Let's see, being six o'clock on Tuesday, January 2, 2018, we'll now call the order of the Winooski City Council meeting. I ask that everybody please stand and join us for the Pledge of Allegiance, led by Acting Deputy Mayor Brian Sweeney. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Okay, first up tonight is a gender review. We have a pretty compact agenda, so don't think there's a lot to move around there. Any questions, comments about the gender review? Okay, seeing in here, none. We'll now open up for public comment. This is an opportunity for members of the Public Justice Council about something that is not on tonight's agenda. To remind you, you'll find tonight's agenda in the back of the room. And we also ask that our guests please sign in. Thank you very much. Any public comment this evening? Okay, so seeing and hearing none, we'll move on to the consent agenda. We have multiple items on tonight's agenda. We have approval of city council minutes from December 18, 2017. We also have the warrants for payroll from 12.3.17 through 12.16.17, and the accounts payable as of the 31st of December, 2017. I'd entertain a motion on tonight's consent agenda. Motion by Eric, second by Brian Sweeney for the discussion. Seeing and hearing none, all those in favor, please say aye. And those opposed, motion carries consent agenda is approved as presented. City update. So a couple of quick updates. First, we want to start by thanking our mutual aid partners across the county and across Vermont for their support the week of December 18th as we laid to rest Lieutenant Michael Cram. They, people came out in droves. They provided great coverage for the city so our officers could participate in the wake of the service. There was quite a procession taking Lieutenant Cram to the service. So just shout out to the mutual aid, our mutual aid partners and the public safety community across the state who really came out to not only honor Lieutenant Cram, but allow us to take care of our officers and protect the safety of the city. I'm really excited to announce that we have a public works director. We'll be starting February 5th. Jonathan Rosher, who's currently the public works director and O Knight in New York. He is a PE and has private sector engineering experience before moving into the public sector. So he'll be here February 5th permanently, but you might see him around town for other public meetings this month, just as he gets up to speed. I believe he will be here at the January 10th Main Street meeting. So on that Main Street revitalization project, our preferred alternatives meeting will be January 10th, which is next Wednesday night here, starts at six o'clock with an opportunity for people to mill about, look at the drawings, look at the plans, talk to the engineers, and then a formal presentation at 6.30, and that will be broadcast as well. Our community services administrative assistant, Jessica, is leaving us this week, which is sad for us and for the city. She's been great for the last five years, but does present an opportunity for us to relook at how we staff administrative services. So we are having those conversations this week. I bring that up to you all because it may inform job description changes or potentially potential budget changes. We're trying to front load that as early as we can in this new year, so we can bring you changes. Just a reminder, Martin Luther King Day, January 15th Day of Service, Afea is doing Yeoman's work, putting that together. So if you're interested in registering for an opportunity, click go to the website. And then finally, I'll bring this up again later in the month, but there will be a Winooski Bridge Local Concerns and Alternatives meeting hosted by CCRPC on February 6th at UVM. So this is not about the sidewalk railing work that will be done this summer, but this is actually kind of the long-term potential of this bridge. So there's some short and long-term solutions. Short-term solutions are still three to four years out from construction. Long-term solutions may be more like 10 or 15 or 20 years out, but this is an initial kind of public meeting to talk about what those options might be like. So again, that's February 6th at UVM. We'll be doing a lot of publicity about that, but just want to get it on your calendars early. Thank you. Thank you. OK, council reports. I'll go first because I don't have anything. It'll be a quick update. Happy New Year, everybody. Just a second, but great. I think the only thing to update is legislative sessions starting. Justine and I met with Clem and Diana on sort of legislative items that we think the city will be tracking over the next year. And at some point when the session really gets going, we'll have them come in as we usually do and kind of do an update for council on what's going on. But it's going to be fun. I'm not clear. You know anything about that? No. I don't have anything today. Great. And so with that, we will move into tonight's regular items. First up, we have approval of the audit report. Welcome. Thank you. Happy New Year to you. Happy New Year. Thank you for joining us again. And thank you, Fred, for the great work of the firm. And you guys' great coordination with staff. You know, I think we chatted a little earlier, but I said it feels like it's been a great working relationship and a really positive opportunity for us to learn. Audits are always a great time to learn as much as finding things that, you know, sometimes are always exciting to discuss in terms of corrections that may or may not need to be made. But it's been a great relationship, and we appreciate all the work of Salomon and Powers. Thank you. So I'm here for your pleasure. I guess I can do a quick overview of kind of the audit, what the deliverables are, and the results. So there are, it's a multi-part audit. It's an audit in accordance with government auditing standards. It's an audit in accordance with generally accepted auditing standards. This year is not an audit in accordance with federal audit standards. The two years ago, they changed the threshold from half a million to 750,000 of expenditures. You did not hit that this year. So you did not require to have a federal audit. But it is in accordance with government auditing standards. What you get is three deliverables. You get the audit report. That's the bound financial statements. You get a letter of recommendations. So we could talk a little bit about that. And then finally, a report directly to the board that indicates how the audit went. I'll just start with that. The audit went extremely smooth. Your staff was well-prepared. We were cooperative with. Things were ready when we needed them. And in fact, you're one of the few communities where your finance department actually prepares their own financial statements. So that's the way it's supposed to be. So that's indicative of the fact that it all works extremely well. In terms of the audit itself, our opinion on the audit report, which is our responsibility, takes place on page two. And it says opinions. It's because we actually audit every major fund separately as though we're a separate entity. So we're telling you that each, not just in total, but each of the major funds is audited. And our opinion on each of those is that they are presented fully in accordance with general accepted accounting principles. So that's a clean, unmodified opinion. It means you're following all of the regulations and the rules. This year, there's been no change in the rules. I don't think there's anything that'll significantly affect the year we're in now. So it should be consistent, at least for a few years. They're always looking at things. But this is consistent. What I typically read when I go into a community starts on page four. And it's called Management Discussion and Analysis. And it's about 10 pages. And it's narrative information. It discusses how the year went, what the major bullet points are. It talks about your budget actual variances and why they happened. So in about 10 pages, you can really get an understanding of what happened in that fiscal year. As it's titled, it's written by management. What our responsibility is to make sure that all the numbers are accurate and that we agree with the information and the analysis. But it is written by management. And I think if you read just that, you'll probably get a good sense of what happened. I'm not going to spend a lot of time on the traditional financials unless anybody has questions. In the back, there is a report as required by government auditing standards, the last two pages. And that is a report on compliance with laws and regulations and internal control over financial reporting. We had no material weaknesses and no significant deficiencies. What that should indicate is that you have a good system of checks and balances, good internal controls in place. And not only are they in place, but they're functioning the way they're designed, so that not only do we have financials that we can rely on, but that all year, the information that you get should be accurate because of those checks and balances that are in place, which is really more important because that's what you're using on a real time basis to make sure that you make decisions that are appropriate. We did have two recommendations that did not rise to the level of even significant deficiencies, but I know they're both being addressed. One of them simply had to do with collateralizations of funds. It was mainly some funds at the credit union, but I know that they've looked at a number of alternatives, and I think they're close to coming to an agreement to secure that money. And the second issue I know has been dealt with as well, and that's the community fund that we weren't quite sure it was sort of operating like an enterprise fund. It was sort of a governmental because of the subsidies, but it sounds like you folded that into your general fund this year, so that's been dealt with as well. So the only two recommendations we have, I think, have been addressed already at this point in time. How does any general or specific questions I can answer for you? Thank you to Jesse and Angela, especially. I know it's a lot of staff coordination, I'm sure, from a number of areas. But it should hopefully be really, really proud of, number one, having an audit that has these