 Welcome everybody, I get this started. So we're gonna call the meeting to order. The first thing to do is to review and approve the agenda. There had been a couple of addendums to the agenda from its original posting. I think they're both on the online version of the agenda. So one of them is the discussion of a, well, one of them was gonna be a consent agenda item. So I think that's just the minutes. And then the other one is the discussion of a proposed charter amendment. So I'd like to put that in under, like right after item seven, which is after the Green Mountain Transit. And so we can call that item seven and a half, maybe. All right, so any other things to add to the agenda? Okay, so that objection, we're gonna get to consider the agenda approved. Can you hear me okay? Okay, just checking. Great, okay, so next up, general business and appearances. This is a time for anyone from the public to address the council on any item that is otherwise not on our agenda. And if you would say your name and where you're from and try to keep it to two minutes, great, go ahead. Or I think I'm, if you need five, it's okay. The legislators, as we get going to the session to educate folks about what the non-citizen voting means and to encourage them to be for it. Okay, just wanna let people know about where we're at. Thank you very much. Okay, on to the consent agendas. They're a motion regarding the consent agenda. Donna, can you use your mic? Thank you. I had some edits to the minutes. They were not substantial, such as I was present and I'm not listed. A couple of other things are, I think that's pretty substantial, Donna. In complete sentences, it's not the minutes in its whole, just some little grammar pieces that, and I had a copy and I'm sorry I didn't bring it with me, but if I could pass that on to her, I'd appreciate, especially being present. So potentially we could approve them with your adjustments. Yeah, thank you. Does that sound reasonable? I don't think so. Or we could wait. What's your preference? Why don't we just take the edits next time and approve it and stand down. Okay, okay. So we're gonna not, that's the only item on the consent agenda, so we're just gonna keep moving then. All right, so now we get to make some appointments. So I know we have some folks here who are interested in, well, I should say, really young people who are interested in serving on some of our city committees, and I'm very excited to have more young people involved in the city business and on city committees. So if you are up for it, you don't have to, but if you're up for it, if you would like to come up to the mic, introduce yourself and say why, what committee you're interested in and maybe a little bit about why you're interested in it. And you could also sit at the table, those are mics on the table too, if you don't want to use them. Either way is fine. Also don't feel like you have to, that's the other cool thing about this. If you want to, you can. If you don't want to, you don't have to. Teach your ways, like have more stuff and protect the animals from like getting hurt and stuff. Could I ask you a question, Jasper? Well, first of all, I really enjoyed reading through your application. I saw that you were interested in two committees. Would your preference to be put on just one or both? And there's no pressure. You can also come, you can also go talk about it with your mom if you want and then come back and let us know what you think. I'm going to try one. Just one, okay, okay, fair enough. And do you have a preference for which one or does it matter? Well, that's a good question. Um, I think there's a couple of factors in there. I mean, from what you described, it sounds a little bit more like conservation commission, but I could be wrong. That's what I was going to say too. I think it'd be great on either one, but I think the focus sounds like more conservation commission maybe. Okay. What do you think? Yeah, I think I would like to do conservation too. Okay, great, super. Thank you. All right, go ahead. My name is Lily Fournier. I'm a student. I'm a peer high school. I live up by Vermont College. And I, I'm not sure what the right verb is, want to be on, have been going to some meetings for the Historic Preservation Commission, which is really cool. I really like it. I think one of the things that makes Montpelier and lots of Vermont and honestly New England special is that the buildings are unique wherever you go because people just built them differently, different places. And so that's something that I think is a huge part of Montpelier's character that I want to continue to be a part of protecting. Super. I think that's it. Thank you. Any questions? Okay, super. Thank you so much. Great, thank you. Hi, welcome. The Historic Preservation Commission, super, great. Any questions for Emery? Awesome. Well, so thankful for your application. All right, so thank you so much. And so at this point, you don't have to hang out up here if you don't want to. So. Which you can't. Which you can't. And also thank you for that clarification about which committee you would want to be on. That's great. All right, I don't think we need to go into any, Ian Keane is not here. I know he's not here, but is he still, his application hasn't been withdrawn? No, but because it's an ex-officio position? Oh, okay, I thought there was one per. Okay, then I will. I think it's probably fine. Would you agree? I think we're gonna appoint multiple people to the conservation commission. I love it. It's perfectly okay. Okay, so. All right. I don't even like to make a motion. Does anybody have it all together? Am I supposed, okay, that's a really broad question, and I don't have it all together. Just want to be clear about that. Most people know that, but. So at this point, I would move that we appoint Jasper Eklund to the conservation committee. That we appoint. The next one's Lily Fornier. Yes, that we appoint Lily Fornier to the historic preservation committee. That we appoint Ian Keane to the conservation committee. And that we appoint Emery Richardson to the planning commission. All is ex-officio. It's ex-officio members. Yes. I'll second. For the discussion. Are you using that to mean non-voting? Because I thought we found out that didn't mean non-voting. In this case, I think we're gonna, it does mean non-voting. That's an intent to mean non-voting. Ex-officio, non-voting members. I amended my motion. Thank you. Thank you for that clarification. Glen, did you have something? No, I was just. Okay, Rosie. I just wanted to say that I'm always surprised during our appointments of adult members to the committees how qualified all of the folks that we have are and what knowledge and background they bring. And I was amazed and pleased to see how qualified even our student members are. Certainly not something we expect, you know, we're expecting that our student members are just interested in a topic, but frankly, some of them were extremely qualified and had lots of background experience. So it's wonderful to be in the position of appointing people to committees in Montpelier. Just wanted to acknowledge that. Yeah, I'm really excited about all of the interest that students had in all these committees. It's really wonderful that y'all want to serve. So great. All right, so for the discussion. All right, all in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, great. Thank you all so much. Congratulations. Yeah, congratulations. Okay. And we'll let those committee chairs know that. There's no requirement that you stick around for the rest of the meeting unless you really want to. Well yeah, and we'll let the committees know to expect you. Okay, so we have another appointment to the Central Mont Internet Group and is for the alternate position. We had two applicants. And I know you're both here. Would you like, I know you had the opportunity last time to say something, would you like to say anything further or what not? If not, that's fine. Up to you. Sure. I just wanted to affirm to you folks, but also to the folks in the public. Certainly, my name's Ken Jones, I'm from the city, but more importantly for this discussion, I work at the Agency of Commerce and Community Development and one of the most important aspects of both commerce and community development in the state is the expansion of broadband. And therefore, the work that I do during the day, some of the work that I do during the day is on this topic. So I've been asked up there to provide assistance to those folks developing communications in new districts. And so I would, as a reason why I'm interested, excited, and poosed, like I said last time, my opinion hasn't changed. I'm Richard Lutower. He's much more qualified, I should probably get it. The reason I'm talking here, I was gonna come up in the beginning, but I missed it. I really appreciate it if we could implement a policy where it's the secretary is sick or the clerk is sick, that someone else gets the email because it's kind of awkward to be like, hey, I applied for that and I didn't get it. I'm pretty loud spoken, I don't really mind, but other people might not be. So that'd be cool. Otherwise, he should get it. Thanks. Thank you. Well, it's thinking about having a procedural policy if Jamie is out. So, do we wanna go into executive session team? Yes. Yeah, yeah. I move that we go into executive session pursuant to one VSA section 313. Is there a second? Sang it. Sang it. Okay, for the discussion. All right, all in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? All right, we will be right. Okay, motion to come out of executive session. So moved. Second. For the discussion. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? All right, do we have a motion? I move to appoint Ken Jones to the remainder of the term for the Central Vermont Internet Board. And this is as an alternate. For the remainder of the term. Yes. Second. For the discussion. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay. And we just want to acknowledge, we're so grateful actually that you are interested in this. We hope that you, we would encourage you to go to these meetings, they are public. And we also just want to acknowledge that it's wonderful that you've been to our meetings for the past few. And that's not, that doesn't happen all the time. And so we hope that you stay involved and encourage you to stay open to other possibilities. So, and plus these, these seats will become open or they'll be up for reappointment later next year. Well, like sometime like, yeah, the spring. So thank you. Okay. Thank you, Ken. Okay. Okay, fabulous. Perfect. Okay. So we have an update and some budget report from the Green Mountain. Yeah, GMT. Come on up. Good evening. Good evening. Here tonight. This is my visit to kind of update the council on what's been going on at Green Mountain Transit. What I'm passing around right now is as you may have heard, we've started a next gen 18 month study on our complete service throughout. Yep. You might want to introduce yourself. Oh, I'm sorry. Mark Seuss and our general manager. Thanks, Bill. Appreciate it. I am the general manager of Green Mountain Transit have been there for now, two years, a little over two years. So I wanted to come tonight to go back into the next gen information, which is the next kind of a next generation of what Green Mountain Transit is doing for the future. And looking out, it was an 18 month project that included all the service area that we provide. We're in five counties. We are the providers of Sugarbush Stove service as well. And Franklin Grand Isle and of course Washington County. What I tried, what I was trying was going to do tonight is there's the Montpelier circulator has been, we've been talking about that every year that I come. And I just wanted to kind of update you where we are on what the next steps are. In this next gen study, what you'll see is there's an implementation timeline, which is the first page. It kind of gives you an idea of the three urban, rural and seasonal services that we provide. This timeline is very fluid because of public hearings that we have to have. And we're trying to kind of do the urban and rural. Right now we're kind of working on the rural. We will be working the urban, when I say urban, I mean Chittenden County. So right now we're working on the rural timeline. And I kind of, like I said, we'll push some things out because of timing, public hearings, et cetera. But this gives you a general sense of what we're looking to do. The first, we have two scenarios right now. One scenario is scenario one, which is it's basically some service that is currently goes kind of an opposite direction, but is currently has been designed to maximize the area of the city. As you'll see, very colorful, but it kind of gives you an idea of exactly what we're going to present as one option. And then the second scenario is what we call a bi-directional. The bi-directional has basically, it goes basically back and forth. It gives you more service and time points. But what it does, it also misses an area. If you'll see in the, is there college green, I think it is? Is that right? You'll lose that area over there. So we want to put this out to the public, so the public has a say in what this looks like. Can I ask a couple of questions? I can do this Freedom Drive. And Freedom Drive, but I will explain Freedom Drive. Okay, so just for clarity, so there are three different colored routes on here. So one of them is magenta, green, and orange. Those are the current route system. So which, can you just tell me which ones are which? Like which is the? I don't know because they change the color scheme on there. Oh, okay. Okay, but like, one of them represents the circulator, one of them is like the city loop. The way I'm reading it, the magenta one is the circulator, and that's the one that changes from one map to the next. Okay. Okay, so, and that's the one that's sort of at play here is should the circulator do the scenario one or scenario two? All right. Okay. I thought the circulator went out Elm Street, which is green on this map. This is a, the next step on what was designed by our consultant. So this isn't current, this is what we're presenting to the public for options. Currently I have people who are using it on Elm Street and are afraid of losing it. So that's what the green is on this map. I believe you're probably right on that. I don't think you're losing it. So if the current is both the green and the magenta? No, I think the current is not shown. Correct, the current is not shown here. This is what we're presenting as options. And that's why I'm bringing forward to the council because eventually when the public hearing comes out, this is what we'll be presenting. And we have plenty of time to have input from public. This is why we're kind of doing this because we wanna hear from them what they think. Also, I may add, we're also implementing complimentary ADA into this area which we never have deviated fixed route. So when you do complimentary ADA, it's mandated by the federal government. They go three quarters of a mile off the route. And so that will pick up some of these other areas that you were talking about, freedom of drive, freedom of circle that we've checked into that and that they're actually qualified to be able to get the complimentary ADA so they won't lose service. So that was complimentary, so it's just secondary to the fixed route. So, but those are also public hearings. Ashley, do you have a question? Yeah, sure. So I just wanna make sure that I'm clear. So with ADA though, that's only for folks protected by the ADA. Correct. Okay, so I just, I, full disclosure, I lived on Berry Street for at least part of my time in the council and for several years before that and I'm quite concerned that proposal two cuts out in essence all service to Berry Street other than ADA. The co-op is there. It stops at the, I believe it actually, circulator stops at the co-op if I'm not mistaken. It does now. Or maybe something does. Or it stops close to there. And the senior center as well, I just feel like that's a major cut. The senior center provides a place for lots of members of our community to go and to be and not just for seniors either. There are lots of classes that you can take there. And I mean, I'm really, it's a hard note for me on this second proposal because that cuts out a lot of folks who need this. And as a former resident of Berry Street, I am intimately familiar with the happenings and I see lots of folks walking to work when I was living on the bus stop to get to work. And when I leave for work in theory on time, which hasn't happened for a while, but there's lots of folks waiting for the bus down there. And I just, I cannot support a plan that cuts out bus access for that many residents of our community and particularly, how diverse the Berry Street neighborhood is and just this sort of diverse ridership that I know relies on this to get where they need to get to be members of our community. Thank you. You're not voting, you don't really have any. No, I know, but I just. So I just want the council to know that this was done by a third party consultant that does this all over the country. They're the ones who made these recommendations based on demographics, based on household demographics, et cetera. And so I'm, this is a common conversation we have. That's why this is not a done deal. This is just an FYI for the council. So when the public hearing does come, councilors are allowed to obviously be there and state their objections to certain areas or add service. So it doesn't mean we can't add to this, to these recommendations. And I just, I wanted, this is one of the things that we've been trying to sort of tackle in the committee that I formed, but I love public hearings. I think public hearings are critical to these conversations, but there are lots of voices that are left out of those conversations. And I know that there probably is some data to support all this and this is in no way to undermine or in any way discredit the work that this organization has done. But as someone who represents a large segment of our community, district three, my, the residents in my district are human beings who have needs that if the council is sort of looking at this only as a map, sort of really misses out on how critical these services can be for people in our communities. And so I know, I know I have no doubt that this is supported. I just want to sort of bring that human element back that, you know, while money is important, people's lives are also important. And some of these services, you know, central remote substance abuse, prescription services at pharmacies in the area, shopping, grocery shopping, you know, reach up. These are critical services that our community relies on to literally survive. And I want to make sure that that is an ongoing part of the conversation. If anyone is seriously considering at least per proposal one on here. Thank you. I don't disagree with a lot of what you said. So the last page is the Michael Transit. I believe there was a counselor that went to, you did, right Donna, that's what I thought. Went to the Michael Transit meeting. I was not there, but this was part of this part of the presentation. I believe it's an ongoing monthly meeting with a recommendation, I believe, coming out sometime in February and March. And VTrans is actually a kind of spearheading these conversations. So we're involved in the Green Mount Transit involved and there's a lot of stakeholders that are involved in the Michael Transit, so. Great. The only other thing I'd like to bring up is just kind of give you a kind of an overview of how much rides we provided in the central Vermont area. 336,248 excluding the Montpelier link, that's just the service that we provide locally. Part of what we're trying to do is be a little bit more efficient with the dollars and by doing so, hopefully with that and the company ADA coming into place that ridership we're looking to put ridership, move ridership up, it's actually has an uptick right now. So it's actually