 meeting to order of the South Burlington City Council of Tuesday, January 19th, 2021. And our first item is the agenda review. Are we being taped yet? Oops. Thanks. More about town meeting because usually they say conference will now be recorded. Okay. So are there any additions, deletions, or changes in order of the agenda items tonight? Okay. Seeing none, we'll move on to comments and questions from the public not related to the agenda. Are there any? We have one caller, two non-members. Anyone have anything? No? Okay. I don't want to speak on the Burton issue, but I'm assuming that I can't see the agenda because I'm just on a phone, but I'm assuming that you'll let me know when it's appropriate. Okay. Which issue was that? The proposed Burton venue. Oh, good enough. I'll let you know. Thank you. What item? We don't have an item on that on the agenda. Pardon me? We don't have an item on that on the agenda. Do we? No. Proposed concert venue. She should speak on it now probably. Okay. It's not on the agenda to speak on Burton. So if you have a time. No, on the act, I mean, I'm sorry, on the act 250. Megan's going to mention that in her remarks. So she'll be talking about her letter. Okay. And if you wanted to chime in, then you can. Okay. I think that would make sense. Okay. I have something I wrote that I just wanted to have the opportunity to read. And I was told to do it in the public comments. But I can't see the agenda, unfortunately. Okay. You can do it. You can do it now. It's not on the agenda. So why don't you read your, your. Comments. Okay. I appreciate it. Okay. My name is Joanie. And I want to comment on the proposed concert venue at the Burton site on Queen city park road, which a but South Burlington. And I want to thank you for participating in the act 250 pre hearing conference last week. And I hope that the city of South Burlington will continue to actively participate in the development process to make this a possible event for neighbors and South Burlington, as well as for Burton corporation. I'm becoming aware of the potential future financial impacts of this venue that could happen for all South Burlington taxpayers. I've been thinking about the possible ongoing long-term expenses that South Burlington could incur on municipal services and sidewalk upgrades. And I think that that Burlington has reduced its police force by 30% to the point of stating that they would cease coverage for a night shift. The Burlington and South Burlington police force are critical to us for safety and keeping noise and traffic problems to a minimum. I suspect it will be South Burlington police force who will be called to Red Rocks park events or to the clean city park road. I don't think it's going to happen with late night issues such as traffic situations, noise, complaints, parking problems, and whatever else might happen. In addition, there's an unsafe lack of sidewalk on the east side of the one laying bridge on Queen City park road. I wonder who will pay for this infrastructure upgrade. Shouldn't that be Burlington? I would like to thank the taxpayers of South Burlington paying for upgrades needed due to Burton corporation's choice to develop. I want the city council to continue to actively participate and address these issues and the impacts of the potential development now while we are able to still have a voice. Once the venue is here, we can't go back and tweak the smaller details that we may wish we have had. Thank you. I appreciate being heard. You're very welcome. Will you please tell me your name again? Yes. It's Joni. How do you spell? It's A. V is in vegetable. R U. T is in tango. I C. K. You've done that before. Thank you. Thank you for the record. All right. Sue with the most appreciative she takes our minutes. Thank you very much, Joni. Thank you. On to the consent agenda. We have two items disbursements and improving the minutes of December 21st and January 4th. I have a motion to approve. I'll move to approve. It's been moved and seconded. Is there any discussion? Okay. Let me call the roll. Tim Barrett. Megan Emory. Tom Chitendid. David Coffin. And the chair votes aye. So we approve that 5-0. Item four, consider and possibly approve a council resolution condemning the violence in the United States. Capitol building on January 6th, 2021. So. Megan has worked on this. So would you like to present this? And Tim indicated that he had some. Additional language potentially. You're muted, Tim. Can you hear me now? Yeah. Yeah, I just said just a couple of. Little things that this is great. I just wanted to just add two more things. Okay. So do you want to quickly take it through or explain the. Derivation of this and. I just want some verbiage that, that, that, um, lineage the fact that, um. Not, I mean, ran sacking. Is one thing, but destruction. Destruction and. Destruction. Destruction. Destruction. I'm not. I mean, ran sacking. Is one thing, but destruction of destruction and theft of federal property. If we could add that, that would be nice. I'm not. I'm not, you know, I don't have to have it, but you, I just wanted to add in all the things that were done. Destruction and theft of federal property. So which whereas is that? Oh, that's right. And sacking. If it doesn't make it too long, you know. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. Can you guys see this? I'm sharing it on my screen. Can you see it? I have it on my, um, iPad. So. Somewhere in there after ransacking offices. Destroying federal property. Destroying and stealing federal property would be good. Okay. That's all. Is that the only change? with me um it's not redundant any is it anywhere to anything else I don't think so because ransacking is like you know just tossing things around and right which is what they did yeah but we don't have anything else about destruction so we said public property you said public property too yeah federal property that's what I had understood first okay the definition of ransack is to go hurriedly through a place stealing things and causing damage might already be this this language came from the um you know what was passed in the state house okay um we'll add theft in there because that they stole that laptop and some other stuff and just you know stealing federal property since we have we have the ing verbs throughout okay okay I'm okay with saying destroying in case someone doesn't know the total definition of ransacking that's good just destruction and that's a destruction of federal property that's good okay I'm gonna put destroying and stealing because we have the ing verbs throughout there right attacking ransacking okay destroying and stealing federal property I'm happy to okay okay so as Megan said this was structured after um the resolutions that both the house and the senate passed correct correct Tom Tom yeah so um and she and I felt that it was important to um let the public as well as um the leadership know that we were as disturbed and bothered by this as everyone else and so we changed it a little bit because it was after the the vote to um what do you call it um get rid of Trump and yeah and um so we added that we would send the resolution to the the leadership in the senate and the house and our congressional delegation because it's in their hands now whether impeachment goes forward in the um senate or not yeah I think the the most critical um aspect of the impeachment um I don't know if that will go through but there's also the 14th amendment section three uh which is another means it was it was done following the civil war which would prevent public officials officials that have you know sworn to uphold the constitution and the government of the united states um that they acted to in fact overturn the government um through encouragement um and you know it was I think pretty clear uh that people look at upon themselves to act on the president's words or on their representative words it's been captured um through video it's been put into court proceedings now that people are being charged um and they are um claiming to have acted at their president's behest uh so I think that is important for officials such as such as we are who take the oath seriously uh to to make it clear that that oath means something and and that we understand its importance and and it's essential that we respect that oath otherwise it truly would be anarchy and we would no longer be the united states as we know it Tim you're muted we can't we had two more things for the punishment which would be um um the denial of uh you know you know security reports security briefings to the you know to to him as well as a denial of any federal pension that would be due to him I mean I'd like to have him lose his pension and also not get any security briefings I mean I can't deny him the secret service because that's probably is that's a bad thing to deny somebody that but but money and information and then access to transportation right I don't know if if former presidents have access to um you know military aircraft for their personal use is that I don't know does anybody know I don't know I mean I do know that they um have some paid staff and they get um money for an office somewhere we could simply say financial gain they could no longer receive any financial um there was something about that hold and I can't drag it up now we'll take too long but there was something there there is language in the constitution that talks about being denied financial gain well maybe we could just say in the second to the last resolved be