 6.01 p.m. on Monday December 5th. I'm gonna call to order this meeting of the Winniesky Liquor Control Board. Please join us in the Pledge of Allegiance led by Counselor Oakley. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Okay. Welcome, Jenny, for regular items. We have on for discussion approval, home test food market, second-class liquor license, and tobacco license and tobacco endorsement. Yes, thank you. Just to let everybody know, Counselors know that clerk's offices are now obligated or required, I should say, to issue tobacco licenses and tobacco endorsements. So, and tobacco endorsements are bait products. It used to be part of clerk's four or five years ago, we used to issue tobacco licenses, and then the state took it back, but now those are coming forward. So, home test market, food market is a new business at 325 Main Street, Suite 4, and they are looking to get started as soon as possible. So, we're just looking for approval for their second-class liquor license, tobacco license, and tobacco endorsement. And they are here. Would you like to come up and introduce yourselves? Yes. Welcome. Yeah, if you want to just share your name and then tell us a little bit about the business. My name is Erika Sabimana. I'm the immigrant from Africa, and I'm here in America for 17 years, and then when I come in America, I come as a refugee, and I started working. It was a new challenge, new life, and then I tried to go to school to UVM, and then I graduated. And then after I was working as paycheck by paycheck, having a check every day, and then one day I just think, like, why do I need to be an employer instead of being employer? And we believe in America is a country of opportunity, and then it's our home. So, and then I started thinking, like, I can think something different, and they just bring an idea to not doing like everything. The same thing everybody doing, because a lot of our immigrants just do the business, but it's African market, African food, and I said, they may think something different, but we can share with our American people, like, I can come with another idea of a test for the market, so that I can just do the business, which even if American, the narrative for America, they can even come to share our business, not only for immigrant. And then I talk to my partner. She's the owner, I'm the runner, and then we talk, and then we discuss, and we say, let's just go slowly, and we just ask the formation how things goes, and then that's why we come to ma'am right there, and then she gave us an idea, and then we started applying the iron number, and then we go to the Secretary of State, and they apply for the certificate, stuff like that. But it was a long procedure. We don't have a lot of connection. We don't know a lot of things about it, but we just want to try, so that we can apply, instead of being applying, that we'll come with an idea for home test for the market, which we can have a connection, and if we can have a moral source, we can do more than that. Instead of home test for the market, we can do more according to that name. But we try to start with the liquor, and the beer, and the tobacco endorsement. But in the future, we'll think that if we become bigger with the connection, we can do more than that. We can just start selling even if food, open even if bars, so that in the immediate, we can feel welcome in America as a business owner. Thank you. Awesome. Thank you for sharing about that. And would you like to deduce yourself? I just said my name because he already did everything. Okay, that's true. My name is Yihardija Uze. I am an immigrant from Africa. I have been here for five years. Oh, sorry, seven years. So my idea since I came here was business, but it's a lot of process. I have it just wait until I get the pointer and I am on pointer with my partner Eric. We just sit together and come up with the idea and I will try our best. Awesome. Well, thank you for coming in. Are there any questions from council? Any questions from members of the public? Remember, you can use the chat or raise hand feature. Okay, well, here you know concerns about the the license. Would anyone like to make a motion to approve both regular items? Second. Motion by Thomas second by Bryn all those in favor please say aye. Motion carries. You are approved. Thank you. And then Jenny can follow up with you to help. Thank you very much. All right, thank you. Thank you. So that's the end of the liquor control agenda. Motion to adjourn. Motion by Bryn. Second by Thomas all those in favor please say aye. Motion carries. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. I've got 607 PM. I'm going to call to order the Winnowski City Council meeting. First up is agenda review. Any comments concerns about the order of the agenda tonight? Okay. Next up is public comment. So public comment is meant for excuse me. Comment on any items not on tonight's agenda. If you are here for something that's included on the agenda, like the budget, for example, if you can please wait until we reach that item, we'll have time for public comment in each of the agenda items. If there is public comment about something not on tonight's agenda, please go ahead and use the raise hand or chat feature to let us know. On our consent agenda tonight, we have our minutes from November 7 and 28. Were we all here for all of those? I think so. Okay. The accounts payable warrants for 11 16 18 and 12 10 payroll warrants for 10 30 to 11 12 and 11 13 to 11 26. Any comment or concern? Consent agenda? Do I have a motion to approve? Second. Motion by Thomas second by Aurora. All those in favor please say aye. I'm curious. Okay. So council reports. Can I start with you? Sure. So don't have anything super specific to report beyond that our next inclusion and belonging commission meeting is going to be on the 8th and it is going to be virtual. So anyone who wishes to attend, please do. And that's going to be at the 8 on the 8th at 6pm. So have our next safe, healthy connected people meeting. And that's going to be on the 13th at 630. So please feel free to join either of those meetings if you want to comment and participate. Thank you. Um, and since we last met and early November, um, the Municipal Infrastructure Commission had a meeting on the 17th number November 17th. It was a joint meeting with the Finance Commission. Uh, we continued to review. We had a joint meeting with them in October. Um, and in November, we continue to talk about capital assets. Um, uh, that the city has and owns, um, looking at, uh, potential uses for ARPA funds such as, um, parks and recreational opportunities, safety improvements, especially pedestrian and, um, biking safety, um, improvements that could be made, um, opportunities. We also reviewed opportunities to improve city communications so that, uh, residents had a better idea of, um, capital improvements that were coming up and that were planned, as well as opportunities to engage. Um, there wasn't anything specific that came out of that. I think continued, um, efforts and posting through many channels is kind of, uh, um, continued direct, continued continuation of that, but also, you know, being adaptable to other opportunities. Um, and we are having, uh, another meeting, um, basically a work plan review, um, with the group, um, in two weeks, and that'll be, uh, planned for, to be held at the, um, the community room at the pool. So if anyone wants to attend, we'll, um, be meeting in person. Thank you. Thank you. Um, Planning Commission had another meeting since our last council meeting. Uh, they continued to discuss revisions to parking requirements, including potential small reductions to incentivize affordable housing, electric vehicle parking, um, and underground parking that increases open space. There's another meeting this Thursday, 6 30. Uh, they're held hybrid. So here you can attend by coming here or zoom and phone. Um, and there was also some discussion amongst the members about a desire to bring back and design review committee to support historic preservation. So for context, we used to have that kind of committee. Um, it's kind of nullified when downtown zoning and form based codes that standards for design though. Um, I attended the town meeting TV Board of Trustees again. We might have an applicant for that, but, um, just did a review of financials for that meeting and, um, was also able, you were able to join me. Thomas had a listening center, a listening session at the Senior Center for ARPA. We're still conducting those. Um, there's some outreach happening through the schools to get youth input as well, and I think our survey is still active on the website. It sure is. Great. You can also always email or call any of us with comments about that. Uh, pass it to Jim. Thank you. I'll start off with, um, piling on for Thursday, the 8th with a 6 p.m. housing commission meeting to be held there to kind of continue our work on the public building registry, which really affects a lot of our housing quality for, um, enforcement and, uh, promotion work here in the city through the rental registry. So encourage people to join there. Um, this will be our, uh, last meeting of the year and will be meeting again in January. Um, the, uh, Hard Windowsky Foundation Board met and approved the first round of funding for, uh, improving, uh, the teacher pipeline, um, and awarding funding to, uh, current Windowsky School District member that, uh, can use it to upgrade their financial training in order to, uh, develop a pathway into a profession within the school district. So excited to see that first award come out. That was a monumental, uh, or a momentous moment for the Hard Windowsky Foundation. I'm really proud of that group for getting there. And we held a, um, listening session, engagement session with the Windowsky Housing Authority Courtyard building, um, since we last met and had, uh, next conversation with a handful of folks there, both about art, but, uh, spending priorities as well as larger, uh, questions and, uh, updates on what's happening in the city. So it's nice to be back in that building, um, with residents again, and we're looking forward to continuing to rotate through that building, uh, every couple of those buildings every couple of months. So, um, those are my reports for today. Thank you. Thomas? Um, nothing from the Downtown Windowsky Board. Uh, I just want to echo what you said about the artful listening session. It was well attended at the Senior Center, and then I will be attending another one at St. Francis School on Wednesday. Um, so looking forward to hearing from some students on their perspective. Awesome. Thanks. How'd the pop-up go? How'd the pop-up go? The pop-up's really great. It was fun. I got up there a little late. Um, city updates. Yes, city updates for summer 5th. On behalf of our community and our fire department, we want to thank the fire and rescue departments of St. Michael's College, Vermont International Guard, Burlington, South Burlington, Colchester, Essex, and Burlington for supporting our response to construction fire at 72 East Allen Street. Although the structure was a total loss and several people are now displaced, the efforts of about 70 firefighters and rescue personnel on site ensured their safety and that of the neighboring buildings. My neighboring buildings were not damaged. I also want to thank our own fire department and leadership for their tireless and effective work this weekend. John, Ani, would you like to add anything to that? Thanks. I think it's important to recognize other city departments. You know, Winooski PD officers and dispatch, public works department, Vermont Red Cross, Green Mountain Power, Vermont Gas. You know, as you said, this fire is displaced 10 to 12 people for a long term, if not permanently. And right now the fire, we know where the origin of the fire was, where it started in the basement. The cause is undetermined and anyone that has any information is asked to call the Winooski PD at 6550221 or the Vermont Arson line at 1832 Arson. You know, again, any information that we can obtain through the joint investigation with Vermont State Police, Winooski PD and Winooski Fire would be extremely helpful at this point. The next steps are we are trying to determine if the building is structurally safe to remain. And we have some challenges with some communication with the building, the property owner that we're trying to work through. So the coming days, that's kind of where we're, you know, where our focus is and really trying to help to displace residents at this point. Thank you. Thanks, Drew. Thanks. Continuing on, speaking of emergency services, the Winooski Fire and Police Departments have partnered with Operation Fire Cuffs and the University of Vermont Children's Hospital. I'll just realize. I don't know, that's fine. Children's Hospital for their annual holiday toy drive. Donations can be delivered at the following locations. Winooski Fire Department at 120 Main. You can use the back parking lot door. Winooski City Hall at 27 West Allen Street Monday through Friday, 7 30 a.m. to 4 30 p.m. Entrances on Weaver Street. And the Winooski Police Department at also at 27 West Allen Street to enter at the lobby, it would be on West Allen Street, 24 7. To see the list of recommended donation items and for more information, please visit the news updates section of Winooski VT.gov. As you know, tonight officially marks the start of fiscal year 2024 budget season. Committee members are encouraged to get engaged in the process and we are glad to see the many folks joining tonight on Zoom. To see the full budget and meeting schedule, please visit Winooski VT.gov slash FY24. If you have questions or comments, please contact us by phone at 802-655-6410 or by email at budget at Winooski VT.gov or you can get in touch with me directly or any of your counselors directly. Winooski Recreation Parks are excited to announce their slate of 2022 to 23 winter programs, which include youth basketball, adult yoga, a special February break camp for grades K through five, winter themed outdoor activities, Friday afternoon outings and more. Visit Winooski VT.gov slash Rec programs to sign up today. As we head into the holiday months, the city Winooski encourages our residents and visitors to do everything you can to prevent the spread of COVID-19. More COVID-19 illness is to be expected as people are spending more time gathering indoors and over the holidays. For information on vaccines, testing, masks, and other resources, visit Winooski VT.gov slash COVID-19. Free take-home test kits are available while supplies last during the open hours of Winooski City Hall, the Winooski Memorial Library, and the Winooski Senior Center. And finally, the winter parking band reminder, overnight street parking is prohibited in downtown Winooski from 2.30 a.m. to 6.00 a.m. from December 1st to March 31st. For the rest of the city, winter parking bands are made on a case-by-case, weather-dependent basis, or for area-specific snow removal where overnight street parking is prohibited from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. To receive up-to-date winter parking band alerts, you can sign up for Nixle by texting Winooski to 888-777. For full details about winter parking bands and Winooski, please visit WinooskiVT.gov-slash-parking. That's it. Finally. All right, thank you. So moving to our regular items, first step is on for discussion approval, assessor's office errors and omissions. Yes, so in your packets, the assessor did provide two new errors and omissions that were left off the grand list that were incorrect on the grand list. One is due to an inactive account, and the other is due to personal property no longer located in the city. The two adjustments remove a total of $146,959 from the grand list, resulting in a revenue decrease of just over $2,000. No any questions? Any questions from Council? Any questions from members of the public? If there are no questions or concerns, should I have a motion to approve the assessor's office errors and omissions? So moved. Second. Motion by Aurora, second by Thomas. