be collected. But I am struggling with this notion that we can spend millions of dollars on something that doesn't benefit local people exclusively and instead benefits another private business entity and be pushing back about a process by which an organization that serves every single person in Montpelier and has a partnership with other communities and frankly, I mean, while it's disappointing that other communities don't want to fund the library, I cannot imagine being where I sit today as a city council member without my public library. I really, it wouldn't have been possible. And my grandfather up until a few weeks before he died frequented the public library because that was sort of his outing and being able to read things that in large print and having access to those things was a social event for him. And at, you know, at 91, that was a big thing. And I remember going to story hour with him when I was a child because that's what there was to do. And so to me, I appreciate that there is a process but this to me is an extension of city services because you serve every resident regardless of income, regardless of ability to pay for play. And so I just, I feel like that's an important distinction to me. I think Donna raised a good point in general which was how do we fund city services and tonight isn't really the night to do it but I really had questions ever since it was created about having the Montpelier City Foundation be the sort of the clearinghouse for community funding, be the clearinghouse for funding requests and cutting people off the ballot the way it was before. So I think that's a conversation to have. And I'm not sure if that's what you were getting at but. We're not gonna say yes to all of our departments for their increases. So why should we say yes to this? Yeah, and we're not saying yes to this. We're providing an opportunity for the voters to say yes. But there we are. Tom, go ahead. May I have one more thing? Thank you very much for your comments and I appreciate them very much. The, even the ones that have concerns about this, the number one reason I'm asking for an exception this time around is we have had a number of unanticipated expenses in the past year. So we had to find ways to cover those things. We reduced our evening hours year round but that started in the summer. We reduced the evening hours and we reduced the Saturday hours. We're not gonna do that again. In other tight years we reduce how much money we spend on technology or what money that we spend on buying books or DVDs or that we provide for programming or other areas. And we very regularly, going back for 20 years, dealing with a very tight budget, the library is constantly underfunded maintenance of the building. That is really caught up to us very badly. I mean that's why we had big expenses in this past year. It's because it's always been underfunded. So we have started a process. We've been working on this for a couple of years to turn this around. Number one, to get caught up on some of these needs. We have our elevators 45 years old. It's gonna die at any time. We need to, we wanna be able to schedule a replacement of the, not the car itself but the mechanisms and the controls. We wanna schedule that because when it's out we'll be, the elevator will be down for up to two months. If it's not scheduled and if we just wait until it dies well then we're looking at four months or longer of not having an elevator. So, but we have been very seriously done of working on changing how this is done. We have plans, we've outlined what the needs are in the building, short term, long term of building maintenance issues. We're talking about the big things like the roof and the elevator and the windows which we're having done right now. We're working on applying for grants for these things as much as we can. We're in the process of meeting with, the process we started about three months ago. Meeting with people who have been generous to the library in the past and asking them, this is not, it's a quiet phase of this campaign to get us going because before you go public with a campaign you wanna raise like two thirds of it, two thirds of the money. So that's where we are right now. We're working on that phase. If we need to stop that for a month, my biggest concern is we have a half a dozen trustees and five out of the six of them are from Montpelier who are very actively working on meeting with donors. If we have to petition, most of them are gonna be petitioning for a month and not meeting with donors. And we're just on a roll right now. So my reason for asking for an exception really is I'd like to not lose the momentum that we have going on that. We won't get to as many people. It's not that it will be delayed. It'll be that, you know, we have a long list and we will just run out of time. So thank you very much for your consideration. Yeah, so I just wanna add a little bit here, which is I also feel very conflicted about this because of the process issues around the, really the rule of thumb, I guess, that we have had in previous councils, which was that as long as the budget was the same, then we didn't, it would require that you go out and get signatures. To be totally honest, I'm not sure that that's my rule of thumb. Like, I'm not sure that I want that to be the rule of thumb. I mean, that idea of that, like, as long as you don't increase your budget, then we'll just put it on the ballot for you. That's not a part of the rule, that I'm correct me if I'm wrong, but that was just something, that was a tool that the council used to try to make it equitable. And I do wanna find some way to make it equitable, but I'm not sure that that's it for me. And so while I am in limbo, as to what my, like, what my philosophy is about that, I'm willing to support it. So, which I realize is maybe not, you know, like it probably should have a rule of thumb figured out by now, but I don't. But in any case. The history on this, not library specifically, because back when we had all the art issues on the ballot, the council policy was if it's the same amount as the prior year, we'll put you on the ballot. If you want an increase, you've got a petition for the entire amount. So it was, you know, okay, if you want more money, you've got to work a little harder for it. When the community fund came into place, most of those items that had been on the ballot went to the community fund, leaving only the library essentially as the outlier that was in that same old situation. And because the library's funding was so much greater than the community fund, we just kept them outside. And so the policy continued with them. If you want an increase, you consider it. With the community fund, it is different. People have the opportunity to apply for the community fund, but if they don't get money from that process, they have the option of doing so. Now, so last year you had central Vermont home house and hospice at 20,000 people's health and wellness clinic at 2000 and Good Samaritan Haven at 4,000, who were not funded through the community fund, who all were required to petition to be on the ballot. And I do recall at least one of those agencies did make a plea to the council because they'd missed the deadline or something like that and the council still chose. So that was, that's the history, but the community fund is a little different than the library and a lot of where it's always been this sort of, how do you handle them? So it's a precedent in practice. I don't know if that's helpful or not, but that's how we got to be where we are. I'll just follow up with Bill. One of the notes in here is that with the other towns, when you petition, you need 5% of the registered voters. With Montpelier, you need 10. That's correct. Is that part of the? That's in the charter. Okay, well, any further comments on this? Okay, does anyone want to make a motion? I would move that we approve the library's request to be added to the ballot with the projected increase, which I think puts it at $350,000. $350,000 and $471. That dollar amount. The increase is only $19,838. It's not $350,000 increase, just to be clear. Right, the total, the total. But for those that are listening. And Jack is seconded. Further discussion? I think I'll support it just as I'll re-emphasize that there's an exception. It's a capacity issue this year for you folks. And I'd say we would afford other groups who came in and had other such issues. It's an opportunity to come in and ask this. I would support it. They're in danger. They're in danger. They're in danger. Fair enough. Glenn. I also just want to take this opportunity to apologize for the books that my dog has been eating. Well, you're paying for them, right? And apologize. I guess I would also just encourage us to consider beyond this instance what should or should not trigger an exception to the petition rule. There probably is, well, there probably is, there are groups that we would turn down and what would that look like? So I encourage you all to do some thinking about that. I'm like talking to myself. Didn't you turn down home health last year? I don't remember. Yeah, there's signatures. I think they did. We made them good signatures. And good Samaritan. Good Samaritan, some really small people's health. Yeah, no, it's true. It's true. Just vote. Okay, fair enough. For the discussion. Okay, all in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? No. Okay, I think it passed. Okay, all right, thank you. Thank you very much. Yep. Thank you very much. And all right, moving on. Cool, all right. So, can we take a break? Yeah, sure. I'd like to be kicking back up again at seven. How long do you want? Seven? Five. Seven fifty-five? A lifetime. Seven fifty-five, that's my goal. Before we