going in the right direction and the Montpelier circulator service had 16,686 rides last year. So that's kind of what I have. I entertain any questions or comments? I have a quick question. You said there was an uptick in ridership, is that, are you seeing that statewide or is it just Montpelier or both? Nationally. So nationally, we've done our peer, we have a peer group. We have approximately, I wanna say 30 other agencies that are similar size, similar budgets, similar ridership, similar service area. And we basically about a year, a little over a year ago we did a study to see why our ridership had gone down. We were down 6%. And so when we did this peer study, we actually found that nationally the average was almost between six and 10%, somewhere actually down 22%. So nationally, when gas prices are low, public transit usually takes a hit on ridership. So the gas prices go up a little bit? Yeah. Ridership goes up a little bit. So Montpelier's numbers are also up? Yes. Okay. Connor and then Rosie. Just a couple of quick questions there. Enjoying being on that state micro transit committee with Bada there, and great to work with some of your guys on that though. Looking at the numbers here, I'm looking at Montpelier circulator, 205,000 a yearly costly estimate, that's 16,000, 686 there for ridership. So it comes out to like about 12 bucks a ride. Does that sound right? Yeah, I believe that's probably true. I don't have the data with me today, but that sounds about right. Could I ask you just like broadly as you're looking at the micro transit option, some of your folks are serving on like the state committee. Does that idea like strike you as far fetched as you're just hearing this? The micro transit? Move it to like an Uber run model? No, no, no. Is that something that GMT would be interested in running like there's someone there? Absolutely. It is, okay. Absolutely. Okay, great. Good. I've got a number of questions. One is I wanna get some clarity on what the two proposals are showing for Elm Street. I know Donna and I have been contacted by several constituents who are really concerned about losing the Elm Street service because that had been my understanding of the original proposal and what the board had voted to accept last year, maybe. And I understand that, and I think this may have happened since some of the studies went into place or were taken, but that there are several daycare centers that are using the Elm Street section to get out to the rec fields and the nature center. And I wanna make sure that that, if it is indeed more recent that that is reflected in what you're, the data that you're using to make these decisions. There is, you know, CCV is out there and the rec center and some other important locations out there. So I just wanted to make sure that that's on your radar and hear what the current plan is. Yeah, I don't, the current plan or the two plans that are in front of you, we haven't changed anything since the last time that I was here. This has not been implemented at all. So what was there is still there. And I'm gonna make notes for your concerns because I'll bring it back to my planning staff. So what's the green route through the Meadows neighborhood that's shown here? Because my understanding of the proposal before was that it was basically gonna stop at Elm and Spring and that was as far down that stretch as it was gonna go. Like I said, I don't have a much better guide. I believe the rec field was added to that route to go out there and come back because of the responses they received during public hearings. Okay, so there is a change from the initial plan that was presented. This has been a very fluid document. So every time we go to a public hearing, we kind of add all comments into the formula, if you will. And then the consultant starts looking at things a little bit, okay, is this needed, is this unnecessary? Then they'll do the demographics. And so I would say that that was added probably because of a public hearing. Okay, it would be great if we could get a solid answer to give back to our constituents on that because that's not my understanding of how it had been. So I would like to be able to say that for sure. My next question is, I'm a little bit confused about your actual request because there's the $40,000 for the circulator and then there's the $29,000 for general participation in the service. Don't answer that. Is this level? The same as last year. Okay. We're just showing one line in the budget for $70,000, which was $40,000 for the circulator and $30,000 for their operating. It was actually $29,000 in change. Okay. And that's the same that we had last year. Okay, great. And I also, I think I raised this last year, but I'm just curious as we consider how we handle the circulator in Montpelier, right now we subsidize it and don't charge and it's free. And I'm just curious about what the thought is about charging for writers who can afford it, still offering the subsidies that you offer across all your services for low-income folks and seniors, but charging a little bit for that service and does that mean that we can serve more or serve more often or is the cost of collecting fairs so much that it isn't worth doing? So the fair, there was a fair analysis done when we did this next-gen study as well. So that's part of the board document that was adopted by our board. And we're discussing fairs right now. We do have some that are fair-free throughout our system and then there's some that pay and should there be a fair increase for that. So those are the discussions that are actually happening now that we'll be presenting. So part of this final document that you'll ultimately see, there will be a recommendation on fairs. Okay. And that's something that I would, if a fair increase allowed us to expand service and do it more frequently or serve more areas, that is something I would be really interested in exploring. I'm not sure what other folks think about that with the understanding that we do have some methods for subsidizing it for folks who can't afford it. And then I don't fully understand the microtransit proposal. I haven't really been involved in those conversations and I wondered if you could just give a little bit of a summary of what that conversation is and how GMTA would be involved in that. I think actually the members that were on the committee could probably answer that question better than I could because I wasn't at the meeting but the understanding about microtransit is basically putting a bubble over the city of Montpelier and people would call for rides and basically like an Uber, I don't want to use that, but that they would actually call for like a demand response ride and within that bubble. And if I, am I, is that? The idea is having the technology and app to make it more responsive so that you could also share hopefully that ride, not just ride yourself like Uber in a taxi, but so far it's only been done in larger communities. So the whole group is looking at all of that closely. So the idea is that GMTA would run that rather than a private company such as an Uber. Maybe there's private companies who put in bids who are participating in the study who have the technology that right now GMT doesn't have but wants to have. Anything else? That's for another discussion, another day. If I could chime in Rosie, just on that. I have to say when I'm looking at like 12 bucks a ride here, right? And it's okay, 45 rides a day for $205,000 a year. It seems like there are other options worth considering. So I'm really happy you're saying that because if you do take, I'll say the word Uber in Boston or something, most of those trips are gonna cost a lot less. So I think it's a very broad discussion at this point, but just looking at the numbers who live in each community and where they travel on a daily basis. I think it's worth thinking into. So we just had the one meeting, but I'll be interested. Anything further? I think I'm good for now. Donna then Jack. Well, I'm gonna jump to the price because the $12 an hour, again, I was glad you brought up. It's national norms dealing with population base and especially roots that have any kind of small neighborhoods and door-to-door response is more in the neighborhood of $20 per ride. So you have to look at what the norm is for the population base and what that route is doing. Is it a fixed route or is it a more of a door-to-door response? So, and I would also concern, I'm glad to hear that you're taking in input because I went back online to look at the posted next gen study and I didn't see any revision dates. And so I do have concern about the circulator in Elm Street. As Rosie said, we have constituents who are concerned but I also have concern for changes you're doing to Hospital Hill or proposed to do Hospital Hill and Hospital Hill on Berry and Montpellier as well as your city commuter as well as a circulator. So in a timeframe, when are we gonna be able to have more input? I know that the Montpellier Transportation Interstructure Committee is reaching out to you to come and meet and us to solicit, that group to solicit public input at that meeting because some of your meetings weren't well attended. I know the one here in Montpellier got canceled because of snow and I don't know that it ever happened again in Montpellier. When I looked at the minutes of all your public meetings there was no Montpellier meeting mentioned. So that concerns me that we hopefully we get you into that group and we have a more extensive discussion about this and we can see indeed whether it's making any impact of change. Yeah, so I think the timeline that we're working on right now and again, very fluid timeline is nothing would be implemented until July one at the earliest. Meaning from now until then you'll have several chances to meet, talk about it. So it's July, at the earliest would be July one. So if the Transportation Infrastructure Committee had you come, would you also be able to bring fares and some of the other changes you're proposing besides just the routes that I found online? Absolutely. Thank you. And I'll bring my planning staff who was much more involved in this from the day to day. We're actually involved in the actual study. Just to add to that, beyond the Transportation Infrastructure Committee hosting and basically a public hearing on the proposed route changes, the complete streets group is also gonna be hosting a public hearing doing the same. So I think that's wonderful to get, our committee is more involved in that process and I would love to see that be a more regular normal kind of thing for us. Oh, I'm sorry, go ahead. I think Jack was next and then Dr. Rosie. Okay. Thanks for being here. I have, I'm new to this because I haven't been on the council before. One observation I would make is that for future presentations like this, I would find it useful to have the first map be what you're doing right now so that then we can go from there to see what the proposed changes are because some of us don't use the bus all the time and I think that would be very helpful. I don't represent either Barry Street or Elm Street but I can tell you that every time GMT is mentioned in these meetings we have people coming in saying they're really afraid that they're going to lose access to the service and so even before you've heard of public hearing in Montpelier, I can tell you that it's a service that people really rely on and would be very unhappy to see it go away. I had a question about the scenario three, the micro transit map. It appears that you still have two of the bus routes on here and so is the model for this that you would maintain these two bus routes and then the micro transit or the individually dispatched jitneys would be an overlay or supplement to the fixed routes? I think it's to be determined. I think what you see here is some of these routes right here actually go outside the bubble if you will and because of that, we have to continue. I think they were continuing those to be outside that bubble and I think the bubble is really to be determined as a group, I don't think they've really kind of pinned down exactly what that looks like boundary-wise. The other thing about the micro transit, its focus is the last mile they talk about so if you take the city commuter from Barry into Montpelier but they're not dropping you off close to your work or to your home that then you could use the micro transit to do that last mile. Makes sense and I know, I have friends who used to drive the link up to Burlington but it doesn't get you very close, necessarily get you close to your office. So, same thing. But there's great service up in Burlington for our fixed route up there that covers most of the city. Well, they've got more population so they can support it more easily, I'm sure. Good, so two more questions. One is obviously we're getting our new bus station hopefully by next summer and I wanna know how that fits into this because it doesn't really feel like all the stops are still, the overlapping stops are still at Shaw's and these and we're hoping to not have all those buses lined up in front of Shaw's anymore and so. That'll go away, Shaw's will go away. Once the DTC opens and as construction goes on it's really hard to pin down a timeline although I was with Bill earlier and having a conversation, it seems like it's on the right timeline in the fall. At that point we'll have to move everything down to the DTC and at that point we'll have to actually have public hearings to move some of those stops, so. Does it make sense to incorporate that all those changes into one time and maybe it doesn't but so that you're not altering routes for July 1st and then altering routes in October, you know. We can't kind of worry about, like the construction could have a huge hiccup, right? So if we wait longer, we're trying to kind of get the impact of July 1 and then see where it goes. Now if we find out, Bill's gonna say that, hey guess what, we have a magical date and it's gonna be summertime, then maybe, maybe that makes sense at that point. But. Great question. The other question I have is I know there have been some conversations with the school system at some point in the last year, I know they're thinking about adding service for middle school, school bus service for middle school students and there was also some conversation about being able to add service, I believe, up Berlin Street or kind of an after school late bus type service and trying to work with GMTA on that and I don't know what the results of those conversations were or if anything is happening in that direction. So last summer there was a conversation this conversation came up and the school board, I'm not sure it was the school board but the principal or superintendent kind of backed away from that for this year. So we haven't come around since then. Okay. I would encourage you to reach back out and hopefully the folks who are involved in this year, maybe some of our committees could make that connection again because if we are adding some more school bus service, which isn't our decision here but if the school system is thinking about that, it seems like there is room for some more conversation there for next year. Yeah, so school service, we have that up in Burlington, it's called the school trippers, it's still a public transit system so anybody can still get on those, not just specific for schools. Yeah. I just want to clarify that because sometimes people think, well, why can't you do well, federal transit administration doesn't allow us to do that. No, it makes sense. I think that it, I think there's some sense in having one bus serve both needs, so. Oh, Ashley and then Donna. So I don't know if anybody knows the answer to this but I noticed that regardless of which plan, so whether we do the microtransit scenario one or scenario two, there is consistently bus service to national life. Is that something that national life also pays for in part or is that something that's funded by the city and GMTA or how come the bus route encompasses national life regardless of scenario one, two or three? National life does pay a fee to us. Okay. I think the state of Vermont too. State of Vermont, now that's our next conversation about the state of Vermont moving down to Barrie. National life. Well, and then my agency is moving into national life. Oh, right. It's probably gonna be the same. Yeah, I guess just the thing that stands out to me, I think microtransit is great. It works for someone like me, but I think that it's also important to be mindful that there are service areas, you know, the hospital and things like that where while the service is a great service for some people, it's not something that would work for everyone and some of those services that are accessed on bus routes right now provide really critical support services and other things and being able to sort of establish a routine for some of it and some of those things are, I think it's incumbent upon us to be mindful that while microtransit's great for some members of our community and maybe for a whole bunch of them, I just, I don't want to get away from sort of the public piece of public transportation to focus on the privatizing of that. I think it's an important partnership, but. Donna and then Jack. And then we should probably move on soon. I want to get back to Barry Street. One of the sad commentaries is the lack of senior ridership with the circulator going to the center that we as a city have not promoted and maybe give some enhancement to seniors to not bring their car to the center that has limited parking space as well as Barry Street so that we need to look to ourselves as a partner and promote among our citizen the awareness not to bring your car but there are a little more time, you can take a bus. So I think we need to be more active partners and likewise you need to be more active with us. That's also where this summer lunch program is at the senior center. And so I know I've, you know, I know because I used to ride across the street, I know how many people like take the bus and sort of come in and hang out until lunchtime. And so I just, important function. It's important, but we don't have the ridership we should. Jack. I don't know if this is the full solution but I've been hearing that they're because of the limited hours of the bus routes that they're people who are sometimes just at the hospital they get out of diagnostic imaging or out of the emergency department or something and they're stuck there at night. And, you know, the healthcare system doesn't necessarily work for people unless they have a lot of support outside of the healthcare system. So if you're looking at microtransit one of the things I would encourage you to do is to think about hours to see if it's possible to cover areas or cover times that the bus system can't. You know, one thing I think we're trying to get the hospitals to kind of understand is not all about fixing but it's community. So how do we work with the hospitals and healthcare to help them get people to where they need to get to for appointments, et cetera and not to just worry about getting them, you know it's not all about just the fixing them but it's about the community health as well. And so we've started that conversation. They're not quite there yet but I think eventually they're gonna have to come around because it's starting to hit a national trend right now where hospitals and transit agencies are working together for the community. So good. Great. Just one last thing. Yeah. Madam Mayor, I will tell you that the capital shuttle that we had approved for a year round service will actually end at the end of this legislative session. So that kind of puts in a little bit of a curve ball. So that we were notified by that not too long ago. Okay. And I'm more than willing to any committees that you would like us to be at and we'll make presentations. Just let us know and we'll be there. Great. Rosie, just on that. Is that a state decision? They're funding that. Okay. Yes. Great. Just a legislative session. Okay. All right. Well, thank