We'll call this meeting order so we can get started. Okay, so the first thing is to review and approve the agenda. And I think as of this moment, I don't think there are any changes that we need for the agenda. Does anyone have any information different than that? Okay, great. So we'll consider the agenda approved. On to general business and appearances. This is an opportunity for any member of the public to address the council on a topic that is otherwise not on our agenda tonight. And if you have something to say, and this is true generally sort of later on, if you have a comment, if you would say your name, where you live, and try to keep your comments to about two minutes would be great. So any general business and appearances? Yes. Any comments from the public? Welcome. Good evening. Laura Rose Prospect Street. Can you speak in the microphone? Certainly. Laura Rose Prospect Street. It's really concerning item 12 not being a special election and why it is an appointment discussion because it is a vacancy. So if you have a comment on that particular item, then we would ask that you would save your comments to that time. My question is why it's not like Barry where they had a vacancy and they held a special election so that, for example, the third district could vote. It's the way our Charter is written. Barry's Charter is different. Barry's Charter calls for caucus of the district, ours calls for appointment until, so there will be a one year election in March. The rest of the term will be filled in March by a special election. This appointment is only from now till March. And I'm just going to caution, you know, making a lot of executive decisions in private chambers in the meantime because I don't feel that there's a proper representation and that there could be potentially a hostile work environment for council members that don't agree. So just the whole trend here is concerning and that's my comment. Good, thank you. Any other comments or statements from the public on items that are not on our agenda? Oh, yes. Oh, sorry. Yes, go ahead. I have a new announcement really more than a comment. We just started a brand new program to recognize employees that sort of go above and beyond. And we have a, there's only a small little $50 bonus that goes with it, but it's really the recognition. And this is nominated by fellow employees and then we select and this is the first time we've done this. We'll be doing it monthly. And our first recipient is Lieutenant Doug Jasmine from the fire department. And we had five nominees, which was great. So fellow employees nominated five different people, but Doug had done an awful lot of work. We have to buy new power stretchers for our ambulance, which the kind that lift up and I'm sure those guys can describe them better than I can. They're going to be mandatory next year. And so Doug got ahead of the game and he found a way to save us $34,000 on the stretchers that we're going to need to buy. It would have been a $93,000 purchase, so we saved us 37%. So as I said, we had great nominations, but that was our team's choice of Doug. So we'd like to recognize Lieutenant Doug Jasmine as our above and beyond employee recognition winner first one. And thank you for your work. And he's an above and beyond kind of guy all the time anyway. But this was this particular, I don't know if the chief or Doug wants to say anything. Can we describe what it is you actually bought better than I did? Yeah, well, no, I'll let Doug describe that. But what I will like to say is Doug's one of our lieutenants. And along with his normal duties of going out on the ambulance and fire, he's an operations officer. So in that role, he takes care of ordering all our supplies. He does our building maintenance, our vehicle maintenance. And yes, he saved us a ton of money on these stretchers. But he does that routinely day in and day out, repairs to vehicles that normally would have to be sent out. Doug fixes, repairs to the building where we would have to hire an electrician or a plumber or something. Doug makes those repairs. So he probably saves us that much every year just on the work he does on the vehicles and around the building. So along with this, I also want to congratulate Doug for, you know, he definitely is above and beyond an employee. So to give you an idea of what I saved everybody, the power load, power stretcher system allows us as an ambulance personnel to pick up 800 pounds. Now, no one patients 800 pounds, right? Some of them are close to 400 and it takes up to four of us to lift that person up on an ambulance cot, put them in the back of the current ambulances. Where this system, it's all battery operated.  And then the system which sits in the back of the ambulance comes out and lifts the stretcher for us. And it's rated for like 900 pounds. It will pick it up and we just push you in. This is going to reduce the amount of back injuries by lifting heavy patients. And this system will be able to go from ambulance to ambulance and ambulance to ambulance for as long as you guys here have an ambulance service. It's transferable. And it will not cost the city any money to move it. Normally, one system is close, just the load system, it's close to $65,000. By transferring it automatically, you're going to save every year because it's going to go up like 30% every year on cost. So when you buy a new ambulance, you have to buy a new system. Now you won't have to. So we're hoping this is going to reduce all the injuries and cut down on the workman's comp claims. Yeah, all right. Thank you so much Doug. And I'm so glad that we have this program in the city now. I think this is a great