get started with the next item, I just want to just tag on one thing to the conversation we just had, which is that I think it would probably be good for us to have a conversation about our policy around when do we accept people from needing to get petitions when there's not someone in front of us asking for that. And so, I was just talking with Bill about, let's put that on as an agenda item, to talk about what is this group's policy want to be sometime in June. I know I think Rosie won't be here, but that'll be the new council. I'll give you some comments. Yeah, please do. But that way we can have that history out there and thoughtful conversation prior to meeting to use it. So anyway, just wanted to make a note of that. Cool, moving on. Sprinkler ordinance. This is the second reading of the ordinance you reviewed at the last meeting, which came out of the group that Rosie and Glenn worked with and the variance committee. And I think this is just moving this forward in the process. So I just want to officially open the public hearing doing that. Comments from council. Could Jack? I think we should just do this quickly. Great. Comments from the public. No? Okay. All four of you. Okay, any other further questions? Okay. I'm gonna close the public hearing then. And so this being the end of the second hearing, I think we get to, I'm not looking at the language. But yeah, I think we need some kind of emotion to adopt this language. We adopt the language as proposed. Second. Further discussion? All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Great. Okay, thank you. I'm done, yeah. This is the second Sprinkler ordinance. This is the one we discussed at the last meeting, basically to mirror the state language regarding parking garage requirements. And so we drafted, chief and I drafted the language you have. Pretty simple, just reflecting the state code. Yeah, the language you have in front of you was right out of NFPA one. Okay. Jack. So I'm gonna officially open the public hearing on this particular set of changes. Further comments? Okay, public? Nope. Okay, great. I'm gonna close the public hearing. Sorry, I was reading. Oh, okay, question? I just wanted to give the fire chief an opportunity to share whether you feel this is a good thing or- I do. We took a look at it. When Chris and I started reviewing the parking garage, we realized that the parking garage falls under. It's a new public building. But when we started taking a look at it, we realized that that probably didn't make a lot of sense. And then we looked at NFPA one and we looked at the fire code, the state fire code, and realized that it's not required in for a, as the wording says, for a freestanding open parking structure you know, it's basically four levels of parking lot is what it is. So I reached out around the state to fire chiefs in St. Albans, Burlington, South Burlington, and Brattleboro that have these structures and they follow NFPA one. Three weeks ago at a New England fire chief's meeting, I reached out to the state of Rhode Island and Connecticut and they also only require in freestanding open parking structures, they follow NFPA one also. Which does require, this building will be required to have a stand pipe system in it. For those who aren't familiar, a stand pipe system is just basically a six inch water main that runs up through each stairwell. And at each landing, there's a place where we can attach a fire hose and turn it on and have water available. That is required under NFPA one. So this structure will have that or any freestanding open parking structure would be required to have that. So I do support this. Yes. It seems obvious, but I assume there's room to interpret what freestanding means. Like I assume that the city center building parking ramp is not considered freestanding because it's attached directly to the building. And that is a sprinkled, that parking garage has sprinklers. And I'm also picturing the parking garage up in Burlington that was adjacent to the mall downtown where there were, at a couple of different levels, there were direct connections going into entrance doors of the building. Would that be considered freestanding? No. Okay, any connection, any physical connection? Any connection, yeah. And any underground or below grade parking by NFPA would require sprinklers also. Okay. But it has to be a completely freestanding, separate building. Donna, did our current parking structure have that in their blueprints? What you're saying is required. The sprinkler system? We are really... And the sprinkler system, what you said, the standing pipe in the warehouse. The stand pipe, yes. They already had that, good. Checking? Yep, yep. Yeah, the architect knew, he knew the code. He knew it was required, yeah. Great, further comments? Okay, I've already closed the public hearing. So we're going to set the second reading for next week. Do you think we need a motion for that? I would move that we set the second public hearing for, is next week at about time? Okay, I would move that we set it for our next meeting on December 19th. Second. Another discussion? On favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, great. Thank you. Thank you. And some parking ordinance changes. Still on the agenda. Thank you. Good evening. Moving right along. Moving right along. So I'm Tom McCartle, excuse me, Public Works Director and presenting for parking ordinance recommendation. Save a public hearing. It's the first public hearing to enact an ordinance change. I'm going to interrupt you to open the public hearing. Carry on. Thank you. We did notify all the interested parties. We believe we did through mailings, posting on the website and newspaper. We've not had really any comments. They're not tremendously impactful. The streets that are involved, they'll go through them. Math or Terrace is pretty narrow. Not wide enough to support on-street parking is primarily legislative session issues. So we don't have a lot of parking demand there, but when we do, we've had to post it with some signs under police order. That's a prohibition on both sides. Guernsey Avenue, same sort of thing. Primarily visitors of the streets. Delivery vehicles as well. We need to accommodate them. There will be a loud on one side. I believe this is the way we did this one with some intersection clearance. Berry Street. This kind of goes back to the old days when there was a market there. We've had a limited parking, short-term parking here in the past. It was taken, it was removed and now it's back again. So it's consistent with city practice to address that. Police have identified long-term parking there. So this is kind of the overflow parking, unmetered parking in this area taken up by a long-term parker. So this was helpful business. And the last one is just truly a housekeeping matter. Baldwin Street was modified through a project taking out the several irregularities. It's consistent with, we don't need the seasonal change and it's now included in the winter parking band under the event-based ordinance. So that's just a brief summary of the four ordinances and we have questions. Ashley. So with regard to the Berry Street change, I'm just curious why 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. because I don't think that we have any parking enforcement that late. I mean, I know law enforcement can write the ticket. It just seems like if all the other parking goes into effect at 8 a.m., I mean, I understand maybe 7 a.m. because I think the bakery may open at 7 a.m., but after work, I mean, if you're a resident in that area and full disclosure, I used to live diagonally across the street from there and sometimes had to park on Berry Street. I appreciate that it would be desirable to see someone, I mean, somewhere 6 a.m. came from, but you don't have to move your car from the city lot if you have to park there until I believe 7 a.m., is that right? Or 8 a.m. if there's a parking ban. So I guess my request would be that either we change those hours from maybe 7 to, what's the parking meter, 5? Can I interrupt you? I appreciate that you asked, my friend. Yes, feel free. I really appreciate the ask. You're the first person all week. He's asked. They get interrupted. I want to stop you because the way I read that, and I appreciate your interpretation, but the way I read that, it applies specifically to the parking at 203 to 5 and 207 Berry Street where that 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. restriction applies. This is a separate, and I could see why you would interpret it that way. It wasn't intended to be that. I added it to Berry Street because we already had a Berry Street section. Perhaps a better move would be to either add the time to that as being a time period that the council suggests or create its own section, so that's separated from that. But that 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. applies to the other piece, not this one, the new one. Hold on. I don't know that I followed you. Reading the, that's one sentence, 15-minute limited parking, two, so situated at this location from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. Then it's a new sentence, 15-minute limited parking for the two spaces at 78 Berry Street, where no time period during the day applies. So it's a separate sentence. It's the way it's structured. I could see why that would be confusing. Yeah, I just, I'm fine with making it like during business hours limited. It just strikes me that having to get up, and as someone who's lived in Montpelier and has had to get up at the wee hours, that was hard to find a replacement for what I wanted to say. It's, you know, when it's like negative 10 degrees out and you have to go move your car at 545, there is nothing worse than the