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you. Thank you. All right, item B. So this is the FY24 budget presentation. So we're going to have our city manager, Elaine, run through the overview. We'll have time for questions after that before we jump into the general government section. Okay, so this is going to take me a minute. Let's see if I can share what I mean to share here. Well, while you pull that up, I will just share for process information, information. We go through six meetings, seven meetings for budget. Eight, actually. So tonight is the first introduction, general administration. And then we have four additional meetings that we dig into different departments. And then we have a final meeting to get any less information or discussion before we then actually vote on what goes to voters on the ballot. So the goal of tonight is not to do like complete decision making or, you know, we're not expecting to get there, but to make sure we all understand what the different proposals are, get questions asked. Additionally, we all have these binders. It's also in the packet too, like line item, you know, you are, I would encourage all of you to do some one-on-one time with staff. You know, you are welcome to do that and have questions answered that way. If you really want to get in the weeds, you don't have to save everything for the meetings. I know my first city budget, I sat down with the old manager and Angela and went through spreadsheets and asked inappropriately detailed questions I would say, just to make sure I felt like I understood what I was getting into. So there's a lot of time to to dig into the singles of the process. This is just the first of several opportunities for us and for members of the public. Oh, positively. Okay. I'll see if this works. All right. So tonight, I'm presenting the city manager's fiscal year 2023-2024 proposed budget. I'll provide an overview of all the funds and go into some detail about the general administration departments. This being an unusual year for Noosky, between a high inflation, having ARPA grant funds and the TIF district expiring in May of 2024, I will be presenting three budget scenarios before my recommended budget. We do have a lot to cover and much of it is interconnected. So I request that council limits themselves to clarification questions during the presentation. Please, of course, do take notes on your questions and either ask them at the end or during one-on-one or at future departmental level meetings, presentations during your your meetings. For detailed questions related again to community services, police, fire, public works, and capital improvements. Specifically, they will have opportunities to discuss with you their departments. Am I still okay? Can people hear me okay? Jim? Sounds great. Looks great. Elaine? Yes. Thanks, Paul. Okay. So during the presentation I'll remind everyone about the strategic vision, review the budget process, present the budget scenarios and proposed slash recommended budgets. Review all funds, reserves, and leverage funds, and review what's next in the budget process. I'll also review the general government budget in detail. To not keep everyone in suspense, a level services budget would require a 14.53% tax rate increase, meaning we would be doing the same this year as we did last year that would require that much of a tax rate increase. For context, usually it's more around 2%. There'll be more detail later in the presentation. Keeping the tax rate increased at 5%, and I'll explain later where that number came from. That would require cutting services and adding revenues. Despite this, it's important for council to understand and the community what other commitments and goals would look like for taxes and what we have been calling the stretch budget. The budget I'm proposing and recommending, well the budget I'm proposing would require a 11.62% tax rate increase. To get this down to a 5% increase would require the use of $409,000 of fund balance, which is ultimately my recommended budget. So this is a reminder that everything your city team has done and continues to do is guided by the strategic vision set by the community in 2015. These themes continue to be relevant today as has been evident to me coming to Winooski knew about six months ago. In recent years it has been rough seas for many. COVID has been difficult globally. Your city government staff was without a permanent manager for about a year and without an HR director, human resources director for several months. Inflation is also at unprecedented high levels as I'm sure all of you are experiencing in your own pocketbooks. I'll circle back to that in a minute. So if this timeline looks familiar it should. It you saw, at least council did a very similar graphic in my predecessor's budget overview presentation in December of 2020. The main change I made to this really is updating it used to say 2020 to 2021. Now it says 2020 to 2023. I've included this as a reminder that through stormy seas city leadership staff and council have persevered in carrying out the vision plans and commitments that the community has established, reinforced and continues to value. In my six months the priorities of housing, equity, access to local government and impact on taxpayers have been clear. These are consistent with the focus on affordability and equity that the former city manager noted in her 2020 presentation and still are in this timeline. I encourage the community to recognize that their city government has continued to maintain course on their strategic vision under very challenging circumstances. And it does continue to be a privilege for me to have been welcome to join you all in serving the Winooski community. So a reminder on the budget process as the mayor just outlined. The council has approved the budget timeline. This is what it is basically you see it on the screen right now. The council discussed budget priorities in October. Tonight is in bold. City manager's budget presentation and general government. The next three meetings are more department more department presentations. In January there'll be an overall discussion of follow-up items. January 23rd is the date that council needs to approve the vote and set the warning for town meeting day where the community will be voting on the budget. In February the staff and council will strive to present the budget to as many community members as possible. And then again on March 7th the public will vote on the budget among other things. So back to the budget process on priorities. During that October meeting all no votes were taken. Council provided the following guidance. No explicit tax rate goal this year at staff request because it wasn't an usual year that we could use American Rescue Plan Act otherwise known as ARPA or tax increment financing for bridging to a future year to reduce impact on taxpayers to right size capacity to current programming to catch up with the capital maintenance plan and there was no consensus on areas to deprioritize meaning that council was looking to staff to recommend what to deprioritize. And a note to back up to the current programming council did not reach consensus on whether current programming included ESSER funded positions that was COVID grant funds from the school district. We have included some we considered priorities as you'll see later but not all. The context for the budget is what services those budgets pay for and what it takes to deliver those services. For the most part it takes people. So that's what we're showing you an organizational chart. The blue box let's see if I can show my hoping it could show my point over here. Oh well. So in the blue boxes near the top or at the top are the governing authorities which start with residents and voters. Everyone else in this organizational chart for our purposes is to serve our purpose is to serve that public meaning you that are joining on Zoom. The community's primary role is to set the vision and keep everyone else accountable to it. Everybody else on this chart. Council's role is to adopt the plans, strategy and policies to achieve that vision. The black box off to the right with the list of commissions there. Those are advisory bodies. Their members are all appointed by city council to formally advise them on plans, strategy and policies. Everyone in the green boxes meaning me, the city manager and below we are appointed staff. The city manager that's me again. Staff's city council and provides leadership coordination and support to all city departments. As city manager I'm accountable for all activities of staff. Below the city manager box is where it gets more tangible. The words at the top of each green box shows the type of services meaning municipalities are expected to deliver and Winooski does deliver. Below that are the staff that deliver that service according to Winooski's priorities. So going from left to right the contracted assessor makes sure we're evaluating property values consistently so that we're charging property taxes fairly. Fire and code enforcement protect our safety and health related to buildings and road hazards for example. Code enforcement officer hours include enforcing city parking regulations which is about safety and most of Winooski and in the downtown supports our economic vitality by ensuring parking spaces for business customers turnover. Public works manages our streets sidewalks water and wastewater services. Police and dispatch support the safety of our community members. Community services support the vitality of our community by providing green spaces safe spaces learning spaces and programs. Planning and zoning and housing support a built environment that our community needs and wants. And finally administration makes all the other functions more effective hopefully. Most of Winooski's government services are provided by people again so it's not like a manufacturing plant where maybe the machinery might be the highest cost. That's why so much of this pie chart of Winooski's budget costs is in salaries and benefits which is in yellow. Now we'll go into the budget scenarios for the general fund. The general fund pays for general administration, fire and code, police, public works administration staff, community services, the O'Brien community center and some capital costs related to the buildings for those people. As I previewed budgeting in FY24 for the actual cost of providing the same services provided in FY23 the current one that we're in would result in a property tax increase of 14.53% which would cost the owner of a property value to add $225,000 as an example an additional $380 and 88 cents annually in property taxes. Most of this 14.53% increase for FY24 is due to economy-wide cost increases outside of our control. In particular recall the yellow slices of the pie chart those are related to salaries and benefits. We assumed a 6.5% cost of living adjustment in fiscal year 24 for non-union staff and a 7.7% cost of living adjustment for union members. Our employee bargaining unit contracts include an annual wage increase based on either the October to October or February to February consumer price indices. In September the February 2023 projections were between 4.43% and 8.36%. The current consumer price index issued for the period October 2021 to October 2022 is 7.7%. Unfortunately a budget must be adopted by the council by the end of January to be advertised for town meeting in March and so we will not know the February to February consumer price index amount until after the budget is adopted or at least voted on the first time. Health insurance the city receives health insurance through Vermont Health Connect. Initial health insurance quotes for calendar year 2023 show an increase of 10.5% for blue cross blue shield premiums which make up 75% of the city's health care costs. We project a 13% increase for calendar year 2023 based on experience. And finally the grand list assumption we project a modest increase of 0.8% growth in the grand list based on zoning and building permits issued offset by expected value reductions. The net increase translates to approximately 71,275 dollars in new property tax revenue for the general fund. While we continue to see new development throughout the city grand list growth that will determine the actual tax space for the city won't be calculated until April 1st 2023. And so could vary from projections last fiscal year the total grand list growth was 1.39%. Like the budget itself most