start. Thank you. Congratulations. Well, I'd like to give a tip of the cap to Cameron Needemeyer, an assistant manager who thought this up and championed it. All right. Any further items for discussion for general business and appearances? Okay. All right. So moving on, we have the consideration of the consent agenda. Is there a motion? Move the consent agenda. Move the world record short consent agenda. Second. Further discussion? All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Just dive in for a sec. Something that's going to be passed around with it is just another sheet on something you've approved October 30th. I guess there were two copies of the same sheet or something. It was a grant resolution, so it just needs to be signed again. And if you wonder what the heck that is, that's what that is. Thank you. So we have an appointment to make. There was a vacancy on the Complete Streets Committee. And after advertising, there was one application. So I don't know if Jay Dayton Crates is here, but if you are. Okay. All right. Is there a motion regarding this appointment? Go ahead, Connor. Yeah. I'll move to appoint Jay Dayton Crates to the Complete Streets Committee as an alternate. Further discussion? Oh, I'm sorry. Second. Thank you. Thank you. Further discussion? All right. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay. Thank you. And thank you to Jay Dayton for his service. Okay. Moving on. So next up is the community fund update. I know there's some folks here from the community fund. So welcome. Hello. If you would introduce yourselves and then make us do this. Nope. That's fine. Exactly. And we have another member who's probably going to pop in and join us soon, Amy Cunningham. And I encourage you to pull those microphones over closer so you can be heard. That one works too. You're good with that one. Okay. So this is our annual appearance before City Council to present our total grantmaking recommendations to you for the Montpelier Community Fund. And we sent a memo and a list of recommended grants to you in advance. And we want to just talk through a couple points on that memo and then open it up for any questions or discussion that you all might have. So this year for fiscal year 21, our total grant recommendations are $130,150. It's a little bit less than last year. And it is less than the bookmarked figure that was originally in Bill's budget. There's a couple of trends that we just wanted to note. The number of grant applications that we've been receiving have been relatively stable over the past number of years. So that's not changing very much right now. The percentage of applications that we're recommending for funding are similarly remaining stable, 85% this year, which is in line with the past several years. We received 40 grant applications total, which is the largest total ever number of grant applications. And that totaled $190,870 in requests. The average size of the grant, of the approved grant, declined slightly this year. That's another number that we track. These are largely small grants, so numerous small grants. This year that average grant size declined to just under $3,000, $2,830. And the reason for that was the absence of one larger grant application in the pool. Central Vermont Home Health and Hospice did not apply. And so last year, their grant caused the average grant size to be larger than it is this year. And then finally, we took a stab at breaking down the grants by category. Just another new way to look at this total. You can see on the pie chart in the memo that we sent to you that human services accounts for the biggest percentage of total grants at 35%, with arts at a close second with 33%, and then other grants falling into the humanities, environment, and education categories. And of course, it's a loose categorization, but it's just interesting to see where the dollar is going. Let me just turn to my other members of the board to see if there's anything else that people want to present. Okay. And otherwise, we want to turn it over to you for any questions or discussion. Well, just to start off, I really appreciated this analysis, looking at the trends over time with the requests and then the percentage breakdown. I thought that was also very interesting and really helpful, because I think that also said something about potentially our priorities. You know, that this is where we're spending our money. I think that it's a good piece of information to have. And then I did have a question in the chart above that. The city grants to nonprofits for the five-year funding trends. Just in that FY21 category, it's got some parentheses that say applied, community fund, grant funding recommended. Is that just applying to the numbered years further to the right, or does that apply to FY21? It applies to FY21. So for instance, for the three organizations where it's noted that they applied and grant funding was recommended, that's for this year. And they're listed in that table because in the past they had gone to the ballot for various items this year they did not. That's helpful. Thank you. And then I perhaps I missed this, but so the North Branch Nature Center is listed down below. The People's Health and Wellness is listed down below. I didn't see Good Samaritan Haven listed down below, but maybe I'm missing it somehow. Let's see. Oh, they didn't apply. Oh, I'm sorry. My memo is wrong. I guess that's also just a making a mental note of that too because of our larger conversation about the homelessness, budgeting, and task force. Yeah, I'm sorry. That is incorrect. No worries. All good. And I think there was a prior, was there a prior year, am I