 Sorry, I think we're good. OK, so I'm going to call the meeting to order. Just a couple minutes late here. All right, so in terms of meeting logistics, so if you're joining us remotely, if you would change your name to your first and last name so that I can refer to you properly. When you speak, if you would start by saying your name and then when you live, we recommend that you keep your comments to two minutes or less. Donna over here will help us with that. And keep your comments germane to the topic. If you would like to speak, you just need to be called on me before you speak, so just make sure that you do that. So we don't normally get into a back and forth kind of comments here. Excuse me. Check, check. I don't know. Weird. You don't have a mute button on your, oh wait, now it's gone. OK, that was weird. Oh, wow. OK, super. Check, check, check, check. I don't know. OK, I'm going to keep going. Right. And yeah, OK, I think that is it. So the first thing is to review and approve the agenda. I don't have any information about changing the agenda. We are mainly focusing tonight on the strategic plan update. Oh, no. Excuse me. It's OK. Check, check, check, check, check, check, check, check, check, check, check, check, check. That is weird. Check. Curious. Curious in retrospect. Oh, dear. I am going to keep going. OK. Any information about changing the agenda? No? OK. So with that, we're going to consider the agenda approved. And yeah, you don't have to be on Zoom. I mean, I'm, oh, it's like still going. Oh, my gosh, that is so crazy. That is wild. Sorry. OK. So general business and appearances. So this is an opportunity for any member of the public to address the council on any topic that is. Oh, I'm sorry. The mockery of this chamber, gentlemen. Oh, my gosh. That's amazing. OK. OK. We have to focus. All right. General business and appearances. And this is an opportunity for any member of the public to address the council on any topics that is otherwise not on our agenda. So I don't have a lot of folks here. So if there are folks online who would like to address the council now is the opportunity. I see you, Peter Kelman. Go ahead. Hi, Peter Kelman, Montpelier resident. I've got five questions. And I realize that we have staffing shortages and technology ghosts all hitting at the same time. And I don't intend these questions to be a criticism of any one. I think we've got some structural issues that we have to attend to. So I'm just going to list the questions. And I'm not looking for answers right now, but I hope there will be some answers at some point. First is for Connor, restroom committee. What is the status of it? Are you seeking stakeholder type membership? And when will it be scheduled? No need to answer that right now. Second, city council members, have you been given and have you read Beth Burgess's report and title Washington County Continuum of Care Homelessness Research Report, which was completed in May and was paid for largely, if not entirely, by the city, by your assignment? Third, Bill, have you, in fact, signed a contract with Parker Associates to work on the next report that needs to be done? Fourth, I don't know how many of you may or may not be aware, but Sustainable Montpelier Coalition is no longer employing the two people who were coordinating CAN. And that has put CAN pretty much in chaos. I hope that somebody will look into that. And if they are not able to fulfill their MOU, I hope that you'll be looking for some other ways to do it. I got some ideas. And finally, guys, I was in the ed tech business for 25 years. And I can tell you that the website is on life support, not just the website, but notifications, agendas, and minutes. It's impossible. And it's not going to get any better. And it seems that the city is using Front porch forum and Facebook as a workaround. And that's not right. Many of us don't use Facebook on principle. They're destroying our country. Never mind. And I don't know about the rest of you, but I don't have time to wade through Front porch forum looking for things that might be useful. So we need to do something. I suggested during the budget meetings that the amount of money that was being put in the budget was not sufficient because you cannot stick with the current platform. The current platform was created in something like 1990. It doesn't work anymore. What is the plan? What is the plan to move on to a 21st century platform for the city? That's it. Thank you. Great. Thank you. We'll get back to one of those. OK. Great. Yeah, we have answers for pretty much all of that. OK. Thank you. Are you going to respond to him personally, or is that going to be in the room? We'll put that out. I will put it in the weekly memo, and I will send them to Peter personally. OK. With the exception of the restroom committee, because I don't know what's up with that. I think at the last meeting, we have to put that out again. So yeah, we can make numbers. OK, so seeking numbers. OK. Thank you. Sorry, not seeking. I think we're going to have an initial meeting first there. Just to see how big we want to make the committee. But yeah, I'd be ready to roll on that anytime. Great. Excellent. Anyone else for general business and appearances? Yes, Bill, go ahead. Thanks. I was going to say the end of the meeting. We've been the comments that were just made and also just the way our meeting started. I just wanted to let people know that we're having quite a confluence of things happening. As you know, we've got a lot of outages. We've got our key admin assistant out on maternity leave, although her fill in Shannon has been doing a great job. Our former assistant city manager just left. And I am happy to announce the appointment of our new assistant city manager, Kelly Murphy, as of today. So that's very exciting. However, she's just learning how to use this stuff. And on top of all of that, as you can see from Kelly and my masks, we are both recovering from COVID as is a huge amount of people in City Hall and in amongst city employment. It's kind of blowing right through us right now. We actually just put out a notice tonight telling people, just be aware that you may have some delays dealing with city government. And if you choose to wear masks coming into City Hall, that's fine, because there's a lot happening in here. Everyone is quarantining as they should. But we're just out of kind of a confluence of a lot of different things going on. So we do know that there have been some drops and some misses. And we are doing our best to get caught up on all of those. And we apologize to anyone who is inconvenienced by any of that. But we'll get there. Hopefully, everyone will be healthy pretty soon. And we'll be fully staffed sometime soon. Great. Thank you. Anyone else either with us in person or virtually? OK, all right. So with that, we're going to move on to the consent agenda. Is there a motion? I move the consent agenda, although I will have one comment. OK. OK, motion and a second discussion. Jack, go ahead. On item G, on the handout for item G, the extension of the contract purchase date on Berlin Pond, the recommended action shows extending it from 10-1-22 to 4-1-22. And that should be corrected to 23. Thank you. Donna, go ahead. It's just an error which I spoke to Bill about earlier since we did the executive session and came out. That really came from Bill and not the city clerk. And it has to do with the motion to come out of executive session appears after the motion was made when we came out of executive session. So it's just a placement. Oh, I see. OK. Yeah, just reversing the order. Yeah. OK. Yeah, a lot of items in the consent agenda this week. Any further comments? OK. So since these are sort of superficial kinds of changes, I don't think we need to necessarily have like a motion to change things, but just with the understanding. So your motion is with these changes. Is that OK? Oh, OK. Any further discussion? Yes, Donna. Glad we bought the extension on Berlin Pond. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. OK. Any further discussion? OK. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. And opposed. OK. Great. So we are ready to move into our discussion on strategic planning. And for this before we get going, I think we we're going to take some public comment or see if there's unless you'd want to unless you'd like to start. And then I'm going to be setting up anyway. So I think we're going to do it right here is the best. Yeah, that's fine. So yeah, so you want to take public comment while I am. So that'd be great. Great. So because this is one item, the strategic planning update, we we're going to take all the public comment right now. And this will not be the last time that we will see this item. So there will be more opportunity for the public to comment. And we absolutely welcome that. But for now, we're going to take public comment at this point and then and then go into our discussion as a as a council. So if you have a comment now is a good time for that. And so Linda Berger, I see you have your hand up. Go ahead. Thank you. I'm from District One, I think. Anyway, I noticed two emissions in the strategic plan specific to the waste, the water resource recovery facility that fit into the three goal areas of a goal for practice environmental stewardship, goal five, build and maintain sustainable infrastructure and goal six, improve public health and safety. The first mission I noticed is the completion of and compliance with the new wastewater discharge permit, which replaces the current permit that expires on 930-22. The second is to complete the goal and steps in the Vermont DEC's Notice of Alleged Violation for Air Pollution. This includes addressing the items cited in the preliminary engineering report for the wastewater recovery facility phase two project. And in addition, due to our small value location, the effects of inversion complicates controlling voters from the facility. But the DEC has reminded us that the city is responsible for controlling air pollution despite atmospheric conditions. Thank you. So I just want to make sure that I am understanding your comment. So these are emissions that the items that you mentioned are things that should go somewhere in the strategic plan. That's what I think, yes. Thank you. I appreciate that. Great, thank you. Fair enough. Any other comments from anybody either in person or online? Thank you. Just to that note, she's absolutely there. Those are really good activities, specific activities under the goal. And we'll be sure to note those. I mean, they are obviously high on our list because of their requirements. But it always makes sense to specifically articulate those. So we'll be sure those get put in under the work plan. So let me get ready to go here. Apologize. Yeah, I'm so. Oh, sorry, you're still taking comment. Well, I don't see anybody else. But I just want to double check that nobody else has a comment to make at this point. OK, thank you. All right, I'm going to turn it over to you, Bill. Go ahead. Thanks. So sorry if I'm a little bit spacey. Like I said, we're still kind of finding my way. The plan tonight is I'm probably going to go over verbally. You're going to have to listen to me for a little bit. And then we will turn it over to you. And the idea would be to, well, I'll explain it when we get there. We'll just leave it at that. Oops, that is not what I wanted to do. OK, so what I'm going to do tonight is go over just strategic planning in general, remind you what we're doing. We'll give you a quick progress update on our existing plan. Talk about some of the current challenges and work in progress. Give you some very broad highlights of the citizen survey results. We just got the first preliminary results this morning. And I sent them out on this quite a deep dive. We'll be getting more analysis. I think at the next meeting, we can go into those. Bill, can I do you real quick? Sure. Sorry, go ahead. Oh, this. Oh, sorry, I saw it up there. Oh, hold it. How does I how does one know? Well, I'm already in this. How do I share my screen? I'm already in. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Beautiful. Thanks. We'll make it. All right. Thank you for that. OK, now am I not advancing? Why is that? Any idea why I'm not advancing my slides? Oh, there we go. Now I am. Just the computers. OK. Taking it from the top. Take two. What I'm going to try to go over with you tonight is just an overview of what strategic planning is. Well, and I know many of you have heard this before, but just to remind you and the public what we're trying to do. A brief progress update on the existing plan and reminder that we did adopt a two year plan. So we're in the middle of a two year plan and challenges and works in progress highlights of the citizen survey results. As I was saying, we just got the first results this morning and expecting a more complete analysis of that. So on our next agenda, we'll put the deeper dive, but in the meantime, a lot of interesting information there. And then we're going to your discussion and review of the strategic plan, what you want to change, what you'd like, or at least the beginning of that conversation to set us up for next year. So proof is what it says now where you still want to be. Are there things you'd like to reprioritize? Are there new ideas, those sorts of things? So it'll take a little while to get there, but you will get plenty of time to talk. So just a reminder to start with the Athenian Oath. I'm not going to read the whole thing, but just the last paragraph reminds us to transmit the city not only less, but greater and more beautiful than it was transmitted to us. And I think that is the duty of us as the city servants. And this has guided many municipal people over the years. So why do strategic planning? Who fills keywords? What is it? What's the product? How's the process done? Basically, I don't know why I'm getting these things. Hold on. There. This is from Stephen Kravitz, the four quadrants. And as you can see, there's the urgent and important and not urgent and not important. We tend to spend a lot of our times on the urgent and important and urgent, but not important things that have to be done. And as a city council, a policy making board really need to make sure we're trying to spend our time in the not urgent but important. So the planning and doing the first two quadrants. So this helps us sort out how the council should be spending their time. And the reason we do that is you really only meet as a group in council meetings about 125 hours a year, roughly. So that's three work weeks. So when you think about all you're trying to take on as a group, you're trying to do it in three work weeks a year. So you've got to use these, even those nights we're here till 10 or 11, that's still only four or five hours. Like that's all we have to do this work. So what are the most important things we can be doing during those times? And as you know, other things come up that can take a lot of time, even if they aren't a quadrant two or even a quadrant one. Focus on the important leadership issues. Where do we want to be going? And then providing clarity on one of the most important things since you're a policy making board is providing clarity to those of us on staff and to the public about where we're headed and what to expect. Even if it's something people don't like, at least if it's clear, they can understand it. This is basically just an iceberg, but I share it because what you use the council deal with is sort of the top, what's above the surface. Those are the issues that people are talking about. Those are the policy issues that show up in your agenda. Everything beneath that iceberg is all the functioning of what's going on, all the services being delivered, all of the citizens calling in, the different activities that are happening, as well as your plans being implemented. So I think it's important to remember that while you are the visible tip of the iceberg, you're sort of anchoring or holding, guiding the rest of it. So whatever the rules, there are three main rules that when we think about making decisions in organizations, one is who are these, the external deciding authority who's providing vision and what's the capacity. So in our case, our external authorities might be our state and federal governments who provide either funding or statutory or legal authority. Our voters, residents, taxpayers, businesses who approve our various proposals. And if you're a staff person or even a resident and you need something, it could be the mayor and city council who are external. For you, they're not, but for me, you are. So depending where you sit, your external authority can be a little bit different. Vision is provided by the mayor and city council. Ideally, obviously, as city manager and staff. So we bring ideas to you, but again, really it's your role to either provide or approve the vision for the city. And then ultimately the capacity, of course, is the city manager, the staff, the volunteers. We're the ones who get things done for you. And so all of those things are important and the more those things are aligned, the more effective we are. So a good example of this, I always use this when it's snow plowing. The vision of the mayor and city council, the community, anybody that we ought to plow snow in the winter. I don't think anybody disagrees with that. Therefore, we get money in the budget to plow snow. We have citizens support that. And we have enough trucks. We have enough people. We have salt, sand. We have the capacity. So that is completely aligned. There are other things, of course, where we might think it's a good idea, but we don't have the ability to deal with or the law doesn't allow us to deal with it. So as we, as you, the council, and we, the staff, think about things as like are we, where do we need to focus? Is it on getting people to agree with our vision? Is it developing capacity? Is it advocating for authority from our own voters or external sources? So just taking a quick look, who are these people? They, the voters, the residents, they elect city officials. They vote on budgets. They engage in local discussions. They are external authority. They're interesting in that they are owners because they are stakeholders, but they're also customers. That's not always, you know, when you think of a business, you're usually one or the other. But in this case, you know, as owners, they may have some controversy over what they'd like to see happen versus customers. They just have complaints over sort of how something happened. So there's a, there is a difference. The mayor and city council, of course, you established the vision and policy values and goals. The budget is your biggest policy. How do you collect and spend the public's money? Regulations. How do you enact, you know, regulations to enact the vision and values? Fiscal oversight, overseeing your staff, making sure that's happening, and you're addressing controversy. Complaints, you know, well, we'll talk about that, but you know, controversy is really a values issue. What should we be doing in our community? And so when your owners have controversy, it's really up to the elected officials to address, to sort of sort through the controversy. And then at the end of the day, the council speaks with one voice. You are a particularly good council at this, but you can debate, you have different votes, but once that vote is cast, that is the voice. And that's how I will communicate to members of the public or our staff, people say, well, I heard someone say this, I heard so, so yeah, but the vote was this. This is what the council as a group said. The city manager, and by extension the staff, we implement the council's policy. We recommend policy to the council to provide advice and information to the council. I'm the chief administrator of the officer of the city, so higher fire, supervise, manage all of the operations in the city. Do the constituent services and address complaints. And I think that's, you know, to make the distinction between controversy and complaints. If someone's complaining about service, pass it to us, we'll take care of that. If it's a controversy over a policy, then that's in your realm. And then in my case, follow the ICMA Code of Ethics, which I also try to insist on with all of our staff. I'd be happy to go through that some other time. And again, we have the capacity for the vision and the authority. So policy decisions, where we, again, where you want to spend your time, I'm showing a plane. Because policy is really like choosing your destination, choosing your arrival time, and choosing the cost. So you want to take a flight, right? I want to go someplace, but I don't really want to pay for first class. I want to take the long way. You know, you kind of have to make it all work. Once you do that, you don't sort of tell the pilot how to fly the plane or all those other things. You just, you've set your policy of where you want to go. So if you think about this, you know, here you are, you're setting your, you know, you can kind of look at this chart, right? Your purpose and vision is way up there. And as you slowly come down, you get down to the day-to-day work, which is landing the plane. And if you look at the little chart on the bottom, you can see the council's role is really heavy at those early items. And then the staff is really heavy at the end. And in the middle is where we interact to come up with these things. So nice little visual to think about landing the plane and getting to where we want to go. Another quick visual, we use most of these terms. I don't know if we use all of them, but again, it's starting with the vision, working our way down through. And so those, just as Linda Berger just mentioned, you know, we have a goal for environmental policy, a strategy for improving the wastewater plant. And so in and among those projects and initiatives are those specific needs that need to be addressed. So we're going to come back to these at the end, but I wanted to go through where we're at now. So this is what you all have said is your vision. Now, I want to be clear, this is aspirational. This is not a statement of what exists now. This is a statement of what we would like to see for our city. I suppose I think we chose to word it in present tense and we could say Montpelier will be an engaged, but for whatever. So this is what we've said, that we are an engaged and growing city for the population that reflects cultural and economic diversity. City balance is being a hub for businesses, arts, outdoor recreation and other cultural events with ensuring that there are strong municipal services, environmental protections, a variety of housing and support services for all. So this was, until you change it, it is the council's vision for the community. And so all of our policies and practices ought to somehow stem from these and be at least not inconsistent at the least, then certainly consistent with that vision. And then the specific mission of us as a government is to be a leader in the state by providing excellent municipal services that align with community priorities through proactive communication and public engagement. So that was what you all thought was what we do as a city government and what we should be striving to do. And then we said some core values. So for the city government, you said the dignity of worth of all people is recognized and respected. The city government will be transparent and accountable. All city activities will be conducted in a highly ethical manner. Innovation is encouraged and rewarded. Diversity, equity and inclusion in the organization and community are essential. Climate change is real and proper preparation must be made. The city will be financially responsible with public money. City employees are respected, treated fairly and recognized for their commitment to the community. So those are core values that you established as again backdrops for how we conduct ourselves. And so again, I'm gonna come back to all of these and check in with you to see if he's all still resonate with you and if they're all still where you wanna be. But for now, this is what you said. In addition to yours, our staff has also in a few years ago adopted some internal values for us organization and call it our craft. Because you gotta have a good acronym. So competence and caring, respect and responsiveness, accountability, fairness and teamwork are things that our admin administrative group, in addition to the values you've adopted, which we all buy into. So our goals, these are our current goals. You see these listed each week in a weekly report. You see them in your various things. This is, if you went to our website, this is what you would see, improved community prosperity, provide responsible and engaged government, create more housing, practice good environmental stewardship, build and maintain sustainable infrastructure and improve public health and safety. As you know, there are specific strategies within each of those goals. And then specific projects and initiatives that relate to those and then staff projects and things that go further with that. And you helped prioritize all of those and you helped choose these as the top goals of the community. So strategies, and this is really more of an explanation of what they are not a list of our strategy. So if those are goals, for example, strategies are policies, plans or ideas which will implement the goals. And so if, for example, if the goal was to reduce homelessness, a strategies might be to build more housing, to build more homeless shelters, to improve social services. These are just for instances, but those are examples of strategies that you could use. So then you would have initiative and actions. Assuming you adopted those, then you have your goal, improve