Okay, so I'm going to call the meeting to order. The first thing is to review and approve the agenda. So we're going to be a little bit fluid about this because I think there may be people here for different things. So just as an example, I had a request to move the complete streets plan earlier in the agenda. I'd like to move that up till right to item basically six and a half or right after the Montpelier High School students present. Are there, one consideration was we were maybe going to move the consent agenda until after the Scribner hearing. But if it's short, then maybe we can just do it and get it done. I wanted to pull one item from the consent agenda, but I'm happy to bump that till the end. That's fine. Let's do that. We'll vote on that afterwards. Okay, I think we're just going to get right into it then. So with that, I think that's our only change. Did you have anything else? I'm just going to make sure that the agenda gets approved, nobody's. Okay, so without objection, we'll consider the agenda approved. So next is general business and appearances. This is a time for anyone from the public to make a comment about something that is not on our agenda. Anybody like to make a comment about, yes, if you would come up and say your name and your street and our group norm is that you try to keep it to two minutes or less, if you would. My name is Kate Harrington. Hello, hello. My name is Kate Harrington, and I'm a 20-year resident of Montpelier. No matter the differences of the places we come from, we each have in common that we come from the same home, the earth. I'm sure each of us feels not indifference, but rather a deep love for home, the place that gives us food and drink, and the splendor of beauty. We owe much to the earth and her extraordinary web of life. As this council considers plastic pollution and what actions might be taken to mitigate its harmful effects, please remember we're talking about our home. A spokesman for a marine conservation non-profit recently said, nothing that is used for less than five minutes should pollute our environment for centuries. I'm sure you would agree, and I urge you to go forward with plans for a ban on single use plastics. Thank you very much. Thank you. I just want to clarify, I think plastic bags is an item that is going to be discussed soon, so that is more or less on our agenda, so if other people have comments on that, we can save that until it comes up. Any other comments on topics that are not on our agenda? Okay, moving on. So we're going to go to the consent agenda, is there a motion about that, Rosie? I would like to pull item G for further discussion and stick that at the end of the agenda tonight. I move that we approve the consent agenda less item G. I'll second. Okay, further discussion. I want to make a couple of comments. One is items K and L are about purchases of equipment, vehicles, and one of the things that I want to make sure that we do going on into the future is that when we put out bids for vehicles that we are prioritizing non-fossil fuel-based vehicles if we can, if such are available. It's very likely that for these kinds of vehicles, there might not be something that would do the job that had some kind of alternative to fossil fuels, and that's fine, but I would like to just make sure that we are consistent about making sure that we are at least asking for that going forward. So I'm happy to support this as it is, but just a note for the future. And then the second thing is that as we are about to potentially re-up our contract with good taste catering, one of the things that we have had some counsel discussion about is the possibility of setting some kind of standards for ourselves about a living wage. And are the people that the city is contracting with, are they providing a living wage for their employees, and don't necessarily want to hold this contract up right now, but this is a good example of the kind of contract that I think we might want to consider applying this to once we have a policy in place. We don't have that policy quite exactly right now, so again, happy to support it. Let's talk about this more in the future. This is, that would be a good venue to have that conversation. I know they have an industry standard that they're paying their people according to. There's some logic that's based on, it's fine, but let's keep talking about this. All right, I'm done talking. Other further discussion? Okay, all in favor please say aye. Aye. Opposed? All right, so that passes. All right, so we are going to go to this, the hearing for the Scribner Street with length, width, and classification. So I want to be a little clear about what we are doing here. This is not a regular portion of the council meeting. This is the Warren public hearing in accordance with title 19 VSA section 708 to consider the resurveying and the classification of Scribner Street. As a formal hearing, the council will receive written and oral testimony to help determine the true bounds of this public highway. The question of the city acceptance of Scribner Street as a public highway is stipulated based on uninterrupted public use and the lengthy history of city maintenance. So it's got to be a little formal about this because it's, again, it's a little different. This is a quasi-judicial meeting. So the council can ask factual questions at any time. Just any note to those who are giving testimony, please stay on point. We have a very long meeting. So no duplicate testimony, if you would. Because this is a quasi-judicial process, councillors should refrain from expressing what they are thinking while we're in public session here. And we'll talk about what you do think when we go into deliberative session at a later point, which will not be tonight. And the city has retained Paul Gillies and who's here to assist the council to help us keep on track through this process. I was actually going to suggest Paul could come up and take my seat and I can, that way he's- That would be great. Perfect. He's a county-time municipal attorney, and why don't you come up in my seat so you can be right here to help the mayor and everyone else, and I'll- I'm not that active in this hearing. So I believe the first order of business is for us to swear in all of those who want to testify. And that could be interested parties, just in general. So I guess I would ask, and John, I think you're the notary here, so I might ask you to do the swearing in, because I am not a notary. You know, I would actually defer to Jack, who knows the proper way to swear in folks under such circumstances. So I would invite anyone who intends to testify to present evidence, to stand, and then I'll give it to you, Jack. Okay. Anyone who's going to be a witness, stand and raise your right hand. You solemnly affirm subject to the pains and penalties of perjury, the testimony you are going to give in these proceedings will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Do. Do. Okay. So did everybody who signed in, or signed, you know, saying that they wanted to testify, everyone got sworn in just now? Yes, they have, and there's six, and I know they are, too. Where's the sign engine? That's right here. Okay. Okay. Okay. So the first order of business is for the public works department to present their evidence and testify. So I'm going to turn it over to Tom. Thank you. Tom McCartle, Director of Public Works. They're, it's way far away. That's the table. You can drag them over. You can grab the other one as well. They're two. It's live. So again, Tom McCartle, Director of Public Works, presented a background cover sheet for, or council agenda cover sheet for this hearing proceeding. We can, we can move it, too. So we, we convened a site visit at the Outscribner Street, reviewed the site and the lay of the land, discussed a number of things, got oriented on the property, which is part of the proceedings of the laying out of a street and the, when this was brought to our attention was a matter of questions about property lines and the boundaries of, of the public highway right of way. It was determined that we did not have a record of the official action of the acceptance of the street.  She's a registered land surveyor in the state of Vermont. Lisa had conducted some other, done some other work on the street, is familiar with, with the property. I surveyed the Margaret Neal property, has a background in this type of work and known as ancient roads. I also consulted with Attorney Paul Gillies, appreciate your attendance here tonight, provided a great deal of guidance on how to go about this, this hearing and how to resolve this problem, which is not that uncommon in New England. Poorly defined streets in excess of 100 years old, lack of title. This portion of town actually was part of the town of Berlin until legislative action in 1898, officially became part of Montpelier in 1899, unknown at the time whether or not Scribner Street actually was part of the town of Berlin at the time and the city acquired all its rights and titles to the streets when, when Berlin was annexed. So I'll move into the reference to the statute. This is a survey of the existing highway where no previous survey had, has been properly recorded or the record of a previous survey has not been preserved or the termination and boundaries of a previous survey cannot be determined, all of those are true in this case. I'll go into the exhibits that I presented to city council, I have them here, you also were, city council was also provided them as electronically, they are available online for the public to view as well. So I first prepared a memorandum to the city council in April and the city council heard this, received a briefing on the 25th and we talked about the absence of an official acceptance, tonight the city council was asked to consider the historic evidence of acceptance dedication by the city through continuous and uninterrupted care and maintenance by its department of public works in light of the lack of action, evidence of official action including documentation of a certificate of completion, a deed, a petition acted on for laying out of a highway, we were left with the only remaining remedy to us being 19 BSA section 33. The evidence will show that Scribner street has been considered to be a public highway and has been treated as such since the late 1800s, the public has had clear and unobstructed use and property owners have relied on it for access since that time, and recognizing Scribner street as a public highway, the city council was asked to affirm this point by formal action in order that a survey be conducted, which will be recorded with your findings of fact and conclusions which attorney Gillies will prepare for you based on your deliberative session. You are also asked to determine its classification as defined by statute, title 19 subsection 302, by definition the improved portion of a street is class 3 and any portion of an unimproved road, the length beyond the improved portion will be considered a class 4, there is another classification known as a trail. The primary remaining question is length and width, because I believe we have established that it is a public highway through use, acceptance and dedication. Although not absolutely conclusive, the weight of the evidence will show that the street is 340 feet in length, you will hear testimony and receive evidence that the street is 24 rods in length at 396 feet. The improved portion of the street is about 314 feet, but this is not the length of the right of way. The width of the right of way is less certain per the evidence, in this case we have looked at the best possible fit given the monuments and evidence of record, the actual needs of the city for maintenance and consistency with the neighboring properties, Taplan street, I refer to them as the sister streets, nearby is Taplan street and laid out about the same time we believe at 33 feet wide and Blackwell street at 40 feet wide, I have those two sometimes mix them up. Ms. Gannett will explain the layouts considered and why the width of 40 feet makes the most practical sense with the least impact on properties while respecting and guided by historic boundaries. I will now describe the exhibits and have them entered into the evidence or four review by the city council. So they are all labeled, I have 15 exhibits, exhibit one is a memorandum, background dated 419, this was provided as information to assist with the understanding of the matter at hand. Exhibit two is a second revised report by Lisa Gannett, registered land surveyor, she prepared preliminary reports, this is her revised and updated report based on additional research, and a physical survey will be presented as exhibit 15. Accordance, well this first was a notice of city council is exhibit three, regarding the April 25th meeting, by statute it was required to submit notices to all interested parties, and I affirm that I sent notice of this hearing by certified mail to interested parties, I also received and contacted their respective utility companies and have written record from them that they have no concerns, that they were duly notified. The public notice of this hearing was published in the Times-Argus, this is exhibit five, and as required this is evidence of public be noticed, which was published in a local newspaper of general circulation. Exhibit six is a survey of property belonging to Margaret Neal, conducted by Sunwise Surveying, which is Lisa Gannett's company, which is dated July 2001, I had a question on the date of that. Exhibit seven, a survey of a portion of land owned by James and Debra Penard by Gregory Dubois, this property now owned by Enelrad LLC, joining the southerly end of Scribner Street, note that neither exhibit number seven or six or seven illustrate the length or width of the street. Exhibit eight is an email from Bruce Sargent, a resident of eight Scribner Street, contains a list of pertinent records relevant as evidence to the public acceptance and activities that have taken place on the street that is evidence that the city has accepted and maintained the street for all these years. Exhibit nine is a city of Montpellier Street planned by Percy Smith, dated 1921, it's considered to be an official highway map of city streets, and it contains a notation about street acceptance, which asks Lisa to discuss about with measured length, and that is behind me, I believe that's the blue one. Exhibit ten is also an official city street plan, 1932 by J. J. Pines, considered to be an official highway map, and also containing a notation about street acceptance. Number 11 is another Montpellier Street plan, 1932 through 40 last revive, 1947 by J. J. Pines. Exhibits nine through ten are considered as the greatest evidence that Scribner Street was indeed accepted, and its length was known when these maps were created. Also of interest are exhibits 12 and 13, which are sand born maps. These were created for fire insurance rating purposes. They have detailed information about buildings such as building materials, whether they're wood or brick, and the city's water system. They're interesting maps, but they're presented as exhibits because Scribner Street is illustrated with a municipal water main and shown to be like other city streets on their maps. Exhibit 14 is an email from Bruce Sargent, dated March 8, 1918 to myself, contains references to street commissioner reports, which were commonly presented to city council to explain expenditures, again, evidence of municipal acceptance and dedication. Just to, I believe you misspoke in the email as dated 2018 and 1918. I'm terribly sorry. I don't think I was there to receive that. Thank you. Exhibit 15 is a survey of Scribner Street, dated June 2018 by Sunwise Surveying, file number A18514. There's four maps. These are the various widths that the