remembering correctly, where they had perhaps forgotten to apply? I feel like I remember that. Last year. Last year. Okay. Oh, okay. Yeah. So, and I think on there, and it's just, it's an oversight. Sure. You know, it's a small organization. Yeah, fair enough. Fair enough. Okay, great. That was my only. We're touching on that. Oh, okay. Send me a copy of that about a week, 10 days beforehand. Yeah, and this year, the first time, at least since I've been involved, we actually did a story in the bridge. So we did, I think we garnered some new applications that we saw from the memo. So we try to hit bump and farm. It's true that we use the address that we've had on file from the most recent application and for a lot of these organizations, those people change. Yeah, fair enough. Any other questions? Glenn? Yeah, thank you very much for all of this. And kind of along the line of the conversation, have you seen, let's say, a better awareness among the organizations of the timeline over the course of the last few years with the reaching out and like people. I think that there is some confusion about the schedule in the air. And it feels like I know at least a couple of organizations that have had trouble getting their applications in on time. Is that improving, would you say? Overall, I think so.  But the schedule, I mean, our deadline has been pretty consistent within a couple of weeks for days, right, for several years now. I also think part of the confusion that happens sometimes is because people are applying literally nine months before they're ever going to see a dollar from the city, right? And so, like, which fiscal year are we talking about or, you know, and they're applying. That's all extremely, it's confusing for me, the loan for the applicants. But overall, as far as like the deadline goes, I think that we're being pretty consistent and it's fairly well known. Donna and then Lauren, I think. I do thank you for all this information and the meetings and the work you do. It is more confusion than just applying for nine months ahead. You're reporting on the year that's just finished. You're in the year you just got money for and you're applying for the year ahead. So it's three years and everyone's FY year is a little different. So it is complex, but you deal with it well so far. You've been very flexible, so thank you. I just had two questions. One, is it, and it might not be concise in which case I can just go read but it being my first time through the budget. Is it easy to describe the criteria you use and in a relatively concise way or again, I'd be happy to. Yeah, so, you know, the criteria that the city council set for the community fund are very broad. You know, it's about the health and well-being, the vitality of the city of Montpelier. You know, I think that there's a line in there about, you know, basic human needs perhaps. But overall, those criteria are very, very broad. We have felt that it has not been our place to be more prescribed about the values of priorities regarding demographics or issue areas. So what we have done is look at the quality of the application and our best ability to evaluate the program in order to understand the effectiveness of the grant and how those dollars would be invested. You know, at the same time, these are also really small grants. And so, you know, we also attempt not to overly burden nonprofits, you know, when they're having to fill out multiple pages for, you know, maybe $1,000 grant. Yeah. And just one follow-up. So I'm just trying to wrap my head around. So, you know, you estimated about 35% goes to human services. So there's this budget. And then we also have the recommendations of the homelessness task force and other human services and just kind of how that intersects and how, you know, what need you see these grants filling, you know, good Sam could potentially get funded through both. It sounds like and so on.  If you want to address. There is a question in the application form asking if they receive any other city funds, which doesn't necessarily disqualify them for this, because they may be in fact in a consortium or in operating with other institutions to get some funds from other agencies. Frequently, we have three ways that applicants can apply. They can apply for general operating costs. They can apply for program costs, or they can apply for a specific project. So sometimes the, those organizations will be receiving city money for a specific project. And so they'll come to us for a program, which is larger than just a specific time or they'll say. And I think we're one of the few branding organizations that actually do give money for general operating costs, which is very important for most of these. They're small, and they're struggling, and this helps them do, actually, one of the criteria is the extent to which the applicant can raise, has raised, can raise, or can leverage funds for others. And these funds that do support general operating, help them. Thank you. Now, just to add to that, typically, really until this year, this has been the bulk, the entirety of our human service funding has been two agencies in the community that provide those services, either through this fund or those that go on the ballot directly with a petition. And so this, you know, the task of the homeless is task forces we've been talking about. This is kind of an expansion of the city's role and responsibility and how we want to handle that. So we haven't had this crossover before. Great. Donna. Will you entertain a motion? Yeah, did we need a motion? I'm just going to, I, we do, okay, sorry, thank you, yes. Because I'd like to make a motion to approve