 Good, excuse me, good to go. So welcome everyone, and then the South Burlington steering committee meeting, and after that, the pre-town meeting public information session on Monday, March 6, 2023. We'll begin with the Pledge of Allegiance, please. Would you like to lead us? Start it now. 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. Item two is instructions on exiting the building in case of an emergency. Great, thank you. So for those joining us in the room, thank you for being here. If there is an emergency in the room, please go out either door to the back of the auditorium to the left or right, and then go outside to the left or right. For those joining remotely, I'm very sorry you can't see us, but I'm very glad you can hear us. We are working on the camera. We've got maybe, I don't know, many people in the audience, and the city council here, all but Matt Coda and the school board, I believe, all here with a few of you online. If you do have any technical difficulties during the meeting or for some reason the sound goes so we can't hear you here, please do put your comments in the chat, and I will be sure that those comments or questions are out loud. Thank you very much. Item three is the agenda review. Are there any additions, deletions, or changes in the order of agenda items? Seeing none, then I don't see anyone online waving their hand. Okay, item four, comments and questions from the public not related to the agenda. Are there any? I don't think, if you are online and would like to make a comment not related to an agenda item, you can either turn your camera on to be called upon or put a question in the chat. Does it look like anyone? Okay. So item five is approving the minutes from the January 23, 2023 steering committee meeting. We approve the minutes. Is there a second? Second. Any discussion? Okay, all in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. The minutes are approved. Next, item six will turn it over to Violet Nichols, the superintendent. She's going to give a presentation of the FY24 school budget. The phone needs to be turned on. There we are just in keeping with the theme of technical difficulties. We don't have such fancy a tech at the school district. We just have to yell into a sound bar on the side as some of you have seen or heard. Anyway, good evening. My name is Violet Nichols. I'm the superintendent of the South Burlington school district. It's a pleasure to be here this evening to share with you all one last final time some of the highlights of this budget. That's really representative of a number of people's a good a great number of input and work from many constituents within the district. I'm looking right now at Tim Jarvis. He's our senior director of operations and finance. And while I'll have the pleasure of delivering these this information to you this evening. I want to thank Tim as well as many other members of our teams administrators educators school board for helping to shape a budget that we feel is really supportive of our students and our educators and an important strong school system which we believe strengthens the community as a whole. So this evening I'm going to be walking you through some of the highlights of our budget. And I'll thank Jesse for running the tech for me. And we can. No slides. I'm happy to start talking through I can start talking through this so I'll talk to you about some of the highlights of how we developed this budget and really number one is supporting students that's always the center of all of our decision making. And this year in particular we had to think about a few headwinds as we develop a budget that supports students in this current economic and hiring climate. How can we craft a budget with the loss of these ESR funds these pandemic relief dollars which we've put toward supporting students academic and social emotional needs. And as we know according to our data are both our anecdotal data such as survey data as well as more qualitative data such as student assessment results. We know that these needs the social emotional and academic needs have not been remediated during the short time these pandemic relief funds have been so we have this task of supporting students where needs are high. We know that we have high consumer price index or inflation. We've got chronic facilities needs district wide. We're seeing those most notably right now at the elementary level at two of our schools. Rick Mark cut central school and orchard elementary school who have significantly over enrolled school populations. Throughout the district we have facilities needs and each one of our buildings so I'll walk us through the details of some of the bond that's proposed this year to support some of those needs facilities really do drive how we can educate students. So that's an important part of the conversation. So finally we had to think about staffing with these short term ESR funds we've had the ability to hire many staff members to support students academic and social emotional learning needs in alignment with agency of education requirements. So this year we had the task of thinking about how to support students while returning to a staffing to student ratio that more closely resembles this pre pandemic funding. So these are some of the big approaches. Now this slide is going to walk you through some of the specifics of what staffing might look like for us. We're planning on reducing our full time employees by 23.75. This is we have an asterisk here that I feel probably should be bigger and bolded. Those who know me and have worked with me know that I believe in promoting from within and retaining and supporting our staff is critical. I do believe in my heart of hearts that we have the absolute best staff and educators in the state at South Burlington. Our retention rates are high. If we compare ourselves to neighboring districts and those across the state, which our friends at the Vermont Superintendents Association have in a in a survey. We see that our staffing in our schools is some of the best in the state. And so reducing our staff is not something that we take lightly and many difficult decisions went into this. So I'll tell you some of the specifics here. We do have some of this Essar funding left this elementary and secondary schools relief funding otherwise known as this short term pandemic relief funding. And of course you'll hear Jesse and her presentation describe this funding how it applies to the city. But for us we've we've used this funding primarily to staff our schools to support our students. So few positions that we are proposing shifting into Essar this year is a student engagement coordinator at the high school. This position currently exists. We link this position to social emotional learning. We know that not every student is going to be drawn to football or basketball or maybe some of the traditional venues that we've been known for itself. So this person is really supportive of all kinds of ways of engaging students that are outside of some of our typical venues and there are several hundred of these positions. So this has been a really critical way for our students to continue to engage in school. We're also proposing a math interventionist at Rick Marquott Central School as we look at meeting the needs of students academically and being in compliance with agency compliance with agency of education. Multi tiered systems of supports and Act 173 which has been rolling out. We know that it's important to have layers of support between a classroom teacher and a special educator. So having an interventionist who can support mathematics instruction is really really critical especially at the elementary level so that we can focus on early support and early intervention. Finally there's a point for our teacher at the high school. Again this is another current position. None of these are new positions. These are all people who are currently working in these roles. We do have some proposed additions to the local budget. These are shifts from Essar as you can see indicated here and I'll walk you through some of these. Spoiler alert it's more of the same right supporting students social emotional and academic needs. So the first is a communications coordinator. This actually is outside of that direct student support this role. I think is more supportive of student family connection and relationship which we could link to social emotional learning. The importance of home and school and district communication is essential. I was just discussing this actually with one of the counselors who has children in the district and this position has been partially funded by Essar. Up next three math interventionist one at Orchard Elementary Chamberlain and the middle school again shifted positions from Essar. These math interventionists provide that layer of support between a classroom teacher at the elementary level or the middle school level and provide support for students who don't need to be working with a special educator but who might need a bit of additional support in certain areas so that they don't fall behind. Finally a one full time special education coordinator. This position is proposed to be split between half time at our middle school and the other half of the time at our elementary schools all three of them. This position is one that's lived in the district before our current director of education support systems used to fill a similar role to this at the middle school and you see her title here. She served as a special educator and special education building based coordinator. We've made the decision to provide middle school support but also to bring this person part time to our elementary schools. Our some of the data that we've used to evaluate the staffing decision has really centered on the many students matriculating into our system from pre-k programs or from homes who are coming in with greater needs social emotionally and academically. So many of the students who say were two or three or four and in these early pandemic years and we're seeing that students coming into our kindergarten programs are coming in with higher IEP rates individualized education plans than in years past. So really wanting to focus on early intervention here so that we can support our students from a young age on. And those are the details of the proposed additions again these are all people currently work within our system. So, you know getting to brass tax here what does this mean for our our wallets a 7.17 proposed increase for the expense budget. This is a 3.93% impact on the residential or homestead tax rate. I'll contextualize some of those numbers in a moment as we move on. I do want to provide some information on on what this how this money is allocated. You can see here that on this pie chart about 80% of this cost is employees. We are a people heavy company business. I need something less we need something more personal here enterprise. Thank you. Yes. And our work is educating young people with people right so this 80% is a pretty standard healthy number for many schools. The blue color here this royal blue represents salaries and you're at about 57%. And then the larger slice of about 21.5% the orange are benefits. This year 12.5% of our of our budget is health insurance alone. These are one of the costs that have really driven the the budget up. So although we're eliminating proposing to eliminate 23.5 positions. We have costs where if we strictly rolled over. We would be at a much greater percentage so I just want to draw your attention to really the the lean budget that we're presenting this evening. I'll use another example off the back of the snowstorm. You know as I greeted our facilities staff as they're dropping salt and plowing our parking lots. The cost of that gasoline and that salt is about 6.5% greater than last year. Right so you know given inflation and some of these costs in particular this this health insurance which you'll hear me say again next year. This health insurance rate is negotiated statewide and they'll continue to go up for the next few years. Sure. My apologies. Not at all. Yes salaries is the the royal blue color and it's about if I if I verbally went through with that be supportive. Great. Sure. Yep. So this. Yes. Yes. The largest portion of this pie is the the royal blue it's a salaries. And it's about 57%. The next largest slice I'm going to move clockwise here is that orange and its benefits and it's about 21.5%. In this gray again moving clockwise services 11 it's about 11% followed by supplies in yellow equipment is that lighter blue. Followed by green which is contingency funds right so money is budgeted for negotiations. All three of our unions are negotiating this. Well two of them negotiated this year for our current fiscal year one negotiating this year for fiscal year 24. Finally the smallest sliver is the darkest blue on the screen and that's debt services at 0.6%. This is about five and a half million dollars which for a school district is incredibly low. Any guesses on why our debt is so low facilities we've not invested