council has asked to consider. Ken Lisa will refer to those in their draft surveys of the width and length. So I'll conclude by saying, in my opinion, Scribner Street should be surveyed and laid out at 340 feet in length with a width of 40 feet in alignment, with existing monumentation found along the existing street as shown, and that it be considered a Class 3 street for the improved portion. Any length beyond the improved portion would be considered Class 4. Any questions or the exhibits? I do have a quick question, Ashley. Should we go to Lisa to describe the exhibits in more detail? Sure. So first a question for you, Attorney Gillies. Are the rules of evidence relaxed in these proceedings or? Modestly. Okay. I do think we need to accept. Yes, I think you need to have, but the proper thing would be to ask if there's any other party who have objections to the material. Okay. So any parties with objections to the submission of that evidence? Okay. So we're going to accept and acknowledge that evidence, those exhibits. And with assuming for a minute that we were to accept the 340 with the designation of the unimproved portion as a Class 4, what if any maintenance or repairs would need to be made to that additional unimproved section if we designated it as a Class 4 as opposed to a trail? So Class 4 is unimproved and there is no municipal obligation to maintain or change any of the status of it. We do not plow it. It's an optional if the city wishes to maintain it. It could be improved at a later date and reclassified. So essentially it's status quo and no obligation to change the status quo by statute. And that would be if it were a Class 4. What if it were a trail? Trail is, I don't know an awful lot about trails except that it's limited to use for access. It can be other access besides motor vehicle. Okay. And let's assume for a minute that we, the council decides that it will be accepted at 396 feet. Would that analysis stay the same as in the improved portion remains as is and then the remainder back to whatever, whatever the footage we decide would be a Class 4 or a trail? That's correct. You notice at the site visit there was a drainage structure beyond the end of the improved portion. It's important that that drainage system and the maintenance of that would be included in the, which the 340 feet does and certainly the 396 would do that as well. That would all be unimproved portion beyond that. Okay. So I guess we'll go to Lisa. Do you have different evidence or are you just talking about the same evidence? I'm going to talk a little bit about why there is no width available on this road. Thank you. Just from my own point of view, I started this survey. Okay. I started this survey for Margaret Neal last year. We essentially did the research on all the parcels except for the GMT associates parcel, which didn't have anything to do with what we were serving. We looked at the Greg Dubois survey for Pinard that wraps around this area. And one of the things that is clear is that the first lot out of the east side of Scribner Street was the Staples and Gomez lot. It was never owned by Scribner. It was not owned by John Doucette who owned a lot of the land in the area. That lot is originally deeded out as having four rods on River Street and eight rods on Scribner Street. They also call for the two southerly monuments of that lot to be granite bounds. Those granite bounds were not found, but I'm suspecting that when they dug for the little garage here, they replaced those bounds with pins. They're in the right position. They are the right distance apart. So on the basis of those two pins is kind of how Greg Dubois came about a lot of his survey with a tie into various properties over on the Taplan Street side of things. So I was really asked originally to survey Margaret Neal's property. I did a lot of the work to locate these other monuments because I needed to figure out how things lay in here. So we have another two lots that were deeded out by John Doucette or various later people and that created the Martinot and the Neal properties. Both of them are called for as eight rods along Scribner Street and that's how we come up with the 396 feet that would be called for if all of these three lots stacked up and they were all along Scribner Street. The only thing I'm going to say about it is that Doucette, who deeded to the Enelrad LLC, Margaret Neal, Martinot and Enelrad all came out of the same chain of title. Now John Doucette when he bought this land didn't own right down to River Street. He owns a 14 or so acre piece back here. When the piece got conveyed into Neal, he calls for this entire eight rods to be along Scribner Street but when he deeds further lands, when he deeds his land forward, he never discusses Scribner Street at all. There's no mention of any street in that deed at all, in none of them. GMT associates now remember that I often had to go back to the town of Berlin to fill in my deeds because Scribner deeded to John Doucette. It was still Berlin. The GMT associates and the Staples and Gomez piece came from somebody named George Scott who was not part of the John Doucette deeds. So when I looked at GMT associates hoping once again that I could find something that showed me where the other edge of this street was, there wasn't anything. They gave a description. They start on a line where it hits River Street. They go along River Street until they come to something that they called Slaughterhouse Road. Then they went along Slaughterhouse Road to Doucette's line along Doucette's line. So there's no distances given here. So there's no way to come from some other boundary and pull onto the other side of the street. That's why we can decide what width of street to put on there. I like the concept of holding the monuments that are out there already along the east edge of the street. And whatever width is decided to hold those monuments. They've been there. They're established. Everybody's lived with them for a while now. I can't remember the date of the Du Bois survey, but clearly the original pins for Staples and Gomez have been there at least since 1907 if not before. So I favor holding that. If we go for the full 49 and a half foot being a three-rod width that are standard roads, you're going to knock lines like right through the edge of porches and the front edge of houses on the west side of the street being the Enelrad and the GMT associates side of the street. After looking at things, and let me say this as well, there's no monuments of anything on this other side of the street. Nothing in the ground to mark the line between Enelrad and GMT associates. That's not really my issue. It would be hard to prove because of the lack of distance calls in the GMT associates deed. All they have is an area call, which is fairly weak. So I like the 40 foot. It gives enough room for the street. It also leaves the apple trees that are on the GMT associates parcel on their side of the new line of the street. I have got a couple of different drawings prepared if people want to look at the other possibilities for width. Obviously you could do the full three rods. You could center the 40 feet on the street, but then you'd be leaving a strange gap between the monumentation and where the new street line is going to be. Not impossible to deal with, but maybe not that favorable. The survey also one exhibit 15 shows the 340 and the 396 and the finish rod so you can see that. Any questions from the council? I guess Ashley. So assuming we go with the 40 foot width, that would still mean that there would be access to all properties on Scribner Street from the public highway. Correct. The frontage of the Neal property. I don't know exactly what that is. You can scale that off. Yeah, the full width of their frontage is 132 feet. The 340, what is the frontage to the 340 line at length? Well, it would be 56. From here to here. Okay, to the 40 foot line, you would have somewhere around 75 feet. So all properties would have frontage on a public street and access for driveways. It would allow for the widening of a driveway there, if so desired. Much of what we're basing this is on highway maps that were submitted to the state of Vermont for call outs to when streets began to be laid out. The state wanted to inventory all public streets and that's began not sure the year. Maybe Paul knows, but the towns had to as tests to their actual roads and began submitting maps and every year this council is asked in February to send in a certificate of highway mileage and you attest to the true measure of your highways. And that primary purpose for that is for financial state aid. The town receives aid for class one, class two, and three roads for maintenance that we do. No funding for class four portions of roads or trails. So that's the primary purpose of submitting official maps. Typically not your key evidence as what is actually the record. Typically you submit the record to the state of how you acquired a road and then that then becomes the measure distance. There was a little something odd that happened over the years in those measured lengths. It was done by feet. At some point, I think in the maybe 60s, they went to decimal miles. That led to some confusion in the record. This 340 feet works out to .06 miles. Actually .064 miles will give you the 340. They rounded down giving us .06 which is 316 feet or 317. And that's been the record for quite some time. Merely from a rounding error. There was no questioning of that as far as the state aid goes. Eventually everything balances out. Some are rounded up, some are rounded down presumably the state aid is the same. But feet matters when we look at this and what that record might be what the council actually attests to for its length. And it has contributed to the confusion of what the true length of the street is. It's .064 miles or 340 feet by the records that were submitted to the state. Okay, so at this point, if you were one of the interested parties who was sworn in, this is an opportunity for you to ask questions of Mr. McCartle or Ms. Gannett. No questions? Yes. If you wouldn't mind coming up to the microphone I'll also just introduce yourself. I just have one question. I heard your testimony, is this on? I heard your testimony about the different lengths and from the 340 and the additional 56 feet did you find any evidence of any highway maintenance of any town maintenance of any portion beyond the 340? Have they ever plowed it? Have they ever put pipes through it? Has there been any kind of use by the public of that portion from the records? Perhaps Bruce Sargent can address that as well but from the recent past, more recent history that has not, if anything did occur back then that has not continued in the last 40 or 50 years and I know of. So that would be discontinuous maintenance of the streets so at some point that was not continued. Thank you. That's all right. Sure. Yes, Bruce. Just a quick question. I think on your survey that was posted this week there was mention of a finding that Maggie's deed of 396 was based on a fraudulent transaction or conveyance that, so I'm confused by what I read. No. That's why I wanted to check. No. Because what I'm looking at here is clear evidence from 1990, 1915 that the street was built almost up to the pine, paved. And so when John Doucette sold that property four years later there was a street there. At least by the evidence. Well there may have been a street there Bruce but there was never any dedication of that street to the city. John Doucette never conveyed any rights to the city for the street. So someone can say, I mean the lot size is not going to change but the fact that he calls it along the street does not then suddenly make that a street. He did not sell those, he never conveyed those rights. Neither John Doucette or George Scott in the front ever conveyed any rights to that street to the city. I think I understand that. So there's nothing fraudulent except that he called it a street and there is no certainty. There may have been a road there but all I'm saying is there was not a street listed to the town. I'll work on it. Thank you. That's not uncommon. We have other streets. I refer to them as paper streets. There's streets that were intended in a subdivision to have been conveyed but never actually were. So it's not, it was a anticipation, expectation that there would be an acceptance. It may have been used as a street but what was actually accepted was a question here. And what does the city council believe is the appropriate true length of the street or established what that length should be? Okay. Any other questions? Okay. Great. Thank you. Both. Do they have evidence to submit? Well, that is a question. So at this point other interested parties can submit testimony. And I think we have a sign-up sheet right there but it is a little far away from me. I'm wondering if someone could grab that sign-up sheet and throw it my direction. Thank you so much. Do you want to sit at the table? Okay. So next up would be Sarah Field. If you wanted to present any testimony? I guess the only testimony I want to present is after reading all the research and listening to this presentation tonight we feel that the street is appropriately at least 316 feet. Probably there's good evidence that it could be 340. The anorhads do not dispute that either way but that we feel that it does not go beyond that. There's no evidence in the record. There's no evidence historically for that roadway ever being longer than at most 340 feet. Okay. Thank you. Mark, I don't know how to say your last name. Megira. Megira, would you like to offer anything? I'd be an echo of her. So no. Okay. Thank you. Maggie Neal, do you like to offer any evidence? If the answer is yes you should come up to the microphone or the table. Sure. I'm glad that my driveway doesn't seem to be impinged by this discussion. The fact that my deed seems irrelevant. I mean it was brought to Tom and he kind of put it off. It's the only deed that I have on this piece of land and it says along Scrivener Street. So I was going along with that. And the neighbor that I shared the land with for 17 years felt that the stream was the boundary. So we just had this kindly assumption that we owned to the stream. So when it was uprooted and blocked, it was alarming. And then to find out when we asked the length of the street it wasn't really a length of the street but we were told that it was .060 which put it below my driveway. South of my driveway. North of my driveway. It was upsetting. So speaking from the heart here, this has been very uncomfortable and I know that it's not all written in stone and that we're trying to correct it now. So personally I'm very glad to hear that .340 is a number that's being spoken by both of you up here because it was not the number that I was hearing in the past. It's been my privilege to care for that wild piece of land up there and to have the edge of the wilderness so near this capital city that I have worked very hard to keep the art vibrant in the town as much as possible. So I guess I would like to appeal to the council to at least do the .340 and I do understand how there's not much evidence that there was a road. I think there is evidence but I do understand that if it wasn't accepted by the city that it was just a little local road that belonged to those people that lived here on the top of Scrivner Hill. All of them were French Canadians coming down working in the granite sheds and I think that's... I've really been happy to have learned a little history about this place where I live so there are some benefits to having this problem because I got to learn more. Well, thank you. Jack? Before you leave, I have a question for you if I could. Excuse me, Jack. It's okay. It was very useful to me to go out and view the property and the