you very much. Thank you for your time. Yep. For sure. Thank you. All right. So we're moving on to item seven and a half, which is the charter amendment. And so I just want to frame this a little bit. So back in November, when we, well, prior to November when we were considering another charter change, one of the possibilities was that it was going to encompass all of sustainability. And so of course we decided to go with just plastics at that point, but that lost a lot of potential changes that could happen around energy efficiency. And so I know there was, we definitely got some calls about that and I'm particularly interested in being able to do some work in the city around energy efficiency in buildings. And anyway, so we've got, so we got this language from our lawyer not that long ago. So he and I went back and forth a little bit on this to tweak it a little bit. So just a couple of notes from him. So one of the things that he, I just want you to know that he had expressed was that legally speaking, he didn't have any concerns about this language. He did mention that it would be a political risk because this is somewhat novel. This is a somewhat cutting edge for Vermont. And we should just have our eyes open about that. So that's one thing. Another thing is that he, I mean, he admitted that he's not an energy expert. And so I actually had the opportunity to run this language by some energy expert folks, including people from Efficiency Vermont and Energy Futures Group. And they had a couple of not terribly substantial edits to suggest, which I could tell you about or I can send later or either or both. But the point of this time right now is to just get a general sense of like, how are you feeling about it? Do you want to change something? What's, you know, sort of where, this is more temperature taking at this point. And then we need to be, if we want to do this, then we need to be filing language in early January. So one of the things that I also want to point out about this is that this does open up the possibility for us to create ordinances around energy efficiency and that might seem kind of scary to some folks. And so I've actually been working with Efficiency Vermont to put together a program specifically for Montpelier that could help make this just a little bit easier to achieve for folks. And so Efficiency Vermont has agreed to do a particular program with Montpelier, which I'm very excited to announce, which is that we're calling it a concierge service, which the idea is that any property owner could work with a prepaid consultant, paid for through Efficiency Vermont to help anyone, but especially landlords, walk through what the process would be to do energy improvements in their buildings. So the idea would be that this person would know all of the best pots of money or rebates or incentives and would be able to help the land owner find the best deals and also walk them through doing the work. So it's a really exciting opportunity and we're gonna be talking more about that. That's gonna be available in early January. So I just wanted to put that out there as well as part of the context for this. And so one possibility is that we could just go around and what are our general thoughts or questions or comments. Another possibility is that I could tell you what the energy experts advise we add. I guess my inclination is to tell you that first just cause that seems like that would be wise. So I'm looking at it right now. I haven't sent it to you all, but I can tell you. I'll send this around later. So there was a reference in here to the Vermont Energy Codes. That's sort of right there in the second line, I think. That has a formal name. And so we were advised by these energy folks to call it what its actual name is. So the first line would potentially read ordinance is establishing minimum energy efficiency standards for buildings, which may incorporate technical requirements of the Vermont Residential Building Energy Standards, quote, or not quote, parentheses, R-B-E-S comma, commercial building energy standards, parentheses, C-B-E-S. Energy codes. So there are already these two existing energy codes, and so we might be taking some of the pieces from that. Moving on, or stretch codes. I'm just gonna keep reading, and I'll just tell you all the edits as we go. Including requirements for time of transfer slash listing, inspection and disclosure slash certification of minimum energy efficiency standards, compliance or non-compliance, and this is new, or anticipated building energy performance using forms generally consistent with the Vermont Residential, or, though this is new, or commercial, building energy standards, and then the rest is the same. Sorry, that was probably not that helpful. I'll send it around later. Okay. How would this be applied? Just in general? If this ordinance passed, I mean, this chart had changed, how would we then go about applying? So this would give us a lot of opportunity to create some ordinances around energy efficiency and in enforcement. So the current building energy codes, my understanding is that they really only apply to new buildings, and so what leverage do we have to, particularly in rental housing, to get landlords to make energy improvements? And so there are three, there are really three ordinances that this anticipates, which is not to say that we have to do them or that there's any order to these, I mean, and there are probably lots of details that would need to be worked out about any of them, but the three that this is sort of in reference to, one is the part about time of transfer or listing. There's a Burlington ordinance that requires that any multifamily building must be at a certain energy performance standard at the time of its sale. Now, whether it should be at the time of sale or time of listing is one question. So in a certain sense, that ordinance has already been done and it might make some sense for us to do that. And I believe they also have a cap on the amount of money that would be required to be spent on energy improvements so as to not prevent the sale of the building if it was really bad. So that's, but those are all details that we could figure out and learn from their situation. So that's thing number one. Number two, one of the things that this anticipates is something called home energy labeling, which was a proposal back in like 2015 in the Vermont State Legislature. The best analogy I think for that is that like if you're gonna go buy a car, you wanna know the gas mileage of the car, why would you not wanna also know the gas mileage of a house? And just like you and I might drive a car differently, have a gas mileage rating based on some industry standards. And so beyond just being like, hey, what were your fuel bills? You and I might operate a house very differently. And so again, it's important to have that be based on some of the assets of the house. So one hypothesis is that the, well, I forgot what that train of thought, maybe go with a different train of thought. So one of the things that came out of the 2015 work at the state was that they came up with a profile that could be provided to any potential renters or home buyers. And they could, so they came up with this profile that would communicate an energy score. And they trained a whole bunch of people to give those scores. And so that infrastructure exists, but no one has required that this be done. And so the program, while it's still, it's been sort of mothballed basically at this point. And so I think of this as mostly like a consumer protection issue, as well as being useful in terms of energy and energy efficiency. So that's, anyway, that's why there's all this reference in here to the Vermont residential building energy standard certificate or similar state of Vermont residential building energy ratings and labels, because those have already been imagined, if that makes any sense. So that's second one. And then the third one is captured in the last sentence. So there's this classic problem called the split incentive, which is the issue of how if landlords do not include heat in the rent, then they, financially speaking, don't necessarily have any reason to do energy improvements on their properties, because they're not gonna see those savings. And then at the same time, the renters don't have the authority to make those energy improvements. So kind of a conundrum. So one possibility is that in very poorly insulated buildings, it's possible that we could just say the landlord needs to include heat in the rent. And then it basically puts the pain where the problem is and would be a financial incentive for the landlord to make improvements. Now there's a lot that would need to be carefully crafted about that because, well, I could go into that one ad nauseam. It's very helpful, very helpful. But that was the kind of list you were looking for. I mean, there are other types of things I can imagine, but any of, I think, because of the way this is framed, it allows for other things as well. But it seems to be a carrot and stick, which I appreciate, that's what I really wanted to hear. We're trying to upgrade and motivate and incentivize. Yeah, yeah, and just so you know, the frame that I'm coming from, there are a lot of carrots out there that have existed and have worked to some degree, but I think we're at the point where there have been very few sticks around this issue and I think we're ready for that. So, yeah, and I mean, to be fair, we'll base this all on what's reasonable and easy to assess, particularly learning from what Burlington's done. Sorry, I have a lot to say about this, clearly. Other thoughts or comments? Rosie, I have a whole bunch of thoughts, so I'm happy to do them all at once or? Well, let's hear. Can I take a temperature? Other people have thoughts? Go ahead, let's do a few and then we'll jump around and we'll come back. So I have three main trains of thought here. One is I have a number of concerns about, I should say that I appreciate that we're trying to figure out this issue of multi-family units or buildings and energy efficiency and rental units. I think that's worth us pursuing and I think there are things that we can do there. I'm concerned about this language specifically. First in the drafting, just the way that this is drafted, we don't need to get permission to establish building codes, we already have that. So I think what you're trying to get at is not building codes for new construction, it sounds like you're trying to rate buildings that already exist. Yes. And so I think we don't, that's first line about ordinance establishing, like giving us this power to establish ordinances, establishing minimum energy codes, we've got that power. And the state has already established these codes for the new buildings. So there's no point in us re-establishing the code that the state has adopted. Instead, I think what we're looking for is to establish some method of evaluating buildings that are already built. Can I interrupt you? Yeah. So this, I did briefly talk about this with some of the energy experts. And one of the things that came up was the verb establishing, like that second word there, and that that might not be the right word. Because we're not really literally establishing minimums or performance minimums, what we're doing is more like having a variety of administrations or enforcements of those things. So yeah, I think that we don't need to take on this code piece of it. We one already have the power and two the state's already established the energy code. So if we wanted to, without a charter change, we could establish a stricter building code with regards to energy without getting the change. I think what you're wanting to do is to give us some powers to establish penalties or regulations around charging for heat. Landlord charging for heat, that seems like that's really what. And to give us some powers around requiring this labeling or around sales. And I think those were the two things that I heard you talk about. So I'm not sure that the way it's drafted really gets it what we want to do. So I think there's some room to work there. Thank you. Also the residential energy codes, those really apply to new construction. And I think that maybe like a HERS score or the certificate program that you're talking about would be more appropriate for buildings that already exist because you can't take an existing Victorian building and say, okay, you have to do this, this and this thing that are in the energy code for a new building. What you want to do is get it a air leakage score and that kind of thing. So that's a different thing that already does exist. And I think that's what we would want to use instead. And we do in our zoning, we reference HERS already. So I would be probably in favor of using the same one throughout all our regulations, but that's certainly something we could discuss is which one to use. Yeah, fair enough. I think that's really interesting. And I also feel like that's something that, so one of the things that I want to do with this language is make sure that we're not, well, to get at what we want to do, but also not limit ourselves to something that turns out to not be that useful. So if we, it might make sense to reference HERS in here, I guess, maybe I'm, yeah. But I'm not sure that just talking about the energy code is getting where you want to go there. For the benefit of people who might not know, could someone say what HERS is? I don't know what HERS stands for, but it is a score in terms of energy efficiency that is nationally accepted and used. But it's usually only used for apartments. Okay. I think it can be used for single family homes. I don't know why it wouldn't be able to, but. Home energy rating system. Oh, yeah. So that's pretty self-explanatory. And finally, the other thing that I want to, so I think we need to get at, are we talking about regulating new buildings versus old buildings? And I think we need different language for each. So that would be a drafting conversation. No, that's great. The last piece is while I think that this is worth investigating, I want to be really, really careful about the unintended consequences. And there are some serious public policy consequences of us not being very thoughtful about this and being really considered. One is that I could see that landlords, rather than going through this process to increase their energy efficiency of the building, would just say, well, I'm just gonna add $400 to the rent for every month to make sure that I'm covered and I'll pay for the heat, but that'll cover me if the tenant cranks their heat up to 80 degrees. And normally, in a normal housing market, they wouldn't be able to do that because there would be other apartments for people to rent instead. But in a very tight housing market, there is probably room for people to increase their rents. And so I just don't want us to do this and then the result is not increased energy efficiency, it's actually just increased rent. So can I address that one thing? That is one of my biggest concerns with that last piece. And my hope is that we'd be able to craft it in a way that anticipates that and particularly limits that effect. Because I think the, you know, has this potential for there to be a spike and ultimately cost tenants more. But anyway, knowing that that's a potential problem ahead of time, I would wanna be really careful about, I agree, I guess that's my point. I wanna be very careful in crafting, particularly that one. I've got one more point, but Ashley looks like you wanted to chime in on that one. I wanna dovetail on that. I, oh, sorry. No, it's fine. I promise I can't be, I kind of have deference on some points. It's okay, go ahead. So I'm glad that you mentioned that Rosie. This is something that I've actually been thinking about for quite some while and I had reached out to the mayor of Barrie, Luke Herring a couple of months ago now. I rented in Burlington when I first moved up here. Much to my chagrin, I left pretty quickly. It just wasn't for me, but that's okay, because I'm here. So one of the things that I'm very interested in doing, and I think I'm still the only renter on the council, I have been through the attempting to find an apartment process and that very scary moment of like, oh my God, I'm going to have no place to live in three weeks if I don't find something right now. And I was surprised at the fact that there are almost zero protections for renters here in Montpelier, and I actually just sent this out to both Ann and Bill. I think I may have sent this out to other folks before, but Burlington has a very comprehensive set of ordinances that talk about how and when landlords can raise rent, the percentages at which they are capped at raising rent, there are notice provisions, there are damage provisions for landlords who violate those terms. So if they raise the rent on 30 days notice, the tenant can commence an action in civil court, small claims court most likely, and then seek enforcement of both the ordinance through the civil court process, but also can be entitled to financial compensation for any losses incurred as a result of a landlord sort of jacking up the rent by $400 a month. So that's something that I've been very interested in. Also security deposits are another piece of this whole conversation when it comes to renting and capping that, Barry actually has it in their charter that the security deposit, basically moving into an apartment, you can't collect more than two months worth of rent, whether that's apportioned as first and last, first and security, last and security, however it's apportioned, it can be more than two months rent. So I think it all sort of dovetails. I would also point out too that with particular regard to this, I don't see energy efficiency just as electricity, I think water as well as like waste water and a number of other things sort of fall into that, wiring and electrical things can also factor into all of that, appliances and things like that that are provided. I know there are programs that exist, but I just don't want to focus only on the sort of heat piece, which is a critical piece, but there are a lot more things that I think have sort of fallen by the wayside for renters because well, it's kind of a transient population in part, but also, it's not very cheap to live here. And so I will confess, I've not spent a lot of time thinking about electricity in this context, but I think you're right. It would potentially fit into something like that. And you know, we can spend some time, electric heat is a, oh yeah, electric heat, yeah for sure. No, great. And so in essence, that's another way where the cost gets transferred to the tenant. And I mean, that is expensive. I've lived in places with electric heat and that's like a $350 to $400 electric bill some months when it's cold. So, so I just wanted to finish my thought there. So that's one major policy concern there. One is, you know, this would have to be kind of more on the extreme end, but if we made our requirements too strict, I'm really concerned that we have all this historic housing stock in Montpelier that is gonna be difficult to bring up to the same level as new construction. So if we don't allow for that, then in that housing stock outside of the designated historic district, maybe even some houses within it, I can't quite remember how that works, but is not protected. Like it seems like, oh, you've got this 150 year old house, you can't just tear it down. But if you're not one of those specific houses in the specific area where we do regulate tearing it down or not, what is to stop a landlord from tearing it down and replacing it with a new building? And I think if we make it too difficult to own an old building and make it meet our standards, we might see more of that. And so I wanna caution us that as much as we want to move to net zero, we need to be somewhat aware that the old buildings that we really value for their beauty are not ever gonna get to as good a point as a new building. And we need to figure out how we wanna work that