What's going on infinite fail welcome back to another video if you guys into the channel make sure you guys hit that subscribe button Turn on your post notification about leave a positive comment down below for chance to get a white for chance I want to shout out in the next video I kind of want to replay what I just did right there because that was a complete fail And it's probably the cringiest thing I've ever did in my life, but guys we are back This is our first video back in like a week or so like a legit real video. We're in good spirits We're feeling good today, and we're gonna be decorating. We're not decorating, but we're gonna be fake as some Christmas cookies So we have the reindeer, and then we have the snowman and a Christmas tree I can guarantee you I already know which one you like the most which one you like the reindeer Because it reminds you of blue You may remind you of blue, right? Yeah, come here. You look like reindeer Why are you spazzing and I'm talking we're gonna get into the baking gonna be the easiest thing ever All we have to do is like put them in the oven, and that's it We're gonna see how it goes because you know us in the kitchen There's a chance that the house might burn down, but we hope I don't get to that point first things first You got to go into like the secret layer dungeon down there that we'd like to call he double hockey sticks And you got to go get the stuff Yeah, don't mind how that looks we've been through we've been through a lot in the kitchen Yes, it works well, so that's all that matters. We're gonna put aluminum foil on it anyway Come on yo We didn't even turn on the oven yet, and you already making the first mess up What the heck Well look that you did it Now that we got the aluminum foil situation handled Pam Pam is right here. Pam Pam. Is it just me?  What what is who's he fighting? Nene, who are you fighting? What is your problem? What are you doing? I think that boy? Oh man, you got me on camera. What's a man? Who is it?  Oh bless you All right back to the kitchen as I was saying you won't spray that Pam in your mouth.  We're not that fat. So we're gonna do like four of each Look how they look I'm actually kind of excited to see how this plays out. I know So what are the instructions saying how long do you have to preheat the oven for I don't know Heat the oven to 350. All right. We'll do that. Yeah, put that to 350 Okay, boom. It's preheating. All right. So how long is it say to leave them in for place the cookie dough rounds on ungreased cookie? Oh This is what I'm talking about that in the kitchen It never goes well, so we weren't even supposed to put that spray Okay, so we can just take it take it off and then leave it right on the stuff. All right I want to see how this comes out. Okay, and then we have to bake the cookies for 10 to 12 minutes Do not over bake We like our cookies crispy. Yeah, so instead of like 12 minutes We're gonna do like 15. No, not that long. How much am I supposed to space them out like like an inch apart? I guess there's like stuck to the thing. We're gonna have three rows. Oh, that's more of four All right, so we're gonna get back to you guys when I get all these cookies out.  We obviously weren't able to do vlogmas So we usually show the tree like our first video of long list, but here it is now Don't mind don't mind that there's no gifts or anything like that There's a bunch of gifts like we have and stuff and like we just haven't wrapped anything Yeah, we've been all over the place to say the least so we've been really trying to get ourselves together Get some gifts together and we haven't had time to wrap or anything. I heard the oven. It's time to go Guys also by the way, we're also going to the mall later today because we have to buy more gifts over there, too So 350 degrees. We're good, baby. You want to give it to Satan for a little bit? Let him do his thing I'm scared. You should be. Let's turn on the oven light so we can watch it. Please don't burn yourself So far the house hasn't gotten burned down. We're looking good Yeah, right. I know you didn't know you didn't so we got the timer set for 12 minutes And then it should be looking good. I think they're done Wow Imagine there were that it's like instant cookies. You only put them in for like 30 seconds. Oh That'd be crazy make that instant cookies guys. Also. I forgot don't mention the jungle in the background our babies need sunlight Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we usually put them on the windowsill over there But you know lighting filming we had to you know, dim it down a little bit right in it Babe, I think they're done No, yeah, I think that's done. They look good They look good No, I'm just kidding. I just want to annoy you really. I'm doing shopping Is it for me? No, it's not all right. Well, then it's not that important. Let it bake.    How do I all right shut up? Oh my god. It's so foggy here, okay, bro There's no there's no way they're done. Yeah, they are why do they look like that because they have to cool down You clearly don't know anything about Someone's Betty Crocker I'm pretty sure we lost a good like 20 subscribers right there 20 subscribers. I'm sure I'm right there gone. Thank you for that All right, here we go It always scares me when I babe You really got me that's not funny it always scared me when you take it out like that because Even like holding that thing I get burnt Now is this a relevant to me? All right, whatever it's just that I care about you getting burnt. Now. I don't care.  No go touch it No, because you know I'll eat them hot put your hand in the oven. No, I learned my lesson guys It's crucial to never touch cookies when they come out the oven because they fall apart so easily Last time I did that the cookies came out looking like Pancakes and shredded and yeah, just yeah that and don't try to scoop the cookies out when they're first out of the Okay, you live in your learn first of all that that's first of all second of all They just taste better when they're warm. All right, and then you get a glass of milk They're still gonna be warm once they start to like cool down. Yeah, but it's not the same I like it scorching hot. No because Isaiah always messes up all the cookies So then they all get messed up and they look crumbled and he comes to the room like babe. I have I did something I'll have you know that anytime I messed up cookies and they were my cookies. Okay, so we made eight I messed up four let's say okay for example. I never touched your cookies. Yeah Well, that's what you want to touch your cookie. That's because you're impatient. Nobody wants to touch your cookie They become your cookies because nobody wants to touch your cookie. All right. Why are you screaming? I don't know Can I have your cookie? No. You want some Nene? Absolutely not So it's time to take them from the tray and put them on the plate, but I want to flip one You think I can flip one like a pancake? No, if you ruin the cookie Look I'm flippin ready. Oh my god. Wash this. Wash this You didn't even just toss it. Life doesn't go all the way.  No, not with the cookies. This is why I don't let you do this See the cookies don't have feelings. It doesn't matter. You're gonna bruise them bruise. Yes And they're not gonna be as nice and fluffy. I've never heard of bruising a cookie You're just gonna mess them up. Okay Oh, yeah, I'm just throwing a singa. I'm done.  Oh, get yourself together I don't need this. My dog has two jobs. Do you really? He's doing his job right now. You're distracting He's being a good dog. Okay. All right. Well anyway, you want to do the taste test? Yes Give her the cookies at the same time. Give me the camera Mmm This is my favorite thing in the world sugar cookies, especially when it pertains to a holiday Which one are you picking? Man, it don't matter. Give me the reindeer All right, so I'll pick another one. I'll pick snowman.  I'm three. All right. I hope these taste good because we weren't supposed to use that sprite. Okay. Ready? One, two, three It's a banger. It's a slide That's good. We need some milk Boy, I don't drink milk. We got almond milk.  I guess we got the cookies now. Ow. We squeezed my arm. I didn't even touch you But in fact, this is our breakfast. All right. Yeah, we haven't eaten anything today yet. This is actually our breakfast So healthy with all that being said, I hope you guys enjoyed today's video If you guys didn't make sure you guys smash that thumbs up button comment down below see my say all day every day You know we get down boy. Bye. Anyway, I was waiting for your face It is time for today's post notification shout-out today's post notification shout-out goes out to tony rice Thank you so much for your love and support. I say, and I love you if you want to post an application shout-out All you guys got to do is like comment, share and subscribe Hold on to a gentleman. Hold on. And thanks to ball T95 whenever we post a new video and We'll catch you all in the next video. Peace out


The Permanent Forum notes on indigenous peoples' right to food and food sovereignty is inextricably linked with the collective recognition of rights to land and territories and resources, culture values, social organizations, subsistence activities such as hunting, fishing, traditional herding, and shifting cultivation and gathering are essential not only to the right to food but to nurture in their cultures, languages, social life, and identity and I wanted to point to that because during the summer and even now many of our communities across the province are in a process of harvesting and putting away food for the winter and the impacts that that we see from development whether it's login or mining or pipeline development or oil and gas development the impact of that on our communities and our people's ability to to to continue our traditions and to continue to rely on the food from our lands is important many if you know that for many of our communities the social assistance is a primary source of income and it's not very much so our people continue to maintain their reliance on the land and the resources that it has so it's important to protect the land and the environment to ensure that the food that comes into our houses and that feeds our people is is is not toxic and it's not contaminated where I come from there's a mine and behind one of our villages not far away that contaminated the lake the food from that lake is completely off off limits now even though that mine has been closed for some 30 years so the discussion that Carla mentioned about Kinder Morgan the the point that were raised around the Northern Gateway and Stuart mentioned that there's been several several there there are more than one or two pipelines being proposed taken together those pipelines running through that's that core in the north there needs to be a rationalization there's already a pipeline through that area and and there's proposal for at least three or four others and the cumulative impact of those proposals and their impacts we don't really know for sure and the environmental assessment process now such as it is or such as it remains is not going to be that that important safeguard anymore because now it becomes a political decision at the cabinet through the minister ministers recommendation whether or not projects proceed in many cases without any any review at all of the environmental impacts that we have in this country environmental assessment impacts to a limited degree now what we don't have is indigenous peoples impacts assessments or assessments dealing with the impacts of indigenous peoples and and so so we have to fit our our stories into these environmental assessment impacts but there are also people impacts for sure