of the cost increase of the tax rate is driven by staff cost increases and wages and benefits. Again this is because most of Winooski's government services are provided by people. Now a reasonable person will look at this big yellow part of the pie and ask whether we can reduce these costs by paying people less or by providing fewer benefits. There are three challenges to that approach. First wages and benefits set by union contracts are legally binding. Second non-union wages and benefits could be changed and has been trimmed in the past by councils. However this contributes to pay compression where those with leadership responsibilities and stresses are paid similarly to their frontline staff. We actually did model a few scenarios because this is certainly an ugly budget as is but it didn't take much cutting before some supervisors would be paid less than their staff after staff overtime was included. This would make it hard to find or keep people willing to shoulder the burden of leadership. Third because we have so many more union staff cutting non-union wages would not move the tax rate significantly. So as we look next at what costs are included in level services and then what costs to cut please keep in mind the rest of this pie chart. What would make a significant difference? Everything that isn't brown that all other slice in the in the pie chart is more or less out of our control. So in addition to salaries and benefits Winooski has limited ability to negotiate the costs of regional services, utilities and professional services. So for example most of regional services which contributes just 1% of the tax rate increase is Green Mountain Transit and during this process with the Winooski City Winooski can't affect their budget request. So I will review the larger budget increases that were for level services but still reflect a change of some kind. Some of the level services budget tax rate increase is due to including what should have been in the budget and the city does pay for but in a way that isn't reflected in the tax rate. I'll explain what I mean when we get to those items. Historically the rental registry and public building fees collected have been maintained and operated as a special fund that is not part of the general fund. Any budget shortfall is then paid for by a general fund reserve balance transfer. This has two consequences. First the true cost of the program is not obvious. Second staff feel pressure to generate enough in fees to 100% cover the rental registry and public building programs expenses. This has begun to lead to quantity versus quality of annual inspections whereas we are ensuring quality housing through this mechanism primarily now. But many factors each year affect the ability of staff to meet revenue targets and many of those factors are out of their control whereas the rental registry services are essential to the health and safety of renters and users of public buildings and have contributed to reducing our structure fire calls including this budget and the general fund reflects that criticality of these services. Winooski fires part-time on-call staff response rates have declined in recent years and we are having trouble recruiting new staff that live within a workable response time distance. Although our structure fire calls have decreased this weekend notwithstanding we still need sufficient readiness for our current building stock and continuing growth. St. Mike's Fire has historically provided limited automatic aid to Winooski on certain fire responses. We've asked St. Mike's Fire to respond side by side with Winooski resources 24-7 to assure appropriate resources are available from emergency calls. This will also allow us to better meet national response guidelines and best practices and better ensure staff safety and the Lowell service across our diverse response area that it needs. This does come at a cost which is included in the Lowell services budget. St. Mike's Rescue provides Winooski with advanced life support with ambulance transport services at no cost to the city budget. None of our budget scenarios include any changes to that arrangement. Recent actual legal services costs which are unpredictable have been higher especially in the last two to four years. The Lowell services budget includes an amount based on the two year higher average. When we have more legal expenses than budgeted it comes out of fund balance. Each year the Chinden County Regional Planning Commission supplements our work under their unified planning work grant program. This program requires local match. We haven't budgeted for that match in the past again in an effort to keep the tax rate low and then have used fund balance to pay the match when the time comes. Lowell services budget includes the match. All the complaints I've heard about line striping is among the most common so far. Again staff has typically budgeted for it then cut it to meet tax rate goals and then submitted a fund balance request to pay for it. This delays our ability to secure contractors because we might delay going out to bid until we know what the fund balance is. So Lowell services includes an increase for line striping which if it isn't clear to those of you weren't used to looking at it is a safety measure. We often have to cut down street trees and poor health. We need to replace these but have typically not budget enough for replacement trees. The level services budget increases what we have been replacing but using fund balance to meet grant grant match requirements to pay for. The recommended capital improvement plan includes the annual 5% increase to funding for infrastructure that that has been voted in the past. Included in this plan is all existing debt service including for the Myers memorial pool and phase one of the main street revitalization project. Scheduled fleet replacement and some street resurfacing. This amount is still insufficient to keep up with maintaining roads and sidewalks let alone began implementing improvements identified in planning documents. But we've interpreted level services in this case to mean the 5% annual increase which has been historically approved by a community vote. A majority of the senior center programming funds were formally tracked in a separate fund. Without bingo that budget is no longer covering its expenses because that was a revenue generator. So we are proposing to bring the senior center programming budget fully into the general fund. Note that that adds a net of eleven thousand five hundred and forty dollars to the general fund. That is twenty thousand three hundred and twenty dollars of expenses and eight thousand seven hundred and eighty dollars in revenues. The last bullet on this slide is staff required to maintain level community services including some items currently paid for with the ESSER grant the school grant of COVID area COVID era school grant. Council members did not agree whether ESSER funded programming would be considered level services so we have included all of them in the level services budget as what is recommended by staff. We have put some thought into which are providing more value at this time because fourteen five three percent increase is too much. You'll see these in the cut recommendations. Staff included in ESSER funding are the community services administrative assistant the second library circulation assistant recreation programs assistant and a portion of the youth interventionist. All together all these all the items on this slide represent about five point six six percent of the tax rate increase. Level services also includes fees to regional partners and keep in mind the share of the tax rate increase due to regional partners is only one percent. Compared to the amount budgeted in FY twenty three the green mountain transit bus service assessment is going up by nine thousand two hundred and twenty nine dollars and seventy cents or four point two two percent. The actual assessment decreased compared to the amount being paid in FY twenty three but as some who are present on council for the last budget cycle may recall the actual assessment being more than budgeted was noted as an item of concern during the last budget process. The level services budget for regional partners includes the planned one thousand dollar increase to the Winooski Valley parks district. This would bring the total allocation to nine thousand dollars. Note the Winooski Valley parks district fee full fee to Winooski is twelve thousand forty five dollars. And finally for level services budget the last item to note is the planned one thousand dollar increase to town meeting TV. This would bring our total allocation to ten thousand dollars. The full town meeting TV fee to the city is seventeen thousand dollars. So back to the big picture of the general fund. A level services budget would be nine million six hundred and thirty nine dollars eight hundred and fifty women. Nine million six hundred thirty nine thousand eight hundred and fifty six dollars and twenty seven cents. That budget is up ten point six one percent from fiscal year twenty three. And again the property tax rate increase on a level services budget would be fourteen point five three percent. Because the revenue from grants and other non property tax revenues will go down a bit by one point eight four percent. The reliance on property taxes from a level services budget would increase to seventy five point five five percent in F white twenty four. This is illustrated in the pie chart on the left. It shows how the level services budget is paid for. The green is property taxes so just over three quarters of the budget relies on property taxes. A reasonable person again here would ask if we can increase the share from other sources. We do pursue grants. You'll see a slide on that later in the presentation. But one we don't show in the budget grants we haven't been awarded yet. And two remember how much of the cost is in staffing and it's not ideal to hire people for core services with grant money because once the grant goes away there's a risk the services will also go away. Since it there's no guarantee we will be able to secure another grant. The pie chart on the right shows what those revenues pay for in the general fund. General administration, fire and code, police, public works, community services, and the O'Brien Community Center and again the general funds share of capital costs. And all these slides are on the website so if I'm going a bit too fast you're welcome to view them there. Paul actually if you want to drop the link in the chat that would be great. So that's what I have to say for now about the level services budget scenario. Next I'll review the 5% tax rate increase budget scenario. So how we got to the 5% number the Winooski finance and municipal infrastructure commissions indicated a tax rate increase of 5% which is lower than inflation thanks Paul but higher than Winooski's historical increases would be tolerable. To meet this request staff recommends specific cuts to some existing services, specific new revenues, and use of fund balance. We'll go over each of those now. To reduce the tax rate increase to 5% staff recommended staffing cuts. Again that's the biggest part of the budget so it would have the biggest impact unfortunately. Those staffing cuts recommended include the equity director. This position is currently vacant. Staff continues to implement recommendations from the previous equity director and to integrate equity considerations into the operations and personnel considerations of each department and more can be done. And I will say any of you on the call now or on the zoom call now or watch this later or hear about this presentation. I do want to be held accountable to those outcomes. Not filling this position means the city will forgo having in-house expertise and proactive planning for another year. Some learning opportunities are available through the city's current involvement with the state office of racial equities ideal program. The Chinden County Regional Planning Commission has hired an equity coordinator who may be able to provide some research support. If the equity director position funds are indeed eliminated the goal would be to restore funding for the position in fiscal year 25. The youth interventionist this position is currently funded at 28 hours 16 of which is from a COVID grant from the school. That's the Esther funds that I've been referring to. 28 hours can support a caseload of four to five individuals. Without Esther funding this position would be down to 10 to 12 hours a week which is not quite enough to support a caseload of two individuals. This position has had some very positive outcomes with individuals referred due to problem behaviors at school becoming happier engaged members of the community with the coaching of the youth interventionist who understands their Winooski context. Unfortunately given the choice between our serving one to two people at a time and other hours supporting many more staff reluctantly propose eliminating the limited youth interventionist hours. If those 12 hours were eliminated the goal again would be to bring back a 28 hour position. Reducing the housing director weekly hours from 48 to 30. I pause filling this new position pending this budget discussion. The impact of this of course would be that the work plan would need to be scaled down. Since the position is currently not filled the work plan hasn't been created yet. One AmeriCorps down from two employers across America program not just Winooski have had trouble finding people interested in serving AmeriCorps position slightly likely because of the low pay rate. Going down to one AmeriCorps reduces programming capacity by 20%. So clearly there is a service impact eliminating that position. Other cuts recommended by staff are matched for Chinning County Regional Planning Commission unified planning work program work. The FY23 projects are not yet started so it's possible the CCRPC won't need into fiscal year 24 to complete the fiscal year 23 projects and will have limited capacity for any new FY24 work. That RAM program is currently open and staff have not applied for anything yet because of this plan or rather this proposal. So not as painful as some of the other cuts. This one is similar so reducing