 I call to order the City Council meeting for Monday, February 4, 2019. We'll start by rising to say the Pledge of Allegiance, led by Counselor Hal Fulton. 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. So first we have a agenda review. I don't believe there are any changes to tonight's agenda. So we will move to public comment. This is the opportunity for members of the public to address the council on any item that is not on tonight's agenda. Is there anyone here who would like to address the council? Okay, so we'll move to the consent agenda. We have three items on the consent agenda. The City Council minutes of January 28, 2019, approval of the warrant ending February 1, 2019, and payroll January 13, 2019 to January 26, 2019, and approval of the staff accountant's job description. We'll have to split the consent agenda into two because Councillor Mack was not in this capacity for the January 28 meeting. So I'll take a motion to approve the City Council minutes of January 28, 2019. So moved. Second. Motion by Eric, second by Hal. All those in favor? Aye. Motion approves. And then we'll take the second to the last two items on the consent agenda. I'll take a motion for those for items B and C. So moved. Second. Motion by Eric, second by Hal. All those in favor? Aye. Motion carries. So the update. Great, thank you. So a number of updates for you tonight. We do have our ballot for town meeting day finalized as of 430 this afternoon. So we have the bond items and budget items you approved at your last council meeting. And then the election ballot is as follows. We have a contested race for the mayor with Eric Covey and Christine lot running. We have two candidates for our two two year vacancy seats on the city council, Amy Lafayette and James Duncan. So two candidates for two seats. We have a contested race for the one year council seat. Corey Mack and Mike Myers have both put in petitions. And then we have one candidate each for the two different school trustees positions. Mac McNeil for the two year position and Margaret fast for the three year position. So that will be our final ballot and we will be getting that sample ballot up on the website for the public to see and understand before town meeting day. And we've had as the public probably knows and you all know quite two weeks of fire activity in the city. We've had 17 calls that the fire department has responded to with three official structure fires, which is very unusual for us. I think you've read about most of them, but we just wanted to take a minute to have the fire department remind the council and the public that carbon monoxide and carbon and fire detectors really do save lives. Which in two of these three cases, they really limited the potential scope of the incident. So if the public has any questions about their what their in building coverage, please feel free to reach out to chief body to the city hall and we'd be happy to come and answer questions. I do also want to thank chief body and Italian chief Spittle and all of the FD staff who have been so responsive, as well as our mutual aid partners who have been on site a number of times in the last two weeks. And specifically those were St. Mike's fire and rescue Colchester Center fire, Mallets Bay fire, Vermont Air National Guard fire department city of Burlington fire department and an extension. They've all spent time in our city in the last two weeks. As probably most people know as well, the school is undertaking quite an extensive water main replacement project and as a result has had to close school for number of days. They are hopeful to reopen on Wednesday in partnership with them. Community Services is doing meals at the library tomorrow for students who are looking for that also being done at the school. But take your pick those two services are available and public works and fire have also been partnering with ASC the contractor as well as the school personnel on keeping the building safe while it's not sprinkled and watered and then public works will work. Once the final pipe installation is completed, they'll repressurize the system and do the water testing as well. A few quick staffing updates. Mark Sterling, who is one of our public works employees passed his CDL license test last week. That's the commercial driver's license test and allows our employees and others to drive bigger vehicles. So it's a huge accomplishment and we're really proud of him. He put a lot of work into it. It also means we have another big power driver on the street during snowstorms, which is great for all of us. And then Claudia Brown started today as the Recreation Assistant and Community Services. She comes to us with a Masters of Science in Environmental Science and Public Policy. She's worked for the American Forest Foundation and the National Park Service. It brings just a wealth of expertise and hopefully we'll be here at your next meeting to meet you all. And then one final reminder. Next week on February 14th, there will be a joint meeting of the Public Works Commission and the Planning Commission to kick off the East Allen Street Scoping Study work that's being done in conjunction with the Ginnon County Regional Planning Commission. So if people are interested in providing their feedback, it's at 6 o'clock, 6.30? 6.30 here next Thursday, February 14th. That's all I have. Thank you. Okay. Next up is Council Reports. How why don't we start with you? No report. Okay. Only after this past November election, I know a number of individuals in the Burlington area that are involved in election administration there had reached out to the Secretary of State's office to initiate some conversations around translation at the polls. So it's my hope to talk with Jesse and the folks here to see if we can proactively be a part of those conversations as the Secretary of State's office pulls them together. Great. Working to finalize our budget presentation. Jesse's pulled a lot of information together for me. So our first presentation is at the Senior Center next on February 11th. Is it Monday or Tuesday? Monday? Remind me what time that is. Once we think it's at noon, but more to come on that, we will be doing a big publicity push about all the opportunities here about the budget. Stay tuned as to the specific time at the Senior Center next Monday. But Monday evening will also be at CCTV recording our sort of annual budget clip there. So encourage folks who haven't necessarily followed the budget presentations or conversations of the last month and a half to tune in to either CCTV or join us at one of the other events that will be posted on the city's website and social media pages. So it's a complicated budget. There's a lot of moving pieces. And so we really want to encourage folks to get access all the information you can so that you make an informed decision on town meeting day. And I would like to welcome our new counselor, interim counselor, Corey Mack. Not sure if you have any updates that you'd like to share with a group. No, just the first week here. First meeting, getting my feet under me, got my email all set up. You know, I'm honored to be here representing the city. Great. Thank you for being here. Next couple of meetings. Okay. So I think we can move on to the regular agenda items. The first item is a discussion or approval of the Vermont performing arts league letter of intent for the O'Brien community, Sarah Wase. I invite Ray. Good to see you all again. So excited to have April and Ben here from Vermont performing arts league. We have been working hard to get this letter of intent pulled together represents a lot of back and forth, a lot of work on both sides. So wanted to bring it forth to you all tonight for discussion and listed it as discussion approval just because I wasn't sure how you'd want to proceed. Also did mention on there the opportunity to go to executive session if desired because it is a discussion around contract negotiations. So put that in there as well. But I was hoping to give bad name for a little time here to discuss sort of some of their intentions and hopes around the use of the space and then we can dive a little bit further into the details of the proposal here. But I think it's important to kind of hear what they're envisioning and how that jives with some of the conversations we've had in the past about the use of the space and how that is available for the public. Great. Can I just ask Ray for folks who are watching from home? Can you just describe the spaces that we're talking about so people can sort of visualize as they're hearing? Yep. So the spaces we're talking about are the community room. So that's the big room right up at the front of the building when you walk in the two bays of the former teen center. So as you head down the hall of the community center with two farthest bays in the back left and the small meeting room, which is straight ahead as you walk down the hall. This is a space that we've had sort of, you know, maybe it was going to be a child care center that didn't work out. So we've had a few iterations of possible, but really excited to hear from April and Ben about your vision for the space. Okay. First of all, we're very happy to finally be here in this position to speak with you. Little background on us. We have pretty much been at every aspect of space usage from being renters, being guests, contractors, programmers, everything about public space. Around arts and entertainment and exercise. And worldwide, not just locally. So we've gotten to see many ways in which public and private people treat public space. And our approach is a combination of all of those things. That is to say, we're not naive about any of them. And we do consider all aspects when we make suggestions and decisions. We started out in our own neighborhood in the old North End wanting to have places for the people that we saw in the community that needed a place to celebrate, come together, exercise, whatever they wanted to do in a public space in a non-commercial way. Since most of the people in our neighborhood there have traditionally been low income or new residents either to our area or to the United States. With different cultures, different points of view and so on. And different levels of income and expenditure hierarchies based on their situation. And we've tried to consider their needs, desires, as well as the community's needs and desires in developing our spaces. So we started off in a commercial building. And we've been there. Doing this kind of thing for 12 years. And we've run out of space and currently run out of time in the building since it's being gentrified. And we've taken it from our main space, which was a laundromat. And our secondary spaces, which were the Act 1 facilities in the back, and turned them into very comfortable, very useful, very flexible spaces that are pretty much full. Within the last couple of years we've added space in the old North End Community Center, the former St. Joseph School, with Champlain Housing Trust. And it's coming along. We've been there a couple of years. We have a large event hall and community kitchen that's used by people within the building as well as in the community. And then we heard about Winnowsky, my town. I also work with A2V. And it sounded like our cup of tea, something that we're very familiar with in terms of raw space, community need. And we were just talking about this before. Our unique ability to pull things together like this. It's kind of like being a dog catcher. Nobody wants to do that, but if you're good at it, there's a place for you. So we kind of, it's not exactly, but just the whole idea of it's something that not everybody wants to or can't do. And over the number of years we've kind of gotten good at it. And by considering everybody's needs and point of view. So when we looked at this space and started talking with Ray, it became pretty clear that this is something we could pull together here as well. Yeah, I feel that the building was kind of designed and created to do just the things that we do. And the parallels of course between our neighborhood in Burlington and Winnowsky are quite dramatic. You know, it's just so, so similar. And a lot of people actually come from Winnowsky and use our spaces because they don't have a place that they can go to here in Winnowsky. One of the big things that we need to make clear about what we do when we offer a space to the public is we're just offering them a room. But we're offering them a fully equipped and atmospheric place where they can do the thing that is important to them. So we bring in sound equipment that is not, you know, blasting. It's subtle, but everyone can hear. And they do like it to be loud. But, you know, we don't want that loud to be painful or disruptive to the community. We also support them in a lot of ways. And people come here from other countries. They don't necessarily understand how we use public space. The whole idea of finding a room in a certain way and putting it back that way when you leave. So it's like an educational process of finding out what these people that are our clients need to know to make their experience be the best it can be. And we learn from them what they need. And they learn from us what we think will help them be happy in the space. And having been in the Burlington space in the North and North Newsy Avenue space for 12 years, I can tell you we just started it. Basically, we are just open to whatever we had to learn from the people so that we could hear them and then design what we were doing and adjust what we were doing to suit what they need. And of course, it's not just all new Americans that come to us. It's obviously everyone in our neighborhood and then beyond who don't want that hotel environment or can't pay for it or both. And so, even after 12 years, people still come in the door. They rent it without even seeing it. And then they come in, they go, oh, this is so nice. You know, this is just, I feel so good here. I'm so comfortable here. So that's really a great feeling that we have kind of gone along and made the adjustments and kept our ears open to what they needed. I'll just tell one little anecdote. This is