in them and that's representative of the large backlog. Of facilities needs that you'll see throughout our district. More detailed information on that can be found on our website. We have our facilities stewardship plan which has planned maintenance right so things like roofs and windows just as many of us would have planned for our home rooms say every 30 years. Further questions on that or was that helpful. So folks in the audience joining us virtually won't be able to hear the question so what I'll do is repeat it. After you state it and so that the virtual participants can hear. Yeah I'm just curious. I know that facilities everyone's talking about it right the heating system at the high school the roof at the middle school. So when you say that that debt service by the way I'm Cindy Freeman the debt service is low. Is that because we are being conscientious and we have that in the funding already or will the taxpayers be asked to contribute to that as well as this budget plan. Yeah great question. Thank you. So this current sliver is what we currently hold for debt. I'll give one example of what this is so it's not it is things like our Chromebooks. So we have about half a million dollars of Chromebooks that we ordered this summer and we had to take out a loan for those and there's interest associated. Any new when we talk about the bond a little later in this conversation there would be new there would be debt services associated with any new bond. I will say anytime I talk about our bond folks are going to hear me say you know we have worked with the council to turn on impact fees for the part of the bond a $6 million portion of the 14 and a half million dollar bond which is for these zero energy modulars or zems to support over enrollment at the elementary level the eight and a half million dollars proposed for things like the middle school roof windows at the high school kitchen upgrade at the high school school ADA compliant bathrooms sidewalks that are safe for students those would have those would be tied to the bond and would have a new debt service and they're not represented in this chart right here. And I should add this is the it says it's the proposed expense budget for FY 24 but and Tim jump in if I'm wrong here this sliver here I think these are FY 23 numbers. That center says push in the center. Okay. Yes. Yeah, so the debt service that you see here is representative of the bonds that have passed in historically. And it's a balance of about $5.2 million, which is very low. So the question of, you know, why is it so small is because we have not invested very much money in the recent 10 years or more that would have incurred debt. So this percentage will increase should the bond pass tomorrow. But it is representative of under spending under investment. Historically which is quite frankly why we're in the situation we're in with our facilities. Thank you, Tim. It's extremely helpful. So getting back to the budget. Some of the factors that impact the budget that we've just shared with you some of the details of we can continue on Jesse. One of the main factors you know when we talk about creating a budget that supports student needs we need to look at enrollment. We have had for many, many years enrollment projections calculated by a demographer. And we did the same this year this fall. We worked with Mr. Jerome McKibbins, and he's known for being one of the best demographers and we asked him again, what are the projections for students who are going to be coming into our system and what does this look like. So this chart here has projections for FY 24 through FY 27 as well as our current numbers and what you see here are big increases at the elementary level. And then our biggest one you'll notice that is at the middle school next year. So these students are going to matriculate through our system. And we're going to need facilities that support our students, both now at the elementary level. And then soon we'll have to continue these conversations as a community about how are we going to have a middle school and high school facilities that meet our students needs. So, you know, I'll put a plug in for board meeting attendance or committee participation, the enrollment committee who worked very hard last year to bring us the solution of the ZEMS for the overcrowding at Rick Marcott and Orchard. Shared a report in June, which made two recommendations, which this our board has decided to pursue for community engagement around facilities conversations. So these master visioning and future planning conversations are just getting started. The board has decided to take one of the recommendations of the enrollment committee and start a fifth grade transition committee. This is a committee that will evaluate middle level programming and to will ultimately make a recommendation to the board for a move or not of our fifth grade students. Ultimately, this recommendation will be brought to an infrastructure committee and the infrastructure committee will make recommendations to the board on renovations or new builds at the middle and high school level. You know, again, I should say any potential move of fifth grade or not would be multiple years down the road. We know that we need these modules now at the elementary level. And we know that we need to open up these conversations. So I want to be really clear that we the ZEMS are something that are needed now and a conversation about fifth grade is something that would be is still important, although down the road a bit. So we can be in a planful place, right? Not one where we're to having conversations about emergency units for students to learn in this year. Earlier in the presentation, I mentioned one of the important goals for was for us to return staffing levels to resemble some of the pre pandemic funding levels. Again, every staff member is critically important to our organization. And we also recognize that having a budget that taxpayers can support is critical. And so you can see if your eye is anything like mine, it's drawn instantly to this data point in 2023 and you see this best fit line strong correlation just totally changed. So this is the year when we decided to the district decided to use the lion share of this pandemic relief funding, this SR funding to bring on humans to educate our younger humans. So this is money relief support in year one it looked like things like PPE right so social distancing some health measures, virtual teachers, and then it shifted to be more social emotional and academic support related as well. Some of the effects of the pandemic is time we're on. Now we're in a place where there was no gradual plan for sunsetting. We knew that this cliff would come. And we are unfortunately here. And so this proposed budget is is looking at the reduction of these 23.75 positions. These were hard decisions, I will say eight of them are currently unfilled. So that brings us to about 15 every year through attrition we're able to retain about a dozen staff members. That's an average. So I'm hopeful that we can keep any of our valued staff. Again, the closing of eight unfilled requisitions was really part of the way that we're able to get to this number of 23.75. Yes, absolutely. Yes, so I'm looking at a for those of us at virtually if you can't see the screen I'll just verbally articulate this. The orange line is the full time equivalent so that's a staff member and the blue line is enrollment. So we're looking at this trend of when we think about a budget we think about again 80% of this is staff. We want to make sure that we have a staffing level that correlates with our enrollment. And so the use the historical rates in 2019 the student to staff ratio was 5.17. The hovering in that 5.17 to 5.14 range until employees were hired for pandemic relief brought us to 4.72 students to staff member. This proposed budget is returning that ratio to 5.04 students to staff. I will say, I think it's important to note here when we're discussing any kind of staffing ratio. We're not talking about professionally licensed teachers to students. We're talking about every member of our organization. So this is everyone from those who drive our students to school on buses who provide janitorial services to those who work in the business office. The organization is included in this ratio. Let's not forget students these are important bringing us back to the why here so supporting our students and what's the budget impact for these students on our end taxes. This graphic I think is an important one. As we develop programming we think about our neighboring districts. We do believe we have the best district in the state in order to continue our high quality of education. We need facilities to allow us to educate our students in diverse ways. And we need to think about when we think about our programming. We look at these districts here. This is a simplistic graph that is to say that it's looking strictly at the education tax rate by district. Understanding each district has different needs, right? Different debts, different populations. Again, this is just a simple tax rate comparison. And you see South Burlington on the left and you can see our neighbors and this is ed tax rates by district. Another way of saying this is of the 259 districts in the state. We are 229th for Ed spending. That was a stunning fact to me when I came to South Burlington. I was really surprised to learn that our education tax rates are so low that we would rank 229 in the state of 259. This graph depicts some of the residential ed tax rates over time. This is a 19 year trend. And you can see on the far right this proposed tax rate of 1.34. This is something we've really tried to propose a lean tax rate this year. We understand that inflation has an impact on our families. And we know that our families need to be supported to support our students, right? So with the cost of heat, food, housing, all on the rise, having a fiscally responsible budget is critically important. We also made the decision to go out for a bond for some of these facilities stewardship items such as roofs, windows, ADA compliant bathrooms. And that was a strategic move that allowed us to really keep this tax rate low and to spread the cost of these needed facilities items over a 20 year period. Again, trying to alleviate tax burdens on our community. So this slide here shares some information on what exactly this tax rate means. We have some information here on average condominium and average home prices within South Burlington. So the average condominium is assessed at $293,152 here in South Burlington. What is the change if you own a condo? It's about $12 more per month or $149 more per year with this proposed budget. The average home price is assessed at $437,384. If you own this average home, the increase per month is about $19, which equates to $223 per year. So this is a way I think that allows us to contextualize what does this tax increase really mean for us dollars and cents per month. So this concludes the portion of our budget presentation. I can take questions on this now or move directly into the bond. That's past comments of people making as the meeting was starting confirming they could hear us. I am monitoring the chat just in case. You mentioned so part of the budget you received grants for the facilities to work on the facilities. That's what I heard. I heard so how much of how many grant? What's the amount that you have that will be work will be, you know, directed toward the facility maintenance that needs to be done. Yeah, great question. I appreciate the opportunity to expand upon this. So in our bond, we have proposed bond of $14.55 million. And in that the there are $6 million proposed for the zero energy modulars at Rick Markott and orchard elementary school. As we currently literally do not have roofs to put over our students head heads and when what when I receive. And a questionnaire from, you know, any developer saying do we have an impact fee questionnaire from the state I have to say no we do not have room and we cannot accept students in these neighborhoods. You know, I believe development to be a good thing that enriches our schools in our community. And at this point in time we cannot accommodate any more students and so the $6 million portion of the book of the bond is tied to this Zems project. The city council, the board directed me to bring impact fees to support this project to city council city council made the decision to turn impact fees on for education, tied specifically to this Zems project. Knowing that we will likely have a phase two potentially to the middle school and three associated to the high school. This is a impact fees are a mathematical calculation that are tied only to the Zems project. And so we estimate that about 91% of the $6 million Zems cost will be covered by those impact fees which are paid by developers and those building homes. And so those will be recognized as revenues. We do have to go to bond for that money so there will be an amortization, of course, for about 20 years. And, you know, we