results, but also such high praise in terms of the support you provided in doing it and the professionalism with which you've really developed the city's financial policies and actions. I mean, it's what a change in six and seven years. So that's awesome. If I can just underline that for a minute. This really is Angela's success. She does a huge amount of work. And I just want to underline specifically this year, providing the information to the auditors in a clean way while she was also preparing the budget in a new way was a huge undertaking. And she did it with grace and professionalism. And we are very fortunate to have her as a city employee. For many decades to come. See? Yeah. Questions for friend? It's a boy, what a difference these meetings were six and seven years ago. Wow. I remember the first clean audit that we got. That was, yeah, blooms went up. Yeah. So that's great. And thanks for the partnership on working towards it to the recommendations and suggestions. And I think, as Fred mentioned, both those items are being addressed as we speak. There was some development this week on the credit union cloudization efforts. And of course, in the budget proposal, we have the community center being put into the general fund. So it looks like we're on top of addressing those two. Any questions for her? We've got some good reading. Thank you very much. We appreciate your time. Thanks for coming tonight. All right, good night. Thank you, Fred. Have a great night. OK, we'll move on to the second item on tonight's regular genitums, the community services budget. I did try it, and it did work. What happened? Did you adjust the template color already? Just say, yes. All right, so I've got a bunch of reference materials here because I was saying to Angela earlier, I tend to build these budgets. I think we all do as staff in the detail. And then presenting them in the roll up, I always want to make sure I've got my cheat sheets here available. So happy to be here. Happy new year to everybody. This, as we all know, is a new process for us. But it's been, I think, a really positive one. Happy to be the first, I think, department head guinea pig to roll this out. So wide open to critique feedback thoughts. But my plan is to kind of move through the presentation here, kind of linger over specific parts of the budget, answer any questions there, and then kind of come around to the end if there's any kind of more global pieces. But whatever we do here, make it work for you guys in terms of presentation. So all right, and as you can see here, my fantastic staff, this is a nice photo from our Halloween event of a good number of our folks. But not a lot of significant changes here staffing wise, either in the current year or moving forward. We've kind of held pat at the moment. As Jesse mentioned, we do, or as of Friday, we'll have a vacancy in the administrative assistant position that we're going to be looking to try to figure out what we want to do with. And then, of course, seasonal hires coming up, card managers, summer staffer, Thrive, et cetera. So for now, we expect that to look pretty similar in future years, but it seems to be a bit of a moving target as our programs evolve and change. Funding streams change as well, so yeah. So jumping back to fiscal year 17, which is the last completed budget year that we've got, just a couple key highlights that we wanted to point out. So I always like to just make mention of the fact that we as a department do hustle for quite a bit of the funding that we leverage to develop programs. So in addition to the funds that come in in support of the community center, about $180,000 in fees, grants, donations over the course of that fiscal year. So definitely proud of that. In addition to doing the lift of getting those programs out to the community, there's a lot of work happening behind the scenes to make those happen. So that's a team effort for sure. And in support also, and this isn't necessarily a pure dollar figure, but looking at the volunteer management and support that we get for our programs as well, we do really like to consider that in the context of the cost of doing business. But for these folks, a lot of the programs that we run wouldn't fly. So we definitely really value and rely on volunteers, but that also takes a fair bit of work to manage. So Afea, who's been here this year, Paul, for the two years prior, both really exceptional jobs of bringing in and managing and supporting those volunteers. My rec, which hopefully many of you have an account with and are one of the now over 600 folks who've signed up, that's been a huge boost for us. It allows us to track usage across multiple programs, have a better sense of who's doing what where. It's way better than trying to shuffle spreadsheets. So we've really benefited from that. I say nothing of the ability to pay online. That's been a really nice piece for us as well. So that was a huge change for us in that fiscal year. Library continues to hold steady. The biggest growth we've seen in the last few years is with the digital circulation that continues to grow. Our circulation materials have stayed pretty constant and our visits and card holders have continued to kind of rebound from the move over to the O'Brien Center. So we saw a little dip with that change of location, but we're back on track and growing, which is nice. Senior center, again, busy, busy, busy down there as always. But I think that meals numbers are really huge one to highlight in the course of that fiscal year between meals on wheels, congregate meals, and other events. We're serving a lot of food to seniors, which is a very notable need in that population. So pretty proud of that. And then Kirstie, and you'll see this, it's not a duplicate. This was in 2017, the achievement of the second star for Thrive. So that's a really big deal. That's an indication of program quality and also starts to pay dividends for those families who draw subsidies. So that's a really huge step for us to take in 17. And you'll see again, took yet another step in 18. So we spent quite a bit of time on a Saturday back in June on this. So I'm not gonna be labor points here just in terms of setting these goals for ourselves as a team. And I say that staff and council working together towards achieving some of these. But a few that I wanted to highlight and just note in terms of the amount of time that's gone into them in this current fiscal year now, a lot of work at the community center to try to address the tendency issues there with working towards nailing down childcare center, working with SNAP and UVM to try to fill the YMCA space. So a lot of work and investment of time there. It's been in both cases more complex than I think we anticipated, but I think we're close. And as you'll see in fiscal year 19, our goal is to have those locked down. A lot of work to our own early childhood. So again, I mentioned we did achieve a third star, which now officially designates our Thrive program as high quality with the state, which is a big deal. And again, comes with further financial benefit. And then also the work, of course, through the Promise Communities Grant towards childcare, but also as you'll see here, some really exciting professional development for community-wide partners, which is coming up in February. So that's really exciting to have on the radar as well. And then Winooski Wednesdays, I think too, is in the Halloween event, both really hugely successful public events. I think one of the really great things doing the jobs that we do here in Winooski is that this community is ready to come out and be together and gather and get to know other neighbors. And it makes our jobs quite a lot easier when it comes to putting events like this on. But a lot of work does go in behind the scenes to make those things happen. And I just wanna give my staff credit for the hard work that went into that. Moving on to looking ahead to fiscal year 19. And again, I think the pieces that this budget will hopefully help support. So we do anticipate being open at some point in fiscal year 19 for a childcare center at the O'Brien Center with upwards of 50 slots available for infants, toddlers, and preschoolers, which is extremely exciting. Again, hoping to have full tendency there. I think we're very close with the childcare space and a final deal for the YMCA space. So both of those should be potentially within the current fiscal year, but I didn't wanna jinx myself. So fiscal year 19 will start hopefully in that way. A lot of work around planning, especially in our parks. So that's something that as we work towards our municipal plan, we really wanna focus on the parks and open space planning that we're doing and turn an eye specifically to lot two in Casavent, which in the context of some other projects in the city, have a lot of strategic importance, but also I think some real potential for community development down the road. And then as you'll see in the bottom here, just a lot of event-based pieces and program-based pieces. We're hoping to add new programs, try to get our programs to be a little bit more aligned with the demographics of the community in particular, as you'll see in REC slide later, our young adult population, which we don't presently do a ton for, but which is here in droves. And then also trying to be, again as we have my REC now on board, we've got a year of data, a little bit more sophisticated about how we're applying cost recovery goals to programs. So again, we're trying to balance making programs accessible, affordable, but also recognizing that as you saw with that $180,000, we do have somewhat of a need to bring in revenue to offset costs. So trying to balance that and look at a way to apply some goals across programs in future years. So that's kind of where we're headed for the fiscal year 19 year. I'm gonna pause there on the goals and accomplishments piece and just say, are there any pieces I missed, things that you had questions about? Great. So not a ton of huge changes for us budgetarily this year from a dollars and cents perspective. We, as Fred mentioned, are proposing to move the community center budget into the general fund. So you'll see that reflected in the general fund budget. And then of course, we'll talk about this further too, but as part of the leadership proposal, we are