So, this little witch is going to call the South Rowington City Council meeting to order on Wednesday, November 30th, 2022. We'll start with the Pledge of Allegiance. And, Megan, want to do that, please, please. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Instructions on exiting the building. So, for those of you in the audience, welcome. There are doors on either side of the auditorium at the back if you there's an emergency need to leave and then to the right or left doors outside. For those participating remotely, thank you for joining us remotely. If you're interested in making comment during any point in the agenda, either turn on your camera and we'll call on you or indicate your interest in making a comment in the chat and I will make sure the chair calls on you. We are not monitoring the chat for content. Thank you. Okay, agenda review. Are there any additions, deletions, or changes in order of agenda items? Yes. Yes, I have two requests. One, we neglected to put the planning commission's recommendations for ARPA funds on the agenda, so I'd recommend you add that. I emailed it to you earlier in the week. I'd recommend you add that as a new 9J, I guess, H-I-J, is that correct? And then also, I would respectfully request this as Andrew Baldock's last council meeting with us and I have a resolution for you all to consider. Okay. So I would ask, I guess, that you add that as a 5A or a five and a half. Okay. Is that legal? Yeah. So the J, the additional committee presentation was? Planning commission. Planning. Oh, that's right, yeah. Can I change that slightly and ask that that be our first presentation? Just because I think they provided a different kind of framework to look at things that I thought was kind of interesting and that the other committee's recommendations in some ways, I don't know, worked with that quite well. Is that going to mess up? I don't believe so. Okay. Thank you. I would appreciate it. So that would be like, what would that be? A, A, and then recreation parks is A, B. Okay. Thank you. All right. So I guess we vote on those. Is everyone okay with those additions to the, all right? All in favor? Aye. Aye. We've added A, A planning commission under nine and an additional consideration of a resolution. See if we really want to pass it. We'll discuss that. Alrighty. Next is comments and questions from the public not related to the agenda. Is there anyone in the audience with a comment? All right. Good conference. We'll now be recorded. The home viewers. Anyone with thoughts not on the agenda? Okay. Seeing none, we'll move on to five counselors announcements and reports on committee assignments and the city manager's report. Chances are there isn't a whole lot to report, but Tim. I just want to say I had a very pleasant Thanksgiving. Consumed a fair amount of turkey. My son drove up from Boston and so we had the whole family together with extended family as well. It was a nice holiday and we got our Christmas tree on Friday. Oh jeez. So and you know what, I think it's a good idea actually because it gets it out of the way and it's not snowy anymore, you know, that time of the year. So and is the city manager going to talk about the deadline that happens tonight at midnight with the parking and ban? Oh, sure. Good. Do you I'll let you go ahead that. Okay. Good. So that's all I have. Okay. Thank you. Matt, do you have any updates? Tom, how was Quebec? It was good. It was a great experience. Happy to report on that some other time though not as relevant to some of our discussions. One thing I do want to always say is promote the ugly sweater run on Sunday, December 11th. I'm going to be bringing the ugly and I hope to see you all there as well. Should be a good time Sunday morning, December 11th. Hope to see a lot of people registered. I'm registered. Yes. No, nothing. Okay. And I don't have anything to report either. So let's move on then to the city managers report. So as Councillor Barrett suggested as of midnight tonight, we are entering our winter parking ban period of the year. So parking on public streets is banned overnight from midnight to 8am every day. Till April 1st. And basketball hoops? And basketball hoops should be removed. See, you should have you should have just done that. Basketball hoops should be removed. This is to enable of course plowing operations. So thank you for that. And then I'll save most of my updates for Monday night. Just a reminder, we do have a regular council meeting on Monday night. We will be presenting the overview of the FY24 budget as well as several other budget presentations and public hearings. We encourage folks in the public to attend that as well. And then just because it's really exciting and we can start to see elements of it appearing in our hallways. Illuminate Vermont is December 16th and 17th from four to eight here on Market Street and in City Hall. And we invite all of our neighbors to come out and join us for that free event. And I'll have more to share on Monday night. Thanks. I actually forgot. I should report. I sat in on the planning commission meeting last night. And they had what I thought were some really good conversations about aspects of the neighborhood, neighborhoods retaining neighborhoods as they consider the comprehensive plan and what that really means. So they kind of started that conversation. And then what else did they talk about? There's some other good stuff. That's right. They had some good conversations about different aspects of the LDRs for solar and put that kind of into their work plan. But they explored that I think as a group. And I thought the conversations were really very helpful and substantive. So it was good to hear. Okay. So let's move on now to eight, which is a proposed change to the city's charter on the town meeting. Oh, I'm sorry. Excuse me. We are going to do 5A. Pardon me. I guess we have to. So we have a really lovely resolution and recognition of Andrew Valduck. Hey, are you even pronounced it right? Yeah. It took six years. I know. I know. Well, who is currently until Friday, our deputy city manager. So this resolution reads whereas Andrew Valduck was hired on November 7th, 2016 to serve as the city attorney and whereas Andrew was named deputy city manager on July 1, 2021. And whereas his time as city attorney, Andrew advanced community priorities through city center infrastructure and development agreements, environmental permitting litigation, drafting and defending regulations that support affordable housing and land conservation real estate transactions. And whereas in his role as deputy city manager, each day Andrew was focused on what is best for South Burlington residents, how we provide equitable services to all, and how we maintain exceptional customer service while being financially responsible. And whereas deputy manager Andrew faithfully cared for the city's finances, secured participation in the state's inclusion, diversity, equity, action and leadership program, often referred to as ideal, and managed ARPA funds. And whereas Andrew was a valued colleague, thought partner and problem solver, valued by city employees, committee volunteers and our council. And whereas Andrew grew up in the city of South Burlington, graduated from South Burlington High School and has always been committed to the well-being of his neighbors. Now therefore be it resolved that the South Burlington City Council here by expresses is great appreciation for all the work and leadership of Andrew Valduck over the last six years and wishes him the best of luck in his future adventures. Thank you so much for all you've done. We'll miss you. Yeah, thank you very much. It's been an honor to serve. Thank you. Okay, moving on now to six. Oh, I'm sorry, we have to prove it. So all in favor. Is there any discussion first? Yeah, I like I brought a 12 page speech here. Let me just get through these pages here. I just want to echo all the sentiment on all the whereas is there are a lot of where as is in there and there's a reason why it's because you're a really great city attorney and really great assistant city manager as well. And so I really was I thought it was really great when you stepped into Tom's shoes and I thought those are big shoes to fill, but you filled them. And so I really appreciate that. And I appreciate your honest approach to every item that you've had to deal with. Right. And the way you deal with people and you're open and it's just it's we're going to we're going to miss you. So but anyway, and the fact that you come from South Burlington, that that helps as well because you know a lot of people and you know, and through this job, you've probably made a lot more so. So thank you for me at least as well as probably other city counselors. And good luck and your new job. Yeah. Oh, do you have a new job? Okay, any other comments? I mean, I'm sure we all have our stories. I got to know Andrew specifically when he was acting as city council city attorney. And I was the counselor assigned to attend the act 250 hearing for the residents down in Queen City Park. And Andrew and I were texting back and forth. I mean, it was it was really I would say just very privileged view that I got of you because we there is some distance between this desk and your desk and and I just saw your thought process. I saw how, you know, you were really comprehensive and also a good listener and really took your role very, very seriously. And I can't speak for my husband, but as the chair of the natural resources and conservation committee, when he learned that you were leaving, he it was it was for for me as well. It was a physical reaction. So yeah, you will be missed. You're you're a wonderful human being. And I know whatever you end up doing that the people working with you and benefiting from your good work are just going to be really, really lucky to to be in your presence. So, Tom, I have to say something ditto to everything that and said and I just say you will be very much missed. And I hope your path comes brings you back to South Burlington sometime in the future. I would heartily agree with the last statement and everything else. We really are going to miss you. And I know Jesse's going to really miss you too. So we'll be supporting her as she transitions through finding another person and taking on some additional roles. But thank you for all that you've done. It always was kind of cute and fun to get your perspective as having grown up here. And I think that's helpful in many ways. Yeah. So I've appreciated that. Thank you. Okay. Do I have a motion to approve this resolution? Second. All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. All right. So I'll sign it and then send it around. Okay. So now we can consider placing a proposed change to the city's charter on the town meeting 2023 ballot enabling the regulation of thermal energy systems in existing residential and commercial buildings and setting two public hearings for January 3rd 2023 at 8 30 p.m. And January 17th 2023 at 8 30 p.m. And we'll hear from Paul Conner and Colin McNeil. Hi folks. Paul Conner director of planning and zoning Colin McNeil city attorney. This is the same language that you saw last week when it was introduced by the chair and the vice chair of the former climate action plan task force with I think the only change is the citation of where in the charter it would be placed if you were to so choose it. So really tonight the conversation is yours to have if you choose to um warn and hold these two public hearings in January you would then have the opportunity following those hearings to either keep it on the ballot or remove it from the ballot. So we've set up the timing so that you can do that if you choose not to advance it this evening then you would not have the opportunity to have it on the ballot for town meeting day. That's the brief version. Okay. Any other comments Colin? No that's it. Okay discussion council what do you want to do? I think last time we were open to having the public weigh in on it and get their their view. I think we have until January to put it on the ballot. Am I right with the timing of the actual printing of the ballots occurs in late January. Yeah but we have to decide tonight whether to have the public hearings. So I guess that's the question before us not whether it we actually supported going on to the ballot but rather do we support the process of having public hearings to consider? There are some you would have to the way the schedule is set up you have to have a version that is certified that you want this on the ballot they get sent to the clerk's office and that's available for public viewing within 10 days of the first public hearing. So you would have to at this meeting essentially approve that this language is going on the ballot but then you can always remove it later on. Okay so that's the question before us. So we're looking at a public hearing and then at that time we can decide whether or not we want to move forward to put it on the ballot or not. All right. Well it sounds like we sort of have to say yeah we want this language on the. Yeah we have to say this is the language we want to have at the public hearing that would go on the ballot but after that public hearing we could then still not vote to move forward if we wanted to and if we didn't want to. I mean you know what I'm saying is that that after that public hearing we could take action and not send it to the ballot. Is that right Colin? Yes in a way well you're approving that this language would go on the ballot tonight but then it could be you could remove it at a later date before the ballots get printed. So the difference would be that it would take an action to remove it a month from now versus normally when you have a hearing your action would then be to approve it so your action would be tonight to place it if you chose and then it would be if you'd have to have three votes to remove it in a month. That's fundamentally the difference right? Correct. Okay. Comments? Tom? So I missed the last meeting because I was committed to another responsibility but I did watch part of the meeting and I spoke with some different people exchanging some emails which I think have subsequently been forwarded to all of you and so from my understanding of this so far and I also did meet with an energy committee member I'm not in support of putting it on the charter change right now. That's just where I am not putting it on the ballot this charter change now for reasons that were articulated in an email but I think it's important for the community since they can't read my inboxes to have an idea of where my concerns are. So I'll go through this. So my first concern is technical legal and administrative ability to income sensitize fuel taxes carbon taxes or so on unlike Burlington that owns an electric utility in a power plant we don't as a city currently income sensitize our broad-based taxes even our property taxes are entirely done by the state we with our current capacity and expertise could not do a carbon tax in a fair way for our residents and businesses and I don't see that changing on a faster timeline than what the state's probably going to do in this coming session nor do I think that we the city of South Burlington could do this better than the state and our utilities that are and utilities that are not municipally confined I think they could do it better those like Vermont gas Green Mountain power otherwise as well as the state I also have issue with the Burlington electric comparability so the charter change was done by Burlington but we are not Burlington as many of our residents remind me regularly we don't have a municipally owned electric utility and we don't have a power plant we are not Burlington and this charter changes doesn't fit from what I'm seeing so far our city