 All right. Good evening, everyone. I think it's just three of us for a night. So we are going to get started. I will call the Board of Finance to order 503 p.m. On agenda. Great. Second. Any discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. We are off. I'm trying to make sure we have very good sound. We have Dr. Dutenda. The next item is the public forum. Is there anyone who would like to speak to the Board of Finance? Seeing none. Yes, Sharon. Go ahead. Sharon. Yes, hi. Good evening. I want to speak to item 4.01, which I'm going to shorten the title as Office of Workforce Development and Marketplace. So this, this department, the expansion of the marketplace responsibilities for that director happened during COVID. And, you know, I don't really feel that it perhaps got the attention of everyone. Everyone was so concerned about the virus and the focus of the, the council and the administration was on the budget gap staffing. And certainly the police issues. So I noticed this, but now that you're going to add positions, I want to make a couple of comments about this. When I looked at the responsibilities listed in your overarching memo and thank you for that. There seemed to be some overlap with other departments like workforce development would normally fall in the HR function. Business support is was in CEDO market marketing and programming for micro businesses was also in the past done by CEDO. Business support, I can't speak to that, but you grew that that equity department and I would have thought that some of that would have been done by those staff there, although I'm not positive. The reason I'm mentioning is this is that when the office of permitting expanded and integrated some planning positions. There was an extensive process that involved the director of planning David White and the proposed director of permitting Bill Ward, and the HR department. And was there a process like that that happened during the COVID time was the CEDO director involved was the HR director involved the marketplace director, and the equity director involved in the creation of of or the expansion responsibilities. And I wanted to know also, has anyone redefined now what CEDO's mission is, since a lot of those functions were performed by the community and Economic Development Office. I have another question for the administration and the council, it will there be a commission overseeing this new department or expanded department. I want to say why are you so focused on this. Well, I'm focused on this because every time we expand and add positions. We add monies that we need to generate to fund those positions those salaries those benefits. We've had to our retirement and the and the public and the citizens pay for a portion of that, although we've addressed most of that, we still pay for some. And I'm concerned about those funds and not in this year you explained that in the FY 23 budget but I'm concerned about that in future years, what the financial impact will be. And I think that as a property owner in Burlington and a homeowner, you know, as we add positions and as we grow the city of Burlington's staff, that does impact our property taxes. And I believe and it also impacts the rents and I believe that this, I would like people to reflect on the fact that this does impact the affordability of housing in Burlington. So as you move forward, I'm asking to understand the process. If that all happened, I'd very much appreciate having access to the information that occur that took place, and then answers to generally for everyone, not just for me, the new mission of CEDO and whether or not there'll be a commission overseeing this new expanded department. Thank you so much. Thank you, Sharon. And, you know, this again is not a time where we really can get into a sense of back and forth. We just, you know, since you, these are all fair questions and ones that may be on the minds of counselors, just, I will say a few quick things on it. And there is a commission oversees the work of the department of the strategic marketplace commission, not everything that this department does is overseeing there but I would expand expect that it would be an expansion of that commission's oversight. This plan that is articulated here is successful which involves not basically the expansions we were paid for as opposed not through additional taxpayer pay. It's generated by by these activities and by extension of potentially of the deep end district or shall be something that requires a lot of big work and years from being implemented, but this is a multi-year plan that it's made out in this effort. Other points, yes, there's a lot of extensive discussion with other departments throughout this period. There was extensive discussion with the council about creation of this department during the budget process is not done under the, you know, there was changes that were made in the response to circumstances that we face in COVID so the attacker to say that these changes began with Kara and her department playing an expanded role during the pandemic, but they were debated and finalized just in recent months and quite a bit of process around it's possible in some ways to put your basic record. So, those are some quick responses I'm sure we'll get into more of it later but I'm going to unless there's anyone else who wants to speak to the folks in the finance online or in person, I'm going to close the public forum at 511 we got a pretty long agenda to get to. So, let's let's dive in as a result of the long agenda. We are doing something we don't always do at the board of finance but we use the sparingly action advanced communication out of here we have created a consent agenda. Is there a board ready to consent agenda. Thank you all make a motion to adopt a consent agenda and take the actions. Thank you seconded by Council McGee discussion. I'm going to vote all those in favor of motion please say act. Any post the motion carries unanimously. So next up right away is what we've just been talking about, which is the organization we're going to discuss. Just, you have this, you know, right at the meetings it is an important discussion item that will try to stay mindful of fact we do have the agenda behind it. You have until 630. Get through the whole agenda out there so we should have some time with that. Thank you so much. Thank you. First of all, I am excited to discuss the work that the office of business and workforce development has been doing. I see Lynn Reagan's here joining us she is my HR manager. Thank you so much. I have a couple of other topics I wanted to hit on our ones that former Councilor busher had also brought up so I'm happy to dive into those as well. I am suggesting adding four positions which you can see on my PowerPoint presentation. One of these positions are to be in a support function to members of what I would consider my mission team right now. And it allows them to focus more on policy, because we do a lot of technical support for businesses. What the office of business and workforce development does encompass the church tree marketplace which has a separate budget per charter it's held separately. And then it also encompasses the business support that we provide citywide the management of the early learning initiative, as well as continuing the work we've been doing a workforce development so we did start a program. Through our connections in the early learning initiative we started a program for teacher training in the childcare industry and social and emotional training. And we're hoping to launch our second round of that right now. And in the early learning initiative we've added six new centers to help support getting workers