 And it does not look like I'm not sure if Councilor Paul is going to be able to join with us. Everyone should know that she suffered a boss in the family and last week and she may not be attending tonight. I don't know what her plans are. So, So we will get started. If we will, I will call the board of finance to order at 505 p.m. The first item on the agenda is adoption of the agenda. I would welcome a motion on that. Councilor Jang, go ahead. You need to unmute yourself. Yep. I moved to adopt the agenda as indicated on board. Excellent. Thank you. Is there a second. Seconded by President Tracy. Thank you. Any discussion of the agenda. Thank you. Thankfully it's not a ton of items. We do have three various meaty substantive issues regarding town meeting day potential town meeting day actions to get to, and that's going to be the big bulk of it. So there's no amendments will vote on the motion. All those in favor of the motion please say aye. The next item is the public forum and I think we do have at least one member of the public who requested to be recognized. Former city councilor Sharon busher, I believe is with us. Jordan, what, what do she been. Yes, we're at the public forum now. Okay, can you promote. Sharon. There we go. Sharon. I think you're, you're with us now and you're welcome to go ahead and make a comment. Okay, thank you very much, Mr. Mayor. And I wanted to speak to you. Regarding just the priorities of the city. And tonight's agenda board of finance agenda speaks to many of them. I was, I did dial in and listen to the joint city council school, school board meeting, which I found somewhat informative, but it really just. Once again, reinforces that our priority in our community is to get a high school and a technical center for the students that we serve. Some of them are outside of the city of Burlington that go to the technical center, but most of the students are our own residents and I just need that to be upfront. And that flavors what I'm going to say tonight, Mr. Mayor, because I know that sometimes we have, we see things a little differently. But I think ultimately we really do want the same thing for the city of Burlington. I want to speak to the item that deals with the capital bond request for March. And once again, I would really hope that you would not move forward with this revised smaller bond request. That is the size of the need for the high school and the, and the size of what that's going to be, knowing that there will be will move heaven and earth to find other avenues besides a bond that is born by the taxpayers. But there still will be a sizable ask. So having said that. If you do move forward. I reviewed what you had done in that comparison between the two the, the December request and the March request was useful. So I would ask that that the Board of Finance actually and the administration actually, if you go forward, modify it down from what your current ask is to 10 million. And what I'm saying that is a fire trucks, the 2.2 million for fire trucks. I think voters will will want to support the 4.3 for the radio communication. I can't speak to if we have to invest all of that at one time, but the, but the reality of having police fire and dispatchers all be able to have the time and to upgrade what we have because it's kind of at the end of its life is, is real and we all want to have good communication with our public safety department. So I think that's an ask that I think people would look at and probably favor. And then the 1 million that you need to stabilize memorials. Before you decide what the go back, I guess to the voters to decide what they want to do. I think is necessary. That would leave you that brings you to 7.5 million that would leave you to 2 with 2.5 million to reinvest for the local match for grants which I, I'm sure I don't know if that's adequate but I think that that's a sound request. It's a round figure. And most of it goes to emergency services that people want and use. And so if indeed you move forward, I'm hoping that you'll at least discuss or contemplate my proposal. So my first request really is not to ask for any money because I'm worried about the fact that I'm now a person who has a limited not limited but fixed income. And, and it's really hard. You want to do everything for Burlington you want to make good choices, but the reality is, you don't always have the resources to do that. And so what I've done is try to prioritize and make sense out of what I believe are necessary asks and you'll contemplate. I do have and thank you. I know I've gone on and I'll end up but I didn't want to. I didn't know if ARPA funds could be used for any of of these emergency services because some of them are responding to COVID patients and I just didn't know if that was an avenue that you could still look at. And the last request is that I really feel that the state should look at giving some money back to Burlington for what they made us do with their ratings for contamination at the high school. And now that they've found that the rest of the state can't really they can't afford to have all the municipal buildings and all the schools do what they've made Burlington do for. I think they share some of the financial responsibility and burden and I would really hope that we could ask them to reimburse the taxpayers they'll never be able to pay back the students for what they've done to them. But those are my final comments and thank you all very much for listening to me. Very good. Thank you, Councilor busher. Thank you for those comments and we will be grappling. Former councillor Bush or we will be grappling with the the capital bond later in the agenda. Thank you for those comments on it. Appreciate you've fallen so closely. I think this is the only correct Jordan I don't believe we have any other members of the public wishing to speak at the public forum so I will close the public forum at 513pm and move to item number three, which is the consent agenda. And I would welcome emotion regarding the consent agenda. I would like to move to prove the consent agenda. Great. And it takes action. Indication says indicated on board dogs. Thanks. Excellent. Thank you, Councilor. Hi, tower. Thank you for the second Councilor Jang. Any discussion. All those in favor of motion please say aye. Aye. Are there any opposed motion carries unanimously. I did just want to mention, I do, I do have a note that I had not noticed earlier that Councilor Paul who did suffer the loss of her father last week Alan Paul will not be joining us for the board of finance or the city council meeting tonight. Perhaps the first council meeting she's ever ever missed so didn't want to let my colleagues know that. So, we will now move to item number four, which is the lease of vendor space at North Beach for three seasons 2022 to 2024. This is a contract managed by the parks department as part of the North Beach complex and Cindy are you going to kick us off here. Okay. I can help me go ahead or do you want to do the honors. One of our long standing having concessionaire at North Beach. We did bid this project out and they were the only ones this year that bid on that project they've done great job down at North Beach so we are pleased to offer them this opportunity for the next three years. Thank you. Thank you, Cindy Beach. It's a great revenue producer for the community also provides a nice service to those that attend the beach. Great thank you. Thank you Cindy out do you want to add anything to that or, or you don't need to. We can see if there are questions. So, the item, the floors open how would the board like to proceed on this. Make the motion there. Okay, thank you, President Tracy. Go ahead. So I'll make the motion to approve and recommend that the city council approve and authorize the execution of these agreement with AS concessions concessions LLC to perform food and beverage sales at North Beach for the 2022 through 24 seasons and I'll give you a lease and you related documents subject to review the city attorney's office. Second. Thank you seconded by a counselor high tower. And I just present Tracy from you may know this but just so you can just you know for some reason the way the automatic camera is it's focusing in on on rich not you so. I'll try and get that to switch. Thank you. So. Okay, is there any further discussion of this item we have a motion and a second. Okay. I will just note because there has been some public discussion in the past that the. Actually, it may be getting into information that were that is probably premature so we'll just leave it at this. This is we have a one bidder. If there's no further discussion. All those in favor of the motion please say aye. Hi. Is there any anyone opposed. Motion carries unanimously. Thank you. Thank you. We would like to move to the next slide. Thank you so much for the presentation. This kid brings us to 4.0 2, which is engineering amendment. Number two for the Flynn Fletcher pump station improvements project. The many. I'm a number of the pump stations that were working to upgrade. Megan, would you like to further kick this to this up. upgraded the Flynn Ave pump station which is the one down near Oakledge and we had been working on Fletcher. Both of these projects had some complications which I've described in the MO which have drawn out the project and we need to allocate some additional engineering funds so that we can get to full completion and so this is a request for an amendment of up to 35,000 dollars to the engineering contract so that we can bring these both to completion. It's possible we will have to return to you in the spring. One of the complications on Flynn Ave was we had planned to reline the force main which is the pipe the pressurized pipe that goes from the pump station up to the gravity system and as a sort of pre-construction investigation unfolded it was determined that we're not going to be able to do that so we have to go back to the drawing board a little and when we do it's possible we may have to seek a increase in the amount of money we're borrowing from the state but we don't have that information at this time so I'm just piecemealing it a little bit to make sure we stay compliant as we move forward. Great thank you Megan. Further are there questions or are we ready for a motion? I'll move to approve and recommend that the city council authorize the director of the DPWU to execute a second amendment to the engineering service agreement increasing the maximum amount to 178,483 for additional construction administration and resident project representative work on the Fletcher Place pump station project so to final review and approval by the CAO. Great thank you Councillor Hightower. Is there a second? I'll second that mayor. Thank you President Tracey. Further discussion? Okay seeing none we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion please say aye. Very opposed. Motion carries unanimously. Thank you Megan. We will move now to VTRAN's finance and maintenance agreement for the resurfacing of along US 7, US 2 and alternate US 7. It's another DPWU item section. This is item number 4.03 and Chapin are you going to kick this off? We're going to pass it over to senior engineer Corey Mims. Okay great welcome Corey. Okay so this is for federally funded work by VTRAN's state managed project. It's finance maintenance agreements just allowing them to do the right the work in the right of way as well as potentially cover any potential non-participating costs that may be associated with this. One potential change order that may come would be work in the Winooski corridor remarking but that is still being finalized. Ultimately this is for resurfacing of US route 2, US route 7 and all route 7 so kind of the whole Shelburne, North Willard, Riverside, Winooski and Main Street from Willard East to South Burlington. So this is all being state performed work. It was formed as night work and this work will be completed over two construction seasons between 23 and 24. Very good. Great thank you Corey. Floor's open for discussion or motion? Present Tracy. Move to take the recommended action on board docs. Okay great. Is there a second? Second by Councillor Jang. Any discussion? Okay all those in favor of the motion please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Thank you Corey. That brings us to the end of that section of the meeting. We'll now move to the Board of Finance approval only section of the meeting. This is a contract extension for ratification for wastewater testing program. Can you just shape in our mega and just keep this up Rob briefly? Sure I can do this. Nancy put this memo together she can't be here tonight. This is for an extension of our existing contract with the vendor that has been performing our analysis of our samples of wastewater for the COVID surveillance program. We initially signed this contract through competitive bidding process during the early or during the summer of 2020. So this is actually the first time since the city's emergency procurement policies have lapsed that we've brought this contract extension to you. This is for the extension of wastewater surveillance for COVID. It's variants as well as for flu and RSV and for a pilot surveillance program to monitor for opioids and other other drug presents through the end of fiscal year 22. So it'll be from this month through the end of June. And the funds for this have already been approved by the city council in our previous ARPA allocations in May and September of last year. This is actually the first time that we will actually use those funds to cover the expenses because all of our previous expenses related to the surveillance program have been reimbursed by other emergency grants that the city received. Thank you Megan. Are there any questions? Are we ready for a motion? President Tracy, you're ready. So I had heard about, I knew about us using it for COVID detection, but the piece that was new to me about this particular proposal was the detection of opioids and other substances and just wondering what all is involved with that and how that information would be used going forward or what the purpose of that piece is. Yeah, that's a wonderful question. So this is a pilot for us right now. We have been working with the vendor for the last several months to understand other what they call metabolites and substances that they can detect in wastewater using similar technology to the COVID surveillance that we have been running. And we were particularly interested in opioids because of the city and many partners work on opioid policy and substance use prevention. So this is, we started by actually rerunning a number of the samples that had been collected in the past for COVID. And the lab has sent us the very initial set of results for those samples to help us understand how we can measure opioids in wastewater. Once we have a better sense of the level of sensitivity of that testing, it'll help us inform us on how we might use that information through the ComSTAP program or through other community partners just to understand kind of like COVID, how levels of opioid use is trending using this as a surveillance mechanism. Okay. All right. That's helpful. I appreciate that. The second question, Mayor, was more of a BCO shot. It would be just around the process for ARPA. Like this is another drawdown of the ARPA funds. So just wondering about that broader process for remaining ARPA fund allocation and how that's going to play out. Thank you. Oh, I was just going to say this, this is actually part of one of the previous allocations or previous authorizations, I should say, but I'll let the mayor and Catherine speak to your other question. So just to clarify, so this is from the previously authorized. So this is not a further, we've worked hard to try to limit for some months now as much as possible further commitments of ARPA dollars. We continue to have that kind of 15 million dollar approximately figure of uncommitted funds. We are as we get into the budget and discussions tonight. We're going to have some discussions about potential, how potential uses of ARPA dollars could impact and give us some ways through the next budget year. So we're going to have some discussion of that tonight. We are also expecting by the end of the month to be in position to share with the council and the public. Our broader kind of first cut of thinking about how the total 15 million dollars could be deployed after incorporating the feedback from the public. You know, from the survey that nearly 4,000 people filled out as well as other as well as applications essentially that have been made to the city proposals have been made to the city about use of funds. So basically since the closing over the last couple of months since the closing of the of the survey, we've been working on that. And I think the plan is to discuss that with you before the end of the month. And I don't envision us while we'll have some discussion tonight of a potential limited amount of ARPA usage for the FY23 budget or reserves at least. You're not going to be asked to kind of commit to that without some broader understanding of the kind of big picture on the 15 million if that makes sense. Okay, great. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Appreciate that clarification. Okay, good. And you know, and again, I think this is clear, this is this is not a new, this is just a contract extension using the already authorized dollars. So are we are we ready? Any further questions about that? Are we ready for a vote? Okay, I think we need a motion and a second. I move the motion as indicated. Great. Thank you, Councillor Chang. Is there a second? Seconded by Council Hightower. And I will just say, presentation, your other question that Megan answered, I would just add to her answer that I certainly see this as another, you know, potentially, Mr. Pilot, we'll see how it goes, but a potentially useful data point in our regular monthly community stat evaluations, trying to understand what is going on with opioid usage in the community. It gives us another kind of baseline, another empirical measurement of what is happening with opioid use within the city of Burlington. I think it could augment the law enforcement and public health, other public health information that we already try to grapple with on a monthly basis to understand how, you know, things are evolving in this quickly changing area, sometimes quickly changing. And so I see it as another tool for that that I think will be helpful. So with that, we have a motion and a second. We'll go to a vote. All those in favor of motion, please say aye. Are there any opposed? The motion carries unanimously. Okay. That brings us to 5.02, which is a Letty Park Comprehensive Plan contract. Sophie has her camera on. Can you give us a quick summary of this, Sophie? Sure. Thanks. So we are just looking for approval for a contract for a consultant firm to lead the Comprehensive Plan for Letty Park, which will give us a chance to do some good public outreach on the future for Letty Park in terms of improving the connectivity, accessibility, equity, safety on the site. We have funds set aside in the next couple of fiscal years as part of Penny for Parks to make some changes, including the playground replacement there, restrooms and shelter and addressing those needs. And we want to make sure we're putting things in the right place and responding to the community's needs at the park. So this will help us do a good job at that. Thank you. Thank you, Sophie. Councilor Hightower. Yeah. And I'm not sure if this is a question for Sophie or for Director Wright, but I guess as someone who, as a counselor who hasn't paid too much attention to the parks programs and the timeline and is really more doing this as a resident, I do know that we're planning on a lot of that we have done and are planning on a lot of upgrades across a lot of parks. And so I guess I'm just wondering what the staging of some of those are. And if we're always finishing kind of one complete overhaul before we start a new one. I can answer that or Cindy. Please, Sophie. Go ahead. So we do the planning ahead of a lot of the implementation and it's all by stage. So for Letty specifically, for example, we have funding in fiscal year 23 to replace the playground. And then we don't have any funding till 24 to do the restrooms and look at a shelter, a potential shelter at Letty. So it's more of giving us a big picture so that when we're doing things incrementally, we're doing them correctly, if that makes sense. It's like a bigger vision, but there's not any plan for an overhaul all at once, if that makes sense, so that the park could remain functional throughout any of these changes as we go along. Great. And then I think my question was also a little bit bigger about like between the parks. So it sounds like this is maybe more minor changes than what we've been doing at Oakledge. And I forget the other one in the south end is called that. I know we just made a plan for. And I can I can touch on. So like Callahan Park, it's the same sort of piece that we did there. So we had money set aside there to renovate the playground. We had some money set aside for the basketball court. And so we realized with those projects lined up because of deterioration of the structures that rather than just replacing the playground, let's make sure the playgrounds in the right spot are the courts in the right spot. And so that's why we're trying now with the guidance of Sophie is to really make sure we've got good comprehensive plans in place for these parks. So as we go to do the renovations to the parks that we are able to do them and then some like Perkins Pier, for example, that's a much larger vision, but you want to be ready for when those much larger opportunities come up that we have a plan in place for some larger improvements to Perkins. So if we're an opportunity to replace the building, we need to make sure that the building's in the right spot, knowing that limitations with wastewater playgrounds in the right spot. So we're doing these comprehensive plans to allow us to be ready for the projects. But we don't do, say, a full renovation of a project at once. And Oakledge is a great example. I think it's been, it was before I came that they did the comprehensive plan to Oakledge. And as part of that comprehensive plan over the past, I think it's about six years. They have removed a softball field because the realization it was in a wetland. And so that got done. We've done more conservation plantings there. There's been an addition of water toward the Bacchi courts as part of the plan. We've got the playground. There's been a renovation of the bike path. So it's been over six years, incremental improvements of that park, all guided by this park comprehensive plan that was done for that park. But it wasn't done all at one time because the needs in our parks are so vast that we can't take all our money and make it all improvements into one park, knowing that we've got playground issues across the full city is one example that helps our view of any more specific information that we can help provide. No, that was helpful. Thank you both so much. I'd more like to proceed. We're ready for a motion. I'm happy to move to prove. Oh, go ahead. Yep. I have a quick question. And you was just wondering if Sophie or Director Cindy can talk about, what does it entail when we talk about the comprehensive plan? What are the elements? So the main element is to go through a process of public outreach with Letty. It's a bit different than the other to being Perkins and Calhann, where we hadn't done public outreach yet. Letty has already had a session on public outreach to understand some of the values of the community for the park and what works and what doesn't. This one, we're jumping kind of into our second of three public major public meetings, where we'll have the consultants look at what information was gathered during that public meeting, also ramp new information into that and develop concept plans for the park in terms of waiving forward. And then from there, get public input on those ideas and then have a final public meeting to present the final recommendation for moving forward. And the benefit of doing this too with knowing that the playground has funding to be replaced next year is that we'll also get public input on what kind of structures or playground equipment the public wants, as it hasn't been changed probably in the last 20 to maybe even 30 years. I can't remember for Letty specifically, but the needs of the kids who use it change over that time. So we don't want to just replace in kind, but really make sure that it's what people are looking for in that neighborhood. Yeah, so thank you. I think this is very good. And it seems I just want to make sure that whatever we do, we do not forget the accessibility piece for those who have disability issues access to make sure that the handicap also is included as part of the outreach. So thank you. Absolutely. Thank you for bringing that up. It's definitely one of our priorities. Okay, thank you. Thank you Sophie, Cindy. Are we ready for a motion now on this item? I think that's right where we started to make a motion before. Yeah, I'll move to approve and take the recommended action as listed on board docs. Second. Great. Thank you both. Further discussion? Seeing none, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Are there any opposed? The motion carries unanimously. And that brings us now to the first of three significant presentations, which the first is on the downtown Tiff district. And we are accompanied by David White, who is a consultant for us on both the Tiff districts in general, as well as the city place project. And we have other members of the CEDO team here. I'll turn this over to Brian Pine in a moment. I do just want to frame up a little bit of history. Possibly the presentation gets further. I just want to remind my colleagues, this is in some ways, this Tiff work goes back a full decade to when the Tiff district was created. Actually in the last administration, the KISS administration put a lot of effort into the creation of this downtown Tiff district after the really remarkable success of the waterfront Tiff district over the last 20 plus years and transforming the waterfront. We have the idea in the KISS administration and that we have carried on is to make similar positive transformations in the downtown. The two big investments that have been made so far with the Tiff district include the upgrades of St. Paul Street, a piece of the city hall park transformation. And we now want to talk to you about the possibility of moving on the plan that was developed a number of years ago about a Great Streets plan for Main Street as well. You may also recall that the Board of Finance have recently approved a design contract to move us in this direction and we do have a designer engaged to move full speed on this work so that this could be a project that gets in the construction the next couple of years. So with that just a little bit of orientation, I will hand it over to to Brian. Are you taking it next? Yes. Over to you. Thank you. Brian Pine, CETO director and speaking tonight about the downtown tax increment financing district. Our speakers will also include David G. White, but since David needs to as a consultant, he has another client that needs him in about 25 minutes. I want to be very brief and then I'll come back because I want to make maximize the opportunity for David to present. I'll just say on the agenda it does refer to this as a this item perhaps as a public hearing. Just to be clear, it is not the Board of Finance public hearing, it is really just to give the Board of Finance sort of a preview and for those members of the public who are participating to what will be a public hearing at the council tonight. I just wanted to clarify that and just lastly the council or the January 24th action from the council will just need a sponsorship of the final resolution, which hopefully members of the Board of Finance will agree to after we've gone through this process. So since we're tight on time, David, if you are have joined us at this point as a panelist, I would ask David to to run through his slides. Great. Thank you, Brian. So I am going to share my screen. Let's see. It needs to be enabled for me. Whoever can do that. If whoever's doing it will let me know when I can do that. That would be great because right now it says it's disabled. Oh, here we go. It is up. Share. Can everybody see that? Great. Thank you. So this is about the downtown TIF district and the information I'm going to give you tonight is substantially the same with only one or two small changes really from what you looked at just back in, I forgot whether it was late October, early