barred from national or state office um as denied denied a federal pension and be denied security briefings any security briefings but we don't know for a hundred percent accurate on saying those things I know but I just I was trying to look for some words that would in general say um and other um remuneration traditional um compensation yeah I guess support of um former presidents or something you know and that because I think the congress is talking about that but whether they can do it or not I don't know and I don't know all the things they can do yeah so if we start enumerating them yeah can you scroll down a little bit there Megan that's that's Kevin Kevin whoever's got that yeah that's a that's a little better thanks no profit it says yeah show that profit that's not quite what you're talking about either no um so yeah I'm not going to demand this I'm you know I was just I'm mad as hell I don't want to take it anymore and I just would rather that anything that can be removed from his possession or future possession be done right but you know this is fine yeah I think we've made our point and if we can't be a hundred percent sure we're accurate in the wording we might use we really shouldn't put it in although I totally agree um the fact that we're going to pass this resolution means it's going to it's going to happen right you bet the other thing is it would be good to have it timely so they get it ASAP so they know that we support these actions not after the fact that they couldn't get anywhere you um Helen do you want to um change that last uh resolved clause since this is model after these what the legislature did but we can't really direct the secretary of state to do something oh oh yeah so you so you requested that you should you should restate that be further resolved that this resolution be sent a copy of this resolution we can just say that I think we could just take out the secretary secretary of state be directed to and just say that through send and just say that a copy of this resolution be sent to or that sounds good I think so okay thank you that was a good catch okay so we have that um correction and then the other several words um we added um earlier in the um whereas is um to better define ransacking offices are there any other changes or comments people would make okay all right so are you ready sue do you have those changes I think and I can send this I can send this to Kevin shortly can you yeah Megan if you could update the resolution with the new language and send it to me you know this is probably most of those things that you should all sign I suppose or at least one of you well you have my signature on record or something you could use that or I can come in and sign it if there's that capability I don't know yeah we could do that if you'd be willing to do that or you could have someone sign for each of us and just initial it I don't care okay we want to do that okay we'll figure it out ready for the vote yep okay let me just call the roll Megan Emery hi uh Thomas Chinden hi David Kaufman hi Kim Barrett hi and the chair votes aye so we have adopted the res resolution condemning the storing of the capital among other things um yeah five zero great all right um we have a public meeting that starts in nine minutes but we could probably if everyone is okay with this go down to item six announcements and the city managers report um Megan how much time do you need Megan with your letter and you want to just update us on the Burton issue your silence you did yeah I'm happy to do that now um so this is yeah this is under um the item 10 the report from counselors on committee assignments oh no this was um announcements number six because it wasn't really a committee we just asked you to show up true okay so I attended the the pre-hearing site visit as you requested and um was asked there uh by Aaron Brandeik to attend the pre-hearing itself and uh when I was um responding to him it seemed clear to me that it would be positive if I were to do that so I did and um I expected just to observe but then the chair called on me and so I again felt called upon to to respond and the chair was specifically asking for criteria that our concerns fell under and I had heard people addressing them prior to the chair calling on me so I had looked the criteria up and I had responded to the best of my ability and afterward um I realized you know is it possible for noise to somehow be considered because noise was not among the criteria uh and Colin and I had had a little bit of exchange and Colin said yeah it was under air pollution which I hadn't considered so I wrote to Aaron and I said I'm concerned I didn't address this because this was the the moment where people really stipulated the concerns that the commission was going to consider and when called upon Colin hadn't hadn't developed uh you know hadn't built on what I had said either and so I contacted Aaron and he told me I had to respond with a memo to all of the parties and another um response that I made to Aaron was when I was talking about criterion 10 about the plans I was cut off by someone at Burton and I I felt that it was important for me to perhaps not leave it at that so I thought it would be helpful to the commission to have more information on that and Aaron um again indicated that a memo would be in order um and so rather than ask our attorney to to to write this and for us to pay him to do so since um he will be observing for us um I was willing to do it myself Aaron said it certainly could be written by by me uh and so I did that with Helen's agreement and I thought it was helpful this is something that the ccrpc has sent other people have sent just just comments um you know providing the commission I think within it with the document uh you know really indicating what specifically we want the commission to to look at and so of course before sending it and this falls very nicely with our meeting schedule I wanted to show it to all of you and make sure that this represents uh you know your your ideas on the matter okay well thank you um any thoughts um anyone in the council can can you scroll down I can only see down to criterion five in the sentence below or I did send I did send it to you by through the city email too oh just to the day or just this afternoon yeah oh okay okay sorry all right so what's the action you want you want us to read this and then um give a our endorsement of the letter yeah so that it read to make sure that it reflects what the council um agrees our pertinent issues to raise with um the during the act 250 um process okay almost all of them I think are included in the letter that we originally sent the one that we didn't right Megan is the noise and the water the water pollution or the water pollution that's the one that was the one thing that came up since we wrote our letter we have not taken the time to investigate it I mean we have no engineering reports so all I said was that we that this is a new issue and that of course we will be you know following that discussion since our our residents well-being is of course of our concerns so that's what I wrote why were you interrupted by Burton Megan how can I how can I explain for them I don't know I mean no you said what you're talking about the access or the road and who owns it oh no I was talking about uh the plans criterion number 10 oh you mean what did Burton say so you're saying that they interrupted you did they stop you from proceeding in your delivery or well I I didn't expect to be called on to begin with so okay I I was trying to be um you know I I didn't I hadn't prepared and and so when I was talking about how the the plan btv south end um inflicted with this amendment um and and that counselor Joan Shannon had said that infill housing would be more appropriate that is when I believe was Justin worthy broke in and and housing's not allowed there at all and and the council chair said this is not the time for you know people to be challenged we're just taking testimony and okay okay and since I hadn't prepared you know any kind of you know real argument I I wasn't going to pursue it further so orally and I knew that Colin was likely going to be called later on then the fact that I was present was challenged um and Colin did say that I was there representing the South Burlington City Council as had been agreed upon by the counselors so okay there we go any other comments or questions from the council I have one chair really yeah so uh thank you for putting it together um counselor emory I glanced at it since it came in this afternoon I'm reading it now I don't see anything I disagree with I would just say I I'm hesitant to cast a formal vote on it uh tonight because it wasn't on the agenda I don't want to sentiment I support it and it makes sense and thank you for putting so much time into it okay well I think that was my point um was to just get uh kind of an agreement that yeah this pretty much reflects everything we've talked about and that it wasn't okay to send in this memo certainly Colin agreed with that process okay well good the word got one minute um so we won't we get ready to move back to item five and then we'll finish up with any other reports or comments from um counselors from wherever whatever we did this week so let's see I I am five as a public hearing on a proposal to bring the question to the voters at the south brolington annual meeting on march 2nd 2021 of authorizing the city to incur debt under the tax increment financing program to finance