in our public policy decisions. And finally, I have one concern about making sure that in order to sell a building, it has to hit an energy efficiency standard, a multi-family building. I think that that could potentially, if we have a case where there's some slumlords who really aren't keeping up their building, that would, why would they wanna bother to make those improvements in order to sell the building? They might as well just keep it as it is and keep renting it. And so maybe there's a way to get around that, but that would be my public policy concern with a policy along those lines is that you might disincentivize the landlords that you might want to sell their buildings to a new landlord from doing so. And that would be unfortunate. I agree. All of the things that you just raised, I'm sorry, I have so much to say about this. Those questions to me have to do with the dial settings of this and how much are we capping the improvements at and what can our market handle and still make progress. And that's, yeah, your point's well taken. So I would just encourage that as we go down this road, we really involve landlords and tenants and all the interested folks in town in this rather than just saying, yeah, let's set it here. I forgot to mention, I did also get to meet with Down Street earlier this week and went over this all with them. And they were, well, to be fair, they couldn't say that they fully backed it. That would be a board decision for them, but it was, I will say it was well received. So that was encouraging. Glenn. Just a couple of things. First, back to Rosie's first comments about the existing codes and so on. I may be reading it wrong, but it seems to me that if we inserted the word existing in that first sentence so that it reads, ordinance is establishing minimum energy efficiency standards for existing buildings that could potentially say more clearly what we mean without changing it any other way. Yeah, I can take that suggestion and to just the idea that this is applying to existing buildings back to the lawyer and, you know, re-craft. And I don't know if that solves all of Rosie's issues with it, but it feels like it does get closer to what we mean. I had a question about one of the changes that you talked through. I think it was somewhere in there. I think energy ratings and labels or in, no, it was standards compliance or non-compliance or anticipated performance. Yes. Anticipated by whom is my question there? By the building energy ratings and labels. So some of these, like the, so after that comma, right there it says using forms generally consistent with the Vermont residential, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay, so first you label the house and then that gives me a sense of the anticipated performance. Those labels, like the labels and ratings aren't necessarily just about compliance or non-compliance. Right, okay. Good, that answers my question there. And I wanted to come back to Rosie's last point too about calling in conversation with renters and landlords and other people. And I think that I know a few landlords who come at it from being builders and a lot of their MO is to take old existing buildings and really improve them as much as they can and then rent them. And I think that we want to encourage that as much as possible and make it easier for them to do it. And so I think those might be the people to focus on and check and see where our dials are. So I would love to connect you to some of those people. Super. And then also I just wanna call back to the first thing you talked about, the efficiency Vermont concierge service, which sounds great and sounds like a really good carrot to be able to, as I understand it, any property owner can basically starting in January. Well, I'm not sure what the date is yet that we're gonna start it, but yeah. Starting at some point soon can get efficiency Vermont to give them a bunch of information about how they could improve. That's great. I think this whole thing is something that I support. Awesome. The whole idea of making the buildings of our city more energy efficient is very important. And we've been having a lot of discussion about everything that people have said tonight has just emphasized or has made me think more about how complicated this whole thing is. And some of the, I think it's fair to say that some of the complications are more related to what the language of implementing ordinances would be than the charter language itself. But on the other hand, I do think it's also important to have a good sense of where we wanna be going before we adopt charter language so that we know that it's well crafted to get us where we're going. I had a good long conversation with the mayor about this last night and I don't wanna feel like I'm backing down from what I said, I think that this might be a longer conversation than we put this together and have worn a couple of public hearings in January and then go to a ballot on town meeting day because I think it might be, there might be more to it than that. And I can envision, for instance, asking both the Housing Task Force and the Energy Committee to look at this. Ashley was talking about a whole lot of the tenants' rights issues and I know that next month one of our meetings has to do with rental housing standards. And so there's a lot there. I was looking at this at the source material entitled 30 of Vermont Statutes, which seems to already have a requirement that new residential construction be built meeting these standards. And I don't know if they are or not or who's enforcing it. But not the stretch code. Okay. We could do that. Uh-huh, yeah. And then how are we gonna enforce that? But I'd like to understand a little more about how all that works. I think that some of the things we see in the rental housing market now, even in my pillar is really pretty troubling. I've been in a lot of units and my colleagues at Legal Aid have been in a lot of units where landlords have decided the easiest way to address heating problems is to put a red-eye heater in one of the rooms in an apartment and call that good and say, well, okay, now I'm offloading the heating bill onto the tenant and it probably doesn't meet the code because it probably is not, the one heater in one end of the apartment probably is not sufficient to bring the temperature to the standard required by the rental housing health code and all the other rooms in the apartment. So I think there's a lot for us to work on that I think we should work on. Sorry. So in terms of understanding more, would it be useful to have people hear from efficiency Vermont or from, like I'm trying to think of like, I mean, you mentioned some of our committees. I mean, the energy committee is looking at it now. So they'll have time to comment soon. I mean, we talked about it. We've actually been talking about it for the last couple of meetings and anyway, so I'm trying to boil down what you were saying into like, what are some next steps for you? Yes, I do think having some energy experts, energy and construction experts into talk to us about how this would work is a valuable thing. And the EIC in their operation of efficiency Vermont is right up at the top in my view. So yeah. Okay, great. Thank you. Rosie then actually. I think Donna was actually. Oh, okay. So Rosie actually, Donna. I would echo Jack's wanting to slow this down a little bit. I think that we are gonna, I would like us to craft the ordinances that we want to do, at least in part, before we craft the charter change that we need. Because I think that we have much more likelihood of explaining to the public what we want to do with this and to explaining to the legislature what we want to do with this. And you know, we have said before that when we're too vague with our charter changes, the legislature is not particularly excited about embracing them. And so I think if we can point to this is exactly what we're planning to do, we'll have a much, it may seem like it'll take longer up front, but actually we'll have a much higher likelihood of success if we spend the time to figure all this stuff that Jack's talking about out upfront. So that would be my next step's preference is to kind of do more delving into figuring out what do we actually want to do, start crafting those ordinance changes and then work on the charter change to meet those needs. Ashley. One thing just sort of as Jack was speaking, that sort of stood out to me in thinking about this proposal is that this is pretty verbose. Like this is a lot of specificity in a document that does require a degree of specificity, but does not seem to entail in any other place this level of specificity. And so I'm wondering, so I sort of see this as a two prong thing. One, we want or the council is considering requesting the opportunity to present this to the voters to vote on whether or not the voters believe that the city should have the option to, in essence, regulate by creating ordinances, minimum energy efficiency standards for buildings in our community. So that's sort of one piece. And then the second piece I think is a bigger policy, like ordinance drafting question about how we would go about doing that. And it feels like this is, so I think what, at least to me, what I'm hearing and maybe correct me if I'm wrong, Jack and Rosie, because I think that the two of you sort of highlighted that piece, which is like, how do we go about effectuating these potential policy changes versus how do we even inquire whether the legislature is willing to give us if the voters give us the authority to make that request? To me, that's the sort of question here. And so, not weighing in on my thoughts about some of the particular policy proposals contained herein, I think it's sort of a basal question of, do adding to the city charter the ability for the council to regulate these things rather than proscribing or prescribing particular options for that? So I'm wondering if there was one, any particular reason that we ended up with all of these? Yes. A lot of talking words on the page. Yes. And so can I ask what that is? Yep, so it was our lawyer's opinion that having very specific references, so the ordinances that this anticipates are sort of all built in here. And that's why it ended up being so verbose. So one of the concerns that he had was he wants to give this as its best chance at passing. And he thought that having sort of specific references to existing codes, to the energy labeling work that's already been done, that that would help its passage. That sounds like a totally lawyer thing to say and I say that as a lawyer. That's fair. But I also feel like sometimes lawyers tend to eat their own in that regard. Like we get so wrapped up in what it ought to be. And so I'm sort of looking at this. So I'm not really clear how this whole thing is numbered or sectioned off either because it seems to change formatting. Like so we've got five dash three oh one, A, B and then we go one, two and then A, B, C, D. But looking at let's see, construction of improvements including curbs, sidewalks, lighting and storm drains, yadda yadda yadda yadda. There are other standards that we have to adhere to. Like there are state standards that we have to adhere to in terms of width and height and things like that. But it's not spelled out that we have to do that. And so it just seems like maybe we could cut out some of those words such that we still get at the crux of the issue, which is utilizing those already existing tools, but taking out the sort of policy judgment or policy value piece of this in terms of referencing that as it relates to rental properties, such minimum energy efficiency standards may require. Sort of taking that piece out because they don't know. So I sort of view this as like the constitution. It's sort of this like thing that's left to interpretation. And so then that would give the voters some, we would be having these conversations with the public hearings, what kinds of ordinances could we draft, but it would be leaving those bigger, more significant policy questions about how we effectuate these things to the council to have in a thoughtful way like we did with the zoning. An interesting question. So my only hesitation there is, as a non-lawyer, part of me wants to believe our lawyer to say that like, well, you know, if- That's other lawyers too. Yeah, I suppose that's true. We do have other lawyers. Oh, it's super opinions. Anyway, your point's well taken though. Before we go to Donna. Poor Donna, it's okay, I'll get that. Actually, you know what? I can hold my thought, go ahead. That's okay. Well, you started out, I thought, trying to get a measurement of where we were with this ordinance versus fine-tuning it. And some of the fine-tuning has given us an understanding. I'd like us to move ahead with the intention of doing the charter change and that we have to come up with some language, that we have public hearings on and we keep working on it, but that there's no way we can do everything, Rosie, that you want us to do before this gets posted. But meanwhile, between when we have to have the ordinance language and then we can work out the policy between then and town meeting as we share with the public what we're about. That's what I would like us to have as a vision. Thank you. Awesome. Connor. Donna said a lot of what I was gonna say, I think a lot of what people have mentioned, those scare the hell out of me as well. And I think we need to have our eyes wide open and look at those red flags as we move forward. At the same time, you know, pushing this back to a November special election, I think puts us beyond this biennium and into the next one. So I think we can to some extent work on parallel tracks with drafting those ordinances at the same time as moving forward with the intent on this one. I have my own concerns. I don't think our city staff can absorb all these functions as they are now. So we'd have to look at appropriation for next year. So we've got a lot of work to do, but I think if we could, and I am looking at the other ones, they are written in more plain English than this one. If you go to the government operations committee, they're citizen legislators like us and they might actually appreciate the simplicity of it and not bogged down with the legal stuff. So yeah, if you're taking the temperature, I'd be okay moving forward in the broader sense. Glenn, did you have something you want to add? Thank you. And I also just want to add, thankfully, this anticipates three ordinances, right? So one of them, we already can work from Burlington's ordinance, well, let me back up. When we were going to be thinking about banning plastics or plastic bags, really, the anticipated ordinance was the same one that Brattleboro has. So using models should be very useful to us. One, the first one, it's very similar, I would imagine doing something similar to what Burlington has, so that should help. Two, the home energy labeling has actually been adopted by, I'm gonna get it wrong. It's either Seattle or Portland, it's Oregon. It's one of those two. And anyway, so I've actually been on conference calls with them talking about how it was implemented. So forgive me, I feel like I've done a lot of background work on this that has not necessarily included you all. And so, you know, happy to continue to share more. And anyway, but my point is that there exists an ordinance that's being enforced right now about home energy labeling. The one that is probably novel is the one regarding the split incentive. And we can, I think that's something that we could be spending some time with. I saw Rosie and then Ashley. So I guess I would clarify that I agree with Donna that's a lot of work and I was not anticipating that we would be able to get it done by March. And this is such a big thing. This is as big a zoning in terms of the impact that it has on our property landscape in Montpelier. And so I would like us to take the time and get it right. And I think that looking at our schedule, we don't have that time before town meeting day. And so I would be more inclined to do this right and do it with a November type timeline for the actual charter change. But as we work towards the charter change, we're also working on what those ordinance changes would be again to give the public a better sense of what we're looking at and to give ourselves that sense of what we want to do. And then once we have that language approved, then it's a better package to present to the legislature. And we're in place to go from there. The next thing I wanted to say is that I believe if you want to adopt the stretch code for new buildings, we can do that without this. So that might be something that we go ahead and start thinking about. I want to think about that more about whether we actually want to do it. But that's something that we could discuss apart from a charter change timeline. And those stretch codes would be setting different types of standards that would trigger some of these different enforcements. Potentially. No, it would, adopting the Vermont energy stretch code and I don't have the quite, but for new construction in Montpelier would just be a building code that we would adopt. And we can. I think we did adopt it. But we didn't require, the state has adopted it, but not required it. So I think we have it in our, it is referenced in our zoning. I think it may be a, if you hit the stretch code, you can do X, Y, or Z, but I don't believe that we've required it. And I'm saying that that's something that we could decide to do without a charter change. Sure. Ashley. So I'm just, I've just been sort of wordsmithing, just stream of consciousness. And so I guess what, maybe I'm not understanding something. So I hear that we want to, or we are interested, or you are taking the temperature of whether the council has the appetite to put this on the town meeting day ballot. Is that? Sure. All right, good. I'm with you. So, next question. When is the expectation that the ordinances that people are envisioning or not envisioning whichever would happen? I would imagine that this would be a, all three of those things would be a lot for the community to absorb. So I wouldn't want to implement those all at once or even close to each other. Hold on. I'm understanding. So we can't, I mean, we wouldn't even have the authority to enforce those ordinances without a charter change. Right. So, why wouldn't we have the vote on just the charter change and then see what the legislature does and have committees working on that while that's percolating over at the state house? Because. Committees working on the ordinances? Correct. Yeah. I just, so to me, that seems to be the sort of the way to approach this. Have a general request that, I'm not super familiar with these terms, but something like D would say, enact ordinances establishing and enforcing minimum efficiency standards for commercial and residential properties in the city in accordance with state, federal, and other, you know, I don't know, other like adopted mandated something standards, whatever, and leave it at that. And then therefore that gives the city some idea as to whether or not the legislature is even going to allow the city to do that by approving or denying the request to change the charter, assuming the voters approve it. Then the committee or committees, cause I could see a few sort of would, would be working on putting these ordinance proposals together because they do think there are a lot of moving parts to that. But it just seems like, one, we're unnecessarily limiting ourselves because what I don't wanna do is in 10 years when these standards change, and we're referencing in our city charter, which is our governing document, you know, things that are outdated. It's like prohibition in the constitution, right? Terrible idea. You should never have put that in the constitution as an amendment. You know, but what ultimately did happen is there were other ways to enforce that desire and they did it through other means like highway funding. So it just seems to me like maybe a more generalized sort