sight of me going to move my car at 545 and it's negative 10 out. And so I just, I wanna be mindful that the council also exempted that area from having required parking in the zoning. And so there are lots of units in that area that don't have parking and residents need those spots. And I appreciate that we need to be mindful of business operations too. So I would just ask that we change those hours to be more in line with other city areas. Again, it doesn't apply to the new section, but the way this reads is that this particular 15-minute limitation applies only during that time. So then the limitation goes away. You'd be able to leave your vehicle after 9 p.m. through to 6 a.m. I know, but that's the problem. With no 15-minute restriction. No, I know. But what I'm saying is 6 a.m. is awfully early for that to begin. Yes, that is. And then 9 p.m. is awfully late for that to end when the business closes, I think at two or maybe three at the latest, or at the latest? So I could offer a suggestion, but Jack, you had to do something. Is just to understand what's going on here in this section A, that first sentence going through 9 p.m. is what's already in the ordinance. That's correct. That's already there. And then the bold and italic is only the new stuff. That's the new. So I think what Ashley, Councilor Hill is suggesting is that we alter the existing ordinance to say 7 a.m. To like 5 p.m. or 6 p.m. Or just something, I mean, it just doesn't make sense to me. As someone who lived there, the businesses are closed. So we warned this as a restriction specific to this address, not alteration to an existing ordinance that affects those. So I'm not sure if it would require a new public hearing, first reading on a restriction, or if Council has a prerogative to alter something that was not on your agenda. I think you could, as long as we notice people for the second reading of the change of intent, I think they can do that. Okay, so you're. Can I ask you a question, Tom? Sure. What are your other meters? What time are they in our ordinance? Are they listed in our ordinance at time? I don't know offhand. I believe the parking enforcement boot begins on, as far as meter patrol begins, about 8. Yeah, it's 8 to 5 for parking meters. Right, but for other things, so I thought you started earlier because patrol can came by. That's right. And get people to move. 7 a.m. is when. It's not just by the foot trap, foot patrol. It would be good to have a consistent with what the other ones say, I think. You are perhaps right. That, again, wasn't the intent of this ordinance, but perhaps there is some other house cleaning that needs to be done, but I think it's, if I understand what you're saying correctly. So I don't know what the date of this. This goes back quite a ways. Great. I think we have a common question. This is a public hearing. I live right off that street, and I don't really know what meters or what, and in general, I assume no one else does. She, Councilor Hill, is really well put what my concerns would be, but I prefer to just be consistent. And so I just wanted to have a second voice for that. Thanks. Thank you. This is not a metered area. This is referenced to, but I understand the point. Yeah. I don't want to have to wake up. That's really weird. I don't blame you. Listen, I totally get it. I have been that person, like, getting out there. First thing, it's not a pretty sight for anyone. Where is 203? Is that down near the market? It's down, I so... So it's... 82 is where we're at Nelson Street. So it would be, I'm thinking it's near the, the little convenience store, I'm pretty sure that's where it is, because I was at 178, and then that was Kitty Corner from there, and then... They've had a 15, and it could be that they're open... They've made that date back when they were open at six. I think that they are open later, although I don't know if it's nine. I think they were at the time. That's what was the origin of that in that one space. I think 207 to 209 is in front of the Bear Street Market. That's what I'm thinking, yeah. Just to... Catch it up, okay. So to be clear, your suggestion is that we change that to 7 a.m. Yes. And that the section that is actually worn for 78 to 82 Bear Street, that we include a time. Yes. Consistent with the other. Yes. Okay. I'm fond of things being predictable and easy to read. 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. I don't know what the bakeries hours are, but... Close us at 1.30 on weekdays, two o'clock. But I think having it consistent with other... I mean, we stop traffic for parking enforcement at six. We will hear from the market if the market is open until after six or whatever, we'll hear from them, because they are pretty vocal about this change. Right, they are. When they... So typically these hours do... They don't believe we might want to... On the restrictions that support a short-term parking for a specific business, it does coincide directly with their hours. So that's why I'm thinking it probably goes with the market with those times and then it should match the bakeries hours. So we'll find out what that is. Although Wells is looking on Google Maps, but it says 10 to 8 right now before the market. For the market? 10 to 8, so they've changed. And that's not uncommon. That's one of the issues with these restrictions, I guess, is that... Yeah. Once they're in the book, they're here for a long, long time, so... Oh yeah, go ahead, Ashley. I have an unrelated comment now as someone who lives very close to the elementary school. I've seen lots of folks try to take that shortcut that we all used to take and get stopped by the gate. If there is any way that that can be signed on both sides, like street, closed, because I watch people all the time come in because the GPS will tell us to turn down there and then they're trying to turn around in the middle of the road. It's not on here. It's not an ordinance change that needs to happen, but given the snow that is piling up and the number of people that I've seen, just making that sort of 18 point turnaround back up towards, you know... So you're talking about Park Avenue and Humbert Street? Yes. It was one way before it was closed. No, I know, but people turn down there now thinking that it's open. Right. People don't realize. I watch people do it all the time, but it just, if there's something... That's right, it is one way. Something that says like... But we change that to two way to allow because that section is closed, just so the residents here can get in and out. So I think what we need road closed ahead or street closed ahead. Yes, exactly. Just something, because sometimes you can't even see the... Or no outlet. Right, no outlet, something. You can't see the fence always until you're almost on it. And so people have just kind of been going and then all of a sudden like, whoops. Got it. Good suggestion. Thank you. So do you have enough information for coming back to us? As long as you're comfortable with us adding the changed for whatever the bakery is. And we'll leave that to... I suppose there's a way so that this can go, be eliminated such that wording is added that when the business closed, this ordinance terminates or ceases to exist. This is a change. I don't think we should do an ordinance total. I don't think we should do an ordinance totally based on one business hours. We should be at least covering them but maybe a little bit more. That's another way of doing it. It could always be a business area. There was a business there before. I don't know why it was rescinded. And then, so that's another... Seven to nine is... Seven to nine should cover it, right? Okay. Yeah, this just seems like a really good opportunity to keep piling on more things. All right. Thanks Tom for showing up. I'm your sounding board. All of the parking changes have reminded me that a neighbor of mine on Prospect Street has asked me to suggest that we limit parking on Prospect because of similar reasons to what's stated here. We've had a bit of a change in use over the last few years and more people are Airbnb-ing their homes or parts of them and we have more cars on the road than we used to and it's starting to get tight in a couple of spots. So I don't know if you've already looked at it recently or if you would be willing to take a second look along this way but I think that would be great. I have not looked at it. I'm not aware that that is so. What is specifically the concern in the specific area? Yeah, so. Perhaps you could send me a note about that and I would, these reviews are not just public works who includes fire and police, fire on public safety access and police under enforcement and we kind of work together on that. So they sent an email that I could loop everybody in. I'll do that. With an address. If y'all follow up on that. Okay. Thank you. Okay, any further comments? So I just want to be clear what, I want to make sure all the business owners and all the residents get adequate notice and I'm not sure that we've been very clear about what we're planning to do so that they get adequately noticed for next time. What I feel like we need to give Tom some more concrete language so that he can then notice the people who would be impacted. Tim, what do you feel like is your direction right now? Um, the alteration to the existing section we would notify the few businesses there so each of them would receive that notice and as well as the adjoining owners. Notice for what? The, they would receive, what we send is the full demo. But the question is what's the change, what? What are you thinking about is the change? Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, I thought it was more the manner of delivery. The, so the existing section for 15 minute limited parking would be revised from 6 a.m. as a start time to 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. The proposed new language would also be, would be 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. So both sections would have the time restriction included. Does that seem adequate to you there, Ashley? Everyone's okay with that? Okay, great, thank you. Okay, I'm gonna, unless there's further comments. All right, I'm gonna close the public hearing and I think we need a motion regarding the second hearing. I would move that we set this for a second reading at the next meeting. Next week. On December 19th. I'll second. Further discussion? Hall in favor, please say aye. Aye. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Tom. And thank you for asking about interrupting. You're welcome. Okay, so we have a bit of an update on the. Sure, so this is just to follow up to the message I sent you earlier. I got a copy for you. So I, you know, I can go through it if you'd like. We, at our last meeting, we had a discussion about. It's okay. I need this now, but I'll hand it to you when I'm done. I just want to refer to it that I will hand it to you. So. At the last meeting, we talked about a process to look at options for the properties on the north side of the, or the east side, excuse me, of the north branch. The three properties that the city owns or has an interest in. And I was asked to put together a working group to look at that. I've made some effort, talked to some people and have, I think, assembled a group. I haven't actually reached out to them, but I think we have a structure of who we might get around the table to look at this. The first place I wanted to start was with our funding sources to see what, if any, restrictions we had. And there are some. So I tried to articulate those as best I could. As I said, I ran this by the state and federal people like Matt and they both said, yes, this accurately reflects our conversation. Because we've had issues in the past where we've had a conversation. And that's, you didn't understand what we told you, so. Anyway, I think the main issue is that we don't, while the city owns those three properties, we purchase them with federal money. And so therefore there's an ongoing federal interest in the use of the properties and that they were purchased for this specific project, the One Tailor Project and for transportation and transit uses. One of the lots, and this is partially at our request because of our prior plans, has been declared non-essential. And you're right, they are correct. We could build a road around that lot and not necessarily need the former TKS lot. That's the parking lot next to the drawing board, not where a popular beverage was, but the parking lot next to it. And so they are expecting reimbursement for that. That was an issue for us because we planned to sell the combined new property and that's how that was gonna be addressed and that's how they understood it. So they never really articulated that clearly. So, and in addition, as you know, they provided additional funding to our project. And again, they were clear, they agreed that it was not conditioned on the sale. However, I know, I certainly said to them, you know, you're gonna get money from the sale of the property. So, you know, it was definitely part of the conversation. And then the, yeah, so I think it's all laid out. So the question is, there may well be some, it's almost certainly will be some financial obligation to using these properties for something other than the way they are properly designed, that currently designed, not properly designed. And so would be the cost of a park. So my only question was before we continued forming a committee in a group, which was your direction last time, was just to make sure you had seen this information and that if you wanted to change course or do anything different, you could. And if you don't, we'll just continue, but I wanted to be sure that everyone was doing this with full knowledge of what is out there. I did have a one follow communication with the V-Trans official and he did basically saying, how soon would we need to pay back the money, even if we decided to go and he said, probably we could do it up to two years. But no more than that. So your, the cost, if we wanted to have total control is $304,000 or there's an additional, I didn't quite follow all the different financial impacts. Well, it's a little complicated in that the three lots we bought have since been converted to two and that's a subdivision that's already happened and they now exist as two lots. So what we purchased each individual from is kind of different. So the appraisal for the new, what I called lot two, the combination of mostly the TKOS lot and part of the association for the blind lot in the back, what we were going to sell. That was appraised at 380,000 a couple of years ago and that is what we were going to be paid by the Moab Trust to purchase and we were bought there later for 360. The state then can take that 380 and match federal funds so that they can add to their transportation purchase so that becomes a 20% match for them. So that's worth about 1.2 million to the state so it's not chump change, they want it back. They recognize that we paid 20% of that when we bought the property so if they were to sell it to a private seller they would not get the full 380 or whatever. We'd have to do an appraisal first of all to come up with a new value. But the city would get a 20% discount off of that because we spent 20% buying it so that's the recognition. So at the most recent appraisal for 380, 304 there's 80% of that. So that would clean out all federal rights for that new parcel. We could argue that well, we only want to buy the rights out of the smaller parcel and see where that goes but that would be certainly unequivocally a clean way to do that but we'd have to. And if we do that we don't also owe the state money. The state and the feds are one of the same. Okay. So the V-trans acts as the agent for federal highway and but the interesting thing about this is that even though it was paid for with federal money it goes back to the state of state money which they can then use to match more federal money. All right, so what was that? Right, otherwise they, so the part I didn't really get into here because it was just long but just so people are clear when they've determined something is not essential or surplus property. If we don't do anything they will then seek to dispose of it and they will put it out to bid to top bidder and then the next thing they do is see if any state agency wants it and put it to them and then they would go and come to the city. So there is a backhanded way in which if nobody bid on it privately and nobody from the state wanted it then the city could possibly get it anyway and the surplus property but it's how many times you get through waivers right before you. Yeah, go ahead. No, go ahead. One more question I had was so right now they've deemed it non-essential. If we were to do a transportation related thing such as one of the options we kind of mentioned last time was rather than doing a building or a green space but putting parking there and removing parking from Berry Street in order to make that last connection of a bike path or a multimodal path on Berry Street. To me that's a transportation related item. Could we get them to change their intervention? I raised that issue and they said number one would have to be open to the public so it couldn't be private parking spaces for designated for an entity. And part of the issue they have and I get this they're not actually they've been extraordinarily cooperative. I want to actually give a shout out to VTrans and Federal Highway because we asked them to put this all together for us so we could sell this in the first place and they were extremely helpful and now they get that we're revisiting it and they're trying to, they've been great about telling me what the rules are. But the funding was for the One Tailor project and it was for this part was basically to put a bike path in and to put a road in and that's the sort of federal transportation interest. So they've got to somehow make sure that whatever they spend money on is consistent with that grant. And essentially they said you know you could put the bike path in and you could still put the road in without having to have touched that TKS property. So it's not necessarily essential to your bike path project. So somehow we'd have to get them to link that and say well it's parking for the bike path project. So you know, I can't rule it out 100% but I wouldn't bank on it either. So I'd call it your number three on the backside of your memo. You talk about the easiest, the next easiest and a more complicated path is to subdivide the two into a smaller building space and then you go on about then buying or selling out. I mean I'd like to explore that. I don't know if we have time to. So how much time do you think it would be to approach them about number three? That option's more complicated. We've got competing time frames here and this is where it really gets dicey because states can have their own process. If we were to subdivide this we need to go through our own subdivision process and do that so create lots and go through our own development review board and draw up the subdivision plan and all that. We can't just subdivide it like okay, we did it tonight and then there are existing permits for this lot so anything that we change it to whether it's parking or open park or anything else we're gonna need to get revised permits for that. So that whole regulatory and funding source. At the other hand we've got contractors who are saying we need to know what we're