do expect these this this money ought to offset that, you know, by 91%. So the remaining bond is about $8.55 million. So we don't have any grant money, we have the impact fees that will come in to pay back the Zems, if the bond passes. And then we have an 8.55 million dollar portion of this bond. It's just the one bond. We felt that was a really important equity issue, and that we can't say that a roof or windows to remediate possible harmful, you know, contaminants in potentially the windows right at the high school which are original 1960s windows, certainly not energy efficient, we know that for sure. But we can't say that any one of these needed facilities issues is more important than another windows roofs and literal spaces, such as the Zems to learn in all allow students in our system to continue learning. So that was one of the driving factors and the decision to package the one bond. So no grant money associated with facilities. We have used this as our money for employees for personnel. Can you put the mic in front of your face? Yeah. The other question I have is, so right now with our tipped districts. We give a base of 25% and 75% is held until we receive the revenue from the developments that are where we're creating. That won't be until 2037. Does that hurt the education fund of the elementary middle school and high school. Sure. So this is an opinion question right so the school districts got school districts got SR funding we don't we don't have tipped funding. So the question, you know, does development within the city hurt the schools. You know, I can say that that Jesse and I have worked hard to, you know, develop a relationship and I think have been really successful in in coming together to say, you know, going forward. You know, Jesse knows from the city side and the council knows they have certain projects that that, you know, are tied with, say, Tiff money right so there are goals. The district side, you know, I've said the same thing as I've said here tonight. We need zems for elementary levels immediately. You know, it does seem that we're going to need renovation for the middle school and potentially a new build for the high school should the community decide that's what they'd like to do to address our facilities needs. And I really do see this as a way for the city and the school district to work together to say, you know, say the community decides five years down the road that we need middle school renovations or that we need a high school rebuild. You know, I think, you know, I've certainly gotten a commitment from Jesse that we would work together to have bond years that are, you know, supporting one another and not competing. And I do view it as supportive to have a bright vibrant city right and we know that requires development 75% 75% is not coming to you at this point. No, so let me just answer that direct question about tax increment financing. So you are correct that the city is retaining 75% of the increment the new development and the Tiff district is paying to pay our debt service on our Tiff bonded projects. However, the state education fund is making the school district whole. So it's not that the school district is functioning with 75% less funding from those property taxpayers those those property tax dollars through the state's Ed fund are all going to our school district. So they're made of that development, not the Tiff district development. It's everywhere else. Yeah, everywhere else is paying but not that Tiff district. So the Tiff district is paying their full freight and property taxes, including the municipal tax and the school tax 75% of that municipal and school tax in the increment that they're paying in our community is being retained by the city to pay off our Tiff debt. The state education fund is making the school district whole for what they should be owed based on that actual tax rate that the tip properties are paying. So there's no sacrifice on the sit on the city's education fund. If I could just add, I would just add and again, this is opinion but I think that it's it's been shown in other communities that without the Tiff district that development would not occur. And so there would be no increase in property taxes collected. So it's an investment that the state is making that will pay off in the long run. Yeah, I mean I hear that and I love what has happened. But I have also heard the argument that the development would have happened, regardless and and it is. It is partially giving welfare to the developers. So the development that's currently happening along Market Street would not have been possible if Market Street didn't exist. Yeah. Thank you. Any other questions I could answer regarding the budget. Yes. And then we have a person at home to Ken Jarvis. Hi, this is a bit of a technical question. Can you just flip back to the tax rate slide for a second? I just want to make sure I'm understanding it. And it's really interesting that our rate is relatively low compared to the towns. I'm just just wondering, is that the nominal rate or is it adjusted by the CLA? I just I'm wondering whether it's an apple apple. Good question. So, you know, one of the slides that Tim and I were discussing this that we cut is really the detailed we call it budget worksheet. So it's a breakdown. That information is on our website so you can see kind of the background slides that really prop up this slide. These numbers are inclusive of yield. So when Jesse is talking about the state education fund, right, we have the yield, the CLA, the common level of appraisal. So these are the numbers that are that after all of those factors have been accounted for, which is how you get the residential tax rate. Great. Thanks. Okay, we now have a question from Ken Jarvis. Hi, Ken. Can you hear me? You have to turn on your audio. Travis, can you make it so we can see the cameras? Thank you. Okay. Okay. Ken, ask your question, please. No, we're not hearing you. We still can't hear you. Now you're muted. Can you unmute again and try that? I'm unmuted. Sure. Your mic is connected on your computer. If you want to put a question in the chat, I'd be happy to read it for you. No questions. Okay. Sounds like it looks from the chat that we may be having the problem we thought we were going to have at the beginning, which is we weren't going to be able to hear the people online. So, Ken, if you can put your question in the chat, which is the little bubble on the upper right hand corner, we'd be happy to answer it. And I'm going to start reading down the chat. So, Representative Noah Hyman says, could you please talk about staff retention and benefits? How are we competing with other districts to make sure we have the best educators in our community? Yeah, thank you for that question. So, staffing when I first came on was first order of business. We had significant turnover, knowing that we had great facilities needs as well as, of course, a budget to craft. We had a significant turnover in the business office. So our business manager and director of operations and finance had left. And we started searching right away, you know, day one, it was, hmm, how are we going to get people paid tomorrow, right? It was one of the most important things. And I'm grateful that we've been able to staff that. We also had other critical vacancies in leadership. We had to fill the principal ship at Rick Markott, Lisa McDonald, who is the assistant principal at the high school, moved over as interim. We then had to backfill her. Some of you may know I was the executive director of learning for the district. I was working as myself and as the interim superintendent for a time, filling backfilling my role as executive director of learning was another important role. So we've been really incredibly fortunate filling those positions, retaining staff. I think one of the things that we do our HR department worked diligently this summer to create non union pay grids. We did a full evaluation of every position at market rate, and we modified how we were paying folks to be more closely aligned with market levels. That was a huge step. Health insurance, we offer excellent benefits. We received an email this morning saying, you know, hey, our friends at X district don't have problems retaining bus drivers and they're paid $32 an hour. We don't pay that per hour, although, you know, we certainly have a competitive rate. However, we do offer excellent benefits to go with salaries. So, you know, compensation, another one I hear is, you know, the bagel shop is offering $25 an hour, right? And to that I say, and it might be for three hours a week or it might be for 53 hours a week, right? And there's no benefits. So we try to be a district who is humanistic. We try to be sensitive to our staff knowing that many of them have needs beyond just monetary compensation. Although I will say, you know, as we're renegotiating, I can't say too much as where the board has not yet ratified our teachers or our support staff or for FY 24 or admin union contracts. I can say that if you look at historical pay rates for all of those categories, which are public knowledge, South Burlington is one of the highest paying districts in the state across the board. Paying employees is critically important to us, always has been. That's a value we're maintaining. If you look at our teachers, which is the greatest, you know, numbers wise group that we employ, you can see significant numbers in the upper ends of the pay scale. So teachers who've been in our district for many, many years. So what are we doing to retain staff? I think, you know, certainly compensation compensation, again, adjusting non union, as well as the unions renegotiating attractive benefits. The superintendent's association did a survey in the fall of all superintendents asking about our staffing. I believe that's public knowledge as well. South Burlington fares incredibly well stacked up against many districts. So we've been extremely fortunate. Let's see retaining staff, hiring new staff. We've been trying a lot of different things. The district is on social media now. We're doing a lot of job fairs, virtually in person. We are up against the tough climate. You know, we have 1200 people unemployed in the entire county of that 1200, not all need employment or seeking employment. And certainly not all are a fit for some of the openings that we have at the school district. So, you know, we also are making sure, you know, we background check employees. There's fingerprinting. So training requirements. Let's see what else can I say on retaining staff. We do provide, you know, good training professional development. This is my old lane as a curriculum director. So I'll tell that for a moment. But if there's any other specifics, I can speak to those as well. So, we do have another question. Kate Bailey, thank you for sharing that Ken doesn't have a question. He's just observing. Diane bugby is asking how does the bond for facilities complement or continue the stewardship plan developed by the district many years ago. Thank you, Diane. Very good question. So the, the stewardship plan is sort of like our facilities constitution. It is something that we it's a living document in that way. And so the facilities stewardship plan is updated annually. And it's a companion, I think to our master visioning and future planning work. I'm going to cite the 2020 work, which is up on our website. At that time there was a significant bond brought forward for the high school and new build. A lot of that work, I think is the basis for current conversations. While Zems, these zero energy modules weren't a part of that to my knowledge. You know, I think that focus was really on the high school. And now we know that these Zems are needed. If they are, if the bond passes and they become part of our facilities, then they will then become part of our facilities stewardship program. So we'll have to maintain them. They do have a lifespan of about 100 years and they're movable. And these at, you know, as for projects related to the middle school or high school, as long as they're at the elementary level for five years to provide that enrollment relief. So, you know, Diane getting back to your question, I think that, you know, the Zems are have not historically been a part of the master visioning or the stewardship plan. They will be going forward if the bond passes. And I think they'll be really seen as an asset in that they're, they're versatile. So representative Hyman, thank you for your fully informed answer. I'm glad they glad you're there to help our community. Thank you. Okay, any other questions from the audience? Yes. One little column and I was wondering, did this sudden huge enrollment spike come as a surprise? And I asked that and maybe Alex has more information than I do on this. But I think three to four years ago, the administration was secretly planning with no board input to close an elementary school. And now in a relatively short period of time, we brought out a space and this seems to be a contradiction there. Sure. Yeah, I'm happy to provide