question I have for you is do you think there would be any negative effect to you if the line were set at .340 instead of .396 keeping in mind that it doesn't change the boundaries of the lot that you're deeded? Yes. Thank you, Jack. I think that's a good question. It is a very water-full piece of land and therefore all the years that go back in history a lovely stream that came down and that held a lot of the water. Now the city put in two French drains one at my driveway and one up at probably .350, .360 back in the late 1980s. The city council and the workers of the town came up and resolved that situation in the backyards of the homes there. So I like that the city was taking care of the property. I do think that if you let water not be channeled properly it can be very destructive to the land. My son is in California. He's an environmentalist and that's one thing he's really worried about that it doesn't have a real channel now. So yes. And are these French drains located in the area where you think the road should be or are they located right on your property? The French drains run to the stream but the upper one has just kind of it's come to the top of the ground and basically it isn't there anymore. But my other son has dug channels just to get the water from the hill over to the stream but now the stream is not a stream anymore. But they're within you a lot? Yes. Yes. Ashley, piggybacking on that. Do any of those things on the property fall in the width or the length of the question that we're being asked tonight? Any of the things on the property? So the French drains? Yes. The first French drain does fall just past the driveway and goes down to the storm drain that's there and it's within the 340 feet. And is it also, it's also within the... It's right in the middle of the stream. Right in the middle. And the second one is that depending on the 340 or the 396 does that second one fall in the length of? It falls at 350 or 360. Okay. It is past the 340 mark laid by the city. And does, would that also be encompassed in the width question if we were to go with either the 40 or the 49? Is that right? No, it's further, it's beyond the street. So... Okay. I did not see that second French drain so it's not located on here. Okay, I can't answer the question. Can I have that microphone? It was Jim Pinard that was talking about it so he's the one that refreshed my memory that that happened. It was... And he would be here tonight except he said it was just going to be too difficult to watch the conflict, witness the conflict on his land. We're hoping to resolve the conflict. That's right. I want you all to know that my hope is that we will be wrapping this up at around 8, which we are within eye shot of. Now, I just want you... To put that out there, I'm not going to hold this to it but I just want to watch you all know. Good to have boundaries. Yes. Pardon the pun. I'm not familiar with the second drain. I am familiar with the storm drainage work that was done on Scrivener Street. There's a lot of drainage that was affecting both private properties in the public street and waters the enemy, especially for public roads. I don't know about the one further up the street but as far as whether or not by this the holding of the line along the westerly, easterly side of the street, whether it's 49 or the other, as you can see from the site visit, how far back they are, 14 roughly down in front of their house and way up to those would fall within that boundary. However, those serve a private purpose. There are many private connections of drains to public systems so that doesn't necessarily mean the city is responsible for maintenance of those. Although if the record shows that they were done to protect the city street certainly that's of interest to the city and public works and we would participate to the extent we can. So I think anything by the side of that it could very well be but again I don't know where that upper drain is. A question perhaps if you don't mind, Mayor Watson, if I could ask Attorney Gillis as a survey or re-survey under the statute, there is there a question of this street if it is shown to be 340 feet by acceptance and dedication over time and City Council chooses to go to 396 feet where the evidence is less, doesn't carry quite the weight. Is there a possibility that that could be considered a new taking and damages might have to be paid for acquisition? How would that be resolved if that were to be questioned? Well if we start with the assumption that the only evidence of acceptance is at 340 then to go beyond 340 to 396 would be to lay out a new highway and it would be a taking and there would be an argument that compensation should be paid or should at least be discussed. Thank you. But I don't think you have warned at laying out hearing tonight, you're just re-surveying. I happen to by notes that Scrivener's Creek was recorded and accepted by City Council at 397 in 1919. So at some point it was accepted. I mean where that is and I never saw it. If you have that evidence I suggest you submit that for review. I believe it was accepted so I'm going to interrupt you Bruce, sorry because I just want to make sure that we are done with Maggie and you're next on the list Bruce so if you have evidence that you would like to submit now is the time. You're answering the question Also do you want to just say your full name for If my understanding did Scrivener's Creek at 396 because that was implicit in the Maggie's original deed was dedicated at that distance otherwise how could you sell the property and then it was accepted by maintenance from 1907 to 1920 so that was my understanding I don't know if that you know I really was the case down in Southern Vermont I'm not sure anymore what the I think it's very difficult to have an implicit dedication and acceptance become law now true so it's become very stripped and I don't know conditions on Scrivener Street meet those new conditions or not so do you have a set of evidence? Let me launch I'm very excited to present evidence on this because I think evidence is the thing that will answer a lot of different questions this is a picture of the number from 19 and the house is photographed with the residents there on the right is Susie Bertoli she lived in that house her father ran a boarding house on Taplin Street down here was Alexander Burganti the first purchaser of the number 8 house there's a lot of information but for me what's very exciting is you can see Scrivener Street behind the gang and it's paved and if you do a little math the house is 19 feet wide there's one known in that if you do a little math you realize that pictured here is a paved Scrivener Street up to almost 340 feet it's 6 feet short of that now this street is going somewhere and I would say it's probably going to the shed that was on the 1915 map of Sanborn map so that puts Scrivener Street paved at 365 probably so anyway I think I'm excited to add photographs to the project that you're doing and I think it will help to actually be able to see what is happening was that part of the evidence that you already submitted? it's exhibit 7 it's over the exhibits real quickly so I'll wax eloquent to one we're getting going on this first exhibit is an analysis by our attorney Richard Brock which describes the acceptance of the magazine from 1995 up to time now he would have been here personally but he feels that he doesn't hear well enough anymore we did definitely beg him but he wouldn't do it but he did ask us to deliver one message to you he wanted this report to go to Mr. Gillis that was very important to him the exhibit 2 is a copy of the Ford 6th Census February 1, 1899 it shows the beginning of Scrivener Street listing the people that lived there exhibit 3 photographs dated July showing the Piner Bridge in the power plant in the neighborhood there's exhibit 4 this is all listed is that the email? excited that you're going to see it so let me get to what I want to really say about this and this is probably from conversations I had with Mr. Brock it's a very brief I just want to clarify so is it your intent right now to introduce everything that had been sent out to us earlier that was in that list so you're moving to admit all of that earlier by PDF I've got a set of copies so you don't necessarily need to submit it in writing or to give us all these copies because we already have it electronically I appreciate that it's very nice I'm happy to give so we have that yes but they have to be submitted let me get to the whole point of what I would really like to say here and it came a little bit from Mr. Brock so I think there's what are the overriding public interests here justice for one or all or windflow profits for few it's really no more complicated than that in February when I offered to give evidence to survey Mr. Gillies he pointed out to me that I was free to give evidence but the surveyor was free to ignore the evidence that I brought and I understood I would like to point out to council that the surveyor can advise you Mr. Gillies can advise you and you are free to ignore that advice they will not bear the responsibility of decision you will bear the responsibility of decision in the decision you make therefore that decision is absolutely and entirely yours I would encourage you to read and breathe in the Vermont 7th article the government is or ought to be instituted for the common benefit protection and security of people, nations or community and not for the particular moment or advantage of any single person family or set of persons who are a part of that community and that community has an unalienable and one of my favorite words indefensible right to reform or alter government in such manner as shall be that the community judge most conducive to public will that's a big responsibility and you got to do it on your own you have the you and only you have the indefensible right to decision in this matter thank you so much Bruce is there any objection to the acceptance of this evidence so we are going to acknowledge and accept the evidence that Bruce submitted thank you so much you can we brought it right okay thank you very much any other questions that you have so everyone understands that this was your opportunities to submit evidence and there's nothing further to submit okay great so from here the council is going to set a date to go into deliberative session and we have 60 days to come out with a decision we'll do that in writing we won't necessarily have a meeting to announce that but we'll issue a written decision about this within 60 days and let's set the date for the deliberative session later on in the evening does that sound right? thank you all sorry okay we'll officially close this evidentiary hearing and we're going to go back into a regular a regular council meeting okay thank you all alright so moving right along oh and we're at 801 that is excellent what's that sorry maybe I should tell people there are ending times ahead of time all the time alright so we have some presentations from Montpelier High School students I'm so excited to hear what you have to say um I think everybody knows I'm a teacher you have a pot physics quiz right? that's right there's a physics test at the end so I'm going to turn things over to Heather McLean who is a teacher at Montpelier High School what's that yeah sure so my name is Heather McLean and I teach social studies at Montpelier High School and the students have been working for a couple weeks on researching some local issues that matter to them and they created some nice presentations that aren't working with a projector so I have to warn you especially the first group had created their presentation on an online platform and so they're going to do their best to present without that and we did print out some statistics for you but they might have to sort of shuffle through because they weren't they weren't planning to give you those so it will just be a little bit do you want to try my laptop we could take like two minute break I could use a break after that anyway sure take two minutes and see if we can get my computer to work we've got tech gurus here a plastic bag band two things one, there's a microphone that works you've got to get really close to it number two, you should also say your names alright, I'm Aiden Murphy pass the microphone around as you're doing that I'm Mia Preston I'm Quinn Mills I'm Cypress Levitt so the basic problem is that single use plastic is one of the main causes of most environmental problems today the average American family takes home over 1,500 plastic bags per year and only 1% of those bags ever end up getting returned for recycling many marine animals such as sea turtles mistake plastic bags for food and scientists believe that about half of the sea turtle population has already ingested plastic plastic is not only dangerous for animals it is also dangerous for humans when plastic debris floats through the oceans it releases toxic chemicals such as PCB that can cause cancer plastic bags are only used for an average of 12 minutes but they can take up to 500 years to disintegrate in a landfill so some of the constraints about having a plastic bag band would be things like the alternative if the alternative is paper bags then paper bags the process for making them is not much better than what plastic bags do for the environment and it's having to use canvas bags can also be rather costly for families and it just can create hardship so we sent out a survey to the school MHS and asked a bunch of questions and one of the more important questions was how much do you do you really care about the plastic bag band and would it affect you and about 76% of the people care about it and they would be affected in a positive way and 94% of those people know about the effects plastic bags have on the environment so they know what they're talking about so we're asking the council to pass a plastic bag band in Montpelier questions Rosie and then Connor I think I heard you say you sent out the survey to the high school can you just tell us a little bit more about who your survey audience was we sent it to the students and the staff all students and the staff Connor what do you guys think about plastic straws do you like them should we ban those too do you think there's more for the environment as well any other questions Bill do you think it's appropriate to talk about what our plans are from here so we were in the background here able to talk with our attorney briefly about what this might mean so just a super briefly in Vermont municipalities are not allowed to make just any laws any ordinances that we want to we can only make ordinances about things that the state has expressly given us permission to make ordinances about and one of the ways that we if we don't have the authority to make an ordinance about something is that we can basically give or ask for permission or give ourselves permission to make an ordinance like this through a charter change so at this point we could make the case that either as a plastic bags or straws are a public nuisance or that they affect the health and well-being of the public but it's that would be a tricky link to make so one possibility is that we could ask our lawyer to make that connection for us but that would be kind of a heavy lift and it would take some time another possibility is that we could if the council is interested we could work on language for a charter change to ask for permission from the state to allow us to regulate things like plastic bags thumb scale if this makes any sense this is good so can I interject with a legal question I can't imagine it would just be like we want to make an ordinance about plastic bags what would that change look like that we would be requesting actually could be pretty simple as that it could be that the