of very short mirroring some of the surrounding provisions would make the most sense. And then if there are guidance or wishes for ordinances that we address those separately from any request to amend the charter. So I have lots of thoughts on that. So one is that I think that to me that highlights the need to have the first clause be right. Because everything after the which may incorporate is like here are things that we just don't want you to be surprised if we start to do these things, right? So it's just, I mean, our lawyer's advice is really about trying to make it abundantly clear that these are the kinds of things that we're anticipating doing based on this amendment. That strikes me as the conversation to have with the legislature and the conversation that we have as a council rather than like putting that into the charter. Couldn't say something like ordinances establishing many minimum energy efficiency standards for existing and new buildings, which may include. Yeah. Without all this. All the other stuff. No, that's fair. I mean, it's such as, you know, energy efficiency standards. Home energy labeling. All the energy labeling, those kind of things and just leave it at that. Right, the point is it doesn't obligate us to do those things. It's just, yeah. And I think the authority of that, whatever's given in that first clause should be general enough so that we can do other things as well. Does that make any sense, Ashley? It does. I just, and maybe this is like my own lawyerly mind thinking like I, well, one, the council is still going to be the gatekeeper of this function anyway. So any ordinance if the legislature grants the charter change, which is, I think, is maybe a much larger hurdle than any of us are contemplating in this conversation, but setting that aside, it just doesn't seem to me that we would need to build all of that into this because what if they change the name in a year and then people are reading our city charter and then we have to petition for another charter change to amend, even though it's just a technical amendment, there's still a process by which that all has to go through and that just doesn't, it doesn't seem like the most best use of city, you know, city attention and council resources. Okay, thank you. Donna, do you have something? Well, just that I think we do have to do some of the ordinances as Rosie and Jack were pointing out along the way so that our citizens understand what our thinking is and it helps us to see the potholes as well as the benefits. Even though I do think that we should go ahead with the charter change language and put it forth, but meanwhile we should be working on the other stuff. I think, good. Jack. I'm on record in this, in previous council meetings already as saying that, as a lawyer is saying that people should generally follow the advice of their attorney. One of the thoughts that I have in anticipating how this is gonna go for one thing, I don't think this is gonna be harder to get through the legislature than we think it is because I already think it's gonna be really hard to get it through the legislature. But getting beyond that, I can just anticipate some property owner who doesn't like the way this affects him or her deciding to sue the city. And one of the things they'll say is, well, this ordinance goes beyond what the legislature gave you authority to do. And so that's one of the things that we wanna think through pretty carefully as we're crafting the charter ordinance. Yeah. Agreed. Charter amendment, I should say. All right, so thank you all. This is great feedback. I'm gonna take all this feedback and consult with some more energy folks and the lawyer again. And some landlords. Yes, and some landlords, actually they're on my schedule. And as well as actually Capstone, who does weatherization work, they're also on my list. Maybe somebody from Burlington. Yep, so we've been also in touch about all of this as well. But yeah, so, but yeah, checking in with all those folks, I think will be good. So I'll have something more or different for you for next time. Can we have a break? Yes, and then it'll be time for the MDC. Okay, great, thank you. So we're back in break, go ahead. Great. My name is Lara Gephart. I'm the executive director for the Montpelier Development Corporation. So I'm here tonight to give our six month update. And that is part of the agreement that one is in the economic development strategic plan, but it's also in our memorandum of understanding with the city. I have six month ish because the last time we gave an update was in September of last year. And so with some turnover with executive directors, I am now taking that over. I came on in May. So we hope to make it six month from here on out. So tonight I'll give an economic development overview. And just kind of a general overview about economic development, because I realized Ann and Donna were really the only two that were on council when the EDSP was adopted. So we just wanna frame that a little bit for everyone. Also go over the 2018 economic development activity that happened in the city, and then looking forward the priorities for the Montpelier Development Corporation. So here is MDC's vision and our mission. And this is couched in the economic development strategic plan, but we are a private nonprofit that was created out of a recommendation from the economic development strategic plan to implement the plan and act in coordination with the city, but to act independently. So I see economic development as a forest really, and I love to make the comparison in this way. And in a forest you have the plants, you have the trees, and I equate these to businesses. So our organizations, for-profit, nonprofit, educational institutions, in order for them to grow, you need to have the adequate soil, rain, air quality for them to prosper. So I see economic development as providing an environment where these organizations can grow and be successful. I also like this chart, I guess, a graph that I'll walk through just because it gets to economic development isn't just working with businesses. We touch all points of the community because economic development is the prosperity of businesses, but it's also improving quality of life of a community. So at the top we have healthy environment, vibrant places, housing options, healthy people, quality education, arts and culture, equity. Those all work to attract, retain and support a talented workforce and high quality organizations. And those, in turn, increase our regional income and opportunities, public revenues, which we then get to invest back into those pieces at the top. To put it in a little perspective, MDC, where we kind of work within this cycle, we create and support development that influences these vibrant places and housing options, and we work with our partners to address some of these other aspects. We don't have the expertise to address certain things in the communities such as homelessness, but that's a really important aspect that we need to be considering in the grand scheme of things. And then the majority of our work is actually working with businesses to support them in their growth, to provide more job opportunities to attract and retain talent and to spark entrepreneurship and startups. So kind of where I see Montpelier in this process, before I came and along before the EDSP was adopted, there was some activity to start looking at economic development a bit more intentionally. So at the start of this, we have the EDSP that was adopted, MDC was created, and then in this phase, which I consider the phase where the EDSP is being implemented, we have this first part which is already underway where we're seeing some significant private investment over the past year and we've had commitments for public infrastructure improvements and other investments. And to continue this progress, we need to continue to have targeted economic development activity and public-private coordination and investment to continue moving the needle on improving quality of life and the viability of Montpelier. So the idea is that all these activities eventually lead to the outcomes that we want which in the EDSP is outlined as an increase in private sector jobs and establishments, housing, and increase in population. So here are the metrics that are outlined by the EDSP. And again, it's saying that we work on these various strategies and our outcome will be an increase in these various areas. So by 2021, it has these various goals outlined. And so I took some data and looked at our progress as of 2017. So this is assuming that our baseline is 2016 and this is, we're going only to 2017 just because that is the last full data set for all six of these metrics. Some of these are updated quarterly and the sources of these, of this data is in the report that it distributed as well. So where we are as of 2017, we actually had a decrease in private sector jobs. But we had an increase in new establishments. And I wanted to put a graph in here just to show that it's really hard to get perspective over one year. So to break that out a little bit more to look that we've had a relatively steady growth in our number of establishments. And we had some volatility in the number of private sector jobs. So we have spike in 2015 and we've started a slight decline. I have a few theories about this so I'll have to get into them now. But again, it helps to look at some of this data over a greater amount of time. But getting back to these metrics as of 2017 and this is based off the American Community Survey. We had a decrease in residents. We did have 73 housing units approved for construction in 2017. And then we had an increase in our meals receipts and a decrease in our rooms receipts. And just to put into context how those translate, in 2017 we had $26 million total of meals receipts and $3.7 million total for rooms receipts. So here's that same data just in a chart form. So going back quickly the line along the bottom is our 2016 baseline. The dotted line at the top shows that if each of these metrics get to their 100% goal it would get up to that dotted line. So this is where we're at as of 2017. And as you can see, some of those are below the baseline. So we have some work to do to reflect some of the activity that has been going on in 2018. There's some assumptions we can make that adding on to those bars, here's what it may look like in the next year when we touch back into this data. I don't have residents or meals and rooms receipts on there but we are able to predict a little bit in terms of private sector jobs, establishments and housing units. Is that net new establishments? It is, yes, yep. So that's considering closures as well. Define an establishment, does that break some mortar or if I start an LLC with a couple people in town? Does that count as well? That's a great question. I'd actually have to look, this is based off of the quarterly from the department of later, they're blanking on the name for it, but employment and wages. So if you have an employee, you're considered a firm or an establishment, basically. Any other questions with this? When you look at data like the rooms receipts, for example, do you also correlate that with a number of available rooms? Like for example, probably wouldn't have affected this data but Betsy's brain and breakfast is closed and others and so, does that necessarily mean less people are coming or that there's less places to stay and I don't know how we're being fixing to that too? Right, and so that's a little hard to determine. So there's a few different variables in that data. It may be fewer people are coming but it also captures any closures. So Betsy's B&B closing is something that would impact that data. And there's some data too that I have that shows this over a few years. So it's interesting, I'm not quite sure what's contributing to that 8.3% decrease but here's another area that when Hampton Inn and Suites comes online, we can assume that we're gonna see an increase here as well. So to bring some color to the dark green on those bars, some of the activity that's happened in 2018, some of our major projects, the creation of a tax increment financing district which is essential for providing a space for future private investment and also public infrastructure improvements. We had a first bond approved, obviously the public parking garage, the French block apartments are near completion in their construction, which will add 18 housing units to the core downtown. One Taylor Street transit center in housing is under construction, also adding housing to the downtown. Hampton Inn and Suites and public parking garage were issued decision at least at this point and Caldery Spirit Distillery is currently under construction. And here's a little bit more activity, just some business openings and expansions that have either been completed or have been announced. Unless it's some of the closures, this isn't all-encompassing, there's a likelihood I've missed some but it's still an impressive list of what has occurred in the last year. So getting to MDEC's specific activity. So again, I came in in May and a big piece of what I wanted to do at the outset was start building relationships and getting out meeting people and understanding who our partners are, how we can collaborate together and also meeting with businesses to understand what their needs are and what opportunities may lie out there. So in the past few months, it's been over 200 meetings with partners, resource providers, businesses and property owners. We worked on 12 business retention and expansion projects and these 12 we've actively participated in so providing resources or connecting businesses to other resources. We also implemented some software to be able to track some of this activity that in the future. I can translate this activity into jobs retained, jobs added and an actual investment into the community. With the parking garage project, we provide support predominantly in communication and outreach to the public and spreading information and then to stakeholders. In regional collaboration, we had an opportunity to work with our neighboring communities, Barry and Waterbury, as well as the Central Vermont Chamber and Economic Development Corporation to host the Central Vermont Fresh Tracks Road pitch in August, which was just a great way to kind of cross that imaginary in non-imaginary border to the other communities and start to conceptualize some concepts regionally. And the two young women featured in that photo, one at the Central Vermont pitch stop from She-Fly and they went on, I had the opportunity to coach them in their pitch in Burlington as well in their phenomenal group. So heading into 2019, over the past couple months, the MDC board has gone through two facility discussions to start to envision what are our priorities heading into the next year. So this is considering what does the EDSP layout, what are our current opportunities and what have we learned over the past year and a half of our existence. So from that, we were able to garner our priority areas. I'm still working on coming up with a fixed work plan, which I'm happy to share with all of you that starts to prioritize the activities under those priority areas and figuring out where we can best allocate our resources over the next year and also thinking about the long term. And part of that was understanding the key opportunities and threats that currently exist or that we can foresee. And I see key opportunities is really with our business community. We have some really phenomenal groups that we're not tapping into them as much as I would like to. So understanding their growth plans and how we can facilitate that, among other areas, it's a really good opportunity. We're very lucky and fortunate to have a pretty diverse mix of industries. Some key threats, it remains to be a threat that we have such a low vacancy rate both in our housing and our commercial areas. So to put in context, commercial vacancy rate for retail is considered healthy at between five and 10% and we're currently sitting below 3%. So that just creates some challenges when we're either trying to facilitate growth with existing retailers or we have a displacement like we did, we're going to have with the SHIPI iCare expansion and we can't accommodate a change of space. So that along with housing and increasing our housing stock are key threats that we want to be able to keep in our sights over the next year. So quickly bringing it back to the EDSP building blocks. These are the four strategies that are laid out in the Economic Development Strategic Plan. Again, with the idea that if we put our attention and resources into these areas, we will start to move the needle on those metrics. So keeping that in mind, we've evolved the structure a little bit in the framework that our mission is at the top. So we ensure the long-term viability of non-pillier and underneath that is our customer groups. So the people that I and the MDC serve directly there's existing organizations, new organizations and developers. It doesn't include on this graphic all of our stakeholders and partners that we work with in this, which obviously includes the city, non-pillier live, other resource providers, both at the local, regional and state level. And so underneath that are our priorities that we see as essential to cultivating an environment where these three customer groups can be successful and can contribute to the overall well-being of the community. And just bring it back that this isn't lost. We are promoting growth, but it's growth in line with community values. So it's not growth at all costs. It's measured and it's making sure that it's in line with what is appropriate for the community. So going into the 2019 priorities, just quickly the business retention and expansion plan program. This is economic development jargon, but basically it's just a formalized approach to connecting and maintaining relationships with the business community. It allows us to understand their needs and be reactive to any opportunistic growth projects or retention projects. So if they're on the verge of shutting down, you can be a little bit more proactive with that and at least have that connection. It also informs us about the economy. So we take that information back and are able to have a better understanding of what's going on. And it also helps us to inform our strategies, the services we provide and inform other people's strategies, policies, programs. Development project management is, MDC was essentially set up to be active in part as the development arm for the city. So now that we're staffed and we're functioning, we see us championing that in the next year and being able to act in an active role going forward. Outreach and communication, while we spend a lot of time with the businesses, we wanna be really focused on our engagement with the community, because essentially we need to be in tune with them and understand the community values to feedback into the business community as well. So it's a two-way street and we want the community engaged in economic development decisions as well. And the last bucket is informed development, planning and strategy. And this is, us wanting to establish MDC as the go-to resource for economic development, anything immobiliar. And so us being able to take our expertise and the information that we garner from our connections to inform city policies, city programs, as well as other resource providers, partners in their plans and strategies and really looking at the long-term. So looking ahead in future updates to the council, we plan to give a progress report basically on our work plan, where are we at at the six-month mark in terms of what we wanted to implement, including our project activity and outputs in terms of jobs and investment. And then the community indicators and trends. So we know Mayor Watson is putting together the community indicators. MDC will be overseeing a few of those and be responsible for reporting those. So I would love to be able to do some, a bit of analysis to