the completion of the connection of garden street to dorset street on the west and garden street to mightest drive on the north as well as potential additional improvements at the white street willistan road intersection and the hindsburg road willistan road intersection well and so I would like to open the public meeting so may I have a motion to open the meeting salute and a second okay all in favor raise your hand all right so we have opened this public hearing and I believe Alana's on deck for sb city so are you going to um share the proposals and then we'll hear from the public if there are any comments uh well I made you a lot I made you a presenter if you're gonna I go um but I just want to make sure I'm sharing that I'm not sharing the right one um sorry moment the purpose of this is to just go through the what we're asking the public and then to elicit any comments or questions that the public may have or additional questions by council members and then we'll vote on putting it on the ballot okay so apologies good evening um for the record my name's Alana Blanchard and um I'm pleased to be presenting information about the garden street project uh for consideration so this project has been around for quite a while um it's on the official map and it's a connection between Dorset Street and Williston Road it also includes certain improvements um on Williston Road for the purposes of the ballot item um it the whole project is referenced but the amount of money that is up for approval is anticipated to cover two portions uh and and I'll go into those portions um the ballot question also uh addresses related costs and related costs are costs within the TIP district that are um incurred in administering the TIP district so that might be legal um audits are required to audit the TIP district each year and then the state will come in and audit the TIP district uh three times during the life of the of the um overall district so that's um uh over the 20 year life of the TIP district um between 2017 so uh the debt authorization that is being requested is for four million two thousand five hundred and fifty uh which includes both the two segments of roadway and related costs um and then the uh any debt that's authorized at a future date so um once the voters authorize it it would uh the debt would still need to go to the council in order to be issued as a bond and that would be for the roadway the related costs are intended to be paid directly out of uh tax this a TIP tax increment financing district increment which is revenues that come directly from the TIP district and not be issued as debt and then the debt is intended to be financed with TIP district financing note however that this is a um would be issued against the full faith and credit of the city in addition to against the tax increment financing district so that if the revenues are not available from the TIP district then the city would still be required to service the debt um so this is an overview of the project uh and so as you can see it's quite an extensive project um segment B is under construction currently by south of the city center LLC as part of the site of riverman um development project and uh so this question is on funding for A and C so between Peter Joe's and healthy living and um between the south brawlington city center LLC property uh and white street um so that's a full reconstruction or full construction full depth construction of a roadway between the end that's already constructed um and might as drive and then on might as drive endorses street it includes curb work and improvements to pedestrian bicycle facilities as well as some utilities and you can see there's a bit of a closer up um you um which shows some of the improvements shared use path in front of healthy living which does not have one now as councilor marrett mentioned at the other meeting uh we will make the radius at that corner less tight so that um hopefully even i in my little tiny car will not drive over over it anymore and um and then the connection uh this shows generally there's a lot of turns in this area so there's minimal parking um but that the cycle bicycle facility and the sidewalk that is already established uh in front of the garden apart garden street apartments um would continue through this section uh as well as some stormwater treatment um so attached to this uh is a necessity resolution um and that's required uh to put the question onto the ballot so this would need to be approved by the city council and then this has two um two attachments um a draft ballot or the ballot i'm sorry the warning um and the article for the official ballot so there's any questions i'm happy to answer them will there be an express tunnel to al's fries from somewhere no that's the bicycle lane oh from my house tim from my house right does this include remind me this does not include any additional work um over the wetlands to connect that bridge to the park that's a different okay that that yes that would that would go under a different question okay all right are there any other questions or comments by counselors okay i think it's always very well we're good i think it's always important to emphasize for the public that um while agreeing to four million two thousand five hundred and fifty dollars is a lot of money it uh the anticipation and the design of of the TIF process created by the state is to allow um the the these kinds of infrastructures that improve a city um are paid for through um the taxes that are generated over a period of time and eventually they then become part of the tax base for the city but during the TIF years that's what pays for this so it doesn't require other than we have a reserve fund to assist with cash flow for these things it doesn't increase the tax rate at all unless for some wild reason nothing else gets built but we have a a lot of information that a lot a lot has put together projecting and we certainly have had conversations and understandings from um South Burlington Realty and and their um partners um Snyder Braverman that there are a number of additional buildings that plan to be built that will provide the incremental tax money to fund this kind of project but Tom okay I think you I think you said this chair really but one thing that I'm gonna emphasize whenever somebody asked me about this is that unlike the library community center this is 100 percent to financeable that's just an important distinction so assuming the development occurs which we have every reason to believe it will based on the the forecast Alana has given this will not increase the taxes for South Burlington residents because of the TIF 100 percent financing opportunity okay all right are any other um comments are there questions from the public with a number of public members um no comments or questions I hope you're all gonna vote yes all right any other statements or comments by the council Alana do you want to add anything or have we we'll be getting lots of information out in the newspaper and um in the newsletter that the city puts out to explain this um more fully um we did that the first two times and I think it's always good to remind the public how this process works because it's a little different than other um bonds if you will that um we often put before the voter Alana anything else Jen um we will be putting together a public notice that will be available on the website and in several public locations uh and um I believe there and I believe that will also hold a public hearing an additional public hearing provide additional information if people would like it okay well great so we need to do two things we need to um vote on the necessity resolution and then we which incorporates the verbiage to go on the um the ballot and then but then we also have to um vote on that right the actual I yeah okay I think Helen I think the ballot question is number nine on your agenda oh okay so you need to close this hearing and then do the necessity resolution I think okay we shall do that so if there are no further comments I'll entertain a motion to go out of or end the public hearing I will move that and second okay and Megan seconded so all in favor raise your hand okay all in favor five zero um so we were out of the public session so we now um I would entertain a proposal to um adopt the resolution I'll move that we adopt the necessity resolution for incurring bonded debt for garden street and Williston road improvements in the city center tax increment financing district okay and a second second the seconded by Tim any further discussion okay I'll call the roll on this um so David Kauffman hi Tim Barrett hi Megan Emory hi Thomas Chittenden hi and the chair votes I so that passes five zero um so we'll get back to actually the ballot later on in the um agenda so let's continue with item six if there were any announcements any other announcements if people things they did and I have two committee meetings but I'll do that later Tim I attended a pension advisory board meeting tonight and I brought my personal SCI advisor to the meeting tonight to present about that okay and you're starting off well for Tim he's in a good mood yeah Tom any highlights from the senate you've been busy doing anything for self-pollington up there so happy to give a report I've been assigned since we last met to transportation and education I asked for transportation and I'm happy to be on education but I will say it's intimidating and I also was very excited to be appointed to the Vermont State