city in the charter enumerate certain authorities that the city council has so adding it could be something like regulating plastic straws and bags or something a little bit more better worded than that but it would basically give ourselves that authority we looked at a lot of different angles we talked to the league of cities and towns we talked to some other communities Brattleboro has passed one of these and they used their charter gives them authority to regulate solid waste it wasn't and so they used that but the counter argument to that is actually when you get handed a bag at the store that's not solid waste it's not solid waste you throw it in the trash so it's a kind of a slippery slope and we looked at a lot of different angles and what our guy said was if you've got time let's put together a good well written article about the charter change ballot and then you have the community discussion so that was the advice it's the safest way so did you have follow up I guess I would encourage if we go that route I would encourage that we not limit it to this one tiny thing because I think that there are other things that we might want to examine in the near future like single use plastics maybe not saying that that's where we're at but if it is something that we want to explore later in the same process again in 12, 18, 24 months you can do it in one I could picture us trying to find some overarching language that would be a little more general and also framing it in a way that is that allows for the state to do whatever they want to do with single use plastics and that maybe we want to go on whatever it is that they're regulating does that make any sense so one possible timeline moving forward from here is let's say the council is into this idea we could either direct city staff or create a committee to look at language for a charter change that could then potentially be ready for a vote as soon as let's say November we're anticipating that we may have some vote in November so that could be on the ballot simultaneously if it's approved by the public on that ballot in November then it would have to be approved by the legislature in the following session and it's after they approve it then we could actually go back and enact some kind of an ordinance change I would imagine that we'd also want to write the language of the ordinance to have sort of simultaneously to the charter change language as well so one possibility is that we could have a motion to direct city staff or the creation of a committee to create such language yes Connor I'd like to make that motion if possible I will second that motion any further discussion yes Jack I think it might be useful to have some clarity as to what the motion actually is and the things that I'm thinking of are plastic bags plastic straws and other single use plastic items like cups, cup lids take out containers I'm not sure whatever else have it be fairly broad so that as we proceed to draft an ordinance which I hope we will that we're not stuck with having the ordinance that we want to draft go farther than the charter change that we get approved would you care to clarify? I'd consider that a friendly amendment I'll have to review the video but I'll figure it out maybe it's not so much an amendment as an explanation of intent sure sounded like to me you can go with it are we feeling clear enough about it Donna do you have a question? that's fine we can vote on that I had a question for the kids my take away is that we'll draft charter language and then perhaps a basic language and we have whether we choose to do the charter change in November or March we have a sufficient length of time to talk through a lot of different options and have community discussion so I think it's I wouldn't be too directive at this point it would be as we get into figure out where we want to end up Donna then Rosie then Ashley I would hope that staff would research other places that have done it which was one of my questions for the students whether in their research they actually found places that did it what kind of language they used can I jump into there are some representatives from the group formerly people against plastic pollution currently citizens against plastic pollution it was renamed and they've done some extensive research on this with other cities so they may be a good asset working with the city staff on this great thank you Rosie so I'd like to be clear that I would like I'm happy to direct staff to work on a charter change that would give us the authority to do this but I feel like we haven't fully investigated what are the impacts on everyone who does this affect and how does that affect them so I want to have that conversation and I think that we can as part of a discussion on that charter change before we decide exactly what we're doing I'm also interested in the idea of a ban versus a tax or a fee for bags so I want us to gain the authority to do this but then be really deliberative in how we actually go about doing it so I agree my hope is that actually by going the charter change route it will actually allow us some time to get lots of input from all the stakeholders that's my hope anyway along the way as well so thank you Ashley, I don't need to speak that was what you were going to say great any further, yes you did have a couple people from the group who had one minute sort of testimonies fabulous give them a chance if they could mayor if they would like to speak you sure may yep it's really okay no worries yes, what's your name my name is Joe Yoder and we formed a group a couple months ago called Citizens Against Plastic Pollution there's just a few people in the neighborhood that are just, we've had it we're fed up there's so much bad news out there about plastic and what we've been doing is meeting and collating information coming up with a better name and I think what we're working on right now is kind of three things one is to educate about the problem ourselves and other people hopefully we've got a lot of information about it there's all kinds of information about the plastic problem and then educate regarding the solutions and it's not just a law there's a lot of solutions like passing out reusable bags maybe businesses can sponsor them and then we're also interested in trying for a band of single use plastic bags and other things so we're delighted to see what's happening here tonight and you've got a pepper alley for you if this starts to hit for a vote we're going to rally the forces for it for sure great, super thank you alright so we have a motion it's been seconded alright all in favor please say aye aye great thank you so much let the record show these four came in and can totally change that's right I appreciate your work on this we're going to point at you boom alright who is next oh you have a new projector there's a second high school group oh I know I don't know that Kevin knows that yet so Kevin there's more students to present can you just try this one first because it might be working there they have a presentation yes so I don't know your compatriots name Stu there's more student presentations so you're not quite next sorry no worries alright who is next from Montpelier high school there were a couple things that were knocked alright if you would welcome back did you find the microphone that works okay great so make sure you're passing that around and if you would introduce yourselves alright so my name is Nathan LaRosa and this is Evan Rohan and Sydney Dunn we've been working on a project researching the rec center building and gym and we've all played basketball for the rec and we sent out a survey to grades 5 through 12 in Montpelier and we got 147 responses to that and we also sent out a survey to the wider community for three days and we got 37 responses from that for our research on this subject we believe that the building and the land should be sold so it can be invested into a new facility that prioritizes ADA accessibility along with allowing the community to democratically pick out key parts and priorities of a new facility slide 2 there's a graph and that is from the survey that we sent out to both the community and the students and 85% of them roughly on both had said that they had been to the rec center and on the next slide 37.4% of people said that they have only been to the rec center once or twice 23.8% of people said that they go to the rec center seasonally for sports and 18.4% of people have never been to the rec center and this kind of goes to show that most people have been to the rec center but haven't particularly been enticed to go back and we're kind of drawing the conclusion that that might be on because of the state of it currently. So next on slide 5 we asked the question of do you feel like the rec center is in need of a renovation and we got about 25% of people saying yes that it isn't in need of a renovation and this just shows how the student body and community understands that there needs to be a change in the current condition of the building. The next slide one being there are no importance to the rec and ten meaning very important you can see how almost everybody on both surveys believed that the rec is either important or very important to the Montpelier community Can I interrupt you? I'm a little confused about one thing why are there two side by side graphs so the one on the left with the 147 responses was sent to the student body of MSMS and MHS and the one on the right was sent out through french port forums to the community Sorry, carry on In the slides before you saw how around half the student body and community never went to the rec or only have been once or twice but if you go to the seventh slide we ask the question would you go more often if it was renovated but almost the exact same number saying that they would want to go even more often to the rec Alright, so if you flip to the next page it's just a little bit of an overview of some of our results so we had 131 votes for an indoor pool which would obviously require a new building 100 votes for a full size basketball court because the court at the rec currently is I believe regulation width but it is much shorter than regulation length We had 86 votes for a new locker room which again would probably require a new building and a couple more 79 votes for a table and games room which is currently at the rec and 74 votes for a renovated bathroom you can see the rest of the results on that page don't want to bore you to death with numbers but we also interviewed the recreation director Arnie McMullen and he and we in our meeting were told about the feasibility plan that is currently in place and that ADA accessibility would be the main priority for renovation or a new building and the building is the main priority of other recreation facilities fields and Arnie said that there were 10 to 15,000 people that go in and out of the gym a year and he also showed us to the Claremont rec building which they had the decision whether to renovate an old building of similar age to ours or build a new one and the renovations were expected to cost about 2 million dollars and the new facility ended up being built for 9 million they had before the rebuild they had a 23% recovery rate and with the new building they had a 61% they almost tripled their recovery rate and granted they got a very very large grant they got 3 million dollar grant from their local bank but they were actually saw very good financial benefit from building the new building and there was a very big interest along with that back to the slide we had a part that was specifically in the communal survey about taxes and so our first question was just simple would you be willing to pay higher taxes in order to pay for the rec center to be renovated or rebuilt and we got almost 90% of people saying they would not be able to afford it but then we still had around 50% saying they would definitely commit to having higher taxes and who was asking this survey was this still students? this was just to the communal survey just to adults because you have it listed twice so I assumed one was front porch what was the other one? the one with 147 responses students don't pay taxes they did not get that question so on slide 2 the next question is different if you answered no is the second one thank you alright and on the next slide 78% of people showed interest if they did not want to pay higher taxes to pay a higher rate to use the gym currently it's $1 for an open gym pass for for resident open gym pass and once again 78% said that they would be willing to pay a higher rate to support the rec so kind of the conclusion that we've come to from the data is that most of the respondents feel like the rec center should be renovated or rebuilt most of them saying they think it should be rebuilt because of the amenities that they're asking for we feel like one of the top priorities for the rebuild is the building being ADA accessible because it's one of the last buildings in Montpelier I believe to not meet those codes and we feel like what the community thinks is definitely the right direction to go in from our research that we've done quick question so in your surveys or in your talks with the rec center director did you kind of get an idea for who who most often uses the facility like by age or by resident non-resident population or we did not get a specific number but there also was jump and splash which is a group of people who did a survey to the community who got a thousand responses who may have some information on that as well okay awesome thanks guys alright any other questions for this crew yes Glen alright a small question of curiosity on slide 5 I believe do you feel the rec center should be renovated in the responses from the students apparently one person responded or some people responded salad bar yes there was an other option on that question to say whether you thought the gym floors needed to be or that stuff that was not a intended answer so just so you all know we are looking at this this very question and what we should do with it so is your I think I know what your recommendation is but tell me one more time what do you want us to do selling the old building to use that money to continue to build so we're going to get some kind of a feasibility study back with lots more numbers and we're going to go from there but thank you for this input this is very valuable I don't know what our timeline is on that decision but actually the groups meeting on Friday to get the feasibility study out the door but yes this is what council just set their priorities in dealing with this question was a high priority for this year this is very helpful quite as definite as the plastic bags but definitely something we need to take so we appreciate your input on that thank you so much alright I think we have one more group is that right okay Heather would it be possible for you to email us the any links to these presentations that'd be great thank you so much presentation here it's okay take your time you know we're not connecting to the presentation but they just want it to be nice okay are you all ready you're getting there okay no no worries um you should say your name I'm Michael Gustafson and we are a group of students you're not coming across at all maybe it's the way you're holding us so you should speak a little louder and how about the other folks can you introduce themselves I'm Isaac Mendel-Sever I'm Kim Gomez so first of all thank you for having us so as you know we're in the Mopilar High School and we've been working on a project for our Global Issues and Perspectives class that consists of solving a problem in Mopilar that we think we can see that it's important so we thought there are an indoors park or an indoors public space for all ages would be a great idea especially in the