the thing that I was that was my pet thing. People would come and say they wanted to have their parties go until like the hours of the morning. And I said, well, as far as I'm concerned, the bad stuff always happens after 2 am. So I just want to say, just figure out how to stop your party at 2 am. And they looked at me like I was insane because they can't stop their parties at 2 am because their parties just aren't going at about one. And that's the good part for them, you know, and I just had to back off because... Ask her how many of these parties she's hosted. God, very cute. Now in the beginning I was forced to, but I mean, just... And then the other aspect of it is that when a kind of a long-term Vermont resident comes in and says the question, how late can we stay? I didn't start laughing. I was like, well, did you want to stay past 2? Because I usually don't like people to stay past 2. Or they go, oh no, I meant like, could I stay to 11? So we've got it all. We've got it all. So I appreciated the information that you shared with us in our... There's a lot of gorgeous pictures of the types of events and are prompting me to just ask a question. When you say use of the spaces, it ranges from... It looks like it ranges from everywhere from group fitness classes that may occur on a pretty regular basis to events for a single night event or a single-use event. So it's really intended to both provide access to a space for people who want it for a limited period of time, but also have the space really come alive in terms of there's activity happening there on a regular ongoing basis. Do I have that right here? This is the thing that I've found not only with these kind of spaces, but commercial spaces. Once you narrow down what you're willing to have in doing your space, you're really looking for failure. And to remain flexible and open to, as what April said, what people are interested in doing. And be able to... It's not a turnkey event in the sense that we don't hand them a key and say go at it. We post everything. And because of the breadth of experience that we have, within the time that they're setting up for their event, and that we do contracts with everybody, and all of this, we can continually suggest ways to accomplish what they want to accomplish without damaging the neighborhood, the space, or themselves. And that they can have a good time with this thing and make it happen within their budget and so on. Some of the things we do are bare room. They come in there and they put four tables in the middle and they have a meeting and they go away. Some people want to turn it into Las Vegas. And as long as they don't put tape on the walls, we're fine with that. But that's one of the things. We don't let them do anything to the space that's going to create any evidence of them being there beyond the time they're there. We develop techniques. I used to work as an artist at a residence in the schools and we would go ahead and create public display for two or three weeks of 6,000 international artifacts without a single hole in the wall. And so we've learned how to create atmosphere without damaging the space. And most people, why should they know that? And I think just to chime in, I think one of the things that's really spoken to me throughout my conversations with Ben and April is just the parallels between what I think we've talked a lot here philosophically about wanting to do with the space, keeping it publicly accessible, making it a resource for the neighborhood and for residents, but that limitations of budget and staffing have really kept us from doing well. We have been largely a turnkey operation. You know, if you want to use the space, books are welcome to. We have a very affordable price point, but it is often just, here's a key, here's how you get in and out, please don't burn the building down. And I think again, the way that I've heard and sort of been working with clients is much better than what we've been able to offer as a city staff, realistically. So I think the combination of that improved service, the ability to stay in the lane that that building was really created to kind of run in and to really increase the vibrancy of the building is super exciting for us. And really do you think it checks a lot of the boxes that we've been trying to check with that building for a long time? Well, you certainly transformed the old North End studio building. I mean, I've been going there for years. What have you been? I go to the high yoga studio, which started out downstairs in the room that now people are suspended from the roof. But every Sunday morning, that space is filled with two different types of folks coming to worship and fitness classes. And now there's a bakery. I mean, so there's certainly a lot happening in a space that I think reflects the breadth of that community. Now, that's actually another point raised talking about the building itself. One of our goals is to and has to create a meeting place for the community, for the neighborhood. And because we've been there for a while, I think we've attracted a lot of interest of current residents and people outside the Old North End and to that area to the point where our building owner feels like he doesn't need us anymore. So the idea of not only having the O'Brien Center function in and of itself, but to have it be more of a gathering place beyond just having a bunch of events there, but having meaningful events for the whole town. And the other side of that is we're more providers of space rather than producers. So we're not, it's not like we're looking to run everything. We just want to provide a place where people can run things effectively. Right. Because we really have learned the lesson that you can't take on all the roles from the place through the final performance. One group or one individual can't know enough to do all that. And so because there's this kind of vacuum in the whole area of putting on events that are not, you know, commercial, since there aren't very many people doing that, we're creating that space. We're concentrating on that and hoping other people will come to us and have all their excitement about what they want to do, kind of all come together and bring this big pool of excitement into that one place. And that's basically how it's worked at North End Studios. Right. So we hope we can do it here. Right. So maybe see, do you have something else to add, Ray? No, I was just going to say if any other councillors. Any questions on the use and then kind of jump in maybe to the details of the document in front of you all? Right. So anybody have any questions about the use of the space before we get into the use agreement? I just have a question about promoting. How would you go about promoting the space? We have a lot of free social network connections. And our current activities are on our website and on an email list that goes out every week. So once a week it's promoted. We also have a calendar. So again, this is along the lines of if we can reach people without spending a lot of money, it means we can keep the cost of everything down. We also have the event tech. The one commercial service that we use is an online booking place. It's really very effective. It's the only thing we do and we get tremendous amount of people choosing this area. And then this is, you know, so they could search for specific characteristics that they want. And we're just like several a day coming. So we will expand and have a complete once we get some good pictures of the inside there. That's our intention is to post as much on this suite of rooms as we do about the other two that we do. But we also I was just thinking about this today that we also need your help to get the word out of this community on a regular basis. And we're hoping that we can count on you to also spread the word about what's been what what starts to happen and how people can reach us to do that to help them do what they want to do. Every event we do generally generates one or two additional events. So obviously the more you do, the more it gets used. It was interesting to me I came in to the to the community with the O'Brien Center. One time there was a birthday party and this woman said I had no idea this place was available. You know, I've been doing this at home. It's been crazy. This is fantastic. And I said, how did you find out about it? She said, I don't know. Totally random way of finding out that this place has been here all this time. She was thrilled. Any questions? I was just going to say that we, we have several of our current tenants over in the building on North Winooski are very excited about actually just moving lock, stock and barrel over here. And that, you know, is very comforting to us because that's a part of, you know, we know exactly how much income we get from them every month. And that makes us feel more comfortable about this, you know, 5000 square feet is a lot of real estate. So, you know, we'll have, we have some stability in the fact of what we're bringing over and it's like three clients of ours will pay half the rent. And then it's just those hourly things and all that are going to come together and make it so we have enough. And that, you know, that takes a little while. It wasn't the first year wasn't that great for either of the other two spaces. The first year is going to be the time when we have to just be spreading the word and pushing and pushing and pushing to get people in. And then it really settles down once you're two, three years into it. So that's what we see is going to happen. Great. I think, I mean, I'm excited that you all are here at the table with us because I think in a lot of the discussions we've had around tenancy in the building, but concern has been in getting your tenants in the loss of that community room and an affordable community space for individuals and groups to gather. It's something that probably challenge, I know challenge myself and likely challenge others and to have that still be an option with like your speaking to your reputation, your work and what you'll be able to do to get individuals and groups more aware of that space and into that space, as well as providing other different programmatic opportunities or space for programmatic opportunities for the community to come together, I think is really fantastic and fits the character and intent of the building in a lot of ways. I mean, we're quite conscious of the fact that it's going to be more expensive than it is now. And that's always, some people are going to really not be happy about that. But what we have to do is to get them to understand what's different about it now. What's different about that experience and all they have to do is do one thing there and they will see a distinct difference between this package that we're offering them versus what. I mean, I had two young Somali women come over to the event hall over in the Old North End Community Center and they were really sharp about the whole thing. She was planning her wedding and she's going to do it in the summer. She started calculating the numbers I was throwing out to her and then she said to her friend, if we do this at the, it was the Sheridan at the time. If we do this at the Sheridan, it's going to cost $4,000. If I do it here, I can do it probably for like $1,200. It's better. It's better. It's like, yeah. That's a lot more character, too. Yeah. Actually, because they have such a set idea about what they want their wedding to look like, that we have to try to make ourselves a little Sheridan-like. But it goes away as soon as the party's over. I have some questions about the leaves. The one thing I wanted to suggest to you for the, you know, some of you have seen one or more of our spaces is we can actually set a time. We're very happy to walk you through the whole thing and, you know, any of the individual kind of questions you might have about how we do this or that. It's easy to just show you. So, you know, we can set a time and come over. Thanks. Thank you very much. Before we go into, yeah. So we were talking a little bit about the operating characteristics. You said that sometimes you can go like to 2 a.m. and longer. Is that, so basically, yeah, so 4 a.m. If somebody wanted to, they could do it an overnight, like a sleepover party or something like that. Is that something you would do? Yeah, kind of sleepover. Yeah, okay. I mean, they don't show up till 11, so for them it's like the day. They don't sleep. They don't sleep. Yeah, they don't sleep. I didn't think that there's a sleeping box. I mean, there are, yeah. But they are, you know, there is someone of our organization there with them. So there would be someone there? There are parameters to all of this. It's, you know, they don't bother anybody. Okay. Yeah. Is there, sometimes, like alcohol sales and that kind of thing going inside? That's something that... That's another issue. Yeah, and we have to figure out what would fit appropriately. That makes sense. Yeah. I mean, Burlington's alcohol rules are very... Strict. Strict. It's like the whole maze that you have to kind of get through in order to understand it. And we appalled them. Yeah. They don't mess with us. So we, you know... You have a requirements like, you know, security or, you know, depending on what the proposed use is. Right. We just need to hear from you guys about what are the possibilities. Because, you know, for them people to have these parties without alcohol is... That's going to be a deterrent if they don't have the possibility at all. And because we're monitoring everything, we've never really had that. And live music, I would imagine, would be something that happens pretty regularly. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Really? But we do have all that equipment that we would be bringing in. And should share too, of course, you may have followed this in the ordinance process. I don't know how closely you're following the ordinance process at the time, but the... There was a change the ordinance made when we rewrote it to allow for alcohol use on city property, which hadn't been allowed at all prior to that rewrite. And so we had chatted a little bit at a recent conversation just about some of those options and how to continue to offer the same type of service that they do in Burlington, but within the parameters of our city ordinance is here. So I think there's a pretty clean path forward to do that. And again, I think they've navigated the Burlington path for that. So I feel like our route here will be, at the very least, as complicated, but hopefully less. Well, I'm sure we can work throughout those details and just, you know, understanding what we're talking about. Thank you. I'm just wondering kind of a two-part question. The first is you have a rough ballpark and what that cost to the city would be for what's in the lease for our fit-up costs. Yeah. And then the second part is for all fit-up costs, either us or the tenant, what are for the folks at home and for us the major alterations that may occur that change the substance of the rooms in the space. I can speak quickly to the cost piece. So we've done some estimating of in particular some of the electrical fit-ups that we've talked about, adjusting lighting, updating some of the outlets with breakers that are in compliance because of fire code issues and moving a few lights around. So that electrical cost and the cost to refinish the gym floor altogether, we're estimating at the top end will be about $21,000. As I mentioned, I think in my cover sheet to you all, we expect we can cover most of that, if not all of that out of operating money for the building, which we've budgeted to spend down in this year. So that's not new money to any of the budget projections that you've seen or to the budget that we've passed. We've been, over the last few years, really being very discerning about what we've spent on building maintenance and I think unfortunately that's starting to show and some of these upgrades are the result of us not getting ahead of that. I am still working with efficiency Vermont to get some numbers back on rebates for some of those lights, which wasn't included in the quote that we got from the electricians, so I expect that that number will actually be less by a fair bit and that $21,000 number doesn't also include any savings we would see from those electrical improvements. So changing out CFL light with an LED light comes with improvements to the way the unit performs. Over time that's a savings as well, so we're working with them to get those numbers crunched. That's the high watermark of what we would expect. I should mention to one piece that is included in there that we're going to actually suggest scratching out for the moment is I think it's the last bullet point on that list related to the roof truss piece for some of those aerial elements. We've done the assessment with our team here and feel that the trusses can take the loads needed but we're going to pull that out because we don't have a strong cost estimate right now for what that cost was going to be to sort of get the pieces spanning the trusses and we're going to take that off of this list and deal with that separately and ideally let the tenants manage that cost but we think it's going to be a pretty reasonable number but because we didn't have a strong number we didn't have that be a snag tonight. Great. And I had a question just about the... that was one of my questions was just the price per square foot is the same price that we've been assuming and is part of the modeling for this? Correct. That $14 value number is what we've been updating leases with throughout this year and the lease agreement is for a five-year term initial. Yep. And we have... there's a two-year sort of check-in point included in here. I think again as April mentioned needing a year to figure out how things are going, is this working? There is a desire to have that sort of option at that point. We have asked for a six-month notice if that two-year bailout is going to be exercised and that actually times us decently with a budget timeframe to be able to adjust if that does occur. I think all of us sitting up here are hopeful that that won't be the case and that we're going to have a glowing success out of the gate and be at year one super excited and on to year two, but wanted to just note that as well that we try to time it such that we have time during the budget season to adjust if we need to. And just the two-year option to terminate provision, that applies only to this first term. Correct. Subsequent terms will be negotiated, I would imagine. Correct, Tom. Okay. So that's not an imperfectuity. Yeah, it's just really that first two years to make sure that this is a good fit for everybody. So the only question I would have is if we've invested $21,000 into the space, sort of what's the exchange there in the event that the lease is terminated? The only thing I want to speak to that we haven't asked intentionally for anything that isn't general. There's very little specific to our use. It's just our experience with buildings and inspections and we're very much attuned to that side of operating, the owner side of operating that every time you get inspected, electrical inspection, fire inspection, any of those things, it's meeting regional and national standards and the things that came to our site when we looked around at different things, it was like, no matter what you do, these things need to be addressed. And no matter what you do, this can't look like it used to be a shopping center kind of thing. So that anybody going into a space, it needs a fresh coat of paint, it needs to have the electrical upgraded to meet standards and we knew about the rebates because we've done that and we know about shunt for breakers because that's a national standard. When all of these things, doesn't matter who goes in, these are things that are, they're general for the building. We're not building a swimming pool in the middle or anything like that. I would echo that. I think the biggest investment there is the electrical work and then walking through the building myself with the electrician last week to do the quote. There's a lot of like, so I don't think any of these upgrades are necessarily things we should do anyway. And again, because we're doing it out of a building maintenance operating line that's designed for maintaining the building, I feel like either way, it's a good investment for us. So we haven't talked about sort of a payback if that two year term is, or bailout is executed, but certainly if that's something that you all want us to look at, we can, but again, I think these are general enough upgrades that I feel pretty comfortable that they're going to be really useful for the next tenant if that's what we find ourselves. It's useful in response. Thank you. Any other questions? Are there any current tenants that we would be like kind of kicking out? I'm not sure if there's anybody, current users of the kitchen or something, that would now have to like either... No, none of the spaces in question here would have tenants in them at the moment. And we don't anticipate the uses here are going to be impactful in such a way that current tenants would be sort of chased out in any way. And what's like the most number of people that you would imagine at like one event? At one event? Yeah, like your peak, what's your peak? Like occupancy or something like that? 300? Yeah, so probably you'd have to work with a fire marshal or something. Yeah, I'd say whatever our occupancy load is in the building, whatever it would be. Yeah, and I don't know offhand what the gym is. Our room up front, I believe, is around 150. It's a similarly sized space to the gym, so yeah, I'd say 200 probably, if I'm guessing. The gym is bigger. It is bigger, yes. But we'll do all that work with the fire marshal and get those numbers updated and again comply with those. Right now our biggest capacity is the event hall and that is 240. It's enough. Yeah, that's really... Some people think they're going to get 300 or 400 people at their vet, but they're almost always wrong. So I would like to thank Ray, who has been working filling the space in the O'Brien Center for too long. It's been a long time coming. And I think there was a time, maybe six months ago, that we were all just like, just fill it, you know, just forever. And for you to come back to us with a tenant that I think really has the ability to realize the vision for that building is really remarkable and I much appreciate it. So thank you for hanging in there. And thank you for recognizing that Winooski is our town. It's a great place to be. We would like to thank Jacob Bograe, who with a lot of the things that we've done have come through his wisdom of pulling people together. He got us involved in the St. Joseph's Project and suggested this project to us as well. Yes, he introduced me to Jesse at a fundraiser appreciation event and it just took off from there. Thanks to Jesse as well. So we never say no. So it is on the agenda tonight as a discussion or approval item. I didn't hear any concerns raised necessarily that would cause us to say, come back in two weeks with a different proposal. So if folks feel comfortable moving forward, we could approve this evening. The motion would be to authorize the mayor as a measure to execute the lease based on the letter of intent for the Vermont Performing Arts League. So that will leave it to you. I suppose we should pause and take comment from the public. See if there's anyone here that would like to address before we take any action. Anything else from the... I'm assuming there's nothing from staff just to donorize and cross RT's potential executive session was on the radar. But there's nothing on your end. No, I just wanted to give you all the option in case there was anything there. We're going to get into negotiation. But no, nothing concerning on our end. Great. I move that we do all the things you said. Whatever they were. Be careful. I'm going to go with the motion there. Authorize the city manager, let's say, to execute the lease based on the letter of intent. Second. Okay, so I have a motion by Eric, a second by Corey. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. The motion passes. Thank you very much. Welcome to Wadouski. Thank you. Thank you so much. Okay, thank you for coming in. The next item on the agenda is the proposed Abnaki garage and hotel design approval. This is up as a discussion or approval item. He's going to take us in two minutes to set up, if you don't mind. Can we take a quick two-minute recess? Yeah, we'll do a two-minute recess. Okay, thank you. Yes. All over here. Yeah. This is like the... Where are you from? Yeah, man. Yeah, keep it just right time. Yeah. I was appointed just this way. That's clever. You've got a consultant on that. That's great. Yeah, I think what really matters from our point of view is... Yeah. There's a... Yeah. That's it. Yeah. That's so hard. Yeah. So, I was just looking for... Yeah. Yeah, I was just looking for... Ready? Okay. All right. All of you, back to order. Thank you for your patience. Good thing. So, just by way of introduction, in fact, of the next two agenda items, both related to the permitting of Lot 70, which is, for those of you at home, a lot between CCB and the Redstone Buildings along Abenaki Way. We want to kind of step back and acknowledge that this has been the product of many, many months of work of the entire development team. So, I want to take a minute to introduce that team. And then I'll ask Eric to... Arizona Administrator to give you an overview not of this project, but of your role as the reviewers of projects in the TIF district. And then we'll walk through this project specifically and then take any comment from the public as well. So, to start, I'd just like to introduce... have the development team introduce themselves. So, can you start, Greg? I'm Greg Rebino Architects and I've been on Pete Kelly for the CW construction. I'm Stephanie Haightway with White and Black Real Estate Investment Advisors Financial Consultancy. Great. Dave Marshall from Civil Engineering Associates. Great. So, I'm going to pass it over to Eric to give an overview of your role in this permitting process. Yes, thank you. So, as Jesse mentioned, this project is in the TIF district, which is in our downtown core zoning district. The downtown core zoning is unique in the fact that council is responsible for approval of any projects that are proposed in that area. The whole downtown core zoning is regulated by existing Act 250 permit that was issued when the redevelopment proposal was put in place. So, there's a master plan for all of the lots and all the projects that go into the downtown core. Along with that Act 250 permit were some general design guidelines to assist council on how this process should be reviewed and permitted, but they are not very detailed so that there's a lot of design flexibility for council to move forward. So, really, as you look at this project and discuss this project, you really do have a lot of control in how the design ultimately ends up for the community so that you are responsible for that permitting step. Unlike other zoning districts where we have either the Development Review Board or the Planning Commission or Project Review Committee do the design, council is responsible for all of the design review. Specifically, related to that from the zoning perspective, as the zoning administrator, there's limited aspects that I look at as well. So, specifically building height some of the dimensional standards of the building, the uses that are incorporated into the specific district parking requirements and then any signage. There's some general guidelines again for signage, but ultimately the goal of the downtown core district is to create kind of that pedestrian oriented feel and really to kind of to focus on the focus on the feeling, I'll say, of downtown rather than a specifically prescribed use and material concept. So, that's kind of the process for what your role is here. I think in the past when projects have been proposed in downtown, some of the other committees have provided input, but that's totally the discretion of council moving forward. And just a few other words about table setting, you know, I think it's important to