homelessness, you've got your strategy, say it's to build more housing, now you'd have specific things. Our initiative would be we're gonna build 100 new affordable units within five years. Now we're getting more specific. And then we say, and an action would be, okay, we're gonna contract with Down Street to build 30 by 2025. We're gonna donate a parcel of land. We're going to apply for a CDBG grant in 2022. So those then become very specific actions to meet the Nash initiative. So that is kind of how the plan rolls out. And I think, as we talked earlier, we're really wanting the council to focus on those goals strategies and then have us respond to you with some initiative and actions. And then you can tell us if we're on the right track. No, I'm sorry, I missed one. We're gonna appropriate money too. So the whole idea of this is what's needed for success. Do we need, like we talked about, do we need capacity to do this? Do we need approval from somebody who's responsible for getting it done? What's the timeline? Have you noticed most of these have a date on them because now they're becoming a more specific action. And then again, the staff builds in the initial activities at the bottom of the iceberg. And the end product is we have a strategic plan. So we have a transparent document. It's the goals and priorities are stated. The strategic strategies are articulated. It all ties in and it provides clear direction to staff and the public. This is what we want. This is what we stand for. This is what we're doing. So again, you did a lot of this work. The last several years of the plan we have now has really been a product of your work and the plan we're in now is supposed to be a two-year plan but with a one-year check-in. And so this is where we're at. So with the process, quick dos and don'ts. And then I will stop talking about this part of it. It's organized group decision-making. So we set priorities. Everything can't go on the list. This is always the hardest part, I think for council members and staff people and all of us as individuals, right? We all want everything. Gotta start with the vision and goals for us. As Stephen Covey says, begin with the end in mind. So don't just say, well, we want to fix this sidewalk. Okay, well, maybe we do, but what's the point? We want to have a more walkable community. What are we trying to accomplish? Don't fight every battle and don't waste the time telling the pilot how to fly the plane. Spend more time on where the plane's going, how much we're willing to spend to get there and how much time we want to take getting there. So here's a little progress update on the existing plan. You all have received a very complete document with all the, you know, our Invisio. So I'm not, I will not walk through all of that. Sure, that makes you all very happy. Here's just some of the key highlights. Under the improved community prosperity, we acquired two or three country club road that will come up a couple of times because it includes housing, outdoor rec community and childcare. That was a major initiative for this year. We have, we are contracting for an action plan for the homelessness task force that's underway. That was a high priority. Under provider responsible and engaged government, the website project is underway. We've added a communications position. We've got the community stipends implemented. We've hired a facilities and sustainability director and we've just completed the community survey we'll be hearing more about creating more housing. Again, we purchased the Elks Club. We funded the housing trust fund and we reconstituted the housing committee. And good environmental stewardship. We are working with a Cassella and DEC for PFAS treatment. We've acquired Berlin upon land for a conservation and we'll be buying more in within the next six months. And developing Confluence Park. We're implementing the net zero plan, including hiring the sustainability director and developing a stormwater utility. Build and maintain sustainable infrastructure. Again, recreation infrastructure at the Elks Club, East State Street major project that's getting ready to go out to bed and should be under construction next year. The WRRF, the wastewater plant phase two project. We've already talked about that a couple of times tonight. That's getting funded and going forward. We've used ARPA funds for backlog projects. And I think many people have seen that with some of the road paving projects and various things that are happening around town getting caught up on a couple of years of neglect when we had to cut our budgets. And then we got approvals on the budget on the ballot for some other projects, the very main intersections, street lighting, et cetera. So we are making forward progress on infrastructure. Improving public health and safety. Again, the action plan for homelessness. We contributed $100,000 for the new shelter in Berlin. We're implementing the crisis intervention training program. We are actively involved in developing a regional communications infrastructure with some of our neighboring communities for public safety. And we're addressing staff shortages, which has emerged as a huge issue, which was not so when we set this plan. So what are our current challenges? As we go forward, it's good to take note of these things. One, staffing shortages. I think the number one message I was given to share with you all is we really are not sure how much more we can take on with what we've got going. And we're gonna go through some of those. So as you think about adding projects to perhaps think about taking things away or maybe sticking with some policy work and letting us complete the project. So those are our message, not to dampen your enthusiasm, but just to be realistic. And we expect a tight budget. As you know, we've already had to make some wage adjustments. We're expecting health insurance to go up, inflation in general is driving things up and the federal money that we had this past year we won't have. So I think things will be more difficult next year or this in a month or two actually. So those are the challenges. And just briefly, things that are on our list. Some of them I've already mentioned, but these are active projects. The huge one of course is the Elks Club. The wastewater plant also a huge one, East State Street stormwater utility. As part of that, we're also looking at our water and sewer rates. We've got the street lighting, the very main intersection, Confluence Park, the communications infrastructure, the homelessness district heat we're trying to get a good grasp on implementing the net zero plan, ADA improvements. We need to do a capital needs assessment of all of our buildings, those kinds of things, the website upgrade and of course the city plan, which the planning commission has been working on and which will actually be a major piece of work for the council next summer when it comes to you and you have to spend time going through those chapters. So I know it may not be on your radar now, but it's coming. So with that said, we did get our preliminary results from our poll call survey. So all I did, and as I said, there's a lot there, I just pulled out those. So we were benchmarked with other communities that have taken the same survey between four and 14,000 population, 4,000 and 14,000 population. So there were about 265 or 270 communities that had that. And they gave us a benchmark we either rated lower, our residents rated us lower in certain areas than the big benchmark or higher. And so I just pulled out where we were lower and where we were higher. So you could have that as a backdrop for this conversation. My personal observation was that you as a council are pretty much in sync with your residents as far as those areas. So it wasn't a huge surprise, but as you can see, quality of infrastructure, cost of living, we were much lower. Ease of public parking, of course, well-planned residential growth, a variety of housing options, much lower, affordable housing, much lower. Quality of new development, availability of affordable quality child care in preschool. And you have childcare on your list, which is one of the goals for the Elks Club Project. Economic development, street repair, much lower. Garbage collection, which isn't really something we do. Yard waste to pick up, also not really one of our core functions. Recreation centers or facilities are ranked lower. So these are all areas that I think the council has flagged as concerns. And it looks like our residents generally agree with that. When we were higher than the benchmarks, my pillar is a place to visit. I thought this was really great here. The residents' connection and engagement with their community. We hear a lot about people saying, we need to improve our community engagement. And of course we do. However, our residents already frank us higher than our benchmark in that area. The vibrancy of downtown, ease of walking, our historic and cultural character, availability of walks and walking paths and walking trail arts. Opportunities to participate in community matters. Again, people feel like they can, oops, sorry. They can participate. Did I just screw something up? Of course I did. Oh no. I'll get this. All right, here we go. I'm almost done too. That's the fad bar. Yeah, but I shouldn't have. Maybe this is a quick review. This is your last chance to cram before the quiz. We're not sharing. Oh no. Thank you. All right, you know what I think I'm gonna do since we are almost done. Excuse me, the other areas that we were ranked higher were again, opportunities to participate in community matters. People watched a local public meeting. They reported that they watched a public meeting higher than people reported that in other communities. Interestingly, attended a public meeting was about the same. So we have a high ratings. A car pooling, biking, and our walking or biking and our public library services. Obviously, there's a lot more to unpack. And one of the things we will get once we get the full report is then some of the parsing by demographic data. So how these are responded to by different groups within the community, and that is still coming. But overall, these were the areas. And if you've had a chance to look at it, you obviously go through services and there's much more than this. But I thought these were the, in terms of our strategic planning, this is kind of where our community says you're doing well. And here's where our community says you need improvement. So that seemed to be a good place to start. So basically now brings us down to your part. And what I thought we would do is basically walk through the plan and see where you wanna, if you wanna revisit any of these things and where you'd like to start your conversation. So, you know, we check in on the vision, the mission, the values, the goals. And I would suspect the goal strategies initiatives is where we really wanna spend our time. But if any of it needs to be changed, this is the time to do this or at least start talking about it. So I don't know whether it's easier to put the lights up and just have the conversation you all have, that those things should all be in front of you, all the vision, mission, and values are all in the document that was sent out. Or we can do it with me here, whatever you'd like. I'm here at your pleasure. Your strategic plan, you said so, it's 2022 and 2023. Fiscal years or calendar years? Fiscal year, well, yeah, fiscal years. We, it's set up to go by fiscal year, but if anything, yeah, that's a great, so the plan itself in Invisio is set up to be a fiscal year plan. So that's where you got the year end report, the June 30 report. We do it about now, it obviously then informs our budget process. And then we check in after elections, make sure it's still where that then council wants to be. And then we finish out the year. So it is fiscal year, I'd say. So this plan will end June 30th, 2023. The first half of it has already ended. So now we're starting the second half. And yes, you would, this is your chance to alter it, even though we're already a quarter of the way into it. We could still make changes to it for this next year. And you can change the length. It was really, you know, when we set a two-year plan, I don't think it was meant to be like specifically ending on a set date. It was like, this is our two-year horizon. So you can really set those dates however you want. Sorry to be squishy on that. So I just, it is still feeling a little squishy, what the task before us right now is. So at some point we need to develop our next strategic plan. Are we doing that? Are we starting that process now? So what you're doing now is saying, are we, does all of this still make sense? Are there tweaks we want to make to our plan? And then presumably next year, we would almost start from scratch and do the whole process from the beginning. But if, but you can do that now. If you don't