 Order at 6.33 p.m a few words about meeting logistics anyone who's joining remotely please set your first your display name is your first and last name anyone who addresses the council please start by saying who you are and where you live and we ask that you keep your comments whatever they are to under three minutes if you're speaking about a specific agenda item please keep your comments germane to the topic anyone who wishes to be recognized must be read what wishes to speak must be recognized by the mayor and again keep your comments to the topic of which you're addressing and if you go beyond the time limit or go beyond the topic under discussion you may be asked to maybe interrupt it I'll also mention that around 8.30 depending on what's going on we will we'll have probably a 10 minute break and that's the general practice for all of our meetings and away we go start up by asking the members if we could approve the agenda everybody happy with the agenda Donna I would like to add an item that is the intention is to not apply any late fee to the late property tax payments of those eight houses that our planning department declared as substantially damaged by the flood and they're the ones who have to comply or demolish their homes so I would like to add that okay should we add that under other business great okay and so unless everybody can speak up I don't know any other solution for those of us in the room as far back thank you that's a that's a very good point and you know this is our second meeting in this room we're going to see if we can get some house sound for future meetings because people are entitled to be able to hear the timing was just perfect wasn't it yeah okay the motion to approve the agenda with the modification that I think we just accept it yeah so yeah we don't need a motion we just say everyone's happy with it we're moving forward next on the agenda is general business and appearances this is an opportunity for any person to address the council on any item that is not on the agenda and again it's a three minute limit and Councillor Bate will assist us with keeping track of time Steve speak from Steve Whitaker I'd like to raise a couple issues until my time runs out I've spoken to quite a few people and have walked the streets both during the flood after the flood days after the flood and in recent weeks and the amount of silt toxic silt that we know contains feces and chemicals and oil residue that is blowing around it's very of it irritant and unfortunately even more corrosive is what the reaction I'm getting from the folks who express concern of it they have no faith that it's worth their time to tell council about it they have no faith that y'all will do anything about it and to me that's more corrosive because that discourages participation and all the other issues that are vital importance so I want to raise both of those red flags years ago I recommended a vacuum cleaner that Steve Everett had seen in Europe that could have been purchased for the price of the dysfunctional sweet sweep street sweeper we have and it's it's really not right to put a public event on Elm on Langdon this weekend when you go and look at the bridges and they still have a quarter inch of self you look under our benches and there's a half inch of silt you look up and down the railway and it we still have a toxic environment even if we've become a newer to it and we don't have a system to clean up Confluence Park though the bike path the handicap ramp out of the transit center it's real serious I in the interest of time I'm a petition for a agenda item on that at a future meeting but secondly the proposed blue ribbon council I think it's imperative that the makeup of that council be fresh non biased and be wide open to both future ideas and criticism of the current response that will not occur if our city manager is an installed member there I think the council should decline permission for that to be the case that council was not convened by this council it was created by Montpelier alive and the foundation and they don't get to do something like that when you're in charge okay they don't get to decide who's gonna put their foot or I don't deny that bill has deep experience and long maybe too long a history here but we can't allow it to potentially sabotage or put a foot on the scale of this opportunity to really get some fresh ideas and and fair assessment of the Good Samaritan shelter a congregate shelter in the remains of a pandemic is a really bad idea it's dangerous it's ludicrous to consider a pet a congregate shelter at the Elks Club those bathroom facilities shower facilities could be used if they're there I'm not sure they are but smaller huts spread out across the land and people have to walk to a bathroom is fine and safe people have secure storage for their personal effects they can have restrooms we can get some huts Conestoga huts are a thousand bucks we could even create more of them or the platforms for them for other sections of the state and help get some gainful employment for the folks that are going to house up there so I know I'm out of time but those are valuable ideas that we need to put a priority on thank you yeah I'll just mention for your benefit and the benefit of the public the city is represented on this commission by the city council president and although we do anticipate that the city manager and other city officials will maintain a liaison role but not as a voting member and this and the city manager was very clear that he believed that it should be elected official not staff on that commission thank you I missed that now okay all right next any other members of the public under general business and appearances I'm not seeing anyone in house and I'm not seeing anyone line with their hands raised okay we can move on to the consent agenda there's a request to remove item I from the consent agenda for a further discussion any requests for take anything else off the consent agenda okay I would entertain a motion to adopt the consent agenda all right any discussion all those in favor signify by saying aye aye anyone opposed okay thank you item I counselor Heaney wanted to take this off the consent agenda and could we have a little explanation of what this is you know this is one of those things where this is an annual while she's coming out this is an annual basically we have some funds that need to be carried forward from one year to another and they're just assigning them to be put into it's kind of a ministerial thing that we have to do every year just to make sure that the funds that need to be put in special funds do and don't get all swept out into someplace else so but I will let someone brighter than me explain that our fund balance policy annually this is presented to you all usually it's in June this year I waited because I felt it was more prudent to have the complete numbers to then have you do this instead of have it fluctuate and then this will be used for the audit preparation but funds that are restricted or non-spendable or committed by council are included in this list some of them are dictated by grant agreement or statue or governmental accounting rules and some of them are items you've chosen to commit and continue to commit based on changes year after year so that's what makes up this list everything that's not on this list falls into the unassigned bucket so that that's what this is doing it's just a formality in line with the fund balance policy that shows what is non-spendable restricted committed and assigned so this is income from fiscal year 2023 that we're shifting from the two thousand twenty three budget to our reserves so this encompasses fund balance from prior years as well as changes that happened during fiscal year 23 that impacted each of those numbers so just trying to understand this because I knew so are these like reserve funds that just weren't used and they're just moved to forward so basically if we're trying to put 15 percent aside of your wisdom the goal but it does accumulate for different yeah there are other purposes that accumulate fund balance so our goal is to have 15 percent in unassigned for you know shortfalls or unanticipated events but we also carry other fund balance that has specific purposes or that we have assigned or US council has assigned for specific purposes and then the reserve funds just it's basically any expanded reserve funds to shift just into the general budget no so for example and say five this is a for instance it's not specific you know say the council is set $50,000 in reserve for fixing park trails just make that up so over the years we spent 10 15 so now there's like 23,000 left you were just you're just making a motion to move that to keep that reserved for that purpose so that it's carrying forth so there's a record that it doesn't at the end of fiscal year without the council saying we intend to reserve this money or keep it assigned it would go into the general fund so you have to intentionally choose to keep those reserve those items that were set aside for certain purposes and a few years ago probably more than a few now we went through and called through them and got rid of a bunch of them and we do that every year now is to you know see if there's any we'd recommend getting rid of but most of these are active and so that's it's but it does you know the auditors are going to say what's your basis Sarah and Bill for holding this money was it because the council voted on it to keep these in reserve because there's so much material I'm trying to absorb it off is the so for the reserve the goal is 15% we're going into a year coming up that's obviously very challenging for budget so we're not obliged to 15% now right well so we don't budget for the fund balance it's just our goal is to get have it when we get to it is to try to have that much reserve and that the reason for the policy was that was that was what was considered a good safe amount and then the reason was once we hit 15% if we were to exceed it then the council could have a conversation what to do with the excess should that be spent on a specific project or reduce taxes or you know whatever but the idea was once we get beyond 15 then that becomes fair game so we were pretty close to it last year but we're going to drop down this year but our goal ultimately is that that's the safe amount that we should have that's the recommended amount by auditors etc thank you how can we adjust these numbers once they're rolled over can we can we adjust them what do you mean after if we if we reserve them for the upcoming budget can we alter them at all later I believe in the budgeting process the items in here that are up to you that are not restricted by grants or statute at any time you can make a decision to spend that money or allocate it to something else okay and then all the others are restricted somehow yes so if we got a grant from the federal government it says it has to be used for fixing the city hall after the flood that's the only thing we could use that for yep so if we hadn't spent all that money during FY 23 then a portion of that would be restricted for the future and would only be able to use on the city hall so you then you would see expenses in that next year that didn't appear to be budgeted for but we're coming out of the reserve okay thanks Ellen did you have your hand up okay everybody happy great I think it's always good to raise these questions so that we all understand what we're voting on so is there a motion to pass item I Donna second any further discussion all those in favor signify by saying I and the oppose okay we've adopted item I the consent agenda and we are now up to appointment to the homelessness task force and we have one application Meredith Warner is Meredith Warner here oh great oh Meredith hi do you want to unmute yourself and introduce yourself to us hi sure yeah my name is Meredith Warner I'm a monthly resident I'm also a employee at Good Samaritan Haven I do fundraising and development there I've been attending the homelessness task force meetings just to pay attention to what's going on and it was alerted to the need for another member and felt like I could make the time to do it and have a vested interest anybody have any questions for Meredith okay is there a motion it's not really what we're here for I know you may have concerns about the task force but this is specifically the appointment of this applicant he's it's been moved and seconded to appoint Meredith Warner to the homelessness task force all those in favor signify by saying aye any opposed all right Meredith thank you for coming forward to do that and of course you're free to stay out we always tell people they're free to stay on beyond me their item and they usually blink off pretty quick can't blame them okay that brings us to item seven and can't mitigate Wade Park this is an item that was put on a request of Linda Berger so Linda why don't you come on up hi I live in district one I'm also a Greenmount Cemetery Commissioner the Montpelier policy on camping is that nothing in the policy is intended to permit or allow individuals to camp on publicly owned property it's within boundaries of the city only in emergency situations where individuals without other resources have been left with no other options for camping city intervention includes encampments are determined to be in high sensitivity areas for environmental protection factors will be subject to intervention and asked to move or relocate given their potential degradation to the environment key points regarding Gateway Park Gateway Park is a small pocket park most of the land except for the park parking lot with the rocks around it is owned by the state the cemetery owns the parking lot years ago the cemetery received a transportation grant to transform this area into Gateway Park as part of the grant the cemetery is responsible for maintaining this area and has been involved in mowing debris removal the mural project as well as graffiti graffiti removal from the state underpass structures the park is touted by the city as being located at the western Gateway to Montpelier it sits on the edge of the Winooski River it includes trees places to sit parking a bike rack river access in a canoe launch in the 2017 Montpelier master plan the cities by a diversity conservation areas it is listed as part of site M the western corner flood plain with flood plain forest and underdeveloped flood plain health and safety concerns currently the land on which there are campers contains toxic silt contaminated soil and dust from the flooding there are piles of rock and dirt near the tents from sewer construction at the cemetery the 10th are literally in the Vermont AOT heavy-duty construction area so it's dangerous the encampment at Gateway the campers have been camping campers have been camping at Gateway since July 2023 specific campers at Gateway have to decline the cemetery's offer dated 919 to use a safe section of the cemetery with water trash in a portal at if the city council approves this the campers declined because once the snow closed the roads in the cemetery they would have to relocate and they planned on camping all winter thus bring this brings into question if this encampment is in fact emergency shelter campers initially stated that they would stay that they would stay where they are at Gateway Park without clean water or trash and that they have a bucket to use as a toilet for when the state's portlet is removed to reiterate this camp encampment is semi-permanent their initial plan was the river would be their septic system and the fragile fragile vegetation on the bank would be possibly disturbed recently the campers stated they are planning to rent a portal at keep it locked and remain at Gateway Park without water or trash facilities state statutes this is state land stage statutes on use of property it's VS 19 VSA 106 highways overnight camping a person shall not use any part of public highway right of way a public rest area associated with the public highway or any public land not so designated by the agency department or municipality having control of same as an overnight camping area for the purpose of overnight camping a person who violates this section shall be fine not more than $50 for each day that he or she is in violation there's other kinds of camping that the state allows there's state primitive camping there's use of fish and wildlife lands there's but there if there are no fish and wildlife sites in the Montpelier or Washington County area near us so and it's interesting I looked in the statutes I don't think the state has addressed emergency shelter in part in camps yet I couldn't find that so once again the cities are trying to lead on dealing with a significant problem for people and anyway questions about the policy of the city my questions are should the city revisit that all parks are considered highly sensitive areas literally as I read the policy if I needed a place to camp I don't know where I would go I have some potential alternative park at Park Park Park for encampments that are fully accessible and are not in environmentally sensitive areas there's Mill Pond Park there's Harrison Preserve there's Summer Street Park there's City Hall Plaza there's also potential alternative sites within designated areas redstone we could utilize specific nonsensitive areas in Hubbard Park or North Branch Park should Montpelier compile a map or list of public properties to utilize for emergency camping questions about the illegal encampment at Gateway Park what was the city intervention was the was the city of Montpelier encampment response form completed what were the findings and actions for both tents there's now another tent there who supervises the actions of the peer support outreach worker in a reported case there seems to be no process for public reporting and feedback to the public there is no time frame or flow chart for responding to public referrals and recourse for perceived inaction or perceived inappropriate response this is the form is on page 13 why is there a lack of specificity in the definition of emergency shelter and sleeping what's a reasonable time frame for the city and for campers when does an emergency become an entitlement either by the campers or by the peer support outreach worker page 9 of the policy possible interventions within a 24 hour time frame GMC offered at the cemetery offered space on 9 19 23 is the police involved in organizing a response as indicated on page 8 and camping in cars is not addressed in this policy so the problem as I see it is there's the legal camping at Gateway Park it was recognized in the policy that is that it's a sensitive area it's when it's not unfortunately really devastated by the flood and by construction people use that tiny pocket park to sit look at the river go walk in the river go fishing watch their canoes given the status of the riverbed at this point I don't know that they'll be able to launch canoes for a while so that's my concern I don't know how the city can condone violating a state statute excellent I've got two questions and there they may come across as being aggressive but it's really just trying to explore your thinking and the questions are one what harm do you believe that the two people there are doing and two what would you request that the city do that I didn't I think there's more of a harm done to them that soil is toxic as Steve Whitaker had indicated it's that great toxic soil I went there the other day and it closed off my throat and my lungs it's exactly the stuff the silk that we had after the flood so I and as a human being I wouldn't want to live or have people live in a construction zone so I genuinely feel first the harm is done to the people that are there I think the city can do better it's a it's it should be a shame of itself and there's other parks in the city or other I don't know what the public properties are in the city my third I've never seen a map I don't know a list but there must be places and I listed a few of the parks that seem to me from just briefly looking at them had potential for having safe respectful camping sites so that was that's the answer to the first question in the second question I'm sorry the second question really what are you asking the city to do what do you want the police or somebody to go and either arrest these people are moving off the land I don't know if the city has looked at the forms from the outreach workers I don't know what has been done I'm assuming the city is looking but now there's another 10th there and you know I let you know that it's not a that it's in violation of state statutes so the city of my pillar wants to be in violation of a state statute I I think that's an interesting position for the city to be in okay I'll mention to people that I went over there at lunchtime today to talk to the people who are staying there and I talked to the gentleman whose name I didn't catch unfortunately he was who's staying there and he said they were not going to be able to be to get over here for the meeting tonight but it's very very actually very neat and nice place to be given the limitations of living outdoors and he specifically said he what they wanted to be where they are separate from other homeless again and can't miss but bill do you have anything to follow up I would say that we try to follow the policy as best we can you know we have seen an uptick in in unhoused