in the way it fit theirs heating source regulations already exist so from conversations and thank you Colin for responding yesterday with the city manager and emails it's my understanding that the language is not needed this charter change is not needed to further regulate installation of or replacement of heating systems within South Burlington that was my takeaway from your email thread if you want to elaborate on that when I make my last two points feel free Colin municipal consistency I'm really concerned that if Burlington does this one way in South Burlington does it another way and then Essex Junction does it differently and Winooski does it a third and fourth way we will all be working across purpose with inherent inefficiencies and redundancy a carbon tax will be much more effective and fair when done by the state which is extremely likely this coming legislative session I have optimism for that charter change committee process matters this proposed charter change has not gone through our charter change committee to hold public hearings to consider the points I've just raised above or to make a recommendation further long-standing members of the charter committee who I highly respect have explicitly asked for time to do just this so I don't see a reason to accelerate this process when I don't see South Burlington being able to do this better than the state which is very likely to do at this coming session so I at this time tonight do not support putting this on the charter and I wouldn't support right now from what I understand about it voting yes for it as a voter in South Burlington this March but I could be after it goes through the diligent process and some of these questions are answered that's all okay other comments sure yes Megan yeah I think that many of the things that you raised were discussed at our last meeting and one of those was if the state you know the legislature sees that towns are wanting to to move in this direction that the state might be impelled to act more quickly in fact it might in fact you know make sure that the legislature comes up with some kind of legislation in the next session in which case there would be no need to go back to the public to actually have the public give the council and whoever's on the council at that time the power to impose a carbon tax so that question would be something that would not be an automatic with the charter change and I I also think that your comparison to Burlington with the power plant doesn't come into play in my mind so I I don't quite understand how that difference you know in their energy sources means that there is an implication on whether or not we can regulate heating systems and and I'm not aware that they are you know that they have more access to to residents financial statements than our city does because they have a power plant so I just wanted to put that out there and with regard finally shoot I should have written this down to the charter review committee it's coming back the the sentiment that kind of swayed me because I was in attendance at that charter review committee when Peter Taylor expressed his desire to have this come before the charter review committee is that this is not an issue with regard to governance it's an issue with regard to our our climate action policy and so it does seem to come from the right committee which is the climate action task force and and come to this council and it is our job then to to determine whether or not it's worth putting it out to the public and and so I think that the action to to have two public hearings to actually put it before the public and to you know determine you know the temperature of the water is is smart policy given that we have passed the climate action task force proposed climate action plan and it's the timing is everything with that plan we the clock is ticking ideally we would have known about this so we could have had the public hearings and then determine whether or not to put it on the ballot but if we need to backpedal in January I I don't see a problem with that I think that given the goals that we have set for this community and that I think our community expects of us I don't see any reason not to put this before you know the public into public hearings going forward chair would you like me to if you would like to respond you may just two things regardless of source the charter change committee has asked to look at this and there are some open questions so I think and regardless of source it seems to make sense to let them follow and to regarding Burlington the counter on that Burlington has a lot more lawyers and existing expertise within their electric utility as well as the power plant and so they went through a lot more rig a lot more rigorous process looking at this charter changes being useful for their existing infrastructure I don't see us as having that infrastructure I exchange emails with the city manager this weekend and I just don't think we're the same entity with the same existing infrastructure and capacity to put to do this right so just because we could do it I just don't think right now is the right time for South Burlington to do it so if we do take a vote on it tonight I will not be voting yes okay okay well fair enough other comments I know you could no it's probably okay so um I don't support passing this tonight and I'll tell you why because um I think we are in the process of taking concrete steps within South Burlington to try and have an effect on our burning of fossil fuels in case in point the ordinance that we just passed all right um I support thermal regulation that's the base of this charter change without the carbon tax part but we don't need to put that on as a charter change because we already passed an ordinance where we can regulate that stuff so I just don't see the need and as I said in the in the meeting before I couldn't see an end game or an end plan that then described why you wanted to have that part of the of the of the charter change uh talk about you know um hey uh what's the phrase an assessment uh the hold on the uh assessment of carbon impact or alternative compliance payments so things I worry about when I read that or is first of all it sounds like a carbon tax second of all I worried about equity third of all I don't want our city to have to be responsible for that at the local level I would love for the state or the public utility commission to administer that because they regulate the utilities in the first place and I don't see how we could ever try to impose a tax on gas usage from from our municipality um and I I just don't see the end game in that because there are going to be other plans coming along to try and ameliorate that kind of of gas usage um I just it seems like we have other things we have to do besides that and I'd like to get on those things as as fast as we can so I'd love to see a better plan about how we're going to regulate the replacement of thermal systems in existing buildings I'd love to see more information about that before we even think about a carbon tax now in a year from now if we're back in the same position and nothing's happened at the state level and you want to have the discussion again and we can we probably will know more by then I mean I had a long talk today with people at green mountain power and I have a really good feeling about about at least south brunette if not their distribution region and their their quantity of power and their ability to serve the customers that's sort of a different discussion but um I just I I think we need to take other steps and not even talk about a carbon tax until that's another discussion for future date so I won't be voting yesterday because I can't see the point of having a public hearing and then voting to remove it it that seems like a waste of people's time unless they are in a favor well I mean right I I appreciate not wanting to waste people's time but I I guess I've never thought um soliciting public input and thinking about um concepts or policies that the council is interested in or might be interested in is a waste of time you know I think as you've said many times Tim um this is going to require a lot of public outreach and education and conversation and it seems to me this could be a start of that so I would um support going forward but clearly we don't have the the votes for that so I'm guessing we won't have a we could have a motion in a second I guess oh yes I'm sorry are there other comments by the council I guess yeah I would say that my concern is that um momentum is important and and I think that I would agree with Helen I don't I don't see the that it is a waste of people's time and I see no you know no downside with us you know if after two public hearings it's clear that the public is not ready for it um for us to say okay we will hold off and we'll do more education I I seen no downside to that whereas if people are in favor of it there's only an upside so that's that's my one okay I also just from experience know that you can't necessarily um count on the legislature ahead of time this is a guarantee that anything happens I would note that um it seems as if some of the stars are lined up a lot of them but I've been in other situations where it sure seemed like the stars were lined up and then something happened and legislation did not get passed so um I don't think I'm ever going to accept it as oh they're going to do it so you you wait what I will say I have to pick up on Councillor Barrett's statement is that uh I definitely support pushing this to the charter committee and if the legislature doesn't do anything I'll be the first one out there saying that we should pass this as a municipality but I just don't see tonight being the right time and I said that in my statement multiple times I just don't support doing this now let me let me just reiterate that that we we don't have to I mean we can regulate thermal energy systems now it's just the assessment carbon impact statement that I disagree with at this time because we don't have a definitive plan for it when we get further down the road and somebody shows me a plan for what how they think it might work I'd be willing to look at it then but right now it's it's a cloud of words that gives this ability to the city to go off on a carbon tax tangent and I don't want to go down that road unless we have a definitive plan and I don't even want the the city to vote on accepting this as a charter change until we can tell them this is how we would do it and and here are the exact details we might not have all the details but we would have a pretty good plan I think that's I don't think that's the right thing to do for the voters is to open up a black box and say we're going to be able to do this stuff but we can't tell you what it is but the voters would have a second say they would have a chance to and and and so if if like I said if we have oh something that we need to do later on then well we'll talk about having this this again but right now there's like nothing in the box I don't pass empty boxes I got to see what's in the box but yeah I guess for me you're putting the cart before the horse oh absolutely not because you we already have taken an action and we are going to take more actions to regulate these thermal systems in older homes existing homes as we move forward we're just not going to have this carbon tax part not until you get three people to vote for it to get it on as a charter change on the ballot that's all that's the only difference we're talking about the the the carbon tax as you call it or assessment as it's an assessment right is not something that would come unless the public had a second vote right I don't even want to bring that to them until I can tell them in advance what it is we're thinking about doing I don't think that that's fair at all well I don't think we would bring it before the public unless we had a definitive plan all this says is that we can bring it before the public work on it you can still work on it and then we can have a change I just can't agree with something that doesn't have doesn't have some gears to it right off the back how yeah can we um I just have one yeah yeah my my again my concern is that if we don't have that you know the power right in our toolkit why work on it that's where I would see the waste and that that's what I hear that's where the momentum is you don't think that having that we have the tools right now to to make these these thermal energy regulations anytime we want and we will have a a public process for that it will not require a charter change right at all right and that is taking some real concrete steps to replace systems and existing homes so that they stop burning Vermont gas period that's one of the biggest goals we have to go after now if you're going to say you have a second goal where you want to use if it's a carrot and a stick and the stick might be a higher price because you haven't changed your system yet you know I've got a problem with that because now we're talking about equity issues right and you have a distribution of incomes across this city and eating systems are very expensive and more for some than others and I would like to be able to tell people in advance before they even know that they might have to vote on it that you know this is where we're going and we don't have that in the crystal ball right now so I I'd hate to put that out for a charter change when we don't have enough information okay Mr. Silverstein you wanted to comment you know I didn't because you didn't ask me I thought you were going to share that with the council and you're okay I yeah I probably can do that I'm so good at this can you push the button on that work I'll take this off too um I forgot that um so my biggest concern is it's not clear to me that please will you please um identify yourself as a resident where you cherry silverstein now that we can hear you thank you cherry silverstein south perlington so it's not clear to me that the public has is the wealth of knowledge which is necessary to make an informed decision about what you're doing and I'll start with my first example and I had two parts to this if you look at GMP's website it will tell you that their resource mix where they get their electricity from and I'll tell you what and you'll get it from Helen so um after rex have been exchanged buying and selling 68 percent of their electricity is purchased from hydro kebec 21 percent is from nuclear 7 percent from existing hydro in vermont and 3.4 percent in renewables and they title that as gmp's supply keyword of supply is 100 percent carbon free and 78 percent renewable and that leads the person to believe that for instance we're hooked up to the to you pay for gmp right gmp is your electric supplier and you read that and you conclude that the lights in this building the computers that you're using the electricity which is running all these devices um represent 68 percent hot large hydro 21 percent nuclear etc that's not true we are part of a giant electric grid in new england it's called iso new england for independent service operator and that is part of a much larger grid called the eastern in connection the eastern into connection which runs from the center of canada over to the land agotian south to florida and west to the foot of the rookie mount rocky mountains all of the independent grids within that much larger grid are all operating with the same electrical capacity that is alternating current at 60 hertz all the electricity which is coming into this building is from the larger grid from the iso new england grid so what gmp has on its website which wants you to believe that a hundred percent of the electricity that you're getting from them is carbon free and 78 percent renewal is not true now i list iso new england's