the funding for the Montpellier Community Fund for $130,150 as requested. Second to these, awarded to these. Yes, listed. Okay, great. There's a motion to second. Any further discussion? I just want to say thank you all for your time and dedication. I'm just very impressed with your, your group, your work, and we're still grateful. So, yes. I have a curious question about the county. So, any fund board that's very happy to fund this? Oh, yeah. $130,300. I'm just curious how you do the math on that? Well, of course, that's also brand new. And I'm glad you mentioned it. I forgot I have not been in the office all day, so I would have had a note on that. Actually, one of the ideas, one of the suggestions I have, I don't know if the council will go along, is that if there was a, if there was another agency that was next on your list for whom $1,200 would have funded. Perhaps you would consider just adding, you know, taking a look at that and see what you would have done if you'd had $1,200 more. Maybe there isn't this year, but it was raised. People put money in meters or made donations for this purpose. So, I don't think we want to hold it and send it aside till next year if we can use it. It would be great. Don't give that something. We can talk some more about that. Okay, great. That's great. Great. Okay, so, yes, Don. Well, now I made the motion. My iPad and I don't always get along, and it didn't want to give me the last page. So, these are all your applicants that you're awarding, and I don't see Lost Nation Theatre on there. It should be. So, I'm having trouble with it. So, it's there. I thought I was just approving your recommendations, but okay, great. It's there. I was just... Under the odds. Great. I can't get that page. Lost Nation Theatre is recommended for a grant of 7,000. Yeah, it's for their youth program. Oh, 7,000. That's right. Thank you. I just thought I should be due diligent and look all the way through, and I couldn't get it to go. Thank you. Okay. Any further discussions? It's been a motion and a second. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Great. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for all your work. Thanks. So, I'm actually going to switch up the agenda here a little bit. I think there's a number of folks here for the Winter Parking Band Ordinance Amendment. So, I thought we might take that up next, just, you know, out of respect for all your time. If that's okay, Ricardo, I know that skips you. But I'm pretty sure there's other numbers. If you don't want to go home early. Yeah. So, I'm going to turn this over to... Sure. And we've got the chief rallying the troops here. But we've had a couple of public hearings on the suggestion that we add two areas of the city into the permanent band as opposed to the intermittent band. And after the last meeting, we heard a lot of testimony from residents that would be impacted by it. And so, we tasked our folks to go back and take a look and come think about a way. So, we have a recommendation, but I don't want to steal a thunder of these folks if it's going to be included in theirs or you want me to just... So, what we're going to... The end game of what you're going to see is that we are going to propose to make no changes to the ordinance for this winter with the exception of expanding the zone at the bottom of Prospect Street. So, to allow parking there where it's banned. And so, everything would stay the way it is. And what we would choose to do is on when we have... One of the good suggestions we got was, was there a way you could have a band for a few days in these tough locations. And we couldn't really figure out how to make that work through an ordinance, but we do use the emergency police order, the signs that we put in. So, we use them on Berry Street, we use them on Langdon Street. So, we said, why don't we on Simply and Prospect and anywhere else for that matter where the snow is creating too much of a problem, we'll just put emergency notices in so it might be no parking for three or four days until we get that cleaned up. And then, and then assess that at the end of the winter and see how that worked and then if we're going to have this conversation again, if it didn't work well or did, we will be doing that in the good weather when people have plenty of time to make plans and listen and all that stuff. So, I think the point about changing the rules in the middle of the winter certainly resonated with our staff. And, but we also wanted to make sure we had the safety component. So, that's, that's going to be what we recommend, but I do know that these folks did a lot of work, took some pictures and measurements and ran. So, I think we're, I think we're just as happy to not show them all. To not show everything anybody wants to see that come along. I will say, I do want to shout out to our Public Works Streets crew because immediately after the last conversation, they started reverse plowing, going down or up and turning around, coming down, changing the blade so that it pushed the snow away from the area that typically got very overwrought with snow and shortened the width so that emergency vehicles were having a hard time. So that it should be a case where over a longer period of time we're able to keep that snow at bay. And then the incidence of just putting out, you know, notices for one, two or three days depending on the snow fall will be fewer than they would have been otherwise. So, and that was really, I think that's really the result of some changes that have been made prior to my getting here and how we operate and interact with the crew down at the garage. So that was really helpful