we do kind of joint together. And we'll also dive into each individual number. So the first slide shows some of the joint successes that we had, which just is in regards to providing services to more residents in the community. With the recreation and parks that goes into the programs and the events that we use throughout the course of the year. I didn't go past or further back in 2022 because you start to get into COVID, which greatly impacted the amount of events or two of the numbers there. But the differences between 22 and 2023 community events in 22. We had 22 that increased to 34 last year. Community programs, we had 16 and 22 that increased to 36 last year. Of the programs, there's multiple sessions that go into each of them. The sessions went up from 61 programmable sessions up to 256. This past year, and that's likely a past fall. Soccer, lacrosse, swimming. And on the library side, that slide is only referring to the number of items that are checked out from the library for those years. And I took COVID out as the primary two years for COVID. But it also is kind of a symbolic of all of the services which are all being used more. So our number of visitors is number of visits is up. Our number of programs is up. Our number of program attendees is up. We have almost 100,000 visits in 2023 and almost 10,000 attendees at programs. So everything's going up, and this is just one example. So with the successes, now we're going to outcome more into the rex department here. So a few of these successes you'll see in the other presentations. It just shows kind of the cross-glanding when it comes to projects that are done in the recreation parks department. Obviously one of the big first ones there is the court recruitment at Samansky Park, opening up those pickleball courts when it comes to the demand and interest that we had there. Tom mentioned earlier the opening of the Wheeler dog park, providing more opportunity space and services for dogs in the area. Illuminated Vermont, this is a small role in this event that takes place that it's all different of the departments here as well as externally sponsors and volunteers. And then one of the other areas do that I also wanted to kind of mention that ILITS is the senior center. A lot of times people when they recreation and parks, you think of the physical locations etc. or the Dacey Park little park etc. or the youth programming when it comes to youth, baseball, soccer, etc. But the senior center is a huge of ours. It makes a gigantic impact in the community. For example, the meals that we served in 2022, we increased from just over 1500 meals that year to 2023, we served over 2200 meals at the service center, and the hours programmed in the service heard in the senior center increased to over 1500 hours that we had last year. Who makes up the department? So there's four of us currently. I just started here the other month. We have Rebecca who has been here since the senior center opened. She's our senior adult specialist. We have Travis who's worn a handful of hats within the department. He oversees operations and events. And we also have Brett Lambert who's been here since 2015. He oversees a lot of our programming as well as our program side of things. We do have one vacant open position with our youth programming as well as expanding on to our clients. List out the mission there. But at the end of the day, I think the department was a unique role, especially in our current day and age, when people are becoming more and more connected through their phones, social media, in that regard, or becoming more and more disconnected with actually interacting with your neighbors and their community. So it's through our events that we put a unique opportunity to kind of thread everyone together, whether it's neighbors from their local community, whether it's neighbors from across town through our events, whether it's kids who go to Orchard School interacting with kids who go to Chamberlain before they go up to Tuttle. There's a lot of creative ways that we can do that here. The budget, I'll hit on the capital items that's listed out there in the 100,000 increase on the next slide, but a few of the other increases that we have are $5,000 towards special events that's allocated with the assumption of a full staff being able to expand our special events. What is unique about this? Obviously, it's an expense increase, but by doing more special events, there's actually increases in revenue opportunities. That is the one area with recreation that we do have some revenue generating size of it when it comes to sponsorships. So the more events that we do, the larger opportunity there is to get money from outside companies to help increase money allocated to other programs. Youth programming, obviously as the city continues to grow and develop here, it will be expanding our youth programs and what we have to offer, and this $10,000 increase goes towards helping alleviate some of the staff set up by utilizing paid seasonal staff to help run some of those youth programs that we have. Also in the budget for this upcoming year is money allocated towards save fund action number 87, which is helping to develop a part-taster plan. Here's a little help guide, kind of our plans going forward when it comes to the utilization of CO parks just in the short term, but we'll have them done. Hey guys, the new guy is specifically referencing the action items in the city plan. Kind of jumping into the capital approval plan. So this is what we have listed out for the record parks here. As I just mentioned, we have money allocated towards the parts master plan, both in 25 as well as money allocated in 26 for that. Veterans Memorial Park multi-use field as well as storage. This is a two-year project which we have money allocated for. It goes towards permitting and planning in 2025 with the idea of creating a new multi-use field at Veterans Memorial Park which will help alleviate some of the use and demand currently when it comes to the soccer and lacrosse field and then looking to future years down the road. It would also allow us to kind of rotate out of the field so that we have time for service and repairs during the course of the season. Veterans? I was just curious, does that construction include a resolution of needing space that we were using and we are all to evolve 577? Or is that a different? Yeah, so the storage, yeah, so that is part of it. With the storage element, we do need storage because we are going to be getting out of that location. And is that what that money is for? The storage element. In 26, I guess it is? Yeah, in 25. For 25. Okay, good. There's a design and construction element. So the baseball field reimbursement, this is obviously an issue at Veterans Memorial that everyone is aware of when it comes to the drainage situation that we have there and obviously it was highlighted even more this summer with all of the the rain and weather that we got. This is also a multi-year project, installing drainage around the baseball field areas in 25 and expanding that out into the soccer and lacrosse field areas in 26. This will allow us to have the amount of the fields had to be closed off. This has some of the disputes the lack of drainage because we help alleviate those issues there. A few of the other kind of ones just to kind of highlight and bring out the dugout replacement. That's just kind of a continued project which had money allocated in 24 of this current year. So you're continuing status of replacing dugouts throughout the community. Bleacher is the same setup. There's money allocated this year. Four sets of bleachers and it's been continuing that process going forward. And then on the bottom with regards to the cleats. So currently the Rec and Parks Department gets hand-me-down vehicles from the Department of Public Works. And this is starting to build a reserve fund. So that down the road or the purchase of our own vehicles and that would prevent the maintenance of constant upheaval expenses that we have going around it. Emerging issues, I'll add on a few of these. Before we get there, I think these items are so designed in the request by Parker Mix to be funded by Offer for those different items.  So in parentheses is where the money's allocated. But they had requests to fund. I thought the baseball field was in there. I'm just trying to understand are we already satisfying those requests that they made for these different items? I don't think we've done that crosswalk back to that request. That was a request from November 2022. I'm not sure. We talked about it in the City Council a couple months ago is allocating some of the offers for their requests. Yeah, I don't think we've done that crosswalk. Okay. Emerging issues obviously with the Parks Master Plan. Once that rolls out, the impact that we'll have and then also providing the resources and the funding to kind of act on that plan. What is provided in that report. Continue to look and to distribute our resources appropriate to the surrounding areas. Remembering any barriers that we have when it comes to transportation. We'll be able to participate both in our programs as well as our events. Financial and time restraints is a big issue that we also have. And then continuing to balance both the developed side of things as well as the undeveloped side of things. The community rules and identity housing is a large part of that. People will continue to have a lack of space in their own home locations when it comes to opportunities to have active recreation. So there will be a higher demand kind of on our parks in that sense. And then one of the big things is hardly an emerging issue. But one that's been on the radar for a long time and will continue to be is the indoor programmable space. Currently, we are actually doing control when it comes to our own programs. And we turned into a seasonal, not that we're not doing things year-round, but we're a very, very heavy seasonal project department where all of our events get thrown into a warm-up window and waterworks. And a lot of our programming does as well just because we don't have the control when it comes to the scheduling of the school or we get second tier times. And it also has additional cost for us. Library. So some of this is reiterating again that we are consistently growing in our manner as far as serving more residents, serving residents more fully. These are just some examples. And I think the library programs being up 36% to several almost 10,000 visitors is really important. And that runs the gamut from book groups to English as a second language, meetings to climate change, lectures and upcoming book groups, hosted events around race and revolution. I mean, it's just, it's, and then story times we have a number there that's specific to them. So just a reminder that it really is across the board that we're really trying to ensure that we are providing information and social interaction and entertainment across the board to residents. And also a reminder that it's not just our residents who are attending, that we do have people from towns all around who are also coming out regularly. This is to collaborate. So the final item on that list is about our library of things. And if you haven't used anything from the library of things yet, don't hesitate. I personally just checked out two ukuleles because my family decided it would be fun to try to learn some holiday songs and sing with ukuleles. But there are lots of other possibilities if you have old film that you want to, you know, review from your grandparents or your parents time and you don't have a way to do that. We have a projector. We have a slide projector. We have gardening tools, various bits of tech that you might need, bicycle pumps.  And so they can't check them out themselves, but they come into the library and we get out the bike repair kit and the bike pumps so that they can take care of those things here in the library because at this stage we're asking that adults be the people who are checking out materials from that collection. So that's going to be an ever-growing collection. You'll be seeing that in future budget requests, but I don't think it made it onto this particular one. So it's just something to be aware of. Yeah, next. Do you have a VCR?  