looking at pulling the children and family programs manager, the portion of that salary and benefit out of the general fund and into the program funds, the Thrive program budget. So those are sort of the two primary changes. Again, you'll see kind of natural growth in terms of salary benefits. And in some cases in the program budget, some growth related to anticipated participation increases in the senior center in particular, but by and large, not a ton of changes. So as we dive in, please feel free to ask questions, but those are gonna be, I think, the big pieces that jump out most likely. I did throw in the O'Brien Center budget and I do wanna make sure folks understand this is the trend budget over the last three years. We are proposing that this budget will no longer be stand alone, but will be incorporated into the general fund. But I felt like just moving $330,000 over, it probably warranted a little bit of attention to some detail. So I did put this budget here largely just to call that out and kind of give an opportunity for any specific questions around that operating budget that might come up. But if there are, so I'll kind of turn that to you and say, are there any specific items here that jump out or things that you'd wanna discuss a little bit further? What's the remaining term on the note? You're 28, I believe? Yep. And then the amount, I don't have it. I'm looking at Angela who may have it committed to memory. I don't have the number committed to memory, but we're looking at that steady 110,000 in debt service or in principle and then the debt service on top of that sort of incrementally coming down over the next roughly 10 years. So we're ways out yet before we're through that. A little bit to the goals, I guess. Sure, sure. I'm sorry, I've got like three different documents. Nope, nope. I recall seeing it someplace the pool was mentioned, but I don't see it mentioned here or in the budget book as a FY19 goal. And I'm just wondering where the pool fits in. So I think you'll see mentioned later that there's work and it's I think in the emerging issues slide towards the end, the pool is called out very specifically as work towards that replacement project. In terms of budgetary impact from an operating budget perspective, because the pool will not be opened for fiscal year 19, we wouldn't expect even if we are able to get financing arranged in quick order, we're gonna have a construction season. So from an operating budget perspective, there's not an impact for the 19 budget. I think where you might see it is if we are looking towards 20, the fiscal year 20 budget, that's where those operating dollars will come back in. If that answers that. Yeah, I guess I would just imagine that, again, some staff time might be involved. I don't know what else, I imagine they would be minimal expenses, but we don't really, it's sort of has been a little bit of a journey to this. Yes, yes. In terms of something reveals an expense that needs to be made, I just would want it to. Be reflected there. That is a goal and a priority for this. So if I can just jump in, so where we did include is on this FY 18 accomplishment slide, which is where we're halfway through, it's the bottom bullet there, so our tangible, what we've committed to thus far with the council's partnership is completing the preliminary engineering phase work, and then that will come to you, and then we will make a decision, which is why it's on the emerging issues slide. We haven't made a decision yet about our commitment to that into beyond preliminary engineering, in terms of a financial commitment, where you will see it, again, in the next month is on the public works presentation side, and I think raised on a huge effort to move the conversation forward. If it moves forward from preliminary engineering into final design, permitting construction, then it really becomes a capital project and kind of shifts over to public works for that duration of construction. I don't think we're gonna ask Ray to manage this. I don't think that would go well for anyone. So it kind of exists in two different worlds right now. So from a planning perspective, with public works, Ray's still very much engaged once we have that kind of committed design that we're all going forward with and moves over to a capital project. I should note there too, I'm gonna snatch that segue to say we did get right before the holiday as promised preliminary architectural drawings and pool design drawings from the engineer. So we are set as staff to review those in the coming week and sort of move to the next phase of that. So we're right on track with Weston and Samson, which is exciting, cool to start to see some real tangible pieces come together there. And we did complete the team attack on the surveying before the snow got down, which was great. So we're in good shape on that preliminary engineering phase. So, yeah. So before I depart from my favorite budget in the slate, are there any kind of further questions on the community center stuff? And again, these numbers are in the general fund, but I just wanted to kind of give a chance to answer any questions that might come. Always come back. And again, these are just some notes here related to the budget itself. We are working, I was just down there this afternoon with Common's Energy, looking at some potential projects there. We are trying to build leases that allow us to kind of grow with the increasing cost of expenses, which is nice. And then again, anticipate our full tenancy for the fiscal year, 19 year. All right. So this is really small, but remember the full document is in here. Yes, yes. So again, in terms of the general fund for us, because we have a lot of different subcategories, we kind of end up landing in two different codes within the budget, which is why there's two different sections. The community services piece up top includes general community services. So that's my salary, a fair as time and effort, and some sort of general supports for the department. The senior center, the library, and then now the community center. And then down below in family and youth programming, that includes recreation. So Alicia and her team, and then children and family programming as well. So there's some staff funding there currently, but also some small supply lines as well within that. So because of the way the budget's broken out, that's why it breaks up into two categories. But again, we kind of view this in totality when we're looking at it as a whole. So again, the primary changes we called out earlier, I think the big piece that didn't get called out earlier that again is a change between the level tax rate and the leadership proposal is the proposed elimination of the circulation assistant at the library. That was done, I think as a lot of those cuts were done with a really sour taste in everybody's mouth, but again in the effort to get back to that level tax budget as part of the process that we go through here, there are a lot of really uncomfortable decisions that were proposed. Clearly by showing that being restored into the leadership proposal, we don't think that it's a smart idea or a good idea, but again in the effort of going through that exercise, that was one cut that was there. So again, we're proposing to restore that as part of the leadership budget, but that's that $10,000 in salary and roughly 1,100 or 1,200 in benefits there. And then down below again, the 2,400 I should point out there in additions is the lease for the electric vehicle. So we're proposing to go from a fleet of four to a fleet of two. So this is one of the four electric vehicles that would come out. And then down below in the additions line, again you'll see where the children and family program manager salary got shifted from the general fund over. That's where there's a pretty significant decrease from fiscal year 18 to 19. So I'm gonna pause there and ask if there are any other pieces that jumped out, specific questions on those items. I also wanna add at this point in the correspondence I sent you over the last week, we did update the kind of add drop list between the level tax rate budget and the leadership budget to better articulate what was being cut from the level services budget. So this is a little hard to read and raise doing good job kind of pulling out those additions and subtractions. But if you want a more comprehensive summary that spreadsheet is also in your inbox. I guess from a narrative perspective, what would you say are the impacts of dropping to two fleet cars instead of four on staffs ability to maintain services? I can speak to our department. I think it is sort of a global question for the city because we each department more or less has one assigned to it. So I can kind of speak to our use. We definitely get quite a bit of use out of it, especially during the summer months when we're doing teen employment. So I think that it's a pretty manageable change, quite honestly. There's often an extra one sitting here that's kind of assigned to city hall. And I do think we've had some challenges with the range on those vehicles being kind of, it's not quite long at all. If you're feeling lucky, you can get to Montpelier, but it's those last mile or two is pretty exciting. And if you can't find an outlet to charge, you can be down there for a while. So they're great for around town. We use them quite a lot to get back and forth. The Burlington, especially for us as a department that's pretty scattered, we're often shuttling stuff around between here and the community center and the senior center. But I think we can go from four to two and be able to continue to serve the needs of our department. Again, I can't speak to what others are needing, but. So I think so just for a little more information, right now the four are more or less assigned, one to fire and code enforcement, one to community services, one to public works and one to city hall, which pretty much becomes myself or community justice. I think our intention is to keep the one assigned to community services and have community services share with the community justice center and then to have the one dedicated to code enforcement. They are, they use it every day, most of the shift. I don't need one, I can walk or use my vehicle to most meetings or share with Rafe when I really need to. And then public