resource mix and the largest component of iso new england's resource mix is natural gas about 40 to 45 percent and it can vary during the year and what that means is this if you were to require tomorrow that everybody in south burlington trash all their fossil fuel devices boilers hot water heaters gas fire dryers and totally electrify their houses 40 percent to 45 percent of the electricity which would then come into their house was generated through that through natural gas fired power plants that's the reality of new england's grid gmp does not have its own little island it purchases energy from different suppliers such as hydro kebac such as seabrook nuclear power plant but we get our power from the new england grid and the new england grid is primarily driven between 40 and 45 percent natural gas so if you've electrified every house then 40 to 45 percent of the electricity in those houses would have been generated through natural gas i don't think people understand this and i debated this with gmp the other day and they didn't say i was wrong what christin carlson told me was the way they provide their information on their website is vermont state policy in other words vermont is always looking at renewable and carbon free they totally ignore iso new england the entire grid in new england and that's where you're getting your energy iso new england basically looks at all the industries which are contributing electrons to the grid and let me stop and you say the electron grid is a giant soup of electrons it's massive and it must always be full supply must always match with demand so you have seabrook nuclear power plant you have hydro kebac you have natural gas fired plants you have um other small hydroelectric components they are all dumping electrons into the grid and we draw from that giant soup of electrons so to totally electrify south burlington today you would be using 40 to 45 percent of electrons generated by natural gas that's not up for dispute i've had this conversation with the people at iso new england and i've also had this conversation with people who are responsible from the federal government to maintain reliability of grids in the united states this is the truth that's i don't think the public understands this and so if you were to go to the public and ask them to vote on an issue they'd be voting from a relative lack of information and if you believe in critical thinking critical decision making the first component of critical decision making is to acquire all relevant information which is necessary to make an informed and intelligent decision if you don't know where your electricity is coming from and if you don't know what the cost is going to be to remove from your gas fired boilers to heat pumps and the cost of ripping out the plumbing putting in a new electrolyte i'll give you one example with the new electricity i have three devices in my house which use natural gas i have my boiler a hot water heater and i have a gas dryer if i were to go totally electric i'd have to pull those out not only would have to put in electric devices i only have one open circuit in my circuit box so i'd have to go from a 100 amp box to a 200 amp box and the estimated cost of that is a couple of thousand dollars forget about the new pumps that i'm getting in just to build in the infrastructure is going to cost me a couple of thousand dollars so i don't think the public understands the cost of doing the transition that you're talking about and again if you're going to institute a carbon tax the folly of that is almost half of the replacement energy you're buying is going to be generated from natural gas how long will that last that's the questions everybody's asking well nobody has a crystal ball everybody who i speak to who has knowledge of grids has told me fossil fuels are not going away anytime soon why because if you look at all the systems which contribute electricity to the grid the one which has the greatest reliability the one which has the greatest ability to quickly ramp up when demand increases is natural gas fired power plants and so at isa in erringland the people i speak to say you we want to make the transition we want to go to renewable but don't destroy natural gas fired power plants because they are your last line of defense when demand radically increases natural gas plants are the ones which can quickly ramp up power output and deliver those electrons into the grid so you have to be careful i mean gmp is a great company but they want to see this entire state electrified and so they are willing to put information on their web page which to me is very deceptive that those lights are not being driven by the combination that gmp has on their web page which says this is our supply that light is being driven by the power that is amalgamated by isa in erringland which draws on multiple different systems in order to constitute the grid the grid must always be full of electrons if it's not full of electrons it'll collapse and so you need every one of these energy producing systems to make sure that that grid remains fully electrified fully available for demand payment which which means when i turn a switch the electricity comes on at the at the time i turn the switch and the light bulb comes on some other energy producing system in the system is going to fill the void created by the electrons i drew out of it so you need multiple systems like the state education fund everybody know how the state education fund works everybody thinks that in the state of vermont public education is paid for by just by taxpayers that's not true the state education fund has multiple revenue streams to be fully capitated because individual education taxes will not pay for all of education in the state of vermont you need to be a point of order jerry i love hearing you talk man but it's going to be a long meeting this is not on point so okay the point the point is very simple i don't believe the public has the knowledge to make a decision which in which all relevant information is available to them plus the fact that the public doesn't always turn out for meetings at the last budget hearing 19 percent of registered voters turned out so so unless you do an education campaign i i don't think you're going to accomplish anything which is particularly useful and i would urge you to understand how electric grids operate and what is required to maintain them with the reliability which is necessary for you to have electricity on your beckon demand at any time you will not get the same impression if you look at gmp's website as good a company as they is as they are they when when they responded to my criticism they said we simply follow vermont state policy i said that's not science though state policy is not necessarily a synonym for science and i could give you multiple examples of that okay thank you for your time thank you okay do we have oh yes ethan uh thank you ethan goldman resident uh pavilion f so i just want to respond briefly to a couple points there so people understand the recommendations behind the charter change actually came from the climate action task force not an uneducated public body right people who had put a lot of time into thinking about these things so the the issues of the grid mix while none of those facts are in dispute are not actually relevant toward understanding whether or not these decisions would help us toward our climate goals and the generally accepted policy is to uh follow the dollars not the electrons right so it's not about the moral purity of the electrons that flow through your house it's about where the dollars were spending being put to use to build infrastructure and consume fuels and so from moment to moment while it's true that if you turn on your light it may go to this power plant or that power plant if gmp is responsible for um purchasing our supply and they're purchasing from carbon free sources as we increase the demand in the community that will mean that we're building more carbon free sources to deliver that supply so the second by second mix is not really what's important in looking at how our choices of switching from fossil fuel to electricity will have an impact long term on our carbon footprint and even if you look at it from that perspective the carbon footprint of a heat pump using electricity with 60 natural gas is lower emissions than burning natural gas the heat pump is more than 100 efficient etc etc so that math has already been done it's a move in the right direction to go toward electricity and I also want to make the point that the um the goals that we have for reducing co2 in the climate action plan already factor in that all new construction would be natural gas free and so the goals for converting homes to run on electricity versus natural gas for heat are over and above the new construction so we still need to do five times more conversion to electricity per year than we're doing right now so if we don't have this mechanism to enforce that we're going to need to come up with some other way to move the needle that far and if we don't have some type of enforcement mechanism some kind of fee some other type of lever um then we're just asking people nicely you know why don't you do the right thing for the for the good of of everyone and there's certainly our equity issues we're going to have the equity issues regardless of what path we go down or who's managing it we're going to have to sort that stuff out so i'm not saying it's easy i'm not saying we can ignore it but we need to figure those things out but we also need some kind of mechanism to then implement them and if we act today it will be 2025 before we're actually able to put some kind of policy in place that is moving with all haste right losing no time in making a decision tonight 2025 is the first time we could see a policy actually come into place from this by the time we send it to the voters send it to the legislature get it back in front of the voters again we'd be passing that march 2025 postponing further is just pushing us further down that line and we have calls for 2030 that this council has committed to so i really ask you not to abdicate the responsibility that you've taken on by making the commitment um and uh take some action on this if there's a better way that's great but i think it would be really fantastic to have this at least in motion so we had more tools in our toolbox thank you okay thanks um i don't want this to become a public hearing but if there's some very brief remarks are they adding something not just ditto and paul engels uh did you want to speak uh yes okay well let's let um andrew since he's here and up at the mic and then just two minutes okay thank you i'll be quick and joe it's really great climate action task force i would love if we have a clean heat standard this legislative session but we may not and i view this as a critical godrail to begin the process to have some kind of authority to work through what this policy will look like because we don't have the time we have no other levers to attack this really really major source of carbon emissions and it's the one thing that we can attack is a town we're not going to be able to do too much to municipal about transportation we can tinker on the edges as ethan said the planner already took an account due instruction this is it this is the big one our existing buildings and if and it's a it's a really this is a failsafe this is a guardrail in case the legislative process fails and to postpone even putting in place this guardrail um just seems um does seem like we're abdicating a bit our responsibility to our our kids and and um our um what we what we agreed to take up when we approved the plan thank you um paul angles yeah thanks ellen i just wanted to uh clarify something about the the charter committee uh collin mcneil and jesse baker are the staff of that committee and collin spoke to us about having this issue come to the charter committee and he told us that it was unnecessary for that because it had come from the climate action task force despite that despite hearing that and very little discussion and no vote um the charter committee is being represented as having a consensus that we wanted to come to the charter committee that's just not true and i just wanted to make that point thanks okay thank you all right um council do we have a motion is this new information is going to change anybody's mind okay you too is there anyone else i i really don't want to make this an hour long hearing because we're voting on whether to have that hearing i will be very brief i would just like to remind the council that that light on is that it is on okay um that we don't have the ability oh and identify yourself michael mittag i'm a resident and i was on the climate action task force um we don't have the ability to regulate heating in existing buildings yet this charter would be simply an enabling way to do that and um the council has wisely and thankfully adopted the climate action plan and uh in that plan there's a target to convert 360 houses per year to electricity without any way to regulate this you will be you will be negating what you've already approved undoing what you what you've approved and to make it impossible for us to reach those targets this charter change is simply a way to enable us to go in that direction and as ethan has said uh it won't be until 2025 when we can do anything and i think you should give the voters a chance to weigh in on this they need to be they need to tell you what they want to do or tell you that they don't want to do it that's a democratic process here so bear that in mind give the voters a chance to weigh in on this both at the public hearings and in march put it on the ballot please thank you very important okay alicia yankowski queen city park um electricity is wonderful until it doesn't work and if i can remind a lot of people uh yes i grew up here we had a several days blackout 1998 when we had a massive ice storm uh i'm not sure exactly how many years ago a transformer blue at the velco station at the head of queen city park the neighborhood uh brolington was in a tizzy um i commend wanting to try to be carbon neutral but i think we need to keep that in mind and i have to agree with those who think we need to wait a bit and learn a bit more and look at things a bit more and doesn't mean that we can't still keep on learning what alternatives are and better ways to do things okay thank you okay council all right well at our Thanksgiving table one of my sons talked about how in the future they would have to live underground because it will be too hot to to survive above ground just wanted to give you that um he's grown son he's been through college and my 11 year old daughter is also thinking about what the future will be for her i i truly want to hear the public i want to give them the option to have this uh be actionable by 2025 and that's the soonest and so i will move that we place a proposed change of the city's charter on the town meeting day 2023 ballot enabling the regulation of thermal energy systems and existing residential and commercial buildings and setting two public hearings for january third 2023 at 8 30 p.m and january 17th 2023 p.m and i will second that you're ready for the vote is there discussion well we've had some but we can have some more just a tiny bit so okay tiny question for a city attorney we already have the ability without a charter change to regulate thermal energy systems period is that true or false with an ordinance change we do have a regular there is a statute in place that allowed us to pass our the regular the ordinance you just passed which is 24 vsa 31 31 i believe that allows us to regulate heating systems through a building code we have not studied that thoroughly to determine conclusively whether