like, I mean, the council can always change its priorities. So I think that's, so I'm sorry if I wasn't 100% clear on that. But so yeah, we would, it's a check-in and but it's also, you know, some things have been accomplished. And what, you know, a council shouldn't be expected to just sit for two years and not come up with any new ideas. So I think it's, it's that's, this is the opportunity, especially going into budget to say, here's what's important to us. Here's the areas we'd like to add. Here's areas of concern. This was a big deal a couple of years ago. Now it's not, or, you know, this is now higher. And then next year we would do a more facilitated process like we've done in the past where, you know, you put the dots up and all of that kind of thing. And if I can also jump in, I feel like in the past, we've also not made plans that were two years long, you know, feeling like we couldn't obligate a future council to our, you know, to our goal. So the trade-off is that, you know, if we're going to have a two-year plan, we're at least going to have a mid-year check-in or part of the check-in. Like, is this still true? Do we still want these things? And I think, you know, to that end, I mean, obviously a lot of this work takes more than one year or nine months. So I think the idea was, look, we're looking out ahead in a couple of years, obviously can change as councils change. But our goal is, assuming most of us will be around for a couple of years, this is the direction we're heading, knowing that it, you know, we're going to be faced with new things. You know, when we sat here last year doing this, we didn't know we'd be having the kind of staff shortages we have now, for example, or, you know, the type of inflation that we're having now. So obviously, things change. So have at it. The staff have a list of recommendations where it's like, okay, we've been in trouble hitting the target here because we're so understaffed or? I think the staff's recommendations is that we have, you know, we kind of went through the, I highlighted the list, I think in your packet you have a more detailed list of all the projects. I think what the staff is saying is in terms of projects and sort of those kind of things, we're kind of at max. Obviously, if there's policy issues you want to take on and discuss and set, then that makes sense. I think they would ask you not to add a lot of new, sort of those kinds of things unless we're going to take some things off. But that said, if something's urgent, you know, if something's really important and needs to be done, then we would take a look at that. But I think the combination of just the workload that we have already, just from the current plan and having less people and some of the changeover we're having right now. So let's see, we're having difficulty, I think we're having difficulty delivering some of the basic services right now. And nobody likes to be there. You know, we all take pride in our work and we want to be able to do what we do really well and so to dilute that even further, you know, by adding, this is all important work. I'm not trying to take away from any of this, but I would just urge you not to pile on to this unless you take away. But in terms of, yeah, actual project type things. Not to say, at the same time, let's have your ideas. We'll come back to you at the next meeting if we have feedback too, so. Lauren. One thing just some people have noted, you're still sharing your screen if we want to. Oh, well, yeah, because I can take that off. I left up the vision because I was gonna make, I want it to go through and see, but I don't need to leave that if people don't want it. No, I think it's probably useful. Yeah, so. Looks intentional. It's intentional, great. Yeah, I guess, I mean, I think we can go through this just process-wise. It feels like it would be easier to be seeing a version that's like kind of cleaned up with projects that are done or like see a proposal that's like where are we as opposed to a kind of mishmash of like updates. And like I think it's been incredibly helpful to read and reminds us how much has been going on which is exciting to see at all, but like a next iteration of this. I mean, also there's a lot of redundancy. I wonder if there's a way to just like reference like things that are described. They don't need to be described like three times because many things we do accomplish many goals that we have for the city, so. So the goal of the report should be, is intended to be a progress report. I left mine up there. But so, you know, the real detailed one. So, and obviously I didn't want to go through all of that in which I tried to list some of the big accomplishments and the big still pending items. Obviously we've got some roads paved and we've purchased some properties and we've approved, you know, I think one of the things we did was move a lot of things forward this year including, you know, approving a lot of projects now they got to get done. We talked about East State Street, we talked about all the road things. Those are major pieces work, the wastewater plant. Those are huge things and you know, to your credit you brought them all forward and they got approved and now they have to happen. So, we wouldn't want to add another bunch of those on top of that, I think is the idea there. Hi, Carrie. Yeah, so along those same lines, I'm looking at the, one of the reports, I don't know, the executive report that's got the graphics in it and you have these categories of on track, some disruption, major disruption. And so I'm wondering if you, what would be helpful to me, I think, and maybe it's in here and I didn't quite get it, is like some assessment from the staff about the ones that are experiencing some disruption and major disruption, what would be needed to get us through to those or and do you in some cases have recommendations that the disruption is so major that we really need to put this into the discontinued or on hold space. Yeah, so we can do that. We can certainly do that for the next meeting. We actually do, we check in quarterly or on these and we go through those and see, sometimes it's we're waiting for an ex, something else that we can't do anything about. Otherwise it's some, there could be any number of reasons. Some are surmountable, some aren't. So that would be, yes, we can do that. We will do that. I think at this point, yeah, so I guess where I'm, I guess what we're asking for tonight is the basic underpinnings of the plan still resonate with you. And if, you know, what are the ideas that you have for things that you'd like to at least have on the council's agenda for this year, we'd lay those out and then at the next meeting we'd come back with our responses and then any answers to the kind of questions and then we could, the next meeting we'd spend sorting them out. So this would be more about, you know, what would you like us to work on change? I don't want you to, you know, either the vision is still okay or you'd like some changes, but I don't want to think we should spend a lot of time trying to word it, those kinds of things. So just again to clarify, so we're going to talk about the vision. Do we still like this? We'll do mission, do vision, or we'll do values and then we'll go into the, the goals and strategies are really the things of the meat of it. And you'll walk us through that. Yes. Okay, great. Lauren. One thought on the vision, I still like it overall. Maybe instead of saying a variety of housing, we say affordable and available housing. Yeah, Donna, then Kerry. I was liking the word diversity because it's not just affordable housing. I mean, we need housing of all levels. And so I liked having that bigger picture because it helps everybody move wherever they're at in their life. Lauren, respond. Go ahead, Lauren. Yeah, I guess to me it's like affordable at all levels of income. I wasn't thinking of just, but I mean, I know it's kind of like a term of our affordable housing. So, yeah, we could think of how to, I just think variety only gets at one aspect and doesn't get at more. But I mean, we talk about housing a lot in the plan too. So I'll think about that. I'll see if I can come up with a better wording. Kerry. I'm still a little hung up on process, I apologize. To me, a huge part of the appeal of a two-year strategic plan is that we don't have to revisit the basics of it. If we can, we can always change it if we want to, but so I am inclined to not wanna make a lot of changes to things like vision and vision. So let me be clear, that's a perfectly fine answer. I probably should have said the beginning. If you all wanna go through this and say we're good with this, that makes everybody's life a lot easier. I guess I'm sorry if I didn't say that. I wanted to be sure that it didn't appear that I or the staff was trying to hijack your ability to make changes and lead your vision. So I was probably being more deferential to that than I need to. If people are comfortable with where things are, great. And that makes this process go smoother. So I apologize. I'm pretty comfortable with some of these broader things. I think we could maybe just cut to the meat of it now if there's new things we need to do and think to take off the plate. Sorry about that. It's okay. Usually very loud. Sorry, I apologize. Can you say it again? I was distracted. I'm just inclined to agree with Carrie rather than like sort of wordsmithing the vision and sort of these broader things. I think we did spend a lot of good like quality time shape in these. And what are the urgent matters at hand that we need to either take off the plate or add on? I think, okay. Jack. Thanks. As I was reading over this, getting ready for this, I was thinking that there's really, we've taken on a lot in this plan there's like two categories of things that we're discussing. And one of them is categories that the council has essentially already decided we want it to do. We've already told Bill and city staff to do them. And it's still a lot of work, but it's not anything that we're gonna have to spend a lot of council time on. For instance, Peter Kelman commented earlier, well, the webpage is terrible. Communication is terrible. And it's really important for the city to address that. And I completely agree with that. But we've already decided to do that. We've decided, well, we're gonna hire someone to redesign and rebuild and fix the webpage. And so I don't think here at city council, we're going to spend a lot of time talking about needing to fix the webpage. On the other hand, there are things that are still real policy and implementation issues, like some of the housing stuff. We know we wanna develop housing. We still are working on figuring out how we're gonna do that. And we've appointed the housing committee, which is also working on how we're gonna do that. But we're still not at the level where we can say, well, we know what we wanna do. Bill, you and your staff, just go do it. Yeah, I mean, maybe that's a better way of putting that is kind of, if you assume that the work list is the work list, how do you wanna spend your 125 hours this next year? What are the issues that are the most important that you want that are policy issues that you wanna be talking about out of these lists or any, if there's something new? I think that's probably what I was trying to say in less artful way. I mean, I'll just put it out there too. I have no interest in adding anything to the list. So it sounds like there's not a lot of interest in, I'm seeing a lot of agreement that there's not interest in adding things to the list. So the question I think is, you raise some good points that maybe we should be focusing on the things that are either stuck or we're not making progress on that either need to come off or, or the word that comes to mind, a phrase that we use a lot in the education world is like put it in the parking lot. Like that's, we're just gonna, we're gonna put it on the list for some other time when we have more time and capacity. So. So I jumped ahead to our goals. So I appreciate all of that. And if those are still the things that resonate or people wanna revisit any of the key goals. Just to check, any other comments about the vision? We're all okay with the vision. Yeah, kind of. Great, awesome. I whipped past the vision and mission and values. It didn't seem like that. Well, I did have one comment about the values. Oh, okay. Sorry. Of course you did. The climate change one. Right, but it's, it's a value. It's not a, this is not the goal level. So. But I was wondering if there was any language within that that would fit there for you. Yeah, I think, so you could do it however you want. I think when we did this a year or so ago, the idea was that basically to say we as a city adopt, you know, we acknowledge that this is real and people have to do things about it. And then in our specific work plan and project, it was, you know, so that