works as a whole another fleet of vehicles. So likely that would need some more usage of an existing vehicle in public works, but not necessarily the need to have another additional asset in our fleet. I have a question just about the shifting the child and family program manager to the thrive kit. So the slide says, moving these operational costs of this fund budget, the financial infrastructure is established to support childcare expansion efforts in ministry. Can you just say a little bit more about what that means? Yep, I think that by, yeah, yeah. So I think the leadership budget that we put together is something that we all get around a table and make really hard decisions about. And I think that sometimes that means making decisions that you don't love, but again, we're a team and we're all trying to build a budget for the community that makes sense and that meets your collective needs. So in an ideal world, I think that this does present some challenges, especially as it relates to drawing and reserves. But I also think it's a change we can weather for a period of time. I think that in terms of the second bullet here, what it allows us to do is, I think shift, at least for a short term, the focus of that position more to our fee based childcare programs. I think as I've talked about with you all before, my goals and hopes for that position over time are to have it be more systems level, doing work related to promise communities and those types of community wide efforts. But I think too, there's an opportunity here by focusing a little bit more effort into that fee based program to see some growth there, which could then pay dividends on the back end to allow for future work. So it may be a little bit of a pause button on some of the systems level work, which I still believe is there's a need for. But again, I think in the context of difficult budget conversations, that sometimes means making difficult decisions. So I don't know if I'm feel like I'm- I'm just wondering what the functionality with the differences in that role. And as it shifts over- As it shifts over, is there a difference in what the job looks like? To a degree, I think it would allow for potentially some changing of staffing structures in our summer and after school programs. So right now that person is not on site with as much regularity as they had been as prior to promise communities taking off. So I do think there could be a shift back to having that position more focused in program during open hours. And again, I think there could then be more effort put on recruitment, getting more kids signed up, expansion, the stars work. Obviously, as you saw, that work is happening, but it would allow us, I think, to really clarify focus there for a period of time. Yeah, it's a hard one. Again, I think we all sat around a table and made a decision about a budget proposal that we all looked each other in my eye and agreed with. And so again, we feel like we can make it work. If I can just add one other comment here. I think as we were struggling to really face the reality that we needed to cut positions, that we weren't gonna achieve $350,000 of cutting just through cutting operations, material lines here and there. Yeah, right. And thinking about kind of core government and what our real obligation was to maintain service delivery. I think one of the thoughts is this position really supports, as Ray said, fee-based services, that they're not necessarily doing general-based programming that should be subsidized by the property taxpayers. They are running, for lack of a better word, an enterprise fund program. So as we move more in that direction and build up that program and figure out how we do that best in cooperation with the school district and best in cooperation with the new childcare center, that it made some sense to support that with the revenue streams that are coming in through those service delivery areas. Additionally, with building up of the recreation program manager, the great success of the library to serve young families, thinking about, did we need another kind of general fund-supported manager to build up those systems? Or does that expert professional inform those management partners within community services? It's not as much of a question that I had in regards to some of other cut differences you mentioned specifically in regards to staffing between the leadership proposal and the level tax fund proposal. I think that, I mean, you've shown, I think a lot of us have felt, in what you see around the community, how much you and your staff do with pretty limited resources and how much additional outside resources you leverage to really provide the vibrancy and the programs and opportunities for community members to be connected to new ski, as well as to be connected to each other. And I think that that's a direction that as we talk about our strategic goals, we all see wanting to increase and expand. And I just personally don't feel like staffing cuts are the way we get in there. Yeah. I appreciate the positive feedback. I think I will echo that. I have a really hard working group of people. They make my job quite a bit easier. So. Can I just ask, would this, could you see force, could you foresee pressure on the rates that are currently charged through Thrive? So, yeah, it's a great question. Yeah, yeah, it's a great question. So the way that we have operated with our rates to date is that we've set our costs on the state's subsidy base rate. So whatever the base rate is for a zero star program, whatever that reimbursement is to an individual program based on that child, a fee-paying family is gonna pay exactly that same amount. And that's how we've managed our after-school program. In after-school, one thing that we have done, again, to date is required that if there's a copay, so if your subsidy payment doesn't match the full base rate or the full fee of the program, that there is an expectation that that copay gets paid.  And the reason that we've done that with the after-school program is that it's the duration of the program, the number of weeks, the amount of stopping that goes into it, we just can't afford to not capture that back. Summer, we've done a little differently. We've typically set a cap. And the reason being that we've been really focused on trying to keep as many kids engaged in summer programming as possible. So in past years, the most a family would pay for a child for the summer for up to seven weeks of programming is 470 bucks, I think it was last year, 460, thank you. And again, that was a really conscious decision to keep that price point very low because we found, and especially working with the school, summers are really hard time for families from a childcare perspective. So I do think summer is an area where over time we could look at our fee structure, certainly, we're also in the midst of a pretty heavy reboot, I think probably not in this coming program but the following with the school through the 21 C grant. So that's a grant that jointly funds out of school time programming that is run by the city and by the school. And so that's an area where we've continued to look at ways to be more efficient and more really dovetail programs versus having competitive offerings. And I think we've made some great strides there. So that's another area where I think there may be efficiencies in the future for service delivery on the whole. But it may force us to look at those fees, but I think again, the five years I've been here, hopefully will be a testament to the fact that we're really committed to keeping that cost as low as we possibly can and for families to have as much access as we can. Right, but just so I'm understanding it, we're moving a position that's currently funded by General Fund property tax dollars. Partially. Partially. Yep. So right now we are a third? Third? Third, yeah, third in the general fund. Okay, so it's not currently 100% general fund. So a third of the position has some guaranteed, assuming a budget passes. Yes. Guaranteed revenue. And now that position is going to be funded entirely by revenue that's generated by the programs. Correct, correct. And we'll, I think it's noted later, but if not, I know it's been discussed at points. From a program reserve perspective, there are right now about $100,000 in reserves for that program that we're carrying. So we do have some padding in the short term to kind of bridge that. Obviously, that's not necessarily how we drew up the use of those funds, but I think it does, again, in the context of difficult budget decisions, give us an opportunity to bridge. So we're going to do that with our current enrollment projections and fee structure. We have to use $34,000 in reserves to make that work. Correct. In the out years, it's going to be a question of whether or not we're going to boost enrollment. Ideally enrollment. And or fees. Correct. And or staffing structures. Or readjust staffing structures. Correct. Correct. You know, FY17, it ran a 3,000 deficit, 1,500 NFY17 actuals. So we've... Yeah, and 717 is definitely an anomaly of a year in terms of just with transitions of interim. We've kept enrollment intentionally low because we had a new director there. So we left, you know, in theory left money on the table that year by design because we didn't want program quality to suffer under what was, you know, since a temporary director. I mean, those reserves were built by this program being in the black. Correct. Yeah. 17.  