that would allow us to regulate heating systems and existing buildings i understand from the city of burlington and my review of what their materials were that the thing that held them up of deciding whether or not to regulate heating systems and existing buildings was really the implementation and the enforcement of it and so that's how they came to the carbon tax and they just or the assessment and they decided to move forward with the charter change because of the assessment language that's in the language that's before you tonight i think we would want to do a little bit more research to conclusively say one way or another whether you had that authority but we did believe you have the authority to pass the ordinance you did to regulate heating systems in new buildings okay thank you okay you ready all in favor of placing this on the ballot and having two public hearings signified by saying aye aye and those opposed no so the nays have it so this does not pass i i do question whether our fellow counselor matt coda has to recuse himself when we have these kinds of discussions i just i do he did recuse himself with regard to the ordinance and and it does seem to be um his industry um he earns his living um in this industry so i i just wanted to raise that concern meant you want to respond yeah my industry is trade association management you are also a lobbyist for the fuel dealers association and you earn a living i would assume being a lobbyist as a trade company that is a trade association management government ferris company correct and not as as a lobbyist i am a lobbyist yes yes okay so i my my concern stands thank you well even if he recused himself the motion would fail oh i know i just needed to voice that concern okay um let's move on to item seven then receive an update from the vermont league of cities and towns on services provided and the um arpa assistance ted brady is here so can i yeah yes so ted brady and katie buckley are here and i will let them introduce themselves um as folks likely know south berlington as well as every other municipality and state pays dues to the vermont league cities and towns to support municipal government and many many functions um ted is about a year and a half into his position and has been interested in going around and meeting with city councils um one of the innovations he implemented was bringing on katie and specifically standing up staff to support municipalities in receiving arpa funds and other federal funds um so i thought that this would be a great opportunity to invite them in to talk to the council as tonight you are considering how to um use our arpa funds as strategically as possible so with that i will turn it over to them and katie i will make you a presenter welcome well thank you so much i think you came back you were here last year not before the council but i've certainly been to plenty of meetings with you individually one on one or a couple at a time so it's nice to see you again as jesse said i'm doing a tour of select boards and city councils and trustees to find out what's happening out there and make sure that we're representing you well as your association so the vermont league of cities and towns as i think you know seeing a we've been on your agenda a couple times the last couple of weeks uh is wholly kind of owned and operated by you by municipalities all 247 cities and towns in vermont are our members we've been around for more than 55 years and we do really five things i've shared a member guide with you there it's also available on our internet at on our website at vlct.org for anybody listening at home and it just quickly wanted to share what we do and there's these five core pieces of vlct one we support you you know you have an unique job as a member of a municipal legislative body there's there are things that you do that very few others really get to right you have a position of power that you share with you know select board members and trustees and city councils around the state and we try to support you by bringing those resources and those people together to support you as you make decisions as you decide how to govern here in south burlington we provide you knowledge so many of you probably know this but we have four municipal attorneys on staff and a research associate that you are able to contact any day by dropping us an email or giving us a call and having a conversation about how you govern here in south burlington those four attorneys also provide model policies handbooks you know there's a select board handbook there's the book of woof which is believe it or not our most popular publication about how a municipality can and can't uh regulate dogs and ownership it's kind of a funny one that's uh our most popular publication but we also offer model policies on you know how you regulate public comment during a meeting how do you manage uh you know your finance policies a long list of things and we actually also just hired a municipal finance uh specialist real quick may I ask a question yes no we could use a book of meows because there's a lot of talks about regulating cats in south burlington so something to do we'll have to we'll take that under advisement counselor uh we just hired a government finance specialist who I believe jesse uh has taken advantage of and introduced to your finance team uh to provide again free assistance uh free high level assistance in training we have weak monthly uh convenings of finance people from around the state that she manages her name sarah macy she was the finance director in in Essex uh so we provide that knowledge the third one is representation we are uh you know municipalities lobbyists down in down in my pillar we have two full-time lobbyists caron horn who's been doing this for 35 years and gwen zakoff who uh senator chin and certainly knows well and sees around the state house um we last year we booked uh 14 uh 1500 hours or more of time uh lobbying on municipalities behalf and had you know results to show for it when you talk about the attempt to repeal qualified immunity we tried to inform that conversation about what it would mean for municipal policing uh when we were talking about housing uh reform we were we tried to represent common interests of municipalities our members we just completed our 2022 um member survey and for the second year in a row housing was the number one thing our municipalities say they're concerned about addressing housing affordability so trying to look after interest for municipal municipalities to try to promote housing the fourth one you know very well we run uh risk pools uh we were sorry not to win your uh business at the league but we're here for you i mean we were we created these programs because our membership you demanded that we create them so know that we're here for you in the future and finally provide connection you know whether it be connecting select board members to other select board members managers to other managers uh our town fair which has 400 and some odd people attended each year uh it's the largest gathering of municipal officials in the state and also like to point out we're a member of the national league of cities uh which would be a great opportunity for any of you counselors to connect with other fellow counselors who manage you know communities of your size 20 000 people 30 000 people where you might really get some good peer to peer learning and we'd happily connect you to those networks but that's not the real reason we're here tonight uh the real reason we're here is our most recent uh program offering which is the american rescue plan act uh assistance and coordination program which is quickly merging into something different and bigger and uh just about a year and a half ago a year ago we hired katie buckley who's a former commissioner housing and community development most importantly she is a former municipal administrator and has some private sector experience and development and we launched the arpa assistance and coordination program with support from the vermont legislature when the 200 plus million dollars showed up in your bank accounts i wish it all came to you we were charged by the legislature with helping share information and make sure that you're make sure that municipalities know this money's coming what it can be used for and what the best practices were and with that i'll turn it over to katie buckley sure is the green light bright it is now i think ted said a lot of it but uh we did we quickly stood up the arpa assistance and coordination program um we had 277 municipalities across the state who are eligible recipients of arpa money and we had 277 of them sign up for the funding which was quite remarkable on the national stage and so over the course of the last year and a half we've been working with municipalities across the state like south burlington um to help them with their arpa funding uh it originally came through when the act was first passed under an interim rule that was pretty limiting in terms of how the funds could be used uh the smaller the community the more difficult it was to spend your money um so much with much anticipation they issued the final rule in january um and the final rule brought about um i'm kind of jumping ahead ted i'm sorry um how about i let you you do the framework are you sure um basically the arpa assistance and coordination program we offer assistance of all kinds to any size municipality regardless of um the capacity so we've worked with south burlington of course around reporting um so everything from prioritizing local projects and uh initiatives in communities uh down to how do i get a sam dot gov id to i have to report by april 30th uh you name it anything related to arpa we have helped with and we have um created some great partnerships throughout the state in helping communities uh use their funds in transformative ways uh to advance local priorities we partner with the regional playing commissions regional development corps strong partnership with the state of vermont the total arpa allocation for the state was 1.25 billion dollars 200 million went directly to municipalities and a little over one billion dollars went through the state and so really deploying that money and making sure that every dollar uh nothing's left on the table that's the that's our goal and i think we're uh heading in the right direction and so i'll let you talk a little about our framework so as you tonight uh take the next step in evaluating some ways you could spend your arpa money uh i wanted to remind you of some essential framework and essential kind of well i say the spirit of the law of arpa because as katie just mentioned a lot of things have changed since this money came and you have a little more freedom which we'll talk about in a moment but the spirit of the law remains to help communities recover from covet and to help communities be more resilient going forward we here in vermont are really fortunate that our our municipalities did not suffer a dramatic reduction in revenue as a result of covet due to the way we fund municipal government which is inadequately uh and uh here here is what you don't have you can't lose what you don't have exactly so in the end you have a really unique opportunity to spend this money to really focus on investing in the future as opposed to filling gaps and that was you know two-part goal of this legislation so from the beginning we've been talking about three fundamental things that municipalities should be working on prioritizing good governance and how they spend this money leveraging the arpa aid and investing in the best uses for long-term recovery and trying to hit that sweet spot right in the middle so what do those three things mean it means one having hearings and conversations with citizens about how they want to spend this money that's prioritizing good governance right doing it in a transparent manner uh it also means and i saw i'm not sure if you did a city-wide survey if some of your committees did surveys surveying your community that was a great move on behalf of south brilington like showing that good governance the second piece is leveraging your arpa aid you shouldn't just spend your five million dollars and call it a day right you should turn that five million dollars into ten or twenty million dollars there is so much additional federal money out there and state money right now that really uh not leveraging that money is still very important and finally long-term recovery south brilington is in a unique position you are the second largest community in the state second largest allocation in the state national uh news outlets congress they'll be they'll notice what you do with your five million dollars and i think it's really important that south brilington uh brilington that these communities show uh that it's being used in the right way i commend you for using that million dollars for housing that's an incredible uh you know exactly on point with this middle of that venn diagram uh and so kudos for kind of demonstrating that and taking that first step so uh i had a journalism professor at st mike's sky dav mindich that uh when we were doing web design i was i made this crazy website and he comes up to me and says ted just because you can doesn't mean you should and he quickly told me all the things i did wrong and so this is just a reminder that just because what you're about to hear says that you can spend your money certain ways it doesn't mean you should we're hoping that communities around the state uh follow this initial guidance katie back to you sure thank you this is what i was starting into before but it's really the biggest change that came out of the final rule is this thing called the standard allowance so what it allows pretty much every town city and village in the state of vermont including south brilington um to take its entire arbor award and claim it as lost revenue even though you didn't have it you may have had it you may not have you don't have to demonstrate document or prove that you had lost revenue the treasury is allowing you to take a standard allowance up to 10 million dollars um so your total award 5.6 it's 5.65 um can be used for the provision of government services and so as ted said just because you can doesn't mean you should um you have five and a half million dollars dropped into your laps that you will probably never have happened again and the intent of the funding the spirit of the funding really is around transformative transformational investments in your community so what have you wanted to do that is big and bold uh that's what communities across the state are thinking about now there are places where you do need to fill gaps that's a reality of the moment but um transformational investments is really the place to go there is so much federal funding um that really you're sitting on 5.6 million dollars of opportunity so if there is additional funding out there to be had very very best part of this for me i get so excited about it is under the standard allowance arpa may be used as match for other state and federal grant programs and so i you're on a roll i'm sorry i didn't mean to interrupt but i wanted to ask a question about that of course okay and so federal funds can't typically match federal funds so if you're hunting around for grant match and you have this other great federal program that's part of a project can't be used as your grant match well because of the standard allowance you can use your all of your arpa award as grant match so as ted said your 5.6 million dollars can be stretched and really multiply if you are willing and able to chase other funding what i just did with the mic um so i just want to say it again with feeling arpa can be used as grant match for other state and federal grant programs and anyone