November, when we came before the Board of Finance and the City Council for approval to go in front of the Vermont Economic Progress Council, otherwise known as VEPSI for short, to get an application for substantial change. That application was successful, VEPSI approved that, and so what we're doing, we'll be asking at the City Council tonight, is it's a public hearing in advance of the City Council making a decision to hopefully authorize placing the bond issue question on the March ballot. So that's the background for this, but I wanted to let me walk you through. So the current downtown TIF district, the original taxable value that was established back in 2011, I believe if I recall correctly, was $170 million. Today it is $285 million, which is an increase of $115 million, and I do want to state that totally may occult by my fault. The memo that we provided to the City Council in advance of tonight's meetings said the current value is $375 million, and it's not, it's $285. The $375 is a future projected, and I simply read the wrong sell off of the spreadsheet and I apologize. This is the correct number. The number in your memo is not correct. So at any rate, $285 million, incremental growth during those years of $115 million. Now, the voters have previously approved a bond issue of $10 million, that of that, the City has incurred $5,420,000 in debt to date, leaving already approved, but not yet incurred debt of $4,580,000. So that authorization is out there and can still be acted upon. The $5,420 went toward the improvements that the Mayor spoke to a moment ago, as well as some other things such as some improvements to the downtown parking garage. As we look forward, some of the developments that we are anticipating that will generate new incremental taxes that will pay future debt include the proposed hotel on the YMCA site, the redevelopment of VFW on South Muskie Avenue that CHT is working on, as well as the project at 151-157 South Champlain Street. We are also predicting or projecting just background growth, general improvements that historically have occurred, and we are being conservative at projecting only 1% per year going forward. There are other projects we're all aware of that may well happen during this period of time, but at the present time, we're not relying on those in the cash flow, and we're not dependent on them to be able to pay the TIF debt that we are proposing to go forward with. So looking at this, the TIF actually currently has, or as of July 1st, so a little over six months ago, the TIF had a positive fund balance of just shy of a million eight, and over the remaining life of the TIF district, that is from now through fiscal year 2036, where we've got the actual amount of predicted revenue in the TIF district from incremental taxes varies a little bit from year to year depending on what projects have come online, but we're predicting on an annual basis from a low of about $2,450,000 to a high of about $3,575,000. And the highest annual debt service that we're anticipating during that period of time is about $3,100,000, and that's cumulative the previously existing debt and the future projected debt that is being proposed in order to do the main street, excuse me, Great Streets project. And through all the financial projections show that throughout the life of the TIF district, we are predicting and projecting a positive fund balance. We don't see a period of time in which we expect it to go into the red. This cash flow spreadsheet's got a lot of numbers on it, but the keys are, I don't know if you can see my cursor, but at the upper left, the positive balance with which we began the current fiscal year. And if you look at the far right hand, I'm sorry, they're not far, but one column from the right, you'll see the cumulative surplus or deficit being projected, and because there are no red numbers, it's being projected to be a positive throughout. And all this particular table summarizes everything. It looks at the various sources of revenue, the debt service in red for the various projected bond issues, the related costs, and the annual surplus or deficit. So there are a few years, we're on an annual basis, we expect the deficit, but because there's a positive fund balance going into those years, the cumulative remains positive. And at the present time, we're projecting a positive fund balance at the end of about $6 million. Ultimately, if we come back for additional substantial changes and so forth, these numbers will change, but that's not an issue tonight. So in terms of the March bond vote, what we're looking for, this is for the Main Street, Great Streets Project, as the mayor mentioned, along with the relocation or otherwise improvement to the ravine sewer so that that becomes a developable area. And we're looking at a new debt request of $25,920,000. That would be the item for the bond vote. In addition, of course, there's the $10 million that's already been approved, not all of which has yet been borrowed, but that brings would bring the total cumulative debt to $35,920,000. In addition, we are looking for approval from the voters for $1,470,000 in so called related costs. Those are the costs of operating the district and of designing the projects and so forth. And that is in addition to some previously approved related costs, which would bring us to $1,484,000 total. As mentioned, we believe there's sufficient incremental taxes to pay all these costs. And if you want more detail, there's considerably more detail in the public notice. So that's the gist of the overview. Happy to answer any questions. I, Brian, and then there are some representatives from DPW here as well. Although the details of the design work and so forth will be covered at the City Council public hearing later this evening. Mr. Mayor, if I could just add one point that I think is worth calling out and that is that the City has a deadline for this TIF district. If March 31st of 2023, when it arrives, we will no longer have the ability to propose projects financed with TIF increments. So I just wanted to point out that we are under a deadline and that's an important point to note. And that is part of why this is coming at this point is because in order to plan and design and really have a project ready to go in order to meet that deadline, there's time needed for all of those elements. Brian, I think that's a very good point. And I think if I may add one other point, which is just to remind everyone that TIF bonding is very different than the general bondings such as the question of the overall infrastructure bonds. This is being paid out of specific fund and does not directly hit the general fund or the current taxpayers. Thank you, David. And okay. And so since I guess the plan is to get into the design aspects in the Council presentation later, I do just want to make sure viewers and colleagues are all clear that this is a plan. We have looked at the basics of numerous times. What would be involved in the basic scope here of this project would be the addition of substantial investments along six blocks of of Main Street. Chapin, do you want to just quickly just make sure we're all kind of clear on what this just do a brief summary of what those improvements would be? Or Laura, I saw turn on her camera, but just want to make sure we're all kind of clear on what we're talking about here. Great. I will kick it off. And this is a generational reinvestment into six blocks of Main Street from bottom to top that will include renewal, rehabilitation in some situations upgrade of the utilities underground, wastewater, stormwater, water services, including potentially relocation of some communication and electrical utilities. And then moving up to really rebalancing the street to support a whole range of uses along our premier Main Street connecting the interstate to downtown to the waterfront. And that rebalancing will allow for stormwater infrastructure, bike facilities, dedicated bicycle facilities, wider sidewalks, and level of amenities for the public realm, including public art. And this is really in large part unlocked by transitioning much of the parking from parallel parking from diagonal parking to parallel parking. It also this project also includes either the rehabilitation or relocation of the ravine sewer, which is a large trunk line that runs underneath a number of parcels by Main and Winooski. And we can talk about that a little more at the council meeting. But that relocation of that trunk line sewer would open up and allow for the redevelopment of a number of parcels at that Main and Winooski block where they includes Memorial Auditorium, the surface lot at Winooski and Main, and a number of other parcels there. Great. Thanks for hitting that point at the end, Chief. And I do think that that is an addition to this pretty material addition to the potential work here that we have not talked as much about in the last couple years when talking about this project. Having David on the team helped focus on this. And really if we ever do want to see some kind of higher and better use of that corner lot that we currently have at the parking lot, this is a really important opportunity to remove one of what would be a major, one of what has been a development obstacle to that site for a long time. And one that it's never really been clear how it would be addressed. This would be a way to address that. So with that, why don't we open up for questions? We can keep the power point on if people have questions about any of the slides. I'll go to Councilor Hightower. Yeah. And first would be useful to have this deck as well. I don't think it was one of the materials that was posted. More of a comment. And then the question is on the slide where you had the schedule from year to year. I guess, again, only seeing it as a picture, not really knowing where that's coming from. Could you walk us through just like the two or three like biggest assumptions that are being made in the schedule on the back end? And then is this also a spreadsheet that Councilors could have? Let me walk you through. This is part of the one page out of the spreadsheet that is provided to the Vermont Economic Progress Council for their approval. And it is a public document happy to make it available. I will caution you that it's probably best to provide it as a PDF rather than a live spreadsheet so that it doesn't, it could get pretty confusing, I think, otherwise. But let me walk you through some of the big assumptions here. The major, honestly, there are relatively few assumptions because if you look at this, the other annual revenue is, whoops, excuse me, I didn't mean to do that. If you look at the first column, that is our projected total projected revenue. The biggest assumptions there are the three projects I mentioned, the YMCA, the VFW, and the South Champlain Street. And all three of those, we've got a high degree of confidence will actually occur and given what their status is. And then the assumption of a 1% annual growth of just background miscellaneous increases in the district. So those are the assumptions behind that first column. The second column, other annual revenue, that is contracted, that's the Champlain College B. So then the next one simply totals those two together. The next three columns are actual known debt service for existing debt. And so there's no assumption there, we know exactly what those numbers are. The estimated third bond is an estimate. It depends on what the actual interest rates are at the time that the bond is issued. But this is our best projection at this time. If we delay, you know, another year and interest rates go up and so forth, it'll be more expensive. But there's the, and then the final column simply is totaling together those four columns that are in red showing the total debt service. Again, only one piece of which is not already fixed. Then the related costs are our best estimate of what we think it will cost. You'll see the early years, the first five years, the costs are quite a bit higher. And that's because of that's the period of time during which we expect to be spending money, the city would be spending money and actually designing and implementing the public improvements that are involved. After that, as Brian said, there is a deadline after which we can't borrow more money. So all the construction and improvements will be completed. And then it's just what the annual costs are to do an audit of the TIF district and periodic audits by the state and similar type of operational costs. That's why that drops dramatically. So those are really the assumptions that we have. The rest of it is just math, adding and subtracting. Great. And then just to go back to the first column again and the assumptions on the project and sorry if I missed this in your presentation, you may have even said it is, I guess, in terms of when those projects are coming online, how much this would change if at all, if it's later than we expect? It will change if they're later. And I don't have that number right in front of me, but we were relatively conservative about when we assume they would happen. That said, if you push out when we receive their revenue by a year or two or even three, if you look at this kind of light green column over here toward the right hand side, you'll see that there is a positive surplus on an annual basis cumulative surplus. So we've got a fair amount of safety built into this in terms of what our projections call for. We could have a significant delay on one or two of those projects and there would still be a positive amount here. In a worst case scenario, it is true that the city's full faith and credit is pledged. And so in an absolute worst case scenario, the city would have to step up and pay. Typically what happens is that that's a short-term thing where you dip into pooled cash to make the payment. And then when the developments come online, it all gets reimbursed. But I'm not especially worried about that. I think we've been relatively cautious and Vepsi deemed it to be quite reasonable as well. They do a pretty thorough review of this, have their own finance people take a look at it. Great. Thank you so much, David. You're welcome. Are there other councilor questions at this time? Yes, Mr. Mayor. And Mr. David, I was wondering if you just go back to the slide right before the questions slide. Let's get this one. That one. Perfect. So it seems there is here 1,470,000 related costs, you know, around 100, let's say, 850. And I was just wondering basically what is the relationship? Would this specific money come from the taxpayers, the related costs? Where would it come from? Excellent question. The related costs are also paid out of the TIF district. They do not come from the general fund. And so this 1,470,000 represents what we are projecting will be related costs between now and the end of the life of the TIF district in 2036. So this is a cost that's spread over the next 14 or 15 years. And but because we have to get Vepsi approval to spend it and we also have to get voter approval to spend it, now is the time to do that so that we're pre-approved for the life of the TIF district for this dollar amount. But it is paid directly out of the TIF district. And if I may go back to the slide we were just looking at, that's what shows up in the column right under the word cash where it says related costs. If you total this column, it gets to that 1,470,000. So it's already here, it's getting paid out of the TIF district itself. Yeah. And you know, this is maybe just a request. And I know you have to go, just like what Brian Pine said, basically we are on a tight deadline. And also you made an explanation. There is no correlation between ticks and the taxpayers. And if you talk to the public later, I mean, I just urge you to please repeat it and repeat it again. So it's a clear on people's head. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Jang. And I will just point out that those related costs, I mean, the CEDO budget is a very complicated budget. It has lots of different sources that have allowed us to have a CEDO department over the last 30 plus years be one of the ways in which we have been able to pay for staff time to work on these transformational TIF projects is through these related costs. So that is some of the staff costs that get paid out of CEDO as well as some of the professional costs. Have come from those related cost lines over the last couple of decades. And this is a continuation of that if this were to pass. And Mr. Mayhem, I can add to that that there's also some staff costs for DPW in here. So I think it's fair to say that in fact, to some extent, TIF is helping pay for staff overhead, although there's strict controls on that. It has to be time spent specifically for TIF projects. You can't use it for just general overhead. But nonetheless, yes, both DPW and CEDO and a certain amount of dollars are included in that million 470. Okay, we have two more major presentations to get to before seven. So if there are no more, we're not we're not looking for a decision tonight on any of these presentations. But we all we are working towards, you know, potentially decisions on all three two weeks from now. And I do kind of want that. Make sure that's clear as we're going through these presentations. And if the board members are looking for more from the administration before action on the 24th on any of these items, that's one value of these discussions tonight. But also any follow up from tonight is to help us flush out what more would be helpful. So and there will be another just chance to discuss this at the city council tonight. Councilor Director Fine, Brian, go ahead. I just wanted to call out the fact that we will be seeking a sponsor or committee or a group of sponsors on this. So if the board of finance is prepared to sponsor the resolution that will be brought to the council on the 24th, that information would be helpful to know. Great. And just one last scope point on this and I think we should have touched on this before, but this is a key project for the kind of implementation of our walk bike master plan. This mainstream being laid out in that plan as one of the major East West links in the city. This is the this is the way to get that that done. And really, that we don't have another good way of getting that done. So just remind you that's part of as well. All right, with that, I will close this item and we'll move next to item number seven, which is the communication regarding the upcoming potential upcoming capital bond. And, uh, Chapin, am I handing this over to you at this point? Great. Go ahead. Great. Thank you, mayor, for the opportunity here to be here in front of the board of finance tonight to talk about the potential of bringing a proposed general fund capital bond to the voters for town meeting day, a modified and smaller proposal than what was presented to voters late last year. So given the hour, I'll jump right in. I'll share my screen here. I have a very short presentation and get that. All right. Can you all see my screen? Yes, great. All right. Here we go. So we work with a great cross departmental committee, the capital committee, and there are many members of that committee on this call here. And they have worked hard over the last several months and then recently over the last several weeks since the December 7th special election, I determined the path forward. And I do want to thank Martha Keenan, who has been long the capital planning wizard behind a lot of our work who has since retired. So we are channeling her good efforts as we move forward. We are proposing to return to the voters, as I said, for town meeting day for a number of reasons. One is that a majority of voters did support this bond at the special election, but shy of the two thirds voter support needed for approval. We believe we can substantively respond to the objections that a number of critics had put forward and that this proposal can address those. In part, we've nearly removed all of Memorial Atrium. There's a small stabilization proposal here, but the large part of Memorial has been deferred till after the BHS decisions have been made. Secondly, we have deferred a number of items in the capital plan to reduce the total amount of that bond. And that has been done in close connection with the third bullet here, that we have gained additional information about what the federal infrastructure bond, excuse me, the federal infrastructure bill may be able to fund moving forward. And so we've been able to swap local dollars for expected federal and state dollars. And we've also set up a tax relief program for the hardest hit property tax owners in Burlington. And these last point here is that there are significant downsides to us not having a general fund capital bond to continue the successful work we've all done together over the last five years. So the impact of not passing the capital bond is summarized here. This was summarized for many folks at the joint school board and city council meeting. But to go through quickly, we would not have local matching funds for upcoming federal grants. We would not have funds for the police and fire emergency radio system. And it would also prevent us from replacing really any of our fleet, including the three fire trucks scheduled for replacement. Street and sidewalk reinvestment would be quite minimal. And you'll see on the right hand side that facilities really would just be working out of their operational budget, which is quite limited and not able to address any substantive capital work. Parks here would not be able to address these special projects as you see listed here. And so it would be a challenging situation, very challenging. And so what we've listed here is a quick summary of the various asset classes down on the left side. What in the second column you see was the original ask to voters in December 7th special election. And the third column would be what we are recommending be brought forward to voters for town meeting day highlighted in that column are the substantive changes between the December bond item and our proposed item. Going through those quickly, streets and bridges. As we've gotten more information about the federal infrastructure bill, we are confident that money will be available for bridges. So we have reduced the amount for bridges under civic buildings. We have removed some of the capital upgrades pushed them out into future years for our dozens of municipal buildings. And we will pursue additional funding in the meantime. Parks, thanks to the good work of our partners at parks, they have reduced the amount of investment in our parks. And similarly to the civic buildings will pursue other funding for items deferred. Memorial Auditorium is the large reduction here from 10 million to 1 million to shift to a temporary stabilization strategy. And as you'll as we've discussed that would enable us to continue the heating on a heating plant that is at complete end of life, increase security and future assessment costs to develop a better strategy for spring 2023 vote. And the only item here that we're proposing to increase is this last item, which is local match for grants. And that is to take advantage of the federal funding that is coming down the pike. Most transportation investments and grants are at an 80-20 match, needing a 20% local match. And so we wanted to make sure as part of this capital bond, if money is going to be tighter, that we make sure we can take all advantage of federal funding that is available to us. The total proposal at this point that we're bringing forward to you is 25,900,000, a 35% reduction in the original proposal. So this is a screen of what can be accomplished and what is proposed to be funded with the capital bond. It is quite a large range. The local match items here seek to identify for you. The local matches that we know we need from Raleigh Yard Enterprise Project, Intervale Road Sidepath, Lake Street Improvements, and a number of other projects. And then you'll see here the other improvements that are scheduled to be made as part of this proposal. What is the impact of such a bond item? At 25.9 million, the impact on the average median home owner is as described here by year and by month. And you'll notice that the impacts are significantly less than the proposal from December. So we appreciate the consideration. We're happy to answer any questions. And I didn't know if CAO Schade or anyone else would like to add any final thoughts. Thanks, Chief. And let's open up the second discussion since about this capital work, since the vote on December 7. We're trying to incorporate some of the feedback we heard from you previously in this, as well as discussions we had before the vote about the Board and the Council's agreement with the administration on the need to, within our financial constraints, find a way to continue infrastructure work. It would definitely be helpful to hear any, you know, we heard from former Councilor Busher and the Board of Finance earlier. I'd be certainly welcome now or soon after tonight for the feedback from the Board about this dialback proposal. Councilor Hightower. Yeah. I guess my only question is there's a few light items that we didn't decrease at all. And for example, like transportation safety improvements. And so I guess I'm just curious a little bit about like how much we dug into those. And if there was a prioritization or if it's just this was already the minimum, because it didn't feel like we necessarily already did the minimum when we proposed the first one. So I'm just curious about, yeah, why some of the line items didn't decrease. Great question. Why don't we go back to, can we pull that slide back up and dig into this a little bit further? We could go to the, there we go. So yeah, let's just go, let's go, go through it. You know, the, I'll try to, the fire trucks, we have not reduced the number of fire trucks. We have four fire trucks that are nearing the end of their useful life. And three of them are really quite, quite old. And we, I see that we don't see a way of deferring those costs further. They've been deferred a long time. The, similarly, my understanding of the, the radio system is that this is, again, this system is quite old at this point. And if we are going to maintain this critical public safety infrastructure, allowing fire firefighters, police officers, and dispatchers to be in communication from any part of the city, we need to make this, need to make this reinvestment. We have pushed that number was at earlier stages of this planning considerably larger was not, we already cut it back substantially by the December item. We really think, having asked many, many questions about this is certainly been a strong recommendation from in particular Chief Locke, who just kind of headed this up that this, there's nothing more to defer or cut here. Chapin, you want to talk about the next, next two items and how we are, where we are. Yes, sidewalks, we have our enhanced level of funding over the last five years, just to be as we have completed three miles of reconstruction each of the last five years. We have 130 miles of sidewalk, we had understood that this was a priority of the council and wanted to continue this work. This work has a third of the work about a mile being done by our in-house crews and two thirds being done by a contract. Should the council want to reduce the amount of work done by the contractor, we could adjust that number. But we understand pedestrian safety has been an important priority. Streets and bridges, we, to the mayor's point, numbers we've already reduced. Prior to December, we reduced the amount contributed to paving in hopes that we could get federal funding to supplement our paving. This represents less paving than we have been doing over the last five years. But we are confident in the bridge funding and are hopeful in the paving funding that we can supplement with federal dollars. So that's why we have agreed to a significant cut there. The transportation safety improvements, those run the gamut from traffic calming, which this year we understand the council asked for more work to be done in traffic calming. And this really just enables us to hold steady with what has been done with approximately one to two projects, potentially three projects a year in traffic calming, and advance the walk bike master plan and address safety deficiencies. One safety concern that we've had that ties into the bike walk master plan is the safety improvements at the pearl prospect Colchester Ab intersection, which is an offset intersection that leads to some safety challenges and would also improve the bike pedestrian experience significantly if we can realign that intersection. So that was the DPW related items. Mayor. Thank you both. I don't have any other questions. Thank you, Councillor Hatter. Is someone else looking to be recognized? Go ahead, Councillor Jane. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Chappan, for this. And I was just wondering if you can prepare another, you know, prediction that we would be seeking 50% reduction. I would be interested in seeing that how do we save another 5,900,000 out of this. And I'm just talking from the point of selling it for the voters of Wellington to be approving it and we rely behind it. I think that's one. I would love to see that. And I am also a little bit concerned because, you know, I know that some neighbourhood in the New North and such as Franklin Square have been waiting for over 10 years. We are bound in here. They did not have access to the ARPA fund and it's not mentioned anywhere in here. And it seems we receive the promise that, you know, the city will be putting a package together as to how it's going to look like. So if it's not in this balance that's going to the voters, then where will it be and when? What is the timeline for that specific? Mayor, can I respond to Franklin Square? Yeah, that would be great. Thank you. Great. Thank you, Councillor Jane. This is a critical reinvestment. And thanks to your leadership after 44 years of the city and BHA, Wellington Housing Authority, fighting over who owned the roads and who was responsible for maintaining the road and the infrastructure, we worked together to resolve that issue about two years ago. We have already done some work there and I'm pleased to report that we have included the paving and other work on that right away, including fixing some manholes in that area and some sidewalk that we have it listed in our calendar year 2022 paving program. So that is going out to bid very quickly and our hope is that that work can get done this calendar year, which would be prior to us looking at this enhanced capital funding for pavement. Does that answer your question? Yeah, I mean, I think they were sorry. There was also other elements about, you know, waste water management underground utilities, all of that, you know, into the package. It seems we're just hearing about pavement. Yes, the plan is a coordinated set of improvements. Our water resources division has done a full assessment of the subterranean utilities and the plan would be prior to paving, fixing the few failed systems. Much of it is in good shape based on our assessment, but there are a few items that need to be fixed prior to paving and we're prepared to do that. Thank you. Go ahead, President Tracy. Thanks, Mayor. One of the things that I noticed on the slide having to do with just like impacts of not passing the bond, the capital bond is just a it's very clear about the impacts in terms of what won't happen in terms of the investments themselves. But there's a cost to not acting in these cases is something that I feel like we talked about pretty substantially in the lead up to the bond itself. You know, I'm concerned about the the heightened costs that'll happen now that this bond has not passed at the at the prior rate. And I'm just curious as to if you've cost it out, like if this doesn't pass what that looks like in terms of cost, because I think that's something substantial that people need to understand these needs don't go away, they only get more expensive. And I would like to understand what that cost is of not acting. You know, we're looking at inflation being continuing to go go up and go in this really concerning direction, as well as interest rates. So I would imagine that that we would see that both of those those things drive costs higher. But just and I know it's a pretty volatile situation now, but I'm just wondering if CEO Shad or you may or might be able to or someone else on the team might be able to clarify what that cost looks like, because I think that voters need to go into this with eyes wide open. Thank you, President. Your nor Baldwin would be a good one to respond to that. It's friendly. Great. Go ahead, Norm. Well, as you noted, you know, all costs go up. And we're seeing inflation that's that's not going to get better, but get more costly. So when you do any sort of construction work, it's in such a large scale, it's going to be significant. And I think your biggest concern is that we have facilities that really need our care and need our care for a while. We've made great progress in the first five years. And it I think the public has expected us to continue to buy buy down all these things that were a problem in the past. And I think there'll be very, I don't know what put it, it would be a significant disappointment to them to not see these things continuing to happen and fix and solve problems. But it really is condom comes down to the economics of where people are at financially and what they're willing to support and not support. But our sidewalks are really an important network. Our roadways, they need to continue to have investment, or we'll start to see some deterioration that climate change is really challenging us on an annual basis. So I would also put a plug in here for the fire department. If you noted the $4.3 million in investment in their communication systems, what more critical element of our infrastructure than that? We've got to have fire trucks, we've got to have good communications for people to respond and protect the public. All really important things. Thank you, Norm. And thank you, President Tracy, for the point and we'll circle up about whether that there are additional sort of empirical points that we can make about about the the cost of delay. Yeah, I appreciate that just before we vote on this item next time. Okay, very good. And then I do just want to one thing I didn't speak to earlier, Chip and did briefly, but this sidewalk funding, the sidewalk item I think is a great item to look at to just remind us of this long, you know, five plus year effort that this is a key decision moment in. We essentially up until 2016, we're replacing only about one mile of sidewalk a year with a system of 120 plus 130 miles of sidewalk. That is not a sustainable strategy. Sidewalks, you know, that of course would mean you're expecting to get 120 or 130 years out of your sidewalk investment. And of course, it doesn't work that way. Three years, three, three miles a year is something that approaches a sustainable level because 40 million 40 year life of a sidewalk, especially if you're doing proactive, preventive maintenance work is in the kind of ballpark of what you would expect from a well installed sidewalk. So that is it's only sustainable, if you can really do it, if you can consistently make that three miles a year of investment for a sustained period of time. So this is this is a test for us and and our community as to whether we are that we want to maintain our public infrastructure at that kind of sustainable level. And so we have been we have not cut that item back because it it already represented a long term effort to dig ourselves out of a essentially a considerable hole here. And I hope it is my hope if we do luckily decide to go back out to the voters. I think that one is pretty there's this real logic to keeping it at that level. And with this bond and then finding a sustainable way to stay within our debt limits. Wow, continuing that level investment, you know, beyond the next three years. So with that, if there's no more feedback from either board members or other counselors who are with us, we will will close that item, giving us a full half hour for the final item, which I think is helpful. I will, you know, we appreciate the feedback appreciate the suggestion, Councilor Jang, that we should really look at what a full 50% reduction would look like. We'll do that and do that work before coming back to you asking for a decision. And certainly heard a public comment earlier in discussion of the school board meeting last week about we understand that there's this is a challenging community decision. And we appreciate everyone digging in deep to try to grapple with the details of it. So with that, we will move to the final item, which is the FY 23 budget. And Catherine and I are going to tag team this one. And this too has some real challenge to it. And that we're going to kind of go through those challenges over this presentation. And I think we do have some real thinking on how we address each of the challenges at the end of this. So I kind of bear with us till we get through the end. I think we have a way to navigate our way through here. So if we go to the next slide, I just want to kind of ground us again. And this is reiterating some of what I said at the joint school board meeting last week. I want to kind of frame this conversation up in a kind of historic context. Because I think it's important to understand the history here. So we have been very focused in my administration and in prior administrations on trying to limit the increase in the property tax rate. There is a lot of certainly sensitivity within the administration, I know on the council to property tax rate increases. They can be very challenging for our constituents to deal with, especially given the fact that we are, I think, as I've said many times, we are and have long been a sort of property tax burden community. We, Burlingtonians in other Chittenden County residents and Romaners pay a lot of property taxes. And there are a variety of factors that drive that and will review some of the reasons for that in the course of this presentation. So because of that, we have really worked hard for a long time to try to find alternatives to the property tax to address the rising costs of government that happen with inflation every year. And this, you know, to me, this always seems like a really important point. I'm not so clear sometimes whether this, this is as significant to everybody else. But to me, we have a yearly challenge, which is that like basically all expenses, city expenses tend to go up year over year. Our labor costs tend to go up with inflation and other costs tend to go up. Our revenues, some of our revenues go up from one year to the next. Things like the gross receipts, sales tax, those big revenue sources do tend to rise with inflation. But the property tax does not. And that is our biggest single source. It only goes up when the voters, when one of two things happens, either you have real growth in the in the grand list because of new projects, new investments, the increase of investment in property or the voters sign off on an increased tax rate. And so that's why that's why this, you know, comes up with our budget frequently and why it comes up almost every year generally with the school district budget. They have even less flexibility than we do because they do not have these other sources of funding that tend to rise. So the basically as we'll go to, let's go to the next slide and you can see this represented graphically. Here's the last decade of tax rates and you will see that at just some very basic level, Catherine has calculated that the total municipal tax rate has increased by 20%, whereas inflation is up 24%. And that's with an adjustment for the way that, you know, the resized grand list. And that has been, you know, a real something that we've looked at together many times and has been a real goal and we've accomplished that over the last decade. If we go to the next slide, this slide we've tried to update this a little bit different than the last couple of times you've seen it. It goes back in time a little bit further and it includes the reappraisal and what you see there in the top two lines is how the two different education rates, education tax rates have changed shifted over time and then you see the municipal rate at the bottom and you can kind of get a sense for how the education rate is rising particularly, you know, since 2006 has risen significantly more steeply than the city's municipal rate, the rate that we as municipal government are directly responsible for. And then what the graph on the right shows is that what that has meant is that over time, certainly over the last 15 years, there's been a pretty substantial reduction in the percentage of the property tax revenue that is flowing to the city as opposed to the Ed fund because we've been able to keep our rate increases at less than the rate of inflation, limit them. We've gone from securing about 40% of the property taxes on a annual basis down to about 32% after the last couple of years and that is a update of the last couple of years that we haven't shown before. So we, you know, again to kind of tee things up where we're at, in 2019, we saw for the first time since 2014 a general municipal tax rate increase, you know, and we were, I think together we were feeling good that we had accomplished, we had substantial enhancements of services in that five-year period. We had increased payments to employees as a result of collective bargaining changes and voters did approve that increase. As we prepared for the FY20 budget process, we also grappled for a second year in a row with an increase and we made it. We had an extended discussion at the time that the creation of new revenue sources that had allowed us to defer tax increases or avoid municipal rate tax increases for years were unlikely to continue and that we were seeing that, you know, that it was going to need for us coming forward with more regular increases in years to come. Voters responded to that. The council and board agreed with that and voters responded and we did have a three-cent public safety tax increase which was really largely devoted to the new public safety investments, in particular a new staffing of the new ambulance from FY20. So that's where we were kind of before the pandemic. The pandemic hit and as you know, we have tried, we didn't end up initially implementing that three-cent tax increase. We didn't think we could do that in the first year of the pandemic. That was deferred for a year. We have deferred for two years. The voter approved investments in the housing trust fund that was also approved in March of 2020 because, you know, we did that mindful of the fact that we had more housing resources flowing than we never have because of some of the emergency funds. That was the justification for why we've avoided it for two years. So that brings, that's a good chunk of the history if we could go to the next slide. Here's, and I'm going to hand this over. Maybe I'll do this now. I'll hand it with that kind of teed up history. I'll hand it over to Catherine who has been working hard with department heads for months to kind of get a sense of where we are with more moving parts than normal. Again, going into this budget here. So Catherine, why don't you take it from here and I'll interject as needed. Sounds good. So as we look at the FY23 budget, we are looking initially at a general fund budget of $90 million. Last year's budget you may remember was $87.5 million or maybe it's just me who remembers all the budget numbers. That is under 3% growth despite the large levels of inflation that high levels that we're seeing now. And as you'll see and we'll explore more in some of these further slides that maintains all of the services that our community has come to expect as well as some of the recently increased equity investments. It does account for inflation and we are up for another round of union negotiations. And so we've built some assumptions into account for that as well. This is a very high level view of what we are assuming for FY23 revenues. You will see on here the big five of course starting with property taxes as the mayor mentioned that's about 50% of revenue in a normal year especially when you add in pilot which you can see and that is payment in lieu of taxes. You will see a second on the list this year if we choose to increase all of the taxes to their authorized ceilings and those are some of the things like the library tax and parks not penny for parks. Well penny for parks it gets complicated as you know if you see my tax spreadsheet. So there are several taxes where city council can authorize up to a certain level. And so if we do that that would raise about 1.5 million dollars. If we were to go with a 3 cent increase that would raise another 2.2 million dollars. We are proposing 1.7 million dollars from ARPA and we'll go over that in detail in just another slide or so. The pilot numbers sort of fixed. Gross receipt and local option we are projecting 3% growth over FY22. And then fee for service again that is there's not a lot of room there. This is like UVM and some of the other large nonprofits that give us a voluntary fee for the services that we provide is the city. And then as you know if you've seen my budget presentation there are many other sources of revenue many of them that come from our departments parking and waterfront are two that we think of a lot because they contribute a lot of revenue. And what we are proposing to do this year is to take all of those sources of departmental revenue go back to the FY19 levels of revenue that being the last normal year and then we are escalating them at a 3% growth rate per year to get us where we think those revenues should be. We recognize that there is some risk with that and you can see on this slide that we've approximated some of that risk and I've called it in this chart uncertain revenue and it's the places where in my current calculations I've increased the revenue either from FY19 or it might not be such a jump from FY19 like with the waterfront. It's still a really big jump from what we actually budgeted in FY22 but it's what we should be expecting. So not wanting to be foolish in case these revenues are not to materialize. One of the items we'd like to discuss today is to set aside $2 million of ARPA money into a reserve fund that would not be touched during the year but that would only be used if these revenues were not realized, if the revenues were realized then at the end of the fiscal year we could release those monies. Abrupt change, there's not a good transition here. But one of the things that we have been able to do I guess kind of one of the things we can be really proud of through the pandemic is the increased investments we've made in equity and we can be thankful that some of the federal money that we got last year helped us to make these investments. You can see them listed here. People are quick to talk about our amazing REIB department and I certainly want to highlight that but some of the other highlights, a livable wage for every employee regardless of whether they meet the criteria or not. We're getting ready to roll out compensation for boards and commission members. We have money for the language access plan and financial support for trusted community voices. Also I don't want to forget our diverse recruiting initiatives and shout out to my friends in HR who have really been helping all of the departments to be able to do that. That is as we all know expensive. There's no other way to say it and another discussion point we will have is how do we wisely invest our ARPA funds so that we can phase these important investments into our structural budget and give us time to develop other revenue enhancements so that this is not all borne by the property tax cost. You will see in FY23 here, excuse me, we have a proposal of using 1.2 million of ARPA funds and then in FY24 that goes down to 800,000 and then phased out completely in FY25 where all of the new or enhanced equity services are paid for by the general fund raising enhanced revenue services. Two other possible uses of ARPA to mention here continuing to use that for constituent services and the RRC and also our work with economic recovery that meaning supporting all of the businesses throughout the city and especially both of those things likely everyone has heard over the last few weeks more and more about how much money is coming out of the state and just today I heard about state money coming in the form of grants for BIPOC businesses and that's just what we are having asking economic recovery and constituent services to do to really connect our constituents with and to help them to get that money. All right, last slide. You want to wrap up mayor? Yeah, I think so Kevin. So let's try to do it quickly. We've sort of touched on each of these things over the course of the presentation. Want to save some time for discussion and getting feedback? Basically to sum up everything you said so far there is I see it there are basically three big challenges with this budget. One is inflation. We've had nearly since the last property tax rate increase. We've had two years of inflation at much higher levels than we have seen in a long time. Right now inflation is running. The CPI is running about 8%. I explained at the beginning our challenge about our revenue sources. They don't keep up with inflation so inflation is high. That's a particular challenge. Our kind of possible solution and I wouldn't say any of these. I think we might have used the word proposal a couple times. I would say this is our first discussion and I don't think any of these are quite proposals at this point. We're looking for feedback on these possible solutions at this point. So possible solution would be a 3% tax rate increase plus raising the dedicated taxes that we to the authorized ceilings that already exist but that we did not implement last year. That would result in about a 5.8% total municipal rate increase. But as you're going to hear when we hear when the school board presents later, this is a rare year in which because of the reappraisal and because of what is happening with the Ed fund, there is not expected to be, this is the very unusual year in which there's not expected to be an increase in the largest part of the property tax, the almost 70% of the property tax which is the education fund side. So if you average those things out, I hope that Catherine has been doing some math right leading up to here and I'm actually surprised that that is as low as it is but hopefully it is that the big point is and we'll refine this over the next couple weeks that it would be a manageable total property tax increase when you look at the overall increase. Second major challenge is this uncertainty about the revenue streams and let me you know we we've had these two years now a very unusual revenue streams. We may have a third of it going ahead but instead of making personnel cuts to deal with that uncertainty, what our suggestion is is that we assume that we will have a full recovery in the upcoming year but that we create this revenue replacement reserve using ARPA funds which is one of the clearly approved uses of ARPA funds that we would hold that back from broader community investment if we do not in fact have that full recovery to kind of pre-pandemic levels this year and then the third idea possible solution for discussion is you know hopefully my colleagues all remember you know we've made these major new investments in in this current year's budget inequity we were quite upfront and clear that that we did not have structural funding for these at the time and we were using the federal dollars heavily to make these urgent investments coming coming out of the pandemic. Our proposal here is that we start to phase those costs into the structural budget in the way that we laid out here and that this and and while we are phasing them in we are going to continue to work hard beat the bushes and hopefully ultimately it won't all need to be adopted you know absorbed by the property tax but that is that we would take a step towards that this year. So we haven't left a lot of time for discussion but we do have a few minutes and I think any feedback on any of these possible solutions that counselors are able to make would be helpful and also let us know you know if there is interest in meeting again before the 24th to grapple with this further you know that we could schedule an extra board of finance meeting something we used to do quite a bit of and we haven't done in a while so I'll just put that out there now since we don't have a ton of time for discussion now. President Tracey I'm sorry it's really hard for me to see when you have your hand up or not I apologize President Tracey. No it's okay I appreciate it. So one of the things that really stands out and that if I'm hearing correctly is consideration of cutting the REIB funding pretty substantially and I think that's that's particularly concerning for me and something that I've been particularly proud to be a part of and to to see happen and I've been also incredibly impressed with what Director Green and the REIB team have been able to put together. I think it's I'm a little bit I guess I just think it's a little strange from a strategic standpoint to be looking at at those new investments when they weren't alone in terms of being the only new investments to sort of break them out as the only new investments as things that might potentially be cut are the only issue. I think we should be looking at all new investments across the board and all departments across the board for potential cuts. It seems problematic to me and in fact maybe even an extension of white supremacy culture to be highlighting the racial equity office as the one that could be the one the office or the department that is that is the first to go or the first to be considered that those are in fact just that those are potentially discretionary funds and that the other stuff is stuff that we couldn't sacrifice. So I think that this the situation demands an all all departments on deck approach as opposed to one that at least from this presentation feels like it's pretty squarely focused on REIB. I think I just really I just really have an issue with with with that and if I'm misreading that that I you know that I apologize for that but that's that's what I'm getting from this is that we're looking at making significant cuts specifically to REIB and I just really ask that we look at all departments in this and that we don't don't take a first in or a lasted lap of first out kind of approach when it comes to REIB. So President Tracey thank you for putting that table to discuss because um giving us the opportunity to clarify I don't we aren't talking about cutting anything with uh with this what we have what we've just laid out is a way is our strategies for avoiding cuts it is um the uh what we are so just let me just be clear about that that we're not we're what um the three kind of key discussion points here are all intended as ways to avoid cuts in a challenging budget year. So we're look we're proposing uh tax increases um uh we are proposing use of ARPA funds um to avoid cuts by putting them in a reserve and we are trying to um we were very clear together that we had a lot of costs that when we passed the budget last year you go back and look at the memo that accompany the budget um we had a lot of costs um about you know uh approaching this 1.9. I'm not sure we identified quite all of them then but we basically said they're about you know approaching two million dollars in uh new commitments that we didn't have a um uh that these were these were a possible ongoing costs that we didn't have ongoing new revenues for and we flagged that as something we would have to work on in the coming years so this is us working on that and starting to um uh address the situation that we have in it that we don't have structural funding for this area yet and this strikes me as a way that um I think would be consistent with what the voters want of uh a baking of you know to me it seems a very reasonable thing to put about two percent of a 90 million dollar budget into equity investments new equity investments that have really become clear um the need for them in the pandemic and all that's happened over the last couple years this is the way to make them uh part this is the way to make ensure that we have a stable way of funding these long term and that we don't face a cliff several years from now when the federal money totally dries up uh where we haven't done anything to address this so um I believe and we'll go back and check I believe all the costs that we identified as one-time new investments um in the budget last year um we may have missed we'll go back and it's a fair point we'll make sure that we didn't omit something but we also you know the rrc and the uh business supports it's something else that we're proposing um uh those are the other new investments that we need a plan for those may be closer to one-time costs um and that's why we're not proposing phasing those into the structural budget at this point but if if you think if you see that differently that we should be looking at phasing those in at this point that'd be an interesting discussion but uh hopefully that addresses this is not a discussion of cuts this