folks over the last few years and try to make evaluations as to how the city responds based on the disruption that a group is causing the location those types of things we don't want to make a police response as our first response we don't think that's appropriate and they don't want to get in the middle of it you know I it's a technical issue but to the extent that there's a violation of state statute it's not the city that's violating state law it's the people who are on keep you know the city isn't committing any any violation that if if there's a violation it's these people are are doing that the state to our knowledge has not asked us to do anything nor chosen to do anything so you know I get it I mean it's it's a tough situation but so our interpretation of shelter was that there is adequate rooms in shelters for people and specifically talked about you could be on a city land unless there was a place to go for a shelter and while there may on any given night be a room or two available for shelter there's certainly far more people than a room or two that are out and you know I think people have been camping in certain parts on city ground I think in the perhaps the more wooded areas of Harbour Park folks have been in the cemetery has offered its base people have camped up at the former country club so there are areas of city land that we have made determinations that no one was being harmed that that it was a situation now you know Linda raises a good point about the potential harm to the individuals and I don't know I don't we haven't really thought of it from that perspective before in terms of what our responsibility is to them as far as you know it being an unsafe area and that's area of the cemetery that we've used for campers before it was not touched by the floodwaters it's near the Port Olat it's near water it's near the trash and it's a safe area two different sets of campers have used that space it's also supervised you know as much as the work day and one more thing the campers have been incredibly respectful of the land that where they are it's just they've been model campers in a really unsafe setting in the public I'll start with members of the council I think there are a bunch of people I'm not sure whose hand is up first so start down at your end of Donna well what I was visiting them there was just one tent there tonight but and they were only planning to stay until it got colder they weren't planning to stay all year did they tell you they were they had a conversation with okay the cemetery director yeah this is very very pleasant and yeah yeah I see it as an issue so a couple things I want to clarify that this is state lands that they're on yes right so I mean I think that bill addresses but this isn't this isn't a city our city policy doesn't apply here we don't actually have the authority to make people leave off state land or set tell them they can stay is my understanding it's kind of a non-issue it's up to the state am I right about this I think I generally yes I think there is a definitely a fine line between if somebody were breaking into a state building at night and our police were handing them or if somebody was committing a violation on the statehouse lawn we could we could remove them from the situation but that would be in response to an action not just being there and I think perhaps I don't want to speak for police or anybody else because I don't know for sure the answer but it's possible that if the if the state called us and asked us to ask on their behalf then that might be different but in terms of just us having authority over state property we don't great and I wanted to say that I did not know that the cemetery had offered space it which is fantastic and and I want I want to kind of like pin that to talk about ways to make that workable for people if it doesn't it sounds like it doesn't work for these particular folks but if there's some way that's fantastic it'd be great even offered to help transport their camping gear up to the site yeah and then the final thing is they don't want to move and and that you know part of what we part of what I think is built into our policy and where value that I think is important for us always to act on is respect for people's autonomy and for their ability to make individual decisions and and you know have have control over their own lives and so if they're not feeling like it's a health risk and I would say that it is open for debate whether the silt on the ground is a health risk I'm not saying it's not but I'm saying it's open then I'm not comfortable with going in and saying we think it's not safe for you so we're making you leave off of this land that doesn't long test that we don't have any authority over so I'm I'm happy just to let them stay and that's the best place that they they've decided they want to be Linda do they know that they're on state land I take it they don't know they're on state land they think I don't know what I don't know what we see someone nodding I think they apparently they do they do know and the and and you'll get a chance to tell us about that and the the site that you offered them their objection was had to do with seasonal wind so far I didn't have the conversation Patrick our director Patrick conveyed that information that access would be difficult or that they wanted that we don't plow the roads in the cemetery in the winter most of the roads there's just the lower level roads so it wouldn't be as accessible with my understanding was the concern also to answer your question so the place they're on right now is totally flat yeah and these are people with some mobility issues so having to climb up into the hills of the cemetery probably be a real problem for them it's not way up in the hills of the cemetery it's right near the garage got you okay and I don't want to cut you off yeah I'm just curious about there's no there's no heating how what is that what is the plan for I don't know what their plan is that's not my I can tell you what they told me yeah the new the new tent that's appeared is the tent that they brought in that's intended for winter camping and they're going to be getting to bring the heater in catalytic heater or something I'm not certain okay you know I'm gonna I know there are other people want to talk but I'm gonna call on you right now because it sounds like you're you're knowledgeable okay well why don't you come up to the table so we can be picked up on the microphone my name is Tammy Menard my husband Lucas and I have been out there since the end of July I have to have two knee replacements we have talked to Patrick about the site that was proposed to us up behind the cemetery Patrick has told us that the site that's there they plow the main road to the main building this site actually is up the hill and further back probably another 500 feet or so uphill I cannot get in there during the winter the reason we are to have chosen Gateway Park is because it is flat and because it has an physical address where my ride can pick us up to come to town we are in the process of getting a winter tent which arrived yesterday so the two tents that are currently there and the new one that came yesterday the smaller tent will be taken down and stored the bigger tent that we've been sleeping in is going to put all of our totes and storage stuff in so there will be two tents there we are planning on tarping off our tent and heating it with a BTU a buddy heater which throws off some good heat to keep us warm it is not the first winter we've spent out at Gateway Park usually we have a vehicle however we lost our vehicle a couple years ago and have not been able to replace it so and as for health and health issues we are checking into getting a compost toilet but we had to buy the tent first so we will be getting a compost toilet as of right now we are using a bucket it is being emptied in the porta potty that is out there at the moment when the porta potty leaves we have two outlets here in town where we will be able to empty that bucket until the compost bucket gets there trash is taken out once or twice a week whenever the bag gets full it usually goes out and I'm sorry mayor when you were out there this afternoon I was doing laundry so but if there's any questions we will be more than willing to sit down with anybody and do whatever we can to rectify this we've noticed while we've been there the amount of traffic in the parking lot doing illegal things has slowed down quite a bit and there's been no new graffiti out there we've chased the kids that had cans in their hands walking across the grass to go do it out of there just by coming out of the camp because the dog alerted us to people there we're not disrespectful in any way shape or form to anybody out there we try to keep the area clean neat and well-kept there is an extra tent right there out there at the moment but we're in the process moving down one tree length away from the parking lot so there's not so much dust we're gonna reseed and rake up where we were so I don't know what else I can do or either one of us could do we have no place in town to be we have one social security check in month for two of us to live on and I'll sorry $900 just doesn't go very far with two people well I'm so glad you came here because I was I was disappointed that you you weren't gonna be able to be here so thanks for coming well it was last minute find a ride he said oh yeah I can get you there so yeah I just yeah has anyone with a state decal on their car stopped by to say hi no the state doesn't know you're there I'm sure the state knows where there I'm sure they know because state vehicles go by there all the time on that highway and on the route to okay so I am absolutely sure that the state knows where there thanks anything else going down this way from any other Lauren do you have anything like it's just the way our policies written so when the Elks Club shelter opens does that trigger any different implementation of our policy if there technically if there's a room if there's a room available someone's you know we don't have to leave them on city land you know the way it's been the last year or so there's just been so many more people and there are rooms available even if there's you know a room for one person in a night you know it's like which one gets you know we've been trying to be as humane about it as possible and looked at you know how people are treating their situations and what other disruptions are involved or are they are they in more sensitive areas so that's how we've been interpreting the policy and you know I see Rick it wants to speak to toward that but yeah I mean there's only gonna be Rick will tell you for sure but I want to I think you know up to 15 beds it's not like we're gonna be able to house everybody all winter okay Tammy as for the shelter being I believe out by the Elks Club out by the old golf course my understanding and I know it's an issue for us is there's no transportation to it there's no city bus that goes out there and I'm hearing there's no other way to get out there I cannot walk it I had all I could do to walk in from the car here today I have to have two new replacements done and I have to be on flat ground my husband has a psychological disability he can't be around a lot of people we can't be in a shelter gotcha and he has a letter stating from his doctor he cannot be in a shelter we tried doing the Good Samaritan Havens shelter in Berry four years ago I think it was it didn't work out very well not that we were thrown out it's just he had a hard time being around that many people I do check regularly to see if we can get into a motel but there's a waiting list or we have to go all the way down step down southern part of the state when all of our doctors are here so this is where you need to be so this is the only alternative we have we're trying not to be in town sleeping in doorways or around all the people that are drinking because we're not big drinkers there we just don't want to be around troublemakers we're just like to keep to ourselves and you know we go into town clean up three days a week Monday Wednesday and Friday we take showers we come we have friends that are giving us place to shower and we wash up three or four times a week ourselves if you know there's no hygiene issue we have places to get water right now Patrick at the cemetery has told us we could fill our water jugs off of one of the spickets when that shuts down in October we have places in town to fill our water so we are we are trying to be self-sufficient we don't use a lot of the agencies all of our equipment is bought by us so you know we're doing the best we can trying to survive yep I totally get that thank you Zach I'm going to try to speak up I think it's easier yeah Zach Hughes mom pillar and I want to answer the questions laid out by Linda because I think look at the policy you'll see the form there I'm not really we I don't I'm part of the ball I'm the volunteer part of this response Don Little does the GSA gym gets married inside and we have quite a good network we communicate constantly around this stuff we communicate with city staff so we were aware of Gateway our system is not very popular but what we tend to do is we give a 24-hour note to the person and say we'd like you to sleep you can't sleep here here's some here's a number for you to call so we can help you find another spot that is generally how we respond and I I think this bag I mean we can't do it here tonight but I think at some point we're gonna have to have a discussion about the land inside the public land I I didn't really want to come here because I've been trying to do it offline but it's been very difficult to do that to try to talk about this even in committee because we keep getting told there's just nothing there what I'm talking about is I've watched two Ninth Circuit rulings out of the West Coast which aren't applicable here necessarily but are concerning to me because they're public it's public land so the issue of being told this area is off limits this area is off limits where can people go where can I send though somebody where can I offer to send someone and telling me this area sensitive is just not gonna work very much longer without me raising this concern and I didn't want to do it here but I feel like Linda bringing this up was an opportune time because unfortunately this isn't going away and we know and I've seen let's see there's a second ruling out of the Ninth Circuit says the same thing as the first one with a little more narrow than this so I I raised a concern we continue to coordinate with the city but again I feel I think the city's feeling like there's nowhere out there so what happens is we get these parks up we got someone in the park let's move them along that's not okay we need to find spots and before you ask me where I don't know where but that's not my job because I don't own that land okay so I want to put you all notice that I am monitoring and I will speak up again if I have to thank you very much and I will yield for questions thanks a Rick yeah thanks Rick D'Angelo's Montpelier resident and also the director co-director of Good Samaritan Haven you know I have to say I'm I'm just so moved by the remarks tonight the respectful remarks both from Linda and also from Tammy it just illustrates the complexity of this problem how vexing it is and and how we're all trying to do the right thing but yeah it's still very very difficult so thank you guys and Tammy if there's anything that we can do to help you know just reach out to Dawn and we will do our best to assist you I've got a couple of comments I'll try to keep it very brief you know the numbers of this problem that we have right now with homelessness is like nothing we've ever seen before in Vermont I've been working here for over 30 years in housing it's really really bad the shelters are full right now and the motels are essentially full we've got 60 to 70 people living outside in our our area Washington County so and there are people and we have been struggling all summer long to find good places for people to direct them where to camp and the most difficult places to find the type are places that kind of places that Tammy described where you can drive in that there's good access and so it's understandable why they're there I also wanted to make comment about the state law you know there are folks all over the state camping on state property and including pull-offs and in fact we had some involvement you may be aware that there's a little picnic camping area right outside of Waterbury on route 2 may have seen it before and there is a group that's been camping there all summer and we had some involvement with them and we did coordinate with the governor's office and they basically said that they have a hands-off policy unless there's a real egregious problem so they understand and they're trying to allow people as much flexibility as possible to find the best shelter that they can Steve Steve Whitaker you may recall that when I first prevailed and pleaded with y'all to create the homelessness task force that the priorities were hygiene toilet showers designated camping areas phone charging and we haven't accomplished any of those and it's been what four years now so I want to remind you of how inept our response has been to creating designated camping areas I commend how what I've heard tonight from all parties and I also recognize the concern it's admirable that you're looking out for your perception of the health of the of the folks that may not have the wherewithal to understand or assess the risk I feel the risk I wouldn't camp there but could we cap the silt that surrounds this area could we put a toilet trailer that gets pumped out or a shower trailer that gets pumped out in some of these designated areas maybe not there but I originally identified peace park on the opposite side of the river but you'd need like a golf cart or something to get people to town I don't know why we don't prevail upon my right to you know or green mountain transit to do a golf cart you know we got we give them that transit center for a dollar a year they don't even keep the bathrooms open okay that's gross neglect of city management to not enforce that lease and keep those bathrooms open the city should use some of its 450,000 to keep those bathrooms open around the clock but Elks Club is a possibility Hubbard Park a small section of Hubbard Park but if you want to it's important that dignity privacy agency autonomy and opportunity be kind of the five legs of a stool of how to support folks that are unhoused and give them every opportunity to get back into under a firmer foundation so showers let's not miss the opportunity we're going to turn your turn down the 110 straight state street but rebellion and heirs have empty barbershops now which is a perfect place for public bathrooms and showers for bikers for old folks for Appalachian trail hikers for unhoused people we could we could do public bathrooms on Elm Street right now in some of those vacant barbershops right we should not miss that opportunity it was always out of reach because no one was going to displace those tenants those tenants aren't there now so we should we should seize that opportunity so in a nutshell we should have ordered should have used some of that money and ordered shower and toilet trailers back then and then place them where we want to encourage folks to stay out of watersheds we don't want I can imagine we don't want folks up on paying turnpike with beautiful bucolic water supply that's it that's like even up there you know around that reservoir so there are plenty of areas Hubbard Park Peace Park Confluence Parks out of Commission for now you get the idea thanks I wish you had done more between then and now Rick de Angelis I see you're still on the meeting if you have an answer to this question is some kind of transportation up to the shelter part of the plan for this oh yeah yeah sorry I didn't address that I knew there was one more thing yeah we will be running a bus route up there twice an evening and so yeah but the problem is is that we're going to fill up that our normal capacities 15 I have no doubt that we're going to fill up that shelter every night so I would say if there are other places that people can stay that work for them they should stay there thanks Linda did you have one last thing yes I would like to reiterate that your your currently your policy currently is very heavy on maintaining the environment and the Gateway Park is in is considered environmentally fragile Mill Pond Park Harrison Preserve Summer Street Park in City Hall Plaza all of which were listed on page 47 of the master plan are areas that have full access and are not I don't believe are not considered environmentally fragile in addition to reusing specific nonsensitive areas in Humber Park in North Branch Park so again your policy is not supporting the environment if at this point and people's needs and it just needs to be considered thank you thank you anybody on council have anything else or are we set okay thank you thanks for bringing this up Linda item 8 year-end financials are you going to be putting that on the screen or so Sarah look right the finance director this is the fiscal year 23 financial report out at this time I just wanted to run through just a brief disclaimer given the flood and our work with FEMA recovery and finances relocation twice now we