would be a thing. We are gonna reduce our, so we have a goal. We're gonna reduce our greenhouse gas and then here's projects of how we're gonna do that. I feel like in the environmental world, the word preparation and associate, yeah, okay, that's fine. Sure, that's fair. That's a broader. Beautiful. Term. Thanks. That's it. That's why we reviewed them. Yeah, that's right. There we go, there we go. Well, you know, I mean, these, I, you know, some of it is just words and it's thing, but you know, this is what we put out for the public and people that are, you know, potentially moving to the community or looking at and people can say this is what this community or their elected officials stand for. So you want it to say what you want it to say. That's important. I'm just moving on to the goals. These have been our goals now, although I think a year or two ago we had, you know, obviously put in an emergency one about COVID, which we then, you know, we then reinstituted into the other goals. I don't think from a staff level, we see anything different than that emerging. And if you look at what our citizens just told us, our residents just told us that infrastructure and housing were really the two biggest problems they saw and that, you know, they liked our engagement and they liked the environmental aspects of the community and clearly improving prosperity and need is a key thing. So I, and public health and safety is kind of what we do in local government. So. So the question is, do we want to change any of these? Yeah, or re-visit any of them. Yeah, down. Then we finally got down to six. We had, remember we had like nine or five. And we consolidated down and it just really works for me. It's, it's good. Yes. When we redo this, I'm going to have a lot of thoughts about it. And, but tonight looks good. Maybe we'll start a little earlier next year. Okay. Oh, Donna, go ahead. So oftentimes when we've had council retreats, but we've had a full time with just ourselves and then with departments heads, then this also comes out then. It's like a real working group where we're looking at a lot of different things that were in a different mindset. It's like we're trying to throw everything away and then come back into it. I can't remember. I seem to think that was March right after election. So April. Yes. So we actually changed that. We used to do that, right? We used to do this goal setting in sort of April and adopted in May with the new council and all of that. Last year we changed it at your request to now because the idea is that whatever we come up with in this process is directly related to what follows with the budget. So, we would do it in March and the budget had just been passed. So we'd be talking about things that we couldn't even really attach any funds or make policy decisions about for at least six months. Here it's kind of, this is what's important. November, December, we come in and said you just said this was important. Here's the funding for it or not. You know, and then you can weigh the budget proposal against your priorities. So the council and everyone chose to move it to this time of year. So we could move it back if that's something that people want, but that this was a conscious decision that was made. Yeah. What I consider a lack of a real retreat, I feel that various times as council has changed at different times, those retreats really, I felt were important to get a handle on our differences and how we hear things differently and how we react differently. And it led to a lot more understanding when somebody was saying something and you went, what? Or I was saying something and they were, I think it really gave a depth to our understanding of our differences as well as how similar we had goals, that we had a lot of different thoughts how to get there. And I've missed that because we've made this goal so much more, what I'm gonna call a rational discussion, versus just getting down more in to how we feel behind things. And I miss that. So we can do that. You know, again, I think the goal settings, so I think a couple of the retreats we had were actually more about sort of how the group functions and what are rules and what's important to everybody. And some of it did turn into goals, but then I know as you recall, we had brought in a facilitator for the first couple of times who did this and then the last couple of years Cameron led it. And now here you are stuck with me. And so we certainly could go back to getting more external expertise. I mean, we may or may not have changes in this group come next year. So we may want to regroup and team build again with a new dynamic. I think this past year we only had one change. And I don't think people felt like there was a huge need to completely regroup, but that may, as time goes on, sometimes that's important. So it's really up to you guys to do what you wanna do. I just put it out there because Cameron was great, but it was a very different retreat, that's all. Well, I feel like there's a lot of us who haven't had that experience together. Well, and I wanna be clear. This is setting goals and priorities in strategic planning, it's not a retreat. So I think they could be the same, but yeah. And if that's what you'd like to do, we certainly can do that. Happy to. I'm putting it out there for an awareness that maybe people would be interested in doing it separately from this. I understand we have a timeline with this one. One suggestion and it's so small, I feel bad taking up any time saying it. Was that? That's the district heat plan. I was thinking that and I was like, somebody moving here isn't gonna know that. Fair enough, change icon. Yeah, I know, I'm sorry. I figured like, I could tell you later, but then like, is there a council agreement? Whatever, okay. So if we put a road, is that gonna be cars driving with? I don't know, I don't know. I have faith that you'll find something. Sorry. Parking garage? Parking garage, there you go. Oh dear. Okay. Thank you. Yes, thank you. Sorry. Any other changes to the goals? Not for this year, I'm told. Not for right now, okay. Now that you've got the icon set. Yeah. Exactly, now it's really dialed. Right, okay. So to that, I guess to that and then our, and this kind of goes to Jack's comments. I'm just gonna go down here to the, actually I'll just come out of this and we'll go, I'll stop sharing or at least I'll, how do I stop sharing? Red? Oh, where it says stop share. That's, there you go. Look at that. So I think we're at the point now where if those are the goals, are there specific strategies that you wanna talk about that are really policy type strategies that we would wanna consider again, thinking in terms of how you wanna spend your time. What are the issues? Think about what you've spent your time on the last year, some of which were driven by you, a lot of what was driven by this process last year, but a lot wasn't. Some things come from other groups, some things get put on the agenda and you end up spending a lot of time on things that aren't necessarily your top priority issue. So how do you make sure you're getting the time to address what you wanna address? So think about those goals. Excuse me. So for example, improving community prosperity, other specific sort of topic policy areas you'd like to, and at this point you're not voting, you're just listing them all out, kind of getting them out there and then we will try to prioritize them at our next meeting, so. Yes, Carrie, go ahead. So this document that I'm looking at with the executive report. So the, where I see a goal and it says progress, so for instance, goal one, improve community prosperity and progress 30% and then we have the strategies and then listed under that, that's the updates that staff has provided, right? Like what's happened with each of these strategies? And some of them have, some strategies have activities and some don't, is that right? Have, excuse me, what, I just need- Just trying to get a sense of the structure of it, so some, there are activities under some strategies but not under all of them? Right, cause some, yeah. And the activity, so the strategies and the activities are set in the strategic plan. Unless they've been completed, yes. Or you want to change them. Okay. I think at this point, the idea would be, what under the areas of community, for example, our main topics were, support economic development of promote outdoor economic development, actively support childcare options, implement new economic development plans, determine level of provision of social services. Those were sort of the four main points that you said. So I guess, are those still resonating or are there other things that you think should fall into that category then we can try filling in the specific things that would support your new ideas type thing or if you wanted to drop some of these things off. So I mean, is there something new and different under this area that you think we ought to be looking at? Or are there things in there that? So are we looking specifically under improved community prosperity? That's the goal we're talking about right now. Right now, yeah. So like I said, you could either add new strategies or ideas and in fact, this point, you could just throw out ideas and we can sort of put them where they belong. And for example, we spent a lot of time last year sort of talking about our level of provision of social services. And I don't think we've ever, we never really got that. At this point, we're really focused on dealing specifically with the unhoused population and not social services in general. And maybe we really ought to focus just on dealing with the issues that he and his Connor knows. W.A. Suggestion, for example. Donna, yeah, go ahead. I just wanted to mention for a few people watching, this is one of the attachments that was linked to the agenda. And it's under executive report, I believe, that we're referring to right now. The other one was the update. Yeah, so any changes? Well, I'm looking at the update. Yes, Connor, go ahead. So is the idea we just sort of throw something out and then we find out where it falls under, rather than go through each one? Oh, sure. Yeah, you can do that. Okay, yeah, I think I'd like to bring up one thing that maybe didn't rise to a level of urgency when we were doing strategic planning. But as I've spoken to folks, it seems like it's almost a crisis. And that's just the, rental prices are rising at an incredible rate here. And I've spoken to so many people recently. And like one woman who is like 80 years old comes to mind, lived in the place 20 years, she's disabled, her rent was like up 33%. And it's like, I have like five examples of this. People I know who have had to leave town because they can't afford the rental prices. Some of it's natural enough, some of it's predatory, I think. And people are saying, what can my government do for me to help out with this? And I don't totally know. I know we're sort of limited at the municipal level of what we can do in some cases here. We've thrown out rent stabilization and that means different things to different people. But I imagine the housing committee is gonna tackle this, but it feels like it's necessary for us to have a statement explicitly telling them, we would like to see all the options on the table to get this under control. Like if I'm at a city council meeting, that's what I'd like to spend my time on. We're having different groups come up with ideas here that we can grasp on to and either create ordinances or propose charter changes around that. Because like 33%, it's untenable, you know? And these are good people, like community-minded people who are losing as a result of that. And our seniors who are just being like, put through the mill on this. So maybe it's under housing. I'd just like to see it read in somewhere, you know? Well, certainly the availability of affordable housing was a top, you know, one of the areas of concerns of our residents. It's keeping what you got as much as like, you know, finding your housing. Well, that's as good a process and he's just throw out ideas that you think we ought to talk about and then we'll figure out where to put them. It might be free the damn up a little bit instead of... Jack. I think that's an excellent point, Connor. Another thing that is related to that is evictions. And what we have seen, not only in Montpelier, but around the state is people being evicted not because they're not paying their rent, not because they're bad tenants who are damaging the property or interfering with other tenants, but just because the landlord thinks they can get somebody in who will pay more money. So the same rapidly increasing rents and evictions for no cause are go hand in hand as a way that really can drive people out of their homes. And so I know that's something we're gonna be looking at in the housing committee and I know there are people within the city who are working