the legal expense budget would reduce the budget for legal cost to match the struggle average for this expense over the last four years of $62,000 which is still an increase to the current budget. Just as a reminder if this is confusing the level services budget use the two-year average that was closer to $74,000. Keeping the rental registry program separate from the general fund this would continue the operation of this program as it exists today. Currently though this program doesn't cover costs and the shortfall will need to be covered from existing revenues. We do have a healthy reserve at moment so it would not be noticeable in the tax rate again less painful for this year. Not something we're recommending to continue indefinitely but again compared to the other cuts this one is less painful. Community services applied budgets. These are proposed cuts to the level services budgeted recreation supplies and library books and player articles for the year. The cut proposal is to budget the same amount as this year which with inflation does actually represent a cut. Either staff would make do with the existing resources or would seek alternative funding options to require needed items. The new revenue recommended by staff are development plans review. The city is already involved in reviewing development plans as part of its community risk reduction or building inspection services but without charging fees. The state currently earns plans review revenue but their staff have more work than they can handle timely. Note the state would have to agree to transfer this role to the city and there's no guarantee that that will happen. But that is a new revenue source that staff are interested in. Resident parking permit fees this is very minuscule but it is revenue or we're trying to turn over every stone. Currently the city issues approximately 100 resident parking permits free of charge to those who prove proof of residents within a resident only parking zone. Staff recommend adding a small fee for these permits to offset some of the costs to administer that program. And finally fund balance the above cuts and new revenues recommended by staff result in a tax rate increase of 10.39%. Reducing the tax rate increase to 5% compared to fiscal year 23 the one we're currently in would require $333,000 in fund balance. And note in that dash box on the right all of these cuts and revenues shown here would be required to get down to a 5% tax rate increase. This bar graph shows how much each of these cuts contribute to the tax rate reduction from 14.53% to 5%. 5% is the white bar. Bars in blue are staffing related. New revenues in green. You can see use of ARPA is the biggest contributor or fund balance rather. The plans review fee is in dark green and again that is not guaranteed revenue. This section is what we've been calling the stretch budget. We understand the level services budget will more than stretch city taxpayers. However, more investments are needed for the city to meet its commitments responsibly maintenance infrastructure and advance its master plan goals in a way that's responsive to what the community has told us lately not just to keep the status quo. Some of you on the call have expressed such interests. This is important context for this year's proposed budget and recommended budget and what you may see in future years especially as the TIF district expires. For context historically Winooski leadership has tried to keep tax rate increases low to help Winooski's affordability. This has been a worthy goal given our lower income and fixed income community members. Winooski has averaged a 2.17% tax rate increase per year over the last 10 years. 2.17% has not allowed the city to keep up with maintaining its roads and sidewalks nor staff some of its departments to the level of service needed by its growing number of residents and buildings. The population grew 10% between 2010 and 2020 according to the U.S. census. It also added 295 dwelling units and 20,600 square feet of non residential space in the Gateway districts alone which admittedly is probably most of the growth. That development in the community that development was successfully promoted by the community when it adopted form-based code in 2016 which is great in some ways but this growth needs increased services from community services police fire and code enforcement whereas those general fund covered staffing levels have stayed about the same and achieving the city's 2019 to 2027 master plan and annual strategic priorities require yet more resources. Further maybe a third of salaried staff average 50 to 60 hours a week for much of the year occasionally that is absolutely within reason for much of the year that's getting to be a bit much. These staff are trying to deliver non-negotiable services like emergency response and support while also allocating time to change how they do business to achieve master plan goals. In several departments including fire police and community services salaried staff are filling hourly staffing gaps on a regular basis and so have less time to strategically lead their service area. This takes a toll on them and more importantly perhaps their teams. This has in the past and continues to lead to burnout and turnover which impacts who is left and so it continues. There's a lot of information on this slide so I'm not going to go over to each of them in detail. The level services budget does not meet our current commitments and needs and dispatch services public works infrastructure police or in maintaining the computers that we have that we need to do business. Nor does it support advancing master plan goals in the ways that our current priorities by inadequately staffing fire code enforcement for rental housing and public buildings community services and the community policing model which requires more time per call and more time building relationships in the community outside of enforcement interactions. Note there is a gray area between these lists meaning some on the master plan goals list could be considered an unmet commitment. For example the housing trust fund is a program we are running without an ongoing funding source and there is a small grant portion currently of that fund so if that continued indefinitely without any addition that we would deplete it. For context these tables show the tax rates and changes for the city versus the Winooski school districts tax rate over the last 10 years. The data in the tables is in the online presentation for everyone's reference. Right now we'll just focus on the average annual rate increase shown in the red box. The cities is on the left as you already heard its average 2.17% over 10 years. The middle rate 3.08% is what landlords, businesses and others who don't officially live at their property in Winooski have paid in Winooski school district taxes or rather the tax rate and what renters pay indirectly is reflected it would be passed through that middle one. The right most rate 5.32% is what property owners who do live in when their Winooski property have paid in taxes to the Winooski school district. One might say the city has not been able has not kept up with its needs as much as the school district has. Note that the 10 year average consumer price index increase was 2.24%. I know I'm new to the community so I'm going on a lemon saying that and you can just blame me for saying those things. Finally the proposed and recommended budgets. To get to our responsible budget we need all the cuts that we discussed earlier and all the new revenue we were recommended by staff also discussed earlier and we need to add the expenses related to the regional dispatch commitment which as of now is planned to come online in October 2023. All that together results in a tax rate increase of 11.62%. To limit the tax rate increase to 5% I then propose we use $409,000 in fund balance. This is a responsible budget because it is under the projected TIF revenue of $432,000 meets the regional dispatch commitment and keeps a reasonable margin. That means if we add any of these cuts back in or cannot realize the recommended revenue we risk committing to more expenses than we will have revenues to cover when the TIF district expires and payments flow to the general fund. I'm going to say that about three more times just to make sure that's understood. For those of you have not been following Wienewski's tax increment financing or TIF story the debt the city took on to improve public infrastructure downtown to attract private development will be paid off in May of 2024 and attract private development it did. Once the TIF expires the city should start receiving $1,500,600 more than before the TIF district was created in property taxes loan repayments and payments in lieu of taxes for the nonprofit entities inside the district. The other two are from the nonprofit from the profit entities. Of that we have about $445,000 in expenses that will continue shown here under current allocations. Council has earmarked another $623,324 towards the main street project debt service. That leaves $432,000 $4276 and remaining TIF funds. Now staff tell me the original plan when the TIF district was created was those funds would go toward catching up on funding existing services. The parties have shifted as leadership has changed as indicated by the main street revitalization and the regional dispatch votes. That and this year's inflation mean that we can't both catch up and meet all of our new commitments. That's why the proposed and recommended budgets are a mix of the cut and stretch scenarios. So finally this is the proposed budget on taxpayers with and without the use of fund balance. We do recommend using some fund balance. There might be a little confusion between those two terms proposed and recommended. What's shown here is recommended is ultimately what I'm recommending that you do use some fund balance. Without the use of fund balance the proposed budget increases the tax rate by 11.62%. A Winooski homeowner with a home assessed at $225,000 would pay $310.95 more in taxes in fiscal year 24. With the use of fund balance in the amount of $409,000 to get to a 5% tax rate increase a Winooski homeowner with that same home assessed at $225,000 would pay $133 and 87 cents more in taxes in FY24. Now while the biggest the general fund is just one of eight funds so the following slides will review the bigger picture of all the funds. Some good news the increase in the overall budget for all funds is less than inflation. This slide shows the expenses across all the city's service areas. Note that as is appropriate public works as bug as share that's because municipal infrastructure including water lines sewer lines and sewer treatment roads sidewalks and equipment for all of that is expensive. The water fund rate increase needed to cover expenses is significant although the dollar increase for a typical household usage is $72. The wastewater fund rate increase needed to cover expenses including some needed capital costs is also significant though to a lesser degree. The dollar increase for a typical household is $53 for a year. As noted previously staff recommended the senior center programs budget and we moved into the general fund. Those are the highlights of other funds. Other funds raised this is a different funds than the other funds. In the previous slide I mentioned earlier that staff do a good job of obtaining grants and donations. The biggest portion was guaranteed COVID-19 ARPA but they still raised about $139,000 beyond that in fiscal year 22. On the right here is the main street revitalization example of how staff have leveraged funds for big projects. The details are there again for public reference on the website and in that link and for council in your budget book for today's purposes just note how the yellow part which is the amount that the city needs to bond for is offset by all the other sources and the other colors on the top part of that pie chart. So again as you consider whether and how much fund balance council to use remember that any amount you do commit from fund balance for FY 24 you're either committing the same amount of TIF revenue to in FY 25 or to raising the same amount by increasing property taxes in FY 25. Otherwise we may need to cut the service that amount is paying for from the FY 25 budget. Or other services technically. So next we'll go into various departments. Tonight will be general government departments. Next week will be community services. The final votes that council will need to make take are on the general fund budget and to approve the warning for town meeting town meeting day to approve the individual enterprise and special revenue funds for fiscal year 24 to approve the fee and rate resolutions related to water and waste water and then convene as trustees of the Manuski Community Development Corporation to receive and allocate funding for FY 24. If that's confusing I don't blame you. So that was the end of my overview presentation. Would council like to take a break or entertain some questions from the public before we move on to general departments? Let's do questions first. And I would be happy to let public public comments questions come in first. Y'all have been sitting here for a long time. So please feel free to use raise hand or chat. And let us know if you wish to speak. In the meantime I do want to express appreciation to you and the whole team like these are really difficult circumstances that we're working under. It's really unfortunate because I feel like we were on a really good trajectory in recent years and we're being I don't know kind of hamstrung by the same problems that everyone else is facing. So the effort that you've put into finding things to try to make it work you know I appreciate that these are not easy suggestions and that you are forward thinking about it too and I don't know it's tough we're going to everyone's going to be all disappointed to some extent but any I haven't seen your hands raise yet. Are there any clarifying questions that counselors want to ask? I do have some emails that folks sent in to me that they were hoping that could be shared. Yeah are these I think all those folks are attending tonight if not feel free. I was reached out to by a couple people who were unable to attend due to