building soon. As soon as possible because we've got all the materials we're going to be, we're coming in. Fortunately the timing of the winter is they've got to put a storm drain in and that kind of thing which they need to do no matter what so they're gonna get that all finished and then button that up but so in the perfect world we have whatever it is we want to do all of our permits lined up and all of our funding source issues clear in time to tell them what to do in a couple of months. So it's fast, we gotta decide quickly. Do you think that's still realistic? I mean my impression is that any of these options takes more time unless we just don't do anything. I mean we have to do something because we've got to build a road somewhere. Right, well in a certain sense there's like the, I think of it as like there's a long term vision and then there's what's happening in May kind of vision. One thing we could do would be is just build the road where it's designed and not build the rest of it. The parking spaces until we sort that out and then we will have at least done that part of it and we know we've got a couple of years before we have to pay that interest. I mean that might be one option but that's gonna put the road closer to the river than I think people want. Donna, do you have anything further? Any modification of what's there to even move towards a little more green space between the bike path and the river is going to obstruct what's currently planned. Right. There's no way to just slightly modify what they're planning to do to get closer to this. Well so it really, it all, you know, it all works together. So like I said, if we built the road where it was that's gonna take out a whole bank of parking which is gonna create more green space on the river so it's not, you know, it's not completely changing that. The other piece is, you know. I didn't follow that. Well, so right now the plan calls for a road to go through but then there's parking, I'm gonna say to the left of it on the river side of it, you know, whole bank of parking. And actually this whole conversation started with a simple request of can you take out that bank of parking. That was where we began. We said, sure we can probably do that or might be able to do that and now it has turned into let's redesign this whole lot. So I mean it's been evolving. So if we were to build the road as designed and leave the rest open then we could maybe figure out what we're gonna do with the rest of it. It would create more green space. I mean I know ideally they'd like the road to be moved even further away. The issue that comes up is if selling this for a private use is in, one of the things that we need to understand is how important the parking is on site there. And I actually asked Laura from MDC to see if she could research that if we didn't have the capacity and talk to some of the developers. And you know I did speak with the folks that were involved in the prior project and they said they could not have gotten financed if they were not controlling the on site parking. And the other piece which I, you know again we can accept this or not and agree with it or not. But the other piece is that the cost of building a new building requires someone to get top of the market lease rate just to get a return. And if we then have to charge people, if they then have to say and you're paying to be in the parking garage across the way on top of your top of the market lease it becomes less attractive to potential tenants for office tenants and those kinds of things. Whereas they say well you gotta pay, I don't know what that lease rate is so I'm making this up this isn't an official deal. You gotta pay $25 a square foot but you get parking comes with it. You break your next year building. And they say oh okay well that's worth the extra money because I've got this beautiful brand new office and it's convenient. So if we're gonna hold the option open for development there then we also wanna be careful that we don't do anything that is going to stop that. You peed that. So we're trying to have it both ways I think until we make a firm decision. I don't have the best advice and like I said I'm happy to continue a process talking with people but I felt like this was new information from the last time we talked and it was substantive and you all ought to kick it around. Rosie. I had a couple more questions. One is if we don't sell it for the full appraised value are we on the hook for the difference to pay back? So that is- In fact we don't really have that choice. Well what I'm wondering is if it was a less desirable because we took the parking away if it's a less desirable lot, somebody bids less money. Well I think that's why I think you- Do we have to pay a difference back? Well that's you know the very first bullets is any changes in the current plans have to be reviewed and approved by Vittray and so they could conceivably say- You're not gonna get the money- You can't change that parking because you can devalue it on the property. And they have a process which they use which we would follow for selling property. And you know they get an appraisal and they put it out at that and then they take bids. We are allowed I think to have some view we talked with this a little bit about what is it just highest bidder or is it somebody that comes in with a proposal for what they want? You know I mean if we bought it out then we could make up our own rules. But yeah I know they're saying yeah this is what you were expecting. And then my other question is do we have the ability to put any deed restrictions on the property? I know we talked about it being more desirable to some folks that be housing rather than high-end office space or- So Vittray and so the deal that we had with Moat and the purchase and sale that we had went up until closing day called for the city to retain the rights to have housing above the parking lot so we had the air rights to build that. I mean obviously not the city ourselves but to negotiate that as long as obviously that new housing wouldn't be able to use the parking down below because it would be. And the state was aware that that was in that deal. So that's effectively a deed restriction. Well it was in that deal it's not now necessarily but they knew that that was part and I believe that was factored in the appraisal that is enlisted in the appraisal that is that and the road, permanent easement for the road crossing and all that is part of the value of the property. It's not just an open property. It's got public uses related to it. So I don't know if we can, there's one thing for us in a private transaction to say that whether or not we can tell the state and feds we want to reserve this right but maybe that would be a good way out of it too would be to say I don't have any answer to that. I'm going to say we tried before. Further comments, questions? I mean go for it, I keep talking but I don't want to jump in on anybody else but my feeling is that I guess I'm leery of paying $300,000 for a small patch of green space there. I am interested in we've discussed all these other options and I am interested in exploring those a little bit further because I think that green space isn't the only option and I think there was some public perception after that session that that was the only thing that we talked about but I think there are other options and I'm still curious in finding out what those are in the limited time we have but I'm not sure I can justify that amount of expense plus the ongoing lack of income that we would have from the property taxes for just a small amount of green space. I don't know how others feel but that's for that particular option that's where I'm feeling. Jack. I received an email from a community resident I think everyone did saying well you know it seems like everybody's doing into this green space thing so it's a foregone conclusion and so why should we even bother with the with the city manager's discussion process and my reaction was that I'm not sure if that's really true you know I didn't see it as I'm all on teen green space at this point much as I value green space I see multiple public goods that could go here so given that this new information probably alters the considerations I still think it's worth having the manager convene this group to talk about it a little bit. I don't know if I can justify spending $300,000 but I really want to and I think that I am definitely still on teen green space as much as I can be and I think that I I'm confident that there are a significant number of residents at least who are also in that direction this is I was unhappy to see that this is a kind of stumbling block in the way of the plans or the ideas let's say that I already really got pretty excited about and I can see that it does make it a lot more difficult but I'd like to keep pushing if we can for that something like that original idea. I too am strongly in favor of green space and to me $300,000 is a lot of money but it's a question for me of what one I'm gonna be a little selfish and say what I want my legacy to be as a city council member is creating a space in downtown Montpelier where everyone can be I know that Pocket Park is going away I assume because we haven't received any counter proposal from the land owner which is incredibly frustrating on many levels but you know $300,000 for a green space that literally everyone can enjoy versus high end you know commercial realty I appreciate the need for commercial space but we also have a whole bunch of buildings in Montpelier that have open commercial space right now and we've had a hard time filling those spaces so to me green space is the way to go and $300,000 it is a significant price tag but it's the kind