the opportunity to clarify and I'll include Alex to I can answer part of it and maybe we can support this together. I do you want to go first to please feel free. I will just say that that is nothing that I have ever heard of. No plans to that ever in my six years were we thinking of closing a school, an elementary school, and that there was never any capacity at the other two schools. If we were to do that. Well, that's what I was wondering. So anyway, I won't have to recheck my sources, but thank you. Yeah, you know, the the opportunity to clarify here is is one that I'm going to take. I, you know, I'll add I think there's a there's been really good community engagement on the over enrollment. We have about 14 years of demography studies showing that students are coming to the area and that the enrollment projections that you're seeing here today are certainly not a surprise. I can confirm I've heard no conversation ever about an elementary school closing. And if we ever got to that point, you know, with this board and with me, you know, you would certainly there would be significant public discourse regarding that. Wendell, I think what you might be thinking of was about seven or eight years ago, a few businessmen and even the University of Vermont were interested in buying the Rick Markott Central School. And the board didn't immediately shut it down. But I think a solid no was the response, whether it took its time coming around or not that might be what you were thinking of. Yeah. Yeah, I don't I wasn't on the board at the time, but I remember talking with community members and and others and it was just such a non starter that it never got off the ground. Thanks for that history, Alex. So one sweet comment online. Mr Jarvis, who's the one whose camera was on said he was on the first charter committee that converted the town of South Burlington to the city. And it's where the steering committee this group was established. So thank you, Mr Jarvis for your work. Sarah Dopp is saying I can remember a meeting just like this one maybe five to six years ago and we definitely heard that there was worry about decreasing enrollment in South Burlington. Don't recall talk of shutting down the school per se. But no more additional questions. Yes, there's someone in the audience. Hi, I'm Lisa. Sorry, that's too loud. Hi Lisa. I just hi I just have a comment which is for people who are watching or thinking that over enrollment. The numbers used to be lower, etc, etc. I think one thing to think about and I'm not an expert in this arena, but. Is it the way schools use facilities that teaching requirements, the requirements for different types of programming has changed since perhaps the 80s when maybe the numbers were higher. But I think that's important to think about that when people are saying there's over enrollment, maybe once there were more children in the buildings, but perhaps the way. That we are using those buildings and needs that we have for teaching have changed. And that the people who are saying that they're over enrolled are not mistaken. It's just that the, the, the buildings may be the same, but the needs may have changed. And I think that's an important point to emphasize. Because I do hear a lot of talk in the community about what is this over enrollment. Yeah, thank you, Lisa. That's an important point too. Thank you. Yeah, I think we could tie that to Lisa that it's a good point you've made to act 173, which is legislation that requires Vermont schools to have a robust multi tiered system of supports. And what that could actually look like in a classroom is that there might be students learning independently, there might be students in small groups, there might be students doing quiet. Partner reading, or there might be a larger group of students playing a loud engaged game together, right? So that all requires space. Thank you. Any further questions on the budget? Yes. If it's all right, because I was on the, on the city council, when Bridget Burkhart, who was on the school board, she actually went against the consultant for the schools on enrollments, who was forecasting a decrease in enrollments and she did the numbers. This is when Bridget like went up here in my, in my group of stars in the city. She showed that those numbers were not based on actuals. And she really did a space analysis of all of the schools and really reversed, I think, people's assumptions based on numbers. I think that forecasting is really hard to do. And because the state, I mean, everyone's talking about numbers decreasing across the state. And so it's hard to zone in on an exception. And I think South Burlington is an exception. And that's when Bridget just like, I think she wowed everybody and she showed that in fact our schools are really at capacity. And we're then too. Thanks for highlighting that. It's an important factor. Thank you. Any other questions? No problem. Please. Please. Absolutely. Well, next time you can run for school board and then you'll have the answers. Well, that's probably, yeah, or else at least it in, but I don't have young kids any longer. And so that's not really my direction. But I am concerned as a, as I said, a resident of South Burlington. Um, so the zero energy ZEMS modules, what is what is what are they so that that's 6 million that will be going toward that. And so what, what is that? Yeah. Is it if it's okay, Jesse, could we roll into the bond portion of this discussion? If there's no further. Yes. If there's no further questions on the budget specifically, we can certainly certainly address those if they come up. But I've just got four or so slides here to to share some more information on the the bond and the ZEMS in particular. And then I'm happy to take any further questions on those. So the proposed bond. Here's the nitty gritty. So it's this $14.55 million. $6 million is proposed for the classroom space for these zero energy modules. These are in alignment, I would say certainly with the cities and then I say our sort of climate goals we don't as a school board actually have them articulated. Although between the ZEMS and the buses and I don't know, I could cite probably many other small examples. You know, this is something that we're certainly trying to move forward with as well. So another example here, a cost effective example, I would add. So right now, the 6 million of this bond is slated toward the ZEMS implemented now. Of course, you see our asterisks now implemented the impact fees will cover an estimated 91% of this cost, except for the financing. And so, again, this is money that will be recouped by the district scene in the form of revenue. To give you an example, impact fees are imparted on developers or those who build homes, you can find the full formulas and the rates on those on our website. The city collects impact fees right now for things like water and fire and sewer, right? So the city too would collect these impact fees, and then they would be sent over to the district. So those are some of the technical pieces of how that would work. The 6 million is the total for the Orchard and the Rick Marcott campuses, so $3 million per campus. And I used to be a math coach, right? And then before that an elementary teacher. And so when I was thinking about, you know, how to articulate or contextualize this, we see this number as 6 million. And, you know, I say, well, it's really only 3 million for each site. And then I think about that we have five campuses really here, five schools. And I thought, well, if we round this, you know, 14.55 million to 15 and we divide it, we're really the 3 million is, you know, really a very equal share, if you will, right? So I want to describe to you some of the 8.55 million dollar proposed items. These are items, I think that you'd see in this facility stewardship plan really, you know, needing attention. So the roof that's at the middle school, that's 2.35 million dollars estimated HVAC plumbing. And that's about 423,000 window replacements, the original 1960s windows at the high school. Again, you know, the concern there is as many schools have are there, you know, possible hazardous materials and some of these vintage fixtures, you know, so safety but certainly not energy efficient. Bathrooms, we have bathrooms that are not ADA compliant. And if any, I don't know, has anyone caught any of our student videos? Yeah. So we have, if you haven't checked out our district Twitter or our website or Instagram page. We've got our student board representatives have actually interviewed other students at the high school. And they're talking about the bathrooms and how they rearrange in some cases their days and their schedules to visit particular bathrooms, right? So again, earlier in the conversation, I said, you know, we can't say that a ZEM is more or less important than something like a bathroom, right? Especially when we're hearing from students, hey, I rear, you know, I walk the long way to avoid this bathroom to get to this one because of, you know, the difference in them. So we hear things like that. And they're important. So that's representative of $1.425 million or so parking lots, sidewalks. That's about 1.8. Again, this is routine sort of maintenance. Finally, kitchens. While we have more students, we haven't adjusted our kitchens to meet the demand for feeding our students. Some of you may have heard me say before we are now at a point where we're offering at some schools two meals a day and snacks. So the kitchens are operating now in a really different capacity than they were in 1960 when the building, you know, was built. So we're serving many more meals and the turnaround time is quicker. We can switch to the next slide. I want to show you some of the site plans for these zero energy modulars. This is the site plan for central school. It's under review currently right now. We, what you see here is an aerial view. Each classroom is about 959 square feet. There are also project rooms in the classroom. This was really intentional because we wanted to have students in these learning spaces have the, again, the facilities needed for learning. So currently at Rick Marcott school projects rooms are in existence and what these are are smaller learning spaces about 262 square feet. And they're in the middle of two other classrooms. So if I am a fifth grade teacher at central school and I have some students who are needing some extra support or want to do a louder or quieter activity. Or if I need to meet with colleagues or, you know, really have some space where I can supervise students in a way that is conducive to their learning. This is a way that we can continue that on. So again, you'll see those spaces within the building. Some of you may have caught the seven days article where Allison Novak actually observed, you know, students in one of our former project rooms which is now operating as a full classroom. So one impact being, you know, just thinking back to the photos in this article is like backpacks are in the hallway students don't have, you know, there aren't hooks or lockers right so we're now using project rooms as full classrooms which is really limiting that that teachers ability. To instruct students. Certainly not in the innovative ways that, you know, we are known for. We can switch to the next slide please. So, so at central school here. This is a floor plan of one of the Zems Jesse. I don't know if you're able to zoom out reading my mind. Yep. I can see you're hovering over if we're able to zoom in a little bit here. The Zems are connected to our schools. So you can see here. There is the existing building on the upper right. The upper left are the existing trailers. So the trailers do not in any way resemble the Zems. The trailers are being used now as office space. And they will be removed. There's some cost savings to that will recognize about 45,000 a month with the elimination of the trailer rentals at both central and orchard schools which are being used for staff not students. So floor plan of the Zems you can see the four classrooms. And it'll be for it orchard as well project rooms in the middle corridor and then the connector from the Zem to the existing building. And play structures on the right so that gives you an idea parking lot. If so just around the corner here on the left side you see that sidewalk and then there's the parking lot. I flew to go directly left and then on the far right you see play structure. So that's the main playground at central. Now we'll take a look at the so similar again at orchard. Understanding the ballot. So when you go if you haven't already to vote for our budget and bond. This is what you might see. So you see here the language for the bond 14,555,000 written out numerically for these capital improvements for the facilities as well as the Zems. And so this does conclude the information the slides that I prepared on the bond but I'm happy to take any additional questions on the bond at this time. Are there any other questions. Okay, Tim do you want to add anything on that. Tim Jarvis our senior director of operations