And we've made some really intentional investments in staff, Kirstie's position being won, getting salaries up to really intentionally try to move program quality forward. I think that's being reflected in the way the STARS system is responding. But again, we're not, we're running a much tighter margin now, but that's by design. We're trying to make investments in the program instead of just continuing to pile on a nest egg. Yeah. I mean, I think... But your questions are... Both start to build up the reserve, but... Right. And we... Right. Yep. I think that's, that certainly is, to have that additional quality boost. I mean, that certainly is from a, again, not just the number of services being provided, but the quality of the program being provided. I mean, that's key to this whole conversation and really impressive way to go. It's a huge benefit to families because subsidy increases the higher quality of the program. Which in turn leads to more resources for the program to being of quality. So it is a real benefit to residents to see that moving, so... It would be good, you know, should this budget pass like this, it'd be good to kind of maybe do a special check-in on this one, given the change. Yep. I gotta be honest, I can't remember how the revenue roller coaster with Thrive works from a budgetary standpoint if there's a natural point at which to check-in during the fiscal year that makes good sense. Probably towards the end of the school year. Summer is funky because we get, and Angela does a great job of booking it forward, but we'll see a lot of families paying up front for summer. So until Angela's able to make those adjustments, it does start to get funky come May. Probably is when we start to see summer really rolling in. So yeah, maybe like late March, early April timeframe, if that timeframe would work. Yeah, that'd be great. Just to check in to see how it's going. All signs so far this year point to a successful year, we've had good enrollment so far. Again, we've had some really positive conversations about the next summer's program, which I think are encouraging. Already starting about recruitment and marketing for summer. So I think we're positioning ourselves to be successful in getting that enrollment up. So fingers crossed. Yeah, well, I'll save my speech until the end. All right, so anything else on the general fund before we dive into the program budgets? I think as you're seeing these tend to interweave. So as much as I know this is a new process for you all to see all these budgets at once, it's actually for us a pretty, it's kind of nice cause we used to have most of this work done by this point anyway, and then I'd have to sit on it until May. So but because those programs are so intertwined for us, it's really, we really had to have these pretty locked down. So, so I'm gonna jump into wrecking parks first. And in our accounting system, this is dubbed community services. So hence the quotes, but this is our wrecking parks budget. Again, I think the primary changes here are we're anticipating continued growth from a financial perspective. So, you know, with Alicia here, we're starting to see a lot more action from events programs, fee-based programs, you know, we've got our brochure out now that's I think helping to generate buzz. We were just looking at the art and nature program today, Paul, Sarn and I, which, while a free program had something like 683 interested people and already 25 folks signed up and has hit like 25,000 eyeballs on Facebook. So it's really fascinating to see the ways that I think some of that work that happened around Halloween and Winooski Wednesdays and certainly Paul's work is giving us a platform to get out there. So that's been really exciting. I think the challenge for us is now making that translate to fee-based programming, but it's a challenge we're up for and we're gonna continue to push. And again, I think, you know, I reflect back to a point Eric made, I think long ago in a conversation here of how do we do that without jeopardizing participation and access? I think that's really critical. And that's, it's a balancing act for sure. So, and then from a, let's see, this other line here, I believe is our grants. And this is again, where I'm looking into the details where Angela can help me out from the back. On the revenue side, the other long donations, yeah, donations and grants. So not a huge anticipation of growth there, but. And then the expense side, you know, really trying to build a budget here that balances out to zero or better is the goal with these program funds for us. Certainly this is a budget that's been in the red the last few years, but I do think it's worth noting that this is a budget that's also paying rent for space. So that rent, that number and that negative number at the bottom have been pretty close. And I think over time, we're gonna start to see that curve turn up and get this back into the black here. But it's a significant impact on a budget of 20,000 to have 6,500 of that go towards rent. So it is what it is because of the way that the budgets are structured, but I think worth note in the context of this budget here. And I'm gonna jump ahead to the detail pieces, but we can kind of flip back and forth between the spreadsheet and this. But again, some notable pieces. So this was Alicia's first full year with us, which is hard to believe, but it's only been a year. So I think in that time, a lot's been accomplished again, some really successful events. And I also think worth remembering that a huge amount of her time last winter and early spring were committed to a pretty significant cleanup in Memorial Park where we dragged out a bunch of hypodermics and trash. And it was a huge lift to get that work done. And she put a ton of time into that. And then looking ahead, as I mentioned earlier, I think trying to get our program offerings to be more reflective of our demographics. So in particular, the young adults and young families that we see here for whom we don't have a lot of programs currently. As mentioned, partnership with the school being really important. Some growth, programing growth. Four is in essence a quarterly ad. So there's not a lot of magic to that. I think it's a reasonable expectation given that we have a staff of one full-time and one AmeriCorps member that one new program a quarter for the coming year is doable. I think we wanna set achievable goals for ourselves here. Some revenue growth goals here again, 10% minimally. And then also the work around parks and open space planning, which I think is gonna be pretty consuming once we really sink our teeth in. So I'm gonna pause on this one and see if there's any detail questions. As you've looked at those revenue projections do we feel like the fee schedule that was passed supports or are we already looking back at the fee schedule and saying shocks? No, I mean, I haven't once stayed up late thinking about whether we should charge 50 cents instead of a quarter for a candy bar at the senior center. You know, I think what's difficult about the way that that fees ordinances obviously is that it's gonna require us to come back again with regular ordinances or regular resolution, sorry. So I do think that in the coming kind of program offering slate, the spring slate, you're gonna see us back again, probably February timeframe, late January, early February to do another resolution for spring programs and there'll be more fee based programs there. So yeah, I mean, I think it looked lean but I think too important to remember like Thrive is codified elsewhere. There's a lot of standing fees that are sort of set already. So that's just the kind of moving pieces, if you will, of the fees. And again, it's tough. We really try to walk that line of access and equity and not pricing people out of programs. And that's, anything else on REC before we move on? No? Okay. Yeah, please, if I'm forgetting anything, try not. Senior center, so this again is a, so with the senior center operations, primarily the general fund supports staff time and a very small amount of programming supplies, kind of office supplies and such. And then the lion share of the programmatic operations happen out of this special revenue fund. So here you'll see there's not any staff or benefit time included. All the expenses relate to programming provision. You're gonna see growth both on the revenue and on the expense side. And that is based on what we've seen this year in really strong participation, in particular in our bingo program, which has had very high usership and that comes along with a revenue stream. So those two growth curves go together. And then based on some feedback, we got through a senior survey that we did back in the fall and also through the guidance of our senior committee. We're committed to offering throughout the course of the year three, we're calling them socials, likely kind of a holiday timeframe, spring time, and then a summer barbecue type deal where we kind of pull out all the stops and really make it a high quality event, have minimal expectation for revenue back. Certainly the donation or the tip jar will be out, but really want to make it an open invitation to the community, senior community to come in, experience the space, see what we do, and hopefully get them hooked for future programming. This is another area where I do think at some point we will start to see the incorporation of more fee-based work. Traditionally most of the programming bingo aside here has been free. We do have a suggested donation with our meals and see good usership of that. We have most people paying their way when they come in for those congregate meals. But I do think we'll start to incorporate more fee-based programming here that if people do wanna participate, there'll be a cost associated with sort of make and takes is one thing we've heard. So kind of come in and be taught how to do a craft or paint or whatever, and then you get to take the supplies home, but those are gonna come with a cost. So yeah, and other than those changes, not a lot different here. This is a budget that's performed really well for us the last number of years. I mentioned in here from a budgetary perspective, last year's number is in the negative because of the investment in a dish sanitizer given the volume of big events that we've been having down there. So that was again, an intentional move. We came here, used reserves and that's why that number is downward is, but otherwise it would have been in the black again. So yeah, I think I've covered most, I'm just scanning through, but I think I've covered most of these pieces here. We have some exterior repairs set aside in the CIP. We do have some funds for the building in the CIP and I don't, admittedly again, back to my not being handy. I don't know what those costs are gonna look like, but that's a springtime effort for us to sort of price those out and see do we have enough left or we're gonna have to tap into some other reserves or potentially into the reserves in this budget as well. But I don't like painting and there's some rot and some of the soffits and so we're well aware. We did just make a big investment down there in the glass