winter when it's too cold outside and you just need it's the cold outside for hanging out during our research we found that there are currently feasibility studies being performed for potential construction of a new rec center this led us to the conclusion that the best that we can do is to attempt to provide a perspective of the students of this school a place where most of these viability studies would likely reach the city center used to be a place to hang out but ever since it became more business oriented students have been increasingly removed for loitering currently the only real option for students is the basement teen center which is in this building but unfortunately requires a sign up and often feels small and confined leading many to avoid using it yeah so we did a survey that we sent to all the students that we sent to like the town and if you guys want to see it like you only have a few examples that's the town and that's the students oh look at it pass it that way oh they're both together separate things two separate things so after we got 53 answers from Montpelier High School students we found out that 61.5% of the students of our school used the basement teen center less than once a year or never and then the students that rarely use it it's only at 25% and also in the same survey we found out that most of the students often find themselves without a place to hang out around town during the winter time and we got a 43.4% answers saying that they find themselves in this situation very often and also we posted a survey in the front porch forum that I gave to you for the general community and we got 43 responses and when we asked if they would use a public space provided during the winter 72% replied yes and those who replied maybe were 25.6% we proposed that this space was the new rec center we attempted to contact other spaces such as the atrium on 79 main street city center and the current rec center but fortunately they are not interested or not capable of running their spaces at this time this project is something that many students clearly desire as well as people throughout the community the addition of a space like this to this new building would be a large draw we know that this was something that was already being considered though we thought that we could provide some more information and hopefully persuade you to keep this in mind throughout the process of creating this new rec center thank you very much for your time great many questions for this group so if I am understanding you correctly there weren't any great obvious solutions at this point is that more or less true yes we contacted we emailed the city center to rent if they would be willing to rent it but they are concerned about the noise because there is people living around and then we also emailed the space above the book spare and they also said no because they are not interested in renting the place rec centers are our only option Ashley did you reach out to other communities that have bigger rec centers or bigger teen centers I should say than ours because ours I agree is pretty small sorry no we did not but that was what we were I suppose if we wanted to pursue that more we could do something like that Donna do you have thoughts about the survey I just wondered if you mentioned about what time of day what days were wanted we didn't mention that in the survey I don't think next time the schedule would be the same as a park as a park as a park like a normal park it would be open every day I think park might be thank you I'm glad you all looked into this this is something that seems like the community needs something like this I'm glad you did some research into this I want to keep this in mind one of our goals is to increase the park space for the city and thinking about what does that mean for the wintertime it's a great question thank you all so very much thank you Heather McLean for your support I want to do a little time check in because we're just going to have to jettison something so I want to keep it to the things that are timely and essential right now I know the complete streets is definitely going to be next but that's a topic that we had put off from previous meetings but I also just want to put a bug in your ear that we just got to keep moving forward on this can we have the tax stabilization I do I'm hoping that the tax stabilization will not be a long conversation so I would like to keep that one and I want to keep the water resource recovery conversation but beyond that should we we need to do the pocket park Kevin is the first time home buyer thing have to go tonight you can just prove it I mean don't have it smooth strategic plan does not in the sense that waiting my inclination is that that one might just have to wait there I also anticipate that we were supposed to have a presentation from the community justice center that is one I think that we're going to have to put off as well as I would like to put that one off as well as strategic plan I might like I have a couple notes about that I might just add them to my council report at the end just my goal here team is that we are done by ten that's my target which really tells us I'd love for this portion of it to be 20 minutes if possible or less 20 minutes or less for this okay great that's right we've got to keep moving forward how do we do this take it away thanks everybody Kevin Casey community development specialist I'm here with Stu Serota from Alta Planning and Design and Corey Lyne from the Department of Public Works the plan that's being presented tonight is a combination of a number of years approximately two years since we received a grant the a combination of VTRANS and agency of commerce and community development it's called the Strong Communities Better Connections grant which provided $45,000 of the grant and we matched it with 5,000 the associated plan is to was actually a city council goal in 16 or 15 and so this was a this was applied for and we received the funding from ACCD and VTRANS and Stu has stepped on in the last six months from Alta and kind of shepherded the project through the last really three or four months and we're happy with what we've received thank you can everybody hear me okay with the microphone? okay great it's great to be here I'm sorry I wasn't able to make it last month and I'm feeling great now and I'm really thrilled to be here as Kevin said I'm Stu Serota I'm with Alta Planning and Design which is the firm by the city to undertake the plan I'm also Alta's Northeast Regional Director I'm actually based in Baltimore and as Kevin said I took charge of the plan several months ago and this is my second trip to Montpelier and I have to say I'm really enjoying your wonderful city I am extremely smitten with it and I hope to have more opportunities to come back and visit but we're here to talk about the plan and to put things in context a lot of people are not familiar with the term complete streets and you know in our country we're very fond of buzzwords and this term complete streets is something that really implies something it really implies that we need to do something differently that we haven't been doing and that you might think well it's incomplete well you know for the last 50 60 plus years in the country there's been a culture and sort of a practice of building places around the car and these two images could really be anywhere fortunately there's nothing like this especially on the image on the left here in Montpelier but this is a very very common scene where most places and most streets are really filled with the car in mind and really little else for other modes whether it's walking biking transit and so there's really been a movement for the last 10 or 15 years to really start thinking differently about these things even in a quaint charming downtown like Montpelier which is very walkable sometimes we can still feel like the car is certainly king right you know streets are really made for the cars and it can be challenging at times to find room for other modes and that's what this plan and that's what complete streets plans are really all about this is just a quick sample from other parts of the country there's to date there's over 2000 and growing complete streets policies and plans that are in various stages right now and the image I think is Burlington actually so there's really a lot going on people are very interested in this so and here are some examples from other parts of the country where these sorts of transformations are starting to happen where there are still there is still plenty of room for cars and safe and efficient car movement but these are places that are also welcoming and safe for bicyclists, pedestrians and also transit patrons so there are numerous benefits I won't really spend time on any of this but there are really there's a growing and large body of evidence and knowledge as to why doing this matters from a health benefit and a public health standpoint from a sort of fiscal and from a personal finance benefit and also social there are many different social benefits it's much safer and people feel safer when traffic is not moving as fast and there are less crashes so lots and lots of benefits of doing this sort of thing so when we hit the ground running here our team looked at many different aspects of Montpelier's street network we looked at traffic volumes speeds and also limits we looked at both existing and planned bicycling infrastructure we looked at the existing transit network and we also looked at land use and the actual development patterns where people are coming from and where they really need to go and all of that fed into our overall analysis and from all of this we came up with a street typology and what does that mean as you can see on the map every street in the city is color coded in one of the different seven street types and what these are, this is really the heart and soul of the project and don't expect people to read this at this scale but this is a chart that shows that these seven different types are grouped based on the different characteristics and the different aspects of each of the different types that you have here in the city and by grouping them we can also start to look at how things can be looked at and changed over time, what kind of treatments can be done for each of these types and so we've very much catalogued the widths and the lane widths and the ways and things that are sort of a optimal width and things that are sort of the maximum recommended and down near the bottom of the table that sort of bottom section shows the different pedestrian and also bicycle treatments that I'm going to be talking about briefly here that would actually fit and which would be appropriate for each of these different types and let me just back up for one second to note about this table is that on the left hand side types one and two are the most sort of major roads, the ones that are the ones that where cars move the fastest and where there's the highest volumes. On the far right side, type six and seven tend to be the ones where there is the least, it's the opposite and in the middle there's that fine grade where you have more of the sort of urban environment within the core where you would expect to see more people walking and more people biking. So just to show some examples of each of the types how you can see that the character of each of these goes from sort of major thoroughfares to major roadways to more medium sized roadways and then to the more local and even rural streets. So if you take for example focused in on typology three you can read down there and see for within that typology that is the sort of aspirational roadway characteristics for streets within that type and towards the bottom where those dots are those are the different treatments that would be appropriate within that type. So what are those actual treatments? I'm just going to highlight some of those. So these are things that we all know. These are pretty standard things, sidewalks and paved shoulders and in the plan there is guidance on each of these in terms of the widths and the sort of guidance that where each of these should be or should not be based on the different types. Also standard bike lanes but then we have something called advisory shoulders which are still a rather new type. It's still an experimental treatment sanctioned by the federal highway administration right now. It's really meant for people through roads where there's lower traffic volumes and it adds dashed lines. It sort of creates a shoulder for where bikes can be but cars it really signals for drivers when they see people on foot or on bikes that they should yield. And then once you start getting into roadway types where there are higher speeds and higher volumes the idea is really to begin separating cyclists so that they're not in mixed or shared traffic. So the treatment on top is called a side path sometimes that's also called a shared use path and there's guidance for that and then ultimately a separated bike lanes which are really becoming popular in many different parts of the country. There is a growing body of evidence again that really shows that many people who would like to bike whether it's for fun or for getting to school or work or some other trip purpose but who don't feel safe riding in the roadway would feel safe if there was a separate dedicated pathway and it doesn't have to be off in the woods or anything but it could be right parallel next to the road with only a minimal curb or some other kind of physical separation. And this just shows a graphic that shows how a dedicated bike lane can be inserted along the edge of the road that is meant only for people on bikes that would be separate from the actual sidewalk. And so just to show this once more you can see that for each different treatment going across that way this one focuses in on the actual separated bike lanes and shows what the different street types would be where it makes most sense and this is a really general guideline here. So in addition to the overall street types we also included in the plan guidance that aren't necessarily tied to the different types of streets but would be looked at on a case by case basis and a project by project basis. Things like intersection crossings, crosswalk treatments those there's also conflict areas where there are turn lanes and you have bike lanes and use green paint or down on the right there what we call bike boxes bikes can weight and dwell at a red light and the cars know that that's a space meant for bikes. We also include guidance on traffic calming as well as transit these are some images of the different traffic calming measures, speed tables and humps as well as bump outs diverters also thinking about transit and the proper placement for transit stops and I understand that you're going to be talking later in the evening about a potential FTA for transit oriented development which I think might have great promise here and I think it's a very interesting opportunity and then things such as streetscape design things like lighting and furniture and bike racks as well as green infrastructure which I know that you all have been working on for years and how that can fit into the actual street you know, with storm water areas that can also be extremely attractive amenities for the street and this idea also of placemaking which is how to use the public right of way and public plazas and streets to actually take back areas to sort of humanize and help calm traffic but also to create more of a sense of place and to actually draw more people to linger this is a very vital concept in planning we're doing a lot more of this so there is some guidance there in the plan as well and then towards the end of the plan to include several samples of how existing streets could be