Infrastructure Bank so yeah so I'm looking into and we had a good somewhat related to South Burlington treasurer Pierce was before the education committee and we were talking about bonding bond banks and access to capital that we used to do to lower the cost of borrowing from municipalities looking at Burlington high school and also South Burlington when it comes to all the upgrades that have been delayed so there are there seems to be an openness to doing what we use which might make it easier or cheaper for at least schools to access state bonding resources to provide for the updates that we need I don't know what else to offer happy to answer questions or to take any concerns that you all have back to my service no that's fine I have a question Tim so Tom what what kind of a stipend do you get now you don't have to travel and you don't have any food to get and you don't have any lodging so what what do you get so I if you want any of you want to follow my facebook campaign page I actually did a post on Friday and I outlined this so this is one of the points because it's been an issue in the past for some of my predecessors they are doing a pandemic specific approved stipend which is now going to be taxable but it's $75 a day but I will say this when I add up everything I'm spending and using and podcast just changed my data plan so now it's capped it's no longer unlimited data and I've already used up this entire month so my point is on my post I lay out all the costs I'm incurring by working entirely from home so I hope the taxpayers are okay with this pandemic specific stipend that I understand just about all the other senators are also taking so I'm not out of step with the norm does that answer your question Tim oh he gets a salary too on top of that I do so I think the gallery I'll get you my paycheck I just came so yeah and since you are less than 50 miles from um I don't know Montpelier everything you get is taxed other legislators get a break but I swear I do not do this for the money so okay David do you have any comment or were you out and about at all probably not I have not been out and about at all my next out and about will be when they let me know I can get a vaccine okay good question for Dave yeah how was the construction going at Cairns we're we're on final I mean I I walked past it last week um it looks fabulous I think uh I think it's close it's all internal it's all internal final fit up and stuff like that so it's going great it's I don't know when Bob plans to have it fully accessible probably not for a while there's no need to because there's not a whole lot of people coming through but I would say it's in great shape and as soon as we can as soon as as soon as things change it'll be ready at all so it's exciting okay okay all right the managers report thanks Helen a number of things just a reminder tomorrow night at 6 p.m. you join with the school board in your city and your steering committee meeting that should go till a little bit after 7 we will share our budget with them and they with us and there'll be a couple of other items on the agenda as well on the vaccine side I'm very pleased to let you know that 97 percent of our firefighters have gotten the first shot and and I think something north of 75 percent have gotten the second shot and um our uh our police officers are starting to get them now as well so as first responders they were in line and most all of our fire department now has both of them um Justin has gone to the pizza hut at your request uh not to eat but uh to check the pizza hut on I should have said that differently I suppose um uh on um Shelburne road to take a look at the condition of the building Justin's been there twice he reports that the building is extremely secure uh it's locked up well and uh nobody's getting into it and so that pretty much eliminates any avenue the health department or the health officer might have to deal with um the issues you raised at the last uh meeting I think we're gonna have to look maybe on the zoning side if we're gonna get any relief there but um the current ordinances that we have in place uh I'm not real optimistic that we have a good a good approach here but I will report back to you when I get that information remind us who owns it again I don't know I'm not sure who it is who what was your question Tim remind me uh who owns that pizza hut building well on one of the neighborhood watch I think Mike Siminoe seemed to know who owned it but I can't remember the gentleman's name so I could look back on that but I don't know offhand um but someone does and and I I don't know if they're up to date on their taxes that's I assume they are yeah I think they are but we'd hear about I would know that then yeah or you would know yeah um I've been working with the other managers uh we meet every other week and um the group of managers along with Charlie Baker have agreed to host a meeting uh late in March it's a leadership summit on um sharing services it's an effort to go the next step toward um potential consolidation of services among communities to save money and save the impact on the taxpayers you'll hear more about that shortly um we have found we have found out and there's been some uh disagreement about uh Champlain Water District will have one of their ballots um in front of our voters through the mail with us for the March 2nd annual meeting uh this is a ballot that um uh should general obligation bonds of Champlain Water District in an amount not to exceed one million ninety thousand six hundred seven dollars representing the balance of previously authorized bond and debt in this be issued for purpose of funding the acquisition of various capital assets through the district capital reserve fund so they they need to get this passed by the member of communities the question came up how seemingly every community has to do it the same way some communities however are going to be having different procedures this year for voting so this is an ongoing discussion back and forth between Donna CWD and the Secretary of State's office but you may well see another CWD ballot item going out to our voters um and this is a the payment of this is is all collected through the rates right yeah so it's not uh does not affect the taxpayer well it just didn't even affect the rates but it affects the rate payers yeah what's that I thought I thought the went when they came in previous like a month ago or whatever that they said that they would have a ballot item but it wouldn't incur any cost in the rate it wouldn't be a rate change because of that item they have a rate change anyway but that that was a bonded they had money for the bond already but they have to have to put it to a vote right yep it's going to be a second mailing no it would appear would be going out in an hour it's out now consolidated mailing it wouldn't be a second mailing which would be more confusing I think anyway the the the issue here is the disagreement between the Secretary of State's office and CWD and the law and so on so hopefully that will get worked out shortly um I will be appearing before the Development Review Board tomorrow night at seven o'clock to talk about the Garden Street Tiff vote that you just approved um so I'll be leaving the steering committee a few minutes early probably to do that and I'm on with the Planning Commission I think next week and we're going to all the committees I think I think one of you had suggested that we get out to the committees on this so that's starting to happen uh and lastly um in December we had a presentation for you on transportation impact fees um uh all is looking for a little guidance back to from the Council as to how you would like us to proceed um to to move that process along um not something you have to decide tonight but um I think we need to have some guidance perhaps on the next agenda a discussion about what you want to do whether or not the fee is where you think it needs to be whether or not you agree with the mathematics and science behind it etc so probably have something like that on the next agenda for you to discuss again it's the transportation impact fees we had a presentation on that correct yeah yeah yeah and so I think what we're looking for now is kind of a you know thumbs up thumbs down thumbs sideways about whether or not to take the next steps okay and we can do that at the next meeting so anyway that's all I got Helen okay well thank you so let's move on to item seven the annual report from the pension fund manager and um I guess this is Tim Barrett's um speaker guest Pat Blizzard welcome Pat thank you very much happy new year everybody I hope you had a great holiday I think we're all ready to um to move on to 2021 and hope for better things this year um would you like me to share the presentation yeah Pat I can I can make you a presenter if you'd like okay that would be great so we understand we're going to hear some good news and some bad news yes you're now the presenter Pat okay now I guess I have to share my screen here somehow yeah there's a button down at the bottom that says screen can you see my desktop right now or no yeah but your what's up is your connection to go to meeting right okay there you go now you're up there we go let me put this in slideshow mode here to make it a little larger for everybody okay how's that perfect that's better yep okay great okay well let's let's just start out talking a little bit about last year obviously we had a lot of volatility we we had the pandemic begin and it's