I would like to know what is your favorite verse and why mine I really don't have one but I do have a set of verses in Psalms that I really do like Psalm 3 and the Psalmist says how are they have increased who troubled me many are they that rise up against me all the people that are coming against me many that be that save my soul not even God can help there is no help for him in God but then he says but thou oh Lord are a shield for me my glory and the lifter up of my head and so no matter what's going on I can think about this passage even at my worst no matter who's coming against me you oh Lord are a shield for me you're the one that lifts me up no matter what's happening so that's one of my favorite verses and that's the reason why but I would love for you to share what your favorite verse or verses are and then why so others can see in here and then others can also get encouragement from what you have found encouraging you


again again again again we're going to get pixie before fun gonna get pixie before fun we are I know it for sure I feel it in my bones we are going to be getting pixie before fun 100% guaranteed 100% guarantee that we will be by the way hello when you guys come back you owe us three challenges from the box it's not a box that by the way I mean technically we do but I'm gonna talk with them and see if we do all three at once I don't know if we do that we might just miss on some you know you're gonna make them cry oh no I really enjoyed that I thought that was a great I thought that was a great one I love that back in January could you imagine if in if you get pigs infant finds out yeah he's gonna quit he's gonna quit like right away if I do you know what's gonna be really funny I'm not gonna tell him you're not gonna be able to tell him if we get it from law master while we're doing this before he comes back you're not allowed to tell him that we got pixie I'll just randomly cast it in battle sometime and he'd be like oh is that a TCA online not that I got the spell he's gonna be salty I'm so mean I won't try out Seder we're gonna pass for Seder because I need help I need help I need health yeah we'll see if we do get pixie though imagine imagine that I'll be proud of myself I'd be really proud I would be really proud I'll show you my death was it afterwards because he's proud he's death and proud I can say the next so it's fine you are getting shut up it's galore Dylan you are so good so good so good amazing 11 out in oh my gosh it's been 13 hours since we started streaming holy shizzle holy shizz that is a lot of numbers that is a lot of time like 13 big number holy frick over half way coming on the downhill slope now you know we done the first 12 now we're in the last 12 nearly there nearly nearly nearly there so close I can just feel it okay here's our first Seder will we fizzle it probably let's find out heading next okay cool cool I'm gonna heal now 30 hours I should have consumed one and a half liters of water wow that's cute let's have a drink there's a drink I drink it I drink it I drink it good I drink it real good okay oh this could kill me this could actually kill me that's not good I don't know why they're hitting me like seriously why not Dylan please ridiculous well that's embarrassing that's our second death just as well it doesn't count for the thing that way I said we'd do it with Tyler it doesn't count because we're not actually doing like the walk-through thingy so it's fine so it's fine it doesn't count hi I'm back nice to meet you I'm a dick I'm honestly so bad comedy is not with me comedy is not one with me comedy is not one with me whoo nice to meet you too yay let's hit him up with a heart just for just for fun because you know we got a got a heart hotter we can't even say to know our first time casting Seder and it was a fail because we couldn't do it because we died hi back I'm front hi front I'm dad I think I instantly win that one thing I win that one there um well gg hopefully we'll see oh look best death spelling game yeah best death spell in the game will it kill I don't know let's see how it goes pure pure pure kachow wow wow amazing good job you killed gg am I gonna get it if I get it that'd be funny it's just a fleeing luck you know you die and then you get it it was a sign right oh gosh that was a good luck if you die if you die and come back it's good luck 100 guarantee that's how it almost worked you die and come back it's good luck can confirm no it was not a dear god that's dear night this was headless wolfsman completely different spells get it right just kidding um but still whoo that was what our second run second run and we got headless geez hello hello there


nd upwards to 32 to 3500 on some of our worst winters. Last year, we did have some staffing vacancies. We were three to four people short between streets and water sewer, who all helped with different components of winter operations. Additionally, we had a really heavily heavy reliance on the police department and the parking division to help support the ticketing alternate side ban, the no parking in the downtown in the evening. We had some minor issues towards the very end of the winter, mostly with enforcement. We had no dedicated single individual last year for enforcement. And when we had there were some injuries and people were out and that caused less enforcement to be occurring throughout the tail end of the winter. And staff noticed that there was more cars staying on the side and started to have more difficulties actually clearing the road, clearing the snow as compared to the previous winter. The first year we had a dedicated DPW staff specifically for ticketing. So they were in every day, 7am to noon, and that's the only task that they did. We also continued to have localized areas of noncompliance. Monsignor Crosby is one example where the street is very narrow. There's just not really a good alternate side swapping solution for them. So it remains that staff goes back frequently to have to clear that road. It is one of the areas that we have very few exemption areas. So it's not too difficult to manage, but it is, it remains to be an issue. It's never going to be as clear as some of our other streets because there's consistently cars parked on the side where there's housing throughout the whole winter. And lastly, we had quite a bit of equipment issues. We had three safety recalls with trucks that ended up having to go back to McGee Ford to get repaired. We had one total truck and then with the delay in receiving our sidewalk plows, we've had a lot of, we had some mechanical issues with actually keeping the sidewalk plows out on the streets for the entire winter when we needed to. For the 2022-23 season, we have been working with Evelyn to, we developed a fire that is going out in the water sewer bills that are being distributed this week. So you all will be getting a reminder about the alternate side parking van as long as some other DPW related specific information. In addition, we all met as a group, fire, PD, city manager's office, DPW staff, and kind of brainstorm about some potential solutions for the upcoming season. One solution that PD has offered is that they may have some two potential candidates to assist with overnight and alternate side parking enforcement, specifically starting at 4am and going through about noon, which is really big for us because as we all know, PD is, they're having staffing issues as well. So having that dedicated person that we can rely on to make sure that people are moving and obeying the rules is very big because when we don't enforce, that's when we start to see way more non-compliance issues. Additionally, we talked with the fire department, they've agreed to help with clearing of hydrants, which is something that DPW has done in the past. But in the last year or two, I'm sure you've all noticed that they don't get cleared nearly as frequent, if at all. So we were really happy to see them willing to help with that. They've also, we've also talked to them about eyes for us with additional columns for street columns if they're experiencing icy or winter-related issues. We are working to finalize our salt contracts right now. So for those of you who don't know, the salt contracts are typically done through the State of Vermont. They're done by districts. Each of the districts gets bid out and then the towns usually piggyback off that contract as an additional buyer. This year, there's been some just nuances that have changed with selling of DuBois construction. There's just not the same, we don't have the same rental trucks that we've had in the past. So we're trying to find other solutions to provide trucking for when we do snow removal. And we're also reaching out to find some seasonal help for DPW. And then lastly, because this year we are anticipating relying so heavily on the water sewer division, we are working on a retainer contract for water leaks so that as we're using a little bit more water sewer staff to help keep the roads clean, we have that backup option in case we have water leak. Well, when we have water leaks that we have another area to go back on just to provide staff with some additional support. Some challenges and upcoming issues for this season. So right now we still have seven vacant positions that's pretty impactful to us. I will say that all of the divisions within DPW have all been willing to help along with most of the other departments within the city. It feels really good to know that everybody else is willing to help out and to pull their weight, especially this year. We are in the process of interviewing people and candidates and hopefully that seven unfilled vacant positions is starting to go down. But right now we feel like we have some good if we're to snow tomorrow, we feel like we have a good plan in place that we can still manage. We are, we also, one of the, this is a really big issue for us is this year there is a huge increase in salt pricing, $88 a ton from $71 a ton. If we're using typical values of salt, then that could range anywhere from like a $50,000 overage to anywhere to the $80,000 to $90,000 depending on how severe the winter is. On top of that is we just got notification from VLCT that there may be a potential railroad strike, which would impact salt coming into the state. So if the salt isn't coming in, then it can't be distributed out to the towns, at which it's going to make winter ops for everybody way more difficult. It may mean that we're going back to using more sand in the interim if there is a temporary strike or having to rely a little bit more on liquids. We do use liquids, but we're just really in our, I would say in our infancy, like we're just, we're just getting used to how to use them, the science behind them, the temperature, the moisture content and really understanding. It's been, this is going on within the industry that people are trying to transition from salt to more liquids, brines and other solutions, partly because environmental quality issues. So it could be that this year we have to, we're forced to look at other options if we're not able to get the salt readily available. Lastly, we have some other equipment, we just have some old equipment. So we've ordered a sidewalk plow. We're not anticipating the plow that we ordered in 2021 to be here in the year of 2022. So from the manufacturer, we're hearing at best January of 23, but not even a commitment. So that just means that there's a higher potential for more breakdowns, which means that we may be providing a lower level of service. If we only have two plows to get around, it may just take an extra hour to get those sidewalks clear. We do have three units. And so that's not an issue as long as we