In that case, we don't have one, but I reached out to the woman and said, when you find one and you're finished with it, if you wouldn't mind donating it to us, that would be really useful. Yeah. I know I've got about 10 myself. So the library, we have 22 staff now, nine of them are full-time. There are, I'm an administration and I, there are three other staff who are supervisors. The four of us make up the library's leadership team and that's the supervisor of the children's services, adult services and the circulation department. So that's who makes us up. We just had our staff picture taken, but not in time to get it into the library. So the changes, the items in the budget that seem to be notable is that one is that we have this increase in revenue from meeting room use. And I mentioned that first because it directly relates to the next item, which is that we are requesting a 19-hour position. And in part, in large part, it's because of our success in reserving the meeting room. So we've had, in 2023, the rooms were reserved 922 times and that doesn't include for City Hall or any other departments, any library or city use. So this is just the public. And we continue to look for online solutions and other solutions to make this a more streamlined process. We compare to how Andrea does it too because we want to make sure we're being effective and efficient. But the process of accepting all those applications and then responding and then answering questions and then taking money ends up taking a lot more time than we have. So that is a big part of the reason why we're asking for that additional position. The other piece to that as far as the floater is that we have substitutes. And what we're finding is that the supervisors need some time every week where they can really focus on their administrative duties. And if we can have a floater who is there on a regular basis too, who really knows how things works, the subs come in and they fill in when they can, but they're not there regularly enough to maintain a high level of knowledge of each of the desks and what they do. So that person would also be that floater role that can go on a regular basis to the desks to cover for administrators to be able to handle their work as well. Within their part-time hours. And then finally it is just that online and print resources are going to continue to go up. They're going to continue to be popular. The chart there, oh no the chart there is about room reservations. If you use ebooks or e-audio books through Libby, those are, they're growing exponentially. We've recently added some additional movies, Tim, to the canopy, to the canopy line. So that are, we're now buying a package so that as many people that want to watch them can without having to use their own tickets. So there's a, it's not a brilliant system, but the use of it keeps going up. So that's the line that just, we really need to be increasing. And I think over time we'll also be looking at, well I think even in this budget we're already looking at decreasing some of the video and books on CD budget with the, with the plan that we will be moving away from those technologies into online resources pretty much 100% but I don't know the time frame for that. So what I was just talking about as far as looking at collections and figuring out which way to go and are we going to use online resources that's number two there. That is also the place where we would think about how important is it to our community that we have some household items that they, that individuals living in apartments might not have room for. And so it's important that we have crutches and that we have loppers because you really only need them a few times a year and you don't have any place to put them and, or you can't afford them. So all of that is on the second one. I think it's an ongoing process for the, for all of us that our, our community is more and more diverse and that it is important for the library to be welcoming and inclusive and that we are not just, not just imagining what people need but that we are also reaching out to the community to talk to people to find out what it is that they want from their library. For example, coming up soon we are going to be starting a Mandarin conversation class, group, not a class but a place for people who want to practice their Mandarin to come to library and speak to each other. And that's something we've been, you know, slowly but surely we think we've got someone who wants to lead French and then not so much or Spanish, not so much but I think that we are developing relationships in the community so that people really get it that that's what we're here for. It kind of relates to affinity groups that Alana's been working on too. So we're kind of doing this in a parallel way with other departments. A lot more people going to be living in city center in walking distance to the library and I want to just be aware that it's going to change things for the library as far as when are we there, how many of us need to be there to help people and how does it influence story time. So if we have two toddler times now and we have between 45 and 60 people at each one and then we suddenly have families who are nearby and are bringing their kids to toddler time. Okay, can't do anymore. 60 really is the max because otherwise you're not having a positive experience and we're not modeling anything for parents. So it's one of those things to be aware of. And then the final the final line there it kind of ties into what Steve and Sean were talking about and that is that the library as well as the building overall is a place that we are seeing a lot of people who are underserved or have service needs, unmet social needs is what Sean said. And we're seeing them at the library a lot of people on a daily basis. I think we have between eight and 10 people right now who are at the library almost every day all day. Different situations and some people we have no idea what their situations are but there are many of them who actively require attention. And the thing to remember when we're looking at emerging issues is exactly as they were saying even if we can help them and refer them to somebody else that somebody else can't necessarily help them because they're just aren't enough resources. So how does that all work? And that's much bigger than just the library. But for us right now we've had the privilege of having a social work intern at the library which has been a wonderful experience and it's really helped us kind of imagine what that might look like to have a social work professional perhaps working with the library and having those collaborations is a national movement. There's more and more of that going on. Certainly we've talked to Fletcher Free and they're certainly doing that kind of work as well. Evelyn's downstairs right now. Is she good? Do you matter? Excellent. Excellent. That's that. I have one question. Do you want to continue with your slides? I was just curious we used to have the Blanchard Fund to buy books and so forth and I believe that went to building the structure. So I'm just curious as the library board is working on developing a new endowment for books to help with you know some of your emerging issues in terms of the format of things. So the the founding there is a library foundation and they are they do annual appeal and sometimes help us with writing grants and things like that. Generally speaking the foundation funds I consider more capital. So because we we've never had a line for repairs or furnishings or anything like that and that's what it was originally designed for. So that's generally what I think of. However I have some discretionary funds and if I need to use it that way I can in small amounts but there's no there's no plan for like a standard we're going to augment the collection piece. Okay. I'm just curious. Yeah seems like I don't know. It's up and going and it's being used so much that there might be a receptiveness in the community to fund something like that. Yeah. So I think when they do their appeal letter they try to highlight certain things and so that could be something that could be done in an in an appeal letter and then when the appeal letter does talk about x, y, or z then they try to make sure that money is available for x, y, or z. Thank you. I was also curious how much of the library's budget does come from the community outside of taxpayer dollars. I was also curious how much of a budget is funded from revenue that you collect from to use the services and whether those services you think are right size appropriately sized, how do you compare it to other library facilities? So the revenue budget is 12,000, 0.16 million. So we collect 12,000 for fees, whatever a copy or whatever that is and how much comes from the community. You know I don't mean from the general fund. I mean there's idea appeals from you know library foundations. Yeah. I don't think that is budgeted in the annual budget. We keep those funds separately and when they do their appeal like Jennifer said they are curious how much like what's the size of the item and they are spent within that special fund. So they never actually touch the general fund. We don't understand. I'm just curious what the size of that community support is. What is the foundation fund? What's the dollar figure that they're collective I guess? Is that what you're asking? So the foundation keeps keeps their own bank and then when I find need something in particular, so yesterday I realized that the sun was coming into the Cirque desk so that everybody at the Cirque desk was doing this and so I might need to buy new shades because I didn't put shades on those windows. So then I would approach the foundation and say I need shades for $25,000. Can you do it? And we go from there. So generally that's how that works. The money from the the campaign the annual appeal I think comes to a wrap between it varies from year to year so let's say an average of maybe $15,000 and I usually get that to spend as as the $1,000 fees again. Is that it? Do we think that's kind of right-sized? You know we're and I have no idea and I don't I don't I asked you the question don't mean to buy it's not it's just a question you know in terms of what we charge people for rooms or for copying or all the things that we provide. $4,000 increase from last year. So Ed I I haven't ever looked at it as far as how other libraries what they bring in if that's something that you want me to look into I'm happy to do that and and send you all that information today later today. I just I think you know it's it's interesting there are different pieces of it so when you think about um copiers you mentioned copiers and um so one of the one of the trends about copiers is the same as it was a few years ago about fees for late books and that and there's a piece of well we want to be equitable and we want people to be able do the business they have to do and so do we stop charging for copies do we reduce the amount that we charge for copies because we are trying because the library is a place where people are sometimes need to make copies and they can't afford them so you know there's always that conversation and I think that's nationally that that conversation is happening um and the rooms um we certainly talk within the city as you know like third floor rooms versus second floor rooms we have a slightly different fee system because as a public library the board of trustees recommended that we have two free hours for individuals and not profits because we want the library to be accessible and equal you know equitable for everybody um so always we're always balancing out those issues that doesn't answer your question as far as dollars and cents but it's kind of a it's um interesting information I think but I'm happy to find out the others yep any other questions okay thank you final we have our final slide final slide whoops you guys really should click your own slides uh yeah so the the final issues kind of they hit off of what Sean said earlier when it comes to any of the the service industries obviously is the developments around peer or high density and housing continues to grow the rate of neighborhood developments of the past whether it's through our physical resources so uh expanding the programs that we have uh both of our staff will have to play to that as well okay and wrapping it up general government