in the room who's done a grant before is like right on the team of saying wow that's pretty amazing yes i'm sorry i think i'm 99 with you i just want to confirm this is all federal state and federal grant programs not arpa funded federal state and federal grant correct correct and if you are applying for a grant and you get pushback from your funder you can feel free to call me and i'll have a conversation with them we've had many because it doesn't it sounds too good to be true but it is true that's pretty rare when you're talking about federal money so we have um we're just about to launch the federal funding assistance program um and in the spirit of leveraging using your arpa funds working with communities to say how much arpa money do you have what are your local priorities how can we help pair you up with additional grant opportunities so that you can do more so that you can um look at what your community needs are what your community priorities are what your residents really want you to do that's big bold and different and see if you can leverage your money to get that accomplished i think that is all we had formally uh presented or planned to present and oh happy to take any questions or if you want me to go anywhere else we provided a more in-depth slide deck in your packets but we don't want to bore you not tonight anyway quick question yeah um and this is on the lighter side the 251 club is that club the people visit every town in vermont what are the four towns that you don't represent or are they gores they're gores they're the unincorporated areas they're unincorporated so do we know what they are are they buells gore and i don't know them off the top is this a trivia question we need for yeah nobody knows thank you okay are there any um further questions i think that's the best news ever no i've never heard of being able to use federal dollars to access federal dollars so that's great okay um copies of the slide deck if anybody is interested in having a paper copy i i do have two quick questions oh yes i'm sorry um so what are some of the best ideas you've seen from municipalities in terms of in terms of funding unique and impactful funding a million dollars for affordable housing all right we're at the first on the list um you know what we're really seeing mostly is towns sitting back taking time and doing community outreach right now we don't have a lot of spending that has taken place yet um in the smaller towns and uh i want to say barry city also didn't affordable housing um using their funds for affordable housing and i just want to reiterate what ted said that affordable housing is the number one item that came back in our our member survey so seeing municipalities take that on is a exciting and wonderful thing even if it's uh even if it's just doing some land banking around municipally owned properties and banking those with the idea that potentially they could be developed for affordable housing um we're seeing towns entertain the idea of water and wastewater projects uh small village water and wastewater projects that maybe wouldn't have before but for the fact that there's so much additional funding if there was ever a moment to take on a project like that now so the moment we'll never see funding like this again to get those types of big ticket infrastructure projects done um it's you know depending upon the size and scale of the community uh doing a small town hall project uh renovation project is a massive project for a small town so um there's no shortage of great ideas uh and uh possibilities to use their funding on and uh using the town hall project it's a community space there's a lot of other programming that goes on in there and it's a great resource for the community just besides the town office just like this space when um in some of those discussions with communities people one of the um high interest issues in south brolington was child care which isn't typically as a municipal effort so have you gotten some good or other communities talking about that you know is there a place to go for some interesting ideas about how to sure i want to say that the town of alberg actually is using their funding for child care and so throughout the state it might be that the municipality is the sponsor for the funding for additional funding seating it with some of their ARPA funding sponsoring funding applications the municipality could potentially be the owner of the building and then lease it to a child care provider or if you're doing a larger scale municipal project with multiple tenants of which child care is one the municipality could be the owner of the the building um so there's lots of different models but child care is a huge issue that's coming up as well um funding either uh the infrastructure of the building or providing funding opportunities for local providers to help seed them to either establish or expand business and using those funds in partnership with the state of Vermont have you seen any collaboration with businesses i mean there were years ago that was the big deal you know you have a daycare in your business and that sure and then that faded out specifically around child care i haven't it doesn't mean that it's not happening it just might mean that i haven't heard the conversation yeah a lot of its anecdotal so great uh yes thank you Helen picking up on Helen's point about collaboration is there a resource first of all it's amazing that we have this and i agree with all your points but there might be an opportunity particularly with child care and i'm sure there's many others where working with a neighboring town where we have the same burdens and we have all the cross travel might be very effective or housing is there a way a pathway that you all provide that we can we've worked pretty closely decision-making process if we decide a child care facility is best on this side of the border rather than ours that we could collaborate together is there a way to do that um where we've sparked conversations around that and the rpcs are more of the boots on the ground and able to really have those conversations and know which communities to pair up um you know all of this is challenging ourselves to think uh differently than we have before and so local control as someone who worked in a small town local control is very important and thinking outside your town boundary to best meet the needs of your residents is new and bold and brave but really critical um to channel resources in a way that's sustainable and intelligent because if every small community has a child care center or every when you when you can group need together uh it's it's more financially sustainable over time and so if you had multiple uh needs met in a single space with multiple tenants they're all contributing and they don't have to worry about being property owners which is a really hard thing for small nonprofits to do i'm sorry i'm going really deep into this um but okay that's great other comments or questions well we know who to call i welcome it with our call with our questions i've already enjoyed working with south burlington thus far so well we're excited about moving on with at least i am with the conversation about how we spend this money and more importantly perhaps is how we're going to match it two to one or three to one to really make the substantial investments because that is the the i think that's the one value that the council when we first heard about the opera money like what would we do with it and i think the consensus i'm quite certain it was unanimous is to really invest in things that um have a lasting impact and not just a one time buy something and five years later it has to be replaced or whatever but really thinking about that yeah i often say to towns who are really struggling the small ones and say think of it this way what do you what do you want to leave behind for your grandkids right what what do you want to leave so that they say wow they were smart yeah they really really thought of us or they really were thinking ahead or you know leave some pride and legacy behind so okay well thank you very much thank you okay moving on to item eight which is um we'll begin with an overview on the city's current allocation of ARPA funding from andrew sure so i outlined this all um i think i hope it's pretty clear in the memo um it's uh as as we just heard 5.6 million that we received um you've already allocated i guess it goes quick uh 2.5 million um on a various uh different projects including refunding three city staff of frozen positions in the f y 22 budget uh those are allocated out throughout the duration of the spending window for ARPA which is the end of 2026 with gradual step outs so that there's not a uh fiscal cliff just more of a fiscal stairs ramp ramp yes and also you've uh i think there's been a couple of different sort of one time there there's uh one city grant match we're gonna experience that with illuminate vermont coming up in a couple weeks council pledged ARPA dollars for that grant funding opportunity also some cip support these are deferred um uh covid deferred projects and expenditures in f y 23 that were included in the budget and of course the one million dollars for affordable housing um the two others that have been discussed and i just sort of tagged them here uh as previously discussed proposed allocations um cip support when i presented the uh financial overview for uh or preview for f y 24 budget decisions talked a little bit about that that fiscal cliff we would hit in terms of cip spending um and maybe finding a way to step that out in the budget um when we present the budget uh next monday uh it will include the 504 of ARPA dollars for cip support as it's currently proposed um and then also the one million for community child care service support i know jesse's had some initial conversations about what that may look like with some of our state partners um so that leaves if those are allocated that leaves almost a neat one million dollar that remains to be unallocated but overall um the council has not committed three uh about 3.1 million okay thank you uh tom question on the cip support that you've penciled in here uh so in the packet that i read of all the different proposals there's a lot of them that come up that i'm i'm hoping those are already in the sip but is this money that you have laid out targeted at anything or is it really just to try to advance more of our our long-standing cip projects uh so it is targeted at a few specific projects in the budget and you'll see that again on monday um those are things like uh talking about standing up a second ambulance so that those would go fund that as well as uh we still need another ambulance either way um i'm trying to remember the other ones uh the deferred uh dpw garage bay expansion because it was deferred during covid we saw a huge increase in materials costs we're looking to use arpa dollars for that purpose uh we have a generator at fire station number two that needs to be replaced i'm looking to use a small share of that um and i know there's one more that i'm missing but those are those types of expenditures is what we're thinking quick follow many of those have that will match quick follow up just to clarify process is uh we're not voting on actions we're going to hear from all these things and we can factor that in conversation and and hear from the committee the public on at least some of the public on what their thoughts are we can have some general conversations but nothing specific yes can i have a quick and dumb question i get one of these at night at least so we have until december 31 we have more than a year to to allocate and then we have until 2026 oh yeah 2022 years two years right yeah okay two dumb questions what year is it uh to allocate and then to spend it but the dumb question is where is the money sitting is it in our bank account making four and a half percent interest or is it in some other bank account it's in our bank account generating interest not four and a half though well you should check out the rates oh well probably not four and a half 3.6 3.6 right very good can i give you somebody to put your bank for that is saying that's not advocating for holding the money until the last second i'm just wondering thank you for answering that question sir i have a quick question yes so uh in your um memo right of the allocations i'm just curious um how much of the allocations have actually already been spent i was just asking jessie to put it on the screen because it might be helpful for people to see that of the 2.5 million how much has actually just curious has i mean we haven't bought the ambulance yet right we haven't uh yes uh the ambulance yes has been spent okay um and there was a slight overage with that i have in the kind of in the the footnote there that we reallocated some of those okay 2022 uh dollars okay um dispatch consoles that's already been spent firefighter staff PPE um permitting software has not uh office 365 has illuminate vermont has affordable housing mostly has been on the warrant if not it'll be on an upcoming warrant yeah we've signed all those agreements right you've executed one set of agreements with another likely coming at the next meeting okay any other questions for andrew well thank you this was really helpful although sobering when i then added up what all the committees have asked for we probably needed 10 5.6 allocations and then we could satisfy the world but that's always the case okay there's no more questions then why don't we um move on to the presentations and i had asked that the um pc do theirs first the planning commission so who's going to do that is there anyone here from the planning commission i saw jessica earlier uh it was what it was added well it was sent to us i guess it was provided to the council on monday and added to the council agenda at the beginning of this meeting okay well if you're not familiar is paul still here no no okay can i do just a teeny bit of table so yes before we jump in yeah so i just want to really thank all the volunteers who have spent a lot of time in the last two months of committee meetings making suggestions to the council the point for tonight is really for the council to hear from all of you about those ideas they have they do have everybody's uh written suggestions including the planning commissions um and but as helen said earlier the intention isn't to make decisions tonight one of the things we have not done is vet or call the com staff have not vetted or called the committee's recommendations we really wanted the council to hear directly from the committees so what would be helpful tonight from the council if you are ready for that or at a future meeting is to hear from you kind of a high level set of things you are interested in for a staff to go back and put together some implementation plans for you okay um so that's the kind of what we're hoping to come out of tonight's discussion and and tonight in terms of the committees responsibilities um if we gave each of you 15 minutes we'd be here you know till midnight and the written material i must compliment you was very um clear and you gave a lot of detail so i think as we go through each of the committees if you can spend five minutes maybe just summarizing these are the three points or these are the five things we really need are the one thing maybe it's just a minute um and then allow the council to um ask some questions and that i think will be the best use of all of our time but i had wanted to start with the planning commission because while they didn't put a dollar figure on anything they sort of looked in a i guess a planning commission way at a sort of an overarching view and their recommendation was to take the money and allocate it um in three buckets and the first was um