can keep them on the street. Lastly, I just wanted to say that DPW is considering a future request to move to year round alternate parking, partly because we can see the benefits of that you can use for street sweeping and other issues. And I think with in hindsight now that we've completed this Main Street project, some of the areas that we were always concerned with having parking on both sides, I feel much more comfortable about making that transition maybe in the future. We're certainly not ready to make that recommendation, but it's something that we're starting to consider for future because we feel that the alternate side thing, it does work and it will make it easier that there's not like a date for six months of the year you're doing one thing, six months of the year you're doing another thing. It would be a consistent and uniform alternate side ban. And then also we are looking at and planning to starting to incorporate some other technologies. We've been doing some research about root optimization, laser guided systems, and like temperature sensors and cameras. Some of these are cost effective solutions that can be deployed that are really a tool for staff to help evaluate what is going on in the street and how to better prepare for a storm. So with that, I will open it up to any questions that you may have. Lots, questions. Donna, go ahead. Gordon, thank the crew, which is really amazing. As far as a number of tickets, it's usually one of the things we had used, looked at before the data of how many tickets were issued, how many cars were towed. Because you didn't have the assigned reinforcement person, were there less tickets but more cars left? Actually, last year there, what towing was basically a wash. We'd had, I don't know, five toes total for the whole entire year. But there was an increase in ticketing and actual cost received from ticketing. The first year, I would say we were a lot more lenient on appeals. We were just a lot more generous. And moving forward, we started to realize that you're getting some of the same repeat offenders. I actually had people tell me, I don't care, ticket me. I just need to park here. Can I just pay out for the year? Ticket me every night. I don't care. I just need a place. So when you hear something like that, then you start thinking about, okay, well, how can we help accommodate you? And what do we need? Because obviously, if they're willing to just pay those fees, then they really, that spot to them is very important. I would say that we probably had, without going back and looking at the data, probably twice the number of tickets last year, even though there wasn't a dedicated person for it. Some of that was because we had both employees within the parking division were doing it as with and also PD at night, but then at the tail end of the season, when they were unable to perform that action, that's when we really started to have the non-compliant issues. But for the first part of the season, it was it was working well. And then when we didn't have that reliable dedicated staff, that's when we really saw the change. Yeah, kind of seems like that seven vacant positions is like the biggest highlight of this, right? So just any update on how are we getting applications for these jobs? Yeah, we had an interview yesterday, we had an interview today, and we have more lined up. It's just getting the right people in the right positions. And I'm pretty confident that we're going to start to fill those vacant spots. The one benefit with DPW is that yes, they need training when they get here, but it's not like they're getting enrolled in an academy where they're then sent out for six months. Your new hires can come in and be a little bit more impactful on a pretty immediate basis. With that being said, I want to just tell the public and everybody to just be patient, because even though we get an employee that doesn't mean they know where to put the snow, how to do the route, where to back up, where to turn around. And so I think a lot of times the complaints that I get and receive from the public is like, why are they doing this? Or why are they doing that? Why did they put the snow here? We've done it for 20 years. They always put it in this corner, right? And so Montpelier is just, we're very small, we're very tight, and everybody has their, you know, their opinion on where things should go. So I just think that as we move forward in the winter, just be mindful that when new employees, we're going to have a little bit of that learning curve and adjustment for at least the next couple of years, but especially this winter. I just want to add thank you for all of this and thank you for your work on this. And it's encouraging to me anyway to hear that it's successful enough that you're considering it for a year round. I'll be interested to hear how that conversation goes. I wonder how that, you know, I'm already like, how do you roll that out? I don't know. But I also just want to note on the winter parking man thing, even like last winter, I was still getting comments from folks about the signage for it being confusing. And I don't know if there's an easy way to fix that. Yeah. Fortunately, with the signage, in order to be able to enforce, it has to be in the negative, right? So you can't have park here from one to five, right? Or then you can force it because you're not telling them it's prohibited. Right. Okay. So that's why you have some of the no parking from when to when. And we staff really looked at the best way to message that. And this is kind of where we landed. If we were looking at some digital signs and the technology just kind of keeps changing. I was really hopeful that we would be into more of a like a dynamic parking sign at some point where we would be able to say no parking, you know, on this day from 12 to five. But there was, as we were reaching out to vendors and having that discussion, they switched their format. So they used to be able to put it in a text on an app, right? And it would load up on the message board over the internet. And then they realized that that was there were some issues with that. And they kind of reverted and went backwards. And so now it's just a no parking illuminated flashing with the hour sign underneath. So we'll keep evaluating the better signage options. I will say that as a group, we discussed whether or not this was the year to go back to the no ban period. And we personally, I felt that one, the old ban, like before we went into the on call ban, that is not really conducive for this community. We have a lot of areas that need parking and that don't have a space readily available. So it didn't, I personally didn't really think that that was a feasible option. And then going back to the old way, which was only when we need it, that system just really doesn't work for staff.  And then on top of that, there is this expectation here that when we say we were going to clear these streets, that everybody expects that you will do that and nothing else diverges, right? So when you have the snowblower breakdown in the middle of the night and you don't get to a certain area, everybody's mad. And then you have to call it, then you put it on for another day and it just has this ripple effect for managing where the alternate side ban just allows a lot more flexibility for staff to do what they need. We know it's not perfect all the time and it does take us a while to clear, but it's just a benefit of, we feel that if we went back to the old way, we would never be able to go back to an alternate side ban. So with that, I think we decided to just try it even though we may be understaffed and we'll figure that out. We're confident because we have a lot of help from others that we'll be able to manage. Yeah. Thanks. I'm a believer in my great presentation. I am a believer in the alternate side system. I do hear people complaining, but one of the big things is a trade-off between how many people get tickets and nobody likes getting a ticket versus how many people get towed and getting towed is just so much worse than getting a ticket that it's really a benefit. It's absolutely right. I mean, a tow cost is five, six times the cost of the ticket and not the also where they get towed is on the other end of the city. So then they have to find a ride and go get it and then pay the vendor and then it causes a lot of other issues. Yeah. I think it's a good strategy. I know that it's so not everybody gets it or agrees with it, but I think it's a balance and I think it works here for us. Carrie. I don't have a question. I just want to thank you for this presentation and also for keeping the streets clear and all the work that you're doing. It's an unbelievably huge job and I can't even imagine how you do it full staffed. And I just wanted to say thank you. You're welcome. Sure. Okay. Any other questions? Great. Thank you both. Awesome. Very much appreciate all that you all do. And Chris too. I know most of you know Chris, but Chris is our new Chris Lombra, our former building inspector is our sustainability and facilities coordinator. I think he's just here for education purposes tonight. He's already jumping in with a lot of good ideas. More to come. I think he's coming in to see you in November I think to give an update and stuff, right? And thank you all doing the presentation on stormwater. Our consultant is actually going to pick the lead on the presentation and there's Andrew Wilberg with Brown and Faldwell and I'll let Kurt do the introductions and then pick it off to them. Before we do that, I just want to check in with the council. It's 10. And I hate to say this, but I think we should do all of it. I think we need to do all of it. It's all, are you okay with sticking around? I anticipate we'll be done by 11. That's my estimate right now. My hope and my goal. Okay. We're going to keep stormwater briefings a high level overview and we will get right through it. All right. So, yes, tonight we're going to talk about status of the stormwater utility development. We have hired Brown and Faldwell to assist the city in developing utility. I've done a lot of work. We have the coordinating with the stormwater utility committee as well as individual meetings with staff with Zach and myself and Brown and Faldwell. So tonight we'll have with us Andrew from Brown and Faldwell as well as Matt Davis with Brown and Faldwell. They're going to be leading up the presentation at the end. Zach and I can help answer questions if there are any. So for that, turn it over to Andrew and Matt. Thank you very much, Kurt. We really appreciate the opportunity to share information about the stormwater utility implementation process. We recognize too that some of you are sitting on the stormwater utility advisory committee and really appreciate your input so far, but also want to acknowledge that there's probably a wide range of understanding about what a utility is today. So as Kurt mentioned, the goal for today is to provide that overview of what is a stormwater utility and inform the public that the city is interested in implementing this utility. Talk a little bit about the drivers for that implementation process and go through some of those steps and then provide a little bit of context about what is happening in the state and the region with other communities that have implemented a stormwater utility and some of the considerations that they've incorporated that that we think would be meaningful for Montpelier as well, particularly with regards to rate structure. So I want to be conscientious of time so I will be moving through these slides pretty quickly so that we have some time at the end for some discussion. So what is a stormwater utility? This is a term that