so as I pull up this one I am I am um I'm going to try and do this one a little because I would like to give you at least 45 minutes for your own conversation I will bribe you by saying that before we go to lunch andy is going to have a holiday presents for you so I'm going to start this but may ask other people all in a lot of you ready to jump in so general government you've seen this before so we have 33 employees who provide kind of backbone support to the city this is your you know core legal it all pretty much everybody on this side of the room and Greg falls into this budget very plus their staff so about 33 other folks we have had some pretty significant I would argue successes in the last year one we have had a fair amount of staff turnover FY 23 marks my second year here in the city and often during those kind of leadership transitions you see a lot of staff turnover we definitely saw that in FY 23 and continue to see that in FY 24 but have been able to bring in amazing new talent to our city our general government focus is also really around modernizing our systems and improving updating policies putting implementing office 365 in exchange and several other efforts that you have all heard me talk about in FY 23 we are really pleased thanks to Martha and her team to receive another clean audit and receive strong support from the community for all three of our town meeting day votes last year I copied this little chart image from Tom so thank you Tom for that to give you some just quick quantitative data on quantity of support we provide Paul can you want to put the next you sure so on the left side of the screen a couple of a handful of the highlight projects that our development review team was looking at this year this past year everything that you're seeing out the window from this building O'Brien Eastview neighborhood the O'Brien outpatient sorry the UVMMC outpatient facility that has not broken ground yet but we're you know we're working towards the next projects that has been approved on Tilly Drive the Beta aircraft next building which is their hangar and of course the on-logic headquarters that are wrapping up their construction now you see on the right hand side a lot of residential units received permits this past year so this is construction permits now on the right hand side a big chunk of those almost all of the administrative ones in terms of new units are in the city center area that's where it's administrative approval so that's a big chunk that are under construction right now what is the bottom one is it new new blocks so uh so parcel was divided a big chunk of those are in O'Brien Eastview and then on the next slide you've heard from multiple folks here about how our community is transitioning so on the right hand side you see those two charts the red is the proportion of single family homes as a total of all of our housing units in the city and the blue is multifamily which is sort of three or more homes in a structure and so we are about to see the point where these two cross one another and we become a majority multifamily home community and that's a substantial departure that chart starts in the year 2000 when we were about two-thirds single family homes so in one generation we've gone from two-thirds to less than half and then on the left hand side is each year the construction permits issued the blue again is multifamily so you can see why it is that that is taking over the last couple three years have been a big you know city center is a big chunk of that not all of it but it's a big chunk of it and it's a portion of that is a little bit of residual uh that didn't happen in the two years before that from the pandemic so there's a little bit of pent-up demand you see the chart tends to go up and down so those are my couple of highlights do you have a broken out owned versus condo or condo versus rental no it's not something that we track so uh that's what i've got on that slide and then uh just a couple of data points quickly on the uh climate action plan you will have in your monday packet um on your agenda the um annual sustainability report so i won't spend a ton of time on this today but a couple of just quick data points uh the council adopted two ordinances in the last year one on carbon free heating and the other carbon free or renewable heating and the other being on solar pv these take a little bit of time for new projects to be affected by these based on the effective dates and when projects are due but in terms of construction permits we've seen uh 15 dwelling units so far uh being required to meet the carbon free heating slash renewable heating ordinance uh and um nine multi families and then on the solar pv uh we have that only applies to multi family and we've had 196 dwelling units and 32 000 square feet of space that is subject to that so far so i'm just curious but so the form is so added in 23 because that ordinance came into effect at beginning this year are you speaking about the solar or the carbon free carbon free yeah so it took effect on february 15th for any application submitted to uh the fire prevention team on or after that date took effect so the projects that you're seeing under construction immediately next to us and then uh across the street were both submitted complete applications before that date so that's why those don't show up in there one of them though the 196 unit units um the effective the date of the effectiveness was a different one so that south side buildings those will have the solar pv because that was the zoning permit was the trigger point not the um uh food for fire prevention uh permit so that's why it's shaped that way just to see the o'brien development that's all electric was they volunteered to do right so i didn't include that because they weren't required to they chose to so we could um reach out to them and learn a little bit more about what their numbers are as to what has been accomplished because that is an important data point about who's done what but we wanted to stick for this to what was required um so fy 23 was a pretty amazing year in terms of the district um we received a clean 10-year audit which is something we have been not not probably but in terms of something visible to the public in a big way but something that we have been very concerned about for a long time so we're very um all of the hard work towards that didn't pay off um the tip district grand list grew by 7.67 percent um and one of the things to remember with the tip district um is that the grand list uh is for the prior year so um there's a bit of a lag and so a lot of that um growth uh was actually occurring uh earlier um in the so later so different from the permits the growth the grand list actually grows you know a year and a half to two years after the permit is issued so um we're still seeing the effect um of COVID um in the grand list um and we expect to see it grow further obviously next year um but we do have concerns about it growing in future years um and so that will be an emerging issue um the walk right bridge concept was approved um with a lot of public outreach uh and the design team went right to work on that concept um and by the end of FY 23 the 60 percent preliminary plans were completed we're now well beyond that um and into final design and then Illuminate Vermont I think was a huge joint department effort but I do have to give a big hand to back I don't think they had a small part and a really big part in it so along with many others um and just had a you know great attendance for our first time event and what can be a very scary event because it happened in the later time and I know many of you volunteered and and I think one of the things that made the event feel like a real community event was having all of you and other members of the community welcome um people to the event and that made it feel very homey even though it was a huge event so thank you uh so this is just a chart showing the grand list and as well as the increment that is being received and you can see it's sort of flattening off a little excited to get steep again um but we'll need to keep on the pressuring over to keep to keep that um growing in the right direction growing at the right angle we know it'll grow wanted to be at a nice angle moving forward so um some of our successes in facilities this year is the up we worked and acted as the gc for the dorset park veterans bathrooms um we also took one of our spaces that was vacated over at 19 Gregory and renovated and leased it to solid chitin and solid waste district and then also uh we had an incident with the 375 pump station which a car took it out took out the generator um and uh we acted as the gc there also overseeing uh the implementation of the redesign well not redesigned per se but the rebuild of it and we added a much larger generator um fun fact there 70 percent of the sewage in the city flows through that one pump station wow 70 wow yeah we're very close to that building so it smells really good yeah beautiful design it is i'm glad that we came here uh so just a few highlights in our um variance budget needs you've heard me talk about a lot of these already um investing again continuous modernization trend investing in the finance systems making sure we have a little funding set aside for the city plan implementation gmt is seeing a 10 and a half percent increase in their um allocation or um request to municipalities so that's included we anticipate that that may increase in future years as services increase to south burlington as well um and then funding for city center vibrancies for through the mate vermont stirring a downtown association um and the city center reserve fund and then of course there is the climate action investment so i've included these slides here mostly as a reference to you all and you've heard us talk about these a number of times now um the point we really wanted to make here is with the 600 000 that we're proposing for the climate action budget this year that is a very small percent compared to what we will need in future fiscal years to fully realize the climate action plan um goals so that's separate that's um separated across transportation and government operations um government operations will need that 600 000 annually through that point 30 i'm sure we'll talk more about this and then finally on our emerging issues again you heard me talk about this at the overall um budget presentation we're tracking standing up a parking fund we are actually uh alana and i in the process of bringing on a consultant to help us model that out over time uh stay up a rental registry um finding funding if we as we figure out other staffing for climate action for the building in the thermal section um understanding what the transition of ownership at dorset street will look like and then obviously our collective bargaining uh contracts that was speed virgin questions about general government and if not i would love to have staff great job you all thank you very very much um thank you to the five of you for staying so engaged and asking great questions um it's really our honor to be able to share with you kind of the overall operations of the city and with that i would turn it over to you all for some questions i think we're again happy to answer any operational questions or content questions um but this is really the time for you all to have your conversation about how you would like to move forward to make this budget your own um and to request any additional information scoping scenario building you need from us okay the first one follow-up questions from the presentations probably aren't any when you ask a lot if you want okay suggest i i i know that this year's budget is about 600 000 for climate action items they look to me like i guess um maybe more one-time things like uh charging windows names and said that um that would be recurring i was like because you you you view these items kind of like climate action maintenance like how do you think about the 600 000 requiring the evolution to the items that are on the page so how i think about it back here for a second so how i so i fully um to fully achieve the climate action goals we need much more than just the one time we're going to need one time things for the next seven years right so right now we are just making one time requests to