is this is how we make how we fund this is the way we were doing this council right tower sorry yeah so i'm back to you President Tracey if you want us to come back I just saw councilor hydrogen you can go to council right tower we can go a couple more minutes I I do want to get to you this the second film yeah um yeah and the first thing is just thank you I just saw that you did post this update um just now which is helpful in terms of even phrasing my questions yeah and I think maybe the confusion was which was a question that I was going to ask is in the increased investments in equity it was written as an opportunity which I just don't understand I don't understand the opportunity so I wanted to get clarification on that and then I'll just I'll maybe ask all my questions just for time's sake and then um on the possible solutions um yeah I like the reserving of ARPA funds that's not a question that's just a comment um the phase in of equity investments over three years while pursuing non-propery tax revenues I mean that obviously sounds great I just don't know what that looks like and then the rate increase um I guess I don't know what the I don't know what the current load is of what is what we're authorized for what we haven't actually done yet so I guess I'm curious to see what the breakdown is of increase we're allowed to do versus what we're proposing and then of course I guess the same question is that we had with the TIF which is what happens if that doesn't pass and is this are these three solutions to three different problems kind of the way that they're out and if only one of them works out how does that affect the other problems great can we pop that last slide up again and just speak I'll try to speak to them quickly while you're doing it Catherine um do you want to speak to the I think the opportunities I was just going to speak to the opportunities and apologize for the confusion that that caused um I simply to make the slides flow I ended the slide talking about the pandemic saying it created opportunities meaning we had ARPA money that allowed us to be able to make some of these investments it was in no way intended to me we weren't going to continue to do them just like last year we had this opportunity we took the money we made the investments so if you want to address the rest of it yeah so just um yeah the so counselor hi tariff thank you for these are critical questions that the and we will um we will produce we'll publish an additional um it isn't in these materials and we need to break it out there are a number if you if if folks remember there were a number of our the city the municipal tax rate is not actually one tax rate it's like like 10 or 12 different rates and some of them have this charter provision where it's very clear that you're after reappraisal they're you they're supposed to be held at a kind of revenue neutral level then there were a number of others such as the penny for parks and a few others where um it doesn't have that limitation on them and there may be and I'm so we and the city is actually allowed to adjust essentially adjust those upwards for inflation which is what the reappraisal does we did not do that with all those sprinter taxes that we're there's there's um dedicated taxes that were allowed to to keep the tax rate increased this past year as low as possible we did not do that with all of them uh we will uh before we talk again and well in advance of the 24th um I specifically lay out um those those other taxes and and uh where you know what we're proposing to bring up to to the dedicated ceiling it amounts to about a penny in total potentially um of additional uh of additional increase so that's how you go from a three cent um a three cent increase that this would be almost a fourth cent um that would be hitting taxes if all of that authority was used which is an if and I'll remind people sometimes we've had the voters approve taxes and they're not needed to implement it by the time we actually get to setting the tax rate in in June but that would be a maximum of about a five percent five point eight percent municipal tax increase again um and we'll we'll come back to this after hearing from the school district it does seem like it might be a year in which a five point eight percent uh municipal rate and then usually high rate for the city um would uh not would would would not be felt as uh negatively as as is uh felt in in other years because of what's going on on the school side on the education side the um the other question in terms of your other question was like what how do these what's the interaction between these these two um I do think the possible solutions that we've laid out in the first two bullets are are they kind of do they are somewhat what length if if the rate increase were not to be approved by the council or the voters um we'd have to come up with a new theory uh for bullet number two there a new possible solution the the sorry bullets one and three are kind of like the revenue streams I think the the reserve for revenue streams is is not related to the tax the property tax increase that's something the council could approve uh kind of separately regardless of what happens if you follow me with what's going on property taxes this is for the non-propery tax uh rate assumptions and again there what if it wasn't crystal clear what what we're what we're thinking about proposing there is let's you know let's not let's let's assume reasonable rates of economic recovery back to pre-pandemic levels and have a reserve in place uh if that proves not to be the case if we do have a great recovery and we don't need to use that revenue replacement reserve that would allow us to make additional you know we could then um expand or do you know new at a certain point we would decide we didn't need that reserve anymore and we would allocate those funds to other um ARPA approved expenses so I think we probably need to to move on to to UVM in a moment um uh thank you for your patience and working with us uh it has been challenging to get ready for tonight's meeting with the holidays and uh the short week back the one week back before getting ready for a night if there is interest people don't feel like we've gotten deep enough into this tonight and you would like me to call another board of finance meeting to discuss this uh next Monday I'd be happy to do that and maybe I'll I'll reach out to people offline to see if there is interest in a in a further discussion uh before the 24th but with that if there's um no burning additional comment at this point and there's no further no objection I will adjourn the board of finance at 710 and hand the microphone over to you President Tracy. Thanks Mayor Weinberger um so I will convene the the regular meeting of the Burlington City Council for 710 um we are doing this hybrid kind of remote um meeting style where we're having everybody promote everybody who is able to to um plead to participate remotely um you are a public commenter and are interested in signing up for public comment remotely you may do so the way to do that is to go to burlingtonbt.gov slash city council slash public forum so you go there fill out that form that feeds into a spreadsheet that I then use to um call out folks for public forum as we've been doing we do prioritize Burlington residents in that forum um with that having been said the first item on the agenda is the agenda Councillor McGee may please have a motion on the agenda. Yes I would move that we amend adopt the agenda as follows add to the consent agenda item 5.19 communication Robert Bristow Johnson regarding district maps with the action to waive the reading accept the communication and place it on file remove from the agenda item 6.03 resolution regarding the creation of the general aviation task force uh and place it on the January 24th 2022 regular city council deliberative agenda per Councillor Ding. Great thank you for that uh motion Councillor McGee is there a second seconded by Councillor Chang any discussion of the agenda itself seeing none we'll go to a vote all those in favor please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed that carries and we have our agenda uh looks like item 1.02 that new agenda item is a typo so we don't have actually a new agenda item which brings us into item number two um where we have a presentation regarding University of Vermont specific to housing um Richard Kate vice president for finance administration will be joining us this evening um believe yep I see him okay Richard good evening I appear I appear as Wendy because I'm using a link that she sent me I'm sorry about that no worries no worries welcome welcome vice president Kate um certainly appreciate you joining us this evening um I will turn it over to you one thing I will say is that we do have to go to public forum um at 7 30 so um we may need to if there are questions or if you're not finished by that time and I apologize for us getting you late we had a a substantive discussion at board of finance to get it to but um we may have to go come back to you after the after the public forum again so but I'll turn it over to you I'm appreciate you being here and look forward to hearing what you have to share with us very good good evening all just to confirm you can see my screen yes I can okay thank you thank you for having me tonight um I just very quickly and this won't take too long I'd rather hear from you um any questions you may have few things I just want to cover as President Duramo is public commitment to housing on campus in Burlington review of our housing goals our commitment to housing our students as demonstrated by some of the data then I'll talk a bit about the zoning restrictions on Trinity campus and what we would propose to do on Trinity campus if in fact we could secure some changes in the zoning very quickly President Duramo is public commitment as you know on December 9th he committed to expanding housing on the UVM campus as part of the ongoing effort on in many sectors to try to make housing more available in the Burlington community obviously ours is specifically addressed in these of our students but he made that commitment and that's why I'm here in terms of the housing goals what we'd like to do is build new undergraduate residence halls on Trinity campus we'd like to build a new graduate apartment on the campus as well upgrade some of the existing residence halls that are already there expand the dining hall and then basically build build a bit more of a community on that campus we have a small community there now we'd like to expand that and we find if we have a certain massive students in one particular area it is easier to kind of bring them together and create that community and then lastly we need to get the zoning changes obviously from you folks in order to make that all happen one of the talk a little bit there's been some conversation about the 2009 housing agreement that we operated under for about 12 years this is what happened after that housing agreement as indicated on the chart the blue as the increase or the decrease in the number of undergraduates on campus the green is the increase in the number of beds what we said in that agreement as you may know is that for every additional undergraduate student uvm would provide an additional bed beyond where we were in 2009 the take the chart clearly indicates that we have exceeded that all these years in fact in the interviewing years in the middle of the chart we were actually growing the amount of housing while the enrollment was declining in recent years we've had some growth in enrollment but as you can see we're still 80 beds ahead of the number of students that we've grown since 2009 so we've we've continued to meet that standard and we we want to keep doing that very quickly about a little comparative data here as you can see and this is not every university in the country or anything like that but it is some comparatives we use for various circumstances especially around housing uvm is one of the few on the left that provide that requires housing for both first and second year students those in the middle tier there require for first year students only and those on the far right have no requirement whatsoever so just want to reiterate we feel like we are really doing our our park here we understand grondon has a quasi unique situation in terms of having tight housing but uvm has imposed a standard that is as much higher than our peers and is certainly as high as we would be able to go a little bit about the zoning constraints wording on the left are the existing zoning requirements 40% lot coverage 114 foot setback whereas the neighboring properties have a 15 foot setback and then there's a 55 foot height limit that's less of an issue than the other two but still something to be considered if we can have more a lot coverage we could obviously build some buildings there right now we really can't build a whole lot more because a lot we're about maxed out on a lot coverage we're looking to be perfectly honest for some equity and fairness in terms of the setback because we're being we are being treated significantly differently than the neighboring properties again the height is something we'd like to talk about but it poses less of a less of an issue perhaps than some of the others this is a map obviously of the trinity campus the red line that you see there kind of on a diagonal is the existing setback at 114 feet the yellow line represents the setback where the setback is for the neighboring properties you can see on the right hand side of the screen kind of faint darker gray shade the outline of the existing buildings up there so our setback is obviously very different than what our neighbors are the dotted white layout there is kind of the general area that we propose for construction for what we're talking about what we would be proposing to do is to build something in a neighborhood of 120 graduate beds and somewhere between 350 and 400 undergraduate beds in their adjacent to the existing residence halls the we would also propose to have the buildings that are closer to the street the be somewhat lower than those in the back so there wasn't quite as much impact visually but the way to try to get it to a point where we could make the best use of the existing space and so have a really good looking project and one that would serve our students well as I said at the end of the day we would end up with probably at least 500 beds in this construction that we are proposing so that's really it I'm up for any questions or comments and it's going to go back to any slides but however you want to handle it Mr President. Thank you appreciate that Vice President Kate if you could just please take us out of the screen share mode just so I can see the counselors just stop sharing if you certainly feel free to bring it back if you needed to answer questions and let's um I'll just see are there any counselors who have questions or comments they'd like to basket with Vice President Kate this evening. Counselor Jane go ahead put the thing you're on mute. Yeah one minute I know sorry thank you Vice President for being here and I was just wondering if you can speak a little bit about your timeline and it seems you want to seek for zoning changes and timeline in general. Well to be perfectly honest we've just done some preliminary work thus far not knowing whether we get the zoning changes I haven't dared to go much further but if the zoning changes were you know actively in process we would we would go forward with design immediately and we would build as soon as we've got it now a project like this it's not unusual for it to take a year to get it permitted fully designed and permitted before you begin a construction and then again a project like this is probably at least 18 months or two year to get it online but we were prepared to move as quickly as possible if we can get the zoning changes. Last question thank you thank you for the answer and you know it seems these are the only two basically projects one to two 54 undergraduates 154 graduates are there all the you know projects that you guys are contemplating. There's more we could do you know and I won't bother to go back to the map but you you may be aware or you may have seen on the top of the map and this is towards the rear of the property there are some existing older structures there and we we would be interested at some point subsequent to this project possibly replacing them with more beds and what is in them right now. We have another idea about another location on campus you know closer to South William Street as another possibility but this is where we feel we need to start so there are other other things we could do but we believe this should be the first phase of it. Thank you. Thank you Councillor Cheng. I have Councillor Barlow to be followed by Councillor Hightower. Thank you President Tracy. I had a question about the two-year requirement for undergrad student housing is that something that the university unilaterally implemented or is that part of some agreement with the city and do you anticipate any changes? That is a very long-term requirement of the university has nothing to do with the city. Okay thank you. This goes back many decades. Okay the other question I had is are there any do you have any vacancy in the current student housing you have and if so is it sort of spread out across all the campuses or is it localized in certain places and how do you manage that? We're about 97% occupied so there's a room here and a room there as people you know a trip out you know if someone decides to move on but very very full nothing of consequence. Okay thank you very much. Thank you Councillor Barlow Councillor Hightower and if other councillors are interested in this setup it actually helps me if you use the raise hand function in zoom so if you are interested if you could just use that. Go ahead Councillor Hightower. Yeah and apologies if I just missed this because I was eating my dinner one it would be helpful to get this presentation the actual copy and then the question that I'm not sure that I missed is are you planning on making any other changes to your policies or anything else as a result of having this housing like having higher requirements for you know like the first three years instead of the first two years and I say that I mean I have a small sample size but certainly the two universities that I attended had a either two year or higher requirement for undergraduates and then those cities also did not have you know 2% vacancy rate so curious to hear if you're planning on making any changes in line with that answer. The answer to that is no it's not feasible for public flagship institution do that it would make us very it would significantly reduce the interest in the institution if we were acquiring on campus housing for all juniors. We believe very clearly that there are enough more juniors and seniors and grad students that want housing so we're not worried about filling this housing but we're not in a position to require. Also Councillor Hightower. Okay Councillor Shannon go ahead. Yes sorry took me a minute. Thank you President Tracy and thank you for the presentation Mr. Kate. I had a couple questions about this status quo as well as where this is headed so how many and you may have told us this but if you don't mind repeating it for me what's the number of current on-campus undergrad beds? So on-campus undergrad beds are in the neighborhood of 5700 something like that and what's the current number of freshmen and sophomores? That number is around 5,000 something like that. And so are the freshmen and sophomores separated from the upperclassmen like are the redstone lofts is that mostly upperclassmen? In the permitting with redstone lofts it's a requirement actually that that be the upperclass students so those are juniors all juniors and seniors. Whereas the juniors there are juniors and a modest number of seniors blended in in the other university owned housing across the campus. How many upperclassmen are living on campus? Right now we've got in the vicinity of around 700 plus. And what what is the configuration of what you're planning to build in the cost the cost for the students to rent that housing? Well we're not there yet in terms of the undergraduate housing the goal is to have it be the same as what they're what they're paying today which varies based on how many people are in a room or is it a suite you know a double O recorder that sort of thing. So look those numbers have not all have not been run yet we really need to know what we can build first. What what's the going rate currently on campus for housing? The low the low end would be like a triple right? Yeah and so it ranges from just under 9,000 up up to around 11 something like that. I haven't got the numbers right in front of me but it's a range from a from a triple to a single obviously single more students. And that's for like a nine month? Yeah for the entire academic year yes. And doesn't include any plan or anything that's just the housing piece of it. Okay great thank you very much. Thank you Councillor Shannon I don't have any other Councillors in the queue Councillor Mason go ahead we're coming up on 730 LNG ask your questions though and that if others have questions we can visit them we can deal with handle those questions after the public forum go ahead Councillor Mason. Thank you President Tracy I'll be very quick two questions first was is the setback the only impediment zoning impediment for the new space you're planning on building at Trinity and then second follow-up question is given that it may take time to do that is are you moving ahead with other improvements to the existing residence halls on Trinity or are they part of the same package? So it's a setback and the lot coverage are the primary issues however we would be seeking some some increase in the height the allowance as well just to give ourselves more flexibility and in terms of the other improvements you know we're always making we're continually making improvements to residence halls but some of the things we've got in mind for the Trinity campus we want to know what what project we had and we're able to design for the new before we committed to what we're doing on the old. Okay thank you. Thank you Councillor Mason any other Councillors just so that we can give Vice President Kate an idea we need further questions afterwards okay not seeing any of course if we do Vice President Kate are folks able to get in touch with you or yeah you can call me I'm actually there's a South Browerton City Council meeting I've got interested as well tonight so okay if you need me if you need me I can be reached okay all right great thank you for that and really appreciate it really appreciate you being here and sharing that with us this evening really and thank you Councillors for your questions certainly we'll look forward to additional steps as this continues to develop so thank you again. Good evening. Right so we are just a minute or two past 7 30 so we're going to go to the public forum at this point so what I'll ask is if we could please have the timer on the screen as I said before we're primarily remote for this meeting we've encouraged anyone who can't to please join remotely and so what we'll do is we'll follow the normal protocol that we've established with these hybrid meetings where we'll have folks who are in person speak first and then followed by the remote for folks followed and we'll kind of switch off between Burlington people in person, Burlington people remote, non-Burlington in person and non-Burlington remote sorry the screen's gonna shut off I need to so I'm just doing this I'm trying to manage all this I'm gonna make sure that we do have the physical location which is what we are required to have under open meeting lot currently we only have one person who is interested in commenting here with me in the Bush or conference room tonight this evening we're going to have two minutes for public comment so folks could please respect that that timeline that that timing we have the time up on the screen and it is apparent in the room as well and then the other thing is also to just make sure that folks direct their comments to me so we're praying for personal attacks please stay focused on the issues that really helps us to inform our decisions that we're trying to make please refrain from using profanity and you know we're not in person so I don't I hope that this is an issue I always hope this isn't an issue but please respect each individual speaker and their viewpoint don't interrupt them or prevent them from from sharing what they want what they want to speak either during or after when they're speaking so with that said I'm going to go to our first speaker and I'll turn the camera I can change it over a little bit to first speaker if you could just please introduce yourself and then share what you'd like to share Chris Aisley from College Street Ward 3 I wanted to talk about a small handful of issues here the first issue is the redistricting issue we're hearing some feedback from folks that I've been talking with in the community about the desire to preserve the King Maple neighborhood which is currently split between wards 5 and wards 3 as I understand if this is Vermont's largest community of color and one of the most diverse communities in neighborhoods in the state so I wanted to express the sentiment that moving forward it would be I think a good thing for the city if we could put them all in one ward simply because we simply don't have the numbers to create a majority minority district here so I'd like to see that address the second issue is an issue I'm following up on regarding an item that was on the December 13th agenda involving city councilor salaries which I believe that's been tabled and when I first heard of that topic there was to say less than enthusiastic about it but having done some research in the matter I think that it's a topic that should be considered and deliberated here. Some quick back of the napkin map if we were to pay our city councilors a civil livable wage of $15 an hour that would be about $31,200 per counselor which would tap out at about $430,000 a year so something to consider there I think that it's important because if we don't have that option it's going to be hard to get kind of blue-collar rank-and-file working people in the councilor and really be people who are means to participate so I'd like to see the council continue that discussion and hope that it will be a way to bring in some additional diversity from an economic point of view. I'm now down to 20 seconds so I'll yield the rest of my time thank you. Thank you very much appreciate that I'll turn back over okay great so don't have anybody else here with me in the busher conference room so we're going to go to Burlington folks who are remote and we'll go ahead and get started with Gene Bergman to be followed by Paul Fleckenstein Robert Bristow Johnson Eric Chase and Robin Lloyd if I didn't call your name that doesn't mean you're not in the queue but just give up I just give a few names in advance so that folks know that they're that they're on deck so I'm going to go to Gene Bergman first Gene I've enabled your microphone. Thank you I understand that Councilor Deng is delaying the aviation task force resolution until January 24th and I want to thank him for that action. As written it creates a glide path to the airport expansion which is being proposed right now by the airport to South Burlington and I hope it will be changed because that expansion is based baked into the resolve clauses and actions and the reasons for them the resolution has drafted and it subtly but explicitly and implicitly supports airport expansion into the Chamberlain school neighborhood that neighborhood has been ravaged by past expansions in the F-35s too much already and I know it's not his intent but as written this resolution puts the remaining affordable housing of the neighborhood and the working class residents there at risk and it also subtly undermines our work to immediately cut emissions to address climate change. I respect the desire of Councilor Deng to address the equity issues raised in the letter that you have in your packet on that issue but this resolution does much more than that it'll be used as part of the campaign to expand the airport into the neighborhood and increase aviation emissions generally we just can't afford that can't afford either one of those so I hope you come back with a better resolution that addresses equity the neighborhood and climate change and I'm willing to help in that effort thank you very much and thank you Councilor Deng. I yield the rest of my time. Thank you very much I appreciate that so our next speaker