is used interchangeably between a government entity and a fee, but the idea is that it provides a dedicated fund through the city stormwater management program and we know that the city already pays for stormwater management. It's generally funded through property taxes so property owners are already contributing to the budget that pays for stormwater management activities, but the utility is really meaningful because it provides that transparency for what the utility is paying for. Where are those budget dollars going? It aligns the way in which the fees are collected with the contributions that property owners are making to runoff and to pollutant loadings and it makes sure that the budget is adaptable as program costs change over time. So there are concepts of equitability and alignment between runoff and pollutant loading and the rate structure that we're going to go into today. A stormwater utility fee also provides the city with an opportunity to address both short-term and long-term management needs. We know that you have aging stormwater infrastructure as the city has developed over time. This utility will be set up such that the revenues aligned with the costs that are needed to be put back into repairing, replacing that stormwater infrastructure that's already in the ground. It also provides an opportunity to be more proactive with operation and maintenance and hire staff to do that work and to comply with changing regulatory requirements. We talked a little bit about the fact that the city is already doing stormwater management. The utility would continue to pay for these activities that are listed on the stream, capital improvements, street sweeping, cash basin cleaning, and it also provides an opportunity to think about some of the forward-looking requirements that the city will have with regards to water quality under permits, as well as think about whether or not the utility should be set up to mitigate flooding, whether there's chronic nuisance flooding or bigger picture flooding issues that we want to plan for as a community, this utility could also pay for that. So why does this matter? The reason why we're coming here today is we think that it's really important that the public understands that the utility may go into place soon and that billing may commence as soon as summer of next calendar year. So property owners will and should expect to receive a bill starting next year if this utility is implemented. And we know that you're interested in having some of the details about what funding needs are and how much bill amounts will be. We're not ready to provide those answers. We were just getting started in this process, but we wanted to commit today to come back to this group and to share information as we find that information out. We also wanted to share that there are opportunities for the public to provide input and also opportunities for the public to receive a credit for actions that they're taking on their property to reduce stormwater runoff through stormwater best management practices, whether that's through getting water into the ground to infiltrate and be captured through groundwater or to be treated on site so that it's not entering the city's drainage system. So there's both an opportunity to provide input and also an opportunity to provide a credit to property owners or to receive a credit if they're already stewarding the environment in this manner. A little bit of detail on this slide about the implementation process. We were just getting started as I mentioned and we are already in the third of a series of six workshops with the stormwater advisory committee. We are currently doing a revenue needs analysis and having discussions about levels of service and we're going to continue to talk about great structures and credit policies and staff training and the legal process for creating this utility over the coming months. In the spring, we'll get a little bit more information out to the public about what they should expect and we're also going to be providing the city staff with information about how to administer the utility as the committee provides guidance about policies. And then as I mentioned a slide ago, in summer the public should expect if this utility is implemented for the utility bills to be sent out. We really want the public to be able to provide input and for this City Council to provide input multiple points throughout this process. So we're coming to you early in the implementation process to get some input and get a sense of how frequently we should be coming back. We have a suggestion at the end of this presentation about when we think it would be timely but we would like to put on that at the end of the presentation. And on a similar idea, the public education involvement process will be really important for a number of reasons. Obviously we want to educate the public about the utility so that they understand where the stormwater utility budget is going and the activities and the benefits that they're going to receive from it. But we also want to make sure that the budget is set at an appropriate level so that property owners are not receiving a bill that is untenable. So we'll be getting input from the advisory committee about the right level of investment for the employer and the kinds of activities that you want to be incentivizing that environmental stewardship that's on the screen. That can really be achieved through the credit policy and programs that will be developed in the spring and after the first round of bills are sent out. We anticipate providing many different mechanisms for reaching different target audiences. So we'd like to come back and present more information to this group over the coming months. We have a few topics picked out already and we'd also like to educate the public in different stakeholder groups or target audiences through other mechanisms as well. I know one thing that we talked about with the advisory committee is highlighting the web-based dashboard as an opportunity to provide the public information about what they should expect for their bill and to get more information about how the bill was developed and how their individual fee was calculated. So we're looking forward to developing that for the city and making it available to either city staff to provide information to the public or to provide it to the public directly. One of the last topics that I have today is related to the calculation of those bills and coming up with the rate structure that will dictate that. There are a few key concepts that I wanted to share with you. The rate structure ought to be defensible, equitable and implementable. There's a lot of precedent for this that differentiates a tax from a fee that the utility sends out. I wanted to talk through each of these concepts today so that you have an understanding of some of the considerations that the committee and our team is working through. So defensible. Typically, fees are proportionate not to the value of the home, the size of the home, but to the amount of stormwater runoff that a property contributes to the drainage system with the amount of water leaving a property. And that's really difficult to measure. We don't have tools to do that else effectively property by property, but what we can do is measure the amount of impervious area that properties have. And that's something that's very easily done using the state provided data. And it's well correlated with runoff, so it's often used as a proxy. So that's the defensibility concept. Equitability corrects for the fact that the current way of funding the stormwater management program is based on property taxes. Equitability differentiates that because it connects more to the concept of runoff and also provides opportunities for the public to receive that credit that we discussed earlier. So the city is interested in setting up that credit system that recognizes efforts to reduce runoff from individual properties. The policies, the programs have not yet been established yet, but we understand that that's a priority. And then finally, and this was a really lively discussion that we had during our second workshop. Implementability is really critical. We'd love to, like I mentioned, measure every individual property down to the square foot, but is that practical? Is that a good use of the city's energy if a question comes up or if a property has redevelopment and changes the amount of impervious area on the property? That might not be the case. So we want to find that happy medium for what is easy to measure and maintain and explain both to city staff and to the public that will be receiving their bill. And I recognized I used a jargon term, impervious area, so I wanted to define that really quickly. Impervious area refers to hard surface typically, like roadways, driveways, parking lots, roof lines, that sort of thing. And I believe the last concept that I want to cover is what other communities in Vermont and across the country are using in terms of rates. A very common way of establishing billing amounts is through this concept of an equivalent residential unit where we're comparing individual properties to the average amount of impervious area on a single family home or a residential property. And that average value is charged one equivalent residential unit. And the amount of revenue or the budget amount on an annual basis is divided by the number of equivalent residential units to determine how much that will cost a property owner. So I know we're treading into math, but I did want to introduce that term so that next time we come to you, you have a little bit of background about what I'm talking about and can see in a little bit more detail when I pull up a couple of comparable examples. Sometimes the rate structures are considering land use type, like I mentioned, single family residential versus not. So this is St. Albans. And another example of South Burlington where they've actually gone a little bit further and subdivided property types on the residential side and then have a completely separate way of billing for non-residential. And that matters because the level of investment that you make in calculating these values will be dictated by the rate structure that's selected. So right now we're in the process of picking out a few different rate structures to evaluate and present back to the committee so that the city will have a good option that works for Montpelier. And just wanted to kind of close with the summary side of example rate structures and give you a status update of where we are in this process. So as I mentioned, we are definitely thinking about all different types of this implementation process right now but we are in the phase where we are talking about the different rate options, the right size of the budget, and getting feedback from the steering committee, the advisory committee about how to pursue the next workshop that we have with that group. We'll be talking about the different rate structures that were evaluated and also coming up with an estimated annual budget in the short term and in the long term to meet those water quality and infrastructure goals. So we're really excited about the progress that we've made in just a short couple months and looking forward to getting back in front of this group to share our progress. And I'll just close by asking if there's a timely way to come back to the committee to receive additional input. We know that there'll be opportunities to get the public involved through public hearings especially when we talk about the legal updates that will be needed to implement this utility but we're really pleased with the progress so far and appreciate your time today and look forward to any