modernize a very sort of either by ev or electric versions of a very small portion of our fleet for example to replace windows in a very small portion of our facilities so to do that to me our climate change goals as a government for example just our organization we're going to have to do that annually for several years to fully electrify our fleet to fully weatherize our buildings or things like that so while there they are one time costs they're one time costs that we need to continue for a significant period of time Erica or Tom or Paul anything else you want to say about that right so if you think about our whole fleet our whole fleet is right 60 vehicles friendly vehicles that's we're not going to electrify those all in one year right we're going every as we come to a replacement schedule electrifying all the period right well that's for you all to decide that whatever you do that just might not be an actual cost right if there's a vehicle has to be replaced with a credits and with the price of EVs we'll be covering the power particularly when you request for maintenance and refueling the treatment there's not true there's cheap that gets it might not be a cost we'll know much more once we start doing it yeah we're going hybrid this is yeah and i replacing those vehicles based on this is an outgoing vehicle so we need to replace it it's not we're not replacing so the way the government operations plan has been built is to try and get as you as you remember from loose presentation we actually with what we know to be possible right now will not meet our 30 goals if fully funded because of the technology coming online for like electric fire trucks for example just doesn't exist yet um what we have tried to do is get very close to that model with replacing in the regular replacement cycle and in a few places speeding that up to try and get closer to our goal but year to year through 20 through fy 30 or whenever we're able to achieve that goal that's a policy budget conversation that you all have to have i mean here you could say you know we're going to spend 20 million dollars one year in electrified full fleet that's a terrible idea because of the kind of radio quick conversation we had earlier they'll all be come up for renewal in the future but right now we're more or less sticking to the replacement cycle we can't fully do that because our replacement cycle is longer than the 2030 goal cycle other questions how can we get biodiesel into a lot i hear that there really isn't any and is that something that the state is going to work on because that gives us a path to reduce greenhouse gases from old diesel trucks and large equipment and you don't have an answer for that so we don't talk about it but just okay other questions all right boys oh go ahead yeah i mean i don't know we're going to be this is the end of our conversation we see no no we're going to talk about what's missing what are emerging issues okay these are just questions from the presentation sorry so we have somebody going along okay so let's go to the second one what are we missing okay i i think that to ask for a double digit increase is going to be really tough without going to the voters and asking about maybe specific pieces just like we have the penny for pass that we had the voters overwhelmingly approved and then we can celebrate that the owners own i mean that the voters own it right and i think that asking for 11 percent increase and a half with 3.2 3.6 for climb up it brings you to 8.2 all right yeah versus 5.1 without 4.8 4.4 okay so 4.58 this chart yeah okay well close yeah all right all right so we're we're really going to be asking them for just over 8 percent is that what's going to be going to happen okay i mean that's your decision right yeah we've tried to be responsive to put together a budget that was could meet operational needs and fund your policy by rocks it's your decision what of that you keep what you that you reallocate somewhere all right and i i still i still come to the you know thinking about it in longer years where you said this is a smaller increase as opposed to next year's increase and i just i want us to be really really mindful about making sure that this is not just our budget but it's actually the voters budget and so that's just something that kind of creeps in my mind i i don't want us to be in for you know unwelcome surprises um and and really making sure that people can come along with us so that's just the one thing that's kind of tugging at me yeah and so really that conversation with the voters which goes through the ballot box quite regularly is something that we might consider going forward you know looking at the fleet for instance getting through the 60s 70 vehicles just as an example can we go to the voters and say you know we're looking at some major expenses going forward to meet our climate action goals and we want to make sure that you're on board with this would you be willing to you know perhaps as a council or something something like that right where we would yes exactly the climate fleet won't actually be a commodity force but there's certain others and i'm just pulling it out of the air yeah yeah i mean i look at the parking lot and some of the other transportation issues are things that probably you know are facing the street and the voters could be asked to you yeah makes sense for the city yeah i really encourage us to think about that yeah does the school board have a preliminary budget yet with their own increased figures they does anybody see the preliminary no we're going to see that in january and our steering it was another paper yesterday it was yesterday there was a good article on the paper about yesterday and a half percent increase that's the that's the december first letter sorry with 14 percent 14 percent okay we're going to be cheap by that's right just 30 40 percent 40 percent of the total yeah 25 25 percent but yeah so that's my fear is that we are unless the state comes up with some magic we're in the first part of a deprived education budget cycle right with the state yeah i think they were spent over there's like ssr or yes yes or yes i think the other part of our discussion is some of the surplus funds and they help them whether any of those can be directed to the by two i don't know how to proceed on that but i think i think i'm getting some thought to that in terms of successfully reducing our total 8.2 i think it's i think it's really is 400 000 is that right i think it's really a great idea to present to the voters uh the list of um climate action items that are in the budget and what they and what they cost i agree that somehow the somehow the message has to get out that it's not this budget or this budget but this budget includes this these i'm going they're not amenities they're requirements to to combat climate change from the cities off from the city side well just to you mean to better inform the public that the operating expenses for the city include some operational costs for climate change and then there's other climate change costs that we potentially use well i haven't i mean or is that does that mean to we probably need a company for the environment or more well i don't i you know i know you don't like it it's just it's like there's a lot of costs up there so how do you i don't know how you need your you want to convey that information to the public so that actually there's two thoughts so the surplus monies we should look at and decide on how much should be used in the next year's budget and then and then the message for supporting the climate action budget it's two there's two different thoughts yeah not not seeing them combined okay so you use all that surplus and our foot you could reduce the total but we need to explain that a certain amount of it you'll see next year it's a free bridge we've been bridging a lot of things with our money yes i mean we're in the third year of the bridge or the second year we have one more to go so this is the year to actually apply that surplus to items in the budget would you unless the next year is when it really you know doubles that increase i mean that's where i mean that's what i was seeing in those numbers isn't it yeah go ahead unless you identify one time sources you're going to put the money too you're just kicking the can down to a large increase next year right double it next year right right so we have to think carefully about how to use those funds yeah yeah you're going to want to show the voters that these are the allocations that are dedicated to climate action you're going to have to prove to them that they're going to have returns on their investment right if you can't show that right if you you know if you're going to get 70 of the cars you know to be electric or high pluggable by 23 by 23 whatever this which is unattainable anyway right you're going to have to explain them why that's a goal that you can't reach but you want this money for it anyway as one of the items so you know i mean so you're going to you've got some lofty goals you're never going to hit get there we have to make progress the question is what's the ROI on the incremental money to be put in each year for that and are they willing to stomach that right they really have to find a way to make sure that they're on board with it so do we have that data i mean can you make the case that um we've done these things so far and this has been the reduction and whatever um and then this new investment will reduce a little bit more so this is what we're both investing in or buying i don't know if we have that that data bluehead sounds yeah i mean is that enough to convince them do you think or can i go this is slightly different way this year um just before i just wanted to thank everyone i thought this was an incredibly comprehensive thoughtful detail i think we're really well served by this group as jessia said um i was going to suggest for this year that these climate action items um other than the staffing which i think should be built into the budget this right these things which are really well suited for the opera dollars and i think we've taken and hopefully some things out of opera already some i think some of the rec and past stuff that we maybe would go in i think is already paid for by the general fund and i thought we also talked about putting a climate action person in opera from opera but i agree general budget is probably the right place for it so i was going to suggest at least this year that um it's about four hundred thousand or so of items other than um the staffing yeah the staffing is one nine geography and that that will take pressure at least off of the having to explain the numbers are not huge i remember to figure out the area after when we really might want to figure out how we fund it with this year having the opera and looking at these items they seem really well positioned to be funded by opera to me and i was going to suggest that can i put my thumb on sure sorry oh so for me just to react to that a little i i kind of like that approach building the staff into the budget and then using opera for other one time because where i get nervous answering some of these questions is right now we have one 20 hour a week person who we've reassigned to work on this i think there is a lot more data we could bring to the community i think they're you know take a first year learn some lessons know better next year what the asks are going to be into those you know six years following so i think talking about it to the public as this is the first implementation year of the climate action plan and to do that we're making small investments and using one time dollars with the attention of bringing back bigger asks in future years might be a really good way to bring i like that idea the other two just geography things um the stream like we need to be like the mark of heim's virtue like we should do it that one strikes me as something that's not really are that appropriate for opera dollars it's kind of like you know b a u the city needs to invest in this transportation infrastructure and as we talked earlier my own perspective she would say you know that it probably should be funded from traffic impact fees or other fees that we collect it's you know it's to facilitate all that development just it just doesn't strike me as something that's