is Paul Fleckenstein Paul let me just find you. Paul I've located you and have enabled your microphone. Okay thank you can you hear me? Yes go ahead. So I agree a lot of with a lot of what the previous speaker said and I also want to talk about the aviation task force and bring in some a little larger perspective commercial development puts businesses into competition and conflict with each other so they're going to be squabbles at the airport but there are much bigger issues with the Burlington Airport expansion and some of which demonstrate at a small scale why all all levels climate goals put forward by business and political leaders won't won't be achieved the city's approach to the environmental and community impacts of the airport has been to not look up and to not look down the greenhouse gas emissions from the F-35s for instance are large and will far outstrip any gains made for example and residential weatherization in Vermont over the next 10 years the city plans for expansion of flight operations and denial of the climate emergency and the growing impact of aviation thousands of mainly working class residents are physically harmed by the always scientifically documented extreme noise of the F-35s hundreds of people have been displaced from housing already due to airport encroachment into the surrounding neighborhood and the airport brags about being a nationally recognized leader in home demolition by recycling building materials there needs to be a stop there needs to be a reset here there needs to be a reorientation toward the needs of the community and the needs of the climate and we need a bigger democratic and correctly aligned process for talking about all this and making decisions thank you done thank you our next speaker is Robert Christo Johnson and just want to let folks know I didn't I didn't announce at the beginning but if you are interested in signing up for public comment remotely you may do so by going to burlingtonbt.gov slash city council slash public forum so our next speaker is Robert Christo Johnson Robert I've enabled your microphone good evening so lots of redistricting happening at the same time simply because of the year of after the decennial census and so besides award redistricting you also have a state house redistricting that's on your plate tomorrow the government ops committee is going to vote on a another map to send to the boards of civil authorities and so you're going to have another whack at this that you should not squander because because we're not sharing any legislative districts with any other town the bca of burlington basically is the sole spoke spokesperson for how they might want their legislative districts drawn and and so you're going to have another opportunity to tell the legislature and the legislature and the gov ops committee what you want the map that's coming now is going to be the minority map or what they're now calling the alternative map which is not 150 single member districts throughout the state or 10 in burlington what it is it's a combination of single member and two member districts and it's more incrementalist it was drawn by gene albert from um lincoln um and while that is much better than the single member district map that was proposed in the majority um it could still be better and we could we could be consistent in the city of burlington we could have five single member districts for our 10 counselors uh um uh the um map that genie albert drew has four two member districts and two single member districts um anyway i have and it's on the it's on the agenda now on the communications now i have um supplied a couple of maps that i'd like uh the members of the bca which is you the city council and the mayor to take a look at before the next um uh council meeting because i believe in the meantime you are going to receive another communications from the legislature about the map your time is up great thank you our next speaker is um eric chase to be followed by ronnie loyd and we'll shift over to non-burlington folks who are participating remotely in the order that they were received um so eric um i've located you in one second i've enabled your microphone eric chase eric it looks like you're muted on your there you go can can you hear me now yes i can go ahead okay uh in in regards to the situation that has developed at the burlington airport all man's field heliflight is asked is to be provided with the same opportunity as other businesses to operate and grow at the airport unfortunately we have been discriminated against by the airport and it's handling of our lease and presently we are not being provided the same support and opportunities as other businesses at the airport if the airport had been transparent and truthful they would have acknowledged their plans to cancel and not renew our current lease at the november 8 city council meeting instead the airport gave you the city council and us and members of the general aviation community the assurance that we would not be impacted by the beta license agreement in spite of this assurance the airport proceeded to provide us man's field heliflight with a non with a notice of non-renewal with a possible option for a completely new significantly revised lease that would negatively impact our ability to operate on the airport while we certainly understand the city's desire to see the aerospace industry grow at the airport it is completely inappropriate for the city to provide advantages to some aerospace tenants and not others in light of this i asked this the council to enforce the assurance that we were provided on november 8 and confirm that man's field heliflight two man's field heliflight at our current lease will not be affected in the term of this lease will be honored as agreed for the minimum period from 2017 through 2027 thank you thank you our next speaker will be Robin Lloyd Robin i'm not able to locate you not seeing Robin on here try again in a second but i do will transition now to burlington non burlington folks we're participating remotely and i'll read off a couple of names of those speakers so we'll have josh reep to be followed Chris Weinberg, Liz Medina, Larry Mokwin, Jim Richards, Isaac Basel, and just someone who signed in as alex so i will go to josh reep next josh or josh i'm sorry i will i've enabled your microphone great thank you and josh is totally fine thank you and council members thank you again tonight for allowing public input on the proposed changes to their responsible better responsible better ordinance we appreciate and and it's very apparent that you've taken in consideration some of our concerns we've expressed through a letter in earlier testimony however we're still at odds with some of the liability penalties and debarment provisions we feel that they lack certain aspects that are found in other similar responsible better ordinances so very simply we asked two things to be considered tonight on the bill we ask that you strike out lines 138 through 140 which holds general contractors equally liable for violations of subcontractors we also ask that you allow grace period in the debarment and perhaps add in a period where after the third violation maybe a period of time can happen where someone can come back and reapply kind of with a good faith effort of remediation that we see with our other corrective systems let me just say specifically you know with debarment sometimes it's not understood entirely um debarment um I think what'll happen here under this bill is there would not be a complete picture here there's really two kinds of debarment willful and non-willful willful is when a contractor is found they have done something on purpose and that's the bad actor none of us want to see and I think that's what the bill is trying to weed out unfortunately though a non-willful violation when it does be found is a mistake and then as innocent as it is it's false information and thus would be a violation of the law as written um this commonly happens with misclassifications that could be as simple as a laborer who does a favor to help a drywall installer carry materials in a room laborer may not think to classify that 20 minute of time with a drywaller but in retrospect it's found later by not it that it's wrong that's a violation for a contractor and when you have a job supervisor can't even keep track of all that properly I don't think we can expect a general contractor overseeing several subs employing hundreds of people just to do the same so I just ask that's why I ask that you remove that provision because I think it's going to cause a lot of confusion and issues for union and non-union contractors alike on public work projects so thank you for your time today and um just please consider my my um points when you delivered the bill later your time's up thank you all right our next speaker will be uh Chris Weinberg to be followed by Liz Medina looks like I have to Chris you should be able to speak now okay yeah I think I because you're zoom right up a little bit of panelists so I can enable you you should be able to speak okay thank you president Tracy and thank you to the council for your consideration of the resolution regarding general aviation even though the review is delayed unfortunately it seems that standing up for honesty and transparency in government has become equated with being opposed to beta technologies and their growth plans everyone involved with this effort wants to see beta succeed however we want to see that it is done in a way that does not disadvantage existing airport tenants and users while giving preferential treatment to others the airport had an opportunity to be open and honest with you and the public but it chose to be deceptive by giving the assurance that current aviation tenants wouldn't be impacted by the beta license agreement then it promptly notified a tenant that their current lease would not be renewed and offered a significantly different lease as you just heard as the council considers the revised resolution I hope it will recognize that as it is currently written it gives the responsibility of developing an inclusive plan to the same organization that has been deceptive in their dealings with the council and the general aviation community further bringing the integrity of the airport into question recent lease extensions offered to some tenants include a clause preventing tenants from opposing the airport in situations such as this in the future this is coercive behavior that is inappropriate for a public entity and is further evidence of the airport's desire to operate opaquely and out of public view I encourage the council to challenge this behavior and to demand transparency and ethical behavior from the airport thank you thank you next speaker will be Liz Medina to be followed by Larry Bowen Liz let me look at you leave it look into your lives I think I I'm unmuted here I am yes great welcome go ahead thank you good evening everyone my name is Liz Medina and I'm the executive director of the Vermont State Labor Council AFL-CIO which is our state's labor federation of unions representing over 11 000 members across the state and I want to thank everyone on especially on the ordinance committee for their hard work in developing the responsible contractor ordinance before you today thanks to your work we have before us an ordinance that will help us equitably and sustainably build our workforce for the future ordinances such as these have been adopted throughout the country and have proved to be effective in protecting taxpayer dollars ensuring the public only pays for quality construction projects that simultaneously stimulate our local economy our building trace members have frequently shared with me how difficult it can be to find enough good paying work here in our state and some have felt forced to relocate to neighboring states as a result while there are of course other factors at play here too this ordinance is a great first step in guaranteeing that taxpayer money will go towards quality jobs that will retain and attract workers in our state so we know we will have to make a lot of significant public investments in our infrastructure in the coming years to address the effects of climate change I also think this is a really important step in toward a just transition for our local economy in the face of all the work we're going to have to do for climate change so I hope to celebrate this victory with you all later and I hope this does indeed pass and I look forward to working with you all more on this thank you so much thank you our next speaker will be Larry Mokwin to be followed by Jim Richards Larry have located you and have enabled your microphone good evening counselors thank you for your time my name is Larry Mokwin I'm the Vice President of the Vermont building and construction trades council I'm here in support on behalf of the building trades and its members of the proposed changes to your prequalification of construction contractors ordinance what this ordinance will really do is create a community standard for all construction workers that work public projects in the city of Burlington it'll create a level playing field based on wages and you guys will get bids based more on performance instead of bottom theaters I think if you guys weaken the language any uh any more than what we have in the last 20 something months going through this process I think it would allow the opportunity for these contractors to cheat and no no ordinance is any better than the enforcement of it and without any liability the ordinance will will be set up to fail I want to thank the ordinance committee for all the work they did it on it and the whole council for taking the time to deal with this problem that I believe is in Burlington we've had contractors on WCAX telling you that they are starting labor at $16 an hour which I'm not positive but I think maybe below your livable wage this year again I hope you guys will pass this tonight I thank you for your time and have a great evening thank you I our next speaker is going to be Jim Richards to be followed by Isaac Bissell and someone who signed up as Alex Jim I have located you I have enabled your microphone Jim Richards looks like you're on mute Jim Richards President Tracy do you have me now yes I do go ahead okay sorry about that first time I'm doing doing this I'm Jim Richards of Aerodyne Corporation a general aviation stakeholder at the airport for 20 years Aerodyne is an American manufacturer of parts used in our aircraft repair operations and exported to other countries our products decrease the carbon and noise footprints of small aircraft by enabling them to fly higher with lower fuel consumption we contribute to the community by use of Vermont vendors whenever possible offering STEM internships and by offering our aircraft for angel flights our jobs pay at least twice the Burlington FY 22 livable wage and include comprehensive health care and education benefits. Aerodyne is a good example of the attributes you seek for business growth in Burlington I thank counselor D'Ang for his recognition that existing general aviation stakeholders at the airport are at risk of being damaged by disproportionate pressure on airport management to accommodate the interests of a single newcomer private party my business is being negatively impacted by daily shutdowns necessary to protect sensitive equipment one of my neighbors is losing ramp critical to his business counselor D'Ang has told me he believes the resolution to be a good start personally I only see it thus far as better than nothing because it does not adequately address the continuing inequity of a single newcomer private entity impacting the interests and prospects of many existing stakeholders the resolution calls for a plan informed in part by the needs of all general aviation stakeholders I respectfully suggest an amendment to add an item nine requiring equitable treatment of general aviation stakeholders without preference for any single stakeholder or any group of stakeholders less than 80 percent of all stakeholders thank you very much thank you Isaac a cell I'm not able to locate you if you're not signed on as the name that you signed up with if you could just rename yourself I'm going to go to the last speaker that I have signed up Alex I believe I've located you Alex I've enabled your mic so you should be able to speak believe it's Alex Poppin yes excuse me yeah Alex Poppin here I'm a 15 year member and organizer for local 693 the plumbers and pipefitters local and I've also spent a vast majority of my time working in the city of Burlington over my career and I just want to come on and say how important it is that I feel the feel it is to get this the amendment to the the proposed amendments to the responsible contract ordinance passed I think it's going to go a long way towards uplifting everybody in this in your community as well as the surrounding areas and also hopefully maybe be able to bring in some of the local people yeah actually that actually live in the community and maybe keep them working in their community I'm not going to take up too much time here but I just want to emphasize how important it is that we maintain a high level of dignity for the people that work in these trade jobs thank you very much for your time thank you I'm still not able to locate Isaac Bissell or Ronald Lloyd who signed up earlier but who I was not able to locate so with that I'm going to go ahead and close our public forum for this evening thank you all to our to our speakers this evening for respecting the time limits and maintaining the decorum of our body what we will do now is transition right into our agenda pick up where we pick up with item number four which is climate emergency reports are there any counselors or Mayor Weinberger wishing to offer a climate emergency report this evening okay seeing none I will close that item and we will go to our consent agenda counselor Stromberger you will please make a motion on the consent agenda I move to adopt the consent agenda and take the actions indicated I have a motion from councillor Stromberg is there a second second seconded by councillor McGee any discussion of the consent agenda okay here none we're going to vote all those in favor please say aye hi hi hi any opposed that carries unanimously brings us right into our deliberative agenda for tonight where we'll go into item number 6.01 which is a presentation from Superintendent Flanagan Nathan Lavery who's the director of finance for the district as well as school board chair claire wool thank you so much for being with us it was great to to get a chance to at least share some virtual space with you with all three of you when we had our our joint meeting last week I look forward to hearing more about the budget this evening but again thanks for being here really really appreciate you coming and sharing this this crucial community information with us excellent thank you President Tracy what I can give a quick intro and then executive director Nathan Lavery is here to talk a bit about our budget going to some of the detail and then chair wool is here to wrap wrap wrap us up we're will be available for any questions you have so we're looking forward to the opportunity to present our FY 23 budget to you tonight one of what we have done in this budgeting process is to take a disciplined approach to to our budget and we know we have a building that we are we are going to be presenting to taxpayers soon with a bond in November of 2022 we also have American resource plan funding the ARP funding that has allowed us to to introduce some new initiatives so while our our budget that we're presenting our local budget is conservative we have been able to invest in exciting and innovative new initiatives for our district the the American recovery plan allows us both to implement new initiatives around academic achievement social emotional learning and well-being and attendance and engagement while also allowing us to continue to implement the COVID precautions that we that we needed so we've we've purchased in the American recovery plan funding masks filters testing Chromebooks but we've also had the opportunity to utilize the funding to expand to additional pre-k classrooms to bring in a new literacy curriculum for our k5 to implement restorative practices through restorative practices specialists in each of our schools and to implement a mental health and assessment to understand better where our our students are and to implement k home visits for our kindergarten students before the school year started and home visits for our older students now and in addition to that through the American recovery plan we've been able to set aside 10 million dollars for our our building project which is slated for 20 August 2025 is is our goal so overall a disciplined approach to the local budget because of that American recovery plan funding that we have and also you'll be happy to see that the the ed fund is healthy so we're presenting to you a budget that does in that does have an increase because every year our our wages benefits and utilities and other kind of year over year items continue to to cost more but we we the ed fund is healthy so you'll you'll you'll see that that will have an impact on taxpayers that I think will be the city will be happy about so with that I'll kick it over to Nate to walk us through the slideshow great thank you very much um is the slideshow I share my screen or um is that something that's going to be put up on on the screen for me to talk through so you let me see let's make sure that you can share your screen um you should have co you're listed as a co host um so you should be able to to share your own screen I will do that stand by so um you know that the council has had an opportunity to review this presentation already so I will move quickly through some of the preliminary slides here um quickly uh touching on some of the higher points uh and moving right into some of the financial implications for for the budget I do want to just remind folks generally and this is at the end of the presentation as well that this coming Tuesday or a week from this coming Tuesday rather is going to be the board's final review and approval of the budget which will then be submitted to the city by the january 20th 20th deadline for inclusion on the march ballot we provided some base uh baseline budget benchmark so folks could have an understanding of where we've been over the past few years including uh this most recent year which again was a relatively uh modest increase in in spending and rates in part um due to some of the savings we're able to achieve operationally but the big things that are driving our debt uh this year as you've been heading in plan again mentioned number one the two and a half million dollars that's that's new spending but on existing uh costs wages benefits and so forth so there's no new programming or anything in there but that's the cost of continuing to provide the services that we provide from our local budget one of the major costs that is um not new this year but is new in the relatively recently um that we've been budgeting for are the costs of downtown bhs we've not added more money to the budget we uh first included funds to pay for the rent utilities costs of that space for the budget year that we're operating in right now so we have not increased the budget for that purpose but i think it's important to know that those costs are baked into this budget and then as superintendent plan again mentioned we have significant funds through the american recovery plan esser funds federal funds that are not part of our total budget they don't drive increases in property or income tax uh property tax education tax rates here in vermont but we do have substantial funds that we are putting toward recovery and a superintendent plan again mentioned putting toward the construction of a new uh burlington high school and technical center campus one of the really exciting new features of our budget process this year um was our recent equitable budgeting process and a key element of that process was to allocate resources based on enrollment and then have an additional allocation which we call the rise allocation or uh and and this um this acronym rise is recognizing injustice and seeking equity and the idea of this allocation which was drawn from existing sources of funding and federal funds so again not kind of new tax supported money the idea was to allow schools to make equity oriented investments on a school by school basis so rather than having a kind of one size fits all approach to this sort of spending we turned it over to our principals with support from their individual school advisory groups to identify investments that they thought could really help move the move the needle in terms of how we better serve students at each of our in each of our learning communities so i've listed here some of the main types of investments that were identified for those who are interested but again i think uh as as important of as the actual elements or the ideas that they came up with our art is the fact that this is a process where we allocated the funds to the schools not simply based on enrollment but also based on an assessment of the needs in in the school which we did by looking at things like the number of students who come from families who are living in poverty or the number of students who are English learners and so forth so this was an exciting new element there's some materials on our website for folks who want to want to learn more these were some of the new investments that were identified moving on to the tax rates here i've defined the major driving variables that go into tax rates i won't give you this i know before but on the next slide takes each of those variables and shows the status for the coming year and you can imagine increasing spending increases tax rate the percentage increase in spending and frankly spending per pupil is looks relatively high that's actually driven only in part by the increase in actual spending associated with the wages benefits and other kind of standard cost increases it's also a reflection of the fact that we have somewhat less one-time money in this budget going toward supporting baseline operations which is a good long-term practice it makes that number look a little bigger this year but that that's the explanation for the increase in education spending equalize people count down that's a bad thing when it comes to tax rates that puts upward pressure on the tax rate but the good news is the dollar yield which is super intended again plan again mentioned is kind of a reflection of how much money is in the ed fund that number is up significantly meaning that the education fund broadly can support a higher level of spending without having to increase taxes and then the real change the major major change from every year that I've been doing these presentations frankly is the common level of appraisal we recently got the updated letter from the tax department that shows our common level of appraisal is now over a hundred percent in the past that number has been as low as the mid 70 percent so when that happens that means that property tax rates get adjusted up because our property is assessed at levels that are below the market so this doesn't gain tax bills it's important to understand that as the common level of appraisal goes up that means that that properties are valued higher for tax purposes and therefore the tax rate can be lower to generate the same amount of money so it's a pretty confusing formula but the key message here to understand is while the common level of appraisal is going to help bring tax rates down what will actually help bring tax bills down is the homestead dollar yield is to say the amount of spending that the ed fund can support we're going to provide a couple scenarios here estimated tax implications and as you can see just as I mentioned before you've got some pretty large changes particularly in the property tax rate again because that is a function of not only the dollar yield but also the common level of appraisal and based on our current projections we have some modest decreases in actual tax bills but that again being partly a function of the amount of money in the ed fund so we should caveat in as with the case every year that the homestead dollar yield is something that set legislatively it is a process that goes on in Montpelier the governor makes proposals the legislature debates those proposals and ultimately they pass legislation establishing that rate for the coming year so we're always estimating at this point in the process but our current estimates would actually produce slight decreases in in tax bills under this hypothetical scenario and I should also mention when I kind of