transformed or actually retrofitted with some of these treatments and at the top is just a sample cross section of an existing street it's a four lane section currently and within the same right of way with showing the first option it's possible to narrow those lanes and create a side path for pads and bikes where currently there really isn't enough room because the lanes are so wide right now so you can kind of reclaim some of that without actually reducing the number of lanes alternative two goes a little further and it's what we call a road diet where we go from four lanes down to three lanes but you pick up a center turn lane which can actually make it safer and at the same time you can add more room for bikes for a side path as well as for a paved shoulder and the second example that we showed at the top shows an existing two way downtown section with very wide lanes overly wide and if you think of this as the same width from end to end or side to side there's a lot that can actually be done and looking at the first option sorry I'm going to instruct you I just want to be conscious of the time we're almost like two minutes you're doing great so the first example shows how if there was a willingness on that particular section of street to remove on-street parking you could add a separated two way bikeway with the second alternative you could retain one side of the street as on-street parking but also add bike lanes and there's other things that can be done also but these are just a couple of examples before you go up that do you have a quick question there how many of our streets in Montpelier have the width to do that so in this particular example this is modeled off of existing state street in front of the capital so there's the right of way there and we actually measured the lane widths they're really wide and wide lanes encourage cars to go faster it's just a visual cue but if either of those things were done you can see that they're still adequate and ample room for the lanes and all of those widths there are actually tied back to the table that I showed earlier okay thank you and then so in terms of implementation working with Kevin and Mike and Corey here over the last year we established a proposed framework in terms of how projects could be implemented and again it's a little too small to read on the screen but it could either be done in the top box through the regular O&M or operations maintenance such as every year there's roads that are going to be repaved and if they're minor projects like installing bike lanes it's really just paint so when you go to pave those sections that could be done as part of the regular O&M schedule for more significant projects that would be projects that would be prioritized through the capital improvements program and then under that showing the numerous steps that would be needed to get that from planning into implementation and then finally last but not least we also recommend doing pilot and sort of pop-up projects to really test out ideas some of these things might be but there's always trade-offs and pros and cons and trying something out and seeing if it works well or for a period of six months or a year to see how it does and that's something that can also be tried this is just a photo that one of the people on my staff took of Montpelier downtown when a parklet was installed I think within the last year or so and this is the kind of place making a project or an effort that can really show how things can transform over time so pilot projects can be a very useful tool that's what I have and wanted to save as much time for any questions that you all might have anything that either of these gentlemen might want to add to what I've already said great thank you so much Rosie so I was a little confused during the materials I assume that this is sort of a summary of like is there a plan for each actual street or did you just do typology and say this typology should do this thing we're very deliberate working with staff to come up with street types and then show a couple of samples but not tie it to specific locations okay anyone wants to add anything to that that was the approach that we wanted to take for the project I'm going to interrupt here because I had the same question I mean this is an incredible document I was very happy to geek out in this it was so fun and I really want to translate all of this work to some kind of a work plan do you know what I mean like how you lay this out it wasn't totally clear to me sort of like Bill's question so what if we're designating certain typologies for streets what aspects of these streets fit that and what needs to be changed that wasn't totally clear to me and what would need to be done so coming from this proposal what are our next steps and I think that's sort of where you were getting at at the end with like some of these things are easy we can build them in others we're going to need to have a more robust process around that but the part of me that really likes to go deep with this kind of thing like I I almost want to be able to see what is that list look like and let's parse it out into this one's going to be easy this one if we want to do it is going to take some time talk about downtown planning yeah so just if you do look at the map there was for example a special study area one of the pieces that we didn't include in this project was state main part of that was a need to do it really needs further study and a streetscape plan and so you could apply as a general typology to it but it wouldn't take into account the entire unit of nature of those two areas the idea was that when we have these typologies it goes out and it identifies what your kind of optimal situation is so that when it comes time for you know core to do a project on the street they may look at that and say okay this is this typology then what will it need what are the existing conditions the current existing conditions that make the list of what needs to be done at that time one path that's one pathway forward that also feels very passive to me like oh we're happening to do this anyway let's build it in but if it's really what we want then let's put it on the list and get it done I'd rather be more active about it this is me personally speaking I think we also does it seem reasonable to come up with that list of like here are the things that need to happen to enact these things can I answer that I think also Mike Miller might want to answer that too but go ahead Donna and then Mike I've been on the committee this is we've been working a long time year plus and I see it as a tool and so it's out there and we're going to use every time we want and if the city council adopts a complete street one as its guideline let alone this report then the staff would integrate it I think with the CIP and then we're looking at streets and what we're doing and we move forward in a consistent very aggressive way so the answer is kind of both yes but we need to adopt it's not a passive intention at all it's being to be very aggressive in an affordable way that you can sustain I would say that this plan is your kit of parts that you're used to moving forward Mike yes so I just wanted to go through comment that one of the other things we wanted to do with this plan was to make sure we got on paper what our street types would be for every street because what we wanted to make sure first of all we would have an entire network we didn't want to have a bike path that just comes to an end because there wasn't a plan for what was going to happen or no bike path is coming up one way and a bike path is coming down another way we wanted to make sure we had a network so we could have a map that would say you could know if you lived on Town Hill how would you get into town on a bike how would you get into town by foot you'd actually have it on the map it may not all be there but we could start to go and look at we really need to have a sidewalk here to complete this we could do that a little bit more of that gap analysis the other thing we wanted to be able to do on the map is to make sure that we didn't have a battle on every street we really need to know how the network is going to look and we can't go and have a a battle which goes and says we're going to have on street parking on this street and then halfway down when it comes time to pave the next street on street parking loses and we have a bike path we have a bike path that goes to nowhere because it runs into on street parking because we didn't have a plan in place that said this street is this street going to have street parking or is this plan going to have is this street going to have a bike path because it can't have both we don't have the real estate to have both on a lot of our roads so we kind of have to pick it and so part of the plan is we put something on a map we can argue and debate and change it at some point but the idea now is we've set out what we think it should be and now we can start to plan ahead to make that happen and as opposed to street by street segment by segment paving project by paving project have a battle between parking interests and bike interests so is it the intention of this group to continue to meet to flesh this out I think the plan is intended to kind of be wrapped up and it's we hope it's going to be more of a static plan but it's a plan and it can be adjusted and changed as conditions change and as situations change we're having discussions about whether or not we build a parking garage in the downtown that could impact how we treat some of our streets going forward if we decide to build a parking garage maybe that on street parking is not as needed if we decide not to have a parking garage maybe we need to have more on street parking so it's not meant to be fixed fixed but the idea is you would shift from one street typology each type is meant to be internally consistent so it's meant that if we adopt a type 3 street it's going to be safe for pedestrian it's going to be a safe for a biker and it's going to be safe for a car you can't just mix and match parts because you can't put bikes next to on street parking or you'll get doored so you have certain things that you can put together in certain pieces you can't and we've thought about those when we put together types that work internally somebody could say I don't like this as a type 5 street I think it should be a type 6 street that's a policy decision but we know type 5 streets are safe and we know type 6 streets are safe it really becomes a policy decision as to how we want to handle it those are some of the discussions we want to have we've created a bunch of safe streets and we can adjust the map going forward but we've made a map so now everybody can say I like this I like how my street is designated great thank you Ashley the other thing I would just point out because I know that it's going to come up 4 of these typologies 5 of these typologies include no parking at all and right now the only parking that we have in a lot of parts of town is on street so I just want to be mindful of that as we sort of think about all of this moving forward and I know that there are some big decisions for us to make about a number of different things and I think that's an integral part of the conversation because unfortunately we're still in a place where we need to have that conversation other comments Jack I get what you're saying that every street type like this is safe one thing that I'm curious about because I think we all hear people complaining about the traffic in this little town and coming from a big city you think it's a joke that people complain about traffic here and logically so but is there is there data on moving to whether moving to a system like this has any effect on speed of traffic flow well I think that you can't make a blanket statement about something like that I think that there is a healthy body of evidence that shows that there are demonstrable benefits for doing things like road diets but also not just benefits but that it also improves safety and that it can actually improve traffic flow in the case of a four lane section that has no returning lanes is often higher crash sites because people get rear-ended if there are lots of driveways or turns there is a lot of evidence to show that things like road diets actually reduce the number of lanes from four to three where it's warranted where it can work and where the volumes are within acceptable limits that it can actually reduce the number of crashes and actually have that introducing bikers and walkers and be able to improve access so I think everything is always about trade-offs you know I think that if there is a certain project that might result in a little bit longer peak hour delay to get from point A to point B in the morning peak that might increase your travel time as a driver from say three minutes to three and a half minutes is that a worthwhile trade-off to get sort of benefit from so I think that's also sort of a policy decision on a case-by-case basis but there is a lot of evidence out there we see what I was hoping you were going to say was if you get rid of parking on one side of the street that actually enables traffic to go faster because you don't have people stopping for people who are parallel parking but it sounds like you are saying there is a potential trade-off and obviously three to three and a half minutes or three to five minutes is not it can be a complex issue because if you take away parallel, if you take away on-street parking and it helps speed up traffic that may not be what your objective is you might not want traffic to go faster you want it to flow you want it to flow steadily but at a slower rate to make it more acceptable more calm and even more so in a sort of urban area so again there is no easy answer there it is really quite a complex issue and oftentimes there has been shown that by getting rid of on-street parking which has an economic value to those businesses sometimes if you put a protected bike lane in its place that will actually increase access for number of people and shoppers there and I've been studying show on that but I'm not saying that you should always get rid of it or you should always keep it it's really on a case-by-case basis and I guess hypothetically if you're making these streets safer for other modes you're expecting people to use those other modes and not as many vehicles are cluttering the streets and making it easier to commute with less vehicles Glen Thank you it's a really neat presentation I don't want to draw anyone out too far but one of the most interesting parts for me was where you pointed out that one of the alternative samples was based on State Street Hypothetically and it was really interesting to me to imagine State Street in those two alternate modes I wonder if anyone would be willing to give an example of a really ripe spot in Montpelier for a change in this direction along that kind of line like imagine State Street being narrower lanes, bike lanes on both sides any other spots Well I would imagine that in the follow-up study that that will probably be part of that scope of work I wouldn't I don't think that we want to venture at this point because we haven't done that kind of analysis Donna we actually do have the Main Street Scoping that is looking at that for Main Street and if you put in roundabouts you don't, you get rid of the turn lanes so you have more space if you do some angle or parking there's lots of ways on Main Street you can make it look like that and we have some concepts that are going to be coming from the Main Street Scoping study it feeds right into this Get ready for it in August Ryan I'm really excited about this in my mind we can't do it fast enough right I'm excited to get into it so my understanding was that we were just hearing this