inform you all about what our economy actually looks like and what do some of the numbers actually mean. And that's all I have for you guys today. And I'll open it up to questions, comments. Ashley. So I did some digging while you were presenting and it looks like at least the best read I can get is that the department of labor breaks it down into categories by the number of employees, but they do count four or fewer workers. So it would seem like an LLC that generates revenue would count as long as there's some person like generating revenue for investments. And in the station, yeah. So in terms of you had a graph about the number of jobs decreasing, but the number of establishments increasing. Am I right about that? Yeah. The last chart. Oh, sorry. That's okay. That one. Yep, yes. So do we have any data about what the wages are for those new jobs or what the average wage is for those new jobs? It's gonna, it would be hard to extrapolate what the new jobs, what the wages of the new jobs are. I can always reach out to the department of labor and see how we can crunch some of that. There are, they have an ongoing average wages. So you can track that over time, along with number of establishments, number of employees. And it's hard to correlate those, but it would help inform that. Well, and just in looking at the new business or the new establishments list, a lot of them seem like service sector, food service or other markets that are service based. And I was just curious in terms of, what's the average statewide, maybe even what jobs in those sectors typically pay. And then in the bigger conversation about housing, are the jobs that Montpelier is creating enough to actually sustain a lifestyle in Montpelier? Yeah, and I'd love to jump off that a little bit with the activity that was mentioned. Most of them retailers, restaurants, those are the most visible. And that's one of the most, it's a volatile industries. And so we can point to them and say, they've opened this year or, you know, but it's not gonna hit headlines that one of our insurance companies added 20 jobs. But that's, some of that data is captured in this, but it's hard to capture that in show and say, you know, this is a big announcement, we've added something here. But I'd be happy to share a breakdown to of where we've added jobs. So because some of it's been in the finance and insurance sector, some of it's been in the retail, so. Sure, and do you happen to know also, so that the number of employees has decreased, do you have information about where those jobs have been shed and if any of them have been like reapportioned in other sectors or anything like that? Yeah, so the Department of Labor does break it down by industry, so we can start to dive into that a little bit more of where are we losing, where are we gaining, yeah. I noticed in your report, there's a mention of an RFP for the Court Street block and I think there was some other project that was mentioned and I wondered if there was anything more that you could say. Main Street. Main Street, 12 to 16 Main Street. I don't know much about what those two are and so. Yeah. If you wanna. Sure, so at 1216 Main Street, that would probably better fall under the category of informing development and planning strategy or whatever that bucket was, but that's the former MOA property. Oh, okay. Yep, and so that's, can we weigh in with, you know, what are our perspective and expertise and something like that as you all consider the next uses for it? And then that Court Street block. Court Street pit, so, and that's more generally, can we start to think about our underutilized sites and how do we make them, use them for higher and better uses? So, thinking big, how do we think about that block? Great, yep. And then, I noted that it looks like maybe we pushed tech stabilization policy back. She didn't. We did? I did. I, so I won't be here on the 9th and I would love to be part of that, so I might request that maybe that gets bumped a little bit more. It's a critical conversation and I need to do it, but I also would like to be here for it if we can, if others would accommodate me. Yes, yes. And then I also just wanted to make a general comment that I know MDC has gone through this transition and so it's hard to hold you accountable for a year of output when you've been here for six months and I do want the Council to generally be cognizant of in future years, we are investing $100,000 per year in this and making sure that we are getting $100,000 worth from this and that we shouldn't take that money and do something else with it that would maybe help businesses or economic development more. So I don't feel that it's really fair to hold you to that standard this year, but I want to make sure that we're remembering to not just assume, okay, we're gonna do $100,000 here every year to really evaluate that each year and hold it to it that, you know, is this worth spending money on standard? I appreciate that, I just want to note and applaud the Council that economic development is a long-term investment and so it is hard to show any sort of real return in a few years, so it takes a little bit of trust as well, but I totally appreciate that. Glen, did you have something? And then Donna. First, I just want to say, I think this is a really good presentation and I am learning tons of stuff, so thank you and it seems to me that you're doing a great job and also, I think I want to say, as a relatively new Councillor and as a Councillor who was not involved in formulating the EDSP and so on, I have some kind of queasiness about a lot of the base assumptions and ideas and while I really do like the specific, different directions that you've been going on in a lot of ways and a lot of the particulars, I feel like I should maybe just warn you that there are some things that give me a little bit of pause, so for example, I like how you let off with the forest analogy and just when I see that, I think, yes, forests grow and individual plants grow and then they also die and there's a curve and a down and I think that that's a useful part of that analogy to apply to human societies and human organizations that we do want to make it, we want to make Montpelier viable for the long term but that does not necessarily mean to me growing, maybe not at all at some point. I think that right now there are definitely some things that I want to grow but there are also some that I might not and kind of in the same direction, I thought that it was interesting that we identified the MDC's customer groups, existing businesses, new businesses and developers and that's good and at the same time, what's good for businesses is very often good for people but not always perfectly and I guess I want to be sure that, I mean as you said in there and I really appreciated that as well, growth and development in line with community values and making sure that it all goes along with that and then I guess a specific question and it's just my ignorance, what is the MDC's funding structure? We, the city gives $100,000 a year, are there other funding sources, what are they? Not right now and that's what we realized that too and so it's understanding to where are there other opportunities for us to diversify because I don't think we all understand that it's not fair for the city just to fund us as well even though it's an important investment, we understand that there needs to be diversity in our revenue streams as well. Yeah and I guess on that, it does seem like a worthwhile investment and given that the city is currently the sole funder that makes me all the more concerned that we're making sure that the benefits and the actions that MDC takes are not aimed solely at businesses but at the community as a whole in a way. Yeah and I understand businesses, that's the whole idea but I hope you understand kind of the, and I love that you brought that up to part of our conversations as an organization with the board and myself. We're trying to figure out where do we put the community if they followed this customer or a stakeholder and it's tough because as an economic development organization, the community is an essential part of the economy's success, they're interrelated and so to me, I see the community is almost like our top stakeholder, we don't have community services that we can provide directly to them but what we do impacts them directly so to be aware of that and continuing to really be conscious of our decision making and what projects we choose to support, that's embedded in how we approach projects as well. We, it's almost like a litmus of what is the community impact, who does it benefit, what's the return on our investment basically of our time, is it resulting in high quality jobs, so we're asking those questions that's a very fair point. I just wanna make to note that our customers are the people that we're actually able to assist but we're conscious of how that interplays with the community. And I'm sort of dug tailing on similar questions. I was surprised there was no financial report and I guess I do question assuming level funding especially with not even knowing where you spent the money or if you spent all of it and concern that in looking at the list, very worthwhile people on your board, I mean it's great but I do feel there are people left out of the discussion and back to Glen's point of where are the workers' conversations and the consumers so that it's a hand, it's a balance between not only the employment and the business but those who are seeking employment and some input of what they're missing and some of the work conditions that can be enhanced or skills that workers need to have. I think there's a cross-exchange that needs to happen that both benefit from that I'd hope that you look at in the future. Yeah, no, absolutely, yep. Connor. Oh, then Jack. Sounds like we need some more union organizing drives in town, is that what I was saying? No, you're just curious, I've been reading a lot about just co-working spaces, right? And how a lot of like tiny towns in Vermont are sort of bringing this onto a track like freelancers, startups, remote workers there. I was a member of Local 64 for a while and I thought it was like fantastic, for 80 bucks you could get a desk every month there. So do you think there's a market for more co-working spaces in town here? It's hard to tell and I know Lars is kind of the expert in co-working spaces so I'd love to tap his brain about that but from where I came from in Pennsylvania they had a hotbed of co-working spaces and one of the quote unquote experts always embedded it in is there a community that needs it and how do you cultivate that community first before you actually put investment into a space and providing beautiful like desks and all these things. So part of what we need to understand is is there a need out there? Can we generate interest or are people comfortable just the people who are working remotely are comfortable in their living room? I don't know. Hard to judge where that's at but I'm working with Dan Groberg from Montpelier Live to start to, we're trying to tap into the entrepreneurial sphere a little bit more to understand what their needs are because that's another kind of key group that we're not super well connected with so we just had a meeting this afternoon to start to contemplate some of that. So more to come. Thanks. Yeah, and Jack. Hi Laura, this might be, this is probably a bigger question than we have room for tonight but I think we could potentially use a bit of a tutorial on how do we evaluate a report like this and really even more broadly, how do we evaluate one, not only how the MDC is doing, how well it's doing job but how is the economy of the city doing? What should we be looking for? And I'm thinking of the business openings and closings you list and the business openings are really positive of course but on the other hand we, you seem to be talking about net new establishments yet on the business openings there are at least a couple of businesses I see that are in the spaces of businesses that closed and yet those businesses that closed are not listed under the business closings. Yeah, so again it's on all encompassing list and that's where the data can correct me too what I know anecdotally I'm not gonna be able to capture in terms of all of our business openings and closings and some happened before my time and so again anecdotally I didn't know but that's what's helpful with some of the software that we have in place as well to start to record some of that and with any openings or especially with closings being able to assess why did they close and that starts to inform to what's going on and how can we color some of what the data is telling us in terms of our economy. And to your first question of evaluating a report like this it is a bit of an evolving thing with economic development it's really hard to track what you consider successful so we can track economic metrics but it's really it's hard to make that connection of we did this and this resulted in this. To some extent we can, to some extent we can't. What we can do is structure our strategies and our activities around addressing key points. So if we want to create more high quality jobs well where are, what are existing industry clusters? How can we spark or initiate growth in those areas? And to do that it's understanding what are the current conditions for that industry? What is their capacity to grow? What are some barriers to grow? So there's a lot of layers to it but I really would welcome further conversations of how do we assess our activity and what constitutes success. And is our activity worthwhile in your eyes? Exactly like you, growth in a particular sector what is it that the Montpelier Development Corporation can do to make it happen to help create the conditions in which it'll happen? Yeah, yeah. Can I jump in there? So one hypothesis is that I mean the MDC came out of the Economic Development Strategic Plan and that had some goals and so I mean one hypothesis or one way to look at it anyway is like if we hit those targets then you all have been successful. And I mean that's not necessarily a wholly valid way to look at it but that is one way to slice it and I'm not sure that there is definitively like a way to say like because as you were saying like because you were doing this that caused this I mean there may be some of those relationships but some of them are there maybe are linked but it's just indirect and so it's like hard to necessarily tie it all together like that so anyway I just wanna appreciate what you were saying being very modest about it. So. I think that's right. I think as we, if we tell the Department of Public Works well we wanna have six miles of roads repaired and at the end of the year six miles of roads got repaired. We can be pretty sure that it was because the Department of Public Works did it. Yeah. We don't know that. Right. As clearly with the MDC. Yeah. And there are other variables too. You know if we hit a recession we could do a bunch of you know a bunch of really awesome things but it may not. There's other variables that play into those metrics as well as high demand activities. Doug. You might have been doing this but I think the new counselors need to see that report. Yeah. I mean it's a very much a learning tool. And there's a link to it in the report I sent out as well and it's on their website. Okay. Yeah. I was just gonna add a couple of things on this too just to weigh in you know we found MDC in general but especially since Laura's been here to be very helpful and has picked up in areas you know supported our work I think I've seen two projects that just by the nature of timing they were not able to be out front on one was Caldonia spirits where Laura's predecessor was hired sort of after we were already down the road on that and the second of course was the capital plaza and in both cases I could easily envision that the next time around having you know the legwork that I did or Sue and I did would have been much you know there were many reasons why it could have been much better if it was done by them and not the least of which is they can have you know more free willing discussions obviously the city is gonna have to always be engaged in those kind of things and would support them but I think just in terms of workload and I'll remind people because you know you are right this predates five of the seven people here but this was a conscious decision made by the city council there was an emphasis on economic development at the time in part because if you look at that job graph it had been pretty flat for a number of times and you know was we had had some public jobs but private sector jobs really hadn't grown and in housing starts and those kind of things and I think there was you know much like you completed was zoning and to create an environment where more things can happen in a sense a sense to do that and so the plan came was approved and then there was a very conscious decision to create this as a separate corporation and not a city department and you can argue the pros and cons of that but that was the decision and the city council actually drafted and approved the bylaws of this corporation and appointed the board of directors. So to the extent that people like or don't like the board of directors they were selected by your predecessors and put into place and then and so their mission and all of the things that they're doing was a direct product of the city and they chose to fund that as opposed to say us hiring lawyer as the city's economic development director and being part of our planning department and working directly with me and all that kind of stuff that it was it was a policy choice to separate it. So that's just you know we can time change people change but that is how why it is structured the way it is. Okay any further questions. Thank you Laura. Thank you guys. Yeah. Great. Okay moving on to the sprinkler ordinance amendments for the second public hearing just as an FYI team I'm gunning for 10 o'clock tonight. That's total total yeah it's that's it. Okay so all right so I'm going to open the public hearing. Any comments about changing this? Okay okay going once. No yeah actually it looks like you want to stay something. No no comments from the public. Yeah. That's been a thing. We should talk about that at some point. Do you want me to hold off for you here? Go ahead Jack. The public hearing we're in now is 18-399 the sprinkler ordinance parking structures. This one is for parking structures yes. Okay you're we're good then. Okay hearing no further comments. I'm going to close the public hearing and I think we need to adopt this. Yes. So do we have a motion? I move that we adopt the parking structure the sprinkler ordinance. Is there a second? Second. Second it? Okay we have a couple seconds great. For the discussion all in favor please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay great. Then we have a thank you excellent. Okay now we have some parking ordinance amendments this is also a second hearing they're a little bit changed from the last time I think. So I'm going to open the public hearing on these parking ordinance amendments and so any comments from the public or counselors? Yes Ashley. I would just like to point out I raised the issue with the 15 minute parking in front of 78 Berry Street. Still says seven a.m. Consistency. There you go. I'm fading fast. And I know that it's desirable to have that but I know that I think the business has only opened until two at the latest and so it's still seven a.m. to nine p.m. and I know that that mirrors the further down 207 or 209 but what would you suggest we change it to? I would just you know if to the original one from what I remember further down on Berry Street it was they used to be open till nine so the parking was the 15 minute parking until they closed which was at nine. And so I guess my concern with making it a total other parking restriction like in that area and I know that MPD has lots of other things to deal with but you know I could foresee