questions that you might have. Super. Well, thank you. I have a couple quick questions. For the legal authority to do this, do you anticipate that we will need to have a charter amendment? We are expecting that. We are expecting that. Okay. Second question, just looking at some of the structures for like St. Albans South Burlington where it is costing a single family resident residential unit like let's say $50 a year. Do we anticipate that this is in addition to their regular water bills or can they anticipate that their water bills will be less? Well, maybe that's not a fair question to ask right now. So it's not. We don't anticipate it's going to affect the water flow per se but there are two cents on the tax rate called the, you know, sewer benefit charge that we do fund operational stormwater activities with. In addition to that, we actually have the CSO benefit charge which is actually I think we're going to put in more of our stormwater funding and that's like nine cents on that. So it's not water, it's sewer. So hopefully we can take funding we're already doing, make it clearer and then redistribute that funding on a more equitable basis. Okay. I bring that up because I imagine that that will be a really strong selling point right? Like if between the two, you know, the average homeowner sees a reduction like that will be important. So I do want to point out that with Brown and Caldwell and through another consultant, we are looking at a water sewer rate study as well to make sure that we're being equitable across all fees that are being assigned to or assessed to all property owners to make sure that we're being fair from all different enterprise funds, which we're just starting that process as well. We're in the kind of discovery mode at this point of providing information to them. So that's getting revamped potentially as well. Okay. That's good to know. Thank you. Other questions? Jack. I really like this.  One of the questions that occurred to me, like the mayor was, can we offer people a trade-off in charges? Obviously, it's not always going to be dollar-for-dollar. The other question that occurred to me is that if this is a fee for utility rather than a tax, does this mean that this is something that we could assess on the state government for all of their impermeable surface, which is kind of a lot? Yes, absolutely. Are the Arbor South Burlington and St. Albans doing that? Yes. So it's just like the water bill or sewer bill. State properties are not exempt. It may not get us more money out of this than maybe it would because right now it's just based on that. Yeah, as opposed to the area. You have to also remember that a lot of the state buildings have very large impervious areas that are contributing to the amount of runoff that they're providing. One other thought that I think that is a really attractive part of this is the speed by which we're hoping to implement this. I was at one of those discussion meetings for the Country Club road property the other night, and someone was talking about, well, what happens to all these other things where you come to the people and you ask us for our views about plans and then we never hear anything about it? And I typed in the text, well, you know, actually four years ago we had all this discussion about the downtown master plan and that's exactly what we use to develop the plan for the very intersection improvement, but that's years later and people just don't remember that. And here having this introduced to people and rolled out in a year or so I think is a good aspect of this. Just so that everyone is aware in that fire that we just sent out with winter parking information, there's just a little blurb on storm water utility that we're creating it so that we can start to engage the public that it's there, getting it in front of people. And then we've been working with Evelyn to create a website on our city website so that people can be directed towards there. We can upload all the information so that they have a place to go to understand the process, keep them involved throughout. Lauren. Yeah, I'm excited about this. I think you know the ability to have the transparency, the equity that you can incorporate into the structures. There was a study that Treasurer Beth Pierce did I don't know maybe five years ago looking at the best ways to fund water initiatives and this was exactly the approach that came out of an extremely intensive detailed statewide process of assessing different ways of funding it. And I think it also just seems very forward looking knowing with impending new regulations that we know are coming online, climate changing, being able to ensure that we're building climate resilient infrastructure for the community. It's great and the consultants and the staff have been really great. Like Jack said moving this forward quickly but really thoughtfully and methodically. So just kudos to the team working on this. Thank you. Other thoughts? Donna go ahead. I just want to comment again the city staff and their RFP was wonderful and then Brown and Caldwell response was even more detailed. I've been very impressed with the consultants and they gave us nine I think it was nine different ways of looking at it and what I thought I wanted turned out differently because they put it through the robics about equity and implementation. That was huge and so we ended up with like a cluster of four or five and we chose three. So they have their homework but I've learned a lot. It's been just really good. It's great. Awesome. Well thank you to to you all to the committee. So grateful. I just had one more point. So very quickly. Sorry. One of the questions was how many updates Council wants. That's one sort of takeaway we're looking for in this meeting. So they had four total proposed and one at great structure, one at legal and one at basically when the bills are going out. So we just wanted to gauge if that's sufficient for Council too much. So my gut is that that's probably about right. It's particularly because this is new. We are setting this up. We want to keep people engaged having multiple opportunities and focusing on different aspects of it I think makes sense. Okay. Cool. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Awesome. All right. We're going to transition out to our communications update. Evelyn, thank you and I'm sorry that we pushed you back here. Awesome. Okay. I'm going to turn it over. What's that? I know. I know. Well, so we do still have the budget. We need to do the budget. Just while you're getting set up Evelyn, my anticipation with the budget is that we're going to hear from Kelly and I think if we have some initial thoughts that are easy, quick feedback things like that's great, but we're going to have more opportunity to discuss it. I think it's okay to not say all the things that you have in your brain for the buildings. And as I've done in years past, we'll send out a survey to get a little bit more in-depth feedback from the Council as to your priorities and your input reactions to that. So there won't be so much of a need for a discussion for that. Is that okay team? Okay. Just making sure. Is that okay with you Kelly? Great. We were expecting really a full in-depth discussion with guidance and votes. I don't know what you're saying. Yeah. Speed process. It's good to go. And you're going to share it with Zoom? Yeah. Okay. Once again, I'm going to move. Yes. It's from underneath. Evelyn's turning things upside down here in the office and this is just one example of it. Let me get this going here. Can folks look at us since you did. After I saw this presentation, I told her she's going to be doing all our PowerPoints from now on and we're going to be sending them to her. No idea that you could do these things and that we had someone that could do them. Well, screen mode. There we go. Okay. Can everybody hear me okay on this one? Are my clothes enough? No. Might need to turn her up a little. All right. How's that? That better? Okay. All right. Wow. Hi, everybody. Thank you for taking the time to squeeze me in here and to hang around. So my name is Evelyn Primm. And before I get started, since this is the first time that I am publicly addressing the council, I just wanted to take a few minutes to share a little bit about myself and express just how fortunate I feel to be here with you all today. I am a Vermonter. I grew up in Burlington and my first career was in the culinary arts. I changed direction after 10 years in the industry and I decided I wanted to do more to help people. And so I went back to college as an adult and I found my calling in communications. And I'll be graduating in May with a bachelor's degree in public communication from the University of Vermont. And I am also currently an accelerated graduate student in the public administration program, also at UVM as well. I interned for Mayor Watsy back in the spring of this year. And that is how I got to know Bill. And I sat in on a few committee meetings. And so I also just wanted to say that my role as communications coordinator here with the City of Montpelier is my dream job. And I pinch myself every day I walk in the steps to City Hall. And I say that at 10.30 at night so you know I'm telling the truth. Okay, so I wanted to start off by sharing a quote from William Willoughby to kind of set the context here and illustrate some of my guiding philosophy that I carry with me. So William Willoughby is a notable figure in American government from the late 1800s and 1900s and is a prominent contributor to the field of public administration. I wanted to begin with this quote specifically because I felt like it captured the essence of my work in this role fairly well. And this quote also speaks to the important connection between the administration of local government and good communication, which is the reason that I am here today. So just for posterity's sake, I will read the quote. So it says, it is hardly necessary to point out that the popular will cannot be intelligently formulated nor expressed unless the public has adequate means for knowing currently how government governmental affairs have been conducted in the past. What are the present conditions and what program for work in the future are under consideration. And then so with that I will bring us into where we are today. So when Bill first approached me back in June to discuss how a communications position in the city administration could help Montpelier progress towards many initiatives outlined in the strategic plan, particularly the strategic goals under the initiatives to provide responsible and engaged government. And so when Bill and I discussed what the plan and vision for this role would be, we mapped out duties and responsibilities that were directly linked to these strategic goals that I have illustrated here. And I will explain a little bit about the work I've done in each of these categories and the plan for the future very briefly. And if I am going too fast and you have questions, please interrupt me. I don't mind at all. So why am I here? All right. So I talked a little bit about how this role aligns with the strategic goals that you all have laid out in the strategic plan. And I see this role as putting action behind those goals. I'm also here to listen to the community and to respond to their needs. And this is why I say that it's not actually about me. The most important part of being a good communicator is listening. So if I'm going to be communicating on behalf of the city, a major part of my job is going to be listening to the people of Montpelier and using that information and knowledge to inform my work. So my audience, meaning the community of Montpelier, is always my number one focus. And