in our ability to sort of agree to this approach. Go ahead. Yeah, we met with Dan Perry. He's a supervisor, one of the power supervisors today, and he thought that was a real workable solution on Prospect Street. Unless we get these 12, 14, 15 inch snowstorms, then it's not going to be possible. So then we would have to put out those temporary until they had an opportunity to get up there and clean that area out, which could take a couple days. And the same on Sibley Avenue. There could be a possibility where we would have to put out some temporary no parking until the crews can get up and clean it up. Otherwise, I think it's a workable solution. That's great. Jack. Just as parliamentarian, I was going to suggest we... Open the public hearing. Open the public hearing. Okay, thank you. That's a good call. Yay, Jack. I'm going to officially open the public hearing. Thank you. And having said that, is there anything further from you both at this point? Okay. Great. So I know there are a number of folks here who are probably interested in this topic. Any comments from you all on this proposal? Or really a non-proposal, I suppose. Yes. I'm Heather Corral of on Sibley Ave. And I was just wondering how would it be paper notices on the cars, or would we get like an alert on our phones? What we do now on Barry and Langdon and others is actually we put the signs right in the snow banks. You've probably seen them, the emergency no parking signs. Yeah. And they'd be posted right there on the street, right in front of you. Are they like sandwich boards? No. They're post. They go around. Oh, there are no. They just get posted right into the, in sticks right into the snow back. And it says emergency no parking. And then we remove them when the snow is removed. There's some in front of Main Street School right now. They got put out today. Any further comments or questions? Clint. I just want to thank the staff for, for checking through all of this. And all of the public as well for coming out and for spending so much effort commenting and writing and thinking through the possibilities. I think that was in some ways a model of group decision making. And it is not always smooth or rapid, but I feel like we're balancing needs well in this result. So I appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you all. Hi. Thomas Moore, Prospect Street. I'm not going to write. I'm actually going to say thank you for addressing this situation and looking at ways to solve it. So I just want to say thank you for doing that. And, you know, this year we didn't have that much snow yet, but last year was really bad. But it looks like you're going to be on top of it. So no complaints. You know, I just want to say thank you.  And just wanted to recognize that for you. Great. Thanks. All right. Thank you. I do have one question. Bill, one of the things that you said was possibly the exception of spaces down at Prospect Street? So the bottom of Prospect Street, as I understand, is currently in the permanent winter be at. Is that right? Yes. And so the idea is we would take those out of the winter in a place that we'd suggest that people could park. Yeah. So that we would include, so we would take those out. And I hope we have the... Well, and so we're not proposing that tonight. Well, that would be part of this. But I don't have the stuff in front of me. So now... Right. We do have the language for that. So there is a change to the Prospect Street parking. It's actually an improvement. We're adding in parking from Northfield to School Ave. So, and we do... We do have the wording for that. So I think we need an approval of that. Right. So that would be... You've had your reading, so you would just... That's the only amendment you would make to the present ordinance. Everything else would stay the same. Okay. Okay. Any further comments on just that part of it? Because that would be a change? It seems like a welcome change. It gives the folks, if we were to have to put out the temporary no parking above, it gives those folks an opportunity to park down below. Yeah. Exactly. It gives them a place to go. Fairly close to. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So I think we... Any further comments from the public? Any further... Okay. Yes. Welcome. Stephen Cohen, Prospect Street. I just echo what Tom had to say. Yeah. I appreciate everybody being amenable to working through solutions as opposed to just calling a full stop on any situation. This street looks great right now, so I appreciate the additional effort of DPW. I did notice on the front porch forum post that DPW put out... When was that? Last parking ban? Was that earlier this week or late last week? We did have something posted earlier this week. Yeah. I noticed it said on there that there's a full ban on Prospect Street. So just in the future. Thank you. Let's check that out. Cool. Thank you. Thank you. Donna? Do we need to read the wording they have into the record for John, our Secretary? Yeah. If you could fire that off to me even, just real quick over email. Can you... Is it possible for you to do that now? Do you have it... Now would be good. And then it would be attached to the next hearing. Well, you would need a next hearing. You've had two hearings on this topic. Okay. But I've just moved to amend the ordinance with this language. Approve it tonight. No one has to come back to any more meetings. Except us. Well, I'd make the motion if I had the language. Donna, you got it? Yeah. Okay. Hi there. Corey, I just have one more question. And if this goes forward and we... We use the signs to do extra days for plowing. And you said you're doing that for some