a world in which someone whatever you know and it just strikes me as a bit inequitable that the business closes it to the purpose of reserving those spots is for the business and then sort of keeping that at 15 minute parking when there are tax there's a tax preparation service across the streets from there that could use those spots after two o'clock and it's gonna take more than 15 minutes. I think it takes anyone more than 15 minutes to do taxes although if someone could do my taxes in 15 minutes I could be more than happy to be with you. And so I just I'm struggling with why it has to be nine. Rosie and the Jack. I also believe that we learned last time that the business further down Main Street the market is not actually open till nine p.m. anymore. So it seems like we should at least I see the point of making them the same but it seems like we could at least move it back till eight if that's the other business. Jack. I certainly see Ashley's point on the other hand. I kind of think that it makes sense to have it be a standard span of time rather than to be jumping in and out of the ordinances every time a business changes. And so calling it something like five o'clock might be a way to address that. I have a question. Will we stop the metered enforcement at five, right? That was why I thought at five. Yeah, okay. I'm sorry, you haven't built yet? Well I think some of the complaints that the store at least run in there's been a lot of conflict there over the years. So just saying that I'm not saying you have to keep them the same. Moving them both to five isn't gonna help the store. Further comments? Don. Tom, do you have an opinion? I believe it was you actually Donna that was suggested and I believe you checked the minutes in the last meeting, unless I misunderstood. He remembers I was there. But the suggestion was that it would be generic and wouldn't have to alter as Jack was just saying for depending on the store and that I was directed to make them both seven a.m. to nine p.m. So it's your prerogative but we did notify the store and everybody that this was the time period. So that's the only opinion I have is that we weren't, this is what I understood the city council had asked for and this is what we notified the property owners and businesses that we would be doing. But they would be both the same and that it would be generic no matter what store or business was made. So I have a hypothesis which is that we should maybe change that ending time to at least not nine p.m. Maybe eight at the early, I'm sorry, at the latest. And if we can have a third public hearing on this and notify them again with a different language. What do you think about that team? I guess I'm just gonna ask that pragmatic question which is what would enforcement look like after five p.m.? Steve, is the chief still here? Yeah, I kind of figured that sorry, Jeev. And I know he'll answer this but my hunch is that there's not gonna be any active enforcement but when someone is parked in front of the store, someone's complaining, I think we're gonna end up referring again that there's no place for me to park when I'm trying to go to the store. Well I'm not saying, I'm saying if we were to leave it as is and let's say that someone's getting their taxes done or someone has walked down to Buddy's Burgers or whatever and they're parked there for more than 15 minutes. What would enforcement look like after five p.m.? Pretty much what Samir just said, it's we get a complaint and then what we will do just to make sure to alleviate problems, we will time it ourselves and come back if the vehicle is still there. So they can get bonus time if you will but we found for the business further up the street years ago when it was kind of an issue and if we get tied up on a call so be it, we're just not gonna come back and if we see the car is still there after the officers deal with a call, it's not a priority for us. That said, I don't think that we should have ordinances on our books that we don't plan to enforce and so if it's just like, if this is here we're not gonna. I wanna be clear, I'm not saying that we wanted to force. I understand that but I think that was kind of the implication that the government was making. It just seems, and I appreciate why the bakery, I think it was the bakery that raised this rate, is that? That was the original, yeah. Sure, and so further down, buddies, patrons who wanna park on Berry Street there have to pay for parking. Then the tax preparation service that was my old neighbor rated, is that 71 Berry Street? Yeah, and also that office building, although I'm not sure if it's still an office building on the corner of Hubbard and Berry Street, they don't get 15 minute parking. I guess if the issue is, well, 15 minute parking has to happen in front of these two businesses on Berry Street, why isn't every business on Berry Street getting 15 minute parking in front of them? And then sort of the other piece to this is if they're only open till two and you know. So would you prefer, I'm trying to like, what is your suggestion? So what I'm, correct me if I'm wrong, it sounds like you would actually like this to be a separate sentence, so that it might actually not be consistent. Like if the Berry Street market is open later, then they get the later time and this other space for now not open that late maybe has a different time and businesses may change and we might revisit it. Yes, I mean, and I appreciate that that might not be the most desirable thing. It just seems like there are other businesses there who also have people to drive to them. I don't have strong feelings about this. What do other people think? Yeah, I'm on the fence, like on one hand. Yeah, I do feel it's a bit ridiculous of the 15 minute parking for a seven hour period, you know, while we're waiting for the business to, it's already been shut down. At the same time, I don't want to be coming back like if the business changes at the like a three o'clock closure and we have to reopen this anytime. I don't know if there's a way to just like deligate the authority on this type of stuff. I'm telling you that. You spent a lot of time talking about like one's parking spot, you know. We have these smart meters, cannot we set it to be 15 minutes for this much time? It's a non-metered area. Yeah, there's no meters there. We don't go that far down on the street. It stops just before the senior center. Don wants to himself take the meters. Do you think we should re-worn? If we change it, do you think we should? We'll change it if we should. I mean, you can't, you don't have to. I feel like- So team, my inclinent, I'm sorry. I just, it's an equity thing for me. It's like balancing all of the interests of business needs and parking accessibility for sure, but also like residents that don't have parking there. You know, like- So, okay, here's what I'm gonna recommend. Let's separate out these two spaces and let's make the end time for the spot in front of Bear Sheep Market to end at 8 p.m. And the spot in front of the bakery to end at, I guess I would say 5 p.m. Just to make it consistent with the rest of the metered spaces and if we can re-worn the property owners, the budding there and then we can revisit it. Would that be okay? That's totally cool. I just have like a practical question. Like how far, so the meter folks, they do it on foot, right? I mean, did they walk down, or is it usually empty? Well, they have a car. It's one of the things we're kind of challenged with at the moment, right now they're using the detective vehicle that has to change down the road. So, they'll be getting one of the old cars. So, they'll have a vehicle to them. We actually, you know, so. But generally, most of their work is done by foot. And it's pretty much in the designated town. Correct. And the officers also will augment, though if there's a call, you know, hydro violation off of West Street, we're probably gonna send an officer we'll deal with that too. Okay. Any further comments? Okay. I'm not clear what you've asked. To it. Do we need a motion to change this? Sure. Okay. It'll be helpful for clarity sense. Okay. You had a motion last week. Yes. I don't know if people liked my suggestion. We're very indecisive. It's consistent, it adds consistency with the rest of the parking enforcement. So, what's good by me? Okay. It's good by you. So, I think we need a motion. Who's making it? I will move that. To be clear. Tom. We see that you will. Seven to five in front of the bakery and seven to nine in front of the, or seven to eight in front of the store. Yes. Okay. The bakery store. Till five. So, can we use the addresses? I just, yeah. Seven to eight. So, me, um. It's 207 to 209 is further down. I think. 78 Berry Street or the two front. Oh, I'm sorry. You're right. Two in front of 78 Berry. So, that we designate the parking hours for the two spots in front of 207 to 209 Berry Street be from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. And at the two spots. 8 p.m. 8 p.m. Sorry. Yes, eight. And then the two spots in front of 78 Berry Street from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. Does the start time for the rest of the parking downtown, is that, that's at eight, isn't it? Not seven? So. Oh, for them. Meters. For paying it's eight o'clock, yes. Eight to five. Sorry to do that. That's fine. Shall we change it to eight? A.m., yes? Can I add something? Yes, please. The bakery wants it at seven, man. No, no. The original complaint request was that all day parkers are using the spaces from 78 to 80, 82. Don't know what time they arrive. So is that a concern? That was, what we're trying to do is respond to that request from a business that Chief Fakus's officers investigated and there's been a longstanding issue about a very number, a few number of spaces and it's been going on for years, quite literally. So I think the seven, changing it to eight may be problematic. If somebody misses the sign, they're parking there for the day and doing that for a long time. Okay. Sounds fair, so we're gonna keep it at seven? Okay. I support that as well. Okay. So Ashley moved that. Did we have a second? Second. For the discussion. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? No. Okay. She's just in the process. And then continue second reading of that in a minute. Yes. Can I ask a clarifying question? Yeah. I think I heard somebody say it's a separate section. Am I supposed to separate these two? Retain them in. I think you just leave them the two sentences as they are currently written. Just change the times to reflect. Yeah. But on the second Tuesday of the week. It's really only the second half of the second Tuesday. When you were in that room, this is a lot of work actually. So onto a budget discussion. And the next hearing is not going to be on January 2nd because that's strictly a budget meeting. It's gonna be on January 9th. January 9th. Okay. I think we do. So I'm gonna close the public hearing in case we didn't note that. Jack, you wanna make a motion to that effect? Yes, I move we set the next public hearing for this for the regular meeting on January 9th, 2019. Second. For the discussion, all in favor please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay. There was. There was ones on fire with them tonight. I can second them. Looking after those district three interests. Yeah. Okay. I had such high hopes for an early night too. I did too. That's okay. I will note, however, that the veteran department heads who know never miss any budget discussion. No matter how late or how overviewing it was supposed to be. They've learned. So I think I said out to you earlier, my goals for tonight, you may have different goals, but one is to go through this presentation. You have the budget books on your desks, which are your holiday reading, but it's just all the detail backing up that we're talking about. You have obviously question and answer and maybe some feedback from the overview last week and the little play sheet you guys have had to work with. And then as we gear up for the second, which I think can be a really productive night, make sure we're focused on the things you want to be focused on for that meeting. So if there's specific information that you want or a question you want answered for that night, we can identify that or we're already playing and we have the chief here. And he's here tonight too. People want to talk to the chief of police. The fire chief will be here because he always comes. And Jeff Byers here too, those are the two areas where we had the biggest staffing changes. So I'm pretty sure that people want to talk about that. So this is just the overview of the budget. Our goal with the budget is to implement the strategic plan that you adopted earlier this year, continue our capital equipment funding plan and deliver responsible services. Just as a reminder and I talk through this, but we did adopt a strategic plan which included staff mission and values as well as strategic outcomes and then activities under that. And we do use that as a guide a lot. And so we'll just walk through this budget a little bit. Now I'll say before I go into these individual items that I'm not addressing everything that we put in the strategic plan only showing how those items that are in the budget reflected so there were many other activities such as the plastic bag band that we've already adopted something you did, there's no budget. So community prosperity, the tax rate at least for the base budget is at approximate CPI 2.3. We did include $100,000 in funding for economic development that we just talked about. It's keeping our planning and zoning staff as we implement our new zoning and master plan. They're doing a lot of things and implements our TIFT district through, it's gonna be some extra work for our finance department and those kind of things. Our environmental stewardship, we've included the $5,000 from MEAC. We've talked about a new facilities and energy position to begin in April. We talked last night at CIP, or last Monday night at CIP at length. We are including stormwater projects in some discussion. The GMT circulator bus is included although it sounds like there may be changes coming to that. And the energy planning grant is something we're hoping to accomplish through actually current funding to develop an energy plan with funding sources. Our inclusive, equitable, and welcoming community, we funded the community and arts fund at a slightly higher number than last year. The feast program at the senior center remains in place. My pillar alive and our community enhancements program is all things that contribute to our livability, I guess you'd say. Sustainable infrastructure, we funded our CIP and equipment plan as scheduled with another $50,000 increase from last year. The water sewer plan is being followed as well. That's also an under infrastructure plan including again a facilities, it's not a different one, it's the same one. And our complete streets is included in the CIP as well as in the parking lot. Those on the CIP know we'll be looking at maybe the way that's structured in the future but for now that's the way it's set up for this year. Thoughtfully planned built environment. We've included the downtown improvement district again in our funding for downtown projects and of course we have a lot of projects on the books that are gonna be spending a lot of time on so we don't have a lot new for that. More housing, we've included $75,000 for the housing trust fund and of course with the TIFLA implemented that is a can support housing projects. Public health and safety, we're adding additional police officer. We've included funding that would cover public events. Our flood gauges are included again although we are looking at maybe alternatives for measuring flood things. Our paramedic program continues to expand, basically the chief has implemented a paramedic program in the fire department and as we replace people we try to bring in new paramedics. We haven't required everybody to change so it grows slightly every time we have a staff change and project safe catch and either drug prevention related activities are continuing. In the responsive and responsible government we've continuing our communications efforts that we've tried to rip up over the last couple of years our employee wellness program is included. All of our service levels are maintained at current levels. Our bridge articles included. This year we implemented the Invisio dashboard and the monthly reporting as well as the tool for ourselves and that's happening. We have a program which you will hear more about as the year unfolds that you don't know anything about now called Access Mob Piliar. This is using our GIS program and other programs and looked at what, well for lack of better words there are a couple of brand name programs like C-Click Fix and Q-Alert. We actually discovered that we have the ability to create that on our own without spending the money and some of it had to do with the grant that we got through Stone Environmental. So DPW, Zach and Corey and Ryan in particular under Tom's leadership are really taking this on and so they're taking, we've sort of given them a six month window to see if they can pull it off and if they can't, and we think they can, they're confident they can and I've seen their demos and I think they can as well. So we're hopeful to do that so there is no money in the budget for those kinds of services but we're hopeful that we're gonna do it. And basically we've got three areas that we need to use reserve funds for. I just rounded it to 50,000 I'd like to do a citizen survey this year that when you've seen the funding and the potential budget options that's really to start setting aside for future years. I think we said we'd like to do our strategic planning effort again this year and this would be either funding or providing match funds for a grant for an energy plan. So it may not be as much as 50,000 for those three but that would be the highest it would look like. So those aren't in your line budgets but those are activities that are on the radar. Looking at our strategic plan because we do actually use these, these are items that you said, we said, in the spring that we wanted to look at come budget time. So one, and these are just in the order they're written in the plan. I don't know if they're in a priority order. Upgrade the streetlights to LED. We have spent some time on that. We talked about it with the CIP committee. We're looking at the costs and benefits and tax credits and repayments and all that. We are DPWs committed to a proposal for next year's budget and or earlier if we find that it has a positive payback and maybe could be done in a way that doesn't require bonding. Consider net zero fund benefit charge. Again, I think we'd like to seek a planning grant to actually write our energy independence plan for us and including how we might fund that. So that would be part of the plan. Seeking funding to expand our COSA, that's Circle of Support and Accountability. Thank you to work with DCF families. Actually, we have some active proposal before the state right now for a couple of pilots on that. That would be a new service area and presumably mostly state funded. Prioritized non-fossil fuel-based vehicles and equipment plan and these are actually two separate things that combined them into one. We had a long, robust conversation about this the other night and we are looking at alternatives. There is a fuel option which might not require significant fleet changes and then there's one that might and so we're weighing those differences. One Taylor Street, just developing funding maintenance plan. As I said, we don't expect this to be open until October. The initial operations of the transit center will be, the maintenance will be done by GMT who will be the tenant, although we can't charge them rent. The housing portion will be managed by Down Street in terms of long-term funding and maintenance. Again, we ensure the facility's position identifying those needs and putting them into the building capital plan so there's