I want people to know that this position is not about, not just about pushing information out. It's about having a conversation and fostering a relationship with the community where the outcome is, where we're both better off for having it. And so the community learns the community learns something of value, and so does the city administration in the process. And so part of the way I'm working to do that is by improving systems and not just about pushing out more communication. So my hope for this position is that it will facilitate more public engagement between the city and the community as well as to get out important information that is efficient and effective way. And the presentations before me all spoke to some really critical needs coming up. So I'm really excited to dive into those as we get, as we get moving. So I wanted to take a brief moment just to go over some of the professional standards and codes of ethics that apply to me as a communications professional. So just like anyone in a specialized field, government communicators have a set of ethical guidelines that we honor as well. And these are two I've highlighted here. These are two of the largest and most professionally respected associations in the communications field. And I included on the on the right side here the six tenants of ethics from the Public Relations Society of America, also known as the PRSA. And the one below that is the National Association of Government Communicators. And so these are important to this role for a number of reasons that I believe, one being that I believe this position is more than just like I've said before, just being a spokesperson for the city. It's about providing a level of professional expertise to all the levels of the communication that the city is working towards. And so, and also to provide a level of professional counsel to the city administration to be able to do their jobs as best as they can in the best possible way. And since I caucus with the leadership team, I'm here to provide as much support to them as I as I can in this role. And they are, it's also important for the public to know this about me because my ability to do my job well depends on the public's confidence in me. And so I directly relate that to why I wanted to to bring this up today. Since again, this is the first time I am getting to talk to all of you. So that brings us to the my strategic planning process and communication scholarship theory and practice. So on the right here, I have the ropes process. And so communication is as much of a science as it is an art. And so as a scholar of communication theory, I follow the set of principles that are similar to the scientific method when I'm engaging in a project. And so the ropes process is the acronym that PRSA uses for their most highly it's our most highly regarded strategic planning process used in communications initiatives. And so this is what I use when I first accepted this job to get oriented. And I continue to use it every day because as you can see, it's a it's a cycle that begins and ends with research. And so I will walk through that in a in an example that I I'll illustrate here in a second. So research is exactly where I started out back in June. I wanted to learn as much as I could about the city, the departments, all the staff, what their needs were and how I could help. So as I went on a department listening tour, I asked pretty much the same questions to to everyone. And that is basically what what are your communication needs? What are some current current communication challenges? What do you wish you could do better? And how can I help? And so the whole process took just over a month. And while I was meeting with department leaders, I also hit the ground running and worked very closely with Cameron and Bill doing doing various communications tasks, such as writing press releases and managing the city's Facebook page. And then after I met with everyone, I analyzed the results of all my interviews and identified key themes and put this all together into an informal communications report that I shared with Bill and Cameron as sort of my guiding vision forward. And this is just the cover page of that. And so my vision statement up at the top is the communications coordinator for the city of Montpelier strives to ensure the city provides responsible and engaged government. The communications coordinator works to strategically advance the initiative to communicate effectively as outlined in the fiscal year 2022-2023 strategic plan through innovative and efficient communications practices and procedures. And then I broke that all down into some actionable steps, a summary of each goal, and then the next steps that I would take to work to achieve them. And so the results of my leadership listening tour helped me identify key areas that needed the most immediate attention and helped highlight opportunities for growth. So some common themes I heard from all departments were a desire for more proactive communication that anticipates rather than reacts to community questions, which take a lot of time in the moment. So the staff that I talked with shared with me that they spend a considerable amount of time answering questions that could have been addressed in a proactive manner had they had the time to be able to engage with that type of strategic communication and more long term planning. And another desire was for more cohesion between city departments in communication efforts. And so the people I spoke with shared a desire for communication that felt more planned and coordinated between departments. And we spoke about how this would not only help staff feel more confident and prepared to answer questions about what's going on in the city, but it would also help the community by having more consistent information coming out. And then so if you're following along in the ropes process, we're at P for programming. So it's building off of what I learned from my listening tour. And so these are the areas of focus and the initiatives and engagements that I laid out in my communications report. So just to quickly round down the list, I am part of a team that is working on the web redesign and upgrade of the city's website. And I will go into more detail on that in a bit. Since that's a really big one. And as Bill has mentioned a few times before, I'm involved in the city's use of the poll co survey platform, which I'll also speak about more in a few minutes. I manage the city's Facebook page, I create content, I schedule posts and respond to community's comments. I've also created a LinkedIn profile for the city that I use primarily to communicate hiring information and that that's a whole separate category in and of itself. But it falls into the fell into the social media bucket, which is why I mentioned it there. And then in my capacity, as time has allowed, I'm also functioning as an informal public information officer. So my office being right where it is right off the main hallway at the entrance to the assistant city manager's office. It's very conducive to interacting with people who come into city hall. And I love being able to provide that immediate support to people when they need it. I've also devoted a significant amount of my time to creating and distributing hiring communication as DPW highlighted earlier. That is a major threat affecting the ability of the city to carry out services. And a big part of communications work in general is making connections and building networks and nurturing relationships. In communications, it's very much who you know. And so every time a new position opens up it after it's been internally posted. I've created a process for where it will get posted and circulated in a series of job and career channels. I won't go into detail further on that, but I can provide more information on that process if you would all like. And then I'm also working on a strategic communications plan with Matt Wilson today with the communications coordinator for the community services department that will contain a written form of all these initiatives in an easy how-to format so that no matter who occupies this role or who is fulfilling the tasks, this knowledge won't exclusively live inside my head, but will be transferable in the future. So I'll take you through a day in the life of a recent communications scenario. So just to give you a quick insight, a little bit of insight into something that I would handle on a day-to-day basis. This is regarding the water main replacement on Town Hill Road. And so as always, I began with research and a situation analysis, which I did with Zach Blodgett, where we mapped out the who, what, when, where, why of what was happening in this particular instance. It was a road closure and the water main replacement. And then so these turn into our key messages, which I then distribute via all our communications channels. And then because, like I mentioned earlier, communication is just as much of a science as it is an art. I am also looking at the results and learning from every experience. So when Zach and I met a few days later, he shared with me that DPW did not receive any inquiries or concerns from the public regarding this particular road closure. So we felt that was a major success. And so these are just some examples of some hiring communication images that I've been posting on Facebook and LinkedIn. And these two are particularly LinkedIn hiring posts. And this is the headline of the DPW weekly newsletter that came out last week. And then so on to the website update. So Kelly and I have been working really diligently on this website redesign to fast track it as much as possible. And I am happy to share that we received a final design concept this week. And if we keep up the steady pace that we're on track to having a soft launch by the beginning of next year and fingers crossed, possibly even sooner than that. So we've also approved a content consulting and operations training for a group of city staff that we will actually so that we'll actually know how to use the new website, which will be wonderful. And I will readily admit I am a communications professional, not a tech expert. So this training is going to be very much appreciated by me. And it will be a great investment in knowledge that we can then pass on to other city staff. So the initial group can then go out and train others as necessary. So the image here is what the new homepage will look like, the new design concept that we just approved this week. So the circular buttons that are at the center of the screen there will feature slightly different links than what's there. This is just a draft before we put in the final where the links actually go. But this is just what it would look like. And so the redesign layout will be a much more intuitive and logical approach to finding information. And then so below the circles will be a set of nine popular links, which you can see here, this is just a scroll down from that same screen, which will bring you to the most popular pages on our site. And we will be deciding where those go in our next couple of meetings on the books. And then below that will be a news carousel that'll have the most recent announcements and other functions. And to the right of that will be a social media feed, which will automatically pull from the city's Facebook page. So all city communications will come back to this central location, which is what we want in the city's website. We want that to be the central place. So if you envision the hub and spoke model where all the other diffuse areas of communication branch out, you can always trace back the breadcrumbs and everything will exist in one place here. And then onto our poll co