various reasons or other commitments. The first one I have is just someone who wanted to stay vigorously as possible that they oppose the current budget proposal. Lewinowski has a long way to go before the changes that are necessary will be realized and integrated and this is specifically on removing the equity director and youth interventionist positions. Another I can I'll forward these alone to you as well. Just so yeah same time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah but definitely just want to highlight some of these too of once more another resident expressing concerns specifically about the youth interventionist and equity director positions as well as concern about the potential to hire administration for police but cut books you know funding for books and other recreational services especially thinking about you know the way that goes towards helping our community and keeping our community safe. Do you have more? Yes but I'll sure. I see a hand raised in the chat. Indra go ahead when you're ready. Yeah. Thank you. I understand that the inflation has brought a lot of challenges and if the impact of the inflation is to be understood I think you know there are many members that live within the Winiski City where we can go and ask and I don't think they will be saying that they will be cutting their expenses from feeding their child or something that's very urgent and important to them and when I see a particular city or government office trying to cut down a certain position using economic challenge or the inflation or the lack of budget as one of the reasons that it kind of showcases that it's not a priority for them and to quote the former deputy mayor and the former representative Paulson to be former representative from Winiski held position it kind of shows where city stands the budget kind of showcases the morality the ethics the priority of the office and I am a former resident of Winiski who is in Winiski most of my time and also somebody who's really suffered the presence of racial inequity and injustice within our system and if you're unaware happy to come help you understand someday or you can simply Google it was within Winiski that I suffered but I continue to revere Winiski and often keep on thinking about moving back to Winiski because it's the first city that I got resale in after coming to to the US and it's a city that I really do love and when I heard that you know we're trying to cut down the position of equity director youth interventionist what in fact we just started doing this work Winiski hasn't made progress like let's not you know sleep on thinking that like we have made any progress it's not been made I am a brown man was labeled a terrorist by the author be the system in Winiski so I I can see it I can tell you with certainty that the issue of racial injustice hasn't really gone away and I am somebody who really does this work outside of Winiski at the state government level national organizations and I know that keeping only one position is not going to solve the whole issue but it does show where our priorities are and if that conviction that I saw you know from mayor you're giving talks at different places Elaine when we talk right like if racial justice is a priority I think it will come across in the budget that we are trying to propose and if the first position that we are trying to get rid of is equity director when in fact we haven't really grapple with the difficult question that comes with being the most diverse city in the New England area in Vermont something that we take pride in something that we state in every single document it really makes me start question the values that we are trying to afford or the value that we showcase outside so I really do hope that you know we do consider keeping the equity director and youth interventionist position because without that it does not speak well to you know the emails of Winiski the commitment that we express publicly and I understand it's a challenging time again you know also work and I know the challenge of inflation I understand I work with different organization I understand the challenge of budgeting but I think we can be a little more creative and showcase the ethics moral and the value that we continue to preach around the state and around the country to just seeing that this is the line item that we are trying to cut citing economy challenges it just doesn't work well with me and I'm speaking that as somebody who really does love Winiski and somebody who was victimized by Winiski to be honest with you so if we really want to make it be a safe place for the people that we continue to talk about the members of our community please ask yourself like what does this say about Winiski that takes pride in being the most diverse city in the state of Vermont the city that continues to perpetuate where a lot of citizens continue to be victimized because of racial injustice so it's it's just something that I hope the city council members the state of the city government really reflect on thank you thank you Indra we have another comment Andy go ahead when you're ready all right thank you yeah I was one of the other folks that had emailed in earlier but I have just a couple minutes so I did want to just kind of reaffirm like thank you so much to the city manager for sharing all of that that was really helpful information and I'm really looking forward to kind of looking at those slides in more detail so I just really as a member of the public like I really appreciated the presentation that you provided that was really helpful I still I still do feel strongly that we need to fill the equity director position and I appreciate the thought of if we cut it we that would be a priority to get back but I do agree with Indra that like if we take that off of our plate now you know that that it feels like a lot of the work that we've been putting in as a community it will signal to people that it maybe wasn't with the future in mind and I just don't want to see that happen I don't want to see us lose out on good candidates in the meantime and you know one part of the pie chart that I would like to look at more closely was the section when we were looking at where tax revenue goes to it looked like 33% went to the police budget and I was curious if the council is going to kind of look at that with more detail that was a pretty big chunk and I'm just curious as to like kind of wear that money that 33% what that does fund and what that doesn't fund and yeah I just really wanted to thank the city manager but if anyone has any idea what that 33% kind of involves that would be really helpful to know go ahead and yes that's a that's a very reasonable question so the emergency services budget presentation will be on January what is it anybody on leadership team feel free to jump in January 9th thank you January 9th so the 33% will be discussed in more detail then I would add that that's the only department that staff 24-7 so even there may be less staff it costs more because we're keeping his staff that much right and I I will mention too let's see I'm going to get back there so I zip through this the slide very quickly on stretch budget items and I know how this sounds to some of our community members but we are I'd mentioned before that some of our emergency services are where the leadership team so in this case the police chief is spending a lot of time filling shifts and so isn't able to lead the department so that is that's actually we're actually under budgeting for that department now and I know it's hard to to see that and see well okay we should be spending that money elsewhere but if we if we're going to appropriately staff the department for their safety we need a certain number of officers so we'll go into more detail in the July or I'm sorry January 9th presentation thanks Elaine thanks Andy yeah thank you I appreciate it I think Coral is next can you hear me now okay thank you good evening everyone thank you again for this opportunity and to speak up regarding this issue is for me very surprising to hear this cut in your staff in a way it is in another way it's not but I it really is given uh or it's going to give a very negative outlook of what is priority in the city of Winozki and it's very sad to to um have that situation in the city that diversity is something that is very much uncharacteristic for this community so I understand as well as the the necessary it cuts in the budget limitations that you are expressing but I will refer to put in line you know secretaries or I don't know other people that roles and functions are not as key as the equity director as the youth interventionist we have been facing a lot of problems within our youth and I have saw you in one of the Somali community meetings recently and you know very well what that meeting was originated because a lot of our youth are you know are in so much trouble and for you to cut and use interventionist from the city of Winozki I don't know what is the adjective that I'm looking right now but it's given a different message to the community and I want you to be more consistent of what you're saying and what you are promising and what you're trying to do and why you're cutting right now because if you don't have this is a priority then how this is going to work for community diver the community with diverse backgrounds to Winozki and I think again I agree with previous people who are expressing the opposition of this cut that we could be more creative financially yeah it's I understand that can be challenging but I also I understand that that the city Winozki leadership with him is very smart very intelligent and will be able to find another way to finance those crucial important roles for our community there are other people that we can maybe organize or leaders in the community for time to work to get our towards those issues of diversity social justice use engagement but that doesn't mean the city should just take their hands off and just rely on other programs and services outside since you are the leaders of this community and the community really rely on you for for this kind of major important issues for them and I thought it was also for you all and I please I plead for you to reconsider and to observe other ways to adjust your budget accordingly thank you thanks Corley I don't see any other public comments other questions from council that's going to clarify any question of daisy put their hand back up oh it's back up okay can you all hear me hi it's daisy for becco I'm a parent community member incoming stay breathed and I just want to say thank you to the members that wrote in and those of you who called in Andy and Indra and Coralie I just want to reiterate I support all of them and just really I'm concerned about the elimination of the position of equity director and student or youth interventionist I think that the removal of those positions from the budget is not in line with our strategic plan for this community nor is it in line with what I have heard from community members over the last year it's not in line with my personal experience of what this community needs in order to be a safe and healthy place and I think if we want to appropriately staff a safe community we need to underpin every decision with the advice and expertise of an equity director we've had that before and we have sorely been missing that expertise since that departure I'm disappointed that we have not more aggressively pursue filling that position and I again just implore you to listen to those folks who spoke before me about the importance of keeping these positions and I'm sure that you'll reconsider that in the upcoming discussions that you have about our budget you want to talk about Elaine? Yeah I'm just debating right so the equity director position actually I'm glad there's more people on the call today because I've been trying to put this message out and it's a little bit of a yeah anyway more chances to talk about it so the reason why I haven't filled that position yet or re-advertise that position rather is because we lost that equity director because the city wasn't ready it wasn't ready for an equity director at that level of expertise and what ended up happening and again this isn't anyone's specifics fault but there was a lack of leadership so the equity director was hired and the former city manager left one month later so there was a leadership vacuum in terms of making sure that the staff knew how to interact with an equity director in a way that wouldn't overload that person what ended up happening is what often happens to such folks so such people who fill those roles is that the rest of the organization then defers to that person and then involves them in every single conversation related to equity and there wasn't anyone else to to set the stage and say we need to do some of our own homework this is the role differentiation so that person became extremely overloaded and eventually that's why she left there was a few other reasons too but that was the main one so my goal since then has been all the way up until I saw this budget what the budget realities were for FY24 my goal had been to get staff to a point where all of us knew all of us knew that it was equity as part of our jobs and it's fine if you still don't still don't agree and think that you know we should be filling this position in FY24 I'm just explaining why we haven't filled it yet we haven't quite gotten to that point the leadership team I think is getting close now we're not we're having the conversations about how how what does that mean for each of us to have a role in advancing equity and as some of the other folks have observed and it's totally justified that we're not making very fast progress but some of that is figuring out what it means what does it mean for me to have an equity role what does it mean for a public works director have an equity role what does it mean etc etc etc and then down to the staff what does it mean to be an inclusive co-worker what does it mean to be an inclusive public servant then there's operations right how do we change operations so that they make sense are we sure that the the order in which we're plowing sidewalks makes sense for the most underserved members of our community that's just one example