and finance and he's been really, you know, pivotal in planning this and I want to just make sure he's got an opportunity to share any final pieces that I think you know we've we've essentially presented this information at many different venues around the city to PTO's and rotary and the south from the business association civic clubs homes for our elderly residents and you know every time we do this. I'm just continued to be reminded that I've spent a lot of time walking in these five buildings. And they are not representative of the type of facility that we would expect South Burlington to have given the stellar reputation of our school system and education programming. Given the expectations that our residents have which includes me because I'm also a resident taxpayer South Burlington. And I think that it's critical for everyone to understand. This is not a final fix by any means this is a short term requirement to bring our facilities up to a standard that we can that we can live with until bigger issues and bigger questions need to be resolved. A few years down the road, but it's absolutely critical that we address these if for no other reason and for health and safety considerations for our students and staff. In order to get us through to the next phase of development. There is one other question online. Representative know Hyman asks, could you elaborate to the cost difference of the ZEMs versus a permanent addition is a ZEM class similar to a traditional classroom. Do ZEMs meet our needs. Thanks Noah. So the enrollment committee did a comparison when they were evaluating what to recommend to the board on space solutions that infos up on our website as well. And what that did is it compared. I'm visualizing the slide in my head here so several, several things they evaluated stick builds trailers, ZEMs. Was there anyone on that committee in the room. This is a rare time that I were having this conversation and someone wasn't on that committee in the room. So they evaluated a number of options and they looked at cost effectiveness, time, portability, time to time to build portability or moveability. And they looked at meeting educational needs right that should have been the one I listed first. So that infos on our website. The costs, you know, certainly varied. You know, I can say to the cost of these has shifted so significantly as we've watched inflation dramatically shift from when the committee made this recommendation in June. You know, to the point where we were getting quotes and an amortization schedule when inflation was eight and a half percent right so now down to six and a half so with the $6 million there are contingency funds built in for that. And those are aimed at, you know, we know that the cost that inflation is going down and some of these costs could be softening. So it could be that there is excess money left over which the board could then reappropriate to other facilities stewardship needs. Let's see. No, I did I answer your question completely or there are other hopes that you'd had for responses. He says will slash do we sell Burlington own these modules and can they be repurposed. Yep. So, yes, we will own them. They can be repurposed in order to use them at the to get the 91% recouping of through impact fees of the $6 million cost. We need to use them for at least five years at the elementary level since the impact he has tied specifically to that project. We can then move them to the middle school or high school or wherever else they're needed. And they do have an anticipated lifespan of about 100 years. I just have a quick clarification. So I, I was understanding each ZEM was one classroom, but that's not correct. Right. ZEM is for classrooms. Is that right? Yes. Yes, so so ZEMs are something that we have built to meet a few different factors. So students learning needs one to we needed them to be large enough to accommodate. I'm not sound really nerdy here policy G six, which is our boards classroom size limitation. So we planned that these would could accommodate as many students as we really needed. And we actually went outside of that range because we didn't want to be at a point where we underestimated the size. So the ZEMs we have intentionally designed to be for class classrooms at each location with two project rooms and the connectors. So all of that is giving us square footage. The, the design again with the project rooms being intentional and that we wanted these to mirror the learning spaces in the building, which have project rooms. And so the four classrooms being intentional by design, you know, ZEM could surely have one classroom that wouldn't meet our enrollment needs. So these ZEMs will be certainly big enough to get us through. Now you might be saying, hmm, does it mean, you know, what does that mean for fifth grade? Well, it means that we can accommodate the fifth grade now. And so it's really, you know, separate of that fifth grade moving conversation. And we do know that ultimately with the projected enrollment, even with the ZEMs, we're going to have to have that conversation as a community on whether or not to add fifth grade to our middle level programming. Thank you. Thanks, Ellen. Other questions. All right, thank you very much. Thank you. Now we'll move on to item eight, which is the presentation of the FY 24 city budget, which will be led by our wonderful city manager, Jesse Baker. Thank you. And we're right on time. Just nice. Going to do the schedule anyway. So whatever you practice, don't go over. I'll try my best. Hey, Paul. It's going to be a little hard for me to monitor the chat and talk at the same time. If you wouldn't mind keeping your eye on the chat, that would be super helpful. Thank you. So I have, I'm Jesse Baker. I'm your city manager. I have the honor and privilege of presenting this council approved budget tonight. But really, it's just my voice and a ton of people's work with on into this. Not only the city councilors around me, but our leadership team who is in the audience on online specifically. We have our finance director, Martha Mitchell. City assessor, Martha Lyons, our fire chief, Steve Locke, our police chief, Sean Burke, our wonderful city clerk Donna Kinville, who is here tonight, even though she'll be working very hard tomorrow. Holly Reese, our recreational parks director, Tom DiPiccio, our public works director, Paul Connor, our planning and zoning director, Alana Blanchard, our community development director. And then we have some other team members online as well. So thank you all for your hard work to get to this budget. And thank you to the council for moving it forward to the voters tomorrow. So this is what I'm going to talk about tonight. I'm going to talk about our FY 24 city budgets. I'm going to walk through this presentation and then there are two other presentations where you get to hear, listen to somebody else's voice on our two bond votes. So buckle up. We have a lot to cover. This is a really big ballot. I do want to know, especially for those who are in the zoom room or in the go to meeting room or anyone here who is looking. All of these materials are on our city's website, SouthBerlingtonBT.gov, backslash, TMD, town meeting day 2023. It also links to all the violence materials as well. We really want to make sure that your questions are answered. If you have questions, feel free to perverse that website or get into contact with myself or the superintendent tomorrow. We will do our best to answer any questions you may have. So your municipal budget that is on the ballot tomorrow. I'm going to go through some challenges and goals of this budget and then talk about it and then our talk about our enterprise funds. So, as with all organizational budgets right now, we are facing rising inflation costs, cost of living increase costs. As a city, we are still trying to recover from our lean COVID budgets. We really reduced our expenditures during COVID because we are fairly diverse and rely on local options tax on sales tax and rooms, meals and alcohol tax here in SouthBerlington. We also of course wanted to meet the expectations of our community. So there are some key assumptions built into this budget in this budget are our contractual obligations around our cost of living and step increases. We are estimating a 1.75% growth in our grand list. That's the total assessed values of all of the properties in SouthBerlington. I do want to note there that that is only a 1% increase in our non tiff grand list that's outside of our tiff district and a 9.6% increase in our tiff district. And that's the grand list that really is driving our ability to pay off our tiff debt over the next between now and 2037. So that is great news for our community. You've seen some construction fences go up this week on Market Street. Really exciting to see those institutional partners of UBM and UBMC invest in our downtown. Also built into this budget as the superintendent mentioned are those increases and goods and services that we are all personally seeing we as an organization are seeing as well. When the council approved our commitment of American Rescue Plan Act dollars which were the dollars the federal government provided to local municipalities to recover from COVID. The council approved the use of those funds incrementally over the life that we had to spend those dollars so through FY26. So each year of the of between when the funds were allocated in FY26 we are stepping down the investment of returning those staff positions and into one time CIP costs so those assumptions are built into this budget. We're assuming an increase of 6% in our health insurance. We have a captive insurance company has been performing quite well so that is actually a smaller number than some of our partner municipalities are seeing. We also saw some significant savings in workers comp and casualty insurance this year as a result of rebidding. So what are we trying to achieve with this budget. So through the months of December in January we went through a lengthy process with the council to talk about the goals. The goals that we could achieve with this budget. Again we're trying to address those rising inflation rates we are trying to be sensitive towards the tax rate by presenting a two year budget. So there are things built into this budget that will have an impact on next year's budget as well to smooth out that increase. We heard a lot during COVID about the importance of our parks and open space. So that is built in I'll talk more about that. And then again refund come out refund our ability to come out of those lean COVID years to staff public safety and our data abilities to be data driven. Also in this budget we are standing up a second ambulance starting January 1st 2024 and incremental incrementally investing in our capital improvement plan. So I want to talk a little more about each of those things and the data we looked at in order to make those decisions. So as I said we heard a lot during COVID about the importance of our parks and open space and our neighbors ability to get outside and enjoy each other in a safe way. We have also seen 22 miles of road added in the city of South Burlington last 20 years without increasing our public work staff. So we will be looking to add that capacity in the future as well. On the police side, we are investing in funding a new officer in each of the next two budget years as well as reinstating and deputy police chief position. These are fun. These are positions that were allowed to remain vacant during our lean COVID years. They were not defunded. They were not intentionally cut. It was a way that we balanced our budget during those lean COVID years. We are trying to get back up to our 2020 goal of 40 sworn officers for our community and 10 civilian officers. And I'm kind of flying through these. Our chiefs are here if you want any additional details, but I'm going to keep flying through for now. So this budget also restores a 30th firefighter. This lets us get up to our minimum staffing of eight firefighters and EMTs per shift. Just as a note to our community, we run three shifts. They work 24 hours on 48 hours off and we always have eight on duty at all time. What that has meant in the past year, especially with some really exciting FMLA leaves, i.e. babies in our department, we have gone up to a very high level of mandated overtime. What that means is in order to maintain that 80th or that eighth firefighter on duty, we are ordering somebody to stay on after a 24 hour shift, which is a really hard ask. So this 30th firefighter will help in that. And then additionally, we have noticed over the last couple of years, and you can see this in the graph on the bottom. And again, this is online. There's a lot of numbers here that we are about 23% of the time somebody calls 911 from the city of South Burlington for an ambulance for a medical need about 23% of the time. A non-South Burlington ambulance is responding to that call. So this is getting us to the point where we will always have mutual aid with our public safety partners. They will always