update. So again, just to keep this really brief bill gave a great summary from the a few council meetings back on when we just just got the initial findings. So for the sake of time, I'm not going to go into a detailed breakdown of that. But I did want to draw some attention to the governance section of the national community survey. And why I found this area particularly relevant to the work that I'm doing. So some anecdotal trends that I noticed in the result was, number one, how the city shares information and number two, communication around infrastructure items, which I highlighted there on the screen. So these caught my attention because they echoed the same concerns that I had heard from department leaders during my listening tour. And so this is why I think I will be able to learn a lot from the community using this poll co platform as a tool to gauge how we're performing in the future. After we have implemented many of these communications initiatives that we're working on right now, we'll be able to go back and compare the results from this first survey, which is really exciting. And then one of the ways that we had thought about using poll co in the in the near future is during this budget build process as a way to measure the community's support for various budget proposals and help us navigate that. And then so this graph, this pie chart shows how respondents rated their overall confidence in the Montpelier City government. And as you can see, 11% rated it as excellent and just under half rated it as good. Just over a quarter rated it as fair and 15% as poor. So these results were similar to our benchmark, which is good. But what this tells me is that there's room for improvement, as there usually always is. And the next slide breaks it down into areas that can help show us specifically where we can improve. So as a professional communicator, when I see results like this, I think about how this is indicative of a problem that communication can solve. So for instance, when I look at the bottom metric that illustrates 44% of respondents rated the value of services for the taxes to Montpelier, I think about the person who gave us a fair or poor rating and think, well, we probably didn't do a very good job of communicating to that person the value of the services that they do receive as a resident. And so when if we think about that as we're doing our jobs as public administrators, we can learn how we might get a better reading in the future if we keep that in mind as we're communicating out with the public. And so for instance, as I'm putting together the DPW newsletter, I'm constantly thinking about how we can demonstrate that how we can demonstrate in that communication the value Montpelier residents receive as a member in this community. And so this is what I mean when I say that is a problem that communication can solve. In my experience as a scholar and in as a professional, when we're defining the problem, we're not thinking about the enormous role. Typically, we're not thinking about the enormous role communication can play in an issue at in an issue in the issue at hand. So it is my job to bring that skill set to the table here. And that is exactly what I plan to keep doing. And then so for evaluation, you're following along in a ropes process, we're almost there a second letter and at last. So as any social scientists will tell you, it's the hardest part of any communication or of any processes measuring your impact. Because we're dealing with people's emotions and feelings and not just their actions. And if you're following along, we're almost done. So some of the ways I'm measuring the impact of the work that I've done so far is I've listed here. The research never stops. I am always listening and learning as I go, I'm paying attention to the engagements and views on our social media posts. I'm watching the number of subscribers grow on our email lists. And I am just starting to keep track of where our job applicants are coming from. So as we mentioned earlier, since hiring is a really big priority, I want to know where we're getting the most return on air on our investment. So amongst the various different networks that I am getting the hiring communication out there, I want to know where we're getting that return on our investment and so how I can best use my time efficiently and effectively to do that. And of course, I'm always learning from feedback directly from the community. I pretty much when I'm in the office, my door is always open and I always advocate that folks can reach out to me and I'm happy to answer any questions or pass them on to the the right person who can. And so the last letter in our ropes model is stewardship. So we made it. So how do we keep the momentum going forward? So in addition to everything I'm doing now, should this position become full time? These are some additional long term projects that I would be advocating for and I would love to work on. These are these are all ideas that came up in meetings with different departments during my listening tour. So for instance, the first two in the list came up in my meeting with the assessor's office. I found quite a few examples of a welcome packet and in other cities and towns throughout New England. And I believe this would be a really good addition to our communications materials as we're building a portfolio, so to speak, that we could make accessible in a number of ways. So for instance, we can have a live PDF that people can click on actual hyperlinks that would take you two pages. And then we can also have a hard copy and we can translate that into languages fairly fairly simply with the software that we have. So lots of lots of opportunities there. And the same goes for the reappraisal flyer and info graphic. This could be something that we send out in a water bill mailer for instance. And also in my conversations with the assessor's office, this was one of the areas that generates the most confusion and comments from the public. So it would be a great opportunity to kind of get some concrete messages out there that would be less tax jargon and more accessible to to the community. And I also really think there's real potential for the DPW newsletter to grow. We've already seen a ton of success with it so far. So I'd love to expand the reach and scope of that to make sure we're accurately addressing the needs of the community and looking to them for input on what they would like to they would like to see in there. And then to close. Thank you so much for the opportunity to be here with you guys and thanks for sticking it out this long. I'm happy to answer any questions you have now. And if you have any in the future, I would love to share those with you as well. So thank you. Yeah, thank you everyone. So grateful for all that you're doing. Oh my gosh, it makes me wonder like how did we? Yeah, right. Oh my gosh. How did we manage without you? Um, yeah, thank you. Other questions or thoughts? Okay. Thank you. Happy to be here. We want to acknowledge Matt Wilson, who does the communications for the community services department and works very closely with Evelyn and is hanging in here tonight. So two of them have been good partners. Yeah, we've been it's been great. I feel you know, I know we have more stuff to get to so I won't believe with us, but I feel that as where we are right now and where we're going in the future that our communications position is as important as a DPW director in today's world. And it's just where we're heading. And it's the kind of thing that people expect. You know, think of how many things we've had that have been miscommunication or misunderstood or didn't get out timely. And so we're excited. There's some presence there and you know, I think that that's great for the city. So thanks so much. Thank you all. Thank you. Okay. Team, how are you doing? It's okay. Oh gosh. Okay. I'm working from home. There you go. Our team meetings are until 1030 the day after Cal to me. All right. Good evening, everyone. Kelly Murphy, finance director, assistant city manager. I am going to get this. I will be brief. Sit here. Skip to my presentation. Just a minute. Sorry. So for the purposes of tonight's discussion, it's really to give guidance to finance and city staff on, you know, where some of the targets will be for thresholds for building the budget. There's a memo that's been provided and that's online with the agenda packet. So this is just a brief summary of that. So just kind of getting into some of the assumptions that we're tying the budget to as we get underway here. We are looking to grow revenues by 8.2%, which is CPI currently. We are not anticipating any growth in the grand list. And then it's, you know, series of things, no use of the unrestricted fund balance, salary and benefit projections, which this year are a little bit heavy, just given the staffing increases that we needed to put in place for recruitment and retention. Hopefully those will come in within this range. And then we're also seeing an increase in health insurance of 8.9%. We are recalibrating the CIP and equipment plans to kind of right size things based on the resource profile that we currently have. Last year, we did a lot with debt service. And so we're a little bit limited this year and what we can do in future years, we'll be able to do more. So we started those discussions. We're also looking to the equity assessment to make sure that we are treating the budget and that lens as well. And then we are looking to really focus on the strategic plan and projects that we've initiated to date. And then I just want to note that as it stands right now, we're starting with level funding for community enhancements. I just want to sort of go over last year. So based on property taxes, we were up 6.8%. Overall on the budget, it was 9.7%. So just thinking about in the range of things where we might end up in this budget development cycle, it has been task practice that we've tied the budget to CPI. So hopefully you'll agree and we can keep moving forward, if not, let me know and we'll adjust accordingly. And so just moving forward, the other thing I want to note is a penny raises just over $88,000. And so as we assess what we're looking at here, it's pretty impactful in terms of what we're dealing with. And I'll get into that pretty quickly here. So my sticky note list of dates here for you is just basically how we've outlined the budget development process going all the way through to town meeting day and meeting the requirements that we need to meet to get things done. So I'm not going to go into any depth here, just that instructions are out and that we are opening the budget development system hopefully on Friday. And then we'll be getting submissions from departments on the 8th. So those are some key dates really coming up. And then as Evelyn mentioned, we're going to be using Polko this year for our community survey for the budget. So just a quick estimate of revenue projections with the pandemic. We really were hit pretty hard on the revenue side of things where we were anticipating we would be we didn't actually end up with a loss as significant as we thought we would. So we were able to weather the storm pretty well. This projection is just 23 over 24. And as a very conservative estimate, and I wanted to kind of keep that way to kind of cast a large net as we get underway. But as you can see here, this identifies revenue sources within the general fund and then also the parking fund. And those are kind of the primary sources for sort of the implications of, you know, impact on the property tax rate. So you can see that we've grown property taxes by the 8.2% of CPI. And then we also have a little bit of growth and parking based on trend right now, but we are coming kind of back into focus there. So there's not just much growth. So that's where we are projecting revenue at this point, we'll continue to scrub as we get underway. So hopefully we'll come up with some sources that are maybe a little bit more than this. And I think we will. But just wanted to give you sort of a quick overview of where we're at right now.  