back to the workforce. So a lot of what we're offering is we're attacking business support and business development, both from the consumer driven side, as well as from the workforce side. In terms of consumer driven side we run the summer market, the winter market, the one world market. We have set up. For example, this summer the first time we have we used federal funds to offer grants to BIPOC and minority vendors in the park, so that they could we could help them cover the fees. This allows these home based micro businesses to access a customer base that they wouldn't normally have access to. Also through the tertiary marketplace arm, we are supporting the businesses that are more established that we know on the street. We run the micro business alliance. We are about to launch a revolving loan fund $500,000 loan fund targeted to BIPOC and women owned businesses. We offer extensive training and support. One of my best examples as for the need for the, the added capacity is Will Clevelle works in my department, he has a great policy mind, and he spends a lot of time at offering technical support and helping small business owners fill out forms to get grants and loans. We're trying to give him more capacity to work on policy by having someone who reports to him that can help work more hand in hand with the businesses. In addition, Council did task the city with offering some additional support for social equity applicants who are opening cannabis businesses, and that will run through my office as well, as well as helping them get more support that is already been established through the state. So we just wrapped up granting $100,000 and a reopening and expansion grants and 90% of those recipients were by pop. And answer to Sharon Bushers comment, we do work closely with our ID so they can advise us on how to best target the money that we're trying to get out there and how best to support those businesses and we also rely on the TCB to help us with that communication. But the work itself on the ground is executed by the business support team. That's just the trustee community voices program. Correct. Correct. All right, I think that's, that's good. Good. Also, what the mayor had mentioned is the mayor did have me do a four year revenue projection of budget projection so that I could we are funding is funding some of this, but we know that that will be ending and so I can relieve my pressure on the general fund as well as I can relieve my pressure on ARPA. And we have identified multiple sources of income, including these markets, more people supporting corporate support for love Burlington and the work we do there where as you know we separate we have lists of BIPOC businesses and women businesses and every small locally owned business in Burlington is listed on that website and getting more sponsorship for those and as well as what the mayor referred to is in the future, using the DID downtown improvement district as a mechanism to help fund these enhanced services that we're offering with businesses. Great, when we pause there and open up the floor for questions just one in our shared trying to keep us on track and I do want to note that the last 10 or 15 minutes of meeting its plan for discussion Memorial Auditorium which so with that the floor is open and there are questions. Questions or comments. I just. Thank you so. See here, maybe I missed it. Is there you mentioned that you did get all the way through this you did you mention that you did for your projection. Did you get that to you because not all of these revenue sources are locked in. Okay, these are projected revenue sources so we use that as an internal document. So that's just a sort of an exercise to be able to say in four years from now, without our that will not be. Okay. All right, that's great. Yeah, I can. It was something that was quite important to me before bringing this forward, I didn't realize you had not summarized that in some way here. I apologize for that. I'm sad. To me, it's a good job of developing a strategy that would actually inspire fully from this department or your most part of know if you're on a very limited job on the general fund and I think this area where certainly that's kind of said there are numerous areas that are not guaranteed and we'll go to a lot of work to make good on that will be in cities within our kind of joint abilities to cut back on. There's this department we are. I think this is an area where traditionally they're long, there's been kind of an allergy to spending too much general fund support on economic development, we have a plan that's consistent with that. If actually things very realistic with cheap plan, if it does not see our will have the ability to consider back there is I mean, what we're going to understand that you know when you when you mentioned that when you mentioned pro forma is very hard for me not to ask the question of where is the pro forma. But, given the fact that we're voting on the real plan and I don't recall ever voting on a real plan with happy a four year pro forma before. I'll trust that that will be something that we discussed as time goes by. Appreciate that. Any further further discussion or are we ready for a motion. I'm having that on mech recommend the council for the resolution. I guess our discussion. All those favor motion please say aye. I am very opposed motion carries unanimously. Thank you. The next issue is the delegation authority for budget neutral amendments within the department's individual budgets. Catherine is the best position to speak to this something that she's worked on, and it's going to be a significant amount of bureaucratic work for permanent. So, thanks to some collaboration with the president and all and counselors, the key as well as the department had a lot of good inputs on this process. And the idea is that once the budget is passed on June 30, as it stands now, any change, even a budget neutral change within the same department for $1 creates a lot of work for department heads and myself, and that's unnecessary. So we have looked at the budget neutral amendment process as was outlined in 2014 that relieved some of that pressure and we have updated it so that if it's under $1,000 that's not something that needs to be addressed until the end of the fiscal year or $1,000 department heads will have authority up to $10,000 and that will actually free up quite a bit of internal resources one of the other things that we brought back is a quarterly report back to this body about what budget amendments are happening. And I know that there is some more accountability from one budget year to the next about how the city is spending the money that's been allocated. Any questions. I have a question maybe. I'd be glad to read that. Thank you. Second. Thank you. Our special. We'll vote others of their emotions please say hi. Post. Which carries. Namously. Thank you for working on that. Thank you. I'm going to leave a message for questions on this to get this up. It's appreciated. 4.03 proposed budget amendment for the Fletcher free library match towards the national diamond for communities and professional and capacity building challenge. Brants for capital projects. Mary Danko is with us. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Actually, Mr. Mayor was going to kick it over to Nicole's we've been working with her heart on this. She's a little bit more knowledgeable of this particular grant. Okay, it's might be the first time. Nicole, let's present to the board of finance. Over the years, many, many times. She's made the grand plan. She was a trust initial planner and TWA in recent months. She has joined the court treasurer scheme is one of the two places that we have pursuing federal dollars or escape dollars. Suddenly renewed period of. There being. Finding them for municipalities and it's really exciting. What she's doing that role is one of the first chances to. So go ahead, Nicole. Thank you so much. Yeah, this is an exciting new position and happy to bring forward a potential project with the library tonight. We are packaging an application through the National Endowment for Humanities. It is a capital challenge infrastructure grant. Mary and her team have identified over $2 million in repair needs, mostly in the exterior of the building. We're trying to leverage some funding that is likely gonna be approved as a federal earmark in December through Senator Leahy. And that grant would be for $500,000. And so we're trying to leverage that bit of money by pursuing this additional grant through the National Endowment for Humanities. We presented this request to the city's capital committee about two weeks ago. They did unanimously approve the request. This is using bond premiums, which would fund the local match of... I'm gonna pull my notes here. It was approximately a little more than $700,000. Endowment grants through this program are a little unusual. Typically we would not be coming to Bordeaux-Vanets and council at this stage in the process, but they do require that if we're using city funding for the match that it basically be in our equivalent of legislative language, approving the project and basically assigning the local match for this grant. So that is why we're here tonight to show that the city is confirming the local match commitment, that this is not an operational budget. And yeah, as I said, we're hoping that we can use this to leverage additional repairs for the exterior of the building. This is really deferred maintenance to make sure that the library can continue operating and doing all the great work that they're doing. Mary, anything to add? No, just very grateful for all the support. This was a quick one. It was a quick turnaround and the capital committee and Nicole and Ashley Parker have been really working hard on this. So grateful for all their support. And we don't know if we're gonna get it. This is the hard thing, but we've got our fingers and toes crossed. Great. Thank you. Thank you both. Floor's open for questions, comments, motion. Just a quick question. It's also funny because I feel like we just talked about this in the budget presentations. So it's nice to see something potential come up this quickly after the budget was passed. But I just had a question on, I didn't completely understand one of the sentences, which I'm now looking for in the, on the overview, second paragraph, the second sentence of the second paragraph. It's basically says the library facility staff have identified one million project that should be advanced and will not impact the future renovations in addition to the library. Can you just walk me through what that means? Yeah, Mary can probably add more detail about the future vision of the library, but there is a larger planned project to upgrade the library. It would relocate the entrance at a plaza. And so this project is, again, like deferred maintenance that does need to be done and wouldn't have to be undone or redone with the project. But Mary, maybe you can talk about that work a little bit. Yeah, no, I think that's the best way to put it. As we're looking at, as the mayor kind of alluded to, there's, we are still seeing these monies come down and we're always trying to look at them and see what's the best way we can use them, but also keeping in a line with our larger vision for what we want to do. And this does that. I see. So we're saying there's $2 million in maintenance, which does not mean any of the future hopes and dreams. Got it. Thank you. With that, I'm happy to make a motion to take the recommended action as listed on board talks. Great, thank you, Councilor Hadjar. Second by Councilor McGee. Any discussion? Seeing no further discussion, I'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? The motion carries unanimously. Thank you. Thank you. Excuse me, that brings us to 4.04, which is the authorization to execute the contract manager on the operation, the Elborn emergency shelter community. This is approval for much discussed. Simply as a trust contract, obviously something that a lot of people put a lot of effort and to get to this point, and a very big issue of the project that we're here, it's Sarah Russell, and here it goes, so we have the done questions about the project or this contract. Sarah, do you want to say anything else? I think so. All right, great. A lot of time coming. Good. Agreed. Floor jump. Yes, Reggie. Thank you, Sarah. This is really exciting. So if everyone else, CEDO has put in so much time to get us to this crucial point tonight. I'm curious if you'll have any sort of updates on timeline right now, or if we're still sort of tracking what we were expecting. And I think we probably take the timeline in terms of construction, originally we're aiming for November 1st, but now we're like early in November. I'm thankful for every second of that because we have a lot of work to do to stand up this project in terms of developing policies and procedures specific to some of the pieces of the management contract. So do you have any other? Yeah, I think we are still waiting a shift date on our last pieces, which will be the back house and the community space that are really necessary to complete the site. We've luckily gotten things, we've been given a special slot in October, given the urgency, but we, it's just, I think we're not gonna know until we know exactly when they're coming, we'll be ready for them when they come and we anticipate that will be in the first half of November and they need to be fully installed and make sure CHG has come for the site as we need to get ready to operate. Sure. Appreciate all the effort that will continue to go into the project and then we extended on the point to our operating launch perspective. So yeah, that's all I have to see that point. Kassimini, I just do want to point out here, I'm so ready to thank the two of these of the individuals and the CEDA team for this work. I should be clear that there is, this is really almost, there are numerous other departments that have been involved in getting to this as well, certainly public works, I do a lot of the work in making the parking lot available, working with the commission to get them to be supported and then maybe some commitments and ground work that needs to be done here at the police department that we're actually here at and we see that Smith were having quite involved in specifically addressing some of the operational questions and how the police are going to be supportive of CHG and those are some of the final hurdles we need to get over. My office has certainly personally been very, very involved in some of the final negotiations that's been in the agency's state. So I just want to make sure the council is clear, this has really been a big team effort with many people involved to get us this place. Thanks to everyone. Great, President Paul. Thank you. So I guess the only question that I have is, you know, of course, we're all excited to have this given off the ground. It does put again, a certain amount of stress on streaming on someone or someone's to find additional funding sources. Is this, you know, the contract is only for one year, would have been wonderful to have like a three-year contract with CHG but certainly understandable why we only have one year. But that is my, or even a two-year contract. But that's just my concern is, you know, we took, you know, we have, we