funding implementation of the climate action plan which might include additional staff positions and they you know identified a few things um the second was the council could acquire additional city-owned open space or conservation areas on top of the third that's already suggested and they gave some ideas purchasing TDAs and and i think um katie mentioned that as one of the things that that communities were doing as a you know buying up property so that at some point maybe later you could either build affordable housing or you'd have open space and lastly um the third one was to support child care so it's looking at this million dollars that we have still available plus all that potential match to put it think of it in three buckets and when i when i read through um all of the committee suggestions you know i think it they do fit in pretty well it's kind of a nice way to look at that if the council liked the idea of a third open space a third housing and a third to operations specifically child care so if we follow that that one million dollars that we have suggested for the child care could be combined with the other million and we'd have two million yeah yeah so i just thought that made sense as a it was an interesting way to look at it we don't have to adopt it i just thought it was can you just briefly say those three categories again the second one is open space open space housing and then housing was was already included in the million dollars it was the climate action plan actually right i'm sorry it was well the open space how they worded it yeah is um the first was implementation of the climate action plan including including which could also upgrade current housing through one-time grants to homeowners for energy conservation so it could support some making some houses maybe more affordable second uh that it's more the open space acquiring additional open space or conservation areas um and the third was allocate funding to support child care with sort of the operations and so that was their thought all right so our first um committee is a recreation and parks not on enough oh okay here we go here we go okay i'm mike seminoe i'm the new chair of wrecking park i'm here with oliver pearson and we're going to provide you with a presentation and think your idea of hitting the major points probably a good one oliver's going to carry the ball oliver and holly spent a lot of time reviewing our wants and needs and i think oliver can speak to those best so i'm going to pass the ball to oliver here thanks mike thanks members of the council for giving us a chance to share this information i joined the parks and rec committee primarily because as a as a coach as a as a parent and as an athlete using our recreational facilities i i felt that the condition of these facilities was doing as a disservice here in in south berlington with facilities that opened late because of drainage issues that other towns weren't excited to come play at because of deferred maintenance and crumbling infrastructure and because of inadequate space creating a lot of competition for use of the fields and and preventing certain sports leagues from using them the sort of rhythm that they were hoping to so the arpa funds came along and it seemed like an opportunity to address some of these issues and the committee got excited about presenting some of our ideas to you i i think we we're really hoping that the arpa funds can be used and what we think is is a transformational manner to address long-standing deferred maintenance which in and of itself doesn't sound like something that's particularly transformational or sexy but with this opportunity to really get some very important very important maintenance taking care of increase access increase equity of use of these fields it becomes more of a transformational uh in investments i think when we saw the results of the survey there was a number of of references directly in the survey that was done to not only the importance of the fields and the recreational facilities and recreational programs in helping residents of South Burlington deal with get through the pandemic cope with the challenges created by the pandemic but but also really highlighted as investments in improving these facilities as as some of the priorities i think everyone's familiar with the survey but i'll just highlight a few points you know question one 80 percent of respondents cited socially and loss of social connection as as an issue that was very important to them and our committee believes that that can partially be addressed by these types of investments and improve access to an equitable use of parks and recreational infrastructure and services question five as respondents are asked to rate eligible projects investments in parks and recreational infrastructure was listed as both number five and eight in the very important project category question six asking respondents how like to see this once in a generation funding spent the top response from 40 people was recreation spaces and the second response from 20 people was bike and pedestrian infrastructure and finally question six the top three project specific responses were park improvements a community pool and a recreation center respectively so i think there's a bit of a trend here that the residents feel that these these investments are important to help them cope with coming through the pandemic and address some of the challenges at the current state of our of our parks and recreation infrastructure create so as a committee we came up with a number of proposed investments it's it's in the memo that that we submitted but we really think that the lack of a regular funding resource or a specific funding allocation to recreation parks department historically has limited the department's ability to proactively address these challenges and response to the needs that have been created both both by the pandemic and by the high level of use that these facilities get you know if you've been to veterans park on a on a Saturday doing a soccer tournament you can see the the literally the thousands of people i think that come and go from from those fields in a day and and they're such an important aspect of of sort of the fabric of of community life in south berlington but there are so many challenges that we've articulated articulated in this memo that could be addressed to really improve the quality of the services that were that were offering with these recreational parks facilities so i don't want to go through them all one by one i think they fall into a couple categories parks master plan to help us really do some visioning and figure out where we want to go into the future to continue to improve these these assets and these these facilities and these services dealing with the challenge of of deferred maintenance that's that's been the can has been kicked down the road for for too long in the opinion of the committee and there's some very important upgrades replacements renovations etc that need to be addressed and finally one more significant uh investment at red rocks to create the the bathhouse facility there that collectively you know we're thinking big we shot high collectively these these uh these three investments are total at 1.5 million or so but we definitely be able to i think do do pieces of this and still meet some of our intended objectives so you know i think i'll finish with saying you know when i think about helping the community recover in an investment that's going to have a lasting impact uh for for the residents of south berlington given the high use of of these facilities and fields that was articulated in the in the survey and the importance that they played to help people connect socially as we come out of the pandemic i think this type of investment would really address those two points that the council has already mentioned her priorities for for use of this funding thank you very much thank you questions council matt the thank you the additional soccer field where where is that south village that south village okay i just see that we're mostly talking about veterans park and red rocks but right may yeah the open space fund has a few more years left where we're using that for some of the upkeep of our parks including red rocks so if you could talk a little bit about how the you know the bathroom facility you know fits into what has already been um you know become policy in terms of using some of those open space funds for for renovations and upkeep and and maintenance can you come up to the mic please thank you loud and everyone here oh that's okay i'll come here that's your um holly reese director of recreation and parks um so the the bathhouse renovation is nothing that was it was identified as a priority but didn't make what we call the oh snap list so um previous to me i think in 2016 there was a list developed of the needs and kind of slated with priorities of funding uh for the open space funding source and so it was an identified project but didn't make the priority one or two list and i think because it's such a heavy price tag okay because i remember seeing it on that list yeah okay yeah and then just as a point of clarification met to your question um that soccer field the additional soccer field actually is at vet memorial or conceptualized to be so where that defunct um tennis court inline hockey court was removed um we just kind of have that stagnant um so the concept is to create a soccer field there which would allow for resting of some of our other soccer fields so they're not so compacted what happened to the south village plan that's still in the works um you know we're working with the developer so they've reached that kind of 75 build out threshold um so kind of still conceptualizing that but it would be a youth sized soccer field there they're also working with a small commercial building on that corner that would house bathrooms on the back of it so when they kind of start that process i think it'll kick in is that is the bathhouse i was just thinking of this some of the federal match it that's a pretty old building is it at all historic it's not historic it was um built with l w c f funds so whatever we do we have to know what ld so federal funding that um land water conservation funding um so we have to replace the intended use so whatever we put in there has to be changing facilities bathroom facilities shower facilities um and i mean it's just a crumbling infrastructure you know we always say if we had a friday the 13th party it would happen down at the bathhouse at red rocks because it's just almost non-functional we have a great parks foreman who spends a lot of time trying to get you know minimal functioning of the plumbing and all the plumbing is internal inside you know all the stone and concrete so it's an expensive fix so the concept is to tear the facility down and put you know a prefab facility there and then kind of coordinate that with some more accessible parking um down in that section okay and then could you speak a little bit to the um um planning that the master plan i mean it's a pretty big ticket item 150 thousand dollars but i'm kind of a planner type um but then i get worried if we have spend all our arpa money on planning then when we have the plans the cost of implementing them will be we'll need another arpa um grant and won't be there but i'm just curious how you see um a master plan as being um transformative so mic just gave me a thumb so i i can speak and and fill in the gaps um so as we're looking you know we've had a huge population jump and bubble we will continue to see that um and so a parks master plan will help us you know plan into the future to identify what the gaps are in our system throughout the community um for for right now and then also building out um you know some departments conceptualize both a recreation and a parks master plan the committee is recommending just a physical park facility master plan as well as you know bike and pet i think has come with a similar concept so working you know with the planning and zoning department to kind of facilitate many of these and and you know in what lanes do they cross and can they be done together um and just you know prioritizing clearly there's staff time and commitment so when we can all do all these things together um is going to be a deciding factor too yeah i would just add there might be some opportunities for for synergy there with open space land conservation efforts as well if part of our visioning is trying to keep land from being developed and used for different uh recreational uses if there's overlaps with that type of land with with with open space conservation and identifying land that meets those goals simultaneously that could be a way to work together with a different committee okay yes not a question just more comment i just want to say i see all of this as really fitting into that venn diagram from the vlct and i just want to highlight that investing in our parks and recs is what uh that pandemic made us realize we need more of because we need healthy outdoor recreational spaces i remember the hide the pandemic when we wanted to take our kids to anywhere that was outdoors and as we look forward more pandemics might happen or what not but we just know that's healthier activity so i fully support all this the questions i'll have at a future meeting really to you holly is how do we what opportunities to leverage this with arpa aid and how this fits with current sip planning but i just love all the ideas in here i hope they all get happy happened because we need more wrecking parks facilities yeah and just one last quick thought uh uh collaboration and leverage i mean you mentioned earlier you know we could use 10 million bucks uh so there's never enough money to go around uh but we would love to find ways uh to collaborate in order to leverage the funds that there are in there so our ask is a big ask but we know we do know that our agendas as oliver said overlap with open space natural resources bike and pad uh so finding ways to work together will uh make our money go further certainly thank you thanks okay public art the other part of the brain lately different well not really we like nature too after all it is public art i'm pennie tompkins and my fellow uh committee member tree straitman is here today and then i'm happy to say that all of our committee members are online so we have um oh and john is here sorry john and john uh sebastian schullo is also here he has two hats on today as do i um oh there's sophia thank you sophia yes and ilana our staff person oh there they are uh amanda is bar vice chair and john kalaki sophia did i say everybody's name i hope so and michelle bailey is here as well and she's our liaison with the vermont arts council and it's super helpful so thank you all for coming team uh ours is uh we have a straightforward request uh our committee is a relatively young in the city and we um actually for years have been sort of saying we want to have a better understanding of what we have in our city for artists it was actually a really tough period for them through the pandemic because everything shut down in the arts no one could go anywhere and so it was a tough period for them but that is it was it's we're in conjunction with the fact that we wanted to uh and have started um an inventory of what assets we have in the arts here in south burlington but we do feel the need to um develop a south burlington cultural plan um that will help us with identifying the cultural assets help us articulate a vision for our city and to strengthen our economy and position us to grow i think you know we've started to do some public art projects over the last couple of years but um right now they're all tied to city projects in tiff although we have started our first