obviously there's lots more so I just wanted to point out that staff hasn't been sitting on its hands in the meantime there's certainly more that we could be doing and if we had an equity director we might be able to do them faster my worry was to refill that the position with another person would who would then be burnt out immediately because I had not taken enough of a role in setting the stage with the rest of the staff as to what appropriate what's appropriate for them to do versus what we should all be doing and I'll stop there I didn't want to just say so I did receive five different communications one of them was a letter from representative Hall Coulson former Wenuski deputy mayor which he was hoping to read but I also see that he's on the call so I don't want to step over that too if he wanted to speak directly and we can give him a moment I saw Coralie's hand up again yes thank you again for giving me the chance to just pick up for what just Elaine has mentioned and as a responding to all our comments and I see where you're coming from but at the same time I wanted to present the other side of the coin I think it's more important now than ever where leadership is getting established to also get a great director and use interventionist in the leadership establishment process especially because it will help to redirect all those plans processes that has to be equitable they have to be making sense because what about if you do all that work and supposedly you get the platform ready for the new director and then this new director comes and say we have to change all the process because of this and this and this I'm not saying them that that will happen maybe it's aligned with what equity is the processes that are going to be established now but if now all the work that has been done between now and 2025 might have to be redone again because of the new recommendations I believe that in the leadership position should always have an expertise for equity and diversity and use as well mainly because you need that kind of input in order to move forward and establish a really a better process that will serve all especially in this community that diversity is is the greatest thing that you guys can offer so it is only on your best benefit to invest now in that kind of role and expertise I cannot address enough because money is always going to be a problem and if you're if you're using this as a weight of leverage doing the way that you're going to cut these roles then you're always going to cut those roles first and that is not a good precedent to have it's not I believe that there should be it must be another way to address those challenges that you're facing in your budget and even if it's part-time even like that I mean it has to be a compromise here you cannot move it forward we found those kind of roles they are essential especially for the community that you are serving I cannot address enough this is not you have no choice but to also also you know make sure you address that priority it is your priority and you were always talking about the priority and then all of a sudden you can just not cut you can just cut people will resources where the matter is where they matter therefore you're going to be telling your community you serve the data those issues don't matter to you so I just wanted to put that in perspective thank you again thank you horribly I see how I'll hand this raised thank you Paul good evening my hair and city council and staff and community members would be part of this conversation I submitted a statement through counselor heard I trust the counselors will have a chance to review it and consider it I don't have a lot more to add to the conversation aside that you know this this is a a path that we decided to take several years back when I was on city council and to really meet head on the structural systemic racism that pervades our schools our city government and our community so I I just strongly oppose you know eliminating the position of you know equity director and you know the youth interventionists it's just it just doesn't make sense if we're going to move forward and be a truly you know beloved and you know embracing community because without those resources we're just not going to get there that is said to set that simple so I just really beg the leaders in the room to really you know take a look in the mirror and and are you nodding that yes we're going to pursue justice in our community as opposed to you know just us because I think that's what this means if we eliminate these positions it's it's what what indra I think opened up with in this conversation a while ago you know this is this is a moral issue you know a budget is a moral document and and it speaks to what we believe in and what we want to pursue for for the best of our community so we've got to be creative about finding those dollars to make the budget work but once again we'll be following the path of so many other organizations and communities and city governments where the first thing goes is diversity equity inclusion you know we we can't we can't afford it and I beg the differ we we will not succeed unless we can't afford it so that's all I have to say and thanks for your leadership thank you how we have another hand raised it's like search btv you are good to go thank you my name is Courtney Fleischer I'm sorry that I'm actually logged on through that through our search btv account I am a psychologist at the University of Vermont Medical Center and I wanted to agree with information that's been communicated by previous speakers around the importance having a DEI leader within our within our city government as well as a youth intervention specialist I think for a couple of reasons in addition to what has been communicated so in my role as a psychologist at the hospital I see the impact of the pandemic on our youth and see the youth who have been coming to our emergency department from from from other communities around our area but I see youth from community from our community as well in the sitting in the emergency department awaiting higher levels of care and it just concerns me about the youth in our community and hearing not just about mental health concerns that are pre-existing but mental health concerns that are affected by issues around racism in our community and while I appreciate the idea of you know organizations not being ready for the role of the DEI coordinator I have seen that in other contexts as well and I think that it's also possible to look at shifting what that role accomplishes and focuses on as opposed to removing that role from our budget in the upcoming year I think that diversity is essential for the future of our community both as a a wonderful place to live as well as for the economic vitality of our city and along with others I encourage us to explore other ways to be creative with the budget and maintain those positions thank you thank you Courtney time to see that question I did yes the youth interventionist Elaine you had mentioned sorry I'm trying to find the exact number that 28 hours can support a case load of four to five individuals I was just is that four to five individuals a week or a month or what does that look like it's my understanding is it's at a time so you sometimes it'll be higher sometimes it's lower depending on the needs of those individuals I was just trying to get a gauge for like a total amount of individuals in a year or something like that right that wouldn't necessarily be reflective because some of them might be with the with the youth interventionists for longer okay I have a similar question on the AmeriCorps position you said reduces program by 20 percent what programming specifically Ray is going to get more into that in his presentation that's fair and can we need a service to switch this next week thank you um and a question for probably a future meeting as well what would it cost for the rental rental registry to be self-funded self-funded Angela do you have an answer handy currently budget wise the um rental registry program is a deficit of about $26,000 I believe it is included in that tool that I sent out to council earlier today where you'd see the net impact that is not necessarily actual performance we have seen the deficit be as high as $40,000 depending on revenue collections the projected budget for FY 24 includes $18,000 worth of commercial inspection billing and 100% collection of the rental registry program as outlined thank you if I could mayor I just back up to Thomas's question again I do want to underline something that actually a resident I believe pointed out which is that that the absolute number of the youth interventionist impacts might look low but we're intervening with that program and through that staff person before it becomes something worse so you can think about in terms of and there's no way to calculate this but like if the youth interventionist hadn't intervened there might be a lot of other costs that come from police services or who knows what else subsequent to that and or cost of the medical system like that Colorado was talking about so the impact is not strictly just a number of people but like in the in the ripple effect of those particular dimensions any other yes sir are there any other high level clarifying questions Jim thank you I was wondering what's the intention is for potentially updating the CPI numbers right now that based on October October ideally we obviously can't use February February we'll have one more round between this do you expect to change those estimates of Kola if we have a update in the next couple weeks it's possible we are attempting to nail down a a discussion with the other contract that is using February to February yeah ask me is set in stone as an October to October that it's within their contract so I see specifically the contract that's February to February and that so that could be updated with like I'm curious if all of our personnel number or our personnel numbers will change when you do will that forecast change will we just stick with the October CPI for the February of contract like will the budget as presented maintain numbers using the October CPI or we can date it with the November CPI which would be more likely to reflect the February CPI that makes sense nothing to use in November in the contract this escalation that has to be the February amount but can you update this numbers of salary and of salary based on that if this CPI changes and you want to comment on past practice so right now what is presented is potentially worst case scenario we can very easily update this for November to November CPI for the the November estimate of February right I think that's what so the the estimates for forecasting of February CPI have not changed they still range between four and eight percent and that is the estimate that we are currently using for non-union staff we've gotten a little higher over the union staff one is because ASME is set in stone ASME is October to October CPI by their contract FOP's contract does currently state February to February so we could change that but there were going to be discussions potentially with with that union so yeah I think the bigger context for this question would be if we're making decisions about substantive cuts and then we end up with extra budget latitude because our February CPI is lower than we're currently modeling I can tell you what the impact would be if I use the February to February projection number instead of the October to October and give you some idea of scales yeah it might be interesting when we get towards the middle of January is more what I'm thinking that we have that side by side with the decisions we have to make about what to eliminate and where and I'd be comfortable sticking with more with the current I would probably be more comfortable with sticking with the November to November than using a February forecast but it's just something even just understanding that Delta it doesn't the whole budget doesn't need to be rewritten but understanding what you know if the CPI goes up we'll want to know that we have more constraint and CPI goes down in the next month we have a little less constraint yeah the savings to this budget if we were to use the six and a half percent versus the seven point seven is eighteen thousand dollars that's great for sensitivity thank you this first question might also be helpful for members of the public um so when you're talking about using that uh four thousand or four hundred and nine thousand fund balance is that using ARPA dollars or is that using other dollars that are in that fund so right now ARPA is reserve so it you know it's all the same now right so yes pretend it's one time funding yeah i think that's the main like you're we're never going to get back that four hundred nine because it's coming out of two point one million which we're never going to get back right okay just want to get again rather clarify that and then my question uh other question is about the regional dispatch starting in october 2023 is this still for startup costs and at a certain point isn't this supposed to you decrease the amount of money so i'm just wondering right there like i understand that we have that that won't leave an administrative need for the police but then are we you know we currently have i believe you listed seven dispatch staff dispatchers and on-call dispatchers kind of across so those positions would hypothetically now not be paid by the city but be paid by the regional dispatch so i'm just trying to figure out like why is this additional costs now when i believe ultimately this is going to be a decrease on city resources right so if this is uh one of those like angela says you pull one lover and two other lovers pop up sort of scenarios so um team feel free to angela's right it's fine so the i've done the cost analysis for this poorly actually and part of the issue here is that the regional dispatch is not standing up until october so we have several months where we are paying the existing dispatch staff salary and benefits um and the benefits proportion that we're paying out in that time period and the severance pay that is built into the union contract um are helping to to make this need some extra costs next year just looking at regional