of thing I think that will yield a more significant social return than creating more high end office space with prime parking. All right well so I'm gonna jump in here and say that I think I mean one of the things that I'm really hopeful for through this process is because it's right on the river I think there's actually quite a bit of opportunity for grants. So I mean one possibility is that we might end up paying $300,000 another possibility is that we might be able to find some grant funding not to be fair it is a tight turnaround I don't know if that's realistic. I agree that I think it's probably reasonable to ask the city manager to continue to move forward with this group and you know exploring our possibilities but I also like one of the things that this changes for me is just thinking about the timeline and anticipating that there's likely to be well we've got to do something right by when people are starting to construct whatever's gonna happen there in May but that may not ultimately be what we want there and that's okay. So I guess I would just you know put the ask out there that the crew consider what is the short term and long term plans and I want to stay open to I mean I do prefer green space but I am certainly open to if that's not the right solution like I want to be open to that possibility. So yeah, go ahead John. Well I thought we were still gonna be a bit on the hook for the 300 whatever money we owe the feds towards the space that's not gonna be the building whether we sell that space or not we owe them the money unless we do something that definitely makes a transportation so it's not just a green space costing us this money okay and I felt the green space with some light parking at least would give us flexibility to still look at in the future maybe having a building there that isn't so dependent on parking so I just want that clear it's not just the green space costing us money we owe the feds back because we changed a use and I guess I have to sort of separate those two I felt the green space with some parking and putting the road where this drawing at it gave us more flexibility and if it doesn't then I'd want to put the road where it gives us the most flexibility and then if we have the two years to pay AOT back then let's really seriously explore what we want to do in the next six months. Is that viable Bill? Sure. Any other different comments? Yes. Just to point out that it may not be the price tag may not be 300,000 300,000 plus 40,000 dollars a year in tax expenditures taxes that we might have collected from this property. I think that might be high the estimate that we got at least for the municipal tax again depending on what goes there the building that was permitted we estimated bring around 7500 to 8000 in municipal taxes per year. And water revenues? Yeah we had additional water revenues in downtown improvement tax and sewer and all that but just in terms of general fund taxes. The number that we got may have included school taxes and anything else is a higher amount but and it depends on what's built and what it's valued at so the permitted building was about giving me a value to about 750. The cost of it was about 1.5 million so I think sometimes people say oh you're putting a 1.5 million dollar building in there that's where your taxes are going to be but actually you can't then turn around and sell it for 1.5 million it's market value is something less than that so. Okay well that's good to know. Do you feel like you have clear enough direction? Well I mean I think the issue is you want to continue having a conversation and that we're cognizant and I just didn't want to call the group together if people's minds had changed so. Okay are we satisfied with that team? I encouraged the person who emailed us to get on this good committee we'll see. Great. Okay thank you. Okay and we're on to the budget. Yeah. So are you are you going to do that? Okay. This will not take very long. Nine o'clock is not looking great mayor. What's that? Nine o'clock is not looking that great. No I said nine thirty. I said nine thirty. Okay. Yeah it could be. It could be. We could make it. So one time when I worked as a team with Mass we started meeting at five o'clock in the afternoon. They probably went to like three a.m. So not always. And they had a room like where Sue's office. Lights are on. Sure I mean if people are happy with it. It's fine with me if people are happy with it. So. Okay there's Anne. There's Mike. We have her. Where's Donna? Donna. Oh there she is. All right. So I sent out information today you do not need to know it or have read it for tonight this is basically I'm going over what it is and Todd just handed out the copy. So this is a very short preview of I think the discussions that we're going to have over the next couple of weeks and try to lay it out for you as simply as possible and I think where we ended up was in a pretty good place better than I thought we were going to. So basically you know we put together a base budget that kept our core functions our direct services pursued the goals of priorities met our regular regulatory mandates and kept our capital funding. So what's in the base we started saying what if we just do the same thing next year this year same funding for everything same staffing no changes and we actually well fortunately we had increased revenues for piloted increased revenues and local options tax. So those policies are helping to defray the cost of local government among some other things so to basically roll everything just over it was really a less than one percent budget increase and actually a point three percent tax decrease it's pretty minor but you know basically the same thing we do the same thing next year it's going to cost the same thing. So we said all right well what are the key you know what are the key elements that people have talked about so we took a look at some of the things you told us now one of the commitments that I know I personally made and we had we had talked about as a council at least last year was adding another 50,000 to the capital plan so if you add that back in because that wasn't in that do the same thing next year adding a new full-time new police officer raising the housing trust fund 15,000 I'm going to talk about that a little bit the housing trust fund request was to go from 60 to 150,000 and that is a lot of money but it's really broken up into three distinct portions the first 75 of it is a commitment we've already made to the French block project so we've got to have 75 in the budget next year if we don't do anything else so we've got to go from 60 to 75 the next 60 was to retain the home first time home buyers program the last 20 was to put away for the potential Christchurch housing project in three years with the idea that next year we'd have 150 we have 60 for first time home buyers leaving 90 save that same thing the following year 90 and 90 is 180 plus 20 is 200,000 which is what we would need for the Christchurch so the request is broken up into three so when you see our increments further on we broke them up that way you all had indicated the ash borer was a high priority so the team included a full time position for trees for this next year and those numbers include benefits in there and then we took a look at the facilities position and what we talked about so we agreed that's a high priority and we agree that it's going to be important not only for you know we're going to have a new parking garage we're going to have a new transit center you know we're looking at a new potential recreation center you know we have facilities plus all of our existing facilities needs and the idea of implementing some sort of sustainable energy plan so when we do the full presentation next week you'll see that we're going to recommend seeking funding and using existing funding to get a grant to do hire a consultant to do the energy plan so that a new facilities person that has something to implement rather than have you know they're not going to be the person that can do the plan they're going to be a person that can make it happen so what we kind of came up with was splitting the baby was this is a full time position but if we don't start it until April of next year we are only paying for a quarter of it now now that means we're basically adding to the following year's budget a full time position but it was a way to do that so with those in that brings us those that add $231,000 to the budget and increases the budget 2.7% tax increase of 2.4% CPI for this year was 2.5% so this was basically if you want to keep your budget at CPI this is what we would prioritize as the things that should go in there now we all know it's mix and match time so we'll talk about that next so here's the mix and match these are other things that we talked about as a group not only as our own team but from the strategic plan and from the discussions with the budget surveys and then the last meeting when you all laid out what your priorities are so you can see some things aren't here twice and it's because we've looked at them as incremental ways you could get there so the first one was the housing trust fund so that's the next 60,000 that we talked about for the first time home buyers a part time parks position which would again we had some debate whether that would also be like we did with the facilities that we wouldn't fill it till next spring you know for the following summer and have it be a full time position or whether they would actually have it be part time throughout the year the parks wanted to not make that decision just yet this is the remainder of the point of the facilities position they get a full time position that starts in July rather than in April art synergy