one that is um will be um in a different location and so we want to issue an rfp and get some help from an outside consultant and that we will work with um convening with stakeholders both artists community members um do focus groups learn what our community finds important about the arts um we were disappointed we noticed on the survey that there wasn't a whole lot of mention of public art in the survey results at least not that we saw um but uh we still we obviously believe in public art and the important of our cultural assets so ours is that's our simple request so we are one of the short ones um we do think because we haven't had this force up burlington um before it has the chance to well actually illuminate vermont is a good example of how we are trying to put ourselves on the map with a cultural involvement and so um while we have not been active in that project obviously it's just that we might we can start doing that for our city and we know that getting some help to develop a cultural plan will allow us to do that so it's a small request but an important one for us any questions yes we're the short we're the short presentation are there um any questions or in the small dollar amount and a small dollar amount yeah you can afford us well i i'm sure john kalaki probably has the figures but i can just remember um a lot of discussions in the legislature about funding the arts and the payback that you invest in the arts and the money generated from ancillary services um is is it 71 yes well oh that i don't know john do you know do you remember uh a lot of economic impact studies say 18 to 1 18 to 1 wow so i mean i just think that's another piece to think about in terms of um and i'm sure most of the public doesn't ever think about the and the other economic impact but it is there i should have added also that in the in the coming um development of the new comprehensive plan we also feel that this is an important part for our committee to be able to contribute to what we would like to see in the new comprehensive plan about the arts and culture and the importance of it to the community in general right tom so it has my support one because it is the small dollar amount but the other thing on my eight years of of council i love south burlington i grew up here i just i always lament every year that we don't do anything for july fourth we don't do new year's eve we could do we do a lot i love sobu night out i am not taking away from all the great things we do looking at holly uh but i think that they're with the new market street and there are opportunities with a cultural assessment like this to look at how we can have our artists local artists shine in in areas in front of the library where we have this great new facility where they can come in and use the use the facilities and so on so very reasonable request absolutely and we don't have the gallery don't forget we now have a gallery and we have a lovely curator who's working on shows and there'll be a new one being set up in december so that's great well i think the art shows are wonderful uh tim yeah there's an arbor request for the repair to a badly damaged mural on heiser road uh for oh yeah insurance money oh it's insurance money okay thank you we said the art was worth a million dollars yeah say a billion well thank you for giving us the opportunity to present our request and uh good luck with figuring out how to spend the money okay well thank you very much thank you very much um natural resources and conservation right hello mitty is here do you know i didn't see he was far okay hello oh good right there hello i'm john cholo uh chair of the nrcc mary kopferman vice chair all right um i think we're going to be a short one too um what i heard though i want to say that from the get go on the vlct and the planning and zoning uh things that really echo what we are about to uh to present here is the investment investment in the long term this is really both our plans are here the public outreach the second items we're going to ask is public outreach and input and uh planning and zoning was uh talking about open space acquisition and our second request is about open space planning so that's really key to that open space acquisition and uh the climate action plan both our requests directly impacting climate action so that's the preamble i wanted to put forward before we start in the the meat of it keep going okay so um the first one is about canopy part of our charge is to preserve canopy so trees and their coverage in the city so we are we as a state and nation really are being hit by the um emerald ash borer that's the best that kills emerald kills ash trees in a matter of two years so we have a plan in place to address that but we feel like the arpa funding can help us keep the canopy instead of just planting replacing tree for tree we can really increase the amount of trees we can add or treat the existing trees uh with adequate funding right now we have plans to do so but the fund funding that is being allocated is short and we're afraid that it will not be able to keep that canopy and the same capacity that it is today um so that's for the the first request uh the second request is um to develop the open space plan so the open space plan that we have now is old 2014 i guess and we are working on on establishing a new one uh the committee is working as it should to to establish that but having more resources to reach the public both communicating our finding and helping us gather information and um getting it to the public and gather the public's feedback for us to establish that plan is uh something that would require financing so we are requesting money to uh to have a third party or a consultant or an expert help us achieve that gathering information publishing information getting public feedback and finalizing the open space plan both of these very modest requests by the way as you can tell right so you know you have um councilor chitin because these are small figures right so i feel like i have to say i love all of these but i do i love the tree thing because the south brilington loves trees but i'm really pausing on the second request um i'm curious does our open space fund uh at all allow for this type of planning i know there's a small percentage of the open space dollars where we can use it for administrative functions and so on so i question if the arpa needs to be used to study our open space yeah the ballot language really only talks about acquisition or maintenance um maintenance yeah i mean it would have to be yeah it's a little bit of a gray area i would say but we've never used it for that purpose before okay and the open space plan establish the maintenance plan also it doesn't fund it of course that's part of that budget of the open space budget but part of the open space plan is to maintain the open space establish a plan a plan for it and to determine which properties the community wants the city to purchase for different for different uses yeah that could be part of it any other questions i want to know more about the parasitoid wasps but we'll find out later very i think it's fairly new fairly recent development and i think we're all learning about that and i think that um the new method if you if you on the printed copy yeah if you press on the blue i think you'll find more information thank you it's promising but it's really needs infancy to answer your question i may have to learn to have a new pre appreciation for wasps one of those insects which i am really frightened having gotten bitten as a child these are very teeny wasps right well this was sort of a teeny one too but it hurt like crazy right thank you all okay thank you lisa did you want to make a comment too as another member of the committee long i was just going to say that their parasitic wasps exist and you probably have them in your yards um i actually had a tomato horn worm that a parasitic wasps had laid eggs on and what happens is when the eggs hatch the babies eat the caterpillar so that's one way that parasitic wasps do help that's right nature can be so mean cool cool all right yeah yeah okay the library board of trustees good evening thanks for letting us take the time to present i'm stacey pape the new chair of the library board and i'm ted lansky i'm the vice chair of and treasurer of the library board of trustees and we'd like to present our proposal for a book van um it would be a we would purchase and fit up an electrical panel van to make our library more accessible to our citizens there are many citizens right now who can't access the beautiful library that we've put out and many of those are involved in child care older citizens and people who don't have accessibility to the library and we want to make sure that the services we provide to the library are accessible to the full community and this would be one way to do that it fits in with our goal and our values of improving diversity inclusion and equity as well in our community um the book van would also be shared with the parks and recreation group as well to make sure we get the value out of the van um but by using how allowing them to um in seasonal summer staff to help with impromptu recreational activities as well so we would share the van to make sure we maximize its use um in line with what Helen what you were saying about you know using the third or third or third accessing child care and also um accessible housing for people this would be one way to continue to promote that and make sure we connect with our full community because part of the library's mission is to make sure we're accessible to all our community members and this is another tool for us to use to get that um so some of the things again would be to help out with kids that are in child care who are not available during the opening hours of the library so this would allow us to reach out to those um it would also make a stronger community connections out with our with our citizens to make sure that the library resources are available and also for older adults we would be able to do that um so uh we feel that this was the next facet of expanding the investment that we've made into the library and would allow to for a small amount to continue to make that large investment that the community may make it accessible to all citizens of the community and one other point with this is not just bringing books to the community but also having the library staff go out into the community to welcome people into the new library this is a new space we are having wonderful numbers coming to the library but people that are not as familiar and not as comfortable being here this is a really nice way to encourage them to come and also to talk about some of the things like people with mobility issues that need to take the bus at this time the bus stop is at Barnes and Noble so it's a bit of a walk to the library so having staff be able to kind of talk through some of those things and the future of market street changing um it's it's really that bringing us to them to encourage that as well as bringing books and literacy out into the community and it adds a long-term investment in our youth and our community too because the gate access for people who are in child care whatever this would be another way to continue to promote the core values of what we wanted the library I wanted to just follow up with the staffing and in the library's piece it says you will hire a part-time employee and then use volunteers is that part-time employee is that in the budget for next year Jennifer you want to take that one yeah the vehicle itself will take up to 12 months to so there's plenty of time to plan so it's in the cip it's potentially in the cip and for the following year after okay after we have the vehicle so that is what it will need in terms of your shop to run this parks and rec is going to use existing okay I just it may be a year off but I'm just trying to understand the great where we're going with all the costs yep so we've conceptualized a rec on the go vehicle and that would be you know seasonal summer staff in combination with you know our staff we traditionally work when people play so we're out in the evenings anyway so this would just be you know another way to bring services into our parks and community okay we need to use the same vehicle same vehicle with like roll out tracks for books and roll out tracks for games and exercise gears so in the evenings in the evenings you said in the evenings and weekends I mean that's in the recreation world that's the joy is that the library would deliver services kind of during their traditional hours and the rec traditional hours are well 24 7 so we'll be out in the evening in the weekends so it's a great way to pair together yeah super yes yeah I was curious why the library would not operate June July August September the library van so one one holly's describing it differently now so it's obviously constantly has room to change but in one of our pattern one of our discussions it was that the parks are primarily open and people are visiting them during the summer months and so if we can provide a nine month schedule of regular visits for for the book piece that the that rec would then have primary use of the van during the summer months when the parks are the most used even though the hours might allow for the senior citizens and the if time permits it's kind of like the library would have a schedule that's every week we go less than such and so forth if there's a space and recreation has an opportunity then they'll say oh can we use it on Tuesday at five and we'll say yes and similarly that's what would happen on the summer or any other time if they weren't using it and we needed it then we could or we hope to also use it together to go to different communities that we've visited together before or that recreation has been out to see when they've had a vehicle in the past and I don't know I mean I imagine you have to move things onto the van take things off of the van so the design would be the design would be such that would probably minimize that transition time but I think it also we're trying to maximize the leverage and use of the vehicle is really our goal and we would work together to maximize the time on that and the only other thing that I would add is when we conceptualized this building however many years ago you know Jennifer and I really talked about the great opportunities to to work together and to kind of you know broaden our offerings to the community in general and so this is kind of one mobile unit way where we can be sung and dance visual together and you know bringing bringing yeah well I didn't prepare the tap dance but I have time to do that before Monday um so we're just an exciting opportunity and wouldn't it be nice to bring soccer books about soccer to a rec program where brothers and sisters are stuck there and they can read about stuck there oh not stuck there excuse me they're enjoying every moment of their siblings activity I apologize Tom fantastically renovated fields yes as much as I feel compelled to say I love everything I do love this as well but I want to ask or encourage something to make the case stronger going forward I know other communities do this too so to normalize it with the taxpayers I hear Essex I remember conversations with Essex where they bought a van just like this to expand their programming so just to normalize this to see that other communities are doing it and I recall conversations which will affect our GMT assessment that when there was rec and parks programming to some of our elderly homes to give them trips to the mall trips to other things that can drastically reduce our ssta assessment so if you can somehow have programming that gives them those facilities and also gets them connected with their community