sliders. So that was, I think roughly a $15,000 investment in the building that's made a huge difference from a comfort level perspective. So that was sort of phase one and now we're gonna go back and deal with the sort of more cosmetic pieces. So it's 12,500 we're carrying right now in the CIP which was informed by public works and what they thought for the shiplap replacement and some of the other energy efficiency projects down there. Great. And that's springtime? I mean, at this point, yeah, cause it's mostly painting and carpentry and I don't... It may surprise you, but there's been some... I'm not at all surprised. No, what I love about this senior center is there's a huge program in that building and they do what they should be doing which is bug you, bug me, really like make their needs known and that's why stuff's getting done down there. So I would not say springtime, I would say summer for this work because this is the FY19 budget so we won't have access to these funds until July. Sure. So thank you. Thank you. Public, promise public. Bid it in the spring. Cool. Thank you. So tip of the cap to Barb and Tree who have been doing great work down there. They've really... That program has turned way around in the last few years with the Janine's work, Megan before Janine, just some really great things up in there. All right. So meals, this is one where I feel like at this point my soundbite is pretty consistent from year to year. This is a budget that annually ends up right around a thousand bucks in the black. This is a thousand bucks I spend every time. We, based on the reimbursement rates, even if we had some sort of meal count wizard who could tell me exactly how many children were gonna come to any given point at any given time to pick up meals, we would still be looking at a money losing operation here because the cost of the meals is above what our reimbursement from the state is. So as I mentioned in the notes in the next slide, every meal that we put out the door is, you know, we're investing 50 cents in. And that's not including, you know, the challenge of predicting again on a sunny summer afternoon, is it gonna be 20 kids through the door or 50 or five? So there's certainly a bit of a guesswork that goes into our meal counts. But, you know, again, this is a program that we feel pretty strongly about we're doing more work over time to incorporate our meals into different areas where folks are already coming. So I think a great example of that is the library last summer being our meal site. We saw a huge participation in the summer for our meals program, which we'd never seen before. And that was simply putting a refrigerator behind the sort desk and doing bag lunches instead of hot meals. And that change alone was huge. So, and then Wunewski Wednesdays was another great example. You know, we were given out consistently 30 meals at those to kids for free, which is good. I think it really brings folks out. I think it's a nice service to have. And again, I think it's meeting a need. So, I don't know what else to say really about that one. It's kind of a little bit of a, is what it is situation, right? Thrive. So again, as we mentioned earlier, the primary change here being the shift of that portion of the manager's staff time over. Again, we, and I've got the details here if people want to know specifically where these revenue and expense numbers came from. But these are not just darts at the wall we go through and do look at number of weeks, number of kids, number of hours required for staffing. So we've got it, you know, I think to the degree budgeting can be accurate. I think we do a pretty good job here of making predictions and being as close as we can. So, yeah. And again, this is a budget that the primary deficit that you see here at the bottom is related to that shift. So I think we've discussed that quite a lot to date here tonight, but happy to answer other questions or think more about this. So we typically have, we typically start the year and catch up over time because our after school revenues pile up pretty fast. Summer tends to be a money loser for us at the moment. So we kind of typically subsidize summer with after school. So we'll start. So at the point that these projections were made which was back in September, we're sort of starting at a pretty weak spot in our budget over the course of the year but that catches up over time typically by the end of the year. So again, that projection number is based on what was happening on September 8th. So at that point, we were down a couple thousand bucks but you project that out over a year and it looks terrible, but again, summer tends to, or after school tends to be a money positive program for us, so that catches up over time. And I don't know offhand where we are with that right now but I think we're trending in good shape at this point. We're just basically budgeting to spend about 10% of our... Yeah. Yep. So what I'm hearing though is that recruitment for the program stalled out a bit during the transition. Correct. And we're back up. Yep, yep. And already in the fall, we've seen our enrollment numbers back up to pretty much full enrollment. So last after school, we were keeping it down in the low to mid 20s if I'm remembering correctly and we're up at 40 now. So again, those economies of scale with five, eight, 10 kids in the after school program can really change that budget. And yeah, and that was a choice we made by design last year to kind of maintain quality, not overburden staff who are dealing with a lot of transition. So I do think 17 was an anomaly in a lot of ways. And then I jumped to the bullets here and just make sure I haven't missed anything here. Again, talked about enrollment. Again, as mentioned earlier, we've made some pretty significant investments in staff, training time, salaries, the addition of a full-time year-round director that's led to quality outcomes. And then again, the piece looking forward, I think is the duality of kind of in the very short term, getting this childcare piece landed and locked down and launched for the early part of fiscal year 19 and then kind of turning a focus back towards after school to reflect the change in the budget. So community gardens, I think this is another, while small, really nice success story for us from a budgetary perspective. This is a program that I'm gonna go way back here, but that Alina put a ton of time into at one of our VISTAs many years back here and really helped us to build this into a self-sustaining budget. So this is one where again, our annual costs and expenses are just about the same. We've been able over time to build up a small nest egg specific to this program, which allows us when it's time to replace a raised bed or buy a load of compost or when the weedwacker breaks or whatever we've got some padding to go back to. So this has been a great program for us the last few years. As you'll see in the next slide, we are looking at the coming year to shifting the management of this program into REC. We're pretty strongly considering instead of having two very part-time garden managers having one less part-time garden manager who manages all the gardens. We've had two different folks have one at Landry and one at OCC the last couple of years. And I think what we're finding is as the program grows, having one consistent person who can kind of be interfacing with gardeners, being a little bit more responsible would be a good move. So, and then that would give Alicia just one point of contact instead of two to manage during the summer months. We do have an intern coming on this spring semester from UVM who's fantastic, really excited about that. That'll definitely add some capacity. Zach, our AmeriCorps member as a gardener, I've worked at Vermont Youth Conservation Corps. So some good in-house chops I think to have a really successful 2018 season. And then we're also looking at the possibility of some new plots down by the senior center. So we're working with the diocese who owns that property and who we lease it from to explore what that would look like for the spring, but could be a really exciting addition. And that we've grown this program every year in the last six years now that I've been here. We've added between five and 20 plots every year. And every year I'm convinced we've hit the threshold and every year there's a wait list. It's cool. And then last but not least, Library Special Revenue Fund. So this is largely a fund that we use when donations or grants come through. At the time that we're building this budget, there's not grants that we have specifically identified through the library to look at in fiscal year 19. I do expect we'll see some grants that come out in the next couple months that we will want to go after. And so again, the nice thing there is that it's a net zero impact on the budget. It's the money and it's the money spent. So at that point, we would bring those back to you guys for consideration. It's kind of one at a time or based on the size of the grant through the city manager, but at the time we built this, there wasn't any specific donation piece. Should mention too, just in case there's confusion largely in the crowd, but the Friends of the Wuniski Library, which is a relatively new construct in the city is actually a separate 501C3. They're standalone non-profits, so they do fundraising on behalf of the library and their sole purpose is the betterment and support of the Wuniski Library, but that money flows through a different account. That's not ours, that's theirs. So again, it supports the program, but isn't something that we're managing or accounting for. And then we've talked about the reserves quite a bit over the course of the evening, but here is kind of a snapshot of our program reserves overall. Again, you can see that trend over time, where that is, so. And the big drop there from 15 to 16 is reflective largely of that investment in the Thrive program. So the addition of Kirchi's position and some investments in staffing that happened between those two years. So that's where you can see there's a pretty big dip in the reserve. And then last but not least here, the sort of things we're looking at and keeping an eye on, certainly Myers-Pool replacement next steps, Nicole to your point and question there. I think as we come out of this preliminary