streets like Barrie and Maine. Is that also just for nighttime, or should we expect that we would stay off the street during the day too in those areas? That's a great question. I typically, when we put those signs up, it's bad enough that it has to be daytime too. Yeah. But, you know, honestly, I don't think we parsed it. Here we go. The reason for that is so they can get up and get it cleaned out. During the daytime usually. During the day they can get up. Okay. If it's bad during the day, we can clean it up faster. Yeah. I was just wondering what to look for. Yes. Okay. Thank you. We'll only do that if absolutely necessary. If we get up there and we find that emergency vehicles can't get through, or the plows can't get through, then we would do it. But it's mostly for cleanup is why they do it. Donna, how are you doing? Sorry. I am emails with prospects. I'm just trying to make sure that I have good clothes. And then we can actually move on. That's true. And we can get it. Why don't you do that? The wording will be just with the exception of Prospect Street between Northfield and School Avenue. That's what the wording is going to say. Yeah. I don't think they can vote on it without hearing formal wording though in the meeting.  No, I agree. Okay. Why don't we go back, finish it up and move on to other business. So. Is anyone here going to not vote? So the people don't want to stay? Do you trust us? Well, what I anticipate doing. I mean, they're welcome to stay. Obviously. So any further comments on this? That's it. That's it. You've got it. Okay. Just one second. Great. I will read it out loud. You read it out loud to us and then they can make a motion. Okay. Into the mic. Please. There is where parking will continue to be allowed are one, both sides of Prospect Street between Northfield Street and School Avenue and two, the south side of Prospect Street between number 35 and number 51. And is that the ordinance language or is that just an email describing what the ordinance language is going to be? That's the email describing what the ordinance language is going to be. Okay. Is that sufficient? I don't think it is. I think what it should say is we amend section whatever of the ordinances to provide such and such. So I think we, my sense is we probably don't have sufficient information to do this tonight. I haven't seen. I haven't seen. Is the ordinance number listed in our format and our agenda? My iPad won't let me get back to it. Sorry. It was 10-714. It's in the winter. Oh, the specific section. I don't have that. We sort that out well. Unless we just took like a five minute break. You could do it in five minutes. Because I would love to get this done while people are here. Is that because I don't think it's really very hard. Right. Jack, does that sound sufficient to you? Take five minutes, get that language together. I think we understand the sentiment of what we're going for. And then we can move on. All right. So let's take a five minute break. We'll be back in five. Okay. So we're going to call this meeting back to order. Come back from our break. So we have the language. And Lauren, would you like to read what you have there for the language? This is the amendment. So the existing language in section 10, 714 under night parking restrictions reads Prospect Street except on the southerly side beginning at .200 feet, et cetera. So I've proposed starting that Prospect Street except between Northfield Street and School Avenue and on the southerly side beginning at .200 feet. So the added words are just between Northfield Street and School Avenue and the existing. Okay. Is there a motion? I move we adopt that language. I'll second it. Okay. Before we go any further, any further comments on this from the public? Okay. I'm going to officially close the public hearing. There's a motion and a second for the discussion. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? All right. Thank you. And thank you to the public for all of your time. And thank you, staff, for all of your work on this as well. Okay. All right. So moving on, we are up to talking about Confluence Park and funding for that project. Welcome, Ricardo. Thank you. Hi, Ricardo Erickson with the Vermont River Conservancy. And I am here to request some funding in this budget that you're working on now to be allocated for the Confluence River Park, the next phase which we are calling Phase 3. Phase is one and two were funded by Vermont River Conservancy through grants that we acquired. And we are now at the point in which we could benefit from a partnership with the city with an investment in some funds for this phase as well as staff time. So the request that we would like to make is for $20,000. And this is a project that we have been discussing for quite some time and would be a city-owned project. Right. I don't know how much background. Well, just for the public's sake. And briefly, you may recall some of you when we first presented the budget last month, we had a list of items that had been identified as priorities and one of them was Confluence Park. And I think I said something like, we don't have anything and we didn't receive anything from Confluence Park because we haven't addressed it in the budget. Well, we had and somehow in our confusion, we missed it. So they did provide us timely requests just to be clear. And we've looked at this and we believe we can find in, we can readjust some funds in the capital plan for $20,000 and make that work. We'll get the specifics for it. And in fact, as soon as this sort of came up again a couple of weeks ago, we immediately did that. So we'll have next week when we do the meeting, we