are a little delayed I don't expect that there will be significant or material changes to the numbers you're presented with tonight but we still are doing our final stages of review and will be making adjustments and reallocations as we work towards getting ready for the audit the auditors also may or may not have adjustments at that time which would need to be considered and that because of the July flooding they were supposed to come the last week of August and we were forced to delay that so I they will be here the week after Thanksgiving which will also delay the audit report out to you all I'm hoping that will be by the end of February but it won't be before we do budget presentations for fiscal year 25 are they physically on site typically they came for an interim visit in May and then they usually are on site for about a week and then go back and do a lot of work and I was an auditor before so you know the bulk of the work is not in the field it's back at the office thanks so this is just an all-fund summary the red is obviously the shortfall and the black is the surplus is I I'm not going to run through all of these right now but I do have other slides that touch on them the big takeaways is that all of the funds experienced expenditure open this year related to inflation as we rebounds or rebounded excuse me and worked towards a new normal from COVID-19 to start I want to start with the other governmental funds these are the cemetery parks rec and senior center the cemetery fund was had a shortfall of 35,000 that was primarily related to increased salary and wages the parks fund had a $94,000 shortfall this year again inflation was involved in that along with expenses incurred related to Confluence Park just to caveat that if we choose to move forward with the project then these will be offset with grant revenue and bond proceeds if not they would be offset by the bond proceeds we currently have that would make up that shortfall in that fund the rec fund as you can see has a $1 million shortfall this year that is only truly an $86,000 shortfall related to inflation and capital improvements to the pool bathrooms that they made out of their reserve account and then 962,000 was transferred to cover the cost of country club road as previously agreed upon and the big topic is the general fund for fiscal year 23 that has a shortfall of $755,509 as we returned to normal operations you there were difficult financial constraints from the pandemic that we really curved spending and and tried to save and make sure we were operating that not in a deficit in 22 and as we moved back into 23 we had deferred maintenance costs and City Council and staff made decisions you know during the fiscal year that impacted how it turned out they knew there would be an adverse impact on fund balance at the time decisions were made but they were necessary to city operations and every effort was made during the year and especially in the final quarter to curb spending and an attempt to reduce what that impact looked like we had a discretionary spending freeze that began at the end of February and we were very conscious about the purchases that were made but there were still costs incurred as we needed to ramp up for construction season I provided a five page memo that can gave more detail than I have in these slides and I apologize they're very word heavy but some items that impacted the general fund this year are the pilot payment that came in under budget because there's a statutory cap that Montpelier can receive that will also be under budget in 24 which I'm monitoring State Highway 8 came in under budget due to a reduction in the COVID money we had received in the prior years so that was unanticipated and then there were expenses that happened during the year such as wage adjustments to the public works and police union agreements they were counsel decisions that knew we would have an impact on the financial statements but they happened after the budget development so they were decisions made to recruit and retain employees which was important to city operations there were also significant staffing shortages and medical leaves throughout the year that caused overtime to be significantly over budget in several different departments public works police dispassion fire and they needed the overtime costs to cover day to day services for the city we also as I mentioned for experienced inflationary product and service costs significant legal costs related to a complicated personnel matter we had increased expenses related to the reappraisal and the change over in assessors there were delayed maintenance and increased fuel costs from the pandemic within the public works fleet that caused an increase in this year's expenses and there were two transfers that were not included in the current year's budget but were previously restricted and assigned in that other part of fund balance that we talked about earlier that were transferred and they reflect as an adverse impact on this year's budget and how they're supposed to be recorded so I just I kind of wanted to walk through a net impact of the last two years on our unassigned fund balance I felt like that was important so in FY 23 we ended with a $755,000 deficit or shortfall if you take away from that the transfer that was previously restricted for reappraisal and the previously assigned energy fund transfer that was from a 21 budget that brings us more to about a $590,000 shortfall and when you take that with the surplus we had in the prior year of 466,000 we really are in the scheme of the two years reducing the unassigned fund balance by 124,000 and we are in line with where we have historically been with the unassigned fund balance I look back at 2019 pre pandemic and our unassigned was around 800 to 900,000 so we are in line where we have been historically and at the end of this year it will leave us with 719,939 dollars to cover future shortfalls and is that unassigned fund balance what we've been talking about as a reserve yep so the unassigned at 719 is the part you did not just vote to commit that's the part that is left over for a flood or any any unanticipated cost we would have so then the next one is just a brief overview of the enterprise funds the water fund was 196 to the positive sewer was 51,000 to the negative parking 45 positive district heat 200 negative both water in sewer had significant investments made in capital assets from both the sewer fund and the ARPA funds which is really important to those funds and the city's infrastructure our parking revenue is now stabilizing and or was stabilizing at the end of 23 and that will also be reevaluated in 24 and then district heat annually operates at a loss as we've talked about in previous meetings doing the rate so this is is pretty in line with that we're still working out some of the district heat numbers but this is I would say pretty accurate the ARPA funds money we received 2.2 million in ARPA funding it's been allocated for equipment and projects related to loss revenue investments in infrastructure and community outreach at the end of FY 23 we it's between 22 and 20 spent a total of 1,087,372 dollars or 49% of that award and it was put towards capital assets such as police apartment vehicles park and rec vehicle street sweeper and as I mentioned previously some of it was invested in water sewer and storm water infrastructure so I guess in summary this was a tough year for the city and there was significant inflationary pressure as we came back from the pandemic and tried to to get our footing again and to catch up on deferred maintenance costs there were strategic decisions made by council and the city leadership to prioritize staff recruitment and retention and prior to our current hiring freeze we were basically fully staffed and operating at full capacity which I think is impressive these days when you know it's difficult hiring market deferred maintenance costs because we have delayed equipment purchases the equipment is aging which then increases the cost to repair it when you have that and so we talked about fund balance a little bit but the policy is 15% of budgeted expenditures which is about 2.4 million so at this point with the 700,000 we are at about 30% of the targeted amount which is not not bad my previous experience has not a lot of municipalities have a a fund balance policy or near enough or this amount to cover it and so as we work to the future you know we just will need to be cognizant and keep adding to that fund balance to ensure financial stability and and like I said that the purpose of the fund balance was to cover unexpected expenditures and revenue shortfalls which both were experienced in 23 and just a look ahead at 24 we are currently operating under a hiring freeze discretionary spending freeze and only making purchases to keep the city operating continuing projects we were already under contract with and for flood recovery efforts I'm tracking FEMA in a separate fund with the exception of labor and overtime that's still currently in the general fund and as of the day I did this it was 515,000 but today we are at 689,000 in FEMA related expenses and I'm working with FEMA to recoup those costs and we are also working to project revenue loss and present a mitigation plan for 24 that's thanks Sarah I've got a few questions I'm sure other people have questions too one of them is sort of in kind of a big picture thing obviously the shortfall is a combination of being short on revenues and being high on expenses do you know what the breakdown is roughly I couldn't tell you that right now I can definitely give you that but there's a there are a slew of revenue overs and revenue unders that net net to a less revenue and same with expenses there are a bunch that are under and over that kind of all get you back to where we landed and you mentioned the overtime issue was that mostly from before we're fully staffed up like a police department or is not possible to say that we definitely had some before we were staffed up and then there was some that continued with staffing out and leaves I wasn't here all year so I'm you know doing my best if there's more to chime in but and I heard it suggested that we've been spending money that wasn't either in the budget or approved by council could you address that yeah so when when purchases greater than ten thousand dollars are made that are you know in line with our policies they're brought to council and council appropriates and approves those expenses so any significant purchases that were made that would impact the budget were brought to council and approved and the big ticket items were probably like the the contract increases yes those were brought to council and presented knowing that they would have a significant impact on the year-end financial statements okay thanks anyone else have any questions I mean first of all just definitely underscores the importance of the fund balance so rebuilding it you know we needed it this year and we're gonna need it so just glad previous councils and city staff have managed that I guess one question that comes to mind from looking at the overall summary so you know some of this is kind of like things that came up unexpectedly or the inflation that was so high or things I'm just trying to get a sense as we head into the next budget season like what of these like what do you see as lessons learned like I'm kind of surprised like the cap on pilot if that's a statutory thing why did we not know that how did we get that one wrong and like the highway funds from the state like some of those things that seem like we're were we getting misinformation and like are we gonna get the right information for next year so that we can do better budgeting I guess just anything like that like how are we getting that information and can we figure out no one knows what's going on in the future but at least the runaway inflation that we saw during this past fiscal year which really drove everything has come down somewhat we will be in a position you know the pay adjustments have been made budget appropriately the current budget should reflect that as well as the next budget I mean we have to deal with our short what we know we're gonna have issues this budget to that's the deficit mitigation plan that Sarah talked about the interesting thing with the pilot and you know you're right we probably should have known that I guess the good news is that is it's capped when we reach 100% of state tax payment and so that means the state is fully playing its property tax for for its it's the municipal property tax for its state-owned properties as per their formula now they are you know they set the value and and but it is designed so that we get a statutory payment as well as the as the as well as a share of the local options tax and so we had received an estimate based on what they were projecting for local options tax increase and that's what the increase was based on but I think even the state at the time didn't catch that it anybody's not just us anybody who hits 100% then doesn't get any more which makes sense they're gonna be 110% your tax so that's so that's an adjustment we have to make and then the state's decision on changing the highway it occurred during the session after we had set the budget the known unknowns and the unknown yeah okay any other questions for members of the council okay thanks so much Sarah you've made it very understandable great report no that's that's okay all right item nine interim zoning Mike is that you all right all right good evening Mike Miller I'm the director of planning and community development so what we have for the interim zoning and I'll just kind of get hit the high points as a result of the Country Club Road project being proposed we needed to make sure that we streamlined our permitting process to allow us to be able to issue those permits when the project comes to us so we took a look through the zoning Meredith and I Meredith Crandall who's the zoning administrator and I took a look through the zoning we came up with as succinct a set of changes as we could there are lots of ways we could get there but we tried to try to keep it as simple and straightforward as possible and so the proposal kind of working backwards from the definitions forward we have a definition currently in our zoning for temporary housing and that includes emergency shelters and homeless shelters and so that exists in definition it also exists on the use table but what we're looking at for FEMA really doesn't fit that definition but it's not temporary in the sense of a homeless shelter because those are usually considered temporary housing because you aren't being there you're not supposed to be there more than 30 days you don't become a resident a tenant of that property so usually a definition of a homeless shelter an emergency shelter is looking at staying for less than 30 days you might be less than 30 days be gone for a couple of days then you can come back for another period of time but you're not there on a continuous basis emergency housing like we're talking about for FEMA you're gonna be there for two or three years that is your home that is your residence you live there so we decided we what we would do is to propose striking the temporary housing and instead replacing it with two separate uses one being emergency housing and one being emergency shelter and we provide definitions of that which I think laid out just some of the basics of what you would expect and in order to keep this from being abused in some ways the emergency housing definition really it could be a dwelling unit or congregate housing which is provided by federal state or local government to provide housing for a specific population on an emergency housing basis for a period not to exceed three years so we specifically limited it just to public agency so somebody couldn't come in as a private entity and decide oh I'm gonna take advantage of this I can get permits to do stuff without having to do what everybody else is required to do I'll just call it emergency housing no you have to be a state federal or that's what we have proposed limiting it to go up some government agency it may be operated by somebody else but it would be have to be owned by managed by one of the government entities and then we had to add we've replaced in the use table which is in the in the front part we replaced temporary housing with emergency shelter we didn't change any of the requirements peas means it's a permitted use and you could just get the permit administratively see means it's a conditional use in those districts and we added a new use up under residential so residential are all things where you have tenancy these are all different places where you where these are housing units whether it's congregate or dwelling units and so for emergency housing we made it permitted all the way across which is what we've been talking about we want to streamline this process if it's an emergency housing so we've made it a permitted use and then to further clarify that's where kind of the middle page comes in we added in what's called a specific use standard where we kind of lay out some rules and say alright what do we expect out of our applicant in this and one is the applicability the process is emergency housing is a permitted use in all districts and therefore reviews are administrative any additional reviews so let's say country club road would generally be a major site plan you're building something new that would have to go to the DRB what we proposed in here is any additional reviews like site plan reviews or other development review approvals like steep slopes will be reviewed administratively except for variances and appeals and that is simply comes down to a due process requirement those are variances are actually a form of appeal and so appeals really have to go to a board so if for some reason this gets peeled there's nothing we can do about it as staff that's just neighbors the public they have rights to appeal to process rights those would have to go to a development review board and then we have some basic requirements that we put in there the changes must be temporary they must be reversible and that's true of the FEMA proposal they they would build these things in and if after that time they would actually remove them if we ask them to emergency housing can be either dwelling units or congregate housing we were trying to think a little bit bigger things that we might see in the future if FEMA had gone to say VCFA to say hey there's a dormitory that's congregate living we want to be able to issue an emergency permit that would say hey you can use a dormitory for congregate living and so we've laid out a few rules I won't go through all of them but my purpose for being here today was just to kind of lay this out and make sure you think we're on the right path are there questions you would want answered because you can't make a decision tonight because this has to get adopted after public hearing which has already been warned for October 11th your next meeting so we had to warn in the paper 15 days in advance so we put that in the paper so that's already in for the 11th but I did want to get this to you you can make changes on the 11th and still adopt it if there are things you want me to look at whether the things you want to tell me tonight or anything you think of in the next two weeks just let me know and I can try to come prepared with either alternative language or questions to answer and again we put this together relatively quickly so it is possible we miss something or overlook something or we're just missing on a policy statement this has been put together by two people and got got here just so we've got our foot in the door so we can start having a conversation fortunately two people are very good at their jobs but thanks mike any questions from council so are there any special requirements for documentation for this particular permit versus other permits for like application requirements yeah is it the usual usual stuff uh yeah I mean it's going to be it can we can require whatever we want to in the application and it'll depend on what the proposal is so let's say the the proposal we're looking at for country club road we are going to have to see where the road is going to be that's a pretty elaborate proposal yeah where are you going to put the buildings because you are building buildings if this had been a proposal for VCFA or some other place for a dormitory the requirements would be much less you just have to demonstrate you can meet the requirements thank you I'm not seeing any other questions up Steve Steve would occur I want to just raise a question or an observation that two or three years is going to give both the unhoused potential rights of tenancy which triggers long court processes to terminate uh I don't know how or what workarounds there are for that um and I don't think that by casting it in a policy or in the zoning you can circumvent that so I know that some of the shelters ask people to or even hotels move every 30 days to a different room in order to prevent that from attaching but I'm again I'm supportive of use of country cub road it'll give us time to put to do our due diligence on what other long-term development's going to go up there it'll get us some low cost core infrastructure up there even if we sell it you know but I want to encourage you to think about private distributed