compared this to a prior year I essentially compared this to a lower priced homestead the prior year kind of adjust for the fact that we increased that we increased the value of the same homestead so I didn't compare this to someone whose homestead was 361 thousand dollars last year I used a lower figure that was proportional to the change in the CLA we do have actually well now this is this is updated from from the earlier presentation so we've one of these variables that we can cross off the list the CLA and we're doing some work our estimates for our fund balance and our state revenues so we have a little bit more work to do on the budget and the next slide shows what we imagine doing with our fund balance our fund balances surplus funds from the prior year and those have to be incorporated into the budget cycle for the year that is coming up so using 3.6 million dollars of that fund balance we typically require about a million and a half dollars to support ongoing operations but we are also going to add 600 000 dollars to enhance the downtown BHS space we know that there's a need for more doys noise doors noise mitigation and security features and so forth of that space so we have to continue to invest in that space to ensure that it provides an adequate educational facility for our students it's a temporary space at some level but when you talk about being there for potentially five years it's not that temporary so it's important that we make some ongoing investments in that space and then lastly we identified another million and a half dollars that we want to set aside in addition to the federal funds that Superintendent Flanagan mentioned so another million and a half dollars toward our building project again those funds that we're setting aside are all we're doing that with the intention of reducing the need to borrow and then therefore the burden on on taxpayers long term of the new facility so as I mentioned we got a couple more steps in the process coming up but it all culminates on in March with the town meeting day budget vote so we are looking forward to that opportunity and I will turn it over to Mr. Wolf. Thank you very much I want to thank our solid leadership team of Superintendent Flanagan and Executive Director Lavery for your presentation and speaking to the council and the mayor and the public tonight we are a disciplined team working together to ensure equitable budgeting year after year with our school budgets and we recognize the support that citizens of Burlington City Council and Mayor have given to us and we entrust that responsibility very seriously we look forward to this year especially under the needs of our single high school and technical center here in the city of Burlington and look forward to your support but tonight tonight's school board presentation budget we appreciate you reviewing it and would be happy to answer any questions thank you. Great well thank you to the three of you for for sharing all that information with us at this point we'll open it up to to counselors with any questions or comments again it helps me just in terms of identifying speakers if you could just please use their raise hand function which is at the bottom of the screen so any counselors interested counselor Shannon go ahead. Thank you President Tracy and thank you very much for the presentation it's always very helpful to us when we're talking to constituents to be well informed about these things which really impact our constituents I was hoping with the with the reassessment it's really hard to have apples to apples comparisons and to figure out what this does mean to our taxpayers because the taxpayers burden has shifted to our residential taxpayers you know even with the school budget the school budget could go down and still have a major increase for our homestead taxpayers so I was wondering if it would be possible for you to provide us of course not right in this moment but at some point tell us what was the average use the average homestead taxpayer that you use from past years in comparison with average homestead taxpayer this year and give us that comparison as well as um telling us what a taxpayer at say 300 400 500 600 000 would be paying based on this the budget that you have laid out as far as you can determine and then I also have a question um as far as the cl a when does the cl a when is the cl a determined each year it's determined just annually and not readjusted is that correct so um the second question I can say that the cl a is uh the the number that's going to be applied for education tax rate purposes is distributed by the tax department usually in late December or so of every year by the time we see letters that's a tax department calculation they're looking at what they know of values and they're looking at things like uh I believe sales and other real estate data to kind of to come up with that to their their assessment of the degree to which property in a community is assessed for tax purposes at at market rate so that's every year there is an opportunity for it to be appealed I know the city for example has appealed some properties in the past but you don't appeal like the cl a as a whole you appeal kind of specific um big property but yeah so that's an annual an annual process and then see your first question we can certainly look at doing some other hypotheticals but I think uh it's worth me maybe trying to articulate this little more clearly than I did during the presentation which is that hypothetical property taxpayer that I illustrated um what I did was in prior years I had used a hypothetical homestead value of $150,000 and I had calculated the tax burden and the increase or decrease in taxes um for the purposes of our application every year what I did this year was take a $150,000 homestead um and I increased it by the change in the cl a while that's not a it's not the way the cl a actually works essentially in a hypothetical sense I said hey if if a home last year for the purposes last year was valued at $250,000 and this year all values went up by 40 odd percent I'm going to increase that $250,000 homestead um so I you know it's like you said it's not a perfect correlation but that's what I attempted to do if I had simply taken a $250,000 homestead and calculated a uh hypothetical tax impact on that for this budget the tax bill would have looked extremely low right but really we know that $250,000 homestead last time around is now a test of the higher value so I I made an attempt to do that it's not perfect but and I think you you may complain it's hard to really do apples to apples and every taxpayer situation is unique I did attempt to um do something that was a little more illustrative of of what someone might actually explain understanding that in that case um I don't think that that gives a good picture on the homestead side because homesteads increase so much more than other categories so could you could you um get the information from the tax assessor or maybe you have it on what the average increase is for homestead taxes or for homestead assessments rather then start at that $250,000 increase it by the average increase on on homestead values which is different than the CLA and different than what it is city-wide and also but also show it in comparison with that $250,000 home last year so you're essentially comparing hopefully something like the same on the income side of the equation why did you use $50,000 is that the average income of the average homestead owner no it's just the figure that we have used recently it's on the low end of the income levels that are um that are high enough to exceed the circuit breaker it's kind of provision in our tax code but as you know the income sensitivity phases out as household income goes up so that's on the lower lower end could we also get a little bit more information on that as you know different points of escalation on that thank you we may be able to do that calculating that is a little a little trickier but we may be able to come up with a few other taxpayer scenarios uh income payers that is great thank you so much thank you councillor shannon i have councillor barlow to be followed by councillors mickey and carpenter go ahead councillor barlow thank you president tracy um i have two questions the first is about the downtown bhs rent i see a majority of the rent and fiscal 23 is being used paid for by the fund balance and fiscal 22 and that's good news um but but i know from conversations we had over the summer the lease agreement requires the district to pay about i think it's it's about 266,265 thousand dollars in property taxes as part of the lease agreement and i'm wondering if there are assumptions about the city continuing the abatement of the municipal tax and the calculation and additionally i'm interested to know if the district has been given any relief from the state for the um education portion i know that the city and the district were going to collaboratively pursue that when we spoke last summer so the answer to question number two is we don't have any additional relief in the fund i know that our legal council has had conversations uh previous this was going back a few months at least now um with the agency of education or maybe the tax department off to look that up but in any event uh there were some conversations there um we did not get to a resolution it's probably something worth kind of re reigniting um with respect to your question about uh the budget yes we assume essentially a continuation but only of the municipal portion that the city has agreed to is an assumption in the budget okay thank you um my other question was around the um the five percent decrease almost five percent decrease in the equalized people count and i'm wondering if the district has an explanation for that are the students leaving because of the high school situation are there is there a decrease in resettlement activity or is there something else um and as a follow-up to that do you think it's a blip or is it a trend well i can i can start and and superintending and playing and maybe they want to uh chime in here as well but i would say first of all the um equalized one thing to support and understand is that equalized people count is a two-year uh includes a two-year average uh daily membership and due to covid last year there was a essentially like a grace period where they froze those counts so now everyone's kind of dealing with the the fact that when you unfreeze them you kind of catch up over a period of time so i think that it looks a little more dramatic year over year than it may have been had they not kind of provided that one-year relief um in terms of the what's driving it i couldn't like i don't know for sure although i do know that we have that certainly the change in uh immigration at the federal level resulted in fewer families with students coming to our community for a period of time that may be changing um and we know that we have a great opportunity to welcome some uh some afghan uh members to our community but the um but that certainly was one of the things we did see that trend over uh kind of the prior few years and we also know that generally speaking enrollment has been declining not as rapidly obviously as some other areas of the state but that that has you know we have experienced some of that here in burlington yeah yeah i'll just add that we are you know we are looking at we're sort of constantly looking at our enrollment our enrollment um has has dipped down slightly but as as nathan explained it's a two-year account so it's um this is showing a trend over time and um so it's something that we're definitely keeping keeping our eye on okay thank you thank you great i have council mickey to be followed by council carpenter thank you president tracy and i appreciate you all presenting this evening um i have a question about i think it's for superintendent flanagan regarding the district's plan with this budget kind of an overview of how you all are building capacity for el programs throughout the district and what that might look like yeah thank you for that question that we've taken our el programming uh very seriously um the one of the things that we did actually in in the last budget that's carrying into this budget um with the leadership of of uh adin haji on the board and uh miriam edesham kating our el director um and we we we um made our multilingual liaisons uh 12 month employees and made their pay competitive with um or essentially the same as those same positions in winewski uh that was a that was an initial um priority of of of mine coming in because i came in in the summer of of the um of covid of the pandemic and we were really wanting to get a lot of messaging out and it was right away that i learned the multilingual liaisons just weren't they were available to work some but they had taken other jobs in the summer and they just weren't around 12 months and it was clear that we were we needed to not only do we do we really need them in the summer but we also needed to make sure that we were um we were paying them um a competitive wage and fairly so that was an early priority and then in terms of specific programming for students we we have we um our school board is taking the lead on advocacy at the state level regarding the weighted pupil so uh i don't know how much background you have on this so i apologize if i go if i'm going too deep so i'll stay to our surface and we can talk more if you'd like to talk more but uh the state commission to study of uv from uh that uvm records in the american institute of research um did and it said that we have an antiquated weighted formula that disproportionately impacts districts with uh high high percentage of students who qualify for free and reduced lunch and students with who are english learners and so um the the commission of task force that task force has been working on this and they are presenting a categorical they're right now recommending a categorical fix on the ELL weighting side that we disagree with a hundred percent so um your your advocacy i want you to all know that i think most probably all of you do but um just wanted to sort of double down on that and the fact that we really are going to probably need to do some heavy advocacy at the at the legislature at some point soon that being said we are we are doing a lot to support our english learners and and and and their instruction and their programming um we've have a new uh co-taught ELL classroom at uh Champlain so we're doing some some innovative uh or some new not all that innovative but new practices um around co-teaching which is which is interesting uh and i think is you know we're watching to see how that's going and it has been going well uh we also have specific classrooms to support uh students who are brand new to the country uh and so we have we have specific classrooms those have been great to see this summer this year we've had we have one at IAA that was empty in the beginning of the year and now it's have has a lot of students in it and it's really just so great to to see them uh uh the students and and teachers kind of come together um around around that and then the the other thing that we've done is to bolster our our communication so this is not specifically to english uh learners and their their program but it's how do we communicate with our families we have added um we've ended into a contract to provide translation um and and interpretation services uh so that we can do right now our multilingual liaisons uh read the information that we put out and and they and they put it out to to their communities we want to continue to do that as much as we are doing and more but we also want to make sure we're getting uh families information in multiple modalities so uh we we've stepped up that game so that's a that's a huge priority for us 16 percent of our students our english learners um they're they're students who have have amazing assets to bring to our our community and our district um and and we we need to really make sure we're doing everything we can to support them great thank you so much um I have one additional question um regarding um an update on the capital bond that was passed a few years ago and sort of um where we're at with some of those capital projects uh at our other schools in the district um kind of maybe how the pandemic has hindered some of those yeah so we we do have a plan what actually the the pandemic has hindered it but not as much as the the high school and having to adjust and and put our energy toward the high school um and also swing space so one of the challenges we know IAA is one of our schools that is in most need of of uh upgrades of uh to the facility right now um and we don't have good swing spaces to to do that construction so that's a big piece of what we need to incorporate into our strategy for upgrading the facilities outside of the high school Nate I don't uh can you talk a little bit more about where we are with that yeah I mean we I think you you said it well we we're not um we haven't been able to do probably as much as we would have liked quickly as we would have liked but it is been driven more a question of of the bandwidth that that we have um we actually are to be a little more we are looking at doing some significant work at IAA in the coming year and um you may if uh um including uh doing a major um uh what is it uh roof work um in the coming we may you may have heard we've had some water infiltration issues and at that campus so we're going to be doing some major roof work there and and actually going out to pre-qualify bidders very soon so at least speaking that's that's one of the major things that is on the horizon um probably uh I would say we have we have in terms of our total process the good news is we are well kind of within that capital plan um I think the challenge that we are actually encountering is that that capital plan was really about and that and the funding for was really about just investing or reinvesting in what we already have it isn't about growing our facilities expanding our facilities or kind of changing them in any specific way to respond to uh new needs that might be out there and so I think that's just an important thing to to bear in mind when we think about that plan sometimes people think oh we can use this to add you know extra classrooms here that's not what it what you know the funding was not calculated for that purpose it it's about really just kind of revitalizing the infrastructure we do already have so there are going to be some some big challenges in that area in the future I'm sure in some interesting conversations but otherwise it's it's going reasonably well it's just that we have to kind of pace ourselves as we move through through that plan great thank you thank you counselor carpenter thanks um really just a couple comments um Nathan was talking about and counsel Shannon was questioning about the presentation of the homestead credit versus the praise value um I just want to point out that CAO shad hit a ton of work and her staff when we're we were trying to figure out this lag on the homestead credit issue so we have a lot of information so I hope the two of you can get together and analyze it further around um what the reappraisal did to increasing people's homestead credit and not um I think there are several legislators in Burlington who are poised to present um changes to that formula if we could sort how it it works for our residents so again I'm just um encouraging the school department to get together um with CAO shad and sort out all that information um and it was broad it wasn't just like everybody over 50 got an increase because it increases were from 50 to 100 and it depended on your income and and so just we need to do more work on that my other this is probably still more editorial and uh superintendent um planigan um mentioned it the waiting formula very nerdy um I think we all on the call understand it but somehow we have got to get that word out to parents and constituents there's a statewide election there's a governor a lieutenant governor and Chittenden County senators who may not have Burlington in their sites running for re-election so it's got to be a high priority issue and we've got to figure out how to articulate that to the voter because it's really a state issue and I think our brilliant folks are fine it's everybody else so I hope we can work together on that absolutely yeah and there there is a you know about this but there is a coalition uh where we have a number of members on that coalition that statewide there's a connection in a way this this proposal impacts us and the way it impacts small rural districts um so it's you know there there's definitely there are many districts across the state that are impacted by this but certainly for us we we do end up getting more funding for our English learners uh and overall through this but not nearly as much as the weighted formula um tells us that we would so thanks thank you thank you um Councillor Carpenter I don't have any other counselors in the queue anyone else interested you can use the raise hand function you are okay not seeing any I want to just thank Superintendent Flanagan, Chair Wol and Finance Director Lavery for this presentation and for answering all the detailed questions from counselors this evening um we'll look forward to seeing that that finalized budget um as you indicated that should come at the next school board meeting is that right that's correct January 18th okay great so folks are interested in following the process that's the next step in that process um before it gets placed on the ballot the town meeting day ballot and one last I just want to share Councilor McGee um you know the state is is expecting over 260 refugees coming by the end of February um Chittenden County is uh I think earmarked for around 160 so we are poised and and prepared um and you know again we take great pride in being a sanctuary city and a resettlement city you are appreciative of the um you know the federal government's leadership in in making that happen so thank you for that question and yes lastly IAA is one of our our oldest schools um and we are on top of those capital needs and began earlier this summer um and so thank you very much because we too as elected officials um hear that concern for that community and we are cognizant of it so thank you very much thank you very much appreciate it um have a great night all um we'll move on to our next item item 6.02 which is a public hearing regarding the downtown Tiff district and the Great Streets project before we open that public forum however I believe we have a presentation that will just give us a little bit of context for that um so am I trying to get over to you director Spencer or you director Pine director Pine go ahead thank you very much president Tracy the and the rest of the council uh tonight we will be discussing the downtown tax increment financing district and uh hopefully by the end of our presentation here uh the council will have enough information and the public will be uh at least aware and begin to learn about the the intentions with the downtown tax increment financing district also called the Tiff district with me tonight is the DPW team Laura Wheelock and Chapin Spencer as well as David G White not to be confused with our former city planner David is our consultant who has prepared the um financial materials that you will be um well first of all that informed our decision and our ability to go forward with this request and hopefully will be uh information that uh the council is um informs your decision to uh whether to go forward with a ballot question so our public hearing tonight is really to provide a an overview of the of the project the need for the project um and the um mechanism the tax increment financing and how it works uh and I think I want to just highlight a couple key points before others join me in this presentation this opportunity is is what we refer to in the memo uh that was provided by director Spencer and myself as a once in a lifetime opportunity to really make a transformative investment in all of the public infrastructure of our core downtown street main street without raising local property taxes and I think that's an important point a nearly 30 million dollar uh investment without raising local property taxes I just want to reiterate that and it's really this part of the project is a culmination of a planning and development process that really began uh a decade ago with the voter approval to create the downtown tiff district and the subsequent approval by voters to borrow the first installment of capital to fund the first projects that will be discussed in a few minutes so that information I just also want to highlight that this is a this is a not just a once in a lifetime opportunity but it's also an opportunity that if if the city is not able to take advantage of uh of what's available to finance capital needs in our downtown it expires it expires a year from march so we have until next march to um to really do all the work necessary to bond we have to bond by march which means all the preliminary work necessary to know the project scope and the costs and the estimates and the bids and all of that needs to be done well in advance of next march so that's why we're that's where we're coming to you tonight um a quick at a quick at a high level the redevelopment of main street from union street all the way to battery street will substantially upgrade the infrastructure and streetscape to support the local businesses the jason businesses and our community that uses those businesses um it will allow us to make what are essentially environmentally oriented improvements around storm water um making the street both environmentally more sound and aesthetically much more pleasing uh and the results of that are are are are multiple there's multiple positive impacts from that um we think that the the project as you will learn tonight and and as we go forward toward the march vote um will really meet the needs of a diversity of users pedestrians cyclists um motor vehicles and public transit with a real emphasis on pedestrians and cyclists and investing in that infrastructure in the core of our downtown if we can make the investments in the storm water um management the investments that are part of this project it will reduce the pollution of lake champlain which is a priority for I think virtually everyone both on this meeting but throughout the community and by reinvesting in the utilities um and the details of that will be discussed both replacing and and reconstructing and relocating in some instances we are making an investment that that probably has um not been made in in in over half a century and it needs to be made in order for our downtown to be strong and vibrant and so I just wanted to provide that context before we uh go forward um tonight we're going to have hopefully this information will provide you with a detailed description of the project and our DPW team will provide that David White will present the financials and then we will have an opportunity to um answer questions but I want to highlight in the memo that the council got uh there is an error that I I just want to you know take full responsibility for because this memo um came with my name on it so I think it's important to just do that halfway down through page two um it refers to the the the original taxable value of the TIST district it's often referred to as the um the OTV the original taxable value is is it about 170 million that's correct that's correct but the memo says that today's taxable value of our district is 375,500,000 that actually is what we project the value to be at the end of the life of the district the actual value today is is 285 million so we were off by um you know by a fair amount however that doesn't affect any of the other assumptions it was just a um essentially a math error and it made it into the memo and we will correct the materials going forward but I wanted to at least for the council and for members of the public to know that you know we discovered that and we just wanted to be upfront that that was a um just a mathematical error so without further ado I'm going to ask my teammates from DPW to um to to introduce the project. Great thanks director Pine we're going to have senior engineer Laura Wheelock give an overview and I'll help wrap it up. All right so uh Brian did an excellent job beginning our uh our slideshow our slideshow today um we're going to go a little bit through the VEBSI approved TIF projects which is the Vermont Economic Council um what is TIF and how we're going to get the funding for this for the downtown a little bit about the march 2022 bond vote and uh time for some questions and answers at the end. So the