still going on today we had the elections we had the Georgia senate state runoff there's a lot of things that went on a lot of uncertainty but the markets did pretty well I mean they kind of were at their worst in mid-April and they bounced back pretty significantly thereafter and we could see that in some of the returns and we'll get into some of the returns a little bit later in more detail but overall what we're seeing is we thought last year that if we had a gridlock in the in the senate that that would be a better thing for the market because frankly companies in the markets like gridlock because things don't change that quickly there's a lot of regulations out there that have been removed from some of these companies specifically tech companies so but but what actually happened was the market responded very favorably to that and the reason being is because the they believe that there's going to be more stimulus now as a result of a democratic led senate again it's 50 50 with million hours as a tiebreaker so there could be more stimulus coming through there's a number out there about 1.9 million just a trillion additional dollars that's and uh i'm sorry 1.9 billion additional dollar 1.9 trillion and a lot of that will be focused in on the the vaccine fund which is much needed because right now if you think about the vaccines while some of the numbers you stated earlier about the firefighters and things of that nature we're very good i mean nationwide things are moving a lot slower than everyone anticipated so we're looking for the markets are looking for change there as well so whatever all in all markets are high right now they're close to record highs across the board and we'll talk a little bit more about that in the next slide but on the right hand side you can see the major market indices and we had a very good one year period and a good fourth quarter so for the calendar year you can see all equity asset classes were up considerably us large gaps small gaps international emerging market equities us large caps led the way we'll talk more about that in a minute why um small caps bounce back nicely in the fourth quarter that's something we've been waiting for a lot of that has to do with a lot of vaccine news is down there a lot of these small cap companies have been deeply impacted by COVID-19 on the fixed income side pretty incredibly us investment grade bonds had a very strong year close to 10 percent the longer duration bonds you have the more further out in the yield curve longer maturities the better you did in the fixed income front and then asset classes like how your bonds emerging market debt added value the only negative asset class on this chart was commodities and if you remember about six months ago we had negative oil prices at one point in time so that a lot of that is still built into that price on a one-year basis but we did see that bails back nicely for oil unfortunately it's back up to about 53 dollars a barrel we're starting to see that at the gas pump as well so I mentioned I want to talk about large cap stocks because this is really the one that's driving the markets and there are more names in this but I want to focus on the names on the top of the page here apple microsoft amazon google and facebook as you just look at the returns for those companies for last year they had a 55.8 percent return just those stocks so now let's take a step back and remove those stocks from the smp 500 so we're only looking at 495 companies and the smp 500 you can see the the light gray bar on the bottom that was only up 10.8 percent overall the smp 500 was about 18.4 percent so we're seeing a handful of names that really drove the markets and I'd say to the other there's other stay at home names that did very well your zooms your you know pelletines and all those companies did very well when I looked at this chart back in september of last year the 495 names in the smp 500 were actually negative they were negative 2.5 percent so they have come back very strongly in just about two months so what we're seeing is we're doing to see a rotation away from the high flying tech stocks into some of these more value oriented stocks that have really not participated at all in this rally so looking at this you can see this in another right here so we're looking at the us equity market review here bottom left hand chart you could see for the one year growth outperformed value significantly it's because of those techniques that's exactly why I did that but in the fourth quarter you could see value for the first time in a long time actually had a win against growth so that's where we've kind of been focused in your national portfolios we'll talk more about that but um we have been waiting for that trade to turn over and we're starting to see that now international markets we like international international is also more of a kind of value play that's lagged the us equity markets it's lagged the us equity for a while there are some bright spots out there like asia even europe picked up a little bit in the fourth quarter pacific x japan did very well and we saw it bounce back in emerging market equity as well now some of that can be attributed to the dollar declining somewhat and that that has propped up the emerging market equities areas of the market that helps you within emerging market equity but also emerging market that so as a us dollar declines usually have higher returns in those areas but it's great to have an allocation international you have a sizable allocation international we think you're in the right place right now and that's going to benefit this portfolio going forward and it really was one of the best reasons one of the biggest reasons why the portfolio outperformed its index for your fiscal year a date thus far and that finally fixed income a lot of people have been asking me or you know we're going to be in a low rate environment for longer it's going to be more difficult to get returns out of fixed income and both of those are probably yes we will be range bound on the fixed income rates for a while but what we have seen is when you look at the left chart on the left hand side 1239 2019 we had a slight inversion of the yield curve and you can see that there it was very slight at that point in time that has gone away but rates have come way way down so the sugar you are on the yield curve the lower the rate obviously the curve is also steep and so the further out you are such as 20 and 30 year bonds you're getting a higher yield out there so we do believe we'll be range down we're starting to see inflation take back into the system a little bit that hasn't been said for a long long time so right now I think we're like 2.1 percent inflation the expectations are over the next several years for two and a half to three percent so that moving up over time and how do we combat against that we do that by investing in treasury inflation protection securities and other types of investments in order to offset any kind of inflation in the portfolio any questions about the market review the economy okay so let's get into the numbers so on a fiscal year a date basis the plan is up 17.43 percent on a grossed fees basis 17.05 net of fees we have outpaced the index pretty considerably so not far in your fiscal year for all the reasons I talked about earlier so we started out very well from a fiscal year a date standpoint hopefully you know we still have some time to go there could be some volatility that creeps in but hopefully you know we end with a pretty solid double digit number there as we have today I looked at the portfolio as of last Friday and the plan was up to $42.5 million so it's a little bit lower than what we have in the portfolio noted the bottom of the page because we had a couple of down days last week but today's market was up pretty considerably as well so I'm guessing you're probably up another 1.3 to 1.5 percent on a january to date basis I'm waiting for the bad news so this looks good news but you said there's good news and bad news well the bad news I really stated was the vaccine really has started out a lot slower than we anticipated so that really needs to prop up really to give to you know some security to the markets and to some corporations to start spending again so really that's that's the only bad news now if we get that ramped up people start to get a you know immunization to this this COVID-19 then you know we could see a pretty good year this year any questions that's all I had okay Tom has a question I hate to be a negative Nellie but you say you're predicting an increase in inflation 2.53% what's your worst case scenario if that were to skyrocket to five six percent do you have some extreme hedging on on any really terrible inflation outlooks in the portfolio today we don't we're not too concerned the numbers I just gave you they're out like on a five-year basis we don't see a lot of inflation in the next couple of years but we are keeping our eye on that so you know we would enter into asset classes that would potentially potentially help hedge against that areas like a multi-acid real return we might re-enter we took that position away about a year ago only because we didn't see inflation we could enter into an individual tips portfolio treasury inflation protection securities and then also within your fixed income you already have today you already have it waiting to tips so you're somewhat hedged there you don't have like a 40-50 had to get to inflation right now it's just not it's not