ask for $50,000 we just broke it up into $25,000 you know given them part the full times parks position that you see that it's starred with the parks time that is not two positions that would be adding to the part the part time to make it full time so that would just be combining those two and then the remaining $20,000 for the housing trust fund art synergy then the remaining $25,000 for them Montpelier alive had asked for an additional $10,000 and we put that on the list I would like to do a citizen survey the national citizen survey our proposal this year is actually going to be to take existing money do it this year for $15,000 and the suggestions you put $5,000 away and then do it every three years so that you're constantly funding it and you're uploading the data and the info on a regular basis it's not a lot of money probably could have gone if I'd known we were going to end up with a minus I probably would have just put it in the case but and then the library funding that you discussed tonight obviously made this list before knowing whether it was going to be on the ballot without a petition so maybe we need to think about how we figure that so those are those are the items that are in play that would be above so they all total up to an additional $295,000 which is an additional tax increase of 3.1% and 3.4% so if you put all in you'd have a 4.7% budget increase 5.5% tax increase at $0.06 if everything was on the list so that's kind of the field that we're playing with so tonight I'm basically going to give you this preview next week we'll get you the books and the full analysis and some of the more articulated proposals and then we have scheduled it says January 3rd I think it's actually January 2nd it's a Wednesday January 2nd and the idea that's an only budget so I think you know we can get in there and then the two public hearings of course which we can also do work on and I mentioned this only because we do have full agendas on the 19th and we will have agendas on the 9th and 24th budget isn't the only thing on those agendas so really the workshop day is the one that we really have devoted to it now given the numbers and the amount of talk you know I don't know that we'll need more than it so that's it for that and it's one other thing I want to so the other thing we sent you tonight was your way of looking at this let's see if I can find where I'm looking for Hulan we have these computers that aren't ours this is the Excel sheet yes the Excel sheet and I want to just show that to everybody that's not who that is where would that be I want to get on this I know okay here we go so what this is is just an Excel sheet and I just gave it what I just told you was all on here and this is hard to read here but you have it so basically what this is showing you at the top is just the summary that I told you here's the lines that you have and the base revenue so and then the next blocks here just giving you an example of things that are included in that base budget now there is one increase I said everything was funded the same the Montpelier community fund actually they just came through with the awards of $124,500 that's up from $115,500 however last year that $26,000 that was petitioned those people all got funded so that's up nine but the ballot article was down 26 so we take that trade anytime so that was the one difference and the other item is of course there's no zero for the Central Montpelier Safety Authority which was another contributor so you can just get a sense of what's in the budget then below are the list I just went through so you can see what those base adds and then here comes the fund part we don't usually fund the budget yeah this is actually kind of that is really cool so what you have here is this is these are the add-ons and if you decide that you want to increase the housing trust fund you just put a little X there and hit enter and it's going to add it to the budget it's going to add it to the tax rate and show you and then the cumulative at the bottom and you'll see how currently the base budget at this property value 228 which is the median home value it goes up $60 well now it's going to go up $76 because you added that you can also add your own home value in there if you want to see or try different values if you're interested at what it might affect you at different things but anyway if you all you have to do if you want to add is put X's in here so let me see and so that is the spreadsheet so like I said if you max it out and then so that allows you to mix and match now the other thing that you can do also is of course go up above and delete anything here if you want to take out you might want to put it on the side because it doesn't have that same X function so just remind yourself that it was $50,000 so if you want to add it back in that you know what the number is we didn't get that advanced and and obviously if you want to take something out from above at least make a note of it and our thought was this gives you folks a week to play with this and on your own and see and decide what combos you have and next week we'll do the full presentation and then maybe we can just get a sense of where everybody's at by using this tool and then have then really sort it all out on the second so I have a question yes sir on my tablet here this synopsis is showing up as read only yeah you can still so you should still be able to do it if you can't we'll think probably what you need to do because as an attachment it is probably read only then you need to like enable yeah either download it into excel or open it with google sheets and then you should be able to edit it okay and to play with it right but if there's any problem that would be happy to help out this is my favorite thing can we make this available to the public we're going to play it on the website tomorrow yeah that so we did discuss making it available to the public so people can do the same this is a completely unlocked version that you're seeing so the formulas and everything could be changed and tweaked so we're just going to tidy up that presentation so we don't end up with a lot of different versions but yeah we weren't really going to do it as a game like that kind of thing but at least put it out so people can be making it can be but it kind of is it kind of is no but I mean yeah maybe next year we'll have a more robust budget general budget now what it doesn't give you of course is everything that's in this right the top budget the base budget when we talked about services and we don't expect you to take our word for it that it's just the same so that is why you have these detail sheets they're not the most interesting things in the world but if if someone wants to see you know what's in the fire department budget that that's in there or the fuel you know what our assumptions were we didn't want to we wanted to make sure that's out there and again we'll explain more of that with the budget book I'd say the other main thing that we want to so that's really all we have to talk about tonight we're happy to answer any questions about any of it we're happy to you know if you guys want to make all your decisions right now we're happy to do that and be done with it and if we typically with budget processes in the years past we spent a lot of time with departments presenting their budgets and I've actually pushed very hard for that because at least sometimes in the years past council is more that interested in hearing from their partners I feel like you all spent an inordinate amount of time visiting all the departments and talking with them and learning about their operations and really getting acquainted so I think in the interest of using time maybe because of questions about these policy decisions or something you don't like in the operating budgets let's get them in and use our time wisely and talk to them but if you don't if you just you know I'm picking on the fire department because there's really no change it's just same as it was and so if you want Bob to come in and tell you about the 16 firefighters and how they work and what shifts they run thanks you know maybe we should use more and say why do you need that extra police officer tell us about those parks positions and tree positions or maybe weighing some of these decisions so that's just my professional opinion and that goes against 23 years of saying you should always talk to your staff more but I just feel like you folks made a huge effort this year to do that and they all appreciate that so that's going above and beyond that's right Ruben Boyd so if there are any questions Todd or I and Todd really did a great job on this putting the budget together our staff really did great you know every year we do that budget group budget it gets a little smoother a little better a lot of trust in the room and we tried to reflect what you told us but also we felt it was important you saw what was the place to start from so just for context for this time right now this is probably not the time to be advocating for what you would want but if there are clarifying questions or process suggestions yeah I'm just thankful for everyone that we did the approach we did and looked broad and you brought us back very specifics and yet with broader options I really appreciate it that makes me happy yeah I'm really excited about this spreadsheet I mean I know that's been said but I did have to say it I'm very excited about it I'm excited to share it with the public and so you'll all have great holidays because you'll have your budget books next week on the 19th and your spreadsheet and you can spend your holidays looking at budgets and clean the spreadsheet so we can fix them up if you have a facilities person number one I would really