dispatch alone and the needed additional admin support we would only need about 10 to 12 000 more than was in the existing budget for dispatch staff um but it's gone up to the 70 000 number that's in this budget because we have to pay for the existing dispatchers for three months there's another wrinkle which is that wilson is needing dispatch services now they used to be dispatched by state police they're one of the five and we're sharing all the costs proportionately to our call volume they uh are not since they have to change now and there's some contractual pieces for the dispatch service are changing to they're only paying for their fire dispatch and f y 20 in their budget request so the rest of the communities are shouldering an increase because they're not coming on with police at the same time the rest of us are planning to the other piece just to answer your other questions so capital costs are supposed to be in this fiscal year f y 23 and that and dispatch if everything goes according to plan which it might not if everything goes according to plan the idea is dispatching service would begin october not all of the the communities would probably be able to come on at the same time so there would be some staging there and our costs will be slightly less than the months that we weren't getting it right away okay so then next year is this going to continue to be a increased cost or is this again just because we're in the startup stage i guess that's really what i want to establish is ultimately is this saving the city money because it will okay yeah i just want to make sure the existing dispatch staff is about four hundred and fifty thousand dollars the initial ccpsa cost to the city is three hundred and twenty one thousand and the estimated all in full benefits assuming a family plan position between we always assume that somebody's going to take full benefits for a records person dealing with ncic and really confidential information is about a hundred thousand so it is less than we have budgeted for existing dispatch in the future for operations just to be clear there will there might be unforeseen hard capital costs such as for radio upgrades right gotcha i guess you're more in the police budget of exactly what we're suggesting with the police administrative assistant because administrative assistant that title doesn't imply that kind of pay but so could this position then help fill if you are thinking about cutting other vital positions could could we wait till the public safety wants to get the weeds on that cost and i will say that since we've been talking about regional dispatch there has always been an understanding that was going to create a gap and administrative support that would likely be an added cost but we can get more into the weeds when that one comes up it's a fair question though about what the long-term impact is of that could we go ahead then and take a break five minute break and then do the general administration overview so it's i guess 752 will reconvene it 757 that's the eight i'll reconvene the meeting just give me a minute to pull up the presentation again oh i'm ready when you are oh we're ready okay okay so in the last hour i forgot how to do it okay here's anyone who's left yes okay so now we'll spend a few slides reviewing the general department government budgets and i'm glad looks like most people stayed so that's great these are the staff considered part of general government departments another administration department on the left we have the city clerk's office that maintains official records holds elections takes payments and manages certain license and permits you'll see with each office that there's a number of parentheses that's the number of people in that department the other parts of the administration department again on the left to provide support to all city departments including financial management staff recruitment and retention advising on equitable service provision and communications with the community on the right planning and zoning plans for the growth and development of the city through long-range planning and regulatory review to ensure land development is consistent with adopted goals and objectives the purpose of the housing office is to develop and implement initiatives that support a mix of quality housing that maintains and enhances when you ski's unique sense of place and supports the needs of the entire community the parking department supports the supply of publicly accessible parking for economic vitality and finally the tax agreement financing district doesn't pay for staff it holds the funds for operating the tiff district general administration is mostly services so again the budget is largely related to people either in staff or professional services this is the roll-up view meaning the summary view of the general fund administration budget last fiscal year current fiscal year and the recommended next fiscal year the recommended general administration budget is actually decreasing by 0.97 percent due to the equity director position being cut from this department in the recommended budget so what is included in the fiscal year 24 general administration recommended recommended budget budget these were already reviewed so it'll be top of mind for you folks today reducing legal expenses budget from the most recent two-year average the four-year average leave the equity director position vacant net of anticipated decrease to grant revenues which would we're estimating would decrease because we wouldn't have a person to help carry out the deliverables for that grant as much as if we had it filled we're still committed to filling some of those fulfilling some of those commitments but wouldn't be as much as if we had an expert there a $1,000 increase for channel 17 services an increase to the software services line in recognition of increased cost and importance of computers in our in our organization five years is recommended to make sure that five-year replacement cycle is recommended to make sure that computers don't fail when we really need them where some of our commuters are currently at six or seven years now we'll take a quick march through the other funds for the tax increment financing fund the good news here is that the 1.0646 circled and read on the bottom right indicates that we are meaning our one-to-one bond covenant debt ratio in plain English that means we have enough money to pay for financing showing the slide again to remind you how much council has already committed of the anticipated tiff revenue and what remains again if you use more than this amount of fund balance in FY 24 to buy down the tax rate we'll need to cut those services in FY 25 or raise taxes to cover them the community development fund which pays for staff and staff training that advance community development it has a healthy balance again on the bottom right and similarly the on-street parking fund is doing okay for now the Cascades garage the current one that we have is being managed very responsibly to cover capital anticipated capital costs final thoughts now this slide is the fun one and I'm being sarcastic and I know it's already been fun so yeah this slide describes uncertainties that have the potential to impact the city's financial picture there are six that I want to describe inflation on October was 7.7 compared to October of 2021 recent news stories have quoted federal reserve bank governors speculating that next year will be hard but not as hard as this year but no one really knows what inflation will actually do next fiscal year the city plans to sell the O'Brien community center to Champlain Housing Trust I think this can happen in calendar year 2023 but can't be sure as some pieces are out of our control once the CHT owns it the city will need to pay rent for spaces we control we have discussed expanding our footprint to be able to partner with other service providers important to our community but there are financial unknowns in that at your next meeting December 12 the public works team will be requesting your authorization to bid out the main street project we have concerns that bids will come in significantly over budget as the trend has been for many projects in the last year recruitment for police and fire have been a challenge for several years nationally but the last two or so seem to have been much worse for police the global narrative makes it less attractive of a career for fire our reliance on per diem staff who however need to be highly trained makes it hard to recruit enough of a roster to provide coverage overnight especially when our full-time staff isn't working or shouldn't be working but often does anyway this recruitment challenge is also a national trend in per diem fire services also remember that we have increased these department staffing levels even though the community need has grown in terms of number of people and number of housing units or in commercial building space another item of concern is 17 abinac way redevelopment council is discussing this tonight in executive session so there isn't anything definitive to say about this right now finally regional dispatch so in addition and complication to what we've already described as being complicated a week ago monday the chinning county public safety authority ccpsa the body that is tasked to stand up regional dispatch voted on a budget and contribution chairs from the five member communities including when you ski the the the woelsten contribution is the one that was voted my proposed budget includes that f y 24 allocation for when you ski on tuesday last week the colchester select board voted down their f y 23 voluntary contribution and voted to pull out their f y 24 contribution from their managers f y 24 budget regional dispatch is a tricky thing to put together and this is just the latest bend in the roller coaster ride and it isn't over yet ccpsa board members historically assumed the authority would need to borrow money to get started the members may be having that conversation again the ccpsa board is next scheduled to meet on december 19th ideally we will have a plan in time to inform the budget you proposed to voters in march so i realize this is a lot to absorb so i will end with thanks to you for putting in so much time to review so much material for the public for engaging on these important matters and thanks to the leadership team that's put in a lot of time preparing this material and managing resources responsibly and serving our community and a very special thanks to our finance director angela aldera because without her we wouldn't have a budget and i will end there and if there's any other questions you want to raise now from the public or from you all oh actually before we go to any remaining questions ask angela to respond to a couple of questions that jim had if you would angela please sure um so counselor duncan had sent in some questions about year to date information for local options tax we received the first quarterly payment in november for local options tax in the amount of 126 thousand two hundred and seventy two dollars of which six thousand three hundred and thirteen dollars is going to downtown musky in accordance with the five percent allocation that council has contributed to them this fiscal year if that trend continues the net to the city is is going to be about four hundred and eighty thousand of revenue we have budgeted four hundred and fifty for the pilots we have received the state of vermont pilot it's a one time payment that we received in october in the amount of fifty six hundred eighty three dollars we received the cht one time pilot payment on october 11 ten thousand five hundred seventy three dollars and seventy seven cents the final pilot that is in the general fund which is for the musky housing afforded will not be received until june and is based on their a proportion of their net profit so their rents minus their operational expenses and then we get a percentage of that so it's unknown at this time what that would be during covid their contribution to the city was around fifty nine thousand last year we saw that the one hundred and thirty something thousand their average is normally around seventy four so i imagine that last year's was a lot of catch up in backgrounds that have been paid during their calendar year there was a question about whether or not the cost for regional dispatch appeared in the professional services categories for both fire and police it only appears in the police budget and that is because that is where the offsetting expenses were also housed the increase that you see in the professional services within the fire budget is for that contract with st michael's for forty six thousand thank you angela neither general administration questions shut this down at this is two in the weeds so we went through this whole process of really focusing on housing and proposing this housing position for now proposing to cut thirty hours making it virtual ten ten hours ten hours so from forty to thirty which will make it a lot harder to hire someone for that position we you know working on all this because housing is such a priority this the original grants focus of the position that other one check what should we be considering instead it would be a lot easier to hire someone part-time for a grant position that could then help meet some of these glaring needs for additional funds so that's just something that's kind of arising from me is one of the reasons that it might be that we're in the red besides of course inflation is that we haven't had the resource and expertise to look for grants so as much as i don't think we should remove the housing that's a huge thing but if we're not going to end up being able to fill that position why don't we try and fill a grant position that we could then hopefully get other funding and i understand that grants are not good to put positions on but maybe the grants could fulfill other costs and then we can put more stable funds towards salary that's just something that sticks out to me is you know we went through all that work to make it a housing position but we've acknowledged time and time again the need for some help with applying for grants because other staff is at capacity something i have some thoughts but i i'd like to consult