appropriate to be funded by opera i'd love to see that back in the regular budget honestly i know that would correct me both both directions would you use um surplus funds well i would for now just say put it in the budget right and then my own perspective on surplus is as follows um i did some analysis and thank you guys for so much for this five year of data that was all more okay mom thank you it was it was awesome and i'm sorry my computer's blank so i may not be doing exactly right but if i if i did this right i think what it showed is that over this five year period arrogant function on a calendar basis was like 18 percent and i think it also showed and again i know it may be a little wrong but true growth in the grant list when you subtract out the revaluation was about 10 percent maybe it's not exactly so if i get that if our budget was flat we would have grown our property tax real-life we would have grown our property tax revenue by about 28 percent and we're a bit above that actually we're about 750 thousand dollars above that and the way i calculated that could be wrong i would love to use the surplus to fill that hole so we can say the voters at least in municipal side over the last five years in real dollars take account inflation and take account growth in grant lists we were flat we've we've you know we've been very conservative as possible that's that's that's what i'm sorry so I think some of the figure out the difference is between what our property tax revenue would have been had we increased at inflation over five years and we you know taking account growth in grant lists what would have been used and with these adjustments we just talked about the sort of geography used the surplus to kind of fill that gap I think it would be about five hundred thousand dollars a gap to be able to state of voters over five years in real terms your municipal tax dollars have been flat but this one that negates the the huge increase in health care cost I mean it means that we're running a really tight good government right okay I mean do we'll help here I mean you see because healthcare went up faster than pleasure not well sure you have so so then in fiscal year 26 you're going to start with a deficit of 750,000 is that is that what you mean use the surplus to so are you saying basically use $750,000 to buy down the tax rate yeah yeah so the next so just for your awareness that means that that that that buy down exists into FY26 tax rate you know you're you're at some point you'd have to build out of that or cut services to build out of that it's a question of what you do with the surplus though right I mean you know what's I mean this is an exceptional question that we all should have why it leads me to say we should buy down this year's tax rate because the existence of the surplus in my mind means that in the past we collected more tax revenue than we total voters would expect and so what should we do in that excess revenue at least a piece that I think should go back to voters and just keep in mind that most of that surplus came from God property I understand but it just means that the it just means the other one I mean but in total right we collected more than we thought we needed what I was saying Larry is most of that surplus is accounted for through revenues surpluses and local options tax impermanence right not property and sales Andrew how does that your analysis what does that have to do with the plainsburg road the service so just to summarize my thoughts I'd like to move some of the climate action stuff to offer I'd like to move the street like it's just geography back to the general fund it just strikes me that's the right geography for those items and then redetermine the budget right based upon those movements and then independently I would like to use some of the surplus to buy down the tax rate because I think we owe that to the voters because we've collected too much of it as and I just think that would be a good message never say I would counter that we have collected more external taxes I mean we never sort of separate and say oh we're using rooms and meals to pay for this but that's where the excess receipts came in and to then say we'll make people whole by reducing their property taxes because more people bought meals and drinks in South Burlington and you know bought goods um let me have pandemic you know I I the two are different to me now the reason we have a surplus was not necessarily because we overestimated what we needed in property tax we underestimated the growth in those two tax areas which who would have thought that more people would be going out to dinner I mean I certainly didn't think that sales and stuff was going to go up I mean the way I'm thinking about that I hear you saying to account for it is that if and I'm saying that we did anything wrong but in perfect hindsight if we had known what the actual revenue would have been provided we would have set the tax rate low well but then there are the years where we overestimate rooms and meals like during COVID it was like now we've got to rely more on the property tax I I go along with the reoccur sort of the reoccurring costs to government for the climate action both in operations and transportation it can be paid for by ARPA because they are one time and they're going to be reoccurring but we don't know what those numbers are going to be exactly if they're pieces of things but and I agree that the staffing absolutely need to put that in the general fund ongoing operation budgets because that is people to do the work we want to get done and to come be able to come back and say you know this is what I recommend for I don't know the Wheeler house to make it more energy efficient or whatever the issue is another truck or cars but I don't agree with using the operating funds to try to figure out how to return that to the public I mean I certainly support us using some of that to make sure we have a big enough reserve I don't think we should get the reserve necessarily of 16 percent but there may be some other things that are one time expenditures that are not climate action or services and and you know I think you can differentiate in with the public so they kind of understand okay these are climate action things and then these are whatever it is the bus for the library so I mean I just I'm not you know we have a little post of other things that people have identified as needs so I guess I would go along with part of your recommendations but I using it to replace general funds or that's my view can I also have that have the firm policy so the surplus goes into the we are now below the 16 percent 16 percent is recommended eight percent is very quiet but I would also say that it was not recommend using firm balance to subsidize the budget or the or the tax haven't before we actually reached the recommended to set the recommended we are currently right now at 13 percent but the recommended is 16 percent I thought we thought 16 percent was too much not 25 percent is too much 25 percent is what we could go to oh yeah I guess I meant on your I thought and not 16 was like whoa that's you don't need to go that I'd be great but you don't need to oh well then if that's that that changes I didn't realize 25 was okay well what are what are other people thinking it's too high what's too high well it's lower than 11 I came here thinking off the average voter I think from the visible side wants government to be right-sized to not be overfunded to provide relevant services to make sure the streets are drivable right right wants responsiveness to questions to the government right so people have to answer the phones answer the questions people want to feel like they're heard and and that you know that their presence in the city is honored in some way and you know in general I think we fulfill all that and just by virtue of everybody that's here right and that's a good thing and so it's great when we have a right-sized budget so that we don't have these like you know pot holes of deficits and then mountains of surpluses right you want to be right in between that and so we want to have that available and we've gone through some bad times right we've gone through 2008 9 10 11 right we bought the eight million dollar bond for the pension fund right we didn't have any revenue from from the LSOP for a couple years right you know when the pandemic happened and now it's been spounced back so my point is is that what you don't have what you want to have to sell to the voters right you just want to present it that we come up with what we think is a really manageable property tax bill so 8.2 is unmanageable 14 plus because we haven't seen the final budget from the schools that I'm just not feel good about the so tell me where you want to cut them or tell them so what what is it we don't want to do well yeah we got to look at a spreadsheet and say which ones which ones would would be able to to get us back down to the sixth range now so we're deferred till another year so if you look at the ARPA money which is 485 plus the transportation that reduces I mean if there's it's $400 a thousand dollars per penny there's a penny right there that we're looking at or maybe even a penny and a half is that wherever I mean you know there's lots of suggestions so when I recall from the presentation it's one of the largest dollar increases in terms of dollars with the the ccta request the amount of transport right yeah maybe we could take a few of those big items that could be used for surplus say the surplus dollars to be absolutely certain amounts of the values for certain specific items I think and that seems to be that seems to be different than just using no well it is it would be it would be it would be you know it would be a specific kind of analysis of I mean if you're looking for another penny yeah it would be $400 to my mind that's going to be an annual cost so I would be very wary using our surplus on ongoing costs I mean just thinking about my own personal budget and my household we are doing improvements based on savings not based on you know I'm not moving money around it's I have you know we have savings and we've been looking to electrify so we're going to use those savings to electrify and I think that's how I envision our climate action plan that we have to look we have surplus and this is something that we've identified as a council as as a goal and so that would be a use for those you know not savings but our our additional revenues that we have not we're seeing that that seems to me to be an argument with the voters but if we're looking out in the years where it's really going to be going up more and more I think we have to have the voters chime in and say we're on board with this somehow and you know it goes through the ballot box that's that's kind of the thinking jessie did you have a little response or oh rather sorry before not related to your comment just as a reminder the poll that's the operations budget and the policy budget the policy budget in terms of one of ads the policy budget includes the 600,000 for climate includes 100,000 addition for housing trust fund includes the 13th island for trinity and it includes the 30,000 for the crossing guards so those are the kind of big new things what's trinity again that's absolutely the center thing oh so the so going back to larry's infant okay into this yeah trinity well she calls it trinity but oh it's her right it's her yeah so just going back to larry's questions about those addition can we um fund the housing trust fund from the surplus with the message back to the foreign housing can be that we can fund it in this year that we request we are guaranteed that we're going to continue funding that we're going to hope to but we're going to evaluate future budgets it's possible to get in the surplus next to uh well i i mean you could do that the original conversation around the housing trust fund was 100,000 dollars right and we cut it back to 50 because we had a tight budget 2016 like we do this year and then even through covid we said well we can't make it less we'll just i mean not only have they asked for an additional 100 they want 500,000 dollars for their revolving fund um you know on top of the million that we've already dedicated to um for it's being built that was our that was all ours yeah yeah um i mean