can show you exactly how to reallocate the capital plan. So we think we can do that without having to raise the budget. Donna. So the $20,000 you're talking about from the capital plan, but there's two others. One is parking revenue and one is alternative transportation fund, which is the same source, parking revenue. Yes. That was a draft budget that I had worked on with Kevin Casey and was not able to ground truth with him prior to it going out to the council. So consider that and over a draft budget and we do know that that's the expense. The expenses are going to be totaling around $97,000. And the income side is a budget at this point, a draft budget, and we will need to work. And that's where we would like a commitment from the city and staff time as well to work in on that funding. A lot of the funding sources that as we move towards construction, we're a ways away from that. But as we move along in this process, it's really important to a lot of funding sources to show that there's a strong partnership between the city and VRC in acquiring a lot of these funding opportunities. So that's where I want to work with the city on defining that budget and those income sources. So tonight you're only asking about the $20,000. Exactly. That's what we're asking for for this budget. And to be clear, they're introducing that to us. Obviously it's still part of our, you know, I don't think you need to vote on it. On this item, it's a budget request. I think it was just because it was new and coming in, we want to make sure that we can answer your questions and make the presentation. Great. Any further? Oh, yes, go ahead. Well, I'm excited to hear it sounds like we can try to make it work. So this is a great project and really appreciate all the work that's gone into it. So if the 20,000 is allocated and some of these other funding sources don't come through this year, would you anticipate spending that to continue the work that needs to be done to move the project forward? If that's money that needs to be there for a match, would you potentially hold on to it if Grants didn't come through or how do you just anticipate spending it over the next year? Right. We'd like to be, I think this is what you're asking about, we'd like to be a little more confident of the income sources before we sign a contract with the designers. The next phase just for background is a lot of ground truthing. We have a conceptual design that's in the design world considered 10% complete. We're looking to get to about 85% complete, which is just before being shovel ready. And so this next phase will require a lot of that surveying and site work. And so we would be contracting that out. And so before we would want to have, we would want to have about 75% say of the income sources secured or that we would feel confident about it before we sign that contract with the firm. Don. So I'm glad you brought us back to the conceptions, what we have now is 10%. This is phase three. Are you seeing four or five phases? That's what Vermont River Conservancy is calling phase three. In my mind, we had funding for phase one, which was the initial, a year ago, we presented to you the first concepts. And then phase two, I found funding for. And that was to take that first concept in and have a huge public engagement process and have some more options and narrow it down to that one final concept E, that we consider the final conceptual design. And now I forgot what your question was. What are the other phases? What are the other phases? So this is phase three, so four or five. So this next phase is going to get us to about 85% completion of the design phase. And then that final push in that will be that last 15% will be permitting and getting us to the point where we're shovel ready. So if you consider that phase four, it would be a shorter phase, I anticipate. And then the last phase is construction. So we're more than halfway there. We're getting there. This next phase will be one of the longer phases. There is a corrective action plan on this site and we will need to seek an amendment for that. There is a lot of surveying and this will be more time consuming and maybe less exciting and fun but necessary in order to get us to that shovel ready. So I'm going to put you in the spot one more time. So between now, which rightfully say your minus will take longer and phase four, so are you thinking a year, a year and a half, phase four and more money needed? Right, right. So I can't say when I, I'm not sure. These projects can go on and especially where it is a brownfield site and we, it's hard to say, but we anticipate this phase going through best case scenario being completed by the end of this year and then that would bring us to 2021. Let's say best case scenario construction could begin in the fall of 2021. That's if like, you know, hiccup free smooth process. And then so, and that's where I'm really starting to think ahead to that phase because that will require significant funding. And that's where a lot of the grants that we were looking into and the funding sources that we were looking into looked for that municipal partnership and or the municipality actually had to apply for the funding themselves. So that's where, that's why we're stepping into this more of a close working partnership in this fund seeking phase as we look ahead to the construction phase. Thank you. Great. Any further questions for Ricardo? We don't need to take any action at this point. Any further questions? Great. Thank you, Ricardo. Thank you. Okay. Moving on, I suspect that there may be a lot of folks here for the, sorry, Mike, maybe it's switching around the agenda. I