love to work in energy into the title of that because in that is why I'm going to support it so I just want to make sure that that's really clear yes they're you know taking care of energy or not energy they're taking in the facilities but also particularly the energy aspects of of our facilities so that's that's not really a question that's really just important there is a question buried in here which is that I wonder how this relates to I think we have a point D5 position now in that room that's in right now particularly if we're going to delay the higher because Steve's doing a huge amount of work to keep a lot of our budget and processes going I'm glad you actually made or asked that question in a comment fashion because we also attended one of the things we also want to do is have this person be in charge of the district heat system so we very clearly on top in that means not only getting new customers but making it work and looking at all options and right now it's being cobbled together by our DPW so we have a lot of facilities and certainly the energy functions of those facilities are very important but you know there's an energy aspect of it but we also need help and we're going to be operating a parking garage with automated systems and financial elections and we're going to have a transit center and these are things and if we do a rec center then these are all things that someone's got to be running sorry so can we come back to the so Steve Twombly has a 0.25 position now it's contracted for next year that's still in the budget for next year so this is sort of on top of for next year at least because the anticipations we're not hiring till April okay and so then we'll be doing the energy planning before then potentially in the future we could combine those two pots of money yes great that was my clarifying question others and we always know he has any detail to have looked at otherwise okay we'll get out of April 9 30 I know right that would be amazing perhaps if there are further questions you can just e-mail yeah and of course again we'll this will be on the agenda next week and again because we have a full agenda it'll probably be another brief you know I'll give you a quick presentation overview of the budget but that's okay the goal is to send you into the budget if just this week if you've already had a chance to weigh things then it might be good to see where everyone's at too so we can be running numbers next week yeah so great sir don't need my skis don't need my no shoes don't need my skates got it all right here you're all set that's right okay so any further questions about this at this point about the budget at this point thank you this is wonderful in many ways so excited to have this conversation we were happy that the charts are coming as part of this this is oh yeah we wouldn't forget the charts the Excel spreadsheet totally going to be that person those print is really small on this spreadsheet well so you can expand them I know but not all those yeah it's like the books you get next week we fix that it's a little embarrassing my birthday just happened but boy it's clearly gotten worse yeah well we emailed it out which obviously then you can expand on screen those are two things and we do expand it a little in the budget yes I can see it much better when I can zoom in I just want to make sure that for the public who wants to read oh yeah we put that online too as well really yeah maximize viewing okay so keeping in mind that we have 15 minutes basically to go before 9.30 we have no other business regularly so council reports let's start with Rosie Jack nothing to report I will carry on and pass okay Donna oh dear it's okay okay well I hope you all got the draft I left on your desk and this is the first couple of pages are just offline I mean online I just loaded down from another city to think about the third page is actual policies and standard statements that I found and then the fourth page was the evaluation as we have it now so I would just like you to look at this I will send it out electronically and you know edit and add and mark out if you are active with it and maybe new year we can attack this and get our own evaluation system going so just for the public's benefit it's a council self-evaluation tool yes thank you yes and there's been a lot going on in transportation you heard me talk about the your infrastructure committee is going to be having hearings about GMTs on lights at the capital improvement plan and there's just a lot going on and I was surprised to not see you all out the flash mob for the complete streets on December 5th but we went out with our flashing lights and we stopped every pedestrian I mean within 10 minutes I had hit 15 pedestrians just on main street dark as anything and I got up by the library all of them the first thing they said was oh where's your light oh that's cool yes you should so really there's John Snell just emailed earlier that a man 74 years old pedestrian got hit in Burlington and died today and it's just dark and we just have a lot of dark clothes but we have to take responsibility as pedestrians to brighten ourselves up we also need to be as drivers very very very careful I have two people who are interested in joining the EG scooters so I'm hoping that group will happen one is from the complete streets one is from the M-TIC and also lots of positive comments about our flashing crosswalk signs and I hope everybody uses them push the button it'll make it flash thank you just a few things first I think I want to point I spoke about maybe a project labor agreement language as you know we're building a lot of things in town and I'm always very cognizant we're doing it in a fashion that's consistent with our values as a city some of the PLA stuff I did research in other cities I think it could be vulnerable to legal challenges so I have been working on drafting some responsible contracting language that would entail paying responsible wages participating in job training programs and also opening us up to you know private rights and actions just to make sure we're in compliance with workers comp so I hope that language for you in the next couple of weeks here on that other things final scooter stats for the month that we had it 2,245 miles traveled within the city limits here so that's that's pretty good for a fleet and the last week of that as you know was pretty dodgy weather so we didn't get a full month out of it I think you could look at the first week there's being more analogous to what we would look at if we had it on the ground it's not apples to apples but if that was traveled by cars there would be over 2,000 pounds of CO2 emissions avoided in town what I'd like to do is maybe work with Sue on developing a survey for the riders of the scooters there and really nail down how they were using the scooters to see how much of this actually replaced you know road traffic there and how much of it was just you know kids riding on sidewalks maybe drinking beer while they're doing it I don't know so we'll figure it out last thing and I don't want to give John Sundar on this but I've been talking to a lot of legislators if we think our charter changes are a slam dunk over there with the bags and the non-U.S. citizen voting we are sadly mistaken I think these passed by such a margin that we need to be really good advocates for the city and make sure these get over the finish line you know often a legislative tactic is just we need to be ready to get over there and testify in the drop of a hat because that might be how quick it is bringing people who are affected I think tell the human story on this and make sure it doesn't get legalized to death here and I think we can get it passed but it's going to be a challenge there so I hope we can all work on that and encourage folks in the community to do the same I just want to put out there that I am saving some of my personal time but you know from working for the need you know should you need the drop of a hat for somebody to go testify just let me know I'm into it so likewise yeah say this week except come join me tomorrow morning at Baguio's 8.30 to 9.30 the last couple of weeks have been well attended I'm looking to get enough people that I can just sit back and listen and not talk at all and I really encourage you to help me do that so thank you so I just have one thing really to report which is the the investment investment committee today met just prior to council and we are going to have a recommendation for you all about a divestment policy so I'm pretty excited about that so that's coming up on November November January 9th and then yeah that's it okay great I know everything is saying we want to get out of here I'll make it quick the Monday before last yeah last week's Monday I was fortunate enough privileged enough to be invited to a closed-door meeting at NYU Law that was put on by the oh god there's so many words here global resilience network and the international center for enterprise preparedness this is a group of a lot of folks from home and security from the intelligence community from other election administrators secretary states secretary folks from secretary states offices and some folks in the private and nonprofit community sort of looking back on election cyber security over this year and working towards making a sort of collective set of recommendations for the next year and yeah I mean it was it was great I was the only Vermontra there but just thought I would throw out that that happened and it was terrific and hopefully the report will be available soon do we have anything we need to update can you give anything quickly great okay so then without objection we would consider the meeting adjourned ten minutes and time