got the award. The question is how easy, you know. Yes. How easy is it going to be to be able to do this in year two? Yep. This is a big question that we have been working on and are going to continue to work on in a worst-case scenario. We do have more opera funds that we can and will dip into to sustain operations for the three years or something. So that's my, that said, I don't think it should be just the city pulling that gap. We are hopeful that we may be able to, we think that needs to be at least this, the additional carbon state has already come up with significant funds for this airplane at $600,000 a year. It is quite a bargain for the state at $600,000 a year. Cost per night per bed works out to something in the neighborhood in about $2,425 bed, which is very comparable or even less than a lot of the other emergency shelter or something that the state provides. And the quality of what is being offered here at the level of service really goes way beyond what is generally, maybe what is available anywhere else for that $124 a night. So we're engaged in conversation with the state about further support and some of their other enemies as well that maybe don't contribute here. So this is a starting place, we have the fallback plans, we don't do better this, but our attention is to do better this. And of course I committed to that as well, but it's some of my cases. Backing, good, touched a little more there. I don't know if I don't know if the motion has been made, I'm happy to take the motion to take the action as recommended. I don't know, someone make a motion or do I make a motion? Thank you, President Powell, seconded by Councilor McKee for their discussion. Go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. The vote, both be carried unanimously. Thank you, appreciate the Council's unanimous support on this project since the beginning and it was exciting that we're getting close to finally, finally it's not me running. The conception of the last December, I don't know that there's, it's really hard to think of a comparable project that has come to pass on anything like that timeline and it's going to spend a certain sort of life and credit for that and so at the same time, we haven't talked about this in recent months, it's great to see that. Okay, 4.06 is a reclassification of two of the positions in the Mayor's office. Can you guys clarify? Nice. It's a shame really. Oh, I'm sorry. Sorry, 4.05, can I say a couple of things just to get this out of here? Sure, this is authorization to accept money to go towards Elm, the shelter community. So this is two different sources of funding. One is a $50,000 grant from the Vermont Land Trust for Electricity, specifically to put solar panels on these two community buildings that will be coming to the site. That means that those buildings will be able to operate next zero on their own and hopefully kick off even more energy that will be applied to the energy used by the shelters. And the second piece is a very important $75,000 of additional incentives from Burlington Electric Department to help us install high performance mechanical equipment, make sure there's no fossil fuels on the site, add additional insulation, just meets generally our city's energy goals and even in this temporary facility. Great. Thank you. Florso, how's the meeting? I'm happy to make a motion in the direction of recommendation for thoughts. Second. Thank you both for the discussion. Seeing none, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion please say aye. Aye. All right, opposed. Carries unanimously. Stands for that, thank you. Okay, now we're at 4.06, which is a reclassification of two mayors on this position. Spend a moment to lay out why this is some kind of a question for the Council's support board to speak through the questions. Help Florso to do it for it somewhere. Sure. Okay. Thank you both. So two positions that we're talking about here are the Aero communications coordinator and the Chief Staff position. And the reason for the request is different in each case. The communications position is one that has responsibilities of it. I have grown to include statewide communications and coordination across the city, across departments, and you can see the leadership there. This is also something that we have various times advertised for and struggled to, for a sense of extended period of time to get qualified candidates for and I think it's really certainly important for the mayor's office being able to effectively do its work. But I also think really given the role of the mayor's office plays the management of the city and engagement with the council, having really strong leadership in this position is critical. The Chief Staff position, this is really addressing, now it's time to do it at a time when there's four or four of the classes in the project coordinator position. This position used to be, at one point this position was a grade 28 position, then Mike Tannerick left the position and I thought Brian Lowe was very personally, this position he downgraded it so that he probably would be qualified sometimes. This is unique to the mayor's office, this is something that happens city-wide at times when we sometimes need to do the grading in order to, it's not the person that we're hoping to assign to be appointed or to get the job. That's what happened with Brian Lowe with the council support in 2015 and then in 2018 we did that again when Jordan Lowe was a personal for the job she did not qualify under the, she did have a minimum of qualifications to meet the grade 25 requirements and was downgraded to 22. She now has been in the position for years that there were responsibilities that were taken out of the position and it was years of experience to, for that downgrade to be possible. She's now been in the position for four years. She has effectively been doing many of the duties that I think should be redeemed back in to the position for some time. She certainly now has the qualifications for a grade 25 and I think it's right for a matter of fairness with this specific employee but also I think before the future of this commission I think it should be a more senior position future, whether they're future openings or future mayors, specifically those that should be well served by having this back at grade 25. So it's really just a reversal of that she exposed me. There is some additional costs that we have a plan for the address and attending her class here and President Paul. I'm happy to make the motion and send it to the board box. Thank you. Is there a second? That's for me. Thank you. Second is for discussion. We'll go to a vote. I'll look at the motion please. Say aye. Aye. Aye. Third and final. Aye. Aye. Madam Chair. I appreciate the board. 