huts that are more dignified than a and safe than a congregate shelter thanks Steve by the way the for the hotel and motel uh tenancy exception moving it moving from one room to another in the same hotel does not uh preclude the attachment of tenancy right they have but moving from one motel to another motel owned by the same entity does uh that's in part of the tax department regulations because the way that works is you're staying in a hotel or motel is exempt as long as it's covered by the rooms and meals tax and that's 30 days um thanks mike is there any other questions or we good to go and thanks okay that's it all right up to number 10 confluence park update thank you mr mayor this was actually requested by councilmember heaney to be on the agenda um I think there's been a question in the community about whether we would continue this project as you recall a year or so ago we provided direction to the organizing group that the city had passed a bond for 600 000 and would not put any additional city funds in and gave them a period of time I think it was 18 months to uh raise the rest of the funds through other means and or to see if they could and uh in the city simply put that project on hold I think given the circumstances now uh flooding the condition of the space and uh other circumstances again I don't want to speak for councilmember heaney but our staff uh certainly would be comfortable if we were to discontinue that project and either just not float the remainder of the bond to save on debt payments or reallocate it to other capital needs that we have that would be a future decision of yours we do need to do so um with our eyes wide open that that we did have accepted close to 150 000 and grants that would need to be repaid and so in fact Sarah mentioned some of that um in the financial statement so we would have to let the bond for at least that much uh we're trying to work with the contractors you know I realize that if we if you choose to cancel the project it probably will remain canceled but we'd still like to get as much of the design work that we've paid for as possible so that we have a tangible benefit of that money so that in the future 5 10 20 whatever some period of time in the future if the if the community wants to revisit it there's already work done that was paid for that doesn't need to be redone so we're trying to find that great spot so we have an asset at least for for the money so that's ours our suggestion but really it's your I turn I'd say let the sponsor of the of the bill we've already incurred some of that cost absolutely yes we absolutely have yes I don't know how much but well it's about 100 I think it's about 150 000 that we've incurred okay so that's we would be capped we'd be pretty much stopping we're just trying to find the right stop point to make sure we have something of value but we would stop have we've paid it so essentially what it means is we already paid it we just wouldn't get the grant to pay it back so we would we'd have to float the bond to pay essentially the the deficits that we've incurred all right okay thanks Tim unless we chose not to just came to my attention looking at warrants we signed and occasionally expenses were paying out so I thought it was a project on a hold and wondered what's going on and and then seeing it show up again in the deficit side as a as a factor for one of the departments generally well yeah and obviously we're just basically looking at what's going on in terms of payments we've been making for a project that I perceived was on hold but it's not totally on hold if it's happening and very honestly before the flood hearing about the way the cost had risen for this project may have been a good idea when it started but when anything spins seemingly out of control as much as this one has sometimes it's just not a project you should do you know you've got to look back and say started out with great intentions but you know at 750 or whatever it was initially now it's close to 3 million and does this make any sense I don't feel it does so that's why I brought it up tonight to say is it council if there's any guidance we should give the staff in the community on it if it's just not going to happen which post flood I don't think this one is maybe we should communicate that and move on you know if they can reuse the funds allocated toward another project that could be beneficial that would be terrific but I think this one just doesn't look viable to me so just quickly on that before you have your deliberation so this is 100% a council decision it was a council decision to proceed in the way that we did council initiated project so really it's up to you to decide what you want to do with it and then we don't have to make any decisions tonight tonight about what to do with again we don't have the balance of the funds in hand it's an approved bond so we would have to let the rest of the bond for a specific purpose and we do have some flexibility in the bond wording or which would then incur those bond payments or just not do it and not have those bond payments and use that bonding capacity on a different issue so those are all choices you could make in the future if you were to choose and you don't have to solve all those problems tonight but what any direction you want to provide with that is really and bill I've got two questions one is that if I recall correctly the 600,000 we allocated for Confluence Park was part of a bigger bond that was correct Confluence Park and other uses so correct it was either one I think it might be a $1.8 million total bond right so we we can flex that money within the use of that bond for other purposes or just not let that portion and and then the other thing is that when we when we decided a year or so ago that we're going to put it on hold not go forward at this point we I think there was a considerable sentiment to just pulling the plug then but the people who were trying to there were people trying to raise private funds to to generate the rest of the income for it and and I wonder if you've heard from anyone who was doing that to say hey don't do this because we're ten thousand dollars short of the two million dollars or anything like that I haven't I'm looking around no that's not the case that's what I thought okay um any other uh Donna then Sal so I have two questions one is I felt that we were not allocating any additional funds to be spent at this point from what we'd already allocated separate from that which was good the bond if you went further the decision was that and and again you were told that the design work was being done and funded by the grant yeah and that that was going to be moving on but the council's decision was that the city would not put more than six hundred thousand dollars total into the project right that what we had allocated was that and if the group wanted to um you know raise the balance you gave them 18 months to do so uh to consider whether to go forward with the full project and understanding that if we at any point chose not to do it we would have to eat the cost expended to date for the grant okay so the money in which indeed that's been some month been spent for consultants that you don't yet know the full amount is coming out of that six hundred thousand correct okay so I thought we also and I sort of disagree with Jack I still support the idea because I think it goes right in hand with getting rid of our dams facing the river using the river whether it gets modified downscaled I still think that's a good thing to happen eventually but so I thought at one point even this council did a vote to give them 18 months correct and is that up no I thought this next summer was going to be yeah no no this the 18 months is definitely not passed there's some time the the question was raised by council member whether we should consider right okay and we as staff are saying you know it's we'd support that if that's what you want to do well I guess I feel definitely we'll have some conversation about it we should include our partners we give the 18 months to uh and maybe you know that's where I'm coming from I just don't want to leave the ship yet there's nothing there's I don't mean to carrying this conversation but I mean there's nothing precipitous about making a decision to night as opposed to two weeks from now or whatever I mean there's not we're not going to spend any more or less money we're coming to an endpoint of this design work and that's going to be the end of it and um so you could choose what you know if you want to revisit it with inviting the other partners in you could do that or you can make a decision it's really again entirely up to you so so I'm a little clear on that where we are with the design work are we coming to the end or are we at the end have we made the final payment on the design work no we're about 85 done with design work um and Josh could you identify yourself Josh Jerome community and economic development specialist so about 85 so uh the 15 would add to the 150,000 or right well we've told them is because we've seen that this is probably um you know not moving down 100% they they wanted to do permitting we've said no that's not going to be part of this let's just wrap it up get it to 90% done and see where we are from there and what will that cost do they have the they said that they would be done by October for the dollars and cents I don't know what that is the bulk of the work is done yeah so there would be the final the you know the design part will be done the permitting and all the other stuff I guess I mean I I understand uh the thinking of you know having a something of value when you have a sunk cost like the 150,000 but you know we have a commission that's going to be looking at things like what what do we do with the river and I have a feeling that the confluence is actually going to be a big part of that and we may be designing something that just doesn't make any sense I don't know why we can't halt the designing where it is and pick it up 10 10 years from now if if we decide not to do anything else it just seems like that that project this particular time is not going anywhere in fact I would say probably shouldn't go anywhere there are better places we can spend the money now so that's just my feeling about confluence part okay okay thanks Kelly thanks everyone for and Evelyn and thanks for that longer break we're still on item 10 confluence park update and I'm trying to remember who the last speaker was and where we were did you have any go ahead learn I hopefully this makes sense now so I guess one thought and one question it seems like wrapping up and not expending you know getting to a point I mean I like the idea of having some kind of leaving it at a point where we've got something that we could then refer back to and build on when we pick it up I it does seem like there's so many important priorities right now before we did anything like entirely nicks the project I would definitely want to invite Vermont River Conservancy our partner to come in and have a conversation and understand what's what the state is what's happening and it's maybe they're the people to ask for my next question which is like is there is there any piece of the project that they could fund that would allow us to not have to give back that grant money or like is there any way to be able to move forward some piece if the nonprofit was funding and doing the work that we could take advantage of that rather than having to return the money so that would be my question for them is is there is there any way to not forfeit that so that's okay any other questions up here I don't know what the answer to that there's a 1.8 million dollar gap so I know there's but you have to do an entire project to give back planning money for example or could you show we you know in year one where you have done this piece of it it might be year five that we do the next pieces or something like well as as a lot of grants have you know a period of performance and this has continued to extend and amendments after amendments so yeah we can go back to those those grant tours they've also said that we're letting in our community should give us a little extra time they've also said that we can return it and we can reapply when we are ready because it's some of it yeah some of it is planning but a lot of its implementation okay and that's why it got so so expensive wouldn't look like the implementation was going to be so much more costly right I think I think the initial application the the costs the implementation costs weren't quite they weren't all known at the time of course it was a brownfield that's a six hundred thousand dollar cost in itself so that was not known at the time of application thanks Eileen yeah I just want to really speak up okay yes that's the difference right so um again I I just want to repeat if any other funds are available by our partners so how much they collected and will they be okay just leave the money behind because maybe they collected some just to use for this project and the second thing if the if the city council decides not to continue can we use the plays for other things because we are talking about completing some of the design right will it be possible to use it for other things so the design really be the paper design the engineering design we would be doing the work on the site so the site could be completely used for whatever else okay yeah thank you thanks okay we'll go to uh members of the public there are a few people online um do we know genrich yagoda okay we'll skip over that or are you trying to okay great I just had a quick question um we had uh general business and appearances which is public comment at the at the very beginning of the meeting um are you so you're not trying to comment about this item I'm sorry okay no worries okay thank you um it's always just about the first item on the agenda Joe hi thanks jack um I agree with Tim and some of the other people weighed in saying that if there's a way that we can reallocate the funds um for confluence park I'm in favor of that I just think that would make sense and I do apologize I know you were saying that not to go back to a previous topic however I just wanted to briefly address the interim zoning um I know that we're Joe I'm going to suggest that you save the comment for the next meeting it is on our agenda already for October 11th okay perfect thank you thanks Joe right thank you uh Steve Steve would occur again um I'm concerned that the planning in the design that's being done for confluence park that might be shelled for 10 years or indefinitely may not have been addressed whether or not the dams get removed and it would be uh a waste of any more money until that question is answered to to spend anything whatsoever further but I also want to point out that there's a need for remediation after the flood there that's that's a key piece of our bike path in the first turn and the granite benches and the inches and inches of silt there was a campground there a camper and a tent and that just so we need to find a source of funds to either cap if that's the proper way to cap that silt uh or remove the silt and I don't know if any of these funds can be used that way but we can't ignore the fact that that needs to be done that the bike path is still covered with silt in some areas all the way down to employment and training in the liquor board I went down that far today so I just want to point out that we need access to some funds we may need if it's possible for these bonded funds for that confluence park to get used for remediation thanks it's possible okay it's there's a range of things other than confluence park that that money can be used for all right and bill is that remediation for the bike path one of the ticket items with fema you know if there's damage it would be I don't know about cleanup we're gonna follow up on the cleanup okay back to you about that um Mary Kate hello uh just a technical comment I believe there's at least one person in the waiting room to get back into this meeting on zoom I'm just wondering if someone could check oh good thank you we're on it thank you um so council what's your waving okay who is that devora Jonas okay I think we're in the process of unmuting you oh you have to unmute yourself devora I've done it a couple okay can you hear me now here we are yes we can hear okay um basically I also think that the money that's been set aside for continuing the project should be used for something else at this time and that's everything else has been said okay thank you great thanks so okay council um what's your pleasure Donna I would go along with what Lauren was talking about that we invite our partners on that project to come in the next meeting or as soon as possible within our agenda's partners to actually discuss the project and get an update from them and then go ahead and make whatever decision we want to make but I would like to see us finish the general the current design pro contract and then halt so okay that's where I would lean is that good for you Tim yes all right everybody okay with that I don't see any reason to complete the design frankly but you're okay with I doubt if you I mean my experience is you you're gonna be able to complete a design and you shelve it for five years or 10 years whatever it is when you take it up again the new the new designer has their own idea so it's you know we have 85 percent of an asset I think that's enough I don't know what what the extra five percent is but I can't believe it makes that much of a difference but I don't know what the cost is either so we'll try to get that in for the next meeting okay Tim I guess really I was thinking more it was just to bring in the other partners and yeah and have that conversation with the right I think we can get that next step just to have all the information and then make a decision it is every call we've been talking for years about applying for funding to study what is studied damn removable but I don't think there's anything there's no grants for that yeah there's definitely a lot of study there's a lot of money for dam removals right now I know that we brought that up when Riverview was here so that was part of the plan to Steve's question that it was in their thinking and is part of like their long-term vision for the area at least you know a couple of the dams like obviously we're not talking about Wrightsville but the little little bumpy ones close to town and just just noting the design which we'll talk like we were shelving but like they had built it to be flooded like assuming it would be flooded like repeatedly so that that was assumed so but but yeah dam removal was part of that so but we could ask them what the status of that is okay thanks so we'll find a time for your for an upcoming agenda thanks oh so I'm sorry yes since we decided to have other partners will we give them a specific time that oh we are discontinuing this project until this or it will be completely done that will be the decision you make after you hear from them okay afterwards yeah okay because when we voted I said no to this project so now if we I just want to learn if the decision will be different okay thank you yeah thanks item number 11 110 State Street um so some of you may remember that the state expressed interest in selling the 110 State Street building and extended a right of the first refusal or at least the opportunity for the city to express its interest in purchasing the building and we have to give them a clear indication of what we're going to do by October 15th at the time the mayor and I discussed the site and we weren't sure whether we were going to be having an October 11th meeting looks like we are now so this was the last last chance to do so to meet their timeframe you know I think we weren't a hundred percent enthused about the idea in the first place but at least thought it might be worth to to think about it but given everything else on our plate given staff resources and and everything else and there's some limitations with that building doesn't really have any land that comes with it so I we recommend staff doesn't have a specific city need for it we would have to develop you know a partner arrangement to buy it and then sell it and you've heard the financial situation you know we don't really have a lot of flush cash to do that so we'd recommend that we pass on it but again this is a hundred percent your your choice any thoughts from anyone and you know anybody who wants who thinks we should go ahead with this all right that's that seems easy enough thanks and I don't think it takes a vote or anything it would take an affirmative vote to do something and this is not doing something next up we have the outside agency policy so we discussed this policy at length in last meeting in June and you had given us some feedback and thought and basically wanted me to come back and so basically you decided sort of three parts of it and still wanted to consider another couple so tried to phrase that I went back and actually watched the discussion and tried to make the the memo the update memo reflect that conversation and obviously we were going to get at the next meeting or two after June 26 then you know that it didn't happen so here we are and but it is timely in that we are moving into budget season and I think in terms of giving agencies adequate time if they do need to petition or just to know what the rules