i if we are looking for money to reduce that rate then i would not increase the affordable housing much as i am don't like to do that that's um um i mean we did respond in a big way and i and i don't think this community can continue to spend you know two thousand twice pardon me did we get twice like the million plus it was another what was it a 600,000 plus 400,000 is that what right right it was two but you might it was three projects funded with the million dollars and it's the balance of the housing trust fund that existed yeah the ARPA and the ARPA yeah yeah yeah it was 150,000 i would think of the housing trust fund and the million of ARPA right because we hadn't done anything it's a lot yeah that is another way by just giving saying it's not not going to build it into the budget i i i agree with if we're going to build that route i i want to increase the base amount because that was in 2016 which was a compromise already it was a long time the base amount makes much makes much more sense from the city projects because because whether it's 50 or 100 you know these projects are 20 million dollar projects so 75,000 a year is a much better for the city's point of view because it leverages so much more um in there in that financing of a non-profit housing so i i'd agree with that reduction to 75 but i'd like it to be a budget a budget item at 75 right and it's a budget item that you always can come back to because we won't have the budget anytime with you know as we go through this process because we did several years ago i would just give a little um perspective and one of my first or second years on the council um that the council said one percent increase it's a bad year one percent increase so everyone cut their budgets and the next year because of the demands and what we underfunded we had to go up to eight percent i mean they were ragging about four percent i think or four point five we went up to eight to make up the difference so i think you have to be careful with um wanting to appear good stewards of tax dollars and not have this boy babe do we make a mistake on cutting and you're not suggesting that we cut that much but that's what happens but that's why i went into the five year i just tried to level it out and see where we would be had we just increased that inflation to to to make sure we're not you know we're selecting a year i mean if you want to get careful i just my experience so i didn't want to go down that road again as much as you know two percent sounds really sexy and attractive and like you're really good on that unrealistic it's just kind of unrealistic yeah but you know maybe 8.2 is unrealistic so number six and my number are pretty similar my my number would have us down about three quarters of a million which i think roughly would actually get us to six so your number was the six what i computed was that to to be able to say you've accomplished a lot of that by moving some of the talk already so you want to move another 400 is that right but here you're suggesting the climate policy budget get reduced not reduced taken out of general fund and paid for by ARPA or whatever it is um surplus and that saves um $400,000 approximately of generally and then in my numbers i want to do another 350 i so the total climate policy budget is $850,000 that includes the housing trust fund as housing guards that's what that's the number she's quoting no she's quoting i don't see it i see the dpw fleet dpw facility and fire ambulance yeah this is staffing is 190 so take out the staffing right so in the consulting so take out right the 190 yeah from 607 what are you saying put the 243 into ARPA 2 i didn't know what that was 243 you guys have a little bit of a misunderstanding with us okay okay so this is the slide you're looking at yeah you're right doing two notes so Martha can you explain the three homes yes so the first column with the 200 and 4500 dollars at the bottom that's the amount that's already embedded into the operating budget with the 4.85 percent increase the middle column with 605 is the additional money that is included in the 8.2 percent increase yes the 200.3 does that relate to climate or that's just so it's part of the climate that the city has already considered even without an overall 600 or 800 number so this was our attempt to capture that difference so for example when the when Corbin mentioned the buying the so i'm just using this one example Corbin mentioned buying the administrative vehicle we have 30 000 dollars in the in the general fund cip that we've been carrying for years to replace that vehicle you get a hybrid one we need it costs 45 000 so 15 000 is in the climate budget and 30 000 is in the regular operations so the 243 is not really climate no it's it's what we buy an ICU and the climate piece is just the hundred or so in the middle column yeah it was our attempt not to inflate the climate number yeah because we already had some of those and that's in the current budget that's in the operations budget the left column yeah so there's the 242 000 plus the 175 it's about 400 well public transit is that GMT that's a different that's a different that's different that's one of the above and beyond not what GMT is asking for their rate increase that would be for us to make further investments to increase transit as called by the climate action plan like what so that would be going through more studies with GMT to start looking at different options for expansion of routes or increased services that's on that active one the other day no that's the public transit line underneath it okay so that's an FTE or a close one FTE that would be to go towards an expansion study that was the first item in the implementation plan for this action and that would lead into I can probably recommendations cut that what GMT do that's their job if they will do that yeah well I mean we're given the most $3,000 for the year I know but you know some of that is static I mean like I don't know if it's embedded in it or GMT this needs percentages to the community transportation authority is supposed to be the authority you know it's like so what works so we have significantly stepped up our work with GMT Michael Scanlon it's doing an amazing job as our rep so we know how quarterly meetings with staff and the GMT staff I think the reality what I've heard is the reality from them and I know Clayton there GM wants to come in and talk to you is that one they're going they're eliminating fair free this spring so it's going to have this could have a significant something to their budget to as they eliminate as they step down from their ARPA funding they have a $3.3 million budget gap in their operating budget so I think out of I think baseline they're just trying to make maintain current level of service and pass that $3.3 million on to the municipalities in the assessments I think if we want to achieve our climate action goals and increase service from GMT we're going to have to put some dollars to do it I think that's yeah and GMT is going to be doing the more like the regional things to make sure like that the one and the 11 are stopping in the correct places but if we wanted to do some sort of neighborhood loops it would be a combined effort and we wouldn't bear the full cost of the study likely it would be a joint venture for that after we heard that the molecular experiment didn't go well it didn't go well I thought it was supposed to have gone really well no oh it did not go well so that's not necessarily what we are talking about we removed the micro transit from FY 25 actually because GMT is doing their shit in county micro transit study right now and so instead of being an FY 25 which is the initial implementation plan that is not presented in this budget for right now because there's far more to work out before it's viable so that could be a valid item we want to expand public transit in our neighborhoods and let the people speak that could be not this year though we're not we're not ready for that well it's in it's in the climate policy budget well this is just yeah but this is but we wouldn't necessarily put the funding in there now but it'd be something that we could do next year but I think we're still studying right yeah we wouldn't this is what would build the recommendations of where the service gaps are based on public outreach and different data I think you've had some data he said to the public this is what we proposed for you know enhance bus service so we have to spend $75,000 first well possibly I mean I don't know yeah just don't have a good feeling that it's kind of having a return on the best one at all I mean look at the buses happen just right that's true with free payers I mean with free payers so whether you implement the payers I don't know what's been happening after that a lot of public public transit I just don't want to throw more dollars out of bad dollars and not get any right or should work you know end up spending a million dollars and get nothing can I ask a question about the climate plan is it for sort of we're reducing emissions in the city is that from city owned assets or is it city in general it's the city in general so for this piece right it's the goal is to reduce vehicle miles travel two and a half percent a year citywide yeah so there's the transportation sector which is what we're talking about right now there's the government office sector which is us and then there's building a thermal center so coming from the public I'm he's a resident as the Burlington South Burlington resident so like we have the potential to electrify 70 city vehicles and some percentage of those like fire trucks and plows maybe never I live on Dorset street and there are at least 80 cars in my neighborhood town square none of them are electric and it's not viable for any of us to even own an electric car because there's no way to charge there yeah and there's another neighborhood next door and all the Kennedy Drive neighborhoods that don't have a way to to charge an electric car so I bought a brand new car just a couple years ago and I didn't buy an electric car you know I wanted to because it's not viable if we need some sort of effort to make neighborhoods like that able to charge their cars like everyone in my neighborhood had an electric car that would make a bigger impact than all the city vehicles I don't know what the cost or you know I don't know what we can do as a city to push that but something think about yeah it's not it's not in the operating budget yet but it's part of our CCRPC application to figure out where they need to be but that is the question of broadly speaking funding resourcing that subject area or not I think FTE would go towards finding funding to support that can I go back to this point because I mean I think part of the study should be not just where might we increase bus service but if we did that what would the impact be on our greenhouse gas emissions right so we actually know like estimate how many vehicle trips we think that would reduce and what would be the impact I kind of said this when the plan was introduced to kind of have a metric of you know see you see a dollar spent per seo to reduce and we kind of have like a effective an effectivity metric right and we can like know how effective are public transit dollars and reduce CO2 to me that's gotta be part of the study a question I have though and I'm assuming that you live with a housing a homeowners association right how come homeowners associations do not invest in those charging stations yeah so um I was on my HOA board and sidebar just to talk about taxes and stuff are going up I live there for five years and the HOA fees have increased by 100 percent so in addition to taxes going up and other things that is going up a lot and our services haven't really changed I looked into that and I talked to Green Mountain Power and they basically said so we have carports and there isn't power there's power in there for lighting but there isn't like associated power with each thing so you can't even do like a 110 slow charge and Green Mountain Power and this was in 2019 said we don't have a way to connect that carport outlet with your house which to me as an IT person seems absurd that seems really basic to connect two circuits to the same bill but they said they didn't have that ability so we kind of were like what