4.07 creation of a new conservation field coordinator position within our recreation waterfront department. I have a solicitation for a public secretary who is listening and there she is you know. expanded revenues within the post-protecting bike path maintenance revenue tax, as well as the conservation fund that I think it's possible to fund this position without my total budget tax. And Cindy is here remotely, which anything else about about the Senate? Sorry, I launched in. That's all right. No, we're excited about moving this position forward. We do a lot of projects with our conservation team. Dan does a fantastic job pulling in volunteers from a variety of places, whether they're businesses or UVM and this position will help us with managing many of those projects, but also allow us to do some work on our natural surface trails, which need a lot of work in this community. And also some winter trails. We look forward to more focus on cross-country skiing and fat biking on the trails in Burlington to allow folks the opportunity to get outdoors. Great. Thank you, Cindy. Laura's open for questions, a little solution? First of all, I'm happy to make the motion. Has Rick made the motion? Has Rick been done? Great. It's our second second by council. High tower discussion. All those in favor most please say aye. All right. All right, post. Motion carries unanimously. Thank you. Yes, thank you, Cindy. Okay, 4.08 is a police recruitment and hiring coordinator. Karen is not with us tonight, but Catherine has been working with her own position and it's a little about their questions about it. This is a position I will just remind folks we debated and created this position in the budget process. What this is now is the approval of the the job description. So actually go from that sort of conceptual approval to actually getting this position posted and filled their present follow-up target last week to make sure that the discussion and the opportunity for some input to the job description as well. And I appreciate that because I know there was zero integration this morning. I think so I also want to want to mention that it's actually an encouragement of Councilor McKee to to make sure that this this position had been I've been reviewed and that the and allowed a collaborative effort of the police commission, which I believe very very very much took place and I did have a chance when HR director Dervie wasn't busy planning her wedding, had a few minutes to talk about this and it sounds like we're in a good place to run this forward. With that I would make a motion to take the actions recommended on board docs. Thank you. Seconded by Councilor McGee. Discussion? Good question. I just wanted to offer my own thanks for the extra time that folks took to get me and David from the police commission. I just hope that we can build that into the process going forward for more of these discussions. So I have to have these over this Council process. Thank you Councilor McGee. It's quite a ticket. That is that further discussion. We'll go to a vote. All those in favor of motion please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries unanimously and thank you. It's important recommendation for the department to move forward. 4.09 is the Queen City Park Road side path. Neutrans grant acceptance from the engineering team. Okay great. Sorry to take you together. So the interest of time if there is interest the next maybe. Laura could you speak to talking about moving 4.09 to 4.10 or 4.11 together perhaps you could give a summary. Actually I'll let the one on our first 100 years take that and actually a project that I'll try to operate. Great. So there are three different Neutrans grants. Queen City Park Road is a large-scale Neutrans bike bed grant which will support the City Council referred alternative. So that will be designed in construction for Queen City Park Road and the Birchcliffe Parkway that's a small-scale Neutrans bike bed grant that's already part of the COA 22 street reconstruction program. So this is going to be in support of the traffic homing project on Birchcliffe and then Pearl Street is a Neutrans town highway grant and that's to support the street reconstruction efforts made. These are all reimbursement grants so the City will have to use funds and see reimbursement. Great. Thank you for that summary. Floors open tower. Any board you'd like to finish on? President Locke? I'm always having a big motion to accept money and I would be happy just in the interest of time and expediency to make a motion on all three to take the recommended direction because the action is recommended at board talks. If that's okay. Second by Councillor Hightower. Discussion with questions? If there are questions, we will move to a vote on this. We say aye. Aye. The motion carries to the end of the slide. If they can get a little bit of a much better job at this then that's my part of this technique. Somebody's got a single point in our poll. I hope that you had one. Two of us for care. DPW annual employee picnic last week where we set up a little cornhole effort which is not set up to regulations. That's a very nice problem. Although I'm sure it was regulation query would have pressed us. So with that 4.12 Burlington High School, outdoor classroom, and roof garden downtown across the setting. Yes. Full projects definitely. That's great. So yeah I heard that another is due to do so. Yeah so another exciting project we're collaborating with the high schools of Joe Haytech VHS for a while to come up with a way to put a garden outdoor learning space on top of or down calling the downtown north garage. So what we're here tonight to request is a little funny so you want to explain it quickly. So we're here to one notify you that we're doing this because on Wednesday we're going to decommission spaces so there's not any parking space in the north public decommission spaces and then the part of the so that's part of our motion that the other part is to authorize mayor to enter or lease with the school after we go through the whole of our commission on Wednesdays. We're trying to save a step. So a little confusing but basically we did go to the public first commission but once we decommissioned and went through the responsibility of that area space like you. So that's what we're asking for tonight. So any questions? Let's see thank you for that summary. What are we going to take for? So they're going to literally rip up garden with planters, couple sheds, most of the time you speak to them mostly planters built out of some of those and then they're raised bed plants but we also have we want to be able to have an outdoor space as we know we're a kind of large windowless space with no outdoor space. So we would have an outdoor space where we could do we could have like outdoor classroom spaces but also some recreational spaces for lunch and then you know hopefully be able to run certain programs with community partners like sustainable farming, growing vegetables in the beds that are approved for edible thanks to the ones that are not being able to hold our old gardens. So we did our research upon these and then also just having like a nice decorative space where we go outside and enjoy it. And I love the space that's big enough for outdoor craftsmen. It's 11 spaces plus I think it was 17 additional feet in the corner. The way we sectioned it out we could we could sort of divide it into two spaces into two like classroom spaces that teachers in classes would sign out and go off to use and during recreational times it would be under supervision just like our cafeteria and other kind of public rec areas in our building. You have a really sense of operations plan that we work on for months now to make sure that we understand just what's happening in that space because we'll be delaying what it says this year. Well I'm not starting to have any other questions but I'm happy to correct that action on that point. Great, thank you. You have a second vice president Paul. Discussion? Can you just make a point, Jeff, similar number that you're not expecting in fact? Yes, we still have that fully recovered on revenues so the lease that needs to be signed will have a clause and it says to get to one of the partners as well we'll do it for actions and capacity that will terminate. So three year lease setting just so we have some timeline but if the garage gets used to the school, it's a plan that will bring in a lot of new parts up there in one of our English language teachers. He too likes to view. Great, if there's no further questions or comments we'll go to a vote. All those, maybe I must start