report but Donna you mentioned something about accepting this I don't know that my interpretation is that we don't need a motion on any of this but what's your thought? I was going back a statement from Tom that he said he really needed a statement ultimately from the City Council adopting a resolution about complete streets as far as guiding DPW and so I assume at some point the study would be accepted whether it's now or not I was surprised on the agenda that isn't brought up but I thought we would want the city doesn't have technically a complete streets policy we follow state statute but we don't have a local policy I mean one hypothesis is that we could make a motion tonight and say we accept this as the toolkit and we want to follow these guidelines as much as we can another hypothesis is that we wait and you could bring us a more outlined resolution that we could approve at a later time I also think that given some of the areas where there is no designated parking I think it needs to be a much bigger conversation because of all of the feedback that we've received so I would not be in favor of any sort of motion or resolution tonight because I think it needs more public input how do you feel about coming back with the resolution I mean yeah I mean I think my general feeling on it was that the presentation tonight would then kind of open up a period which is why I didn't put a resolution on it and now it's open up a period with public comment and I think Mike alluded to this as well is that this isn't you can adopt it as a complete streets plan that doesn't mean that individual streets are to Ashley's concern about parking that you don't adopt a plan just because of a single street or whatever I'm just saying because it's included in the presentation tonight if the request is that we adopt the presentation I mean that includes a list of potential proposed streets and I think I would need to see the August report before adopting anything like that I understood this not to be the Bible of every street but the ideal of every street and hence even within the the MTIC the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee we discussed parking and we know we're going to need parking but the ideal is to go to this complete street vision and then say okay in this street where are we going to have to make a compromise and try to not compromise too much but to have an ideal this is the ideal so maybe bearing that in mind that there may be some exceptions it's not necessarily blanket particularly considering parking could you all come back with a resolution that we could vote on maybe MTIC should make a recommendation to the council of how they'd like to proceed with this resolution and plan a process for rolling it out they're the ones that have worked with it and hearings and does that sound all right to everybody because I know the MTIC would like a resolution from the council on traffic calming too so maybe we could do that together okay great thank you so much this is really very cool I didn't know if we were going to discuss that I know we're hurt for time I snuck it in I was really glad to see the traffic coming I know that the committee is looking for some sort of guidance on whether a traffic calming program would be accepted by this council or not like a straw vote tonight or something I think there's a real need for a traffic calming process I think one of the some of the questions that you outlined at the end of this if I can scroll fast enough down there those felt like the right questions so what I picture is we either need some kind of a policy or process through which we can handle traffic calming suggestions or requests right so speed tables additional crosswalks etc so I'm either looking at city staff or the MTIC group to come up with defining that process and that's something that when people from a particular street say we'd really like to get speed bumps or speed table that we can crank it through that process and they get input from other neighbors or vetted by these four different departments or whatever it is whatever that process looks like I think that would be a useful thing for us so that we can equitably evaluate traffic calming requests does that answer your question? yeah that type of what you're speaking about takes a lot of time to put together and I think their fear was let's not go through that and then present it to the council and just not anyone be interested like I said in my memo in the late 1990s that's what happened I would assume that if you gave us some check-ins along the way we would draft a first draft are we on the right track that way we could avoid you've worked for six months on it I think you're also asking is this something that you want staff to pursue traffic calming as a in theory right? not just the process but some total right? two separate things so before we get to that question are other people in straw-pole style here just in favor of having some kind of a process I think what you're outlining the process by which if there's a request from the public we go through evaluating that request would be really useful and I would be in favor of directing the committee to work on that and then the second question what you're asking I'm seeing a lot of head nods here so that's good the second thing that I'm hearing from you traffic calming just in general and to that I guess I would say I'm in favor of the complete streets plan beyond that I'm not sure I'm in favor of traffic calming for the sake of traffic calming except where it's identified that people need it other thoughts? it's a tool of complete streets I'll say personally that as a chronic pedestrian I'm almost always in favor of traffic calming and as a resident on Prospect Street I'm specifically in favor of traffic calming on Prospect Street so if that helps small data point East 8-2 yeah I'm not sure I've really answered your question I think the committee has it's a guidance the other just point about check-ins periodically anything you want to put in the weekly memo about the direction you're headed would be useful and then we can flag it and say oh no don't do that or this seems problematic without having to come do a formal presentation okay thank you very much likewise okay so just a reality check team I'm anticipating an end time of 10 30 just that seems overly optimistic I'm hopeful I'm hopeful I figured 11 30 I'm gonna aim for 10 30 though so moving right along I think we are up to the pocket park discussion you're welcome to come up let's I guess I'm in favor of doing an order that's on that's on here where do you want to come up and introduce yourself you don't really need to say anything necessarily but I don't yeah don't no I don't I'm Ward Joyce and I've developed four different public space projects in Montpelier starting with the pocket park excuse me the parklet which was the last slide in the complete streets the park that moved over and became the pocket park then I did Langdon Street alive and then Ann and I just did the Giratton pocket park the pocket park that we're talking about here seems to me like a conflict between a landowner and a lisi and I don't know who the lisi is it's kind of Montpelier it's kind of VTC it's kind of me and we appear to have an intractable situation where the Jacobs family is asking more than anybody seems to want to provide so $30,000 is a lot all of a sudden but I wanted to thank the council most of you are new for four years of support on this kind of project I think one of our biggest victories was the pocket park program which grew out of the pilot so now that we have pocket parks formalized that's a positive outcome of this you mean the parklets? did I say pocket parks? I stumbled between this two the parklet program is a victory or is an outcome of this tactical work so the pocket park across the street wasn't meant to last ten years it was meant to last two or three or four so if indeed it's going to be evicted in 30 days because the city doesn't want to come up with more than $5,000 which I understand so be it it's going to go away it cost about $50,000 to put there or 40 maybe it's worth about 40,000 so it seems heartbreaking in a sense that that that it's going to go away because it had the potential to be a changer for the city in terms of urban quality and vitality but I think it's a kind of an intractable conversation and the bottom line is that if I don't champion that park it goes away and maybe that's a reflection of the fact that it hasn't landed on fertile ground I don't know I've been told by more than 50 people that it was one of the nicest public spaces in downtown and yet you know it's a short term installation and so I just want to thank you all for I want to thank the city I want to thank Tom McCartle and everybody that's helped make these things happen and the reason I brought up the park lit program is because it's just important for all of us to remember that these efforts do want to lead to change and so the park lit program was a great outcome and let's hope that when pocket parks and park lits and all these things come up that we continue to support them because they do make our city a better place to live so I think we can talk in some general terms about this but I just want to say one thing Jesse Jacobs did tell me today that he is interested in compromising but he will not be specific which is a little challenging so his current line is 30 and I don't know whether he'd come down to 20 but he did offer an opportunity for a lower price but not specific I'm going to speak for myself I'm not interested in offering any more than we have already offered on a yearly basis I am potentially interested in purchasing the land we could do so for what is an appraised value and I would not want to offer any more than an appraised amount does anyone have different thoughts an additional thought is there any other place that we could move the park to we're working on that actually we may have some options along those same lines when this came before the council it has come the decision has come before the council before an executive session of whether this is a worthwhile thing to be negotiating on so we have this council and the prior council have discussed this thank you and I feel like this is a good use of a vacant lot but if the landlord is saying that it's valued higher and he can get more for this lot then we the city would benefit from some higher use there so if he can rent it or sell it to someone who would build housing or create some other public benefit then I wouldn't want us to stand in the way of that by offering a higher rental price for it than it's worth and I do think that it's a good idea to make sure that we have some real intelligence and we are offering more even than the assessed value I also want to point out that we have this city hall park right across the street that is very close to the the pocket park and with the amount of money that we would potentially put towards a lease agreement we could do some really great things with that space so I'd say the best outcome is for us all to learn that public space improvements are of value and so it's tactically a strategy to show us the value of doing that so I accept that kind of surprised by the 40-50K to set it up to begin with there if you were to take it down and move it somewhere else are you talking a similar amount or no we could move it less expensive and I think we would have support to do it okay that's the value of what got built there the materials the design and the land used the donation of the land, the water we had back hose on the site it took some money to build it Jack do you have a comment? I just completely agree with you that we see the value of open public space in downtown I was thinking when we were listening to the high school students earlier that one of my many brothers and a friend of his lived in the opposite ends of the town that we grew up in so my brother and his friend Goober just picked out a corner roughly in the middle of the two spaces and said they just hang out on this guy's front yard and they'd go and meet you over at rock and ackerman and they'd be there just hanging out people need spaces like that to hang out and I think we are going to continue to value that kind of thing I also agree with everything Rosie said thank you I assume that's probably needs to be said at this point other than we look forward to working with you in the future and I hope that if the offer that we've made is not acceptable or if there's no possibility of purchasing the land for the praised value that we'll find another location for it and if it's not wholly going away it's just changing form a little bit I think it was a generous offer thank you very much and holding it there see you again soon thank you so now the tax stabilization proposal alright and we definitely we're not doing community justice center we're definitely not doing community justice center I don't think we're doing strategic planning either two more okay hello my name is Shannon McIntyre I am one of six owners at timber homes Vermont and we are planning to build a shop on elm street this summer and fall in between pearl street motors and Vermont tree experts and I'm here to seek tax stabilization level two you have the letter the information that I prepared with great help from Jamie and we just did this recently so feel free to ask whatever questions you want you do have to hold two hearings open the hearing okay so at this point we'll open the public hearing for this tax stabilization so members of the public can come and comment but also counselors Ashley do you have a question yes how many people are currently employed at your business we have 11 long-term people and for summer short-term hires and so I'm assuming then in 8a it's expected that the Montpelier shop will ultimately employ between seven and nine people that means just staff retention as is so that's not seven to nine additional positions that's just the existing positions it's not additional positions but it's a move from our currently our only shop is Inverter which is about an hour south of here and it's kind of like one of those places you can't get there from here and a lot of people who have been working in that shop are hoping to move to Montpelier so it's sort of a migration within our company the biggest question I have is probably not a surprise to you which is it sounds like you're probably going to do this whether you get the tax stabilization agreement or not is that a fair statement that is a fair statement yeah it's a big enough project that tax stabilization is not a make it or break it thing for the project it would be a really meaningful and welcome gesture as we go through this period of growth and as our tax bill in Montpelier goes from currently a thousand dollars up to I believe it's between 13 and 15 is what's been estimated so it would be it would be a help for us as we grow our overhead but we are planning to move forward whether we get stabilization or not are there any other types of infrastructure upgrades so I think I've been pretty clear in my position about tax stabilization as not the best way to create economic growth in Montpelier are there infrastructure things that the city could do to assist your business or frankly other businesses that are interested in moving to Montpelier because I think that's what cities do cities build infrastructure and cities house people and cities create space for people to be and so I'm curious if there are other tangible things that you could identify like infrastructure upgrades or space areas or sidewalks or things like that that you could identify that the city could do since that's sort of where I stand in terms of creating economic growth in Montpelier the only thing that pops into mind probably because we just watched