of the game are I do think we need to make a decision pretty quickly so I think you know really again it's how you prefer to proceed given the information I know there's a couple agencies on here that want to comment and I'm happy to answer any more questions so I can answer that we haven't already written up for you okay anyone here at on council what has any thoughts for starters okay Donna you can start that in no I was just wondering she was just telling me that you were okay yes I I do think that we need to set a limit to how large requests can go through the Montpierre Community Fund but the Montpierre Community Fund has developed such good criteria an excellent application review process they're very thorough and I think they do a good job looking out for us to make sure that it's a valuable service to the community but it's also a diversified service and so I think it's better when the arts are mixed in there when I see the word public art I think of our arts commission and I want them to be separate from this some of the arts that are there are individuals but they're also art programs for youth and to me that's separate from public art and so I would like to leave it more as a one one sum but like cap it off at ten thousand dollars anything ten thousand dollars or more needs to then either petition city council or city council puts them on the ballot without a petition I think we can develop our own criteria as to what we decide that will allow on the ballot without petitions and I do think we have to consider that although we're not in the pandemic we still have the COVID going around we have flu we have so many more situations that we're aware of that it's not always capable with people with disabilities of women it's more and more difficult people who are non-white it's harder for them to go to the door knock and ask for signatures and I don't think that signatures are as direct as allowing an item to go to the voters and getting a voter to then say yes or no so I would rather see more things that the council puts on the ballot once we've evaluated as a worthwhile service that goes to the community residents than having people collect signatures so that's my advice so to be clear Donna are you saying that our policy should be entities are asking for up to ten thousand dollars could apply to the community fund and apply to this council direct and above ten thousand go to the council directly yeah above ten thousand go to the council and and under go to the montpeger fund and no petition requirement for anyone only if the council deems it when that request comes to them I see that the council would decide okay in any criteria like we've been doing in recent years of saying that people who are entities that have been funded before don't have to petition I think that I would put that in there I think once it's voted that as long as it stays the same amount that we should put it on the ballot again that the voters decide and I think the other thing we need to consider is that there's no downtown stores to put your petitions in or not very many so I think it's a really different year this year but I think the old school is that petition is knocking door to door I think that's really hard to do these days okay anybody else have any thoughts before we open a technical thought um and I'm sure you'll hear this I shouldn't say I'm sure I suspect you'd hear this from the agencies um I think if the council is going to consider putting items on the agenda you should set a hard date by which you will make that decision because I could imagine a circumstance where it gets to be January and you're looking at your budget and deciding something's got to go and then opt to put you know not put an agency on the ballot and they don't have time to exercise their legal right to petition so I think you know again it's your policy but I think just from a practical standpoint you need to think about how how to communicate so people have really clear expectations and understanding that petitioning is a lot of work and people need time to handle that so if you're going to make a petition tell them you know now if if you're not then they kind of need to know again I don't want to speak for that they'll speak for themselves but I would imagine that will be an issue okay it probably should be decided like August when the weather is decent that was the plan yeah we were better right we were planning to do it in August here we are can any council members want to be heard before I start whether it was in the public I guess well yeah I mean I you know I I wonder about the just putting just putting things on the ballot doesn't inform the public I mean I don't know you know I read those blurbs on that I mean before I was when I was just an ordinary citizen not on the council and figuring out you know getting more information about what this stuff was about you read the blurb on the ballot and some people don't do that till they get to the booth and because you voted for it last year you voted for it this year and you really don't know you don't know what how it affects the big picture and I just wonder if there's a better way to communicate that if we're going to if we're going to start deciding to put things on a ballot without a petition I mean the petition process is really a pretty small obstacle in the way of that anyway I think most people are willing to sign a petition just to you know to allow the the city to decide on an issue so I would maybe it's not appropriate to attach it to this somehow but I there's got to be a way to better inform the public what what these ballot measures are about and what they the effect they have on that on the rest of the ballot on the rest of the budget okay I don't know if we've ever done that I think it's an appropriate part of the discussion because you know we don't have emotion at this point we're just talking about yeah and Donna yeah I was just wondering I mean you said you mentioned the petition is it anything more than a barrier though they don't do they know anything about what's going before the voters when they sign that petition I don't think they do so it's it's it is a barrier so it's okay you know so they do a presentation at the council and the public has a chance to talk to them we could do that so we you know leaping over the petition requirement that that's okay I it's okay if I think we can somehow shore up information make the public better informed about what they're voting for or against yeah it seems like part of the crux of the problem is this attention between our schedule and these are organizations that wish to be supported and if we don't support them that they have to go through this petition that's their appeal I guess and to have all that happen in time with the town meeting in March when our budget process isn't going to be done before january right so if in effect they want to be able to avail themselves of that petition then right now we're at 10 percent I believe of the registered voters and the state standard I think as I heard from Sandy was five percent you know if you're worried about contact of people having to get out it would be more reasonable to look at the state standard if that's the appeal they choose to take at least it would be reasonable for them to do and is that in the Charterville yes that was proposed a camera board particular what precipitated particularly but I think there was a concern that for money items you know even a bond or anything like that that the that it should be a higher bar than you know just a petition to support whatever a social issue or whatever that that if it's something that's really binding the city and and causing taxes that it should be so but the then council put it on the ballot the past the legislative passage so it's it's now our charter so it would require a charter change to change that which is a bigger deal obviously but can be done yeah john just so you all know I do have this vehicle that nobody ever uses for anything called montail your voter guide dot org just sent you candidates use it candidates will send me information with their pictures and a blurb about themselves but one part of it has always been I put up all the ballot articles and invite anybody to submit pro and con um statements editorials on it nobody's ever done that that might be a vehicle to maybe that's something we need to advertise you something you all could play with and could use that as long as it's sitting there with its cute little domain name and everything yeah hello we need a raffle prize okay let's let's go to the public uh dan grover you're up first hi everyone um i'm dan grover i'm executive director of the calico brit library i'm a resident of montail your i'm also a member of the community fund board um but i'm speaking this evening only in my capacity as resident and director of the library as the community fund has not had any formal conversations about this topic um first i believe councilwoman bait has a conflict of interest in this conversation as an employee of one of the recipients of community fund board funds um so i'm just putting that out there um but uh i i believe the petition process creates an unnecessary administrative burden for the organizations that are petitioning especially the library we've received between 85 and 90 percent support every year um and you know especially this year uh with our time greatly consumed with flood recovery at the library um the petition process just seems like um an unnecessary burden uh to place on the library um and uh very few organizations do petition annually um which i think is evidence of community fund board process is working as intended um so i'd i'd ask the council to waive the petition or continue to waive the petition requirement for the library and perhaps other organizations as well thank you thanks dan any other members of the public steve steve whitaker again you heard this before but i'll reiterate it uh because of the timeliness of this discussion more and more government is delegating or outsourcing government functions to nonprofits and that breaks the accountability chain you can have all the flowery praise for how that money was spent but unless you have public records access to what went wrong or how the money was misspent or misappropriated or stolen we don't really know we're we're basically advocating the fiduciary duty of the council when we give money to a nonprofit that is not bound by public records law so i think we if you're developing this policy we need to put some maybe not as as forceful almost certainly not as forceful as public records law but there needs to be some accountability and transparency with these organizations that are good Samaritan is a good example right things have gone really wrong at good Samaritan and they've been swept under the rug you know not in recent not in my recent experience but in past past times uh my failure alive you know they brought false charges against me organized by mr growberg and they claimed we're not subject to public records law even though they're housed in city hall they're funded by the city they you know this is you're breaking the accountability chain of a government function by not implementing a policy that provides some level of transparency and access to records within these organizations okay thank you uh sandy hi so a couple things sandy sandy just a moment could you identify yourself please sure i'm sorry i'm sandy ruse i'm president and ceo of central vermont home health and hospice thanks for having me and thanks for allowing me to comment like i said i just want to make a few comments first of all from a central vermont home health and hospice perspective that i think you can tell from the documentation provided in your packet i believe we have shown demonstrated voter approval over many years with a significantly high rate of approval i'd say upper 80s to 90% on any given year and i think we've been through this process many times with regards to petitioning and the numbers that we've had to collect um over 600 you know just really goes to show the commitment that we have to the community with our service as well as the commitment we have to do the work to get the money and how much it's needed to to support the services um secondly more or less a clarification which you may have received an email forwarded from me um through bill and through city manager frazier the request for 2021 22 and 23 for central vermont home health and hospice did not include any increase we level funded the last time we went for an increase was in for 2019 when we were going to petition which we did and we had to obtain 650 signatures which we did another thing is that central vermont home health and hospice is a member of the joint petition committee we participated in that for many many years we every year are in coordination with other organizations collecting signatures for different pounds so multiple agencies can be put on the ballot not only us in through this process and through my research and and going back and looking at the work that's been done with this committee we have asked many organizations over the years to petition with us for the city of mob pillar and they've chosen not to join us in that petition process so there is that choice i believe as bill you know documented that they do go to the community fund if they receive less they've chosen not to work as a team to really get those signatures so that they could be put on the ballot with us as well and then i think my last thing was really piggybacks on i believe it was dan um that spoke a bit earlier about the petition process and i know i'm looking at the 23 towns that we provide service to and the 23 towns that we receive funding from my research has shown 10 uh cities or towns require petitioning only if it's a first request or an increase and those are the larger cities such as berry city berlin waterberry um so the larger ones and then there were three that petition always those are smaller ones orange rocks berry and middle sex and middle sex is a little bit different in their approach and then there were nine that have no clear petition process lots of times if anything we go in front of the select board of the committee that oversees town funding and we provide a presentation um reasoning behind why we're requesting increase etc and or um there they have a process where we just submit an application but most times i'm usually going in front of a select board or a committee as a result of a potential increase so those are more or less just some comments that i wanted to add to this the discussion great thank you i do not see any other members of the public with their hands up um dandy do you have your hands still up or is that just a hold over okay great thanks um so we're where are we do we have a motion or don't it i was trying to carve what you were saying into as close to motion form as possible so you're up yeah just have you watch this for a number of years and watch the the council struggle with making you know using a lot of time in council meetings to decide what goes on the ballot and what doesn't especially during budget time you know one one way to look at this and again it's up to you but the this is a problem of two agencies i mean everyone else i mean really we've got central vermont home health and hospice who is a necessary but who went through the community fund process decided um it it didn't you know we didn't get funded enough so chose to petition has continually been successful and and then understandably with the the covid years the council said we'll just put you on the ballot and the color color covered library which is you know a whole different level of funding that's our community library and in fact the council used to go through a whole process of evaluating their budget and finally said you know they're not a city library they're a public library let them just put their you know and the only control was sort of if they if they have an increase they've got it so you know it may be that we really just need to figure out how to handle those two agencies and you know maybe it is just making an exception because they're above a certain amount and deciding how much you need you know i again i'm not advocating or recommending anyway you could just say hey it's the color carbon library let them put a budget on it's between them and the voters and for cvh h h maybe they come in and give a presentation and you hear them and decide how much you want to put on and everyone else goes through the community but you know but and then and then the other part of that policy then if there's somebody new who hasn't been part of the mix who wants to be above the you know to then they've got a petition because they're sort of new to the process i know i'm just trying to think of ways to keep this simple so that everyone has clear way of knowing how to proceed and we're not sort of creating a whole new system bill that sounds like a motion true enough um i still think though the community fund shouldn't get those bigger requests that's your that's the only thing i would differ from what you said give more money okay um and mary kate hi thanks uh mary kate moment i am a montpelier resident and i am chair of the cvh h board so i i'm i'm wanted for say i'm very i love the comments that i've heard so far i think um in terms of a broader policy i completely support accountability um understanding how our organization is using the money i think we are happy to tell our story it's a good story so i would support that uh in terms of policy i completely agree there needs to be a transparent consistent policy across organizations because i think that's fair for us and for anyone else who may be coming down so i like those comments around you know above a certain threshold that's where we talk to the council and get a direct to the ballot um i agree that the petition can be a significant barrier especially given the recent times and in the healthcare sector it's like workforce and the people who are working at cvh who are often the ones that are going to be out there collecting signatures they are they are still strapped yes we're moving past that bolus of the pandemic but like finding nurses finding staff finding anyone to fill these positions it's a real it's a real burden um so i just want to flag that as a specific practical hurdle for this year but i think in coming years the petition uh does present a burden at least at the especially at the level that it is right now so those are my comments um i i would just support transparency and support consistent policy um and for those organizations that do have higher amounts i don't think it's fair to the um i'm blanking on that the the commission um that sees projects yeah you know what i'm saying um i think they they supporting that money for smaller projects and smaller asks this is is fair so those are my comments thank you okay thank you palin and palin if we put these two agencies on a policy or written document is it um okay to name them right we we talk about like oh library should go which means that we will put the library name on the document right so is it okay to do this i would say again non-voting member here yep you know the library funding is so out of you know the the library is more than all of this rest of this put together i mean it's it's its own thing it's our public library i think simple you know you could almost say we're gonna have a policy for the library and there's policy for everybody else and so the policy might be okay the library just gets to put you know they come in and make a budget presentation they get to put their thing on the ballot because there are public library and that's how they work um you know i think the one control the council had tried to have over the years was understanding the proportion of Montpelier funding versus neighboring town funding versus you know compared to usership are we paying a disproportionate share and i you know you do lose that if you don't see those that information so i think maybe having a discussion with the council before the council puts the article on the ballot might be a good way because then you could at least have some control if you don't like it you put them on and then you know with regard to the other one the central Vermont home health maybe you could have a policy that says you know if you originally petitioned and you've been supported you know five years in a row with approval rates of above 75 or you create a criteria so it wouldn't be just named for them but which at least now they're the only people that need it but if somebody else does then it would be i mean again just think it out loud yeah i was just asking that so great clarification thank you so instead of naming specific organization we can create more general policy so we can use it for different organizations in the future thank you okay let me come at this a different way is there consensus on the council with the parameters of the policy as is the city manager would they just laid out no okay i'm not clear enough on what that is to be able to just i need a motion and discussion on a motion and and well let me tell you it's not clear enough for me the next the next step in my comment would be to say if we're pretty if you're basically with bill on this ask them to come to us with a policy written out that we would then adopt or not it or modify maybe i feel like there's been a lot