on it and I think we should be looking at it at the council level too. So is that sort of similar to taking on something like Burlington's Charter Amendment just cause evictions? Yeah. Yeah, I think that'd be really interesting and especially if the housing committee is gonna be talking about that. It feels like it would make sense for them to talk about it before it comes here. So, Lauren. There's one thread that I'm trying to figure out how it would be reflected here. I'm just thinking about the different pots of federal money that are sitting at the state. Like there's this unique opportunity in the next few years for us to do projects that might not have been on the next three-year plan. Struggling like knowing how the staffing capacity issues and like how, what would we move around and how do we would be able to pull it off? But it just feels like we should be doing everything we can to take advantage of federal funds that are either just gonna get sent back to the federal government or like everything I'm hearing is like the projects that are ready to move. They're just gonna like pour money in. There's differences in eligibility, different guidance coming down. So it might all of a sudden be like, all of a sudden there's money available for this instead of that. And I just like how are we being as prepared as possible to do things that are gonna, it's not changing these goals. Like I really like, I think they are the right set of initiatives and stuff. So, you know, but I could see us losing out on opportunities or like I want it reflected that we should take as much advantage as we can, even if it means being nimble to changing, you know, doing something sooner and putting something else on hold because we can get federal funding to do it and not ask, come on, failure, taxpayers. Jack, go ahead. I think that's a great point. That probably goes like in responsible engaged government or something like that to increase our capacity to respond to opportunities as they arise. Something like that, language, yeah. Other things on folks' radar. Yeah, Donna, go ahead. Shadows of ideas as possible, what's gonna be the rules, the regulations around those because you can't prepare for everything. We've done some prepping towards different types of housing but do we need to have our lobbyist or whatever more directed their attention to find out what is the shadow ideas right now with that money? Was that a question? She's talking about, she's hearing things. Yeah, okay. How do you find out more about it? Yeah, yeah, go ahead. I think something like continuing a lobbying contract that would have a role of assessing what that landscape is. Like a lot of the money's been allocated into different buckets. There's specific programs. There's things like, there's money sitting for multi-unit electric vehicle chargers but it's not being spent, nobody knows about it. So I just think there's money sitting out there not being used and whether it's us making that more help partnering on projects as a city or even just letting residents know of things that landlords know that that's available. And so it's hard to know what's out there. Like so there's both specific pots of money that have been allocated and the guidance seems to be evolving. So some of that is moving around. We wanted to do whatever service but we realized that we actually can't and so then they're gonna be scrambling to move it. So the new legislature is gonna be figuring out where to put that money instead. So it's just like a moving target right now to some of the money. So I just think staying on top of it but it's gonna be tricky and we could just miss out on a lot of opportunities and some kind of investment to like try to track that and keep us posted on what those are could help us make sure we're aligning our priorities with what's available. Other ideas? Yeah, so one thing I would recommend, one make sure you as I do think in this is sort of coming from the homelessness task force but we could be facing a pretty serious situation come March when the hotel programs end and people are out. So I would think that we'd wanna set some sort of priority for addressing immediate shelter needs and obviously long-term housing is something that's gonna take a lot longer. We've said over and over again that we can't be the social service providers but there is a role and of course we're waiting to get a report. We have a project underway to give us recommendations for specific facilities or programs we might implement and we have some funds set aside from our ARPA money but I would think I'm looking at this workforce development which really I think wasn't just I don't think we had the ability to really do and I might suggest we change that to really focus on immediate needs of unhoused population and providing shelter because I think it's gonna be urgent. Just in kind of tandem with that as somebody who's worked in social services for over 20 years with homeless across the country I'm my concern is who are the people that are gonna work with this community because there's not a lot of social workers in Washington County and the ones that are here getting burned out fast and I know that it's something that a lot of folks have been talking about like yes we need all these things and we need these structures and we need these programs but who's gonna work? Who's gonna do the work? Everybody's tapped and so I'm just wondering if you know or if maybe you know if there has been funds set aside for paying people what they should be paid to do the work and is there gonna be enough positions? I think probably Bill or I were gonna talk about this at some point today but yeah where the crisis mode with the shelter this winter it's and you're asking the right question Jennifer it's like who's gonna do the bloody work? You know we've got two providers who have traditionally done that in Good Sam in another way and they both told us pretty clearly today look like we can't tell you we're gonna do it you know and even worse than that like if you throw money at us we still might not be able to do it because we can't find people right? Exactly. So you know I think we got into a pretty broad conversation today to be honest I'm not sure the homelessness task force is quite equipped and nimble enough to deal with this because really we just gotta get something moving like right now. Exactly. I like that I mean Peter Kelman today I think he's still on the call he was highlighting the urgency of it and you know even if we don't agree on some of these solutions we need like solutions on the table that we can pick one from absolutely because people are gonna die you know they're gonna die if we don't come up with something and if that means like unstaffed like pods or something hey it's better than leaving people on the street it's not ideal or some other system but I thought that was a pretty scary meeting today and you know I didn't hear a lot of concrete options on the table that we could jump on right now so I think it's gonna take the city like staff sitting down with some of these providers and get some ideas on the board and pull the trigger on us. Yeah the turnover has been a lot and I think that's something within the social work community is that has been going on just for all of Washington County everybody's really panicked today. And this kind of work isn't for someone who doesn't know what they're doing and able to respond that's definitely a crisis situation so if the people that are the professionals in the field can't deliver the goods you know having a volunteer staff shelter is not a recipe for success and it could be even more dangerous so yeah that's right where I was headed. Don and Jack. Okay Jack go ahead. Well Conner is our unstaffed pods even a possibility I was talking to Rick DeAngelis the other day and I know that Burlington was gonna do that one of these pod villages a year ago and the city which has much more resources than Montpelier wasn't able to staff at last year and my understanding is that the companies that provide pods for this pod these pod housing clusters won't even let you have them unless you've got a whole plan for staffing and services. Yeah. For good reasons. So you know toward that end I mean we could spend all night talking about this particular issue I think from the point of view of our priorities I just would urge that that be I think that ought to be on is a very high priority you know the immediate shelter and safety of people in need as well as you know working toward a longer term solutions and there is no one you know I mean housing will help some people but not everybody the state is basically saying we're out of money and not our problem so it's pretty it's pretty scary. Yeah and it's not it's not immediately obvious what the solution is you know it's not just a matter of you know opening yeah. The best people like around at the table today and there wasn't a long list of solutions you know. Well it doesn't mean we can't still talk about the solutions that are on the table. And that is coming up in a agenda pretty soon but yeah but I think the the scary issue like Connor said just to end this so we can move on is even if money were you know so basically what the state said is number one we're not sure we want to provide the funding. Number two if even if we do we want it it has to be a day program. You have to show that you have a day program which OK except you're OK with people freezing at night if there's no day program like it was kind of weird. And then number three which I think Rick DeAngelis recommended or could understand was they were concerned that stretching good see them too thin would hurt their other programs. And I think that's legit. And so basically the point was even if say the city came up with the money and said we'll pay for it. There's there's still that you know and that would eliminate the day program need because we don't have that requirement necessarily it would still mean who's going to do it because it means it has to actually be physical trained bodies in the shelter that can handle the situation. So yeah it's a real it's a real thing. But anyway we could we could spend all night on that one topic. So I know this is more detail on the weeds Bill sorry but I'd like us not to forget I feel we need to knock at the governor's door and ask about that incentive of people moving here and work to attract people through incentives where we have shortages like social workers and that we make we make a lot of noise with the governor to make it happen here as a partnership with him. And likewise we need to reach out to the educational institutions that they have people training in social work that could possibly work with senior social workers that are here. And I'd like us to knock at doors like Vermont College has empty dorms. I'm sorry but it's there and we have some empty buildings that we can repurpose. So I just don't want those to lose sight even though we don't have clear paths to them somehow to get them on the table. So so we're working towards that too. All of that was discussed. You know all of those issues were included. Well one of the where the brainstorms are out there. I know Kerry's got some. Well again small as it is something that I think can maybe come on change. Was that another icon change. I mean it does feel sort of small and a little bit silly. I'm having a hard time finding it now but somewhere on our list was make more opportunities for tours departments. And you know it's not that I don't think we should do that. I just don't think it needs to be a priority at this point. Especially when folks are under departments are under staff right now. So what we can do is really what I wrote down was you know again having to do with housing rental pricing and evictions making sure we have the capacity to understand and access state and federal dollars for projects homelessness issues including advocacy and then maybe knock off the tours. We can do is take a stab at redrafting some of the plan with these and our own recommendations from staff of what maybe could drop and come back to you at your next meeting and if anybody thinks of anything else in the meantime let us know. You know one of the things that is a little bit hard to know what to do with is at the bottom of this document it has the section of initiatives that are not necessarily priorities but they're still on the departmental work plans. I mean those are things that seem important and you know I don't. If those are staff that you don't need to worry about I was going to say like if staff feels like those are important things that I don't want to tell them that they're not. I mean so I'm assuming that's more of just like an FYI here are things that we're continuing to work on. OK and I think you know and I apologize for not teaming this up a little bit better any number of reasons but whatever so as we come back to you with this next