this presentation is better bike lanes out to our property on Elm Street but it's pretty far outside the city so I can't think of anything else really that would affect us very much okay Rosie will there is there any possibility of any sort of public benefit to this space I think you back up on the river there yes there's some I know you're planning to build a building but there's some open land around there is there anything you're thinking along those lines would be willing to consider along those lines yes certainly I mean I've been planning on building this shop for years and so there's been lots of talk about how to use more than half of our land is in the river corridor so it can't be built on anyway and it's a beautiful parcel of land behind a knoll so it's sort of shielded from Elm Street and there has been talk of the at least the flood plane portion of our land going into conservation or being accessible by the public in some way and that's the major so for when you come back the second time if you have further thoughts on that or anything more concrete that comes out of that that would be really helpful to me in understanding whether to support it or not and in general in the past when we've considered these when there has been a public benefit like that that's much higher incentive to support the project so good just to further parse that point that Ashley brought up earlier about employment and employment changes the text in 8A is the project can demonstrate to the satisfaction of the council that the project will positively affect in a significant way the number of employment opportunities in Montpelier so I can I can read that I believe as there are no new jobs being created total you're not adding people but you are moving people that you already employ from a different place into Montpelier and whether that is an employment opportunity that is added to Montpelier and whether it's significant seem like questions for us on the council I don't know if that's a question to you or a point to bring up to the rest of the council if anyone has any thoughts on that point just as a point of information not opinion the only person around when this policy was for it was intended it was intended to be new jobs coming into Montpelier so as a you know so that was a bright line even if they were just coming from middle sex or a neighboring town it would be actually be in city limits no I think the the question of and I think we tried to put that in our analysis of is that significant that's really her it's just those are the words and you can make your own finding and just to get a little more detailed also we're intending on hiring three or hiring three of our summer help people on to help us build the shop and our we don't want to get much bigger than 12 maybe at the outside 15 long-term people but I see a a sort of summer crew in our future pretty consistently so I don't want to come out and say you know we'll have 15 people employed in Montpelier but will waffle between you know 12 to 15 full-time people and then a small summer crew as well. Okay so at this point we don't necessarily need to make a decision any other comments for the public I'm going to close the public hearing there's anything specific you'd like them to come back with for the second hearing you mentioned the public amenities that would be if there's anything else any information now's the time to communicate that. Feel free to check in with city staff and connect with them on on that sort of thing I'd actually like to see how much you're going to be working on this if you have like an hourly rate or if it was a contract you know it'd be something I'd be interested in oh I could tell you do you want to know that'd be great the ones that we have on hire this summer and through the fall are making $18 an hour great thanks super no further questions alright so we'll take up the second hearing for this at our I think it's our next council meeting two weeks thank you very much okay and I think this is our last item for tonight did we decide we were we're not going to do the home didn't Rosie pull something? oh that's right we got to do that too yeah it'll be fast I'm sure did you want to do the what we should do the home buyer thing Kevin's thing was it clear where we ended on that I would I think I want to go with the wastewater water resource recovery facility presentation first because I think we have some that's a big decision for us I think it's going to be require some conversation so if it's not 1030 by the time we're done with that conversation we could take that up but I don't it's not critically urgent that we make this decision about the home buyers program tonight is that right except for that people are maybe waiting there's that Jack but our next meeting is still before the fiscal year starts so so we could do it on June 27 I don't know what the agenda is already looking like for June 27 it's not so because it wouldn't take effect until the next fiscal year anyway okay okay let's let's plan on that okay thank you okay take it away okay so I'm Kurt Modica Public Works so I sent a memo out on June first that sort of outlined why we wanted to have this discussion here tonight basically in order to progress the various aspects of the project to be ready for a bond vote in November what we need from council tonight is which alternative that we presented on May 9th is the most preferred by council so we presented a base case of just doing the aging infrastructure at the plant the sort of middle case of doing some digestive periods but not maximizing methane production and then the largest the biggest scope project which is really setting up for a second phase to utilize the methane for beneficial use so on the memo that I sent out on June 1st we are recommending to go with the large two phase project right now we would only be developing phase one phase two would really come after we are up and running so we have an opportunity to measure the methane we have an opportunity to really get comfortable with all the new equipment that we are going to have at the plant before taking on an additional burden on our staff for running additional equipment and really just give us a little more time to vet out all the options we have been talking a lot about CHP there are a lot of other options for the methane one thing that was brought up as a drier that we did look at bio solids drier that we looked at early on in the project but I think it is worth taking a step back and looking at that a little closer I really wanted to find a way to get it to district heat that is probably not going to be economical but if the grant comes along between the next year or so it may be economical so I just want to keep all our options on the table move forward with the project the phase one get our equipment up and running replace it needs to be upgraded but we didn't want to proceed with getting contractor pricing and setting up all our measurement protocol for verifying the savings that is in the contract with the our consultant and really finalizing the contract with them all that is going to take time and we really need the next few months concurrent with our pilot test of the septage at the plant in order to get everything ready for November so that is really the gist of it I am happy to answer any questions anybody has about the various options that we are looking at or the two phases most of my questions are probably more for Todd financial yes hello so I am glad that you sent that memo out the other day about debt servicing and sort of our bonding ability so can you explain to everyone that is listening who will listen, who is watching to all of us sort of what the impact would be so if we approve the recommendation from DPW what would that mean come time to bond in like plain speak so what would it mean in terms of when it comes time to bond like is there a complication because of it we have limits that we have set for ourselves as a city and I think I want everyone else to understand what we sort of know about that so prior city council adopted debt service policies that limit or intended to limit the debt service and the general fund to 8.2% and for the municipality as a whole to 15% of total revenues the memo that I sent out to you indicates what it would look like by adding this larger debt whether it be $12.6 or $16 million into the total municipal that would be nothing we would still be well within policy limits taking on either one of these options the financing structure is not finalized at this point because we don't have a definitive scope so I indicated that I was presuming a 5 year interest only payment with 20 year principal and interest following we could extend that out to lower our debt service ultimately at a longer at a larger cost there's different options and I don't really know exactly what rates are going to do we're in a strange environment right now so that's another variable but the cost of construction continues to go up as well as we see almost daily so you know those are just risks associated with this now as far as the policy goes the city council adopted it to be a policy limit for itself it can certainly change or amend that policy if it were to as far as the bond bank or the outside sector is concerned as far as us exceeding that policy that is a best practice but our legal authority to borrow is significant according to state statute at least and it runs don't hold me to this but about 100 times our grand list which is in excess of 8 billion dollars we're at like 30 million right now so it's so far beyond the scope of anything that we would ever we just took our breath away the purpose of the policy was to have a responsible outlook for both the current users and the current residents and future residents and not strap future generations with a whole bunch of debt for a current project this does have the benefit of lasting 25 plus years regardless of which option you choose so I think the debt will advertise appropriately with the project itself and it has the potential for significant upside down the road as well I did not factor in the revenue gains that we are predicting for this project in that graphing so I took total revenue that we know as of today increased that by half a percent each year going forward but we're actually going to have a greater revenue source assuming everything comes together and or lower net payment if you look at it net payment so there's variables right now where this just in common speak where this would impact us is if we didn't change the policy took on a 16 million dollar debt here and then wanted to build a 15 million dollar recreation center then we're going to be really starting to look at are we amending our policy or are we doing something different with the financing personally and bill chime in look at the tiff district financing slightly differently if that were to go if we were to do something with the tiff district since the bulk of that repayment will come from education funds that we wouldn't have had access to anyway that doesn't seem like it would necessarily be appropriate to count within the existing policy so and that's a council decision that you want to separate tiff related debt or to separate the portion that is not covered by the increment and include that in your policy decisions and if that's let's wait out of our conversations those are options at least I just I think pragmatically speaking council should be aware of that though and my understanding of the tiff proposal was you know so we go ahead and we bond regardless we have to pay it so it's sort of whether it the ed fund actually ends up covering it or not the city is still on the hook for those payments and then that would in practice get added to our debt servicing totals but we then have to also increase our revenue so the revenue for tiff is actually coming from education taxes so that baseline $15 million total revenue we really need to up that for the school portion that we would be gaining so it would change the graph and I'm happy to go through that and I think probably we've been talking through different options and not to get to the minutiae here but one probably the logical solution is if there is some pressure in the front years if it's not fully covered then that difference it's not covered with the ed fund the other revenues coming in that we would count that against our debt policy because that's coming from the general debt but to the extent that it's covered through it because we have to create a tiff fund to do this so we have to track it the monies go into it the payments come out of it so if anything's not covered by that then it's a three-quarter baked thought not a fully baked thought yet it's very hard to hear the conversation well I will try and speak up so moving away from the financing side of things so I understand that you want direction from us tonight and then there's a go or no go at the end of August or sometime in August after the experimental trial phase has happened which they're going through right now and I really appreciate that you're experimenting and trying it out on the ground and I think that'll give us a better decision there's a couple other things that I want to throw into that mix in terms of what we look at before the go or no go point one piece is I understand that the engineering team hasn't the operator have not been able to go view one of these existing projects that have gone through this already and I understand that there is one in Niskeuna New York so it's not particularly far away and I would like to have the team go see that I don't think it would be a particularly costly investment given we're talking about many millions of dollars and I think that they could probably get a lot out of going and talking to the other plant operators and seeing something on the ground so I would like that visit to happen for that decision point the other another piece that I would like to have a better handle on is this court case I am concerned we think we've got a good case and we think that we're not going to have our limits adjusted but I'm concerned that if the outcome doesn't go the way we want it that we would have made this extra infrastructure upgrade assuming that we would be able to process more incoming product and if those limits are lowered then we wouldn't be able to do that the math starts to not work and we would have made this huge extra investment that if we're able to bring the inputs actually nets us a positive budget impact but if we're not able to bring the inputs if we lose that court case then we're on the hook for so much more and so I know we can't we can't cover every possible scenario but I'd like us to have a better handle on when we think we're going to get a resolution of that or what is our what do we do in that circumstance before making this decision and then the final piece that I want to make sure is addressed is the potential need for a generator upgrade and currently we have a backup generator because we can't afford to have those plant operations shut down in the event of a power outage and that backup generator is sized for the current needs of the plant it sounds like we think that there would be enough energy efficiency in the upgrades that it wouldn't need to be upgraded but I want to verify that and make sure that that's included in the math that ESG is on the hook for in terms of making us whole and I don't want that extra cost of upgrading the generator should we need to fall on us instead of on ESG so those are kind of the three main things that I want to make sure that we get resolved in addition to going through this trial period before we have the go or no go if all those are resolved correctly or in a positive way then I would be happy to support it and at this point with those caveats I'm willing