remember that that zoning was historically put into place in the downtown core very intentionally to give the council as part of this master redevelopment plan for the TIF district that ultimate authority to have the redevelopment happening, be able to happen quickly, be able to happen unbelievably and be able to happen within the community's vision. And so your role in that is really the articulation of that community vision as it impacts the design. Before we get into the specifics of this project, do you have questions about that role? Just what role has the planning commission and or development review board play to date in the process? I know when we originally looked at the first hotel design different locations, different look to the building, DRB and the planning commission I believe sat with us and gave some feedback. Can you talk about how they fit into this? Sure. We've had some loose discussions with both the planning commission and the development review board about this project as it's been moving forward. Typically I've provided them information under the city updates on their agendas. I've also forwarded the previous version of the modeling to both of those groups and invited them tonight to provide input if they wanted to directly to council. The chair of the DRB Mr. Johnson is in the audience and one of the planning commission members, Amy Houtens is in the audience as well. They are both here. So we have had some discussions but we haven't gotten into a lot of detail specifically about the project as it's been proposed. Those groups don't have any formal role in terms of providing input to the council other than being here tonight and offering their input that way. Unless council specifically invites that interaction and that dialogue between the groups there's no formal role identified in our process for it. Thank you for clarifying. Certainly welcome input later on in the process for tonight. So as we transition from process to project a couple of things that I want to make sure we keep in mind. One is that in a small team like this there is some awkwardness here in that Eric is sitting next to me as the zoning administrator and is really the overseer under state statue of implementing zoning in our city. He is therefore considered the regulator and is not necessarily part of the development team. Myself, John, Rauscher is also part of the development partner role. Eric has the freedom and the regulatory authority to say things that are potentially different. So I also want to put this project in the context of some of the last years of history in the TIF district. So as you know we're about three quarters of the way through our TIF district. It's performing very well. We have plans to retire the debt by 2024. Having said that downtown was always part of the master plan, the master revitalization plan. As you may know two years ago we did permit a garage at lot nine which is the lot at the bottom of the rotary in Winooski. A hotel, not a garage. Sorry, a hotel, yes. Thank you. As a result of that permit we were sued by the downtown association for a lot line adjustment we had considered and that's kicked off a series of conversations and negotiations with all the property owners including the hotel developer in the downtown to come to this solution. So we believe that this the utilization of this last big undeveloped parcel in our TIF district that the city currently owns is part of that grander solution and ultimately is a much stronger location for the hotel than they're at the bottom of the rotary right in kind of the public's use of our river front. So I wanted to give that very brief context and I will pass it over to Greg to talk about the details. Thank you. Well once again I'm very grabby over the projects and to help you understand one of the small buttons. Alright. There we go. I'm going to take you through this in a logical way but I just need to figure this out. There we go. So a lot of seven encompasses all of us live here. Greg could you step over there for the camera? Sure. So again a lot of seven encompasses all of this. Here's CCB there's the and what we're presenting are two really separate projects that are going to be executed on this line. A hotel which would be a one level of lobby function at the street level. Five stories of guest rooms up out there. There's also a as you go around to a Newsy Falls way and all the guest spam part will be a bit of exposed basement on the backside of that. The other part of it will be a five level just shy of 300 space parking garage which will be along to the city of Winooski Pension where this gets unfolded. So the process we're asking the city to consider is to take this lot and subdivide it into two parcels one parcel for the city's garage and one parcel for all. As we look at the garage portion of that there's a little dramatic but what you see is a precast concrete frame and we're proposing a series of laser cut steel panels on the outside that have a kind of old organic texture to them as a sort of overlay of texture and art on the outside of the garage to help maintain the open ventilation that we need for it to function as a garage but also to give it a sense of presence on the street. Here's the view from you can see here Winooski Fallsway as it extends off into Castleman Park. The angle that the building is placed at is a result of maintaining access to the park by an existing road. So we keep the building off at this angle to preserve and protect this access that goes down as it occurs off that way. There are also some environmentally and culturally sensitive areas down here so relocating that road was not feasible. Again I mentioned this is a five level parking garage it's actually it works as a sort of split line so this bay is five feet higher than this bay. You can see here at the end here there are speed ramps. So you can enter most of the public will enter next to the garage here by these speed ramps. There are also a layer and a half of parking going below grade here so you can also go down once you go inside the garage. That does a couple of things. It keeps the overall high of the garage down which we want to emphasize the more occupied spaces the college, the apartments, the hotel. But it also takes advantage of the fact that if you've been to the site recently you recognize that it's kind of a big hole in the ground so we're starting from down at the bottom of that hole and building that garage up. This slide starts to give you a little sense of how we want to enhance the connection to the street. It's a little dark but you can see this is the lobby storefront wrapping around the corner here. We've got a cascaded series of planter walls and stairs that separate pedestrian access to the property hotel guests who come in this driveway they've dropped off there's a separate entrance for them into the garage farther down and everybody exits from the garage to the same exit. I'm going to go back to the rendering of this here. I think it's probably easier. I think we mentioned one of the critical things that needs to be considered is building height. There's a 70 foot nominal height in the district that's measured from the highest point on the lot. We have checked that for both the overall lot which the high point would be up here about 192 but also the sub-divide a lot where a finished grade is right around 182 down here. So if we had 70 feet to either one of those numbers that this building would fall down would be allowable. The sixth storey's experiment is that the nine foot floor for gesturing floor is at 12 feet in the lobby level so it would be well below 70 feet. And you can see it in the renderings as it sort of shows you how this compares to the redstone property right across from this wall. Partly derived it's not even close because there will only be three storeys exposed on the high end. Partly on the fourth level it's just open to the sky and some of the levels are lower and so it's really measured up at this point you're going to be measuring three storeys 10 feet of storey or 30 feet versus 70 feet allowable. So the parking garage is fairly compact as it relates to the high limit. There are great many utilities going down through Whenuski Falls way we've tried our best to avoid all of them. There is one chunk of utility that goes underneath the hotel that we may need to relocate but we're not committed to that course of action until we explore all of them because it's down around 22 feet well below the building and there's really just no other way to sort of position this building to get into place right. And you can see here from this view in particular that we've developed this sort of paved courtyard between the building and the garage surface and then there's maybe difficulty to see it might be easier in your packages. There's this sort of parking curve line that has the light poles and ballers to separate this terrace closet for vehicle traffic versus pedestrian and it's also a large surface and articulate in a way that all comes down to the end here where there's an overlooking it would likely be some kind of pedestrian connection between CCV's property and the garage we're still sort of working that out with them but I know CCV is one of the people who will take advantage of it. As for the hotel and the parking rate is at a rate of one per room and we have one per guest room and I think that accounts for they can see it includes staff which would be maximum staff would probably be ten people there's one housekeeper per floor during the day but you'd have a manager an assistant manager and some front desk people and so probably ten people that's going to give them time to maximum. I've been asked to try to get as many rooms in here as possible the number's gotten as high as we've run away and I think when we originally came in it was like 95 right now as it's presented though it's presented with up to 108. It is a branded property the franchise agreement has been entered into with the Hilton Corporation for a brand they call True which is a new product for them and it's some more youth oriented fun kind of thing which we think is a great fit for downtown Lewinsky in fact we're surrounded by colleges Lewinsky's a fun town but the lobby is very active in this area and it includes seating areas for eating there's also seating areas for active play there's like pool table football tables that sort of thing there's like a little convenience you can grab some beers or some snacks or whatever from a convenience like it's almost like a walking closet or something but hotel guests and people from the public can pop in there and grab a sandwich or something and sit in this environment and enjoy that there would be a fitness center as well at the lower level of the area this is just the horizontal way out of the garage as you can see we get roughly 50 spaces a layer going all the way down into the ground and you can see what happens the avalanche weighs out on this side of the building and then it falls away to cast bay on the backside it's fairly tall on the front side I think the rendering showed better but the main there's two emergency egress stairs we're going to make a big deal out of one of them we're facing the street with this glass curtain wall the stairs going back and forth that portion of the building has also got some break on it and a special detail at the top the pattern of street trees you see here was established a long time ago some of those may get relocated depending on utilities other things as we move forward but the idea was to try to maintain the city got well thought out coordinated street development plan in the downtown district we're planning on building on that so I think I don't know if Dave if you've got anything you would like to get out of the public sphere I think I'd like to just open it up for questions unless I don't want to take a long time this figure of law has been designed to basically take advantage of the infrastructure that was all put into place along Abnakie Way and Winnusky Falls way this particular portion of the city also has an extra storm water permit that was designed specifically for nearly 100% in Pervious area for both the parking garage and the hotel it was originally permitted as a surface parking lot but nonetheless those particular tools are already in place so right now the footprints basically respect the wetlands and the wetland buffers that are part of Cassavent Park as well as potentially sensitive archeological areas that at this point in time have not been fully investigated but as long as we stay away from them we're basically clear as far as the division of historic preservation is concerned so again it's what we call an infill project in regards to all the master plan components of the downtown area and again because of the amount of infrastructure investment that was made within the public rights way we're in a very good position to basically allow this project to fit right in in the open area there Thank you Any questions at this point? There have been any initial reactions from the downtown association? So we met with the downtown association which just for the public's information again is the group the major property owners in the downtown area we met with them January 7th I believe and showed them the schematic drawings that you previously saw as part of the budget presentation and some of the highlight components that Greg just walked you through there was universal support for clarification but overall universal support for this improved location of the hotel specifically as well as a lot of support obviously for new parking infrastructure in the downtown that will not only free up public parking spaces in the Casavante garage or existing garage but also allow them to feel more comfortably leasing up their spaces we asked them very directly if there were any litigation concerns they would have if this went forward through permitting given that they were the ones who litigated against us the last time around and they indicated that they had no concerns and were very in support Other questions for Greg? Any concerns about what impact it might have on traffic patterns? Well