of ideas tossed out and i'm not at all clear what we would be directing i mean if i could if i could hear it spelled out really clearly then i could react better to it so if i were to make a motion which i can't i would say keep the the recommendations you already agreed to about the community fund and having them come in to request funding early keep all those in place so you already decided that on june personally i would at least set the amount of arts funding in the community fund that's up to you and then i would say so separate motion these would be series of motions to rather than try to do one thing i would say ask the color you know color curve lever to present a budget in budget time and the council will place their article on the ballot and i don't know if we create a situation so i think the the gray area there is that we're creating situation we don't like their their budget do we not put it on the ballot this council might be fine so might want to decide what you want to say about that and then the last part would be to say if you so another motion might be if you are a non-profit agency that is above $20,000 which i think goes beyond i don't think the community fund funds anybody above 20 not this year and have been successful on the ballot for at least five consecutive years with an approval rate of 75 or more you can go on without a petition or three years or two or whatever one year whatever but so there would be a series of steps by which they wouldn't all be necessarily one motion that sounds reasonable two years i just watched the council spend hours at budget time over this when they've got more important things to be talking not that these aren't important agencies but it becomes a process question not a content question yep cary and i just want to throw in that i think the point made about accountability and and transparency of what's done with the money in particular when where when we are asking nonprofit agencies to basically perform services on behalf of the city i think is a really important one and i so i'd love to not let that go and i'm not really sure what the answer to that is but i'd like to build that in somehow if you get money from the city there's certain expectations about transparency about your work and how the money is spent so the current policy does require them to provide a report for what they did with the money it might be worth a conversation with the community fund board one of the the issues that has been wrestled with that to that point over the end is that some of these grant awards are for very small sums of money five hundred dollars a thousand dollars and how much work is required to you know now maybe it's just giving us their annual report or something like that you know i think we could find something but for the you know the library is always very transparent anyway cbhh is always very transparent with their you know but they have bigger staffs to do this some of the some of the small people really is a one you know so i think that's been the tension is how much information are we asking for for a relatively small contribution now some of them are seventy five hundred dollars and that's a little different in more ten thousand and i'm sure both the library and uh home health have an annual yes which we could which we could make him give us if we want if we wanted to don't know but the army is the montpellier community fund has a terrific standard and everybody adheres to their data of who they serve how many are montpellier residents ages i mean they ask a lot and everyone does it but it's the bigger ones we really don't get as as much data from so i think that would be a really good point that we have them in at some point and look at their annual report that would be good but way ahead of our budget we've got a people going to have any kind of change in letting them go on the ballot we need to make that decision early and i feel like this happened because central vermont home health reached out to me and said do we have to collect signatures i said wow this is really late to make this decision okay so i'd like to get to an endpoint of this conversation lauren sorry i i like the um motion bill was suggesting the the piece i'm wrestling with still is is it like if the budget is more than inflation or cut or like like set 10 percent or something i'm just like you know the dan could be really visionary with the library and be like i want to have a $500,000 budget and we're going to create a new tech center and like if we i want to have some ability like that would have huge implications that might be a great idea and the voters might love it but it would have huge tax implications also and so like how do we intersect that like i don't want to just give like cart launch necessarily like given that it affects tax rates but like but i want to also make it easy for them and to not have to do petitions like almost ever hopefully um and i'm fine with central vermont hope like having a policy that acknowledges these two entities and that the work they've done previously and the successful like um votes they've received which is like what the language bill had suggested but like i'm just like wrestling with how how would we weigh the library comes in they want 15 percent increase are we like what line or even just for guidance for them of like where would we be really scrutinizing versus just rubber stamping which i'm not sure i like to make a motion and i support that for this year we indeed put the library and central vermont home health on the ballot without petitions and that we make a policy through what bill's working on and he brings it back to us and we vote on it next meeting because i think there's ideas here but it's not it's caring to say it's not written out yet but i wouldn't like to give the library and central vermont home health a clear direction today not in october it gets too late put it on the ballot when the same budget request is as they had last year absolutely yes that should be in there that i would we would put central vermont home health and the library on the ballot with the same amount as they had last year good point carry yeah i don't think we need a motion to do i think that's our current policy is that right that's how i read our current policy so i think it's just a not it's not a change i don't know they had to ask every year because the pandemic they've asked for additional money if they ask no they haven't that the library policy was clear that that if they didn't ask for more money i think cvh h was a little less clear it's because it hasn't really done the last three years with them yes so that's my motion technically they were supposed to petition if they weren't in the community funded because it was i think the whole goal was to have people use the community fund and so if you if it became easy to get on the ballot without using the community fund then just do the end around but i think in this case they had a pretty good reason they their their money would take up such a large chunk of the community fund and they've demonstrated the sport through regular petitioning and so you know so that's that's Donna's motion anyway is there a second to Donna's motion second just for okay conversation okay yeah okay Carrie we've got a note from you yeah no i think it's 2013 to 2020 council established a policy whereby cvh hh and khl would be placed on the ballot if they had no increase and with petition for their full amounts if they had an increase and then 2021 to 2023 the community fund process continued council made an exception to the petition requirements for cvh hh and khl due to COVID-19 as noted earlier i hear you are right they have felt the need to come back to us every year because it has not been restated to them and dan grover thank you for having me again um in the current inflationary environment we will need to be requesting an increase from the city taxpayers so if the um motion is for us to need to petition if we're requesting an increase i just want to make it clear that that's that you would be in fact requesting that we go ahead and petition um we recently signed a new union contract with our employees that has significant wage increases um especially in this year one that we're looking at and you know across the board um inflationary pressures so we intend to ask for an increase um so i we would certainly love it if we did not need to petition um i just want to make it clear that if that's the motion of the council that we would need to petition thank you well we're kind of stuck here uh we have we have donna's motion before us is there any other discussions of donna's motion airy's right we don't need it well we've got a motion before us so so we can yeah i guess i would rather in the in the right up that bill's going to do to try to bring some clarity to this like i would be comfortable personally like setting some percentage increase that would would also be not require a um at least for the library specifically maybe cvh we view differently i say not the ages but um but i i think that's reasonable that they're like inflation or some amount like i this is our community library but so i don't know if there's some way to to write that in i think maybe we see if we can get some good thinking when we're not churning so much well i don't know if other people support that idea or if they would just like to require petitions above the current the previous ask one thing we could do is have someone move to amend donna's motion you could say the same as previous year or the same as previous year plus 10 percent or something like that we we don't know what uh what the request is likely to be from uh kello covered yeah go ahead feels like a slippery slope i don't think just applying these percentages like the city did it last year with some things in the last year's budget and look at the increases that came out of it unfortunately i feel for what dan's going through but he's got to look at what we're all going through and what this budget's going to be i because i think if you put a 10 percent or some arbitrary number on it it's going to be that every year they'll have the opportunity to your institutionalizing like i wouldn't support them okay is the language of the petition specified i mean does the increase if it's an increase does increase need to be called out i was wondering if the language of the petition is specific about about an increase for example list a specific amount it has to list a specific amount but in relation to the previous amount in other words you have to list the increase no it would just be just an amount it doesn't have to reference the previous petition shall the voters of the city of Montpelier appropriate $200,000 that's not good enough for me i mean i would want i would want to know is this more is it less is it twice as much is it you know i mean it has an effect on the overall expenditure uh there's just not enough information there so what we're trying to accomplish here is to be able to provide a certain amount of funding whatever that is to community organizations for various reasons let's i think is great and the community fund is a way for us to to do that while maintaining as much control over our budget as we can so we say we have this much money that we know is going to go to these community organizations and we the council doesn't get into deciding exactly how much goes to who we have good guidelines we have a process that's working well yes um so we have i think we have a problem because we have these two that we've made exceptions for over the years and i think just in my view um i've always the library feels like a city function even if it's not technically part of you know a city department but i think it makes sense to treat that one separately and to and to build it into our own budget process so that we know how much it's going to be so we need some kind of system where we know how much money the library is asking for and then in our budget development process we're we're working that in so that it may appear separately on the budget i mean on the ballot but we've made a plan for it in our budget because the one of the problems of the ballot process is that anybody could put anything on there is probably going to pass and so then we don't have the opportunity to build a budget that where we know everything's going to be in there so we could if we if we feel like there's not enough money going to community organizations we get up what goes to the community fund and ask central montan home health and hospice to go through that or the council in the past decided that that also needs to be treated separately just like the library so we could continue with that but it has to come into our process in a way so that our budget is built with it in mind and not treated like this separate add-on so i think we could keep the current policy that we have but be if we need clarity about the timing of it and we could also amend the policy so that they don't have to the library doesn't have to stay level funded which is not a reasonable expectation right nothing's level funded but so that we're not going to say i because i agree with tim if we say you get a 10 percent increase and they're gonna get a 10 percent increase every year which may or may not be appropriate but so if we can build it into our process so we know this is how much the library needs and then we look at it in the context for our whole thing we decide okay yes oh i'm sorry okay i'm done oh i'll stop i'm just rambling now i've touched about sentence yeah it's still there so the motion is kind of relevant because we already have policy so can i just confirm me it because they literally i mean community home health has come every year to ask because they have not felt like we've had the policies because they're asking for more no they have not asked for more that was a mistake in bill's thing they had not asked for no but anyway so do you want to withdraw the motion or do you want to just vote on the motion and withdraw the motion that's fine okay well so so that home health is now part of the policy that's in place does not need signatures that's what we're saying there's the same amount yes that's correct great um but you know i'm just trying to make sure i'm clear and library is clear and so so because i like i like the idea i'm just to make sure so they would submit their budget to us the same time everybody else puts their budget and we know what they were asking for and usually that happens we usually have some idea what they're early in the process what they're asked whether it's petition or whatever so we do figure that into our overall planning we listed we listed right in the budget book yeah um i think the question comes at what point do we like we i mean you that the council seek to exercise some discretion over their budget by what you choose on to put on the ballot and what alternative did they have if they really don't like the choice that you made for what you're going to put on you right do they have to go petition just for the difference do they have to you know right because so i think that's the the tension is how to how do you you know um you know how do you manage that you know we have an agreement with the cemetery commission how that works so they you know they agree to be part of our budget process and they go in the city's budget and they agree not to petition or put a separate ballot so that's how that's how that works you know the library and probably cvh each inch wouldn't necessarily want that they get higher approvals than we do so they don't necessarily want to be protected by the city budget necessarily they want they like standing on their own so i you know it is a tough nut crack really and sure but i can also understand not just saying you know nobody that's here now was involved with that but you know if you look at the history um you know in 2006 they they had a 99 000 budget brought in a 96 000 increase to a 99 000 you know 100 percent increase and it passed but um but do we want to tell them now if you come in with a hundred percent increase we'll just put it i put you on the ballot or they've got they're looking at a collect new collective bargaining agreement we want a 40 percent increase um is it guaranteed that that's going to go on the budget no and so how do we handle that we could tell them they they've been listening to this whole conversation maybe he has a suggestion for what would work best for them well just to be clear we're not requesting a 40 percent increase i didn't think you were it would be lovely and it would probably pass but we're not requesting it um the i understand the balancing act that you're struggling with um we'd be happy to make a presentation to the council as we have in years past um it just seems um we would certainly collect all the petitions that would signatures that we needed where we asked the petition it would just be distraction and a lot of time and effort that went into a process that's really probably unnecessary in my opinion so my preference would be to make a request to the council but i understand also that depending on what the timeline of when that happens that if you said no we don't like your increase that we would then be scrambling to petition in time to meet the deadline so you know it may be that this conversation is happening too late this year um but we could make relatively early requests in future years so that there would still be time i know for instance we have to Worcester is our earliest town that we work with that's requesting um by october 13 i believe so we we will have our municipal requests approved by the board by that date and and would plan to petition shortly after that i you know if you wanted to have me at the next council meeting for presentation or something that would probably be an adequate amount of time but if it's not going to be until december or something like that and then there's the possibility that the council says no we don't like that that's problematic or i had an idea hope um what if we had a policy for the library that um the practice is for the library to present their budget and council may request that amount above previous funding levels require petition with a with a timeline that gives them time to do it i mean that way we can use discretion is it in or out of line with inflation and the kind of the increase that the city budget overall um but it doesn't lock in a certain percentage it just gives the current council discretion to require an above and beyond current funding levels or if it's increasing more than the city budget that year or something yeah keep me in mind one of our items on the agenda later tonight is the scheduling for for meetings the first budget presentation is scheduled for december 13th um i'm sure dan wants to be in here making presentation way before that so that if they need to accept need to collect signatures they want to do it before the ground is covered with snow tim i guess i appreciate it but in reality the budget process is driving our essential services police fire ambulance water sewer public works all essential services in this community that we're trying to fund library isn't this is an essential piece of the community but it's not on that top list of really services so i'm kind of having a hard time bumping this ahead of those in a process i think in fairness we have a process it's known when it starts so maybe you got to walk around in the snow and get your petition signed if they don't like the number we hopefully don't agree to apparently um but i don't see a better solution right now i don't think we're going to be able to tell them in october or if we do either it's not fair to our other agencies and departments carry yeah i think jim has probably worried about the the timing for this year at any rate but i do just want to disagree about the library being an essential service i think a library is an essential service for municipality but that's a difference of opinion but i just wanted to register that well and and as much as i've been through a lot of city council budgets things go on the budget on the ballot they get voted on and then we have to readjust and the library has never gone down not once so it it seems like you need to accept it and the interesting thing about the library way back when we used to actually get data mump here wasn't in same proportion of users as you were money but that's because we value it it's a real central it brings people into mump here it does more than just serve the readers and that's what the data in some of these places doesn't show so i i don't want to spend more time on this yeah i'm in agreement i i feel like we spent an awful lot of time on this and i'm not sure there were any closer to a resolution and do what and make his presentation yeah and then we can swallow it i mean then we'll know what the number is at least we'll know what the number he's asking for and we could have a vote to put it on the ballot and it might or might not pass it could be that so maybe the alternative here because i i was about to say decided i'd said enough so but but that you know if you set a number for i mean it's basically the point that tim made that you know you all and i will hear it if let's say we say okay it's 10% it's not any department heads here left but they're all going to come in and say where's my 10% right you know how come they just gave that away and you know we're