respond when we can't respond, but that's not mutual aids. That's other communities are planting our needs. Hence why this budget is proposing a second ambulance to stand up in January 2024. Again, that lets us build up the tax capacity over 2 years. And then we are also investing incrementally in our capital improvement plan. Capital improvement plan is a really wonky municipal term for the dollars we set aside to maintain our municipal infrastructure. So that's our streets, our sidewalks, our paths, our facilities, our fleet, our snow plows. And over time, we have been funding that, but funding that at a pretty, you can see here, pretty even some years have gone down, some years we've gone up rate. We really believe that we need to be incrementally investing in that CIP every year. We know the costs and goods of services are going to go up. The cost of that equipment, we've seen it through supply chain challenges and we are therefore with this budget starting to incrementally increase that investment every year. So all of those goals, all of those things I just talked about, what does that mean for all of us? It means a 5.75% increase in our municipal tax rate. It's about two and a half pennies on the tax rate. You heard the superintendent talk about the average house cost, the average condo assessment. So $293,000 for average condo appraisal. So if you have a condo around that much, the impact for your annual tax bill this year to next year will be $78 for the year. For the average homeowner with the house assessed at $437,000. It's $117 for the year. I also do want to note that while this is a significant increase, a significant ask of our community, we are also increasing our projected non property tax revenues to increase almost 12%. So we are looking to diversify those revenue streams. We have the privilege of doing that on the city side that the school doesn't have access to. So we are looking to minimize that impact to the taxpayers. I wanted to give a little more detail about the use of these American rescue plan acts. Act dollars with this chart, you can see how those dollars are stepped down over the fiscal years and what is previously approved by the council, what's going to be proposed in the future. With the approval of the budget tomorrow, if it's passed, there will be $2 million of ARPA funding left available for the council to allocate. I do want to note because it's a big question in our community that one of the things that is not in this operations budget are dollars to implement the city's adopted climate action plan. This is the proposal that staff has put together at this point of how we might a path to how we might do that. There are other paths, of course, and the council is considering using some or all of the remaining ARPA dollars to fund this. But that is a date for the future or that is a decision for the future and for the new council. So that's the general fund portion of our budget. I do also want to know a couple of other important ways that our community helps fund municipal operations. So as folks likely know, we have a penny for paths on the tax rate and a penny for parks and open space on the tax rate that raises about 400. I didn't know of this for myself because I knew $412,000 for each penny. You can see here how with the approval of this budget by the council, the projects that will be funded and supported through the pennies for path this year. I think it's really exciting to note that 86% of our residential buildings in South Burlington are already within a mile, a point, a tenth of a mile of a shared use path. And we're actively looking to increase that annually. On the penny for open space side of the house, again, that's $412,000 that will be raised in FY24 to support our open space development. You can see the projects here slated for those dollars, specifically Hubbard Recreation Area, Red Rocks and the Wheeler Homestead. And about 68% of our residential buildings are within about a quarter mile of a park or open space. That's a great success as a community and certainly there's more we can do to make sure all of our residents have access to that open space. So as folks likely know, we operate our general fund budget, which supports a lot of our poor municipal government, and then we also operate our utility funds. So these are what are called enterprise funds within the municipal world. They function as small businesses. So the rates paid by the users go to pay the operations costs. So specifically we have a stormwater utility, a sewer utility and a water utility. And it's important to note the rate increases associated with those three utilities as well because they are, guess what, from the same people who pay property taxes. So it's the same rate payers as property taxpayers with renters paying both of course property tax and utilities through their rent and their utility bills. So across those funds, it's about a $54 increase for the average user across those funds. And I'm going to talk about them each individually for a quick minute. Again, really data heavy slides. They are online if you want to dive into them. On the stormwater funds side, this is a $4.2 million annual budget. The rate increase for this year within the stormwater fund to fund all operations as well as the CIP projects you see on the screen is about 1.64% or a annual change to the average rate payer of $1.44. And kudos to Tom and his team and the graph on the bottom shows the $13 million of grant funding we've been able to leverage into the stormwater utility since 2005. So again, figuring out how to diversify those revenue streams. On the wastewater and water side of the house we do see significantly higher increases. Again, we are trying to invest in our capital investment in each of these funds. We've under invested in CIP for the last couple of years and we're really looking to make sure that that infrastructure is maintained well is modernized. You'll hear Tom talk more about this on the Bartlett Bay bond vote question enabled to not only meet our public health needs, but protect our streams and protect Lake Champlain and the water we are returning to the system. So our wastewater fund is 5.9 million almost $6 million that we are anticipating a rate increase of 8.34% on this side of the books, which is about $29 almost $30 an annual difference for the average rate payer. And on the drinking water side of the house, again, we're seeing about a 8.5% increase on a $3.7 million budget for an annual impact of $22.78, $22.78. I do want to know on both of these slides similarly to the superintendent's comment, we have the lowest sewer and drinking water rates in the state of Vermont. And we are thankful for that, but also acknowledge that we need to increase those rates slightly to maintain our infrastructure. I think it's always important with the council and with the public to be very clear about emerging issues that we are anticipating in future fiscal years. So there are a couple I want to draw attention to tonight. Though, as I said in the beginning, this is a budget proposal that really is a two year budget proposal and includes increases in next year as well to be able to meet the community's goals. We are seeing significant transitions on the executive team side. We are without a deputy at the moment, which is as we bring on that new person there will be changes. We are tracking the future of regional dispatch in the state and the legislature and in our community and really hope to be able to bring that voter approved intention to fruition in the months and years to come. We are anticipating another bond vote in FY 24 for water capacity. We are in need of another water tower and we'll be bringing that forward to the council for their initial conversation this spring. There is no funding allocated in this current budget for the future recreation center again in that partnership with the school district. We're really looking to see how we can partner on such a facility or support each other's bond sequencing over the years to come. So we do still have plans for that recreation center, but there are no dollars allocated in this budget for that planning. We do have one collective bargaining agreement that's expiring at the end of this fiscal year and we are certainly seeing wage pressures in our surrounding municipalities, especially in public safety that we will have to address. So I think that that is my city budget presentation. You will still hear from Alana on the TIF bond vote and from Tom on the wastewater bond vote, but I'm happy to answer any questions. The school board or council or community may have about the city's FY 24 proposed budget. Are there any questions in the audience that I can see? How about from home? Are there any? I think this is a city comment from Representative Hyman. Thank you so much for all you do. I want to thank you. It's comforting to know how much work and effort we've put in. It's apparent or I think maybe this is your comment Violet. It's apparent in residence health Burlington. It's comforting to know how much work you have all done. I am hopeful and appreciative of the schools. Thank you so much. Yes, that was a compliment for you, not me. Okay. I've got no other questions. Okay, we'll see no questions. Then why don't we move on to the the session, the public hearing on the 15 million dollar city center TIF bond vote with Alana Blanchard. I got to toggle between PowerPoints here. Oh, no, you have this one. Sorry. For the record Alana Blanchard Community Development director and I don't think I have permission to share my screen. Well, that doesn't help. I just have to move everyone so I can find my controls. There we go. Okay, so. So tonight I'm talking about article four on the ballot. This is a question regarding the last remaining projects that are not yet authorized for TIF district financing within city center. And these projects. Last time there was a bit of a like, I think it must be just warming up so hopefully it will move forward. So they're these four projects provide significant transportation and place making improvements that support redevelopment and development within city center to realize the city's long held plans and vision of a compact lockable, likable downtown. Alana that was happening to me earlier with the PDF of the school one. That's why I showed up. There you go. So, so here's a map which gets an overview of the four projects. As you can see, especially on Williston Road. These improvements provide a shared use path from Staples Plaza that goes all the way to Gracie's it includes a walk by bridge at the eastern edge. I'm sorry at the western side over 89. And then a shared use path along Williston Road, and then significant intersection improvements on at White Street, and as well as that patch and road. So combined, these provide additional capacity to support growth in city center. Transportation capacity improve safety and improve access allow people to have, you know, a walk or bike to work lifestyle if you if you live in Burlington and work in South Burlington or you live in South Burlington and you work in Burlington. And they also do a lot to improve our overall curb appeal as a downtown. So that's where we get the most people going by our community. And then city center park improvement is a shared use path that does a lot in terms of connectivity to both the park and then to neighborhoods and communities north and south of it. So the, the total question is, or the question includes all four projects and the total authorization is for 15 million 86,430 dollars. Each of these projects is are authorized by the Vermont Economic Progress Council within the district plan. And they're authorized for different amount. So some of them are 100% of district financing eligible and some of them are only partially eligible for district financing and so this authorization is only up to that amount. And so the first project I wanted to talk about is Garden Street. And this is called Garden Street because it is phase two of a project that begins at healthy living between healthy living and Trader Joe's. And we'll connect all the way to minus drive. And it includes significant capacity improvements, especially at the Wilson Road, White Street, White Street and minus drive intersection. And you can see in the illustration on the left side of the screen that that White Street is significantly rerouted as well as minus drive so that they both meet on Williston Road and create a four way intersection with crosswalks on all sites. And you can see on the upper right side of your screen, the extent of this project includes the White Street, Heidsberg Road intersection. This is 100% district financing eligible and here's an overview of the project, what it would look like at the end. So it includes a shared use path on the south side that carries that path that goes all along Williston Road, but also connects to Garden Street and the cycle track and sidewalk that is on Garden Street and minus drive. And then it also improves the overall crosswalk experience at both intersections. The east-west