I'm sure you're aware that the the whole of the downtown TIF district was developed as a master plan community and in developing those master permits at the active 50 level it's a volume to traffic we're anticipated we will need to do fresh findings because it's been 10 years since the it's been a great 10 years since the last master plan but at the time at the time at the time the traffic was master planned there was plenty of traffic allocated for each of the lots and this falls within those allocations we're going to go out and do additional traffic studies as part of our active 50 process to reinforce what we think is going on and we'll say that relocation of a hotel from here to here probably gives more flexibility in terms of the security of that traffic out solves a plethora of problems that we were having down here concerns that were raised by the neighbors as well but we generally speak to traffic a certain amount of traffic has been anticipated for this line of work system on what was anticipated if I can just add to that not specifically about traffic but well actually can you state on that document so one of the goals we heard very strongly from the community and the council historically was maintaining the access to Cassavent this is the last the best public access we have back to Cassavent and if we decide in the future to develop that or make it into more publicly used space through a park plan we need a way to get public safety vehicles back there in a much more appropriate way than we currently can I think that has been very supportive again that building angling to make sure we maintain that public way and that can become a true road for public safety vehicles if we were to have concerts in the field or baseball tournaments or something like that again not necessarily relevant to this Act 250 permit and the traffic implications but in terms of meeting the community's value of getting people moving through that area this alignment does allow for that questions or comments recognizing our role in this process is really of the design and the experience that our residents would have with this total redevelopment of this parcel well I should just first state I'm a consulting traffic engineer and I've actually worked with this team on another product very similar in Montpelier I don't see any conflict of interest with that I'm not at all involved in this but I just want to put that out there I was kind of curious this entrance right there in the hotel is that like just one way in there's no way to turn around and come back out or you'd have to go through the garage I think just what we'd like to do is minimize the throat of this entrance for a couple of reasons but primarily because the cross slope is not an active way so to the extent that we can sort of move our exposure maybe those but also in terms of just the flow we really want to come in it's been a park here to check in and then go right into the garage so yeah that would be one of the entry only this would be two way in and out has that been like discussed with public safety and not at all I'll take advantage of this slide being up just to mention architect I forgot to talk about building we're showing four principle building materials on the outside a cementitious panel by the name of the Ichi Ha a cement composite siding in a couple of different colors so you see the Ichi Ha the stone hills here a couple of different kinds of siding with different exposures on them a lot of stone in the grade level entry area here so we're trying to design a building develop a building where we've broken up in terms of different masses you can see there's several different blocks here different material applications and different colors as well as some modulation building lights to help break this thing down and I have to be one so we can sing the other statement unlike previous versions of this when we were closer to the mill we weren't entirely sure where our branch was at that point either but in this new location we've decided to go with a more modern exterior because I think the sense we were getting from people as we talked to the community is that's the direction they wanted us to head for this project it's certainly consistent with the expectations of Hilton who will give us the latitude to do a completely custom exterior here but we still have interior programming requirements but generally speaking all the stakeholders have kind of embraced this approach to development and design the materials sort of fit with the color and look of some of the other developments in that on that block we had some city lights and then the house where we run the house where we run are two really great refined pieces of modern architecture city lights is pretty exciting it's got a lot going on and there's some version of all of these materials being used in both of those projects I have physical samples of some of this if you'd like to see it and since this is kind of it was kind of a surprise what was your kind of statement Any other questions? I just have a process and timing question so I thought this is honest discussion of approvals basic timeframe if the body did decide to bring the development if you wore the planning commission into a more active review process as we're considering you said that was an option that we have on the table with our role so yes it is always an option for the council to request input from other folks as part of their decision making absolutely this is on as a discussion approval so you can certainly request additional information we can bring it back to you on the 19th I think the challenge for the development team which is solely a challenge for the development team and could be amended is I think there's some interest on the part of the hotel developer and certainly the city too for solving the overall TIFF challenges and what we've negotiated to get in the ground quickly through Act 250 is an involved process and we would like to move that along and quite frankly we have you know about to have a brand new city council so I think this council has seen and heard a lot of these discussions and we are interested in bringing that to you because you've been part of those discussions in the past but it is always your your prerogative to ask for additional input as well and I know we've been at it since 2015 so it doesn't seem like it's going too fast for us we certainly have an opportunity to hear from folks tonight which we'll do once we get all the councillors just a quick question is there a service entrance for like deliveries I don't have a rendering of it but we are all back on the page so we're two ways of not learning this building I don't know if the system is wondering how we'll be there at Gray we'll be able to get great access at the far end but sort of across from the access to the dumpster and clothing for mirror models just looking at the rendering how does ADA compliance and accessibility work well we have we have an accessible route into the stairs would be I mean they'd be designed to be compliant but the pedestrians and people coming in this way that would meet the greater requirements so there is an accessible route from here to the door and the same doors on the back the stairs but no just in the previous rendering it looked like there was only the stairs and then someone had to go down on the traffic ramp I see what you mean I think we need to shorten this and extend that walk around the end at that point we'll be fine I kind of tossed off when I wanted to have it happen that we can correct that similarly on accessibility in the garage how many accessible spaces do you have I didn't really notice any ramps or aisles or anything in there is that just not laid out yet well the levels themselves are flat or essentially flat so all the vertical transitions happens at the speed ramps the 300 spaces I think it's a sliding scale we would probably need something on that or just doing this off the top how's that been accounted for because you usually lose a space with an aisle so when you say that there's 300 spaces or something in there does that include lost space due to aisles I kind of noticed near the elevator shaft that there was a 5 foot narrow than a heartbeat space but then I don't really understand how they get from that elevator elevation down to the exit because that's in the front so I don't think everything is fully labeled on this plan but our thought process was the accessible spaces the accessible spaces would be here where I've got two full site spaces and that is not a space and that happens on every level right adjacent to the elevator so we're going to guide people to park there and go straight in where's the street on this drawing? where's the hotel? we will be compliant but I just don't know it's graphical and those of course are things we could bring back at your next meeting one concern I have is I don't know that you showed this view I think we would buy one that one yeah oops yes so this is a pretty significant intersection and there's a lot of and I'm not an architect so I don't know how to characterize it but there's a lot of wall there and I'm just wondering what discussions you've had about you know the need for that additional that gray concrete blocks sort of breaking up the the experience of the people you know driving down Wendyski Falls Way walking by it feels a little cold to me okay I could take that as an instructive reason there is glass and openings on both sides of that element yeah but the glass on the other side is hard to see on the right hand side yeah it's just because it's in shade but you know this portion of that could get opened up as well and it's a funny thing with the hotel because the side walls of hotel rooms really don't accommodate a lot of windows especially the walls of the TV or a bed ad something that we have to provide help so above the street level I think this is kind of what you're going to get but we have room to improve this and we feel like it's falling short where do those windows look into is that like a stairwell well no in this case this is all part of the lobby none of that like a burnicle these here would be at the end of each corridor right before you get on the stairwell like I said I would not consider myself to be a design expert in any way but if the remainder of the building is going to be pretty much solid wall I'd like to see as much of the space open as possible on the ground level okay I'm happy to take that it is kind of a challenge that you know we lose about half a story for one of these musky falls right but that doesn't mean we can't visually make those so on similar vein I had a similar thought to on this but I like what they did on St. Paul Street in Burlington in front of the one of the newer hotels there they have some public art that kind of makes a noise like a whistling noise as you walk by too and I think that you know like an interesting opportunity here to kind of like lighten up that corner with maybe some like colorful public art or some sort of I don't know what it is but it's like like glass looking stems that kind of stick up out of the ground I think they're kind of interesting well we love all the art and we make space for it here I think the building should carry its own weight in terms of addressing the close concerns but I think both of those things could happen what we're doing in Montpelier where we have a similar and publicly financed project is the Montpelier City Arts City Arts Group is handling the procurement in our department sort of provided a place for it a public engagement process that results in the actual totally supporting that it is kind of interesting that we've ended up where we are I think the relationship between the hotel and the park can be a very positive one for both the hotel and the city I think it's a great part it's cool down here I love going down there I think having a hotel there will make it part of the city unless it's a place where people will hang out so I think this is all good okay, any other questions for Greg right now? I have a lot of questions but I don't know if we have enough time for the next questions I think we could probably take a couple more Trash and Recycling you said was in like a garage area in the building Trash and Recycling was in a garage area this is Winozki Falls way unfortunately I can't take it in the corner but that lower basement was where all the utility rooms were and they'll be inside the building inside the building we don't anticipate a lot of food waste here it's a normal sundry piece of boxes there's no restaurant on site well there's that convenience food aspect and they will provide a breakfast but most of that stuff is pre-portioned it's not like we're getting cases of eggs there's no hotel bar or anything like that well not in a tru as I mentioned we're off let me get the license to sell beers loose in the lobby okay I had a question also about getting in and out of the garage is it going to be like a gate how would you is that too early to tell this now I'll let it so as part of this process we are also looking at unifying the access control system between the two garage facilities so we have an RFP drafted that's been reviewed by the downtown association because they'll be major users to put out to market to figure out what's the best access control system that allows for both permitted users i.e. users like the hotel or Spinner or CZV or FISAC that come in and out every day and public users so that will be released in the next three or four weeks in order to first roll out with an existing garage at Cascades and then as this comes online we'll have a new garage but we are managing that through the city not through the development in the drawing way out didn't see a spot for like queuing vehicles just somebody consider you know we've talked about a lot of different systems and there's all kinds of different systems you pull in it would be a little challenging if somebody was dropping someone off at the hotel and just had to turn around since they can't turn around they'd have to go into the garage I'm sure we can figure something out I haven't up until this point anticipated there