can we do and that's where we're petered out new construction yeah well yes new construction is really important unfortunately so how can the city fix that so martha's done there's a lot of federal dollars so I think martha may have some numbers that will help us yeah potentially so I took Andrew's recommendation of taking that 607 number minus these tapping that you recommend be general fund leave 417 and say that 417 which fund you are for so I put that in as new revenues to the budget and I also reduce the house into 75 which is 150 and that brings the percent increase down to 5.8 2 well this was just to say let us do I mean I think we have a path forward let us do some scenarios for you for Monday night good when we'll bring you some scenarios about the other things are there any other thoughts we just go back to the bike pet thing sense we're bringing to the request you're not yet that's nice to I think we've been pretty generous to them I know there's always more that they want in these well we have a list of dollars for repaving that is that what you were thinking giving you more dollars for paving repay for me it's yeah they asked for 10 for maintenance time they said to hard to take it from the paving budget or it's an or okay but you can't have tax dollars that's a suggestion we're stuck with the increases for the paving this year to paper doors of spring yeah you'd have every business on that is there anything else okay so in terms of response from the public we have so this is all been posted our meeting's been public and we should be hearing I assume from the public at some point some of these ideas well maybe Monday when we see what the result is so we um I also wrote an article in this week's city news about the budget and I said they can reach out to me or directly to you all okay so hopefully that will burn her a little more interest and then you'll have your official public hearing on the 16th as well okay great all right well can I wrap up yes you may um yeah so again it's a team excellent job putting together information I think that councilor summary useful council thank you for being so engaged I think we got to a really great place lunch is ready in the kitchen if folks would like to hang out and have lunch or grab something at go feel free to help yourself just a reminder 430 at barnyard if you want to stop by and visit some more this evening that is so far it is barnyard because it says location awaiting confirmation on wilson road and andy what do you have for us I have some gifts you can show yourself brawlington colors which are blue the little euro stickers um and a couple different sizes for your car your water bottle or your uh laptop of course or sticker they are vinyl stickers what uh what if for vinyl stickers so feel free to thank you thank you all very much okay so I would entertain a motion to adjourn all in favor


I'd probably love to go, but you know that I can't do Thursdays. That's me and my bae's date night. I'll ask, but I don't think that I can pry her away from that new Star Trek. In this bag, I have a number of black and white marbles. I don't know how many of each there are in there. There might all be one color for all I know. But if I reach in and pick one out, it's black. How likely is it that the next time I pick out a marble, it's going to be black? It's a pretty simple question, and it has a pretty simple answer. Obviously, if we follow the trend of what's happened already, I've only ever drawn black marbles. 100% of my experimental data shows nothing but black. So I should assume that they're all black, and that the next one will also be black, right? I mean, I guess so? But that feels wrong somehow. It's not unthinkable that there are 50-50 mix, and I just happen to grab a black one first. Or even that they're all white, except for this one. There are many possible scenarios which could conceivably have given me this result. If they were all black, sure, I'd expect to see this 100% of the time. But if they were half and half, I'd still expect to see it 50% of the time. Even if there was only one black marble and 99 white ones, I'd still expect to see it come out of the bag first 1% of the time, despite the odds being against it. That's 100 times less likely than if the bag were filled with black marbles, but it's not nothing, and we probably shouldn't ignore it. That implies a slightly more complicated answer than we started with, one which takes those possibilities into account. Essentially, we're working backwards. To predict what's going to happen in the future, we're figuring out what sets of circumstances might have led to what we've seen so far, and how likely each set is. The cool thing about that approach is that it's very easy to update our guess about the likelihood of those possibilities as we collect more information.  If you can do a little calculus, you can actually find a simple equation that balances the infinite number of possibilities for the marble question. The number of black marbles you've drawn, plus one, divided by the total number of marbles you've pulled out of the bag, plus two. With just one black marble, that puts the probability that I'll draw another one at two-thirds. That sounds much more reasonable than a hundred percent. If I drew two black marbles, it would be three-fourths. If I drew a black one and then a white one, it would be half, or 50-50, exactly like we'd expect. Both the marble equation and the general method for updating a guess about the conditions that might have led to a specific observation were discovered by the famous mathematician Pierre Simon Laplace, based on a paper published by Richard Price, who had developed an idea he heard from a Presbyterian minister, Thomas Bayes. So obviously, it's called Bayes' theorem, and it's become a cornerstone for all sorts of important stuff. Science, economics, artificial intelligence, cryptography, engineering, in any field which uses mathematical models to predict the future, someone's using Bayesian statistics to do it. But there's one place you might not expect it to show up. The philosophy of knowledge, or epistemology. In episode 58, we talked a little about the problem of induction, an uncomfortable philosophical objection to the main method humans use to form ideas about the world. I see a raven, it's black. I see a raven, it's black. I see another raven, it's black. I generalize from what I've seen and I say, ravens are black. That's induction, and it's just how we learn things. But if you think about it, all I really know for sure is that every raven I've seen so far has happened to be black. How do I get from there to the idea that all ravens everywhere are black? I can't actually prove that that's true for the whole universe worth of ravens unless I observe every single one of them. Which I mean, I'm a pretty busy guy. Compare that to deductive reasoning.  I can say with 100% certainty that that's true without ever seeing a single raven. But inductive reasoning, which is the foundation of all scientific knowledge, is, well, it certainly seems effective, but I could never actually prove that it is. Bayes' theorem is a very useful and intuitive response to the problem of induction, because it gives us a formal way to justify some amount of belief about a whole class of things given only a few examples. Black marbles, black ravens, I might not be able to prove you'll never find a white one, but I can still get close to absolute certainty that the next one you see will be black, even if I haven't observed all of them. Bayesian epistemology uses Bayes' theorem as a template for forming various degrees of certainty about beliefs, which gives us a decent way to use induction responsibly and justify being fairly certain that the sun will rise tomorrow, which is helpful. In fact, it's so good at honing in on intuitively correct answers quickly that is often used as the gold standard for rational thought. Some of its proponents argue that if you're reasoning properly, free from irrational stubbornness or errors, your conviction in your beliefs should update in a Bayesian fashion when encountering new information.  What do you mean Excel is boring? Excel is not boring. Excel is beautiful. Okay, so it's hard to find a straight line between Bayesian inference and practical everyday reasoning. There are certainly some interesting insights we might glean about how we should approach thinking if we're being good Bayeans, but it's not like knowing about Bayesian epistemology suddenly makes you spock. However, it's possible that your brain is already using Bayes' theorem in a very important way. The predictive processing or predictive coding model of cognition represents the brain as a number of layers of interpretation of the world, each using essentially Bayesian rules to achieve the same general goal. Guess what's going to happen next, pretty much the same way we did with the marbles, and minimize surprise. According to the theory, our brains are a set of prediction engines in a hierarchy of abstraction. At the bottom most level is the raw information we're receiving from our senses, flashes of light, vibration of our eardrums, that sort of stuff. The layer that receives all that information, we'll call it layer one, isn't concerned with high level concepts like ravens or pizza. Its only job is to try to filter out unimportant information and errors from that signal, using guesses supplied by layer two. If you wear a watch or a ring all the time and don't even feel it anymore, it's because that layer has learned to screen out that particular sensation as noise. Don't even worry about it, it tells layer two. Too predictable, no need to send this up to chain, I've got it under control. Layer two on the other hand has some very basic abstractions about things like shapes and colors. It can feed layer one predictions about what a blob of red is likely to do, keep being a blob of red. If layer one receives sensory information that the blob of red has suddenly changed to a blob of green, it can do one of two things, usually it treats it as a fluke and smooths things over, saying nope it's still mostly red, no problems here boss. But if it's way too weird compared to what layer two is guessing should happen, too surprising to hide, it kicks it up the chain, nope it's definitely green now, your problem. Similarly layer two is receiving guesses about what's likely to keep happening from layer three, which maybe has ideas about objects or persistence, which is getting information from layer four and so on, all the way up to layer n, the top dog, making all the predictions about the world from a huge tower of abstractions who can say no layer n minus one, it's not actually magic, magic doesn't exist, he probably just switched the red apple for the green one when we weren't looking. According to proponents of predictive processing, this model very closely matches what we observe about how brains process incoming information from the senses, a sort of iterated chain of prediction and feedback, there are all sorts of interesting examples of optical illusions and perceptual blind spots that do seem to fit the idea fairly well. And for what is worth, it more or less matches the subjective experience of surprise, too. We try to explain our surprise from the bottom up, first making sure our senses aren't deceiving us, and only updating our highest level abstractions when we're confronted with something that we can't explain away. Of course, as anyone who's familiar with statistics has been screaming incoherently at the screen for the past 10 minutes, Bayesian approaches to interpreting data have their limits and criticisms. Generally to use them, you have to supply some sort of initial guess about how likely particular scenarios are before you can start honing in on the right one, which can skew the results drastically. That inherent subjectivity makes a lot of people, especially mathematicians, uncomfortable, and is often a very intuitive and effective method for predicting the future, and it has been used to amazing effect. You might even be using it right now. What do you think of Bayesian inference, epistemology, and a model for cognition? Please leave a comment below and let me know what you think. Thank you very much for watching. Don't forget to blah blah subscribe, blah share, and don't stop thunking.