this chair. Did you want to say something? No. All those very much if they say aye. Aye. Any votes? Very good. Thank you both. Although it's good to know, I feel like people are starting to run me again to find out about partying down, you know, so I think that I'll be able to point them into the garage. Even Christmas holidays, most of us have quite a few spaces to develop one that works garages and have not just just recently, the town's recent historic, so good message to get out there. And it's been doubted, but verified by news crews, it's really a thing. Work assignment, agreement number eight, utility services company, department of assault, antenna, corral, redstone tank, and related budget amendments. That's due to our resources item. And Megan here to speak to it. You want to, if you got time, Megan, if you could hear us all right. Yeah, sure. Those of you who are familiar with our smaller tank that's on the redstone campus, the redstone tank, I affectionately call it Sputnik because it's got lots and lots of antennas on it that have been in place since 1990s. But they're directly mounted to the tank, which is not good for the tank and makes it pretty much impossible for us to do maintenance in the future. You all in the past couple of years have approved us to engage utility services company. They helped us rehab, rehabilitate the larger tank, which hopefully everybody's happy with how that came out. She looks bright and shiny and new. And we're trying to do the rehabilitation on the redstone tank. And as part of that, we need to remove all of the antenna. Rather than just putting them back and drilling them right back onto the tank, we're trying to plan for the future. And by putting this corral in, that'll enable us to remount the antenna and in the future not have to take them off and do temporary cell towers and all the stuff that we are currently going through. The amount of revenue that we get from the cell leases is not insubstantial. It's about $98,000 a year. It escalates at 6%. And other than the many efforts we're having to go through right now in order to do the rehab because there is not a corral, it's relatively low effort for the revenue. They sit up there, we get paid, and that helps keep some of the costs lower for the ratepayers, which is why we think that it is advisable to go ahead and spend this amount of money to invest in having a structure that antennas can be mounted to in the future. Great. Thank you, Megan. Sounds like a great idea. Floor's open for questions or motion. Councilor Aftari? I'm hoping to move the right patch. Excellent. Second of all, that's my key. Okay, there's no comments or questions. We'll go to a vote. All those in favor of motion. Please say aye. Aye. Okay, opposed. Motion carries unanimously. And it brings us to another one of the resources the creation of the wastewater plant operator. Thanks. I'll make the motion to be recommended so that the action is recommended on board members. Thank you. Is there a second? Second by Councilor McGee. Discussion? Questions? Being here, Tony, as well. There are no questions or comments. We'll go to a vote. All those in favor of motion. Please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Thank you for your support. Thank you. Okay, final action item and then we will have the memorial discussion. The final action item is board finance approval only because this is for a time transaction under $100,000, which is our 30th board. And they tell our planning director who's been leaving the effort to rent us fuller this year. So I might kick this off again. Okay, sounds good. So this is a request to authorize me to sign a contract with a firm called Urban Free, which is a firm of planners and data analysts who perform pretty unique evaluations around property values essentially for a whole variety of purposes ranging from informing the public about choices about investment and public services to the impact financial impacts of public policy and even data that can provide a platform for discussion about taxation policy. So the specific proposal that we have received is an analysis that includes a number of different ways of looking at the city's property and taxation value, including helping us see more information about tax values on a breaker basis and how that varies across different parts of the city. Looking at not only the value, the property value, but actually how much different properties pay in taxes in real dollars and helping us visualize that by different parts of the city to really help us understand kind of the, I guess, fairness across the city of different types of value. It also looks at helping us evaluate the impact of public policy decisions. So specifically, the proposal includes looking at a couple of different policy changes in terms of land use to help us evaluate what the potential future value of and tax revenue earned by the city could be from changes to land use policy. As you know, there are a number of really high-profile housing policies that our team is looking at with the Planning Commission and ultimately with you. And then another piece of this is to look at available data about the history of discriminatory housing policies and discriminatory land use and taxation policies to understand the long-term economic impact on property values and different neighborhood as a result of those policies. So it's a pretty wide-ranging study. Our office is managing this as a data project, but we really see that the information that will result from this project will help inform a number of departments on going work and a number of initiatives that other council committees are considering as well. Great, thank you. That's our turn. I have a lot of comments and I'll give them to myself because I know we're trying to limit this, but I guess I am so feeling at home that I'll say is kind of overarching, which is, I guess, I'm curious to what extent what's it looking at. Historically, we think of single-family homes, like we maybe have more than enough ends of large yards as the lowest per square foot of land, property taxes, right? Because you're only paying for that. Whereas in multi-unit buildings, commercial space, which might have downtown per square foot, a lot higher. So I think for a road, it pays for the home. Is that the kind of thing that you'll be looking at? That is part of what they look at. So they do specifically try to look at the linkage between not only the property's value, but the value by acre. So kind of normalizing it for size. I believe I've also seen some of their work try to normalize value per unit. And then their work has evolved a little bit over the years that they've been in this line of analysis. But one of the original things that they actually did was help communities understand how much different land uses pay for their shared public infrastructure, essentially. That's great. And I think you answered the question, but I guess to what extent is this going to be helpful in terms of timing? And is John involved with using this information? And maybe you can know the answer to that more than. But curious as to how this will be used for, thanks for your assessment of what we're thinking for that, or if it's just background information that we may or may not use. Now, the whole reason we're excited to get on this is, I think these guys are great. I've seen them. They've presented here in Burlington before, I've seen them present at national conferences. I've seen some examples of their work in other cities that has really made some pre-fundamental questions about methodology and the equitability of the way our strategies are doing taxation. Yeah, absolutely. This is time to be some kind