being draw arms in those things it's not going to be attended we ready to take some comment from the public at this point we can always come back to additional questions okay anybody from the public that wishes to speak to the presentation we've seen so far and if you do wish to speak could you please identify yourself I wouldn't yield to Amy for this Amy I'm with the planning commission but also I'm a late-seat architect and a citizen so I'm not speaking now the planning commission although there was at the last meeting there was some concern about really starting to activate that edge and I'm not sure if that is actually achieved in this scenario I do have concern with the canting of the building as you end up looking right at that one corner and it doesn't I don't feel it is really addressing the street and especially as you brought up the intersection it seems like there needs to be a more relationship and maybe if there is more glass along the edge and you just see into the building and it's activated it just seems off-board in its position to the street that's obviously a reflection of the environment and the right-of-way in the castle we squared up like all the other buildings are on the street we'd have to relocate that access and I don't think we can that's if if there's other parts of the building that came out but if there was other elements that were added so it wasn't a perfect box it could start addressing the street so that's just one thought there's I guess activating the edge and I know there was concern about the garage and how do you really activate that because that's pretty hard we were hoping maybe there could be program coming across the whole front of it but obviously these are very two separate projects so I think it might be hard to do that but I guess just thinking about people walking along that street and there's really not much that's activating that edge even at the community college so that was some concern that we had I know that was a few things at the planning one of the person at the planning engine had mentioned from my standpoint I'm just curious how far back is the building from the curve because it's a long movement I guess I'm just concerned about the amount of impervious area even though it's been designed to be able to accommodate it we don't want to be paving the whole city we want to be very precise where we need it and where we don't corresponds roughly to the front facade of the garage and those little retaining walls on the edge of the hotel there in that area we've been talking about that's all that is the property line so all the red you see the brick is we're interpreting that as sort of an existing feature that's currently where the sidewalk is that sidewalk does not currently fill that whole space as it is today so well there's a parallel parking right excuse me I'll just jump in Dave Marshall what you see right at that particular location actually Greg you're in a good position but the previous site plan the earlier site plan showed the retention of two parking spaces in front of the proposed hotel and one of the ideas of again just trying to unify the space was perhaps eliminating those and that's what the current renderings indicate so I think that's still open but it does jump at you that when you go and take the pervious area away from the parking space and allocate it to the public space so-called as far as the walkway it jumps out at you it's something we're not used to seeing there's a couple places where there are islands that are that wide but it's not as continuous as what's depicted in the renderings so ultimately that's a work area also whether we introduce green space or try to basically create a more public space that allows for that communication with the facade of the building so those are things that Greg has been working on and we're going to continue to be working on to basically carry the day there because I would suggest yes it's great to have people with who's parking on the street having to sidewalk meet that but where there might not be parking I don't think you need to have the sidewalk come all the way to the edge just there's a lot of there's a lot of pavement I guess our point is within the right-of-way I think we have we have limited control over that whatever happens out here is really part of this that's the city's land city's land? we'll construct whatever you want us to I guess is my point we're trying to comply with your that calls for green strips I guess in my CCB just how that is that's I guess what I was leaning towards so sorry so what about because I know you talk about Casavent as being a nice connection so I think that just reiterates emphasizing that corner and having a welcoming edge to where the access to Casavent would be it just reiterates the idea of the building opening up to that corner and I do like that idea of the wall so that maybe people could sit at the edge of that wall and just say hey let's meet at that wall and go down to the park lighting is there I'm just wondering did you talk much about lighting and how and how it's going to be much more closed and shadowed I think walking down through there so just and I don't think we want to light up Casavent I'm not getting, I don't want that because I know there's a wetland back there and everything I guess I just want to make sure there's no point through there I don't have anything prepared to tell you about lighting you know other than to say we generally the interior of the garage will be lit 24 hours a day with LED lights there'll be a little glow coming out of there for security purposes the street lighting is already established so it really would be whatever new building mounted lighting we wanted to provide in these areas here I am showing in here it should show in our renderings, I don't know how well it shows but we're actually using the light fixtures as a way to sort of define the circulation pattern it's really hard to tell but we have a whole amount of lights with flags on them and they kind of form this part cutting across that patio that defines the rate between pedestrians for vehicle circulation there's a granite curb stretch that would reinforce that and then ballers in between the tall lights but that area will be lit up at night I just want to make sure that access to the garage and to the hotel is good for pedestrians that should be very nice in there okay also, I just had another thought I think the lobby gets sort of lost because it's down the driveway is there any way of taking that stone and sort of wrapping it and bringing it to the front so it sort of brings the entry to the street a little bit more do you know what I mean? I don't really use the wrap a whole thing but it just sort of is tucked back there and I'm just curious about access into there and how I mean you'll figure it out but it's nice and it's obvious yeah I have some great change to deal with unfortunately on like 174 here and 182 up here so there is that it's a bit steep but yeah I'm getting a clear message from everybody that you want to see a little more effort in this area here and we'll do that and come back and I think that was great and and if there is going to be food brought there there's not large trucks that are trying to get in here it's not like restaurant service no through that drive and get through the parking car garages no they would tell the elevators go all the way down to that level there's a receiving area and then that stuff will get back down to a maids car and take it up to the you know to the display area so that will get stayed in the basement service and that way also provides the access for the youngsters for this building so I mean there's sort of there's a bit of a service corridor vibe going on down there and getting back to the previous question that was reviewed briefly when our fire chief as well your access of the building's fire and do you think in that access to Casablanca is there access there to I mean enough room there to put in a sidewalk if people wanted to get down in there I guess I'm just concerned about the access through it threads its way between two known archeological resources and some class three weapons high voltage power lines at the far east end of the parking lot and that creates a pretty significant pinch point for us as far as the flexibility on the alignment of the driveway that particular site plan shows Greg if you can red line that shows the hatched area which would be the alignment that goes from the gravel portion that's within the wetland itself that falls away so-called and out into the extension of Winniski Falls way so that area is still we share that with the apartments immediately to the south they have surface parking for their particular street grade access into the building so we're always trying to reflect the previous commitments that the city had made at that particular location with respect to hopefully how that entry point works so is there the opportunity to basically glorify the cast of entrants yes it's not there today to get a walk through just past there it's going to have to stay more less so I think what I guess I'm getting at is that if a car was pulling in there is there a way that a person could walk by and not get in so I think Jesse had something to say so I think we're talking about two separate things what the city's previous intention has been with the access to Casablan is to allow public safety vehicles back there or set up vehicles back there if we were to have large events back in the field I don't think it's the city's intent to have that be a roadway where cars are going down into the backfield and parking and going to events so I think the sidewalk the road is the sidewalk for all intent and purposes but for when there are big events when it may be pedestrians would be directed through the riverwalk so the public safety vehicles could go on the road I think so that's off-site on-site I think it is a good question about how does that kind of sidewalk frontage carry around the edge of the hotel in order to connect to not have to be kind of a big sea of parking between the redstone building and the hotel and I think that is we need to give you a rendering of what the hotel looks like coming from Casablan so we can see that orientation Heather and I walked it with a reporter a couple of days ago and it is when you stand there and think about this kind of new side of the big building it is a whole new entry point into our downtown that we currently is very ugly so I think we need to tell that picture at the next meeting with another rendering so you can see how people would kind of come around that sidewalk and walk down into the park on that road thank you one last thing the parking car garage it looked like the elevator was only in that corner of the parking car garage and not up at the street level was that that's the way it shows as close to the street as possible if someone on the second floor had to get down and get out to the street that's my concern ultimately I think the uses are great here I think it's a good we've done a good job and I think just addressing a lot of those issues would be good I do think that the planning commission would like to have more setting do you have a meeting between now and our next counseling meeting? on the 14th so again this is not up for necessarily approval tonight so we have an opportunity to get more feedback and have see responses to what we've shared tonight so have you clarified the process as it's not important it's not a base is this an informational meeting or are you asking us to go to the planning commission and come back with some kind of approval well I don't necessarily think we're asking to go to the planning commission for approval but my understanding is that to date it's been a sort of here's the information but and I think Amy's been a nice job articulating some of the concerns I think it's important that council has an opportunity to when before taking action make sure the planning commission has had an opportunity to see some of these renderings and to the extent they have any additional feedback that hasn't been offered via Amy tonight can share that but that it's coming back to this body unless the council has a different view I think it's I heard interest in getting more feedback open to your reactions to that that type of a process so I think again ultimately it's your decision to get feedback from I think it's the development team we should think a little strategically about how that staffed you know this could because it is information for the council to make a decision I think that is a meeting that staff with could go share information, collect feedback and provide that back to the council I'm not sure it's another whole full presentation to those groups because they don't have any I think my ask would likely be like a formal invitation from the planning commission to come to our following council meeting where we'll have an update on this to provide us that feedback as we're making so we did do that for this meeting we did invite both bodies yeah but I think they're going to have a deliberative meeting where they look at this and have some more discussions amongst their body before coming and giving our approval to us or not approval but not feedback rather I just think we need to be really clear what we're asking for so Jesse can you restate what you had proposed in terms of it sounded like you guys were going to talk about what's the best approach because there was an invitation issued to the planning commission and the VRV to join us tonight some great points have been surfaced we still haven't heard from other folks in the audience is the expectation that the planning commission as a body will have a separate meeting review the materials and provide us with a different recommendation in time for our next meeting I think that's the question and it sounds like they do have a meeting between now and our next council meeting and I don't know if this is doable but I think my thought would be they discuss this at their meeting and then whether or not the whole planning commission wants to come back to our meeting I guess it may be me or someone