So my microbiology heroes are two, actually. Evojina Nikaido is my graduate advisor in UC Berkeley. They studied maltose transport in his lab. I had a great time. It was an amazing instructor and an amazing scientist. He discovered the porines and a unique man, a man that actually loves classical culture to such extent that he actually learned classical greek in order to be able to read Homer's Odyssey 24, so volume in the text. My other hero in science is Stanley Falco. He has left a legacy in science and in terms also of the people that he trained about a hundred or so post-doc and grad students who now are in leadership position throughout the world, but not literally in the US. Stanley discovered Plasmid. Our Plasmids are mediating the transfer of antibiotic resistance between bacteria, but he also had a human dimension that was unique and that's why he's so, he's very much of a legend in the field of microbiology. His lab was highly sought after and I was very privileged to be in his lab. He has also a sense of humor that was unequal. So those are my two heroes and I am very privileged to have been, to have encountered these two, two great scientists, really larger-than-life type of personality.


A ratio strain is when the set of requirements required for reinforcement or the completion of a task to get reinforcement is too high. So if you're going to do a set of behaviors or do a certain task and you get to the end of that task to the point of where you should be getting reinforced and it's not that great in quality or size or magnitude or yeah. So an example is a lot of people go to work and they get frustrated with their job because they're finding that if they're overloaded when they work to the point that it's not feasible to do their job consistent with what they're getting paid with or even the hours they're given to complete all the tasks, it can be ratio strain. So a ratio strain is when there's a ratio set for a certain number of tasks to the point where it's so difficult a person doesn't meet reinforcements for that set of tasks or it's not worthwhile. Sweet. Awesome. That was a good one. That was so close to the ratio strain. He earned his reinforcers. He almost came up which would have been ratio strain but he didn't we got him through it. Amazing. We made it. Yay. Examples. That was one. That was the end. Yeah. Thanks for watching. See you guys next time. Bye.


Good. Next up is Sandra Balk from the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies in Regensburg, Germany. And she will be talking about the topic digital edition of historical travel logs and the role that transcribers plays. Oh, and you brought a colleague. I hope you can introduce him because I don't have him on my moderation card. Really sorry. Hello. As mentioned, we are from the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies in Regensburg. This is Jakob Merke and I'm Sandra Balk. And we want to tell you a bit more about our new research project, the digital edition of travel logs and the role that transcribers played so far. Here's a short overview of what we expect. In our project, we want to build a infrastructure for the analysis and edition of historical travel logs. This infrastructure should enable researchers to encode and transcribe different texts on one side and on the other side to analyze and visualize them. And one of our main questions is how can we encode the materials so travel logs and other materials in a way that we can use it to answer complex research questions regarding travel events or travel observations. To be able to do this, we are working on a digital edition as a use case that combines T I with semantic web and link data technologies, and this will allow us to model data more explicitly, and therefore enable analysis and visualization of the material. In this case, we will work with the unpublished records of Franz Xarebrunner's journey from Arau via St. Petersburg to the University in Kazan and his way back. So far, we transcribed the first two manuscripts with transcribers and also annotated persons, places and other events with XML markup elements based on these manually transcribed texts. And we developed training modules for the handwritten text recognition. And yeah, these are to be used for the semi automatic transcription of other related texts and about these, this process. Yeah. So, since we got quite a large number of manual transcribed pages, we decided to train a language model to automatically transcribe the remaining documents of one of us work. So, what I noticed quite early on was that some of the models trained on a smaller subset, I'll perform the models trained on the larger parts of the data. So I took a closer look at the facsimile and I started creating them. And how did we create. I did to look at to look for any instances where the straight linear structure of the pages is interrupted. In this case that means strikes loose and additions on the left side, you can see an example of a flawless page on the right side marked in yellow. You can see some of the flaws that I recognized. I then experimented by training on different data sets using pages of different levels of defectiveness. In the end, the model which elevated best evaluated best was the one where I only excluded those pages which were heavy heavily flawed. So, why can we improve the model by outruling pages with strikes loose and super linear additions. Supposedly the answer lies in the layout analysis. As you can see on the left, transcribers has no problem identifying the lines on the flawless page, while almost every addition messes up the line segmentation as seen on the right. And little surprisingly, the automated transcription of the flawless page is almost perfect. While deriving from the bed line segmentation. It is defective. I marked all the arrows and yellow on the left side, there's only one arrow. On the right side you can see whole passages which are completely nonsense. And those parts correspond with the exactly with the messed up line segmentation, why the lines in between are still fine. Okay, and finally, on the last slide I named some mistakes I made so you don't have to make them. First, Bronner uses Cyrillic letters on a few pages. So when I tried training on a base model, it failed. Since we had enough data to train our own new model, I left it there. But if you don't have enough data, and it is possible it is a consideration to exclude those pages with differing charts. Second, I think it's worth spending time up in front on making sure that the data you upload is technically correct, since it since it can be very difficult to find the error causing data afterwards. And third, the transfer of our model to another unseen text caused a significant decline in performance. I was able to get the performance back up by adding some hand transcribed data of the new text. The possible takeaway here is that if you plan on using your model on many different documents, it might be good to transcribe few pages of all the documents you want to transcribe with the model instead of transcribing many pages of the single document manually. So if we sum it up, even poor data, even data of poor quality could lead to good results if the data is created well. Thank you for your attention and if there's still time left, we could lead to discussion and questions. Thank you very much. Are there any questions from the audience, because we're making quite good time. I'm repeating the question. Did you try to automate the curation process so that our online guests can hear too. That's why I'm repeating it. I did not. Right now, right now I'm thinking about possible ways to automate it, but I think since we are the human in the loop I think it's always a good idea to leverage our insights to improve the models. So maybe automating just for automating sake is not always the best, but if there's a possibility, let me know if you have any idea. Okay, any other questions. So Danny, I have one for you. Have you already discovered the trainable baseline feature. Okay, I was wondering whether that would provide any benefit to you. I've seen that it's possible. I'm not sure if it's a new feature or if I just overlooked it. I've seen that it is there and I wanted to use it, but I have no. Yeah, it's quite new. I'm not sure what it will do for your reading order that will probably depend on how you train your baselines so the sequence in which you create the baselines for your ground truth. But that could resolve some of your issues if you train enough ground truth, then those in between lines will probably be recognized a lot better and will mess up your data less. Okay, are there any other questions.