year but next week and I mean at the next meeting along with hopefully the more complete survey and a few other things and then if you want to give a little bit more thought to sort of key part policy issues that you really want to spend key council time on that would be great. Things that we ought to spend time on. Yeah OK go ahead. Thanks I have a couple of other thoughts about housing that I don't see listed in here and they may kind of be in here but maybe not. But one is that I would be interested in doing an inventory or being in communication with the owners of downtown buildings to see if there are spaces in the upper floors of some of the buildings that could be converted into housing and not just right downtown but there are there are existing buildings that that maybe have spaces where housing could be developed and so figure you know it's probably a small enough number that we could talk to all the owners individually and say well OK what is it what is your building look like and what is it what would it take to get you to develop housing in that in that space. Similarly we're the mayor was just on television last night talking about how about the city's use of office space here the state's use of office space downtown and and they had I think good reasons for why it's it may not be feasible to convert those office spaces to housing but there there might be a follow on effect to that which is that if fewer people are fewer city and state employees are coming to downtown they may need less parking and so it may be possible to look at some of the parking lots either behind the state office motor vehicles and other office buildings or in the pit to see if some of that space which people have for years look thought looked at that thought well that would be an ideal place for housing and the states always says well we we're using that for employees well maybe they're not using as much of it for employees so maybe the state could actually save some money by releasing some of that and create use that as an opportunity for housing which would be good for the future and then one one third thing and I haven't admit I have not looked at the at the zoning bylaw to see if this is feasible but years ago decades ago there was a kite kind of housing that most people that a lot of people upper and middle class people hated which is SROs and you know it single room occupancy housing and it might be worth investigating whether that would be a way to meet some of the need you know for people who are not not in families maybe you don't have a lot of money but could could could meet some people's housing needs so I just investigate that as a possibility this might be a question just wondering what's going on with the Vermont College of Fine Arts and just as a change that happened like what is there a role for the city in thinking about that space and so we've asked that we be included and White and Burke is doing their analysis and of course we work with them as on the Elks Club and other projects so I think there's some nice synergy there as I understand that they're doing kind of their due diligence work right now you know sort of assessing what the market options are what the costs are you know one of the one of the downsides for use of that property for even for homelessness is that you know while there's all these dorms there's these old concrete dorms they're not really they're going to be extremely they're going to be just torn down which I think would probably cost some backlash or you know the or the cost of sort of internally renovating them is very high so you know what really is the market value and what what you know what kind of investment what if you made to convert them so yes there's this campus yes they have a lot of house you know units you know they have bathrooms at the end of the hallway they're not they're the old college dorm that some of us are old enough to have gone to and so there's there's problems with them as well but I know they're looking at all their options and we've asked that we be included in whatever you know public conversations they have and I haven't heard back but we certainly I think can fall into that similarly we had did have some conversations with state just yesterday about the use of state parking lots for various types of development and it's interesting they're not quite ready to commit that they will never have people back and never need their parking so but it's still a conversation worth having and we said well if you're going to bring them back bring them back because we could use them in downtown right I mean either either bring them back and pack the parking and we could use we could our stores could use them so well we could use them so anyway anything else yeah I mean just in terms of things that I feel like we ought to be talking about I know we sort of mentioned this earlier but you know as much as we can be proactively looking to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions that is that's a priority so we can state that even stronger yeah yeah I mean it's it's in there but we can you know just in terms of thinking about like what what do we want to spend our time talking about that's something that would be on my list yeah go ahead Carrie this is more of a topic for when we really get back into this but I don't see anything about education in here and is that because we're letting the school board take care of education or yeah okay yeah I mean we don't really have any say over education they're the complete separate entity yes unless there were like educational opportunities that were separate from this you know in terms of K to 12 education and those kinds of things I mean that's really not our right like arguably child care child care could be an overlap issue and you know we do offer classes to the senior center or the community services department so but in general yes yeah not not our lane yep Donna than Jack mentioned education and I went to training because I really think one of the things the city can do for the community along with social justice and restorative justice center is to actually incorporate training that's available to the community as well as the staff in the DEI diversity equity inclusion it's a lot of training out there that's happening and I would like us to make a more of a priority here for us for our staff but also for the community sorry I think just we have at the social and economic justice advisory committee gotten several requests from some of the city committees for example for training and we have been talking about staff training and how the city could be better supporting our own committees or the community in that so I think getting that more clearly reflected would be great I'm not sure I see it here but one of the things that we we got in the budget we got people to do last year is to support the the additional staff for the sustainable sustainability coordinator and and that person has been hired now and so I would think at some point we'll want to have a discussion at our level about what that person is supposed to be doing and I maybe maybe that's already part of what he what he's doing since he got started and it's going to come to us but well in all fairness the the individual has been identified but we haven't really been able to get him fully engaged until we hired the replacement building inspector and she starts Monday so that that will help be able to you know have that handoff we you know I think there we have had some conversations with me act a couple members of me act were involved in the hiring process and obviously the net zero plan is the real basis for so from from my perspective and I think that would be great to have that that conversation is like how do we how do we implement that plan and go you know one of the pending requests we have is sort of what would it take to convert our buildings to you know net zero or off a fossil fuel by 2030 and we just need someone to do that work you know I think that's gonna be one of the first ones out of the box that this individual will do we've got we're still trying to decide on how to handle the heating at the garage you know we had we plan to do it as pellets but we may now use the methane from the plant but either way we'll no longer be fossil fuels so you know a lot implementing a lot of those projects is exactly what they'll be doing but yes it would be good to get a sense of the council schools along and maybe haven't have me act attend as well so that we're united on that policy question not just staffing implementation question you're gonna keep coming up with ideas if we say other thoughts Jack good I haven't read this in enough detail too lately to know what it says but how is transportation addressed in this in this set of goals and strategies and I think that that's just worth looking at you know we from stuff as simple as getting people out of out of cars to as much to the extent we can you know to figuring out if the public transit is as effective and responsive as it should be questions like that I think that's a great question the transportation in terms of as a single focus isn't really addressed but some you know so the net-zero plan talks about vehicles and I think somewhere it's probably under also under the environmental we sound we talked about the the my ride right here program those kinds of things but it probably isn't and then of course the the streets and roads and sidewalks really under infrastructure but it would be good to at least think about transportation issues as a whole somehow has to do with parking and transportation as well as the complete streets that we adopted so it's there it just needs to be more prominent and so again right although you know I think those are good examples of the we've made policy decisions about those and so now I think you know the council doesn't necessarily have to spend a lot of time reiterating their policy decisions and then it should those should be showing up in project you know once you've adopted complete streets then when we see projects the whole idea is that that would then incorporate the complete streets policies and so he is one of the things that this brings to mind is something that we were doing for a while and it's has kind of slipped off our our regular activities which is that we're all on all these committees and for a while all the council members one of the things we were trying to do was bring reports to the council of what's going on in the committees that that we're working on and you know it doesn't go in this document but one of the things that I think would be useful for us is if we would get back to doing that so that all of us will have a some sense of what's happening with the housing committee with the homelessness task boards what's happening in the transportation infrastructure committee just all that stuff so we all have a more of a sense of what's going on with the with the whole city perfect use of council reports earlier in the evening that's why I think we've had so brief we've had some but very brief and you're really good at doing that Donna you really are diligent we're so late at night to take the time to really get into detail it's hard well in the interest of not being late is there anything else Lauren just one thought more on process so it sounds like the staff will look and we'll get kind of an assessment of like if there's things that are on here that just seem untenable or whatever I mean one other thing that might be helpful from a staff perspective and knowing we might have some great new legislators like if there's pieces where like really we need state policy so as we develop our legislative agenda and what we want to be pushing for and if we're going to invest resources in a lobbyist again like how is the state a better partner with us or that we're advocating for the kind of programs and support so that could just be like identifying like we think the state should be stepping up more on this we think this is hard you know just another question to be asking as you go through the strategic plan for the department and in the anticipation of the discussion on the legislative agenda we've already been asking people to think about that but certainly can be tied in with this but yeah I think the plan would be to take this we'll we'll go through it edit it add in some of your thoughts and come back with our draft that you can approve in five minutes next meeting so with that discussion of are there things in this document that are stuck or not right that are untenable I I just want to recognize that that can be a really hard thing to to do because it feels like everything is important but that's feedback that's really helpful no I mean we're you know we want to be accountable and transparent that's one of our values and I think if we've if we're reporting something is you know delayed and you and the public have a right to know you