else to come back as well as staff providing your recap of that meeting I guess what I would think would be a little bit clearer would be to take all the comment tonight be clear about the areas sounds to me like you're pretty clear about what you're hearing from folks but we may hear some new and we can have staff reflect this conversation back to the planning commission and invite them to come members to come to the meeting on the 19th and see the revised plans and if at that time there are significant concerns or areas that are felt to be unaddressed they could share that with the council and we can make a decision about whether to move forward on the 19th or not sounds to me is that clear okay so I want to see if there are other members of the public that want to await I'm Doug Johnson I live at 16 Pleasant Street I think moving the hotel and parking the garage to this end of the Act 250 area is being improved and I'm in favor of that so I'm in favor of the location there are small things that one can think about and so my main concern is public access secure and safe public access to the Casaman area along the traditional card common law access route that has been followed and I think as presently rendered many of the features the present render just doesn't seem to lead people who might be coming along when this falls way into that corridor into the Casaman and when you stand at that corner and look at the Casaman all you see is the transmission lines none of which show up in the architect's renderings of the particular project site so I think part of getting people to go there and actually mask I don't think you can relocate the transmission lines I don't think Long Power is going to be interested in that at all but they could be masked by tree plantings and so on that would block Reddyview and suggest real nature out in that particular direction and I think you could do the same thing with the colors on the corner of the building that would lead one in that same direction and that leads me to thinking about the hotel and the kind of color choice that has been made people will argue about aesthetics and there is no design view board that would consider those sorts of things in Manuski and traditionally the development of view board has done it now I can't express my opinions on this as a reflection of the development of view boards but I have my own strong ones and I think the colors are dull and pedestrian and uninteresting and I would urge brighter colors I probably would prefer different kinds of surface material but I think the window treatment is particularly pedestrian even least interesting residential building and the larger group of buildings the river run building has managed to create a more interesting facade by using balconies now maybe a hotel doesn't want balconies that might encourage people to step out and leave maybe there is legislation that prevents that I don't know but it seems to me the window treatment can be more creative more innovative and more interesting to create a better surface of light and shadow more attractive right at the moment it's just a box and it's not particularly interesting and it just continues a trend in the deterioration of interest in the surface of the buildings in the area from west to east and I would really like to see the hotel make a statement that makes it more interesting both architecturally perhaps with some rearrangement of forms that create light and shadow on the surface and more upbeat choice of colors I worry about a massive amount of hard surface that's going to be present here and I'd like Mr. Marshall's assurance that the drainage is not going to be towards the cast event but will be away from the cast event and that existing drainage system would be able to absorb it I think we're missing a huge opportunity for solar panels on the roof of the building or some other creative use of the roof of the building in other ways how about tennis courts or a surface that could be flooded in a gentle kind of way to create a skating surface on the winter and tennis or some other active use in the summer I don't think people are going to want to park their cars either in summer or in winter on an open deck it's too hot for the car in the summer the sun actually does shine in the summer you wouldn't believe it in the winter but it does in the summer and in the winter it's going to be snowy it's going to be a problem I would like to see a light deck that could have other things done on top of it that would cover the top deck of the parking I assume that the CCV student parking and staff parking that takes place down in the garage near the rotary is going to be moved up to here I don't know whether that's a correct assumption but I assume that I think it would be interesting with some direct connection between the garage level on which the student parking and staff parking is going to take place into the CCV building that keeps people from necessarily having to walk in all the weather up that slope up to the main entrance of the community college and perhaps creates a more secure nighttime access back and forth to their particular level in the garage I think you need a pay station on every level I don't know what kind of plans exist for that but experience with downtown Berling group garages encourages me to think that more rather than fewer pay stations is a good thing and I worry about the frame of the building and whether it is going to be built in a way that would be able to carry more levels of garage construction on top of it as future demand and the success of a hotel and the need for more parking in downtown would be obvious and so charging stations are there plans for charging stations more than one electric vehicle I think it's the way of the future more common and so equipping the garage in that way I think My Tesla doesn't make it around the corner I think you have a real flow of traffic kind of problem into the garage now you've got a higher elevation on the CCD side the entrance possibility where public access would be steered from that side rather than running in front of a hotel did you say there were going to be how many 90 rooms in the hotel or 180? as many as 180 180 a lot of cars going in and out during the day and I think you've got kind of mixed uses in there and if I don't know, I can't visualize how it's going to potentially be a short point other comments from the public this time I really appreciate you both being here sharing your insights and expertise Eric yeah, so following up on the comment for passive and access I'm wondering if some of that concern might be included or solved for future wayfinding work in the downtown we might be doing we will be doing so we should have an RFP out next month and I do think that will be covered so Greg do you feel as though you've got a pretty clear picture of some of the feedback you've received tonight or do you have questions back for us? I definitely appreciate the input we're trying to solve a lot of technical problems it's important to remember that your architecture doesn't get left behind so I appreciate that and yeah, I think I have a pretty clear idea of what everybody is saying you know, obviously the stuff on the building is readily addressable sort of repositioning the building on the site and things that may be a little difficult to come back with honestly, I can just tell you that we've iterated this thing to death and this was the thing that all parties seem happy with because I've got a lot of the city, the garage, the hotel helping me but yeah, there's always room for improvement I can see it here and lively colors would be great lively colors would be beat down for that so I'll happily go explore that a little bit I think all your comments are germane and helpful so I've heard three themes the experience of the street face the ADA accessibility particularly with respect to the garage and the entrance to the hotel that corner there and oh boy and Casablan exactly, thank you the whole view calls way experience I think used to be a little bit used to be articulated so people understand we failed to present a view from that perspective but we did as many as we could but yeah and obviously the color and the fenestration university on the building needs another level of refinement we're happy to do that and so the planning commission's going to receive an update about what happened tonight and if they want to come to our next meeting and weigh in on the next iteration of this, we welcome them to join us at that time is this all on the agenda at the next plan? the agenda hasn't been set yet we're primarily, right now we have the local concerns meeting for these downscoping study on the agenda so we can add this to that discussion as well could be an update but just to make sure folks understand that this where we're at in the process and the feedback that we've received and what we expect to see on the 19th I have one other question I've heard levels of the garage I'm looking here it's going up at 13% is that normal? yeah it's a strategy there's multiple different ways you can deploy these garages if you slope the whole deck obviously you have flatter slopes but then the entire the entire facility is sloped that increases the connection costs we've been getting input from people anyway we've got this input in Montpelier where creating level decks with speed rates between them at least gives you some utility that if someday in the future nobody is using garages anymore this building has some salvage value because some of the level 4 plates would still function as usable space and it does provide sort of big flat surface I don't know about tennis courts but you can't imagine taking the top floor of the garage and using it for some purpose because it's flat now you can just cone off the last ramp and do things up there for instance Burlick used to show movies on the board for their parking garages so to the extent that it's right there by the park and everything I can foresee having the flat decks being helpable yeah that's very typical sacrifice in the short term ramping for a more sort of universally flat experience just as a fun anecdote every year we try to convince waking windows to do a stage on the top of the garage car, car, car hasn't happened yet okay any other discussion on this thank you very much for joining us we'll move on to item C which is related just a little bit yeah S250 co-applicant request important so this will obviously come back to your agenda on hey Dave hey Dave Dave Marshall Dave Marshall so this, the design will obviously come back to you at your next meeting as can the next agenda item if you choose so the two votes just as a reminder are approving the design and then approving the city to be a co-applicant on an Act 250 permit amendment for both parcels since we will be the landowner and developer on one and we are currently the landowner on the other that's really a procedural question for you you can decide to do that tonight or you can do that with approval of your design as well yeah I would just add really with the signing on as co-applicant to the Act 250 permit really signals that you support the project right now there's still some questions about the design but you ultimately support the development of a hotel and parking garage on this lot so that's really what that's an indication of and my understanding is that that process can take a little bit of time so sounded to me like folks were eager to get at least that piece of it under way if we could that would be good district 4 is really busy and downtown development projects are complex regulatory point of view so the more time we can give the district coordinator to deal with this the better and it also us filing the application process also gets people to start coming forward with their concerns other state departments but ultimately the project doesn't move forward with our approval of the design anyway so it's not we've started a runaway train that we can't pull back if for some reason exactly and my understanding is Act 250 doesn't on these kinds of projects Act 250 doesn't comment on the aesthetics of the building they really lead that to the local permitting process there are a number of permits that will have to be applied for the city to make this process go forward Act 250 is obviously a significant one as is your design approval of the site it can't move forward under construction did you say earlier Greg that part of the Act 250 process you were going to be doing a traffic updating the traffic is that there's a special Act 250 process set up just for this downtown area so there were previous permits and we're in a process of we would be amending the last permit that went through which was probably city lights so yes we'll have to provide fresh findings for criteria 5 which is traffic there's a few others that we'll have to update in order to plug into that but it's a weird kind of process that will go longer because we'll send it to them they'll send things back but yes does anybody have any questions about this process and I would need reservations about moving forward with this this evening okay any comment or questions from the public on the question of becoming a co-applicant to the 250 permit amendment process okay if we don't have any anything else anybody on that side of the table want to add alright and I would entertain a motion to approve the Act 250 co-applicant request so the proposed Abnecki garage and hotel development motion by Hal second by Eric all those in favor say aye motion passes thank you alright item D sewer reserve fund transfer request for the headwork project some heavy stuff there so we received bids for the excuse my cold did you have a long weekend yeah thank you for your service finally I'm very glad the manager's back so this is for the headworks project that we've seen the vote for the the bond for last round so in January 17th we received bids back for this project bids came in at $1,127,284 so what we are requesting is a $210,000 transfer from the sewer undesignated sewer reserve fund to cover the additional costs from the bids so we have a $1.2 million bond approval so what I