approved project from the Vermont Economic Council is Main Street six blocks from Union to Battery as well as the ravine sewer between Union um and the block between Union college Winooski and Maine. It's a little bit confusing um when we first went for the first part of this vote uh back in 2015 we worked on two blocks of Main Street. These two blocks have both voter authorization as well as previous VEBSI authorization. We went in November to receive VEBSI authorization for these other three components of this very large project and this is what's going for the march ballot this year. A quick reminder of what Great Streets Main Street was in 2016 the city undertook us uh an effort to create downtown street design standards for the streetscapes. This was rebalancing the use of the right away with pedestrians transit vehicle bicycles creating new public amenities improving existing ones creating new spaces addressing community needs within the right of way and most recently with Main Street is adding in and improving utilities that are underneath the ground uh as well as putting a heavy emphasis on stormwater improvements within the streetscape and I add in construction because as the city has already worked on construction of St. Paul Street and City Hall Park under the Great Street standards we've learned a lot and realized that that needs to be an active part of the conversation early on. Main Street's effort reached a point where we have this beautiful concept in front of us and it is just a concept and it's not a final concept it's not a final design it's an idea of what Main Street can be. Rebalancing the use of the streets with dedicated pedestrian space space for adjacent businesses to be able to interact within the streetscape utilize the streetscape or just enjoy the streetscape providing amenities that are recommended in the bike walk plan for the bicycles dedicated separated facilities out of the roadway still providing plenty of space for parking for vehicle travel for transit improved lighting these are just the things that you're seeing on the surface the Main Street project in front of you right now also includes below the surface rehabilitating replacing upgrading improving water and sewer infrastructure relocating electrical and relocating communications to allow for all of this infrastructure and this is the streetscape project this next slide takes a little bit but this is to remind you what our Main Street today looks like this was taken this fall we have green belts that are eroded because the lack of pedestrian wide pedestrian facilities they're eroded from our metered parking this is a very wide green belt and trees are not thriving in it we have stormwater needs for stormwater surcharges within our project area our pedestrian infrastructure in this area is aged there are streetscapes that are very barren and dedicated to only two uses street trees that are not in green belts are barely surviving there are accessibility challenges throughout the entire corridor because Main Street is an old street the buildings on the street are aged and they are from a different design standard era the existing infrastructure is cracked and deteriorated and I highlight this slide because Main Street's construction under the downtown TIF could be two to three years it'll be significant but it'll be significant when it's completed if the bond vote doesn't pass and this once in a generational opportunity and investment in the street isn't able to come from that funding source you're looking at 20 to 30 years of slow incremental improvements to address all of these concerns in this large project area the other portion of the project is the ravine sewer this is a 1800s era sewer that crosses between College Street and Main Street it crosses under a portion of the library right behind fire station that's on Wenusky Ave and across the parking lot just west of Memorial Auditorium in this section the sewer is a redstone tunnel and while it is not in failing condition or even significantly deteriorated condition it is not a structure that we can allow development or redevelopment on top of and so the gateway into the city is a surface parking lot and it will have to remain a surface parking lot until we have the ability to either reinforce rehabilitate or relocate this sewer it's historic view of what and where the sewer is located this is the church on College Street we have fire station on Wenusky Ave Memorial Auditorium for orientation the ravine redstone ravine sewer runs underneath the library behind the fire station and through this area into Main Street it is a deeper utility it's more than 20 feet in the ground but unfortunately any development or improvement of this surface parking lot would expose it and and significantly impact it and so I'm going to let this I'm going to turn it over to David White to be able to explain how the city intends to fund this project. Good evening everyone for those who don't know me I'm David White president of Whitenburg real estate advisors and we are under contract to the city of Burlington to both help with the city place project and the TIF districts I want to start by being clear because some people get confused that Burlington is the only community in the state that I know excuse me Milton does too it's one of two communities in the state that has two TIF districts Burlington has the waterfront TIF district and the downtown TIF district so the waterfront TIF district is shown with this kind of fuchsia colored or purple outline I'm excuse me no I take that back it's the orange one thank you Laura you're you're doing a very nice job there the downtown TIF district I'm sorry the purple the fuchsia one is the designated downtown at any rate the blue area is the downtown TIF district and actually wraps around the waterfront TIF district and so it's a little bit confusing because the two intermingle around the area here's church street and this is the Burlington town center soon to be Burlington city place area and this is the old Macy's hopefully and currently high school so we're talking about the downtown TIF district only which is this blue area if you could move on so what is TIF for those who aren't familiar with TIF and how it works it's fundamentally an economic development tool and it and it what it does is you set up a geographical area which is what we showed in blue on the map and certain properties are in others are out and within that area you establish at the time the TIF district is first set up what's called the OTV or original taxable value OTV and that taxable value whatever it is on the day when you establish the TIF district that taxable value is locked in and all the taxes from that continue to go where they've always gone to the education fund to the general the city's municipal general fund etc and you don't touch those taxes so you've locked those in but then the municipality borrows money to make an investment in infrastructure and it not just any infrastructure you can't use it for general city purposes but rather for infrastructure that's specifically targeted to enable public I'm sorry private developments to occur that would not otherwise occur and so you tie the the public investment to the private investment and with the private investment presumably the value of those properties go up and as a consequence of those going up you have increased taxable value and that's where the the word increment comes from it's what's the incremental value and you take the taxes off of that incremental value or a portion of them I'll talk about that in a moment you take a portion of those taxes and those are used to pay the debt service for the bond you issued to make the public investment and then that full circle occurs where you've used you've public bonding authority to make investments that stimulate private investment that increase the taxes that then pay for the bonds and the city of burlington's been incredibly successful with its waterfront tiff district and to date with its downtown tiff tiff district to make the economics work and they're paying very very well in fact in the state of Vermont all the tiff districts are all paying their own way there's not a single one that has failed to pay its own way next slide please so this graph is a little bit challenging to read and I'm not going to spend a lot of time on it but suffice it to say that the way it works for the downtown tiff district is that 75 percent of the educational taxes the new incremental educational taxes go into the tiff district 100 percent of the new municipal taxes go into the tiff district and it's the combination of the 75 percent of education and 100 percent of municipal that pay the debt service and one of the key things to keep in mind there is that particularly that 75 percent of educational taxes are funds that the city would not otherwise have available to stimulate or to pay for the the investment that then in turn stimulates the private development next slide please so with regard to the downtown tiff district it was established in 2011 so it's about a decade old the first debt was incurred in 2016 and the final date as brian said earlier that new debt can be incurred is in 2023 and we actually are fortunate because the legislature over the last couple of sessions has extended it twice one year each time for all tiff districts in the state and that's directly because of the pandemic that they have done that the final year in which the state can use education excuse me the city can use education tax increment is 2036 so we only have a limited period of time about 14 years left where in which we can retain the education increment and use that toward debt service next slide please so previously and laura i think touched on this a little bit but not a lot but we have done the city has done projects with the tiff district already the saint work on st paul street the great streets project work there that has dramatically changed that area was paid through tiff the marketplace garage had some repair work done through tiff the browns court parking area there was brownfield cleanup done there and all part of that project that resulted in the eagles landing project and then also when the city hall park was upgraded there were some stormwater upgrades done on main street at that time because it just made sense from a timing perspective to do it at that time next slide so the proposed public investments are basically what laura talked about the great streets project from main street from south union to battery street it includes the subsurface utilities as well as the relocation upgrading of the ravine sewer in addition to that there are what are called related costs in this case we're talking about a million four hundred and seventy thousand which is what's estimated to to do the design work the operations of the tiff district and the audits and so forth through the entire life of the tiff district from from now through 2036 so for the next 14 or 15 years we're estimating just shy of a million five that in costs that help operate the tiff district and so we're looking at in what's coming before the city council and ultimately the voters is approval for not just the bonding for the capital costs but also the use of the incremental taxes to pay the related costs that help this all come about next slide please so currently as you look at the downtown tiff district where do we stand so the original taxable value was 170 million dollars roughly back when it was established in 2011 currently it's 285 million and again i thank brian for taking credit for the error on the the statement in the the memo but it was my error he trusted my numbers and i made that mistake the correct number is 285 million as the current value in the tiff district but the incremental value look at that number for a moment it's 115 million we've already gained through the work that's been done in this tiff district that's a 66 increase now previously the voters have already approved 10 million dollars in bonding laura referenced this and the earlier projects that i mentioned a moment ago were paid through this and the debt incurred out of that 10 million was five million four hundred and twenty thousand so that means out of what's already been approved by the voters of 10 million there's still four million five hundred and eighty thousand of authority that's been approved that the city could incur based on current approvals and we do expect to tap into that authority as we do the great streets and ravine projects next slide please so as we look forward and what we think will help be stimulated as a result of this great streets main street project what are the private projects and we're being very conservative in our projections there are only three specific projects that we're relying on one is the proposed hotel at the ymca that's well known the second is and this is less well known but that cht champlain housing trust is working with the vfw on their facility their property on south muniski avenue for a substantial redevelopment there but that is a real project that's underway not construction yet but in terms of all the planning and moving forward and then also a more modest project but still material on south champlain street at 151 to 157 south champlain street those are very real projects in which we have a very very high reason to have a high degree of confidence that they will proceed and so those are included in our cash flow projections for the tiff district in addition to that we have made the assumption that there will be just general growth in terms of other property owners doing miscellaneous improvements on their properties that will add about 1 per year to the value of properties in the tiff district overall there are other projects that we're aware of some very significant potential projects that we're not including because at this point they're somewhat more speculative they're not as far along and so we have chosen to be conservative and not included them in our projections next slide please looking at the tiff district as of july 1st the beginning of the current fiscal year for the city there was just shy of a million eight as a positive tiff fund balance and that gives us a good kick start as we go forward from here and as we look forward over the the next 14 or 15 years from this year through 2036 when the tiff district presumably expires we have we have done very detailed projections and expect that the revenue will grow over time from a low of about 2,450,000 to a high of about 3,575,000 during that period of time and the highest annual debt service estimate we have during that time and this looks at all the existing debt that the tiff district has already incurred that five million in change that I referenced earlier plus the anticipated debt that we're talking about this evening if you combine all that together in an individual year the highest amount of debt service we anticipate is about 3.1 million dollars and but the revenues that were projecting combined with the existing tiff fund balance show us that we're very have a high degree of confidence that the tiff fund balance will be positive throughout the life of the tiff district next slide please so what does that look like and this I'm not going to spend a huge amount of time on this slide because they're the numbers are so small that I doubt anybody else can actually read them but what this particular slide is it accumulates all of the information about what the existing debt services what the related costs are projected to be what we expect the tax the tax revenue to be and it looks at the cash flow year by year by year and if you look at the kind of light green column that's toward the right of the screen you'll see that all of those numbers are in black and that's because we're expecting a cumulative positive balance in the tiff fund throughout the life of the tiff district in an individual years the revenue that year might be less than the debt service that year but cumulatively we expect a positive balance and our degree of confidence is pretty darned high that this will be the case I want to caution you of course that under law the city's full faith and credit is pledged if something goes totally awry the city is still obligated to pay but I will give you my personal assessment that I think the odds of that are quite slim next slide please so as we look forward the key thing before the city council this evening and as public hearing is the proposal that the city council put on the march ballot a bond vote to authorize new bonding to finance the costs of the main street great streets project and the ravine sewer work and the new request is for $25,920,000 now this is in addition to the 10 million that's already been approved which means cumulatively the tiff district will have incurred $35,920,000 in cumulative debt of but the the the new debt that would actually be issued would be that $25,920,000 plus the $4,000,000 that has not yet been issued out of the original 10 million in addition to that the request would include the $1,470,000 in related costs and we as I showed in the prior slide and have said a couple of times we are confident that and our projections show that there will be sufficient increment we've issued or put together a public notice that has a lot of detail and I would certainly urge anybody interested to review that public notice for more details next slide please great thank you David to to bring it home any project of this magnitude requires a very extensive public engagement process and we are prepared to do that here you'll see on the left there's two overlapping outreach efforts the first one should the council approve the ballot item to go on the ballot we'll have five or six weeks to work with the public on education around the ballot item and then between February and May will be a second engagement process surrounding the development of the concept plans you saw conceptual renderings from senior engineer Wheelock earlier tonight but those are our initial and we want to engage with key stakeholders to understand what are the elements to make up a successful generational improvement on this key gateway street on the right you'll see some of the stakeholders that we'll be meeting with and I want to thank the many departments engaged in this from CEDO church tree marketplace business recovery planning and and many others who will help us reach many of these stakeholders here is a timeline that lays out really how this unfolds as we project over the next three to four years in 2021 we accomplished a fair bit we achieved a vetsy approval of this entire main street six block proposal and the rehabilitation or relocation of the ravine sewer we also secured the design consultant for the project so moving into 2022 should the council approve this going on the ballot we have that education of voters as you see in that top green line the bottom green line will be the overlapping effort to work on the concept design for main street and the May 2022 is an interesting decision point right there where we hope to get the council's approval on line and grade of the road that is where you evaluate the concept plan that's been developed with the public and and hopefully vote to proceed that would result in us continuing design work as you see in that lower green line through to June 2023 at which point we have final plans and put the project out to bid for a fall 2023 construction start and a minimum of two years of construction how the construction is sequenced will depend in large part about how we engage with stakeholders and how we want to approach the project to minimize construction disrupt but we know from working on st. Paul street early engagement of stakeholders and doing assessment work early which we are doing here will help minimize disruption moving forward next so we really appreciate the time that you've given us here we're happy to answer any questions as part of the public hearing tonight and I will just say that not only are there eight departments contributing here but the number of stakeholders engaged to pull off a 30 million dollar generational reinvestment without impacting property taxpayers will take all of us working together thank you thank you director Spencer I am the team that presented it really appreciate just all the information you've shared with us before I open the public hearing however I'd like to to see if counselors had any comments or questions that they'd like to that they'd like to offer and then we'll go ahead and open it up to the public the the public hearing so any counselors interested in commenting or asking questions at this time counselor Barlow go ahead thank you president Tracy and thank you for that presentation it was super informative I mean a couple of notes here could you could you talk about the the ravine sewer there's talking about either relocating or upgrading and is it which is is it both and how do you estimate cost if you don't know exactly how you're going to tackle it and what would that look like when you fill in it looks like a big cavernous um sort of pipe that one could even walk through it looks like would you fill it in or how would they how would you go about that uh so the approach that our water resources department has is we've done um an engineering estimate of what we think our worst case is which is relocating and constructing a new pipe that would go along our streetscape go under our streetscapes and and reconnect but we don't know that that's the the perfect or the the final answer and so we have to take measurements and study the flow this spring do more condition assessments um hire a consultant to be able to help with final evaluation of where we will get with the the preferred alternative or or the ultimate selection and that's really what the vote and the funding will do is allow for that work to occur but the costing for the project then is based on worst case then generally what we think the worst case is which would be constructing off its existing alignment okay thank you and my other question was we often hear people that are sort of against tiff um um saying that one of the arguments against is that it competes with education funding and I was wondering if maybe I'm not sure who maybe David could talk about the relationship on the education tax increment that's realized by the work and its effect on local education tax rates but that's sure I'm clear yep no I understand the question believe me I've heard this question numerous times um and uh you know the basic concept of tiff is that the investments that the private investments that occur that um generate the incremental taxes for the most part would not have occurred but for the public investment that tiff financed um the the concept here is that if you think about downtown burlington for a moment and all the incredible investments that have been made over decades whether it was the uh converting church street to a pedestrian mall whether it was creating the downtown parking lot uh downtown parking garage whether it was um the previous uh investment just done on st paul street those things directly make downtown a place where people want to be where businesses want to be and where property owners are willing to reinvest and that they create that investment stimulates and enables new private investment and that but for the public investment the private investment would not have occurred and so the tax generation that's going on here are taxes that the state wouldn't have had the education fund would not have had and that the fact that the way this is structured is that the new taxes 25 percent of our going the education fund is a net gain for the education fund these are taxes they never would have received otherwise and once the tiff district is finished they suddenly get this windfall of all the taxes because the debt's been paid off and so the concept here is what what is often called but for but for the public investment these private investments and the new taxes would not exist and we've seen it over and over and over again we've seen it i mean think about burlington's waterfront for heaven's sake do you think the private investment would ever have happened there if the public investment had come first and the answer i think clearly is no so um i understand people who uh ask that question it's a fair question but i think the evidence is solid not just in burlington but other places like saint albin's or hartford that tiff generates private investment that otherwise would not have occurred and therefore the new taxes are not being taken away from anybody because they wouldn't have been there otherwise okay thank you that was very clear thank you councillor barlow councillor mason thank you councillor barlow for that question i mean it is it is a very real question we got as recently as last week from the number of school commissioners so i feel better informed to address their concerns now um i want to circle back to the ravine because i am not sure in all the years of discussion of development of the superblock that i never heard that because of the ravine there was no development you know other than the surface parking lot at the corner of main in south anuski is this a new discovery or what have we just always assumed that that would be done by a you know whoever did the redevelopment of the superblock because if not my jaw is a little bit like wait we never knew this before i'm sorry laura it's not new may i jump in i'm sorry laura but if you look back at the original approval of this tiff district it specifically references the ravine sewer it's not new and it may not have been talked about that much it may not have been in the forefront but this is not new it was part of the original approval but we didn't understand the magnitude of it back then the way we do today laura i'm sorry i cut you off no i i wanted to make sure that either you or brian had a chance to speak to the fact that it was part of the original um creation of this district and recognizing that it did need to be a project as david mentioned it is a little bit more sizable um mostly for the fact that the tiff has capacity to be able to do something significant so that the city can do something significant with this block in the future in no way voting for this project does that guarantee what's going to happen with that it just provides the opportunity for it to be something other than a surface parking lot and i want to make sure that everybody's very crystal clear our water resources group is in a no way shape or form concerned that the ravine sewer is in active failure it's just really in the way of significant development ever occurring on that block at this point in time that is correct and i think it's fair to say councillor mason that one of the challenges in past generations is there wasn't the same uh full awareness we're talking decades ago where projects were built on top of the ravine sewer and those propose a very substantial risk to the city including some municipal buildings so we are really trying to do what's right but for this investment the the better use of a surface parking lot is the gateway to our downtown is not going to happen i think there's a universal agreement on this that the use of that as a service parking lot is not its highest invest use and uh well i i appreciate i thought i knew a lot but there's certainly a lot i don't know so um thank you for that thank you councillor mason don't have any other council carpenter go ahead um this might not tie in but i speaking of the sewer ravine i've heard the fire station is not in good shape and is very affected by that ravine is that at all consideration in this conversation so with this work it'll be identifying how everybody in that block area does connect to the ravine how how their connection would be replaced adjusted corrected um i think that there would be significant impacts to to many of those properties um with this work in a positive way and if i may add um you know i'm aware because my firm was involved with uh a study a few years ago of the a couple of the fire facilities including that one that it doesn't that facility does not meet the current fire department needs and standards and i know that they would love to replace it um that said the ravine sewer itself is behind it is not under it um and to laura's point if this were addressed i think it would ease the potential for that site to be redeveloped for other purposes i will say that it's obviously a significant historic building and and my personal guess this is not a professional opinion a personal guess is that it would be adaptively reused as is as a historic building rather than demolished and replaced but nonetheless dealing with ravine sewer becomes an important piece in what ultimately happens on that site regardless of