it's not the threat of it isn't as big as we thought it would be so far so okay David did you have a question yeah I just have I think a comment I think it you know it looks it looks real good um the only thing we have to be aware of is that um probably doesn't look a lot different I wouldn't imagine in other well-managed portfolios in the last year the markets haven't been having been very surprising I think we have to always be aware not to be complacent that one major event can screw the whole thing up and um you know the first week of March everybody felt great by the second week of March the country was closed down and um and so we can't control what goes on out there so as long as we watch it closely um but we could there my point is there's a lot of it we can't control I think it looks great for what we've been able to manage and uh and we've kind of just um through good management ridden the tide of what the market has done which is just fine um but I think it's anybody's guess as to what next year is going to look like that's just my that's just my opinion for what it's worth or not thank you Tim yeah Pat gave us a good story and and um and we're lucky that the market is has bounced back as nicely as it has um not counting fixed income and and the core property components of the portfolio um which I mean which which could turn around when the pandemic starts to relax its its grip you know on on people working and people going out to shop and good restaurants and whatnot but so the so the good news is that you know I think we've gained back in some more where where like you know six months ago three months ago you know we were looking at a much lower portfolio value the bad news is and and Eric will probably talk about this it's not so much bad news is that you know we have to look at our expected rate of return again and if we have to reduce that again that means we have to contribute more to the pension and you're going to see the numbers later on about how well funded our pension is compared to beamers and vistas and that the state you know ministers um and you'll see that there are some disparities and we look pretty good even compared to some other uh cities and towns but nonetheless I mean if you know you'll see that there are going to be some recommendations made that could end up costing a little bit extra money or contribution or some long-term strategy so that's what I want to say okay thank you any other comments or questions anyone in the public want to say anything Spencer no all right well thank you very much Pat and will we get a um copy of this will this get posted somewhere or sent to us maybe that's a question for Kevin it wasn't our packets it did go into your box or should have gone into your box oh you know sometimes I don't okay sorry thank you all righty well thank you very much Pat thank you they say sometimes in the future I hope we can get back up there and see each other in person again very soon uh head of the wood is open again okay number you have your meetings there to okay just curious because it's really quiet and safe colorful too yes um going moving on to item eight the annual value valuation report on pension fund status and we have um Eric shake is that any present shake okay welcome Eric thanks for having me um can I share my screen it should be said there how's that that looks it's good okay so I'm going to talk about the liability side of the pension plan I'll go through some of the basics and how you know come up with a recommended contribution and the funded status of the plan do keep in mind like Tim said we do this as a snapshot every July first so when we look at these numbers they're based on 630 assets and if you look at numbers today they look very different and I'll give you a just a summary of the difference between what we're looking at so just real quick to start out when we put liabilities in the pension plan we have to allocate them to the past into the future and that's where funding methods come in there's many different ways of doing this they all at the end of the day result in the same liability is just what time period you put the liabilities to we for this plan we look at two different methods and what we look at both each year just to get a broader idea of how things are going the first is the unit credit or the pressing value of accrued benefits which is just everything earned to date based on current compensation if you paid everyone out and walked away that's what you're looking at is your current liability and then entry age normal which takes a more future looking approach and tries to even out your liability over time looking more towards the end goal of you know when everyone's retired in the future so it has a little bit more weighted towards the present and a little higher liability now but it would have less future liability and this entry age method is the method that you have to use for GASB and financial reporting in your financials so just graphically top line is the entry age method bottom line is the unit credit and as your plan gets more mature they'll slowly come together but right now the entry is liabilities higher than the unit credit liability if I talk about liability is benefits earned in the past and normal costs or items expected to be as in the current year then just skipping forward to the 2020 recommended time contribution so what we do currently each year is a funding policy is first we take your unfunded liability the difference from your assets and your accrued liability for the past and make an amortization payment on that paid down over a 20-year period and then we add costs expected to be accrued in the current year and just interest from the seven one to the date the contributions expected to be paid and then the employees are also contributing a small portion on their own and so when we look at the tool recommended contribution when we do this we have a smooth asset value that we use and this just helps from year to year to prevent wide swings in the recommended contribution and I mean as you can see here the contribution based on the 20-year amortization for this year is about 1.3 million compared to the 1.302 last year so it's very similar and that's partially because these smooth assets you know trying you know smooth out gains and losses but overall the contribution is very similar to the prior year and here is the contribution just graphically you see that almost half of your recommended portion of the payment is a payment towards the unfunded liabilities in the past and so theoretically if the plan was 100 funded you would only have this normal cost and interest here and there would be about 700,000 for the city portion so we had talked about last year in the past a alternative funding method which I don't which has not been officially recommended yet but it's in the works hopefully but what this method would do is because the plan is close to new employees because you know everyone in this plan will eventually retire it would be a good time to adopt a strategy to have the plan be fully funded at the time when there's no more active employees so instead of that 20-year amortization period this amortization period would basically say get shorter each year with the ultimate goal but in 2039 it would be fully advertised and for the first year the difference in the recommended contribution is minor it's about you know 15,000 more under this method and it has been incorporated into the budget so even though this hasn't officially adopted or recommended yet by the council or the committee it can retroactively be put in place without missing any past contributions so based on the smooth value of assets and the present value or of food benefits the current liability the plan was 101% funded on the 71-2020 and that is very slightly down from 101.77 last year and on the entry age liability it was 85.5% compared to 80 just slightly higher last year so then market value had a little bit more of a swing because it's not the smooth assets and the present value of food benefits was down to about 97% and the entry age normal liability 82% and we'll see some comparisons to what happened to everyone else but I do want to say as of today basically if you were to change the snapshot with the current assets and with liabilities forward a little you'd be 90% funded on a market basis so it's really that 630 dip was probably I think like the lowest point of assets during the year and since they're much higher now the fund status is up around 90% on the entry age and up on the you know 71635 school year the primary reason there's a little decline is the asset return being less than the assumed rate and here is a graph of the funded status over the last 11 years and I mean on the present value of food benefits the funded status has been very steady and similarly with the entry age method there's been not much change from year to year and that's a little deceiving because at the same time as these years where it hasn't changed much we lowered the long-term rate of return and we changed the mortality assumption which would both add liability so really it's not that there was no price it was that it was offset by other changes and just to compare to some other funded ratios the average plan on 630 was 70.7% which is down from 73% last year which was almost a 3% decline according to a Milliman 2020 public funding report okay this is my favorite slide every year during your presentation Eric is it just making me feel so good as a South Berlin City