going to get put through the ringer so maybe it's just an either or that says you can come in through our budget process knowing our timing and we'll go through and we'll consider your budget and we'll place a reasonable amount on the ballot as that we determine or you can petition and you can start your petition anytime you want and leave it up to the library which they would way they want to go and um because you know as i'm listening to this and thinking about it you know we either have to make a decision about their amount so early that we're not you know we haven't we want to be giving you our preliminary like what happens if we just do the same thing this year next year you know what is that the rough cut that you get you won't won't even have that at your next meeting we'll just be trying to figure out how to cut this year's budget much less you know next year so i mean i i i don't know what else to say and as far as cvh each go probably keep the same if you're if it's the same amount you have plenty of keys then you go on the ballot if you don't you know well it's basically nothing it's really what we're already that's a order right so we have a policy in place there we are okay i don't want to talk about this anymore unless someone has a concrete proposal to to fix it so i'm just gonna say this out loud partly for dan and for cvh hs and just all of us so we're clear so our policy is staying if you want to be on the ballot and you are keeping the same amount we'll put you on the ballot no questions asked yep if you want to have an increase you can either petition or you can submit through our process and you take what you get at the end of the process but you don't have to petition and maybe you none of you said this but maybe the promise would be at least we wouldn't reduce it well i mean yeah i mean then then people can make their choice which way they want to go they've got three options yeah i think that's right because until we change the charter they always have the right to whatever dollar amount they want they always have the right to petition for something and that's yeah that is you know throughout municipal government all through vermont it is a you know it's a thing i mean i i don't know i suppose we could take that away through charter change but i doubt people would support that that's a tough one no you know what i mean i'm not i'm not saying we should but i mean there's there's always that option for i do want to say qualified agencies you can't just come in and get money for your private business there are certain legal things that money can be appropriated for so it's not anybody can ask for anything but within this the the bounds of things that are legally appropriatable um anyone can petition as long as they get the qualified signatures and there's nothing we can do about that yep okay let's move to the next item thank you bill the clarity the clarity helps um evelyn item 13 communications update enable screen share thank you hey folks i'm evelyn prim the communications coordinator for the city i will keep this fairly brief because there is a ton of information that's included in the packet that you can review on your own time so i just wanted to to mainly just share a follow-up on our conversation from a few meetings ago where we talked about some of the things that we learned um post flood communications related and so i just wanted to share all with you all some of the things that i'm working on right now and and where we're going to go into the future so it looks like it's a little you can see it it's good enough all right all right so just a really brief overview um so the city uh administration has recently done the flood after action so i'm basically modeling the communications after action after that process so kind of what what happened what did we learn and what are we going to do to improve for for next time so i'm going to run through a few of the different data collection methods that i used to analyze this and the methods there and the that will dive into the just a brief recap of some of the results um what we're getting what worked well where can we improve um and the things that i'm doing now um so a few the few of the key points on the right hand side are just some of the uh the areas that were brought up during the our conversation a couple uh council meetings ago the the top one is is kind of the the big one for me so for about half of you uh that were here for my very first presentation to the council last october i talked a lot about research and how this position being very new to the city is a great opportunity to really make sure that we are living up to the communications related functions of our strategic plan and so a lot of my work yes it's putting out information but it's also evaluating what we're doing on an incremental basis and it is an iterative process so we're constantly looking for ways to improve so i just wanted to to point that out um and so one of the big uh developments in recent months that was a really beneficial part of our flood response was the development of the crisis communications response team so this is essentially just a collection of the people who are already doing the majority of the communications functions so our current members are myself uh mary smith jasmine benson from public works matt wilson in the community services department jake lairby from fire and ems and mike philbrook from mpd and we are recently going to be adding in sarah mcmillan from the clerks office so we'll have basically all the the public facing departments represented in our group so we have a really diverse array of not only skill sets but different populations that we are all serving so essentially what this crisis communication response team is is just it's an organization of our uh the the members so then we created a plan to follow in the event of an emergency and thankfully we were able to uh troubleshoot this uh quite a few months ahead of the flood so it really helped us um to be able to hit the ground running on that basically that monday morning um and the so the plan is included in the packet um and so basically what we do is we could just coordinate and manage the distribution of different public communication functions in the city during an emergency and um basically so in during the flood we functioned as public information officers to both residents and the community and also city staff so as as you are all aware um a lot of us were really displaced during the flood um some of us were still at home some of us were basically trapped in our offices um and so this uh it was helpful to have this team as both a relay between the city and the public and also between city staff to make sure that we were all getting the most recent and up-to-date information as possible so a little bit about what went into the after action so the different data collection methods that we focused on and also let me back up and just say so the after action was an activity of the crisis communication response team that was led primarily by me just as the organizer of the group but we all had a chance to review the different methods and add to the final product so we the city conducted a flood feedback survey in august it was open from the first day of august right to the 31st and we received 118 responses to that the full breakdown of responses is included in the in the packet we asked three main questions basically how how you were affected by the flood so to what degree did a flood damage did you receive and what worked well communications wise from the city and what would be an opportunity for improvement we did get some pretty passionate responses so I encourage you all to look at those and we just get some really good constructive feedback so that all went into this process and then also the recovery and resiliency forums which I've shown in a couple of these pictures those were huge for communications learning and also a new term that I've noticed kind of floated ground is instead of feedback feedforward has been mentioned and I don't know how I feel about that yet but I do I like this sentiment behind it so kind of just taking that into into consideration exactly future oriented and then so we're all we're constantly receiving comments and questions on social media so between Mary and myself on the city's page we look at those and we make sure that everyone who who reaches out to us gets a response of those pages and then the same thing for DPWs and PDs page as well those are all very really active on social media and so we receive a lot of communication from there and then also during the flood a tremendous amount of just personal correspondence where it be people emailing members of the the CCRT and myself during these last couple of days so it's we're really seeing a trend in people identifying ways to connect with the city by having the basically identified individual staff members who are the the the PIO is basically for the city and so between all of us there's usually every hour of the day is covered so if there's a question that comes up we usually have it have it covered relatively soon and so this graph shows so in the flood feedback basically the survey question number two what worked well out these data points represent a percentage of the total responses so for instance 24 percent of the 118 people ranked facebook as their the number one thing that worked well so the big ones here kind of no surprise so facebook and social media was was rated really well front porch forum was also ranked that it worked well vt alerts we were using that quite often throughout the flood and then Montpelier alive as well and then so the other ones just to to to provide the context that the other ones that have like just two percent or one percent it's not the intention to draw from this graph that those that those aren't working well it's just that those are just the percentage of the 118 people that responded so that's not a great number for survey responses out of a total population of 8000 but you know it's it's it was an opt-in sort of survey so it wasn't um one of the larger survey activities that the city has gone through so this is just more anecdotal did you mark facebook and front porch forum or only one uh so those are separate so the sort of facebook uh you could mark you could mark one one yes look at the social media you've got like 47 percent of the two together i just wondered how many were the same people correct yeah so these numbers represent the the number one thing that people were people rated as they're so i wasn't double counting okay in that yes thank you of course and then so the uh basically this the summary of results or did i skip one no i didn't it's coming up um so the summary of the the results was a little more difficult to code it took a little bit more time but the what it boiled down to is basically eight themes of of areas for improvement so the big ones here are listed there and they're also represented in this graph here in the white bubbles so the the white bubbles are those eight themes and then branching off from those are the individual action items that myself and the cct is working on in the city is just working on to expand and so we those are detailed not every single point is detailed in the report that's in the council packet but it some of them can be somewhat combined and that's what the gold arrows linking the two represent just relationships between the different the different areas so for instance like including city branding in communications and then creating a direct and email text notification system that obviously has a really strong relationship so that could be considered as one sort of one action item and then so the big action items that i'm working on right now are so we already have a we have a direct communication via email using the notified be email updates on the website so these we have been sending out the city managers weekly report the the summary of notified or this the summary of updates from city council meetings that we just started doing and one went out today from sharing updates from the from the PD and DPW so just more of an all-purpose way to connect to people this is again one of the the items that was ranked pretty heavily as as that was a desire from the community they wanted a direct way to read to get updates which i will also say is is different than when i first began working here so it was it's interesting to see how the different communication needs change over time and it's also improving vt alert messages so a lot of the messages that we sent out from vt alerts didn't explicitly say that they were coming from the city of Montpelier so that was just a big opportunity to show people that you know the city was behind a lot of the communications that were going up but we just didn't make it explicitly clear so we have our own in-house text blast system to in addition to the vt alert yes we do i know DPW does when they send out like boil water notices and things like that so yes yep how many do you have a guess of how many people are signed up for those i don't but i can ask jasmine and get that to you she'll know she's the one who manages that system because obviously we can only send them out to people who request them saying with the emails exactly exactly um and then so kind of on that same note just making disaster preparedness plans more visible and accessible so on the website under the so you have the top five mega menus in the how do i section we are currently building out a resource page that links to all the different community resources so for instance like the Vermont Department of Health page a v-trans page for my emergency management those will all be on that page in one place so people don't have to search when they want to find something it's the the every basically every type of resource that we can identify will add a link on that page so people can go to it it'll be organized by category so if you're looking for food assistance you know to go here or if you're looking for emergency like emergency shelters or housing you can go to that section and then so another thing that was mentioned quite a bit and this is this was discussed in our last time we had kind of had this conversation about communication was creating more how-to information and so the welcome to Montpelier packet of information is is in the works and so we're going to be basically that'll be a text document and a physical copy if people would if people prefer that basically has everything spelled out for the the major functions of the city so it's fewer arrived in Montpelier and you had no idea where to where I where do I pay my taxes you know how do I catch the bus things like that that will go into that and then we're also going to continue on doing different website show and tells that really show how to use the different features on our website since we had just invested a lot into the website redesign so really just making sure people are able to utilize the services that are already that are the city is already working on and then the the newest addition to some of the different some some of the project portals that were we're working on are different ways that people can engage is the the community project portal so this is also another way for us to engage with community members and they can reach out to us so for instance if you go to the page and this is linked right to our homepage on the website and you go into the minute in Montpelier podcast you you can suggest topics for our next podcast episode and so just a sneak peek teaser we're going to be speaking with deputy chief Kevin Moulton and sergeant Mike Philbrook tomorrow for a a pd episode flavored episode of the podcast so that'll be coming out shortly and so that is basically all I have to present and I welcome questions thanks any questions I have a comment which is that seems like we're we've really ramped up our communications function I think that's a really good thing yes we sure have you know people need to be able to hear what what their city government is doing go ahead so is there and maybe I missed it when I read it through but also a flow of the hardware to back up so you all can connect is that yes there is yep so the the plan is a so it's an internal document so we obviously because it has people's personal contact info so the the plan for we're talking about the same thing about you know what when you didn't have a phone there you were oh yes and why you went to facebook first because you couldn't get anywhere I mean just so that was to me was like a hardware connection like you didn't have internet or you don't have a telephone what do you do yes so that is actually going to be one of the improvements that we make to our the crisis communication response plan in it just spelling out all the different ways to connect to for employees to connect with them employees during those different ways or during a any type of an emergency and that could also be something that we that can also be an addition we make to our communications page on the on our website so right now on the so if you go to the city manager's website under the department's tab and then you click on communications it shows it's a list of everything all the different ways that you can either receive updates or share information or get information from the city so it's a it's a pretty comprehensive page that and that we're constantly adding to as well as we develop new ways so do you see a piece of this and maybe it's not the appropriate place but several residents on state street district one that was flooded and couldn't get out and hadn't and their electricity was off felt totally isolated they really wanted to see a staff member come down in a boat and say are you all right I mean is it going to go to that fine level of communication that sometimes we don't have all this electronic stuff we don't have a telephone yeah I think that's always the goal you know whatever city staff have the capacity to to do is is making sure especially for most vulnerable during during a crisis so great thank you of course this is great just wondering about getting what the plan is to put this to share this back out I'm thinking of like the people who filled in the survey we have email addresses people who signed up at the forums a number of people put their email addresses and putting it out on the channels that people currently use definitely I assume you're planning to just showing we actually are yes trying to learn and exactly great yes awesome yep I assumed thanks okay everybody happy with this ready to move on okay thanks everyone went to the city website 2% we're gonna work on that well and according to this only 4% went to the town already got the okay from the boss it's it's it's 10 o'clock first week I mean I don't want to and that will only be a week before the actual strategic planning so you'll be all yeah and you've got the info to read so okay good on the subject of strategic planning um I wanted to ask if there is kind of a first when we get into our next process of planning is there a framework for that discussion or is that in development or you know do we yeah um Paul Costello will be leading it and um I think he sent me a draft um which I think he's going to share with the mayor basically I think he's going to review what we've done but then try to start from scratch like new group new flood you know what are the big picture you know what what are the top goals and then what do we need you know what do we need to go from it so I think I mean a strategic plan is a strategic right these are the top things we want to accomplish in big picture and then how do you what strategies do you use and then so so the the structure will probably be similar but the content will be whatever you folks want to put in and I think there'll be some of the dots and like you know the whole the whole picking priorities so and maybe this is not anything anyone else is interested in but is there any opportunity during that strategic planning to sort of look at our differences within the council members or how we approach things and whether that's a simple like a disc you know something we can do ahead and sort of look at our process and our neighbor's process so we can better understand sometimes we were coming from that I would like that well I know and we've been trying to schedule that um but we're kind of a work a workshop a retreat that was not content um so I did tell paul that we were trying that it was something we've been trying to do and had not been able to be successful so I I don't know whether he's going to try to build some theme of that in our understanding or if there's any at least beginning a conversation but you know it's also everything's pushed back a little bit we're coming into budget so we really do need to set our priorities but yes I think it doesn't have to be at this meeting just somewhere along behind you'll be good okay maybe if you nail your priorities in the first hour we get two hours yeah okay winter and budget schedules skipping 13 or 14 winter and budget schedule so there's nothing magic to this I think the one question was whether we were meeting on the 11th we are meeting on the 18th for the strategic plan and then regular meeting on the 25th otherwise um it's pretty straightforward every year we run into this that because we're second and fourth the fourth Wednesday is always the night before