of academic background. The idea is that this coming out of this challenge for your personal period of time to have to look at the system and its fairness, and to look at it from a different perspective is more than what we should be doing to create a better system. And maybe we'll have to do this term, too. I don't know. Hopefully you're interested in these types of items. We've worked on the other items. So I think, as Megan said, I think this committee that was set up will find a point in that, frankly, they really be supportive of some of the zoning work we're doing together around missing middle housing. Expect that it sounds like you understand the implications of this as well. This could be, you know, we'll probably have some fighters that really show what kind of financing can begin from some of the missing middle rezoning or the south end patient-district zoning. So, you know, maybe it's going to have a lot of applications and really change the whole thing. I don't know if it's been made yet. That's a good question. I mean, I think Megan made a sense, too, but just this, sorry, but this is a big matter. But I think something that Urban 3 has added to their work recently, at least I wasn't aware of it until about a year ago when I started speaking at conferences that they really have developed a real focus on how, in some cities, I'm not assuming that we're going to find the state case here, although it could be that there has been real racial inequities, racial disparities, racial inequities that were perpetrated and sort of exacerbated by the taxation system. So, this has been part of, the fact that it's become part of their recent work, I think, is, makes it even better. It further makes it sound more, I don't know, less engaged in it. Or to maybe find that one. We've got 20 black homeowners and I know one of them. So, I think I probably know most of them, but I'm happy to move the Court of Finance approved expenditure by $1,000 for the design of the law. So, I'm glad to be trying to predict the contract of Urban 3 with a revenue analysis. Great. Mr. Kelser, our second separate poll discussion. Seeing none, we'll go to the vote post. The motion please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? The motion carries unanimously. One quick follow-up question, which is, when do you think the work will be, when will the report come out? Their original scope was about a seven-month process, but there are interim milestones in that and we had talked internally about coordinating with a number of departments who could really benefit from this work to make sure that even some of the interim milestones could be helpful to them. Thank you. Great. This brings us to our final item on the agenda, 6.01, which is a communication regarding the memorial auditorium. Last spoke to the council on that memorial auditorium sometime in the spring. We really made a decision together in that period to vote forward with the stabilization efforts with the $140,000 supporters in support in the March fund and also to try to find a way forward recognizing financial reality now that we can go for many years to help with the very limited general obligations funding that we can put into this project. Samantha has been hard to work on that, I think we have some cautious optimism drawing that there is a path forward when I hit it over to Samantha to come back. Sure. Not a lot more in the memo, but I can just summarize again, came to the city council in June to give an update. Yeah, before Samantha gets rolling here, really the point, this isn't necessarily something that we would come speak to the board to finance it. At this point, there's no financial decision that's being requested now. The administration has the ability, what we're proposing is a request for a proposal and the administration has the ability to do that without, we don't need council action to do that. Given the love of the moratorium, the long history of this project, we thought it was prudent to come and have discussion with the board of finance and with the PAC committee to flush out whether this general support or actually we're going here not to have more discussion about it, but that's the goal for today's discussion is to get some sense from you if we're directly on track with our board. Yeah, great. So I think it was June that I gave a brief sort of update to the city council on the moratoriums from the existing conditions and the history of what had happened with the process previously and sort of were in this sort of do-nothing phase that was not serving the building. There was sort of a question of are we going to stabilize the building now or are we going to knock it down because doing nothing was no longer an option and heard very clearly from the city council that the desire was to stabilize the building and find a future for it and not to knock it down. So I've been working way in BPRW staff to bomb that stabilization. The first RFP will go out hopefully next week for getting the roof stabilized, which we're trying to do before it snow, lands on it and causes it to collapse. We are also working on an alternative heating system so that stabilization that's not with us right about that stabilization though is underway and is really important of anything else that's going to happen in this building. I think what we're here to talk about tonight is next steps and this was something that I had alluded to in that last presentation city council that the opportunity for keeping the Memorial Auditorium I think the best next steps is to figure out a public-private partnership that would allow that building to stay as an important part of our historic fabric would bring in private equity to take on the renovations that are required. This would still be determined but imagining something like a 99-year long-term lease when the city would retain ownership of the building meaning that if future generations have the desire and the capacity and capital to take that building back over as a city owned and operated entity that would still be an option but the 99-year lease allows a private entity to access the kinds of funding that they need to. I think a public-private partnership gives us the opportunity as opposed to just trying to sell the building to weigh in on what the uses are potentially bring funds to the redevelopment that a private entity wouldn't be able to access to support some of the components that we hope to keep happening in that property. So these public-private partnerships that have been successful in Burlington and communities across the country and I think it's a great opportunity for moving forward. I've had several entities that have expressed interest in redeveloping the building so it's not just like going out in the dark it's not just going to go in seven days and like hope that somebody responds. It'll be fully public but have again several different entities that have ideas for redevelopment of the building. So I'll put together this RFP to reach out to understand what's out there and potentially select an entity to enter into exclusive negotiations around a public-private partnership and of course at that time we would be coming back to board finance and city council before engaging in any kind of agreement but this is really to understand what's out there how can it align with some of the goals the city still has for this building and for the community goals for the building and does it make sense to move forward. So happy to answer questions. I think the draft RFP was attached. We've got I think the scoring is really around how likely something can move forward but mostly around what the city's priorities are for the building which is that something