crossing has been in the news a lot. It's a walk-by bridge over I-89. It is only 30% of district eligible and the city was very lucky in receiving a race grant, a very competitive federal grant, which enabled the city to move forward with this project. We are now under contract essentially with the state and the federal government to build this or to be ready to build it in 2024 and it would be open to the public if approved by the voters by 2026. So it is, again, a big project that changes the way that South Burlington feels and functions. The Williston Road streetscape is a shared use path on the south side of Williston Road between Dorset and Alice French Rise. It includes a shared use path and then a fairly wide storage area between the curb and the path for snow and also to protect people from spray from cars and includes space for things like ornamental street lighting similar to what we have on Market Street. This project is only 50% to district financing eligible and we do have an $800,000 federal grant that will cover the bulk of our match. And so City Center Park Phase 2 connects the park that has already been built to City Center, both at Garden Street and at Market Street. The store monitor funds on Market Street will then become the entrance, their main entrance to this park that becomes a resource then for the growth that is occurring in City Center. It also creates a nice north south connection between the neighborhoods and City Center and neighborhoods to resources to the self such as the middle school and high school. This is 100% TIF district financing eligible for this phase of the project. City Center Park as a whole including Phase 1 and Phase 2 is only 95% eligible but because we have already provided the match during Phase 1 this phase is 100% eligible. So all of these projects support growth within the TIF district and that's the area shown on this map within the blue dotted lines. The TIF district was established in 2012 and what the TIF district does as an economic development tool that was created by the state and approved by the city for this area and then by the state is it captures growth within these boundaries. So everything that occurred after 2012 is considered growth inside the district and so as taxes are applied on these properties 75% of those new taxes every year goes into a special fund and that gets set aside and we the city may then use it to service debt that has been authorized by the voters and issued by the council. And then 25% of the revenues on this new growth goes into or goes to the same place that it that it would normally it goes to the city and to the state so it's not special money it just becomes a benefit of having this growth in the community. So a very important thing to note is that all TIF debt while it's serviced by the TIF district is still the is still issued on the full faith and credit of the community. So if for any reason there is no there's not TIF district, sufficient TIF district funds at the end or the completion of the TIF district in 2037 then the city will still be on the hook to pay that to service that debt. So the total TIF debt that has been occurred to date is 10.4 million and the total TIF debt that has been issued or is intended to be issued meaning that that voters have already authorized is 14.43 million. And then, and that is because there's one authorization for which no debt has been yet issued in that space one for Garden Street. So the expected development. That's you know that's what would pay for these improvements is anything as I said that occurs within these blue boundaries. And that can be on San Rima Drive on Heinsberg Road or Williston Road or Dorset Street and that so throughout the life of the TIF district the city makes for projections and models of what that development is likely to be. And so we have what we what our expectation is we put that together in a model and it's made up of these properties and what the market has been supporting in terms of development. So in the center of the TIF district, I'm showing a property that's owned by or had been owned by South Burlington City Center LLC that Snyder-Braverman contracted with that developer. And that project that property is now being developed and Jesse referred to some of the development earlier that is occurring around us on Market Street also on Garden Street. And we've been very lucky UVM and UVM Medical Center have recognized the investment that the city is making in city center. How what this you know the lifestyle that it creates and has invested in significant housing in this downtown and that's represented on that in that in set in in the map in the red is not run and then two of the purple buildings are the new buildings that are under construction on Garden Street. And these combined will create 476 more homes, new homes that will be opened by 2026. So these are not homes that are on the ground list currently, but they are homes that will be built over the next few years. And they also include, I get this question a lot. So I want to point out that they will also include commercial development on the ground floor on Market Street as well as in the building that is currently under construction on on Garden Street by healthy living. So the model and I want to at this point, point to the same website that Jesse did on if you go to our main page, South Burlington, vt.gov and click on the slide that says town meeting day 2023. If you look under the tip district bond, there is a public notice, which is many pages and goes into great detail about all of the projection models and the revenues that the city expects to receive from the tip district, as well as the debt so all of these numbers are there. We have are all projected development, which is the development that we expect to see, as well as the existing development and pipeline projection and we developed that in order to understand, you know, what are the risks that are involved in this and to make sure that we are prepared. And so the yellow is as if that development that I just showed you that's currently in full swing. What if nothing ever happens like that until 2037. And so that so looking at those two. We can see that there are still a lot of revenues, but there is definitely we want to make sure that we are working towards the, the green line as opposed to the online so the green line shows that at the conclusion of the tip district there would be 49 million cumulative benefit that can be used to service debt of which on at the end, an annual revenue for the city would be, I'm sorry, and the last year of the tip district would be 6 million. So it's a cumulative growth over time. The estimated estimated bond debt payments are also shown in the public notice. And so and you can see them up here on your screen. The sort of looking Golden Roddy, although it was peach on my screen is the existing debt to date and the last four lines are that that that relate to this authorization. So the total debt service so that's both the principal and the interest is 40 million. And so looking at these combined the all projected development results in a surplus of 8.3 million. But if all the development stops after what's in the pipeline, or in our current pipeline, and nothing happens until 2037. There definitely is our is our funds that we would need to make up. And so while those are manageable using reserve funds and over several years. They're not desirable. And so we, and this document has some additional ways that we would manage that risk. But the primary one is to work and conduct our reach to property owners. As well as other things like secure grants for the projects. So this is the question. The question has all four projects in the same question. And one last point that I'd like to make before completing my presentation is that this, the, the voter authorization does not does not mean that the council has to issue all of the debt. So it is it authorizes the council to issue the debt, but they will have the final say on whether to issue any debt. Thank you for the Wilson Rhodes streetscape. Will the electrical be above or underground. Yes, great question. So, so we did investigate that unfortunately because of the cost the, the electrical will stay above ground where it is. We have several good conversations about whether that could be a future project. And there are some options for that. We will be moving or the project does include moving the transformer slash poll that is in front of the gas station at the corner of Dorset and Wilson Road. So that one will move away from the sidewalk. Thank you. Like I was at home a few minutes ago. I've got two unrelated questions. One is, we had a lot of talk about a green, a common village green as part of the city center design 10 years ago when we were brainstorming. So I wondered where that is in the thinking at this point. And secondly, the small property, we're now thinking of that, I believe as part of city center, but it isn't part of the TIF district. Is that right? Could you just elucidate that a little more? Sure. Yeah, those are great questions. So, so the green was part of the TIF district plan that was approved in 2012. And the city did work towards acquiring land that could be used as a green. But given the fact that we are running up against the time during which to incur debt and combined with COVID and COVID, we had to sort of pull back our expectations of the amount of revenues that would be received or generated by the TIF district and what we would have time to build. We, that being that, because that plan, that concept had not advanced at all, that was removed from the district plan in 2021. The university mall is inside city center. It is not inside the TIF district and city center, the TIF district is about 100 acres and city center includes the 300 acres. So it includes everything on the other side of Dorset Street. It includes the Staples Plaza. It includes the Sheridan. It includes the north side of Wilson Road. So it's generally the commercial corridors around the TIF district. And so generally we think of them all together. And certainly there are benefits for all of these properties across, across, across both city center and just the TIF district. We can only capture revenue inside the TIF district. So that's sort of the difference. If I could just add a quick sentence to agree with everything I want to share. As she said, while the university mall property is not part of the TIF district, what that means is the increment that is generated from any development that happens comes back to the general fund or to the school fund. Of course. Also, I think based on our conversations with the new property owners of the University of Malta trade it changed hands in the last year. They are very excited to be here in large part because of the TIF district and the infrastructure that's being built. And I think their vision and our shared vision is really to make sure that those two part are the TIF district and city center and the university mall property really become one downtown with shared access shared by pedestrian access. And those that connectivity that Alana talked about at the beginning of this presentation. So we have high hopes for that new partner in the future. Thank you. Thank you. Very simple factual question. You may not know the answer. How long does it take. Will it take to walk over the east west bridge from Williston Road on one side to the other side or how long is how many yards. So, I believe it's 2000 feet. So, under 10 minutes. I'm a little confused about the garden street. Could you go over that a little more. It seems it's got to be more than just repairing two intersections for $8 million. So there must be something more than I'm missing. Could you just elucidate that. So you just have to find the controls again. So the garden street project. It is $8 million is the estimate for for this project. When we first started it many years ago. That was not the estimate, but given given all of the factors. So we are replacing all the signals at these intersections right now they're on strings and so those will get polls. There's there will be some land acquisition and we already acquired 1 parcel for this project. They it's a not a full depth reconstruction like Market Street, but it is a partial reconstruction and definitely is a full depth reconstruction of the intersection. So that means that there's some reworking of the utilities. So there's reworking of stormwater. There's some, you know, fire hydrants and some. Some minor electrical that needs to be moved around to make this work. And so you just start adding all of these up and it does become very expensive. And then there's also traffic control during construction. And whether you have some parts that are night construction or day construction. So everything just starts to add up. Tim drivers again, this is a very selfish question. Following up of what you just said, I was just curious about the duration of that construction and what impact it's expected to have on traffic and already very heavily traveled. So far