know and it's we try to examine what's going on so we're happy to share that that's no problem at all great anything so do you feel like you have enough information for next time okay and do you think it's going to be back on the agenda for next for our next plan okay but there you won't be the only thing right as opposed to tonight right okay anything else folks want to say about the strategic plan or the goals or any of the action items or anything at this point we'll have another opportunity to discuss it but yeah Donna go ahead I'm just glad to see that it's really stand it stood the test of time we really did a good work so pat ourselves on the other other thoughts okay super thank you thank you and also I just want to recognize that I want to recognize that it's a lot of work to just keep up to date with where all these different things these different projects are and it's it's really it's helpful to know where things stand so I just want to thank you know pass along our gratitude to folks that put that together yep yeah well that's that's why we update that and busy you all the time right yeah well so it's 825 this is the end of the regular business so we could just do council reports and be done yeah okay that's not all right I think okay okay okay okay okay okay so council reports Donna you up for going first I do I had a request from Central Vermont home health and hospice that they would like to the council to consider them to not have to gather signatures this year the last two years they were allowed not to have to gather signatures and were put on the ballot and it's past it's the same $23,500 that they would put on this year and so I told Kim Farram who was the development director there that I would let the council know and they're willing to come and present if the council would like to hear from them but they would like to make that request and want to know what the council wants them to do whether it's a written repress request to be on the agenda or just a direct request not to be made to collect signatures in order to be on the ballot put that on sometime to talk about okay okay and likewise there's lots of blood drawings happening from Red Cross there's one on Friday there's one next week in City Hall next week at the chamber at Central Vermont Hospital so really if you can give blood do because they really really needed and we all have gotten in the mail things from the league about the town fair October 6th and 7th I go I've only missed a couple of them and all the time I've been in the council it's really really worthwhile training it's at Killington I'm already signed up I hope others will do I don't know if we usually pick somebody to vote be authorized so I don't know if we can do that without it being on the agenda we don't have another meeting before then so if anyone wants to nominate Donna or someone or somebody else wants to go that's absolutely fine I'm going anyways really recommend it Jennifer Kerry it's an excellent way to meet other select boards councils but you get such wonderful advice from people who've been in state government city government municipal government it's really good Jack good this year because I was looking forward to it but I'll be out of town those those days and so I can't but I nominate Donna to be our representation representative to vote on our be all second for the discussion on favor please say aye I and opposed okay great thank you thank you we'll say a little bit about this you can talk about the Department of Public Safety has awarded a tentative awarded capital region through Montpellier two point four million dollars for communication equipment so that is wonderful it has a few more stages to go through and we still have some things they want refined in the application but it's good news basically it's really good news the main thing they took out was any administrative money which is too bad but the equipment is really solid so I'm really pleased about that one thing I've been hearing is a follow-up to the public engagement process for the Elks property some folks are wondering if maybe we could do like just a series pick a weekend or something do a series of tours for the public just to get up and see the property kind of like you know put a picture to what they're hearing in the press there I think I could actually benefit from that again you know with some of the new stuff that's come up so just something to maybe throw in white and barks a plan there that's it for me we're gonna are we gonna hear from them okay all right great Jennifer okay Jack okay Lauren two quick things one I just wanted to it was great to see at the energy advisory committee meeting that just recently happened we had Jim Murphy the chair of the school board come and as you all probably remember the net zero plan that we had done looked at both the schools and the city operation so it was great to see and Tim favorite I believe is really leading the charge so thanks to Tim for helping bring these conversations together and get some updates from them and some kind of momentum on seeing that good work put to use in the schools as well as with the city operation so that was great and only other thing was the social and economic justice committee was we've been talking a lot about the community engagement and how to feed input or engage with the consultants and it's not entirely clear to us how to effectively provide that input or if we can meet with them or whatever though the right way to do it so putting it on your radar to yeah like that but there's a lot of interest in some good thinking we want to make sure that that gets in there before we miss the miss the window thanks great I just have a few things here this Saturday is the prevent child abuse of Vermont's walk for children so that's at 9 a.m. starting at the State House lawn so it's a great fundraiser for them great event for them so invite in everybody to come out to that I want to recognize that this last weekend was the Montpelier fall festival which benefits the or benefited the Montpelier Roxbury public school district partners in education which is like the boosters group for the school district and it was great events yeah super fun so I just thank everybody who came out to that and all the organizers for pulling that off making it happen and everyone who was willing to be a part of the dunk tank is that I did not want to be a part of the dunk tank I also just want to call out one thing that we heard tonight which I thought was really encouraging that relative to benchmarked other cities that that Montpelier is doing really well in terms of engagement you know that's something that I feel like we have worked really hard on and it's great to I mean of course we can always be better and we should aim to be better but it's it's great to see that just relative to other cities we're doing well so let's keep after it but wonderful very very encouraged there so and that's it for me anything from the clerk clerk's office so nothing too important but I do want to take this opportunity to just provide a few reminders to any members of the public listening in and present today about the upcoming election and so the Secretary of State's office is mailing a general election ballot to every registered voter in Vermont in case people don't know that new registrants and voters who change their address within Montpelier in the coming weeks can expect to automatically receive a mail-in ballot as well from the city clerk's office once you receive your ballot you can return it by mail with the included envelope drop it off at the ballot drop box behind City Hall or return it to us in person at the city clerk's office if you choose to mail it please keep in mind that ballots received after the date of the election cannot be counted even if they were postmarked on or before election day so just when you're preparing to mail your ballot keep that in mind as always you can vote in person in the City Hall Auditorium on election day November the 8th or at the city clerk's office any business day between now and then if you choose to drop off your voted ballot on election day please bring it upstairs to the auditorium to the polling place and if you have any questions or concerns about the election about your ballot please do not hesitate to call the clerk's office or visit us at City Hall thank you Bill okay I mentioned Kelly's new position I would also be remiss to not mention she's also gonna be doing some double duty for the next few months because we will be starting hiring finance in a formal process for DPW also acknowledge that Kurt is here who is our interim public works director and certainly a strong candidate for the more permanent position so Kelly will be leading our budget process this year even though she'll be in her new role so some of the work that the that may have been done in the past by the assistant manager may not be getting done at least for the next couple months because we can't kill her yet so there's that happening I was a good also note that the we very happy to receive 2.449 million toward radio infrastructure and we understand that may be a phased approach some of it was you know we'd asked for a 3.2 to 3.5 million so we got the bulk of what we're looking for and we have reason to believe will be competitive for the remaining funds next year and the project can be phased was set up to be phased that way so we're feeling really good about that our team here at my pillar PD chief Pete and assist the deputy chief allsworth from the berry fire department really were the leaders in putting that application together so hats off to real good piece of teamwork between the two cities and and of course couldn't have done it without central public safety authority who you know provided the initial study and the are you know the resources with the consultant so good teamwork all the way around already mentioned the city hall illness elk's club so we have spoken with white and Burke is it to follow up with the conversations we had at the last meeting and they were very receptive that we and they wanted to be clear that you know that the plan they had submitted was in addition to the plan that was already in their proposal so you know I think their point was they were sort of saying we want to do more but they still heard it and so they're actually scheduling and I believe I have the date correct but I maybe I think it's October 15 they're actually going to do an on-site walk thing so Saturday I think it's a Saturday yes whatever that Saturday is so they will be an on-site event there one thing they were getting an article out Evelyn actually is preparing an article to go out in the bridge and everything else about the process and I think they really want to be emphasized that they have to do a lot of the ground analysis and now is the time of the year to do that because we can't spend a lot of time talking about let's put this here and there and there if there are certain sites that are wetlands those kind of things so they they want to have a robust public process but they don't want to waste people's time so we're going to start doing some big picture thinking but really you know they can engage the public in more meetings even when the weather is not as good but they can't do the field work they have to do that now so they've already started that work so they are definitely on it they're engaged and I think we'll be seeing a robust process but certainly happy to connect your folks if they're interested in that so lots coming lots of news on that project and then just lastly Kelly and I did attend the ICMA conference in Columbus Ohio last week I think we both got a lot out of it including COVID and I don't know I think it turned into a super spread but the speakers were great and the sessions were really great and I know you know for me it's seeing a lot of people connections from the years and for Kelly who's being overwhelmed by seeing all of my old connections from the years and but hopefully she got to meet some new people in her own sets of resources but great as always appreciate the city's support in allowing us to participate in those those kinds of things so we we will have some good ideas to bring back great that's all I have super well thank you everybody and so well and I will say this about that sorry it's okay the issues on our plate are the same issues that are on the plate everywhere staffing DEI housing it's it's you know it's it's really fascinating talking to people it's just really the same kind of issues everywhere homelessness so we're not alone sometimes you feel like you're on an island here but everybody's dealing with the same stuff yeah I feel like that's also a great plug for the the conference in all the cities and towns conference because even in Vermont yeah all this same too I'll be there yeah cool all right well thank you so without objection we will adjourn 8 39 this evening so