So sorry about that. But I'm just identifying sort of key areas within the budget. The capital plan, we're setting a goal to start off at 2.4 in 24, which was initially where we wanted to be to be sort of steady state. And then the capital fund, as you can see here, debt service is a huge chunk of this funding of about 1.1 million. And then the rest is for project and equipment. I will say that just in initial conversations with public works, to do paving, for example, to be sort of on target, we need just under a million dollars a year. So that really leaves a pretty challenge to deal with as we look at capital planning. And so to meet target, we would need to bring the budget up from last year about $250,000. So that's just a pressure point to note. And then you can see the personnel increases based on the annualized impact of COLA adjustments and contracts. We're also seeing a little bit of a spike in overtime just due to vacancies. So I wanted to highlight that here. This might be an area that could be scrubbed, depending on what we actually see for experience and what we see with hiring. That will come back. Okay. A scrub, it's a data scrub. So really looking into trend and really tying it back to what we've seen historically, and then also getting into the nitty gritty details with departments. Thank you for the question. And so then just going on down the line here, there's the wage based impacts. So the Beamer's sort of security and the like. And then we've got the Blue Cross Blue Shield Health Insurance Impact. And then we have other pressures, too. We are still calibrating IT investment. There's been sort of a lot that we're covering. And so I hope to stabilize that this year. And then there are operational increases due to either delayed equipment or increases in supply costs. And so that's roughly 200K. And then the debt service implications on the general fund. This is right now where we have it based on known assumptions and based on our current payments. So getting into the slide that I think really kind of shows where we're at and what this means for us. So if we use the revenue projections of just over a million dollars based on our expenditures and where the pressures are, we're about $1.8 million short over last year if we increase revenues by about just over $1 million or so. Then that leaves us with a baseline gap of about $800,000. And you can kind of see down here in the note what that means. It would be a $0.9 increase on the tax rate. But for looking at everything and evaluating that, but this is also before we've really gotten into any department level requests or additional capital needs beyond the threshold. So it's going to be a pretty tight budget cycle because a lot of our costs are already fixed based on actions we've taken previously. And so this is just sort of next steps in the process. And this is the last slide. So scrubbing or just really analyzing the detail is the next step here, locking it in the other rates. Thankfully we already have health insurance. So that's really the biggest one. So that should be pretty minimal. And then we'll be finalizing departmental position changes and updating fund allocations, which may have an impact on the general fund. We'll see what that looks like. And that's based on how those positions are spending their time. And then going into the development period, we'll be looking at time period detail and decision items for you so that as we come forward, you'll be able to see those items. And then we'll develop and finalize the FY24 proposal and we'll present it to you on the 14th of December. And that is what I have. So the key policy piece of that, I'm sure most of you picked it up, but just to say it out loud is that that was all based on the assumption that we would propose a tax rate increase of 8.2 percent matching inflation. And so I think that's if we don't hear anything from the city council, that's what we would probably present to you. If you wish it to be lower than that or higher or different, then that's something that the mayor survey, you know, put as soon as you as a group can communicate that, then that's how we will build the budget. So I, you know, obviously what's in it and priorities are always helpful, but really the budget target that we will set out to accomplish absent any other feedback would be to try to bring it in at inflation, which is where it currently is. So you don't have to decide that now, but that that's your sort of first big question, policy question. And then obviously what goes into all that. Let me know if you have a projection for what the vacancy savings would be for this fiscal year. We don't, but that will definitely be accounted for as we move forward and maybe one of the components. And, and some of that, that was that overtime money that Kelly referenced is that, you know, in some cases we're spending more on overtime because we don't have, you know, we're filling in shifts. So we're trying to get a handle. And as you know, we did calculate some of that when we did some of the wage adjustments was using some of that savings in this year to help pay for that, but knowing that it was going to have a budget impact next year. So now we're seeing. In a similar vein, I was curious about with like the lack of contractors and stuff, like, is there anything that we're anticipating not getting to this year that would be like carryover of projects that like money we'd allocated like the bathroom that we still haven't built or things like that. Just, I assume that will be built and was one thought. And then I just at one point for the change in, you know, knowing for Montpelier property taxpayers, it's the city and the schools. And like, there's huge changes happening to the school formulas. Is that going to affect this year? Or is it going to be the next year? Okay. Last year, the school went down a little, which helped ours, but we don't know. But the new adjustment, it sounded like Montpelier was going to get hurt by it. So just trying to understand the whole picture. Absolutely. That's right. Those are all challenges that are ahead of us this year. So, you know, with regard to projects, you know, we've already budgeted for them, even if we don't do them, we would just hold those in reserve until we got to them, unless we chose to cancel them and use the funds for something else. But the other side of this is obviously now there's also other federal money, so can we pay for some of these projects with other sources and free up that money? And we also know, for example, even with paving, we want to keep up. We did a good job this year. I think we did a lot of catch-up this year. But we also know that the state is planning to do Route 2 and 302, so there'll be a huge piece of paving work done next year. So even if we do a little less next year, the city as a whole between the two years, we'll see a giant investment. So, you know, we've got to weigh all those pieces of information. But most of you get to deliver the services. We've got to have people that come and work for us. Also, we'll have a lot of vacancy savings. Any other questions at this point? Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. I also thank you for that outline of the timeline between now and December 14th. It's helpful. Yeah, right. Yeah, fair enough. I mean, do you need anything? You don't need anything at this point. Well, we did have an agenda item to approve. So basically, it's just a formality to the winter schedule, which is... Oh, the winter schedule. I totally forgot the winter schedule. That's okay. That's why I just reminded you. Thank you. Because that was in that calendar that you just saw. It's, you know, I don't even know why we put this on. But we always have because we're moving really two meetings. There's the fourth Wednesdays. One is the night before Thanksgiving and one always falls between Christmas and New Year. So we've always moved them up. So we end up with second and third. And then that means there's some extra meetings in January, depending on, you know, I assume we might need as many as possible in January with this budget, maybe not. But it's better to have contingency. So we outlined a potential schedule and can always change it. Jack. Further discussion? All in favor, please say aye. Aye. And opposed. Okay. Super. Thank you. Okay. Council reports. Donna. I'm going to wish you and and Connor and myself luck on November 8th. Thank you very much. Uh-huh. Carrie. Rick Bank, Antje, Donna and Mayor. It's also quick. I read a short play that got picked up by a theater in Colorado. It was written last weekend and this weekend. It's called the first virtual meeting of the Banjo-Hollow Select Board. And I just want to, I just want to thank you all for the inspiration on that. You might see some familiar characters. It's the only way that we can like, I saw you posted that. Okay. Okay. You don't want to see your character? Jennifer. Jack. There's been some discussion in the public about the new handicap accessible path up at Hubbard Park.  And our charge was really to develop a plan to make every facility of city government accessible for people with disabilities.   We've done things at the rec field all over the city. People in coming years will see these improvements. And the fact that people with the mobility needs will not be excluded from enjoying the, the park that all the rest of us can take advantage of all the time is great. And so I encourage everybody to get out there and, and use it. Great. Thank you. Lauren. And I will similarly wish Donna and Connor good luck on November 8th. Uh, and, uh, yeah, pass it on to John. Uh, really quick. We've got 1679 votes counted. Um, I am anticipating a turnout of around 4,500 and we should have about 50% of those counted. So probably run through about between 22 and 2,300 folks on election day. How does that compare? Um, this is, we're at a rate to basically be the same rate that we were the last, um, you know, off presidential midterm election, excuse me. So that'd be a smidge more. Okay. Uh, just a couple of things here. Um, the river was cleaned up on Monday, the trash and all that did happen. Um, so hopefully we can keep it that way. Montpelier alive is would like to have wanted to know if there was interest in somebody serving on their board. You may recall our last rep was Jay Erickson, who was going to continue even as our non council council rep, but he is stepping down from that board. So if any of you are interested, you don't have to decide at 1114, but I'll just throw that out there. Um, and lastly, we have scheduled for our, uh, one of our early December me actually is the November 16 meeting to, to discuss our legislative priorities, um, of which, you know, three of you may be getting lectured on. And, um, the question was, should we gather our lobbying committee, um, before then if so, and should we have candidates on the lobbying committee? Yeah. So. Oh yes. Go ahead. I just wanted to, um, wish everybody a happy Halloween because that's coming up and trick or treating is happening on Monday on Halloween. So don't be confused. And the downtown merchants are having their thing on Halloween on Monday. Or it's usually, it's usually the fire station. Okay. Thank you team. Um, with that, without objection, we'll consider this meeting adjourned. Thank you so much.