Councilor and taxpayer and I think all of this community should be proud of of how we compare to our peers so I just want to highlight how this slide really shows how how reasonable responsible and how great a job Tom and Kevin and the council have done over the past 10 years or so the Bravo yeah I mean definitely well funded in the public fund sector I mean look at these years 50% I don't know how they can operate like that but anyway yeah the emers is at 74 for only 10 was around 70 and St. Albans around 62% and briefly not to arc you down with any of this but when we do the liabilities there's assumptions that go into it we periodically review them we look at them each year different items like expect life expectancies rate of return on the assets you know how employee turnover we will probably be looking at them a little more in-depth coming up and between now and seven and seven one twenty twenty one but for this valuation there were no changes from the prior year so all the assumptions are the same using the most up-to-date mortality table turnover which is a graded table but you are the less likely you are to leave for turnovers reasons other than death disability or retirement so someone just decides to go take a job somewhere else the long-term rate of return was unchanged at seven point two five percent and just as a side note that same public funding study the average rate for public plans was seven point two percent as of six thirty twenty twenty we have the assumed age that people will retire and future compensation increases all that is the same as the prior year just to give you a flavor of how much the long-term rate of return matters the entry-age normal liabilities were currently about forty four point six million if you decrease them the long-term return from seven point two five to six point two five percent so one percent lower you'd add about six million in liability and that's just the sensitivity of it it's the most impactful assumption may i cheerily just to refresh our memory we lowered that from seven point five to seven point two five what two years ago partly out of due diligence and being cautious and making sure our pension is well funded yeah two to three years ago you lowered it from seven and a half to seven point two five and just in general a lot of apple market assumptions have been declining over the past few years and that was part of the reason for it you're i mean you're very close to the median right now so there's no will may need to decrease it but if we can with large market performances going into this year or you know in the next couple years get it down further in a way that makes sense it would be prudent to do so just to keep ourselves ahead of the curve in that respect not down to six point two five like you just said but maybe down to seven now right i'm seven would be i would the next step okay thank you and we talked about the smooth asset value so this line is the smooth value it just helps with budgeting and you know preventing any large swings from you to year compared to the market value and you can see how you know sometimes it gets a little further away but it will come back and if you look at it right now they would be much closer together after the third and fourth quarter performances so summary of the returns over the past couple years which are you know nowhere near in as in depth as you just saw but you know on a fiscal year basis just a roughly calculated return was about two point six percent compared to the assume seven point two five and yeah so it was four years ago we lowered it from seven point five to seven point two five are you thinking next year i'm sorry the possible lowering to seven point oh would that be likely to come before us a year from now or are you still just on the back burner i think there's a decent chance it'll come to you for a seven one twenty one valuation but not a guaranteed chance this is the breakdown of the participants in the plan because it's frozen the active count at the top is decreasing and it will continue to decrease over time as participants move from active and earning benefits to retired and receiving monthly payments and the group in the middle are participants who have a benefit there aren't earning anything new because they don't work there anymore but they haven't started taking a pension payment and then just some other brief participant statistics you know the average service for non-public is about 16 years and a public safety employee in the plan these are just participants in the plan it's about 13 years and something to look at is that the average future service of the remaining participants is about eight years in non-public safety and nine years of public safety so that's what we expect you know some people are going to be longer and some are going to be shorter but if you average them all together the future working period of their remaining employees can i jump in the average retiree age is nearly 75 for the non-public safety yeah um yeah i would expect him to start getting higher as well as a larger portion of the group ages into that oh oh so it's not the age of retirement retirees yeah retirees yeah yeah as you were making like yeah every age of our workers is 70 it's the retirement age it's retiree age right exactly the average active employee age is about 57 of this group that makes much more sense and that's all i have unless there's questions are there any other questions about from the public oh go ahead public no i don't see anyone tim did you have a question yeah it was kind of for tom hubbard um what's the status on our eight million dollar loan and how many years out are we and it's still a over a five percent rate isn't it correct um i think we're in our tenth year tim so we got 10 years to go on that um and that's uh about 660 000 a year uh that we're paying on so another 10 years pardon me still no possibility of refinancing that uh something that we continue to look at it's it's balancing that with the penalty uh that we would pay for an uh an earlier payoff um so there's there's a couple different factors that we have to look at um but we will continue is the penalty in action the full 20 years of the of the loan i'm sorry is there a penalty for the full 20 years um the highest penalty is for the first set of years which was the first seven years okay we're kind of in the middle of things right now where it's a moderate penalty and and as you get closer towards 16 17 18 19 20 it becomes less and less each year yeah but we can work that up and show you what that looks like and maybe even have that for the next committee meeting with the pack room too yeah that's probably a good idea yeah it just it'd be nice to see what what those curves are like and whether we should be thinking about doing that and looking at what interest rates are going to be like and what our options are for refinancing in the first place agreed thank you any other questions okay well thank you very much error is he going to show us a snapshot from today and is that something you said at the beginning here i bet you would show us a snapshot from today so we could compare or oh sorry i was just um if you use today's market value of assets it would be 90 percent i don't have a actual snapshot of it i'll i'll take that snapshot thank you you okay great all right thank you very much so we'll move on to item nine which is consider and possibly approve the warning uh a warning the 2021 annual city meeting ballot to include articles on the election of city officers and city counselors the f y 22 city budget and the authorization to incur debt for the tax incremental financing eligible garden street project so andrew hi there good evening good to good to see everyone um in front of you is the the warning as as you mentioned counselor really uh for the 2021 annual meeting this was prepared based on prior models um so it's consistent with what we've done in the past for the most part um and also with uh with donna kevin tom and i also chatted with the school school district on their language just so that we're we're consistent the most significant difference being the the warning a little bit below article three there uh related to the zoom meeting that the kind of the pre-town meeting will be rather than the typical in person but other than that it is consistent with uh with past ballots for your consideration okay thank you and then to approve oh sorry okay no go ahead no that's i was gonna move to approve yeah i'm gonna move to approve the ballot so a second and tim barrett seconds is there any further discussion okay i'll call the quick discussion quick discussion yes um do we have any idea yet whether we're gonna be mailing ballots to everybody has i mean we haven't had a bca meeting but is there has donna have any has she given any indication what might happen and what the school district wants i thought she sent us a note that said the school board said if there's funding um from the covid stuff that we send one out and i think she indicated that the legislature was planning to appropriate that money maybe tom has a newer update on what they've actually done yes i believe there's two million dollars from the crf funding to support this and the estimate is that statewide at everybody mails of ballots going to be up to like 1.5 million so i think the money's there and my impression is similar to ellens that she was waiting for the governor to sign the bill today hr 48 which allowed all the municipalities to do the mail out