staff and to provide a thorough answer okay thank you i have a question if you want to make one just quick note that her city policy a 30 hour week position is considered a full-time benefits eligible position that is helpful thank you angela is jim want to go oh i didn't see his hand thank you i think you said me and i guess i want to acknowledge that part of the reason we're in this situation with the equity director position is because we're using grant funds for a position and there was always an expectation that this would ramp to the tiff expenditure so while it's not listed as a planned allocation like that was shown in the funding profile for this position when we approved it three years ago um so i think you're you're what we're giving up in having a housing initiative director that is 40 hours a week what we're giving up in terms of grant writing is important i think we would not really gain capacity through additional grant writing in a way that's sustainable as we're seeing this equity director vulnerability not that actually go for it no it just rose a question for me of you included in here kind of the tentative allocation so is that just main street revitalization so not considering any other like Jim just referenced the way we talked about potentially moving the equity director to do tiff funding so we're just looking at the main street revitalization with the kind of what we've considered so i'm not sure if i got your question but if you're looking at that tiff slide so that's the only tentative allocation out of tiff the other ones are current operating expenses for the to district what was your question i guess i was i was just maybe confused by some of your phrasing previously of kind of talking about council has not necessarily promised but talked about certain expenses so you're not taking that into you're just any of those into consideration before getting to that remaining amount correct so there's over i have a yeah previous spreadsheet yeah the previous spreadsheet has over two million dollars of potential items that have been discussed they were other options that have been at various points in time saying maybe we could do that with tiff funds and yes the equity director is on that list but we have not taken any formal votes of council for those items main street has had formal votes that have tentatively approved the tiff as the source of debt repayment in the future thank you bring another question yes um just thinking another high level question about areas for negotiation for expenses and primarily around health care coverage and benefits and it's a bit in the weeds for me to really know i think about honestly but have we gone out to bid or looked at other providers or talked with the current provider to negotiate the the proposed expenses at all i you know i'm on a couple other boards where that is part of the practice so i don't know if that is something that we've done or looked at angel could you speak to the history so we we always look at what other plans are currently available on the exchange and we do that with all of our benefits we work with a great partner at one digital for our benefits administration and they do a lot of that work for us we did look at mvp this year and the cost to switch and make the transition was and the amount of cost potentially saved was not going to be conducive for the current year we are looking at potentially changing dental in the future to do some sort of cost savings but it wouldn't be a huge amount because the average amount was spent per employee that is benefits eligible is less than a thousand dollars for dental for you um and then uh another thing that i'm i just don't actually know um and i'm going to try and freeze it in a way that makes sense um are all of the staff um on our offered or provided benefits options we do have some staff that use our opt-out option okay and that pays a one hundred dollars a week but they do have to have other coverage um and demonstrate that to us before they can opt out okay so that gets it do you have the opt-out option is something i was getting at so okay thank you okay uh again you may have other questions that arise please reach out to to elaine trying to follow up on those thank you for a really thorough presentation um we are going to move to item c the strategic vision area goal update for economic vitality yes so economic vitality goal update i'm going to be really short this time we're making pretty good progress on five of the eight strategies set by council may for this fiscal year i hope to have a more substantive update on the working community to challenge grant objectives of equity and workforce development um that we would be developing with uh other sectors in time for the next one a note on the sidewalk permit i'd said in the goal update that it was distributed today actually that's not accurate uh the plan was to distribute the revised permit process broadly to the business community today but we're responding to some input from downtown when you see board uh so the broader distribution hasn't happened just quite yet any questions on the update this might be more for tall definitely brought this up before but wayfinding is on here and just thinking about the library which i feel like is such a big need as well as a community resource that like the pool in the parking garage are very important to highlight um especially now that the butternut growth condos are in front of it so i was just wondering if i i see there's some pop note of possibly needing public input but i'm just wondering like where's the library in there as it seems to be kind of a consistent uh need and priority hopefully it has been consistently raised as a priority for our next phase okay sounds good thank you sure thing any questions or comment from members of the public on the economic vitality update oh and paul if you could drop the link to that particular update in the chat please so this um focus on the call don't have to navigate to it thanks okay um let's move on to item d this is on for discussion consider airport commissioner appointment okay i'm just going to read this memo from me so council can just zoom out for a minute zone out for a minute uh let's see you gotta get there so the burlington airport commission is an advisory body accountable to the burlington city council it has a responsibility to provide advice on all matters related to the operation of the airport including financial matters uh when you ski city council may also delegate an additional may also delegate additional airport related duties to the to the commissioner uh there's a typo in the memo i just realized the commission meets once a month commissioner terms are three years eric warwald who has been able to serving as when you see the airport commissioner discover recently it's not eligible to be appointed because not he is not a legally registered voter of when you ski thank you for pointing that out the airport director confirmed his ineligibility so the question to council today is whether you would like to appoint an airport commissioner from council or advertise to the public and also if you would like to add any requirements beyond burlington's position description which were in your pocket packet and on the whirlington website thanks elaine so that's first if anyone has interest in serving in this role trust not ability at that time yeah so it's three p.m. meetings that's inaccurate i feel like there's no date on this document but it's it's not accurate for a couple different places there is a meeting coming up that follows the right okay so there's a meeting this wednesday of four p.m. so it's it is wednesday's at four it must be the first wednesday does that sound right eric it's been third Wednesday but we have been or the airport commission has been shifting the date to us to coincide with when the burlington finance commission meets okay where their border finance meets because most of the recommendations go to the border finance and then the city council so in order to make sure that that the airport commission has a chance to weigh in on any proposals this the meeting has sometimes been shifting to the first Wednesday i had heard from the aviation director that there's a desire to make that permanent as well but they haven't voted on it you know i guess were that the case would that change your mind unfortunately not the time is still so early yeah okay i didn't care what the time the new time that's shifting towards this well so the next meeting is four p.m it it has been the third wednesday but they've been shifting towards the first wednesday i heard from the aviation director a desire to actually officially move it to the first wednesday elaine i did suggest to him that the four p.m timing was difficult be it for us or a member of the public but i haven't heard any updates on the timing i'd be willing to serve in this in like an intern role if we did want to advertise to the public but not miss out on representation on the board so that's the thing i would be willing to do that for a month or two thanks jen christine yeah so eric has actually volunteered to do that as well so if if you also choose yeah it doesn't sound like that's i can attempt to vote with the public not as a representative of the city right so right not actually serving in our role i'm just stated but at least be able to update you in the meantime but right when you see wouldn't officially have representation it feels like if we if jim if you are able to allocate some time and as an interim it feels wise we work so hard to get a seat that we should take advantage of a voting seat i feel similarly and maybe eric if there's some potential to draw on your expertise if you're still attending for the first meeting or two that would be helpful to you in the means you wouldn't be able to vote on any actions so i can do that part but i think we could represent with you ski together does anyone have feelings about resident versus council representation i will say south burlington sends there a member of their council and the burlington representatives include council and residents i mean i think council is probably the preferred method i just personally it needs to be five or later for me i'd be happy to at that time otherwise yeah i mean i think it would have to be a resident i mean as an alternative it could be a shared role amongst counselors it doesn't allow for consistency but if we could split up the role and take you know six months six months or something of that variety that might one allow all of us to be informed of more will inform more more will engage with those conversations and alleviate some of the full-time burden i i would say that if we can nail down what's happening with date with frequency and time and if there's any degree to influence that to a later hour that that i think would be beneficial i will say too in discussions leading up to acquiring representation on the board the desire to have council representation at least initially was was shared okay i would be happy to reach out to unless it makes more sense for you to link but one of us to that body with a strong suggestion that a five p.m. start instead of four would make it easier for us to do that and if that's not something that willing to entertain then we might switch to advertising to publicly especially if it's in person but they offer zoom too it's hybrid okay it's hybrid yeah that makes it easier it doesn't yeah this they also need to update there i think given the interest in having council serve then it's appropriate for the mayor to make that case okay i will follow up on that then i think we can oh any questions any questions from members of the public on this item so i will follow up then and then we'll see this again in the future of jennison and thank you eric for volunteering in jim for interim okay um do we need a moment for but do we need to come back on tv for the follow-up i don't think it's necessary the minutes will reflect a german time okay so well so first off oh shoot you're making a decision though yeah you stay okay well so so first i'm looking for so the next we've worn an executive session pursuant to state statute vsa 3132 um looking for a motion to find that the negotiation of real state purchase or lease options related to lot 7d in the public would put us at a disadvantage so moved second motion by brinds second by thomas lane i need to know who else to invite angela john bill niquette dog netty debating or not on eric i guess not eric he doesn't look like he wants to okay um looking for a motion to enter into executive session mayor sorry to interrupt but we didn't actually vote on the last motion of the finding oh i'm sorry thank you motion by brinds second by thomas all those in favor please say aye hi hi motion carries thanks jim uh i'm looking for a motion to enter into executive session inviting elaine long angela all dri john rousher bill niquette and doug netty second motion by thomas second by aurora all those in favor please say aye hi motion carries we're about to enter into an executive session to discuss solely this topic no other business is going to be discussed or actions taken we may um we have warned a regular item for a potential discussion approval coming out of the executive session that would be the only potential action taken before we joined the meeting we are on regular item number nine regular item a announced an agreement if any is reached during executive session i'm seeking a motion to commit 11.4 million dollars and commit to seek financing or alternative funding up to the 11.6 million number outlined in the december 5th financial proposal contingent upon renegotiation of the settlement agreement including removal of the right of alternative use from the south unit and authorize elaine long to execute set agreement as well as enter into an agreement with the echo financing agency city manager yes authorize the city manager to execute set agreement as well as enter into the financing agency so most second motion by thomas second by brinn all those in favor please say aye hi the motion carries this brings us to the end of the agenda um i'm seeking a motion to adjourn so moved motion by aurora second by jim all those in favor please say aye i motion carries thank you everyone