there are some other benefits there great idea love to see those two points if they are at all worth making the argument to the taxpayers thank you yes what happened to the old bookmobile is it still alive and no the old bookmobile rested out the floor rested out and so it was sold I don't know for use or for scrap and that amount of money is in the special accounts waiting to be applied to this project thank you all right thank you very much thank you okay energy committee another small ask you know we always think small it's just lots of small ones that just add up don't they it's it's a few small pardon me it's a few small smallish ones yeah um so one advantage that we had fortunately was that we had the climate action plan to help us structure some of our thoughts on this and priorities which has had a lot of work going into it a lot of focus on buildings and on transportation so you'll see that reflected in some of the items here and we were really thinking about how to be complimentary with some of the other activities that are happening around the state and use some of the unique strengths that the town has that the city has as a as an actor here to to show leadership to educate and to you know catalyze with some infrastructure so the heat pump activities you see in there it's really about how can you go out and and educate and help to support folks making these decisions right there's there complex decisions and there's a lot to understand and so we can provide some community support through that that's the idea there not to try to you know replicate the programs that already exist and then there's some lawnmower activities that are again you know complimentary to the existing programs the electric lawnmower is a really a leadership move by the city to help show that these things are becoming more mature and the electric vehicle infrastructure is really a critical piece to sort of normalize and build out the capabilities because it's a real barrier right we have a plan to rapidly accelerate the number of EVs but a lot of people are concerned that they won't have places to charge them and so that's a really critical piece to make it a more hospitable environment not only for residents but also to bring in folks from outside of town who have EVs and would come to you know shop here and recreate and then there's some mass transit and bike walk infrastructure I think the bus tops are a really critical piece you know we talk about transformative activities and things that will last for years and years in the future and this can really change the dynamic around what it means to take the bus we've all lived here long enough to know why that's important and microtransit services this would be a pilot to figure out how to make this work when I lived in Pittsburgh I took the bus because I could walk two blocks to a corner and a bus came by every five minutes we are never going to be at a scale in Vermont where we can support that kind of you know full-size bus traffic it's just not in scale with the population and so this is a new idea that Montpelier's been trying and and other small communities have been trying and it's still needs to get worked out we need to figure out how it would work here and some of the bike walk recommendations are really things that we support working with bike ped on the details and budgets of so I won't go into details there I will flag that the subsidies for the purchase of electric bikes and charging equipment was intended to address some of the equity issues those are somewhat expensive first costs so that's intended to go to income eligible households and then the last one I think really this is the the big picture again there is a funding gap in the climate action plan for implementation plans for some of the categories I think buildings and thermal is the most notable one there and so this is intended to address that aspect and also to really think more broadly about what is it going to take to implement the climate action plan writ large how do we go after grant funding how do we bring in the type of support from other organizations to be able to achieve these goals and so the idea here is to to bring in some expertise to help draft an implementation plan that really puts the numbers to how are we going to get all the money and all the momentum behind actually achieving the climate action plan right we don't want this thing to sit on the shelf we want it to be very clear we want to get done it isn't going to happen by itself it'd be great if we could hire three new people and do this all ourselves but this is a quick start way to bring in a high power team and help us make a plan for implementation that's that hundred thousand dollars the last hundred okay okay keep that in mind of the FY 24 budget presentation it's kind of like Ethan and I were coordinating oh good well I mean my follow-up was going to be probably more to you that um probably what's true with all of these master plans or implementation plans you get it you pay the consultant and it's a great plan but we need someone who is a live body in City Hall to carry it out or oversee it I mean one person is going to carry it out but so I think that's important for all of us to think about when we make decisions about investing the ARPA dollars the corollary is that unless we can find federal funding to match or something the personnel that we need as a city to do all this great stuff whether it's driving the the new van around or you know implementing policy yeah so if I can say two points that thank you for um teasing that point so to me there's two different questions there there's if we're going to invest kind of one time funds and plans there are that that can be a great idea and can be transformative as we think about implementing them there is staff time that it takes to issue the RFPs in contract with the consultants and manage the process and all of that and that's really where I hope that our team once we hear your your ideas can bring you back a strategic implementation plan of how we would kind of line that up with existing staff resources I think the other thing the council should think about as you think about all these ideas is and you'll hear me talk about this more on Monday night is the investment in growing the tax capacity to do some of these things when you when you fund plans with one time dollars that can be a really good idea because they are one time things but it's not building the tax capacity to then do something with the plans over time so as we think about both the use of ARPA funds and the FY 24 and FY 25 municipal budgets I think thinking about how we incrementally grow tax capacity so we have dollars available to implement the the community's vision and values over time is really important okay any questions tim we have overlap with rexon parks on mowers electric mowers well we probably could use more than one electric mower I would hope so yeah because we've been talking about it and we've had demos and we know that they work and that'd be a great so how come there's a $15,000 difference parks and rex said theirs was 20,000 and yours says it's 35 is it bigger two of them two I mean yeah right there's a range of sizes oh so you just picked a number it's like it's like a car you can get a car for 20 you can get a car for 35 okay any other questions yeah as the operations chair at GMT I'd love the idea of the bus stops did you talk to John about that or someone Ethan I did talk with somebody at GMT and they supported the concept in general and said you know there's be a lot of details to work out about where they would go and the type and everything yeah certainly like the idea of investing in that type of infrastructure but it begs the question I mean we're going to be asked for spend $600,000 an FY 24 supported GMT a $50,000 increase I don't I don't want to use this money for that but there's no restrictions on using it to backfill cost increase correct Andrew correct yeah any federal dollars for that that we could leverage that's it's a it's a good question we we actually didn't do research I mean I'm assuming when we talk about federal dollars there are specific funding opportunities that are posted by specific federal agencies and there's application periods that we have to hit and things like that so it's probably something that we need to keep watching because these things come and go right there's there's a DOE funding opportunity that I'm working on right now but we've got to get the concept paper in by December 16th they announced it last week like they're they're coming by all the time right so I think we need to like have our plans ready and then subscribe to all the right lists if we want to leverage those dollars well and that also illustrates the need for a person who keeps track of that or people and develops the proposal and gets it in on time and working with the Mont League of Cities and Towns if they know that we're interested in yes yes true yes I love the electric mower and then on also on the GMT thing one thing that surfaced multiple times which I now where I think we're at a point where it's ripe for action is with the new technology where you can see where the exactly the bus is the idea of an internal or inside bus stop especially for the bad weather so it's partnering with local organizations healthy living Eli I forget his last name was actually very interested in doing this but if GMT had screen flat screen panels dedicated to just showing where the bus is and it was designated as an indoor bus stop where people can wait in a warm climate controlled environment as customers that would also get people to find the conveniences of public transportation I think of Dunkin Donuts of gas stations it takes some requirement working with them making them want to have people waiting for the bus inside their warm spaces as customers but I think it's well worth exploring a rethinking bus stops in South Burlington that would also require a change in the practices of the bus drivers because they don't stop unless someone's waiting at the bus stop with the screens it'd be nice because they can see exactly where the bus is so if they don't have the smartphone or if the smartphone is not up they don't have to have it in front of them they can just see exactly when they need to start walking to the bus stop one comment about the electrical vehicle charging half million I mean that goes hand in hand with affordable housing right so if you want people that are going to be in apartment houses to be able to have electric vehicles they're going to need a charging station and so if the city can help incentivize or help if they're going to be affordable housing developments then having money available to assist the developer with implementing that infrastructure is is really important but are they going to be able to afford the electric vehicle well not yet but I think that it's coming it's coming you don't have to buy a tesla you know there were some fairly cheap ones cheap is relative but affordable with all the with all the rebates right if the if the sticker price is 30 and there's 7500 federal and then a couple you know a few thousand in vermont they're they're pretty competitive yeah that's that's I thought the supply too for those cheap well sure but I mean this whole plan isn't going to hide it's not like we're going to fund these things and then tomorrow 35 people are going to go buy it no it's 2026 though so we have that so we have some time isn't isn't there some federal dollars and programs for the electric charging I mean there's a whole bunch that the city I mean the state did along the interest 21 million for charging yeah so we should be able to get our ore in on some of that you got to be one mile away from the interstate exit or within 25 miles on routes to 9 and 7 well we have a lot of housing that's that would qualify it doesn't have to be a house could be a gas station or a vacant lot Matt do you know if that's only for the level 3 fast DC chargers yes you have to 450 kw chargers which is going to cost about 480 thousand dollars but the federal money pays for 80 percent of it you could use money to match the 20 because a lot of owners aren't penciling out saying that even with the 20 percent I can't make it work yep it's an idea yeah no I think there's I mean there's an example that I was pretty sure there was some other money but and we have interstates that seem to crisscross our our community so all right thank you very much thanks um economic development is anyone here hi John I'm sorry I didn't see you I wasn't looking at the screen I was looking at the audience welcome thank you I'm sorry I couldn't be there to to be with you tonight but feeling a little under the weather but our committee has talked pretty extensively about the use of the ARPA money and early on pretty much had a consensus around investing in childcare and that may seem a little off base for the economic development but we think that childcare is a real key element of recruiting retaining businesses and employees and and that can lead to a better tax base and a thriving economy in in fact some of the parts of the country like Washington DC implemented universal preschool in 2008 and and saw that their labor force participation increased amongst the parents associated with that so I think that childcare can go along with a thriving economy in a in a pretty dramatic way it's hard to see the best way to invest that money I would encourage the council to talk to some of the existing childcare providers in town and get their best options to see what they can do to be supported I know they have problems recruiting retaining staff so one idea we throughout would be to help assist with some of that my daughter runs the childcare center in Maine and is always challenged to hire because of the low pay that they are allowed to to offer due to the constraints they have in in fact the state of Maine actually did across the board subsidy of pay for every childcare educator starting about a year ago recognizing that it's an underpaid profession so that's one one thought would be to to see if if that would be beneficial to them and another would be to help them expand I know there are always not enough available slots and what kind of expansion assistance could they use and I saw that the affordable housing committee recommended doing an RFP to to that effect and that may be a good approach but again I'd recommend that you start by really talking to the existing childcare providers and and get their best insights about the role that this money could play to to help with this this problem and I would like to see it targeted obviously to South Burlington's providers and people that either live in South Burlington or work in South Burlington so that it benefits you know our our local town our second idea was to consider maybe some kind of revolving loan fund as interest rates go up businesses are challenged to to make expansions and continue to invest in their properties and in their workforce and a revolving loan fund could offer money at a lower rate perhaps a condition could be put on that it's matching some other kind of funding like from the Vita program or or some other state funds and that kind of links into the third thought we had was one of the upcoming challenges that businesses are facing is the new stormwater regulations related to three acres and there's a lot of challenge there for businesses to design those systems and implement those and perhaps a revolving loan fund could be some kind of assistance to those businesses to be able to to meet that guideline that started to to press against them John do you think in your second bullet the revolving loan fund are there businesses who might look at that as and use that as a way to provide space for childcare fo