ballots so i would expect to hear from donna tomorrow and that's probably why our bca meeting is next week but i know the governor signed the bill this this morning so i think we will be mailing that out but i think donna was still gonna well i don't know if she was gonna try to find out if the um charge for the return was only paid if the envelope was actually mailed i don't know though i know i know she was trying to work that through with the it's how you print it i think you get you know those so i i don't know about that but it isn't our well it is our money because it comes up from somewhere doesn't it um but it's not from our budget this year okay so are you ready for that boat are there any other comments or questions okay i'll call the roll tim barrett hi david coffin hi thomas jenden hi and megan emory hi and the chair votes yes so we have approved this warning um five zero so let's see you can't vote hey for me and you just tried to vote i saw it thank you thank you just you're welcome thank you uh so number 10 are reports from counselors on committee assignments so tim your committee kind of hey we presented presented yeah okay um i had a airport commission meeting um um and you know it's a it's a very interesting time um implements were down 83 percent and it was kind of interesting because um gene made the comment that we are the lowest in the nation with implements who are also the lowest in the nation for covid infection and too likely have a connection so it's good news because people are following the governor's advice or the health department's advice and either they're not coming here because we have too many requirements or nothing or not enough stuff is open or um you know we as the public are really following those rules and as a result our businesses may be hemorrhaging but um people aren't dying at the same rapidity as other states um so you know the airport still we haven't lost any um airline airlines they continue to be interested in flying certainly all the smaller routes and some of the and smaller planes um i guess one upside is there's been a lot more of the come not commercial but like as it is commercial you know like the ups flights out because so many more people are um mailing stuff either coming in or going out so that has helped stem some of the the money but we're running at a deficit and we have um you know ppl money and that's making the difference we've completed the return payments of all the money that's owed the faa for the um curbie cottages so that's done and um i think as megan noted two weeks ago they're they're working um on the um HVAC for the uh chamberland school and we continue to get funding for different projects at the airport um which is i i guess an indication that the faa thinks it's uh will run an important airport and um they continue to fund the improvements to make it so we're putting in a grant um and i think have received the funding to redo the um what do you call it when you go to the tsa so it's one place and um we'll streamline it and be potentially better ellen yes how did they fund the curbie right curbie lane cottage refund i mean they sold them right they sold them yes to um beta technologies and was that enough you well i didn't think it was but they said it's all been paid off so okay they paid they paid it i didn't ask exactly which pocket it came out of because the pockets are pretty slim right now but i will follow up and find out but just because i think it was there was a understanding that that is um is completed which is good we didn't have to pitch in anything well this is good because the curbie lane colleges didn't get torn down so give everybody a clap on that right and it's just another reflection of you know that the business bought them because that's what they want for their employees or nice little single family homes they don't necessarily gravitate toward um apartment complexes which is what we seem to be building that are you know in the affordable lane so and i did have a meeting um for for um town to be formally channel 17 and um we're doing okay too with um you know things very much changed we're looking for a little more money to try to um fund the i mean we'll be all set in south frollington i believe when we move into the new um auditorium because that will be wired for all of this kind of um feeds for for so we can be online we can be there in present present and people can be watching on um the the channel but um in the interim they they are looking for money from um comecast to fund it's about 7500 dollars to buy this camera that you can set up that's remotely and and allows all the communities to continue this zoom option for our public meetings um when we get together in person so i think that that's a a good effort i think it will be really interesting to see how people's behavior will change due to this year-long experience yeah like more people might just stay at home and zoom in yeah probably on crummy um weather nights you know we would never have to cancel a meeting due to weather we could just zoom it and stay in our home i think in person meetings will be considered luxurious oh won't they be nice we're going to be wearing masks for a while still yet yeah that's true that's true well you can we can have funny masks and let's do you want to say something did anyone else go to a meeting okay i just wanted to pop in and say it's really nice to be able to for those of us that used to watch on cctv to be able to actually interact with you on occasion and it also was a really good idea when you told us to shut off our cameras so we just focus on you except when we want to talk um but i think it's it's a it's a much uh it has the potential to really open up and maybe have more people participate because because we because we can talk right it'll be you know a little more challenging to share that to see you know a big screen with all the public and then the audience and then you know the five counselors but it's um it's not impossible i have great faith in you thanks and the chair you know knows that she has the bench to call on if you know other people can keep track of screen while you keep track of right and we did that early on and it was very helpful yeah okay and it's nice when people call in if they're able to put their name so we know like you know who is behind that little black circle with their initials and the zoom bombing was interesting at times right but that didn't happen very much so we were lucky yeah somebody wanted to play warcraft they just really want to play maybe tomorrow night they'll call it and want to play oh i know mine there's a different minecraft okay okay before we're going to be in person but i think we have a ways to go before we're going to be in person yeah i i would agree so it won't happen um probably before we're in our new digs anyway no probably not when's when is that when are we supposed to be able to do that we think july 15th right Kevin that's so yeah he'll have to come back for a day he could be a city manager for a day the it had drifted back to about the july 15th but now they've been making up some time so it's kind of moving back toward uh july 1 june 30th something like that so it's right around that area we just extended the contract for the storage facility that we have for the library for six months so um that coincides with when our library lease runs out too so um we're hoping to be in over there uh before that lease expires which reminds me can we have a um get a walk through sure yep i mean it is so cool to see the wall up and a lot of the i think i talked about it at the last meeting i'd been on a tour um of the library part with a potential donor and it was just fabulous yeah it was just the sheet rock was up and there were some of the paint colors and you could just imagine how gorgeous it's going to be so i thought it'd be fun for us to see it a little bit more in the works if people are interested we could and it can be any time of day actually doesn't have to be the workers pardon me as soon as i get two shots yeah they have pictures too maybe they could send out some pictures my husband got to see some for the art committee maybe they could send us some pictures well um we will look and try to schedule something um i'll get something out soon to you all i know you all some a couple you have difficulty uh well several you have difficulty going during the middle of the day um on a weekday we might try to schedule something on a weekend when it's quiet there so we'll work on that it's yeah it's time to get you guys back over there it's been a couple months i think are the solar panels up yet or going up soon yeah i think they're up oh i didn't go by today oh they're hard to see they're they're uh you can't it's it's hard to see them from the you can't see them from the road but they're out you can't they're not on those little things that hang out no those are those are what those are more shade those are designed to be a shade those aren't designed to be for panels oh okay but my understanding is the panels are up oh cool and covered with snow and covered with snow it's they still work through snow it is all good okay all right is there any other business to come before the council wow 815 amazing i know this is good okay well i would entertain then a um motion to adjourn so moved second and seconded all in favor hi okay thanks well stay safe you all get to get tomorrow night at six tomorrow night at six tomorrow night at six this means vaccine vaccine night king