Thanksgiving and the fourth uh in November and the fourth Wednesday in December is always between Christmas and New Year never really had great desire to meet on either of those dates so you have really just moved everything up uh a week which was fine when it was our building so we will have to figure out um you know another place but typically and then I think the other thing was again I built in three budget you know two budget workshops in January plus a regular meeting to discuss budget we've dropped those sometimes in the past if we don't if we reach budget conclusion but we build the time in if we need it uh and then we would be done um at the end of January which is our statutory deadline and printer deadline and ballot deadline and all those other deadlines some budget years are easier than others yes this one probably will not be uh exactly all right great but yeah sooner we know that you're on board with it the sooner we can schedule the meetings appropriate and not find alternate places okay so do you want us to give you the thumbs up now okay zero motion the staff proposed um November December January schedule winter schedule and there's a second any other discussion okay all those in favor signify by saying aye aye anyone opposed great and the reason I have a motion just is because they are your meetings we can't set your schedule so you're you're setting your own schedule yeah dictate to us and that's at the charter in fact uh budgets or meetings are set as determined by the council yeah all right other business Donna your I want to say that um we had some really persistent residents who got my attention in Lawrence we went and visited their homes and it is devastating to see the houses that were just totally gutted and when you hear them talk about it and you know all of our homes we put a lot of ourselves into it things that you'll never get back out when you sell it and things you can't replace once they're all gone and the level of work these individuals have done to clean out their house and now they're struggling with that they are so substantially damaged that they have to either be total compliant or demolish their home and it's it's been really very heartfelt exposure it's been really good and I'm gonna have a motion under other other business which is where we are um yeah under other business I've asked for I want the council to consider that because these individuals whose houses are been labeled substantially damaged and this is a term Mike's left this is a term that that the planning commission planning department had to determine under the of FEMA rules and so they went out thinking there were 300 houses at the planning department visited when they got done there were 15 they thought that might qualify then when they looked at what actual as repairs went along the more things torn down they actually ended up with eight officially declared substantially damaged and two of those I believe are buildings not houses most are on state street and elm street now there are two houses in on state street that were substantially damaged but they're historic so they're not allowed to be labeled substantially damaged and it's these eight to actually 10 people I'm concerned about and they brought to me the desire that we would not apply any late fee because they can't get their abatement appeal into us before it's late actually the John informing October 2nd is one that bill goes out and so from that point on it's late and Ed Haggett bless his heart really stood up for everybody that he didn't feel it was fair that he would be on public record as being delinquent would have to go to the board of civil authority and ask for those late fees to be eliminated so he would like the council up front to say we are not going to have late fees for the first two quarters for these 10 houses and that's what I'd like a motion on so they won't be charged late fee they'll still do an abatement form they'll still go before the board of civil authority and asked for whatever they want as far an abatement on the taxes but they won't be charged a late fee for the first quarter which is due in October as well as the second quarter that's my motion and actually John worked out the wording read your wording I think your wording does it all well he also has gear wording on it so hopefully that sounds all cohesive moved to suspend property tax late fees and penalties for the first two quarters for those housing houses designated as substantially damaged by the planning department and to historical houses that have the same level of damage but aren't allowed to be labeled as substantially damaged yeah Michael said there was no term for them they're historic and I didn't know what that meant but I wrote it down and it should be property not houses because two of them are buildings property okay all right it's been moved and seconded is there any discussion all those in favor all those in favor sitting if I were saying aye aye any opposed thank you it will mean so much to them that we've done this thank you thank you thanks daughter it's the least we can do literally I'm sorry it's the least we can do oh it's and they're working so hard with all this bureaucracy it's just so sad or unsanitary yeah just just another question just on the same topic if that's okay jack that I don't know I was hoping Mike might still be here but um so they're also seeking like Mike has been working so hard and just echoing I know Donna said it last time but they have been so grateful for the communication and the work that Mike's been doing for them and they are desperate for the grant like which I know that the city's been pursuing money so that they can because now they're required to either tear down which they have to then pay for themselves or raise their houses and so Mike has been working really hard to seek grant funding to help the people who have gotten the substantial damage declaration I don't know if there's any update or just wanted to echo that if we can support that a city letter or something you might have got to know for this year they're not willing to re re uh change the name and change reallocate reallocate thank you funds that exist but to try to hit up the legislators for next year but it's a up to a hundred and eighty thousand dollars per house to get them raised but they can do all this repair and all the other mitigation but if they don't raise them they'll have to demolish them and when you say raise you mean elevate because there's raise and raise well that's the term they use that's the term they use I've been trying to use they have to do they do have to raise or raise in the meetings I've been at I've been here and say hearing the word elevate use but but whatever yeah we know several of these houses had done mitigations from the previous floods it just wasn't enough yep yeah okay we're on pop it in the weekly memo from Mike just so that you all know where that's at great anything we can do obviously yep all right city council reports start that way down at that end yeah I'm seeing that um downtown businesses are opening slowly and it is nice to receive names at all this one is opening this week this one's opening next week so it is nice to see our downtown being um you know like itself again uh pass everything's already come up yeah i think okay um just as we're entering into our budget development and strategic planning process the social and economic justice advisory committee has been talking about how to integrate equity concerns into both the strategic plan and to the budget process and recently um we were all sent a copy of a tool that can be used to an equity assessment tool that they developed a couple of years ago and so I just wanted to kind of you know remind everybody that that is in there um I would love for us to consider officially adopting it and um if it seems appropriate and then also discussing ways to integrate how we consider equity in all of the decisions that we make not just in the budget process but in everything so I'm just kind of planting that I don't have emotion or anything right now but okay thanks I'm glad you brought that up because I felt that related to this raising the houses and that indeed four of the houses on state street that need to be raised represent 10 housing units 10 housing units what will we spend to build 10 housing units so I I really feel we have to look at the more equity of not necessarily building new but trying to keep what we have and helping these individuals and the other thing is for all of us to go downtown but to also go online there's some stores not open but you can buy things you can order things and we all have a responsibility not to go to amazon and to go downtown and we really really they need our 100 support and I just can't emphasize that enough they really need us there thank you thanks Donna um mayor's report I would say I attended the Vermont League of Cities and Towns one day of the town fair and and the annual meeting yesterday as the city's representative and I will say I was very happy to cast that cast my boat in favor of Bill Frazer as the incoming president of the Vermont League of Cities and Towns succeeding yeah sorry I missed it yeah and then I went to a couple of interesting presentations or discussions there was one on short-term rentals and that was really just a round table discussion I was one of the things that became was clear from everyone is that people are concerned about it and feel they need more information and I think that's kind of how we feel too and for a while I've been thinking well the discussion has been well is this a big problem in Montpelier or is this just a couple of properties and maybe it's not something we should worry about and then the other thing that just occurred to me as I was talking to Kelly the other day was well there was a time you know 40 years or so ago when business property owners started converting some of their houses to offices and it probably started out it was before I moved here but it probably started out with not very many houses and we could have thought well maybe we didn't need don't need to worry about it but if we had had a policy preventing that before we lost all those houses on Court Street for instance that would be housing that we we still have and so thinking in advance about what we can do to preserve housing I think is a good thing there was also a presentation on how to do community economic development a good couple of good speakers including the city manager of St. Albans where they've been very successful at doing some economic development and the downtown in St. Albans is is really very impressive compared to what it used to be 10 or 15 years ago and a couple of presentations about disaster recovery I also got to spend some time talking to Jesse Baker who was the former assistant city manager here and and she's now city manager in south Burlington and and Tony Fecos our former police chief so again I don't have said this in years past if you have the opportunity in future years it's worth doing city clerks report okay well I'm sure you all will agree that there's anything this world needs more of it's meetings and I'm I'm here for you to do my part so tomorrow night's meeting should be short because there's been a lot of rearranging and some dropping out of people from these appeals which is making it a little more bottom-heavy but not so much that we have to break out our schedule but tomorrow should be short because we just now have one large landowner with about a dozen properties that's going to present them collectively and then supposedly wave which we can do now the inspections so there'll be a position where you'll have one big presentation and be able to render one big decision then and there and then we can all go home and call it a wonderful day and of course in the next week Marty's not going to be around so we can't have a meeting that week so we get a little bit of a break it's almost a bummer because I feel like we're getting behind you know we could use this time to get done sooner but it's just not the way it's shaking out this time with some withdrawals and some reschedules but um and john speaking of that if if you could send out an email to all the members of the board of civil authority either tonight or in the morning just to tell them the only part of that giant binder you have to bring tomorrow night is the ones for down street right yes just bring your file don't you don't have to bring the whole binder probably worth me sending out the current version of the schedule even though I think you all already know it nice just to have it so I'll send that out too just to reminder how the quorum's and stuff have to work is that there's a quorum to do business but then the quorum the folks who can vote who are part of a quorum on any given case have to have witnessed that testimony so we could have a quorum there of eight people but then a report comes in and it's a vote on a particular property and only three of those people heard the um heard the testimony there wouldn't be enough there to render a decision and if four of them had well you need five the quorum is eight then they'd all have to be unanimous um which I you know I know folks generally follow the recommendations from from the inspection committee so that that's that's not shocking all but just so you all know and the way around that is if someone is going to be there and participate in a vote wasn't there for the original testimony but they can go back and listen to the original testimony all the audio files are up on the clerk website which right now is only one but they're all going to be going up there for anybody to listen to so they can and they can be reviewed at any time then to not the highest quality but you can hear and understand everybody so that's all I have thanks bill um I have a few things thank you mr mayor um so just looking at our schedule uh so we'll be meeting in two weeks the 11th that's we're doing zoning public hearing looks like we had a couple of things we'll try to invite the vrc people in if we can get them in at the next meeting that river conservancy folks we can have that conversation we'll be doing the strategic plan wrap up and maybe we'll have a presentation on um budget rescission for this current year I don't know I think she was shooting for the 25th so um I don't know if I'll get it I almost broke her getting the financial reports done so and getting all the FEMA stuff done so I want to be kind uh she's really knocking herself out um we met I met well Kelly and I and Arnie met with seniors last Friday councilmember Brown was there and we all got out alive that was good it was a interesting conversation I think we had some good frank feedback um certainly took a lot away and tried to share some information and we'll we'll be trying to figure out ways to move forward I think their biggest concern immediate concerns are um we're still occupying one space one of the the meeting spaces we have moved finance out and they'd like to get moving on a vacant position and you know that's we're in this hiring freeze position but at some point you know we've got to make decisions about how to move forward so we're taking a look at that councilmember Cohen has asked they they through her had asked to be on one of our future agendas so we've got that in the pipeline and again hopefully we'll be in a situation where we have more positive outcomes to share with them by the time they get here um let's see should have a proposal out by the end of the week for the city hall design work that's good we should have a proposal in from FEMA about their plans for a country club road by the end of this week that's good jack mentioned vlct and then triggered when Carrie mentioned the cjack work I I guess I knew about this but heard very specifically that vlct does an equity cohort they started it last year they have eight communities and they're looking to start do it again this year and it's really intended to look at inside and out the community most more internally like how you function and they really so they're going to pick eight communities they want an elected official ideally a manager a system manager and a like a staff person and it's a commitment to a fair amount of meetings I want to say five maybe more it's you know it's with a training it's Abundance Sun I think is the training group but maybe to see people we've contracted with um so I you might want to give some thought is sort of the way that something I think it's something we we ought to do I'm not sure this is good the year that we have the capacity collectively to do it but we could give some thought to it and talk about it maybe get some more information about it for our future meeting speaking of vlct the mayor did mention that uh I did become the president of vlct uh Tuesday yeah yesterday and um taking over from jesse baker who is now the past president so kept it local and before that was morrow Weinberger so it had uh the the big cities represented and our next new vice president is mary and gulette from west ruttland so a little smaller town um but it's interesting I just mentioned this not to pat myself with it but I'm out and it's kind of an interesting time because this saturday I end my three-year term as ICMA vice president for the northeast so some of you may not even realize that but uh I have been the first person from Vermont since the nineties to represent Vermont represent the northeast region on the national international city mayor's association board and it's been some time away and I've really so I just wanted to say thank you to all the council members for supporting me when I first ran for that and my time commitment for doing that it's been really fabulous it's been great to bring Montpelier to the national stage um just through name recognition and being at things uh and uh so that's that's hard to believe that three-year term is over but I'll go literally from that to president of vlct and I did check it was last Montpelier president of vlct was a guy named Ray Kelly in 1982 council member so uh there we go so thank you for allowing me to serve outside of our community as always our city comes first and I've always put it first but it is good to learn and bring um broaden our professional uh so with that I will be gone uh the ICMA conference starts well my my last board meeting is Friday and Saturday so and then the conference starts Saturday so I'll be leaving tomorrow Kelly is going down at some point and it's been a great development tool for her and we'll be both be back Wednesday but uh if there's a real emergency Sarah uh LaCroix would be the acting city manager um she there she's still here she's still here okay she's smiling I know I who knows what will happen by the time we come back we might be down half our employees I don't know um but obviously we're we're phone calls and emails and texts away I mean we'll it's a working thing so you know people should feel free to contact us send you face time so you can see how it's going yeah it's actually it's actually a concern we're gonna have to have a special meeting while we're going we have to do face time so uh do you guys know you can do face time anytime you want I'm happy to that's good uh nothing I just uh anyway so that's my report thank you for supporting all of us supporting me in these uh external endeavors is there any update from gba on the rec center report Tom Bachman so I did meet yes thank you I meant to have that on so I did meet with Tom they have a preliminary draft they've got some plans uh which they show which all look very interesting they did not have the money aspect put to it yet so this is from a gba about the rec center but I think they are going to be able to address bathrooms I think they're going to be able to address the use of the building as a shelter or possible reuse or even as a rec center you know they kind of they looked at what can we do immediately to kind of provide public bathrooms what can we do if we wanted to convert it to a shelter what we do if we wanted to have it be rec and shelter or what if we want to do have some adaptive reuse in the future so they evaluated the building structure the building systems you know electrical hv all that kind of stuff the asbestos so they're putting that all together so we will have this full sort of soup to nuts of which is something I think we really have needed we've had this building and now we'll have a real complete evaluation of what it will take to do certain things with it is there any timeline do they have any idea he sounded like I mean the biggest thing was he was actually going to be out we we were trying to coordinate the time we were both together so he's he's gone now and then I'm going to be gone so so he showed me the plans and then they're getting them the money costs and okay from the engineers and stuff so I would imagine it would be soon possibly for the next meeting but I would get October yeah not great that's good no they're very close to wrapping that up which I think will be will give us some interesting choice whether we have the money for it I don't know at least we'll know it is our asset if we want to call it that and uh so we should know you know so I was it was good it done some good work all right it's all good I think we are set and so we can adjourn at 10 26 p.m thank you thank you all trying to talk louder it was much better still couldn't prove but it was much better