engineering process and have some decision points with council about what we're gonna move forward with, I think then work plans and kind of workloads will be adjusted accordingly. Lot of work kind of getting this childcare center off the ground, whether it's us, somebody else operating, I think either way we wanna be very much hands-on and involved and supportive and see this thing thrive and be successful. So expect a lot of work in the coming year around that. Getting OCC kind of up to snuff, again, energy efficiency projects, landing new tenants, kind of continued work around that budget and operation of that building. Lots of planning work coming up, ongoing partnership with the school. And then, I think too, I mentioned staffing down here, I think to Eric's point earlier, we're trying to do a lot with not a ton of humans. So our, you know, REC is I think the best example where our REC department is one person in a VISTA and you look across the river and that's like, you know, that's less people than manage a parking booth at the waterfront for Burlington REC in a year probably. So obviously apples and oranges to a point, but I just think we are really trying to deliver with the resources that we've got. And I think too, you know, worth mentioning here in our world, the fiscal landscape at the federal level and how that trickles down from a grant funding perspective is absolutely something we're keeping an eye on. Obviously those are things that are largely out of our control, but that's an area where I keep a really close watch on what's going on at the federal level because that does often trickle down an impact state funding and foundation funding. So, so yeah, that's us. So what I miss, what questions can I do to help kind of flesh this out for you all? For starters, going back to the pride, I hope that Angela felt today about the audit. I hope you feel really proud about what's happened in six years. I mean, you were really given pretty much a total rebuild rehab gig and reconstruction of something that never really existed in a sustainable way in the city and have just done a tremendous job providing programming across generations, across cultures and reaching people who live in the city regardless of what their financial capacity is, what language they speak, or what their age is. It's really, really, really impressive. And from a city standpoint, I know that it's the investments not where it should be, but I am proud that we have taken consistent steps to try to build this capacity. But I think what we're seeing and finding is that the response to this type of programming is just overwhelmingly positive. And people wanna live in a community where there's cool stuff going on and you guys have done a great job of being shepherds of that and providing opportunities, like I said, across our entire demographic. So I hope you feel really proud of that work. And I know you've done a tremendous amount with half of the programming being paid for from outside sources or everything. And it's really, really exciting to have all you guys here and the professional staff and the way that you handle your programming. And a lot of times we have a tendency to create positions and not necessarily provide a programming budget. And that's something we know that's really difficult to be handed the keys to a department that then doesn't have an operational budget and said, oh, yeah, go ahead and you know, that happens.  It's just, I don't think that there's an area we could point to in the city to say that it's grown like it has in the last six years, the community services. So way to go. Yeah, and just to echo, this team is top notch. None of those successes happened without the people working in that department, period. And so, you know, I think for people at home too, it can be easy for us to look at something like, and this isn't to, it's like you said, apples and oranges, but it's easy to overlook the financial impact that the sense of wellbeing people have living in a community has towards our tax base and towards people wanting to live here and be here. It's extremely important. And we probably don't talk about that aspect of its value enough. So yeah, other questions, comments or things is what we'll talk about in terms of the budget. I appreciate the thoughtfulness and the hard work that goes into making difficult decisions and having those discussions. And I recognize it's not a pleasant exercise to go through, and I think it demonstrates, you know, a tremendous amount of teamwork and collaboration, and I appreciate the work that goes into having that conversation. And I wanna echo what Seth said about all your hard work, all everybody. Huge assets of the city. Good presentation. And well done. Good. Any questions, comments, concerns from the public? You are absolutely public. You're public. Before we move off the budget conversation, I did wanna just make sure you saw in your communication last week that you do have now all the line item budgets with the percent change, the staff allocations spreadsheet and an update of that budget ad cuts list. So if you have any questions about any of those materials, I wanna talk about them now. We certainly can, or at any time during the next series of budget hearings. Thank you very much for those. Yeah, that was great. Thank you. Thanks for responding to those. I don't know if all of the requests were well articulated, but you did a better job of putting the information together than you did in that. Yeah. You got some stuff. Can I have the annual worksheet? Yeah. Okay. So seeing and hearing none, I think we'll consider that close. Thank you very much, Ray. Thank you very much community services folks. Okay. And with that, we have two items on tonight's agenda as executive session. The first is in regards to pending litigation, which the public, which the city is a party and the negotiation of potential future of real estate purchase or lease options related to the tax increment financing district that pursuing in a public setting would put the city a significant disadvantage. And then we also have a staffing issue to address an executive session in regards to employment of a public officer in regards to the discussion about the city manager's contract. Both of these sessions will take place, and an executive session will come out of executive session only to adjourn. There will not be any votes on any action taken this evening. So with a motion to enter an executive session, we will close the public portion of tonight's meeting and only return to adjourn. Any questions or comments? And is there anybody else you would like us to bring in the executive session to vote in? Just you, okay. Okay, so with that, I would entertain a motion to enter into executive session to address the two items listed on tonight's agenda. So moved with Jesse Baker attending with us. Motion by Nicole. Second. By Eric, any further discussion? Hearing none, all those favor, please say aye. And those opposed, motion carries. Councilman, I'll enter in the executive session.


Cyfweld eich ffattu ar y morhoedd diwrnod hynny, yn rhoi ar hyn? Nid yn ymddangos i'n gweithio. Rhyw gyd yn meddwl ei pelwyddiad yn ychydig. Mae'r ffordd o'n ymddangos i'r ffordd o'r gweithio. Felly mae'n ffordd o'n gweithio eich ffordd o'r gweithio, mae'n ffordd o'r gweithio i'n gweithio. Mae'n ffordd o'r gweithio i'n gweithio. Mae'n ffordd o'n gweithio i'r gweithio i'r ffordd o'n gweithio. Ie fan, Ie fan dri ond. Felly yn gwnes â'r falch ac yn mynd o'r nhw yn ymwneud a chel chi'n bod yn ysgrifennu'r geldyddol ar gyfansar. A dyna'r yma yng ngael yn ymgechau'r rhaglen ychydig a'r gyfnod ei hwn yn ei ddweud. yn fwyf yn y ffór ac mae hefyd yn ei ddweud o'r llaw. Os y gallwn i'r dweud, rydyn ni'n dweud o'r gondol ac fydd yn rhaid i'n dweud, gyda ni yn ysgrifennu a ddweud ar gyfer Ie. 3-0 was the correct goal line today, we didn't create enough and allowed them too many opportunities with the amount of chances they had, I think they scored with almost every attempt they had on goal, so it tells you where not anywhere near we needed to be today. Can you put your finger on why, because I think to a certain extent you also from a performance point of view you couldn't really see that coming tomorrow? Normal can't, we'll have to look at it again and see what elements of our play that compromised us. I would imagine there would be quite a few factors in that and there would be quite some lists so we're going to have to go through it, we're going to have to look at what we've done and what we haven't done more importantly and then base our work next week on getting that right. The first goal in the game was always going to be important but I guess the reaction to that from our point of view as well we've seen before coming back from behind and showing the character and it didn't quite seem to be there to do. No, no, we're very flat, very difficult to team lacked energy I felt today, they needed to get around the pitch with more enthusiasm, more energy. We just looked team, as I said, just flat in terms of our performance and our injury levels for whatever reason so we need better performances in terms of the energy that we bring to us that day after 3 o'clock you've got to be ready to work and ready to go. It didn't look like we were today and as a consequence we've got been. After a couple of weeks of Saturday Tuesday to start the season to have a week now particularly after a day like today will that help to have a bit of a reset in a week on the training pitch ourselves? Yes, it's been a busy week, a busy weeks rather Saturday Tuesday does have an impact but we're not using that as an excuse because we should have been ready to go, we had 3-4 days leading into this game so no reason whatsoever that we shouldn't have been ready. But whether or not the first goal just knocked the stuffing out of us and at that point didn't feel that we could get back on level terms, I don't know. We'll have to pick the bones out of it and see where we go with it. I guess if we needed an excuse to perform next week at a home game back at the Baller Parade to look forward to against the crew? Oh yeah, I mean everybody knows it will be markedly better next week but it's the here and now I'm more concerned about at the moment and we need to be a lot better than we were today next week.