happens that there's long-term public benefit that we have a way of preserving the Veterans Memorial with public access that historic fabric obviously this is a really important entrance to our city, to our downtown especially with the great streets that are going to be coming up Main Street so making sure there's activation in this location and either high quality employment opportunities or housing I think those are both really strong priorities for the city. That's right. Yeah I don't think the 100-year lease was in any of the materials that you set and I guess I just wonder if that's a number that you've already heard because that's definitely longer than I was thinking and I assume it's longer than most finance years would even look at in terms of payback period so curious about it. Yeah I think the 99-year lease is probably in the RFP and it's a standard sort of real estate term used to provide entities with a long enough lease to be able to access financing that basically says we have ownership of this property for a long time so that they can get big financing and certain financing that's required for them to have ownership over a period of time. There's lots of things that can be built into that lease like rent a first refusal or we're checking in after 30 years and again that's the kind of thing we would flush out with a specific partner of like how you know how long when could the first like option for the city come back up to re-evaluate the lease and things like that but 99-year lease is kind of a typical term for just to allow those entities to access financing. I have one question and I'm sitting here I was sitting here madly looking forward but I can't seem to find it so we all I probably don't need an email from Chippewa Bridge I just couldn't really know the state email I did and I'm trying to say again if I or whatever I just cannot find it right now he specifically had a request that in the RFP there be again I don't have it but others thought it I haven't read it yet you could just speak to that he's requesting that the RFP include quote reinstate teen-led cultural programming to its historic locations among among the city's goals and objectives yeah so that's something to consider when I reached out to others in the community about that there was a sense of we've identified community space and performance space being maintained in the building as one of the priorities but there's a lot of different folks that would like different kinds of space for rehearsals for performances and so at this time talking with Bryanton City Arts and some others it was recommended that I leave it more broad to see what was available and flush out if there's community space dedicated in a proposal what exactly that should be with community input but happy to if there's strong support to have specifically that teen-led space something that could go into the RFP if it's a priority for counselors yeah I mean I think that obviously 242 maybe it's not going to be there if it's being or you know I mean this is not a matter of finger pointing at all it's just a little bit that the building was not stable for them to continue and so they were sort of put in a position where they had to find other combinations that you know imagine well they could put it back where they were or no fault of their own they can't get there so it would seem as though we could find a way to incorporate that that would be I think that would be obviously in an RFP you can't always get everything but I think if we don't put it in here we wouldn't get it so you recommend having that as one of the city priorities so the teen-led well I just think that if if we if we had somebody we had to leave that if they want to come back they left through no fault of their own but the fact that the city acquired it that should be important that's how I think because I think about like past tenant well I mean they I believe they are the only past tenant that would be in that situation I mean they the pottery and jewelry that was there is now very happily in another location that I think is amazing and there's greater room for expansion John and this is no slight at all on the many others that want to be there on I just feel that well I've already I guess I've already I don't need you to eat it that's how I and maybe it feels differently but number three I think that's important to have that is an important resource that hasn't really found a space to flourish in the way other organizations have and so the extent of prioritize is you really I acknowledge three I don't just look at you no I don't yeah I don't really need that kind of them I think I appreciate the the detail the feedback on this and this feedback in be helpful if you have any kind of directional certainly there's real concerns about this is a fairly tight timeline from here or like you know we're moving from this point on if this is the way we're going that our view would be going out this month or sorry in November it's sorry in October next month we're still in late September November we be getting responses back and then we'd be coming back to you in November December with a path forward like you said there's at least a couple possible responders who we're pretty excited about or maybe pretty excited to say too much but we're hopeful about and so this could be back in front of you relatively soon for action and if there's some there's some kind of disagreement with this lack of comfort with this direction it'd be good to know that now or soon after tonight so that we can separate we need to adjust path so that's really perfect absolutely yeah I think my other comment to go on my question that is somebody who is I mean a hundred years is a very long time for all we know the building could be like just repair at that point so I think just something that either has a very public use or where they the I don't know what we're calling of the respondent is open to having a shorter timeline so that it's the public does want the building back for who knows what in 70 years that's a possibility I think that's a that would be an important aspect of it that's real so that would be so the the issue about that was brought up would be part of the 20% the ability to appropriate public uses and there isn't there isn't anything that says this I mean it's a city goals objection objectives I would hope that one of the objectives well actually I mean I guess it does say that I'm I'm probably again just sort of reiterating something that is already there that it just really be a a real draw to downtown and this is the gateway building it's the gateway block wanted to be the gateway to Burlington and be an exciting place that is exciting good people that live here excited that people that visit just as much about magnet as we could possibly get it I personally am not opposed to the timeline we need to get on with this on the other hand obviously if you get one response and that response is not a good one well then read just timeline but let's hope it does right that's a great point that you could emphasize that a bit more like you're really being a a draw to downtown like like what is the story going to be a video awesome all right well I think we're going to should be any so moment here I do it's definitely one of those things that like if you have new thoughts about this after night there's still some I'm going to say back so that's going to the pack next week yes 27 so you know it certainly won't be too late if or members have some new thoughts I want to get them to us the next couple of weeks so with that thank you thanks for got through a lot today and there's no rejection I am going to adjourn the board of finance at 6.7