whether the fire station continues there or ultimately moves okay council carpenter they don't have any other counselors in the queue so we'll go ahead and move it into the public forum side of there or the public hearing side of things so i will go ahead and open the public hearing um i um in order to speak in the public hearing um as a member of the public if you could just please use the raise hand function at the bottom of the the zoom screen and i'll just um call on folks um that way if you folks who are interested in commenting this is only to be commenting on the tiff district so nothing else that's on the agenda or else that's going on the city this is only to be focused on this tiff issue that we just heard about so please focus your comments on just this issue itself and all the other public forum comments um comment rules apply in terms of just respecting decorum and all those of our features so see one person representative china to be followed by karen law representative china i've enabled your microphone thank you can you hear me yes go ahead i know you can because my name just appeared okay so um thanks for i don't see a time limit but i still think this will be less than two minutes so i just want to say i'm excited about um the great streets project um as a social worker um you know i'm sorry representative china i messed up with the with your uh your your um mic there sorry about that that's my fault i think a lot of people wish they could do that to me um so um but it's okay i'll just back up luckily i had just started so um thanks so um you know as a social worker we look at the connection between people in our environment how people's behavior shapes the environment and how the environment shapes human behavior and um on isham street we've done work to turn our street into a garden walk walkway and it's extending to surrounding streets and we had this vision of a garden walkways crisscrossing the city in burlington being the emerald city of the of the green mountains and this beautiful you know urban permaculture and so the great streets and this vision for main street fits into that and i've been you know my office is at 200 main street which was shown in the presentation and um the corner floods um you know because because and the infrastructure is crumbling um it's you know it'll be wonderful to have an office looking out on a garden walkway after all these years and um you know the the environment in that area on main street does affect human behavior in negative ways it um there are incidents of crime and loitering and problems bait and and some of it has to do with the infrastructure and the city's done things like put up giant metal gates and stuff to try to disperse people but ultimately that actually i think reinforced some of the negative behavior but this is the way to go because garden walkways really do you know improve human behavior in so many ways there's evidence showing they reduce violence um and um you know if we do this right we can make these streets more accessible for people um one of the i like being on main street it's accessible to my clients most of my clients are um have Medicaid they use public transportation or they live in the downtown or old north end area um so i like being there um it's it for my clients i like the businesses around me um i'm excited about the vfw's new housing um proposal and i'm hoping they'll be more creative affordable housing built in that area um my only concerns is that if the tiff is supposed to promote private development so that it increases taxes what will that mean for long-term affordability for small businesses like mine in this area um my my concern is that you know my landlord's been able to keep the rent affordable but could um if the development is not done in the right way in that area could it actually cause rent increases that displace our local businesses a few years ago in an mpa when i expressed this concern uh one city official said that businesses like mine don't necessarily belong downtown and that social services could be you know on the outskirts of the city and i actually think that's really the wrong way to think about this our downtown should have a diverse range of businesses of all kinds um and you know because downtown increases accessibility for my clients it promotes inclusion and right now we really need to be thinking about how we invest in improving the social determinants of health and social inclusion is one of those determinants and so for my clients it's important to be able to come downtown because if we're going to treat social anxiety we need opportunities for social exposure and for support and if we're going to build social skills we need social settings and if we're going to treat trauma we need we need opportunities to build connection and belonging and so in the recovery from this pandemic we are going to need more opportunities to reintegrate people not to isolate them more and so i would just end by saying if we're going to truly create great streets i hope we can create public outdoor spaces that bring people together in new and exciting ways and improve the social determinants of health and promote social and economic recovery for everyone and i believe we can do it with this project and i'm excited about it and i look forward to the public engagement that's coming ahead so thanks for letting me speak today thank you so we don't do a back and forth but i did hear a question about small businesses um and how this might impact small businesses going forward from representative chino so did anyone on the team want to speak to that piece um david i'll take a crack at what i think is the essence of representative chino's question which is if these investments which are public investments spur additional private sector investments will that in fact put upward pressure on things like rents for offices like his own and and small businesses and the answer is is not necessarily however it may so we don't have a guarantee that it won't and i don't want to pretend we do what i would say is that the goal isn't to increase taxes per se it's to spur invest additional private investment that raises the values of some of the properties that are underutilized or unimproved and need to have new investment made in them in order to bring them uh perhaps up to a higher standard and um up to an exceeding code um there's a number of downtown tax incentives to get people to do historic preservation and make their buildings energy efficient and make them a handicap accessible all of those positive improvements result from this type of public investment so the the question is a good one what impact does this have on local small businesses if we're successful the the vitality of the downtown is enhanced by the private the public investments so that it it does exactly the opposite it actually supports a strong vibrant local small business economy sorry i uh the screen has gone down can folks hear me yes okay we can see you too better than before others sorry um the next person speaking that i see is karin long um karin i've enabled your microphone i'm sorry can you hear me now yep go ahead okay great thanks so i understand tiff somewhat but the whole idea of tiff if it is to increase the value of those properties so that we can pay back this money that we are buying it has to finance this huge amount of money we're borrowing we need all those properties to improve we need to ski rack we need all those places on main street to like rethink their property i mean that's where our goal is that's what would be the goal of this if you want more money coming from these properties so what brian was just saying is totally true that it is going to drive out the other people i think um i'm upset that this is coming to us on january 10th and you want us to vote on march whatever it is third or fourth that's five weeks isn't enough time to understand this at all and i am aware of great streets and i remember one of the problems with that design people didn't like the idea of how many parking spaces were going to be removed because you're going to take away the parallel parking and we already lost the parking garage so i've been to these meetings a lot and i just remember at dpw meetings that was one argument people had so and i know the stuff on south or north wunuski is just slogging along because people are upset about the parking spaces so what what is the number of parking spaces that will be removed and you know how are you going to deal with this it seems like you want the money but then you are going to figure it all out because i saw that chart where you're going to get the approval but then on down the line you're going to meet with the owners there and all these other things so shouldn't you know really what you're going to do and then come to us for the money thank you thank you did someone on the team want to speak to that question i'm happy to address one piece of that question which is that the new the taxes we're relying on here are for very specific projects they're not they're not we're not trying to increase or are expecting to increase the value of everything in the district that may happen over time it happens naturally over time as properties go up in value but the focus here is on stimulating some very specific projects and over time also relative to the parking question one of the things the city has learned is that we actually need less parking than we thought we needed that we've got a lot of excess parking in this city and then it's more how it's used and how it's allocated and so it's a parking management problem more than a parking quantity problem other than very extraordinary times of year yeah and so i can expand upon that a little bit um and karen is right the previous effort obviously takes a look at the existing space within the street and tries to optimize the way that is being used to allow more opportunities within the street and that is still an active conversation and that is a reason why it is an active conversation past march this concept is not final we are restarting the conversation with our community and we're going to put months into that conversation before we ask the city council to give us their blessing to continue to move this design forward towards a construction project and the reason why it is important to vote on the funding source and this is how previous tiff projects have actually proceeded forward in their plan the funding source requires the voters not just the city council or the administration but it requires the voters approval to be able to use it otherwise the city is just risking its own funds and so we do need voter authorization to really move forward and put a reasonable amount of money into a design consultant to be able to work with the community and work with staff to address the concerns and the ideas that are going to come out of the public process i think that was just add the deadline of march of 23 is when the city if we don't issue bonds by then this opportunity is no longer available and we can't go back and ask for it to be reinstated once it's gone it's gone great thanks for taking on different pieces of that question all three of you don't have anybody else raising using the raise hand function anyone else from members of the public interested in commenting i'm asking a question use the raise hand function at the bottom of the zoom one once twice okay we'll go ahead and close the public hearing i want to thank all of our presenters this evening for just joining us and for engaging with both the council and the public on this issue director pine in terms of next steps we should see this at an upcoming council meeting again for for a vote is that correct yes our plan is to have it come to the council on the meeting on the 24th okay so our next council meeting will be actually taking action on this yeah great thank you for that clarity and appreciate all the work on this from the the entire team thank you so much all right for your time we will move item 6.03 around the general aviation task force that item was removed and will be on our january 24th agenda so that brings us to item 6.04 which is an ordinance regarding applicability of minimum efficiency standards counselor mason thank you president tracy i'd like to make a motion to suspend the rules place the ordinance amendment in all stages of passage and request the department of permitting and inspections to report back to the ordinance committee in a year regarding the status of implementation and ask for a floor back after a second please okay we had a motion from councillor mason seconded by councillor hanson councillor mason thank you president tracy first i want to point everyone to the memo if you did not have an opportunity to take a look at it very well put together memo in terms of process but for the benefit of the public the council adopted a weather weatherization ordinance on may 10th of 2021 at that point in time we were fairly certain we tasked the standards applied for those with exceeding a certain threshold but we tasked both BED and permitting and inspections with going back looking at we recognized that there were some issues associated with contractor availability with rebates etc we asked those guys to go back take a look at that and come back to the full ordinance committee in the full council with their recommendations in terms of how do we get from where we are today to where we hope to be once the ordinance is fully implemented that they did come back we had a hearing before the ordinance committee probably three weeks ago i would say there was the only modification to the recommendation was an acceleration um on between the 50 and 60 btu's the majority of the committee felt a more aggressive time lame timeline than what was recommended would be best so there was a shift in essence from the final year out from being january 1 2026 back to january 1 2025 the pushback by me on that was that you know in essence we all acknowledge there's i think as chris burn said you know asking for something to happen doesn't mean it's necessarily going to happen you know there's there's a queue and trying to force people through the queue is only going to create some administrative work on the city side but regardless of that the full committee before us and what's before us today is to accelerate that time frame and if i'm i'm wrong and my colleagues are correct and we do have the availability from a workforce development perspective kudos to them if not we'll deal with it or a further council will deal with it in 2025 or 2026 um i want to thank both bd and permitting and inspections for doing the hard work and just coming to us and letting us digest and make recommendations um i see a number of i won't introduce everyone who's on on the call right now but if there are specific questions relating to the schedule that's been proposed i will defer to what looks like at least six people uh experts far more expert on this than i so with that i'll turn it back to you councillor tracy thank you councillor mason are there any um questions or comments from councillors councillor hanson go ahead yeah i just want to thank um councillor mason and councillor high tower for working on this in ordinance committee and and all the staff members that work so hard to to develop this um this is a really exciting proposal i think it's it's really critical from the standpoint of the climate emergency and it goes hand in hand with conversations at the state level to really accelerate um weatherization throughout the state and so i'm excited that in burlington we're making aggressive policy to to accelerate weatherization here and specifically targeting rental weatherization where we do have so many you know burlington is majority renters and so many of them are paying really high um heating bills and living in pretty uncomfortable situations um during the winter months so i think this is going to make a huge impact not only on the climate crisis but also on the cost of living in burlington and also on on quality of life um for tenants so really excited to hopefully move this forward tonight and thanks to everyone who has worked on that great thanks councillor hanson anyone else uh mayor weinberger go ahead thank you president tracy i just uh wanted to um offer my appreciation uh as well to everyone that has worked hard on this and put us in position to start making progress on this next year buildings within this ordinance this is a major priority coming out of the housing summits that we hosted back in 2019 and um it is very clear that we cannot get anywhere near our our climate goals if we are not doing everything we can to weatherize the housing stock and i do believe this ordinance is allowing us to finally get to a substantial number of units that had um not um not really um been subject or we've not been successful at reaching in the in the many years of prior efforts this is ensuring that all homes are brought to uh do meet these proper standards for for both climate goals and for livability goals so thank you everyone involved it's uh i appreciated this was something we could do with consensus between the council administration i'm excited to see this take the next step thanks mayor um our next um council high tower yeah i just wanted to agree i guess with everything that's been said before me um i think for folks who don't know some of the history behind this this was i think councillor hanson originally ran on this on his first run and then the administration really ran with it i think at the housing summit so it's been a long time coming but i'm really excited that it's here and yeah just a huge thank you again to the administration and the city team for the staff team for making this happen and like um councillor mason said bringing us really well thought out um proposals that we could just react to and i'm going to say this just because i hope that a lot of the um unions are still watching based on the next item that like councillor mason said this is a workforce development issue so i hope that there can be some great partnerships to make sure that we've got the workforce to do a lot of this good work in the next few years thank you president tracy thank you anyone else you're ready to go to a vote okay seeing no one else will go to a vote all those in favor please say aye hi any opposed that carries unanimously brings us to our final item on the deliberative agenda which is another ordinance councillor mason thank you president tracy i make a motion to waive the second reading adopt the ordinance as amended and ask for the floor back after a second we have a motion from councillor mason is there a second seconded by councillor hanson go ahead councillor mason uh thank you president tracy continuing with the sort of i would say collaborative effort not only among parties but between the council and the administration um i am pleased to sort of bring back and i had to look at my notes it's shocking to me that councillor pine introduced this a year ago it seemed like it was a month ago but um what is before us is is a slightly there has been some you know some revisions from its initial introduction um there were some concerns raised by the city attorney about enforceability as it related to the school district liquidated damage etc through a course of hearings held by the ordinance committee with much input from the city attorney's office and others um as well as input from unions trades persons and others um i feel what we have finally are putting forth before you tonight is something that is is responsible that that does um elevate and recognize um the competitive environment we're in um and trying to provide support for you know higher wages for our skilled contractors also is is i think respectful of the challenges we face in getting contractors to apply for these positions um but i think sort of build a a middle ground in terms of um requiring adherence to labor standards and other but also recognizing um these are competitive jobs um i want to thank the city attorney's office as well as all those who participate in the process and getting us to the final i want to make an introduction i forgot that i would like to move councillor facie i should have been clear there are two versions on the system i wanted to move the one dated one ten 2022 and i'll explain for everyone's benefit the only modification from the earlier versions we had made an amendment to the definition of government funded project the city funded project but we did not change it in its reference throughout the document so the only change from the one that was on the system dated one six and the one ten is making the modification to use city funded project not government funded project throughout great thank you for clarifying that councillor mason which version you were moving appreciate that thank you any comments from councillors councillor hanson yeah another really exciting one out of ordinance committee really was happy to work on this in committee and and thanks to everyone who worked on it thanks to former councillor pine and um councillor council president tracy for for kicking the ball off on this last year getting the ball rolling and and to all the the union folks who also you know called in and participated and helped us kind of sort through this um really everyone that helped this is this is a big deal and really excited to to support this great anyone else mayor weinberger thank you president tracy um i i just uh also wanted to acknowledge that this uh there this is a a change that um there has been discussion of making for a number of years and which has been a priority of numerous organized labor trades as well as others interested in ensuring that city projects are are done right and meet high standards and i do in some ways um see this you know this is as a comparable to what we do with the liberal wage ordinance where when the city is making investments directly when the city is procuring services we can ensure that our values are upheld and that the uh the work that happens related to those projects are are compensated fairly i think what we're doing here tonight is consistent with state policy that is already in place and i just want to make it clear that i fully support it and i'm glad that we were able to reach closure on this after discussion and work for a long period of time great thank you mayor anyone else okay we're ready to go to a vote i see no one else um we'll go to a vote all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed that carries unanimously thank you to um everyone who worked on this as well um and i will go to um committee reports having now completed our deliberative agenda are there any committee chairs wishing to offer a report councilor handsome great thank you the transportation energy and utilities committee we were going to meet um we were going to have a meeting i think i don't even remember on the 11th or 12th maybe or sometime next week but we're not we've canceled that our next meeting is going to be on tuesday the 25th um at 5 p.m thank you thank you any other committee chairs wishing to offer a report this evening okay seeing not oh councilor jane go ahead racial equity inclusion belonging have a meeting on the 18 5 30 and we will be receiving a presentation from burlington school district equity inclusion director henry sparks about race racism related issue in the school and community thank you thank you anyone else any other committee chairs okay now we'll move on to item number eight general city council general city affairs i'm wishing to comment on general city affairs this evening okay seeing none we'll go to city council president update the one update that i just want to relay that i've already shared with you all um is that we do have a a need for two renters and one commercial property holder in order to fill out the identities that were laid out in the reappraisal re-raisal ad hoc committee resolution um that came forward so we those applications are available on the board and commission um website um vacancy page um the application um the applications are open for just those positions so not the other positions for which we've already had applicants um that that meet those requirements but just those those folks that just folks with those identities um so that we can fill out the rest of the committee um would really appreciate just the councils um and and others um assistance in getting these filled out um we were we were supposed to to fill have the committee um assigned already but we didn't have those applications and i don't feel comfortable appointing the the just a partial committee um and getting that started partially because i think that there was some intentionality to the resolution so please encourage folks that you know who um who are burlingtonians who do fit those identities to please apply um it'll be open again through friday so please again um have have folks apply to that um that particular position um with that i will turn it over to mayor weinberger to close us out thank you um just two topics i'd like to speak to tonight one i just um want to uh make sure it's clear um in a way that wasn't spoken through directly after the uvm presentation earlier tonight um our the administration's thinking um is that uh the planning commission is prepared and ready to start reviewing this proposal at that level and staff is uh is prepared for that as well if counselors would like further discussion um at the council level before the planning commission begins its work of course um please let me and mega know basically of course the council will be the recipient of the planning commission's work and uh can will have to further engage it when they're done but if folks think that further conversation either informally or through a work session some sort would be helpful as the planning commission is beginning its work but please be in touch and we'll uh we'll work with you on that um the the other item i the other thing i want to speak to is just uh a week ago um today uh burlington lost a wonderful member of our community when alan paul who is uh c councilor caron paul's father passed away peacefully at his home that's the reason that council paul was not with us tonight missing perhaps her first city council meeting ever um i was touched by all that i learned about alan when i joined caron uh her family and friends in the paul family at the online memorial service and then at the burial at the hebu holy society cemetery afterwards alan's life was he was very involved in the life of uh city burlington a number of ways um wanted to to note his passing here tonight and this in his 90 years on earth alan paul managed to touch the lives of countless numbers of people in numerous ways certainly through the love he showed his wife of 67 years lc his three daughters and their spouses his grandchildren and great grandchildren also through his work as an attorney where he provided decades of legal services to many clients and through the numerous community organizations force he volunteered to make our city and state even better during his life of service alan helped grow the legal profession here in burlington and in bremont um in a number of ways founding one of the preeminent law firms in the city that is still going strong today paul frankin collins and also in supporting the founding of the remand law school and serving on its board and as its board's chair he also served on the board of trustees of the university of remand which was his alma mater alan loved horse racing and golf and practice and taught the virtues of working hard and playing hard notably and relevant to this body um uh the city council um alan served as an elected member of the uh the organization that came before the city council the burlington board of alderman and he represented uh what is today basically ward six it um i know has been very special to our colleague karen to serve in the very same ward as her father there is so much more about alan paul that was special and interesting and if you've not had a chance i suggest that you read the beautiful obituary in seven days and on behalf of the city of burlington i want to wish our colleague karen and the entire paul family love strength and happy memories of how may his memory be a blessing thank you president tracy for the opportunity to share it thank you so much and certainly want to extend heartfelt condolences to the entire paul family for their loss with that our um our meeting agenda is concluded so a motion to adjourn is in order she moved moved by councillor megey is there a second second seconded by councillor mason any discussion seeing none we'll go to a vote all those in favor please say aye any opposed we are adjourned at nine fifty eight we'll see you in a couple weeks folks