Okay Okay, so what are you working on this week? Well, I made a bunch of breakouts like for example that Quad microphone ADC is talking about they can do PDM or analog mics It was in the echo dot I felt like that's a pretty cool chip and like it does something that is pretty tough to find so I made a quick break out for it It's an I2s Stereo with TDM time division Multiplexed and you can see the top the four microphones and bias and then while I was doing that I was like wait, there's another chip the PCM 1840 we talked about this on the great search It's almost the same idea except it's only analog microphone in so it can work with Electret or Analog mems mics and it doesn't require any I2C configuration. It's configured solely by bootstrapped GPA with the bottom there the FMT and MSZ and MD zero, you know, it seems like there's a lot of them But there's actually not that many configurations. It's there's only a couple that makes sense for you to use And then it just pipes out again quad I2s with time vision multiplexed stereo I2s so I think it's only neat want to put these together, but You know once I saw that echo dot tear down I thought this would be great for people doing projects where you want to do like voice Localization because if you have four microphones and you have I2s, which is like, you know, it's it's because it's time vision multiplexed You're gonna get all the audio samples Like synchronized together you can actually do cool stuff or you can detect where audio is coming from and I don't even think You need to do that much hardcore DSP work to it. So I don't see what else you're working on This I found I don't even know how the heck I saw this chip. Maybe maybe it was on ice chips or something But this is the DS 4420 and this is a I think it was because I was looking at like I Was looking at like audio amplifier DACs controllers, whatever. So this is a Class AB amplifier, but the volume is controlled by I2s, which I thought was just kind of cute like you can Have audio in Mono it's it's differential, but it's mono differential output and you can just really quickly change the audio volume So I think there's gonna be a handy for people like I don't want to have a potential But I want to change the audio on something without Okay, and then the other thing we did was lots of time lapses We've been doing time lapses as we've been doing them. Yeah above the workshop desk of Lady Aida So check those out. You'll see some things. Those are the top secrets and again tomorrow We'll have a special edition of new products and that's up secret the week


Our first speaker today is one of our panelists, Christian. So thank you, Karla, for a very thorough introduction of him. He is from the University of Bern and he will be discussing protocols with asymmetric trust, Christian. Okay, this is about protocols with asymmetric trust. And of course we think about consensus protocols here, like the whole workshop through the two days. And so before we can talk about asymmetric trust, let's talk about this symmetric trust. This is probably what everybody here thinks about trust is. Or what we are using today, which is that we have a number of nodes and the nodes are just defined by the numbers. They're not uniquely distinguishable. They are indistinguishable. They have the same features with respect to failing in a protocol. So we trust only that a certain subset of them of a given size of node more than a given size is failing. And in the BFT, how we call this Byzantine consensus world, we need n-degree and 3F, but the most important case is actually the canonical case would be a strict majority n-degree and 2F. And what I'm gonna mostly talk about the Byzantine case here is also the way how we develop this. How large this threshold is, it can be n-degree and 3F, n-degree and 5F or something like this depends on various efforts, but we know a lot of protocols like this. Just to give you a little background here, I mean, it might be people have never seen this here. If you read and write to the storage location, this is like a heart of all those problems we are talking about here. There is this thing called a register that also occurs in consensus protocols implicitly where participants can write or like a single participant can write, but if the value is stored in a distributed, the value is stored on all n-nodes in the system and there's just one note or process here you can write and just one who can read, but there has to be certain consistency and lifeness conditions satisfied, namely that if something has been written, only that is read later. And so the typical protocol that you also know from Byzantine, with the Byzantine emulation of such a abstraction is that you add signatures, you let the processes sign what they are writing and there's only one writer, you keep logical timestamps because otherwise a faulty storage node can answer to you with an outdated value and the writer increments this timestamp continuously. So, and then there is this crucial property here that we need the Byzantine quorum of replicas to acknowledge this. Write operation, we also need the Byzantine quorum of replicas or nodes to acknowledge a read operation and then we are safe. And so we have here an algorithm, I only want to look at this part here, it will come up later and I only want to have you look at this part here because you've seen this in the textbooks. And so there are tons of protocols in this model and we call them consistent reliable broadcast and state machine replication blockchain protocols as well as long as they are permissioned in any form or even any related form. The important thing about this model here about what I call the threshold BFT model here is that all nodes are trusted equally and all nodes trust equally. So all nodes share the same trust assumption that their subjective, their thing, their trust, how they believe the others behave is not subjective and in reverse because trust is only by the number, this first assumption here holds, this first conclusion holds that the trust placed on them is equal. We can generalize this, this has been done a long time ago, namely that they take the view that every node is special. Yeah, why should one node here fail as often as the other node? Why should we trust this node more than the other node? And this is indeed the picture that I show you here on the right, where we could say of these six nodes, remember before there were seven, of these six nodes, there are two groups, the XYZ group and the PQR group on the lower half. This is the important systems here is what formalizes this idea, namely that we specify a so-called fail-prone system, Mark can write a bit that in 98 and from this we can enumerate here all the sets of nodes that may fail together and we as a complement get out the sets that we can use as quarrels. And then we trust those for decisions in the protocols. And formally we can define this mathematically in quorum system has then these properties, namely that is a consistency property and an availability property where every two quorums must overlap in at least one correct process because we now have this system or this collection of fail-prone sets and the intersection of any two so-called quorums must contain at least a subset that contains at least more than strictly more than something that could fail and availability and everything must find a quorum around. And I say that not much research has gone into this and we're already at the next step but this is also an interesting thing that an interesting concept that we've just started to look at also in our research on special crypto, this generalized BFT model where not all nodes are trusted the same but the nodes trust equally. Everybody shares the same trust system. So what are asymmetric quorums then? How do we define asymmetric trust? So let's proceed to this. This goes back to saying why should I believe that this node is more trustworthy than another node and that is basically giving the participants a very human feature, a very human or also something that people like to do and they need to trust in a way that they like. Because how can you debate about taste? Yeah, you can't. So yeah, do you like it or you don't like it? Some people like this and some people like others. But there are definitely factors that influence how people trust and that should also be used in a protocol settings where it's not people, but in order to build systems with trust, we need to express something of that in protocols as well. So let's give each participant in the network the ability to express its own trust assumption. Here's a subjective trust assumption. This node down here, P, it trust itself that it never fails. There are neighbors that it trusts more, namely the Q and R node. Oops, I jumped because they are close to it. And then there are the remote nodes up here X, Y and Z and it trusts them less. So it trusts them only in the form that any out two after out of these three might fail because they are far away and those that are far away usually don't trust them so well. And so we have another, this is actually a fail-prone system, default assumption of this node P and the idea behind the asymmetric trust is now that every node can express its own trust assumption like this. And if they all are compatible with each other in a certain way, then they have a Byzantine quantum system that is asymmetric. So every node would trust differently and nodes are trusted differently especially. This is not a new idea in blockchain systems because Ripple and Stellar have pioneered these ideas. Ripple certainly with their UNL idea with their unique node list where it's just a list of nodes that I happen to know and trust. It's definitely the case that Ripple intended to achieve some kind of PFD consensus. It's also become understood meanwhile that it doesn't in a certain ways. We've also looked into this just recently with some of my team here in Durham and Stellar is also a slightly different formalization of some related ideas, but it doesn't answer the challenge of how to take quantum systems into the asymmetric world. So here's an example of how this could look like in all of the worlds we've just shown. You'd have a specification that says there are at the top level like five nodes that have equal weight, but two of them, the ones more to the right here, they would be composed through different ways. And this is a very specific hierarchical decomposition. That's the one that's actually used in Stellar blockchain from their config file. But in general, we would be like, so we would like to be even more general in this side. We were coming now to the formalization of Byzantine quantum systems that we put out some two years ago, which is a fail-prone system for each participant. And then by an array of such fail-prone systems here, we can define a array of quantum systems. So each participant has its own specific quantum system. PI has its quantum system, PQI. And the consistency and availability conditions here I'm not gonna read them for you, but you should read them in the paper or at least here later. Say that whenever two of them interact and make the decisions, there is at least one correct guy behind the columns there. And with these, we can also generalize the corresponding existence conditions for the Byzantine columns. These are the so-called Q3 properties to the B3 property for which they'll tell us when such a quantum system exists. And then the example before if every participant has its own subjective trust assumption like this will actually give you a estimated quorum system if we just rotate this view circularly around the circle. But I wanna talk about the change, the protocols that this implies, namely the stuff colored in blue here is what we have in the normal protocol will simply turn into reformulations that you don't count messages, but you count whether you have enough of your friends telling you what is okay. For the register implication. Last but not least, so we can implement many different protocols with this method. We can implement consensus also randomized consensus. We have also a recent paper out. And last but not least, what I wanted to mention here is how do we compose such trust assumptions? This is a new field we've started to look into also suppose that we have two quorum systems, two groups with specific trust assumptions. How would they be able to merge or compose the trust assumptions automatically such that another quorum system results from this? And in a way, through an algorithm, we can do this for traditional generic and symmetric quorum systems and also for asymmetric presenting quorum systems. The references again here on the slide and also on our website because I think my time is almost up. So I wanted to give you the summary of the asymmetric trust model, which is now all nodes are trusted differently. And this is because all nodes trust differently. The underlying reason is that you cannot argue about taste. That's the translation of this ancient saying here because it trusts taste is inherently subjective and so is not trust. So thank you for the attention and I'm looking forward to the questions in the discussion section.