no specific funding right now. Police staffing and training, we looked at that and we're proposing a new position. Replace aging fire vehicles. I think that was put out there as just a heads up that those things aren't cheap and we've got a big million dollar one coming up in the next few years. There is nothing in this year's budget other than funding for the bonding for that vehicle is planned for in our equipment plan and the next, I think once the bonding for the present one runs out, we'll start the next one. Facility management, as I feel like I'm saying this a lot but we do have a position considered in the budget and funding to increase, to address some facility needs in our CIP. Finally, it was community services integration and staffing. We do have an additional tree position in the budget and additional parks position on the options list. We did take a hard look at what we could do for integration. We were pretty satisfied that if we were gonna add positions that ought to be in the service areas and not at the top. We may have a retirement this year but you give us an opportunity to look at the administrative functions but most of the actual hands on positions are already working across all three divisions if you will, parks, seniors and rec. So we see that as working fairly well right now. The pressing needs are really in the trees and the actual parks work. So those were the list we said we were gonna look at. That's where we came out on these. Obviously we've talked about this last week but I just consolidated down to make it even easier to read but these are the what sort of in play that you've identified and we've had requests for. Presumably we'll be talking about over the next couple weeks. What's the difference of this citizen survey and the one you had tucked in the 50,000? The difference is that the survey's about $15,000. So what I'd like to do is do one this year and get a baseline and then set $5,000 a year for the next three years and do another one in three years so that we can, the last one we did was in 2009. So it's quite daily. I know, but you listed it under the reserve fund. Yes, so right. What I'm saying is I'd like, ideally we would pay for one now from reserve and do it this year and then set 5,000 next year, 5,000 a year after 5,000 a year after that and do another one in three years so we can compare the data and do that on a every three year cycle. So this would be setting up for the next one. So yes, there are two separate things. So good question. These are all in your books. So I'm not gonna spend a lot of time on these. This shows you where our money comes from to fund the budget. This shows you how we're spending it. This shows you another way of how we're spending it. So rather than by department, it cuts it apart by your personnel equipment capital in that way. So you can see, again, I've mentioned this many years, but we are a personnel driven operation, which is one reason why those costs, I mean, we can automate, we can do all these things, but it's still people that drive plows, still people that answer fire and ambulance calls, it's still people that are in police cruisers and still people that wait on folks. So we're always gonna have people and doing these jobs as people that are fixing trees and all those other things. If we took the budget as it's laid out and this is what the average person will be paying per service, it shows up better in your book than it does on the screen, but it's just interesting to see that we're paying $500 for police services. That seems pretty reasonable to me and some of these other things. It's a good way to, when you look at it in aggregate, what you're getting for each individual service. So basically the impact, the property tax rate is would be by 2.6 cents or 2.3%. The average, so for an average tax bill of $57, just repeat rates, you recently approved those, the water and sewer, our long-term plan calls for inflation plus 1%, so that would put it at around 3.5% this year and that is to fund the long-term capital needs and then we don't see any change required this year for sewer and benefit or the CSO, sewer, water sewer or CSO benefits. Talked a little bit about the CSO and whether that should be restructured for funding stored water differently. So we have our meeting tonight. We have a workshop on January 2nd, public hearings on January 9th and January 24th, Thursday. You can still, just because you hold a public hearing, we can still make discussions and changes, although there are other items on agendas that night, such as Barry Street Parking. And I was just noting that that was on the agenda and might impact our budget discussion. And then of course the voting on March 5th with the early voting to start in mid, I guess I never got a chance to finish but I did typing out, I'll take care of that. So, must have got interrupted. So that's my presentation. As I said, happy to go back and review any of it with you or take general questions. We do have some staff here to answer specific questions and then whatever you want to structure of a discussion about. So just to frame this up a little bit. Yeah, so this time would be time for questions about the budget, but then. And if we can answer them tonight, we will. If there are specific pieces of information you'd like for the second and people that you'd like there, we can. So I'm wondering if it's useful to do any, talking through what are of the other options that we might want if we get to that. Still going in for 10 o'clock. Okay, Rosie and then Ashley. So I want to read my budget book before we have that discussion. So I would like to push that one off. Two questions that you can answer now or later. I'm curious about how we're doing on our reserve funds. I know you're talking about drawing from them and I just don't have a good sense of where we're at. Right, and we're still looking at that too. We did spend a lot of them this year. So that would impact, you know, we might have to not do some of those things but they're all priority things. I mean, probably I would say the survey would be the one we wouldn't. But we did buy the kind of property and we put money out for TIF, which we will get back but that still comes from the reserves. So I, you know, on the other hand, we are seeing some building fees above and beyond what was budgeted. In fact, ironically, we're gonna be one of the biggest contributors between One Taylor and the parking structure. Those are both like $100,000 fees in the hotel. So we will see some surplus in the general fund as well. That's a great question. It's definitely keeping our eye on it. Okay, and the other one is, I'm sure we heard this earlier but I can't remember what the $5,000 for MEAC was for what they specifically wanted to do with it. I don't, if somebody can just forward me the email again. I'm sure there was one. We can have Kate, maybe you come back. We can see if we can find out. They've had that funding for the last couple of years. Oh, I thought you were saying it was a new? No, it was just continued. They put it out as a loan and get it back. No, that's something else. That's something else. No, they've had that in their budget for the last couple of years. And they use it for miscellaneous studies. I guess I just want to know what it's used for. It could be used as the grant match for the plan, for example. Ashley. So I have a couple of questions, although I think that they are pretty straightforward. So if my math is correct, it looks like over, so we've granted three tax stabilizations over the last year, in essence. And so if my math is right, it comes out to a little over $64,000 in tax abatements for this tax year, assuming that the property would have, they would have paid whatever those taxes were in full this year. So again, my math brings it down to the difference between last year's budget and this year's budget. So if those full taxes, that $64,154, had been paid, that would have brought the difference to, if I read, that's right, it would have been like $205,369. And so I guess what I'm asking is, could you give us the numbers for the difference between what the tax rate would have looked like if we hadn't done those stabilization projects versus what it looks like? I can give you a rough estimate. So assuming the $64,000, I'm not sure they're all completed, so they wouldn't necessarily be taxed at the full amount for this year. Yep, I figured that was the case, but I'm just sort of running the numbers on that. So that would be about 0.7 cents. One cent is about $87,000, so it would be about 0.73 cents that that's worth. So if it was 2.6 cents, then it would be 1.9 cents. OK. Bill, you're getting softer. I'm sorry? What was the amount? It was about 0.7 cents, so it's probably about $16 per average resident, the $228,000 median home price. So $16,000 roughly? Roughly. OK. And thank you for that. I'm not sure I understood what I was saying the whole time. The other question that I ask special certain events and things like that, if there were a proposal to leave the funding the same but to allocate that differently, what's the best way to put that request in writing? So it wouldn't be a dollar amount change. It would just be, instead of using it for this, I'd like to propose that we use it for this other purpose that's related to that, but serves a wider group of people rather than a smaller group. So you can simply make a motion to that if you wanted to send it around. And if the answer people had it, but if not, your job is to allocate funds. So the council can add to the budget. You can subtract from the budget. You can move money around in the budget as you see fit. I mean, within, I mean, obviously, you can't change debt amounts and things like that. No, it's a small. It's like related to. Yeah, I know. But I just want to be clear. The process is, I've recommended a budget to you and you've laid out your options. And then what goes to the voters that you'll approve on January 24 is the city council's budget. So you work from this. Some years it's gone exactly as proposed. Other years it's been changed drastically. Other years it's been changed suddenly. So I mean, that is what you then layer your policy priorities over the staff recommendation. Other questions? Connor. Just in the category of no surprises, you know, for the January 2nd meeting. I've spoken to you, Bill. I just spoke to Bob, too. I think it's a good thing there's seven of us, because I probably aren't staff in every department. But the one I can't get out of my head is maybe the need. We're putting so much on EMS and fire there. I'm looking at the budget line items there, and I see $192,000 in overtime. I think I'd just like a little more going into depth in those numbers, knowing that it can be time and a half. It can be double time, depending on what hour people are called in. If you added another position for, I think, the first steps under $40,000, probably with Benny's $70,000. How much would it eat into that $192,000 number? So I just asked for an analysis on that. Yeah, and we could do that. Just like to give it a closer look. We can certainly do that, and I don't think it would actually make, I mean, given the way that the call-ins work for calls and number of people on calls, and some of that is backfilling for people when they're out on vacations. So if we're going to add a new person, are we going to backfill for them when they're gone? So we have certainly spent a lot of time looking at that. I will tell you, and we'll do more of this, I'm sure, but when I started here in 95, our overtime budget was about what it is right now. And I'm higher, and we actually took about two years ago when it finally caught up with the way we rearranged staff with the help of the fire department, which is me. Putting people at key times, we didn't have to call in as much. So we've actually reduced our overtime considerably. And I think what we have to understand is that in our emergent, actually, not only in our emergency departments, but in DPW, overtime is a necessary evil. I mean, it's not even an evil. It's actually an efficient way to staff people, because you don't have the benefit cause. You don't have all those things. And it is replacing. It is responding to calls and things. So we can certainly look at that. And I'm not sure we would. I don't think we would save dollar for dollar. But I could be wrong about that. Yeah, I'd just like to thank you. Sure. Other comments? Jack. I've the number one thing that I've heard about it. I mentioned this to you and to the chief in an email. The number one comment I've heard from constituents is a question about the additional police officer. So I think that's a topic of discussion that we should be having. And we assume that we, you know, chief, I think, is prepared to make a presentation. I'm sure you can answer general questions now, but I know he's planning to present on that on the second. We assume similar with the tree position, but you know anything else. But yeah, and there are very good logical. The other thing I would say is that the people I talked to also agree that the chief comes with a tremendous amount of credibility based on the experience the city has with him over many years. Yeah, I would say, you know, simply, and I agree with all of that about the chief, all of our departments. But you know, in some regards, too, we had 17. It was cut two or three, four years ago, and one was cut. And I think they've been struggling ever since. And we've been able to support with basically a grant funded position working with the state drug task force. So we've been kept a city officer but not paid for us. So we actually have had the 17th doing investigative work on that program's ending. So to actually go to 16 would be a reduction. To not fill it would be a reduction in the type of service that we've been seeing. I think you can explain that much more detail. Donna. I definitely want to talk to the park department. And last night, attending the park commission meeting, there's more and more demands from the bike group. They've did another petition to the parks to expand to fat bikes. You know that, fat bikes? And so I think we may have some staff changing there, but the staff need and some of the infrastructure need is really, I think, worth hearing. So I'd like them to come forward. And as I said, we were planning to have them. Further comments? OK. I'm going to assume that we are running out of time. So. So parks, police, and fire. Parks, police, and fire. One note. There was a question from the Energy Committee as to whether or not it would be useful to have an energy coordinator from a different city come tell us about what his job is like. And I thought that might be useful, seeing as we might be hiring someone to do that work. What do you think, team? Would that be of value? Oh, OK. Great. So I just want to put that on the list. Well, we can talk about that more, too. Yes, Donna. As part of our budget discussion, are you thinking, or I guess we have so much to do within our budget, I would love to have that afterwards. But I feel there's a solid support for facility energy. Well, so one question. Are we going to support it at 0.25 FDEs, basically, or at a full-time position? So that's to me. The assumption at the 0.25 is just that it's starting partway through the year, not that it's a quarter-time position. It's a full-time position that we are planning to fully fund in future years. So do we start an hour later? That's part of the question. It's one of those options. Yeah. OK. OK, bring him. OK. Jack, did you have a comment about that? OK. I was just going to say it's going to be on the set. OK. OK. OK. OK. So thank you. Great. Very helpful. Thank all of you. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. OK. So we are. It's Bob. It's Bob. It's still here. Sorry about Bob. Council reports. Let's start with Ashley. You can go. OK. Just want to mention that I was chatting with Bill today about making sure that we are clear to the public that we accept comments for public hearings in writing. So we often say that when somebody is being a little bit long-winded in their comment. But I think we should also promote that on our agendas as a, for people who aren't going to show up, a way to contribute to the conversation. And it sounded like that was doable. And we could maybe make that happen. But I just wanted to highlight that for other folks. Great. Go ahead. Donna, you go ahead. OK. OK. I wanted to bring everyone's attention. One of the slides Bill brought up reminded me of his reminder that we have a mission statement and a values that all incorporate it into the draft for our evaluations. I used someone else's. And so I'll just incorporate that. And I haven't gotten any feedback, but what questions you. I know. Maybe after the budget gets done. But what questions you like. I mean, what questions you want to add, a perspective that would be really helpful. But this week with the CIP on Monday, Parks on Tuesday, and MTAC last week, I just want to say we have a lot of good feelings out there for the things that we're looking at for options. Hearing very clearly about some staff needs and lighting needs and other things and more discussion with GMT. So I think I'm really pleased at the direction we're moving and appreciate all the time you're all putting in. Thank you. Not much. Just a little inspiration. I think it shows that even though we're a small city, we can cast a long shadow. And that's an outreach from a group in Worthington, Massachusetts, who would like to ban plastic bags in their town. So is reaching out to citizens against plastic pollution in town here to help them set up a process for that? So yeah, feels good to make a difference on the places. I want to register that we're right in the middle of a pretty busy season for downtown businesses. And so I am only about a quarter here. And I really have been appreciating all of the work that I'm seeing everyone else doing. And I wish that I had more specific comments on a lot of these things. And they're coming. But longer hours than usual and more intense work at the day job recently. So it's all fun. And I just feel really sleepy. Tomorrow morning, I will be back to full power and up in alert and join me at Baguitos at 8.30 to 9.30 to talk about this and everything else. Thank you. Actually, yes. So one of the things that I've spent a lot of time thinking about, I've worked with youth in my prosecutorial career, but also in my other life before becoming a lawyer. And I just want to underscore how impressed I was with the young people who showed up tonight. And one of the things that I am interested in doing as a city is actually engaging more young people in the work that we are doing. And I have some ideas for what that could look like, including maybe like a listening tour that really sits down with young people and sort of listens to them about what they want for their city, because we do that with lots of groups about transportation and infrastructure and things like that. And looking at the data that Laura showed us tonight, we're losing people. And if we want to get people to say, I think we have to really cultivate that. So I'm interested in hearing ideas from the community and from other people about how we can best get that input and what that sort of looks like. Sorry, but I just wanted to jump on that, because there was one other thing in Laura's presentation not in the slides, but in the part that she sent to us about the breakdown of the ages of people in Montpelier. And it was interesting to me to look at that and kind of see. I think that there's a perception that we're an older and aging city. And it looked to me from that chart like that perception may be mistaken. There are a lot of younger people here. I was kind of breaking it down. And it looked like we are something like 60% under 50. So just. I have no update. Everybody looks a little tired. I'll let Bill go in ahead. I'm trying to work on the mayor's 10 o'clock deadline. OK, then. Then without objection, we'll consider the meeting adjourned. Thank you.