it's been discussed as a 1 season project. But, but traffic would continue throughout. So, similarly to. To the, excuse me, I think it was called the Williston Road resurfacing project. So there the when all the surface of Williston Road in this section was was was playing off and replaced traffic. They would state it in a way that traffic would continue throughout the project. I'm pretty, I'm pretty sure there'll be some times when you're sitting at the lights for a couple rounds. Knowing Tammy is probably concerned about school buses school traffic. Right. But ultimately develop a walk safely. So there's an advantage there. Yes. Thank you. Just a very quick question. You mentioned earlier with the call to Jimmy's question that some part of the costs. Or, I believe this project in particular involve remap or excuse me, traffic considerations and that that come along with a project of such extent. So, just to be clear, and I understand that that means that you will also remap the traffic lights. And things along those lines to ensure that that the cycles all map or account for the increased traffic and counts. Yeah, so, so I, if you're, I'm not sure how familiar. So, public works is currently replacing signals along Dorset street. And then at this location, we will similarly replace the signals on Williston Road. Okay. And so, and there will be also a new signal at Dorset and Williston Road. And so all of these three signals will have the same components. And then as the city upgrades signaling software that this would be compatible for that upgrade. There is one additional signal between this signal and the Dorset straight signal that will not be upgraded yet. Although we are looking for avenues to do that. Okay. And which signal was that that's the one that is between the Delta hotel and the wind jammer. Got it. Okay. Thank you very much. You're welcome. And I don't know if Tom wants to say anything else. Any other questions? Okay. Thank you, Alana. Thank you. So we'll move on to item 10, which is the other small bond. The smallest one right for the Bartlett Bay wastewater treatment facility. General obligation bond 33 million $833 even. No, you rounded. Okay. And we have Tom DiPietro, the public works director, who will take us through. Great. Well, thank you for the opportunity to come in and speak wastewater with you on town meeting day Eve. So Tom DiPietro, I've been the city's public works director for about a year now. And here to talk about our wastewater bond. So tomorrow on the ballot voters will see a question about supporting a 33.8 million dollar wastewater project to upgrade the Bartlett Bay wastewater treatment facility and related infrastructure. There are three parts to this. The largest part is reconstruction of the wastewater plant itself. The second portion is improvement of the infrastructure used to handle the solids that are generated during the wastewater treatment process. So those materials that settle out as we treat the wastewater. And finally, it is replacing their upgrading for pump stations that exist in the sewer shed. So that's kind of the big picture. I'm going to go over each of those in a little more detail in the presentation. Again, first piece, largest piece is the wastewater treatment facility itself. Wastewater plants are designed about a 50 year shelf life with upgrades every 20 to 30 years to replace things that are worn out. Incorporate new and better technology, improve efficiency, things of that nature. The Bartlett Bay plant was constructed originally in the 1970s upgraded in 1999. And so again, we were kind of right in that schedule as plans for going back to this facility and completing one of these upgrades. Important for a variety of reasons. Most importantly, to protect our water resources, right? We want the water to be treated to the highest quality once it reaches the plant. But also because there's risk involved is this infrastructure ages. So by kind of making the investment into this facility, we can kind of reduce that risk. And I'm going to go through some of those things now. Oh, sorry, first out. So some people see things better graphically. So this is sort of a cartoony layout, I guess, of what's going to happen at the plant. You can see the different boxes there labels. So, you know, kind of we're touching almost everything at the plant with this proposed upgrades from the headworks building to the UV system at the end. Our storage tanks, new fence for the facility culvert operations building, aeration tanks, et cetera. So things are moving around. You can see some of the old buildings outlined there in the shaded areas. I mentioned some of the aging infrastructure needs. So kind of in photos here, a quick tour of that at the facility. First is the clarifiers. Those are the big circular pools of water. You see that are common to wastewater plants and the arms that move around inside of those. Those were after so many years. So those need to be replaced leaking feelings old blowers that were installed in the 1980s. Big room for gains in efficiency there. Energy efficiency. And then in our sludge storage tank, that's aging as well and needs some attention. There's a hole in the tank just above the ladder in the photo. So that tank can only get filled so high right now. So just addressing those sorts of things. And then some of the really critical pieces here sort of at the beginning and end of the process. So at the beginning in our headworks, there's the grit sediment removal. That was original and we're some screening installed. That is now obsolete. If the grit gets through and moves into the rest of our treatment process, that kind of negative impacts for the pumps and things like that. So it's important that we install some new technology to improve that. And then the very end of our treatment process is the UV disinfection. That's a system in the late 90s was installed, but it's no longer supported by the manufacturer. So those bulbs go, we have a very difficult time getting the UV bulbs to replace them. So that is a critical need to get replaced. So that's kind of part one of the three parts here. Part two is the solids handling. So the city actually has two wastewater treatment facilities, our largest facility, the airport parkway up near the airport. And Bartlett Bay is off Route seven on Bartlett Bay Road. All of the solids generated during the treatment process at Bartlett Bay are actually trucked up to the airport parkway plant where they're fed through the headworks. And they're put through the two pad or the two phase aerobic and aerobic digestion process there to create a class A or high quality bio solid. And so that's been our process for a while back when the airport parkway plant was upgraded around 2011. We had a fourth clarifier in there. So you can see in the photo there's a yellow circle and you can see the nice three clarifiers and there's one that's not there. It looks kind of missing. That was sort of value engineered out at the time, but we've come to a point now with the solids that we're generating and between the waste activated sludge and the volatile reactive sludge. I don't want to get too into the details where we have to keep a proper ratio of that. We have come to a point where we need to add that in. Also, your clarifier is helpful. So if we have to maintain or there's an emergency, having this additional clarifier allows to take some of the others down. So some real flexibilities provided for the operators. And then there's also a sludge storage tank at this facility that allows our operators some additional operational flexibilities. They can feed in the sludge that comes from the Bartlett Bay plant, which is sort of a less active sludge. Biologically speaking, then sludge is generated at this facility. And I can see Jesse smiling so I know I should move on. No, this is really exciting core municipal government work here. I assume that's why you let me go last Jesse to really close this one out. In part three, some pump stations in the Bartlett Bay sewer shed. So we are proposing to upgrade and replace four pump stations. So the average typical level of pump stations about 25 years, these four have been in service for around 50 years. They've seen obviously certain upgrades and maintenance along the way, but they are certainly in need of replacement. They are all located within 40 to 250 feet or less than 250 feet of Lake Champlain, Shelburne Bay. We've started to see some failures in force mains, so cracks and things like that, minor things at the moment. We don't want those to become large things. And so the next slide I believe shows you the location. So that's kind of Bartlett Bay on the left there. I know it's really hard to see the detail there. But there's three pump stations. This is down in Queen City Park neighborhood off Central Avenue. So I can't see on this screen, but there's three, there's three pump stations there. And then on the next slide off the Bartlett Bay Road, there is another pump station rather close to the plant actually that collects wastewater from Bartlett Bay Road in the neighborhood in that vicinity. So on this side there's a lot on here. I want to draw your attention to the box in the upper right. So what is all this cost? It had to get to the $33.8 million figure. So the plant we're estimating about $22.1 million. Solid handling improvements about 1.8, about four and a half for the refurbishment of those four pump stations. $5 million spread across those three for engineering, construction phase engineering and oversight. And then legal and administrative perverting type costs for the grand total of $33.8 million that you'll see on the ballot. Then go back, Jesse, and more good stuff on there. Impact on rates, probably one of the most important questions. So if you go to the left of the bullet, so we currently have some of the lowest rates in the state of Vermont and that's kind of demonstrated on the graph there on the bottom as well. The work required to upgrade or is covered under this bond vote would result in a six and three quarter percent increase each year for the next four years. So in the past, the city, when we upgraded the airport parkway plan in 2011, there was a 20% ish rate increase to support that. Rather than do that, we found a way to spread this out over four years in this case. But what does that actually mean from a dollar standpoint? This is from your average single family home. After four years, your annual invoice will be $71 higher with those increases project timeline. So we've been preparing bond documents and doing public informational meetings for the last few months. Bond vote tomorrow, March 23, assuming a positive result. We'll move into final design and engineering that'll take about a year. And we're hoping to bid the project in summer 2024. We'd go into construction later that year. And then our first bond or debt payment would occur a year after we're finished with the project. So roughly 2027, it'd be a year or two construction period. And just kind of in summary, why are we doing this now? Why can't we put this off? So we've been working towards and planning for these upgrades for a number of years now. Like I said, it's sort of a 50 year process, 25 year pump station service life. So we've seen the need, whether it's force main issues in the pump stations or like I showed in those pictures, some of the infrastructure needs to plant itself. And we are actively looking for grants to support this. And so having a positive bond result community support demonstrates community support. And so that is attractive to grant agencies that are kind of way different applications against each other and very competitive. And just one final note and similar to what Alana said authorization doesn't obligate us to spend that full amount. Were we able to find grant funding to support this project on it would overall reduce that amount and then debt amount as well. Related payments. So I think this point, happy to take any questions. Okay, are there any. Okay anyone at home. Who's listening in that wants to know more about our. So. Bond. And Bob isn't here tonight or wastewater superintendent, but he loves giving tours. So I just throw that out there. Okay, well, seeing them. Thank you very much. So we are about to adjourn. I want to know, this is Tom Chittenden's last. Time as a city counselor. Didn't know if you wanted to. Say hello goodbye or. Last time for now, I might be back. What you and Arnold. Shorten that girl. Okay. I won't be there probably when you're back, but anyway. Okay. So if there's no more, no other questions or comments, I want to thank everyone for the presentations and for everyone sitting. Without squirming too much in the audience. I don't know what they were doing at home. So I hope everyone has either already voted or we'll be voting tomorrow. And so I would entertain a motion to adjourn. So moved. Second. Okay. All in favor. Hi. Okay. Thank you. Just for the folks online. If you are here for the candidate forum, sit tight. We're just going to do a quick table change and we will be back.