provided is some additional detail of our findings we worked with our consultant Aldrich and Elliott to look at the first thing was what kind of value engineering alternatives can we look at for a project like this it's pretty specific it's pretty specific equipment of course there's not a lot of value engineering we can do on a wastewater treatment plan project we did look at all the bids the bids were actually we received four bids they were pretty tight so we were looking at most were in that $1.2 million range so we didn't see many discrepancies there so we also listed a couple of reasons for the cost increase a lot of it is items that are unfortunately out of our hands we're looking at potential tariffs that disrupted the market we looked at American iron and steel requirements for these federal projects and just general high demand for these MEP type projects so we have a representative from A&E here tonight as well if you have any additional questions on that I have a question about the use of the $210,000 and what impact that has on some of the modeling we've seen with respect to the main street and pick up I don't know how to pick it what impact that has probably the most important question Angel and I looked at the modeling and what that kind of does to our sort of outlook for our capital improvement plan looking at the debt that would be coming online for main street so the modeling that was shown to you and the projected rate increases for the sewer fund we're not looking at any changes in that luckily we do have a pretty healthy reserve balance right now and really it's for these kind of issues that come up with projects so we wouldn't see any right now with the modeling we wouldn't see any change in the rates that we've presented so far and you do feel like with what's left over we don't hit water main or break issues all over the place but we're still in an okay place with what's left for reserves I mean luckily on the sewer side if a sewer break happens that's something our guys can take care of to clean currently and if it's really deep water sides that's one of those unknowns we usually have contractors come in and plus the treatment plan is usually pretty that's not something that you're looking at emergency repairs typically it's usually a long planned process for those improvements so yeah we're pretty comfortable with that can you speak a little bit to the scope revisions that were there were those just determined to be necessary changes to the project based on what yeah sure and actually that's probably a good one for any Jason to step in so in the scope revisions identified you've seen significant ones added in the final design phase where replacement of the existing influence pipeline and adding some manholes to maintain a bypass line so I'm not sure how familiar you are with the wastewater treatment facility but this structure this new structure is going in on the influence side of the waste stream so where the gravity sewer comes in from the town so we have to intercept that gravity stream to bring it through the new building so some of the additions that were put in through the final design process were to help maintain that continuity during construction so there was some cost out of there one of the one of the sort of updates with NFPA820 which is a compliance for electrical mechanical hazardous areas is it's a lightning protection so we're seeing these more and more on new buildings which is important obviously in long term with a lot of the electrical components in these buildings in some of their locations you've got some sensitive equipment that is important to really protect long term so through the code some of the code changes that we've been seeing recently these are newer additions that are becoming more and more mainstream I would say in some of the designs of the last year or so so those are probably some of the significant costs in scope changes I think long term is definitely value added in some of it being the additional pipeline for bypassing that's really a constructability aspect but it's somewhat of a necessity to maintain operation of the plant because that just Thank you. Any other questions for John? Was it a surprise that we got like that 20% higher bid was it like we were just hoping that it was going to come in under bid Well it wasn't a surprise I mean so talking with Andy and basically historically the projects they've seen come into bid they kind of give us a heads up based on the bids that they've been seeing like there's a good chance that it could come in higher so in that respect there wasn't going back a year historically yes I think just to add to that so the bond vote was in March of 2018 and so the bond vote was based on cost estimates from fall of 2017 so you know at that point you're basing your bond vote cost on a preliminary engineering estimate after the bond vote we had gotten into final design and through the past year working through final design I think as John indicated there have been a number of issues that we've been seeing with equipment vendors there's a significant amount of equipment on this project with tariffs and with AIS working through some of the procurement requirements, American Iron and Steel equipment vendors aren't holding prices anymore so unless you have a PO purchase order for purchasing equipment you can't get a reliable price so we've been seeing a lot of fluctuation pricing for equipment over the past year and I think another thing that John mentioned was mechanical and electrical subcontractors that typically work for these GCs they're I don't know where they're working but they're incredibly busy right now and they're putting out pricing to reflect how busy they are so we've been seeing a lot of higher pricing as since eight months, nine months from these MEP contractors on the set of multi-disciplinary products I think it's also important to know that so John was not here when we did this bond vote and this project planning in advance of town meeting day 2018 so ultimately that surprise although I don't think it has been a surprise for the last six months or so is my I am accountable for that not John I'll take actually I've been in the same position on the other side of the table so I just want to add one more thing on the $210,000 that you're considering transferring from capital reserves to the project it is an up to $210,000 so for the project to move forward with funding through the Clean Water SRF program the city needs to demonstrate that financing is whole so right now at this phase of the project with the bids that we have we're looking at the project being around $1.4 million which brings about the $210,000 in efficiency in the total project cost we are carrying a $56,000 contingency which is money that's not allocated anywhere and there certainly will be change orders but you could end up with some of that money still being remaining at the end of the project there are some other costs being legal fiscal short-term interest that may not end up being where they are in the total project cost currently and in addition to that the city is eligible for right now currently through the funding program $35,000 in loan forgiveness which is not taken into account in the total project cost right now so just to be clear the allocation of the $210,000 is up to $210,000 to demonstrate that funding is whole we'll keep that in mind for our motion any other questions just a historical point of memory serves me correctly this was something that was budget neutral because of the retirement of old debt correct we have some debt coming off this FY20 okay any questions or comments from the public on this question I have one I was thinking back to you know with our pool project that came in a little bit high too and given the time it takes to get from a bonvo concept and rising costs I wonder if the way we're approaching the budgeting here should be including more contingency to be prepared for things like this just something to think about yeah no it's a good point so what we try to do with you know projects like Main Street and the pool you know we're not looking at what 2017 2018 values are but what the 2019-2020 direction so we build a little bit of contingency I think the other point with those two projects which is much more helpful is we have some leeway on the scope so we can you know we can reduce scope if we're seeing prices are a little higher we can build in at alts you know like for example the pool if shade structures and you know slides you know those can be at alts to potentially pull out the costs unfortunately a project like this you know like Jason mentioned it's mostly equipment pieces we can't pull out the screening or something defeats the whole purpose these are two pretty large pieces of equipment that are very expensive thank you any other discussion at this point I would entertain a motion to approve up to $210,000 of sewer reserve to capital for the head works project motion by Eric second by Hal all those in favor say aye motion carries thank you very much now I think item E is related so we'll stick with you John so now that there is funding so this is to award the contract to the lowest lowest proof bitter NECO of Weitzfield Vermont in the amount of $1,127,284 any other information we need for this motion any questions from councillors any questions from the public seeing none I would entertain a motion to approve or to award the bid to NECO of Weitzfield in the amount of $1,127,284 motion by Hal second by Eric all those in favor say aye thank you we'll get some sleep okay next item on the agenda is to receive the Vermont Economic Progress Council tax increment financing district annual reports so this is annual report we are required to submit to Vermont Economic Progress Council on our TIFF review Angela and Heather spend a lot of time in January putting together this report where we are in the TIFF district is really reporting on the income streams and the increment we're receiving and the debt we're paying out we don't have new active projects we're not taking on new debt at this point it's just paying off that debt as scheduled so this report has been submitted to VEPSI they have reviewed it sent it back for some comments which we've resmitted is that you all receive a copy of it and review it for the final submission to the state and that is due February 15 February 15 any highlights? would you like to point out or is it pretty it's a reporting function I understand so it's not so there's some big numbers on here so I think one of from my perspective it's always interesting to look at these numbers this number doesn't change over time but the original taxable value of the TIFF district was $25 million the current taxable value is almost $1.3 million so if you or $103 million sorry really thank you who just points off there so if you think about that increase in that increment that's coming both over what was estimated and this report represents the first year where we are filing with the reconciled OTB after the new TIFF legislation came out in 2015 we had a file of reconciliation report with VEPSI this is the first year we're reporting on those numbers the previous OTB was $24,822,900 so it has gone up slightly for what the city can retain great and like next year's report will include potentially if it gets built like the garage or something like that this list, this $103 million will continue to increase we continue to do that it may not increase next year because those values are set as of April 1st but the following year once we can count the property in the grand list as developed any other questions for Angela or Jesse I think the numbers are very are wonderful to look at but I think that behind those numbers there's a lot of hard work by a lot of individuals here in this room and elsewhere I have the tiniest little grammar things that I noticed or typos I don't know if you want those if those are helpful at all on the page 4 out of 6 in section 2 there's a typo in employment and then section 8 in the middle talking about rooms, meals and alcohol it's rooms, rooms and alcohol it's rooms, no rooms no more rooms all those rooms we don't have yet sorry where is it at some of the rooms I found but sorry I just saw those and didn't know if it was helpful to pass those along but this is fantastic to read and I appreciate all the work that we did that's amazing though it's only 6 pages long and there's really so much to be happy about that's what you said that's what he has really streamlined this reporting and listened to feedback and adapted the workbooks for what tips are actually experiencing so they're really incorporating our feedback it's kind of silly to think that the TIF district only impacts that outline I mean it brings the whole community up too that whole cost just to acknowledge the work even further Angela and Heather submitted this report originally a week early and received the feedback from them they had given it their review of it back to us before any other community had provided their first report so thank you to Angela and Heather for her piece that's where you get the 8 plus plus so the recommended action is for us to accept this report presented by staff so that they can move it along in the process I'd entertain a motion to accept the report on the FY 2018 TIF district activities second by Cory all those in favor motion carries so the next two items on the agenda are executive session matters the first is executive session pursuant to Title I, Section 313-1B labor relations agreements with AFSCME employees and the second topic is executive session pursuant to Title I, Section 313-1E pending litigation to which the public body is a party so Jesse are we inviting anybody with us or is this just yes for the first one I'd like to invite in Angela John are you staying are you going to be John and Julie to executive session and then the last one will just be me so I would entertain a motion to enter with Jesse Baker Angela John and Julie for the purposes stated on the agenda second my Eric second by Hal all those in favor please say aye motion carries we'll enter into executive session and return to adjourn only