suspect there may be some folks here who are interested in the council appointment. That's listed right now as item 12. Because now that we have a vacant seat, we need to figure out our process in moving forward. If there's no objection, I'd like to move that item next. Does that make sense? That's fine. Okay. Fair enough. Okay. So with this item, Bill, do you want to introduce or do you want me to introduce? I'll do my best. Okay. Then you can take it. I don't have any say in what you decide to do. Fair enough. Our charter calls, because there was a question earlier, which I think was a good question, is why isn't this a special election and all that kind of thing. So the charter says that when a person resigns their seat with more than 90 days left on their term, and in this case, Ms. Hill had like a year and 76 days left on her term. The council shall appoint a replacement, but only until the next town meeting. So in this particular case, the council would appoint until March, and then there would be a one-year term on the ballot for folks in that district to elect. So it's a fill-in seat just for, you know, January and February basically. And then there would be a one-year, and because Council Member Hutchison is not running for re-election, there will also be a two-year seat on the ballot. So in District 3, there would actually be two, there will be two seats on the ballot. There's a one for one year, one for two. So the council, but the charter does not prescribe at all how the council makes that appointment. So it's really up to the council just to choose whatever process or criteria that they want in doing so. And over the years, I'm not going to go through them all, but over the years, I've seen several different methods used depending on the circumstances, whether it's going to be a full year or just a couple of months and those kind of things. So I think, I mean, the council is free to do as they want. And obviously I work for the city council, so I have no say in how they pick one-seventh of my boss. But they can, presumably, they're going to discuss tonight how they want to go about doing it and set that process, and then at some subsequent meeting actually make the appointment. But I could be wrong. Maybe they're just going to appoint someone tonight. I don't know. That's the introduction. Have that again. Well, I guess I'll start. And then I'll be interested in having a discussion about this. So my, as we don't have any prescribed process that we have to go through, my recommendation would be through a normal appointing process in which we are not appointing anyone tonight, but rather we ask a candidate to get 25 signatures, as they would potentially for the ballot, go through the regular application process as we would ask for any other person who was being appointed to a committee, like we did earlier this evening with the complete streets group. Filling that out as well. We could talk about having like a letter of interest. Sometimes it's useful to sort of know that maybe that it's captured in the online application, but sometimes it's nice to just have a personal statement from someone about why they're interested. And then beyond that, I mean this is an appointment. I think another factor that's at play here is the timing of it. We could, you know, aim to appoint someone at the next meeting, but that's a very tight turnaround. If we wait to the meeting after that, that's I believe the 23rd, and I think that's the last day we can vote on the budget. So, and then there's only two meetings in February before the election. So I just want to zoom out for a second to say that I will just personally say that it seems silly to me to have to appoint someone who will be in office for approximately two meetings. And I think that was more or less also the sentiment of those who drafted the charter. So I would love to see us take up some charter amendment language before, ideally sometime in February, I realize that's too late for us to get it on the ballot for March to be voted on, but at least it's this council who has firsthand experience with like why the current charter language is problematic. So just putting that on people's radar that we may, I will be interested in changing that language. So I guess I'll leave it there for now. What I'm holding back on right now is I think it probably would be appropriate for us to say like what are we looking for in a candidate? And maybe that's a separate question potentially than the logistics of it. So I would love to break this into some parts. One is what are we going to require of a candidate? Like are we talking about 25 signatures, letter of interest, or nothing, whatever? That's one part of our discussion. Another part of our discussion is what is the timeline. And then a third part of the discussion is what are some criteria. Before we get into the criteria part of it, I need comments about the first two, either the timeline or the requirements. Don, you look like you're doing it. I just a little puzzled because you went on if you didn't make the other statement of a tendency not to appoint someone. And I guess to me that's sort of the first decision because I feel two meetings is not rightfully fair to the person. And so I would vote not to appoint someone in the short time span. My inclination is also there, but I think we are compelled by the charter to appoint someone because of the word shall, unless we want to just, you know, say two meetings. I know, I hear you. I think it's kind of silly. Yes. I think we're required to make an appointment as I started looking at this as soon as I learned of the potential vacancy. I think we have an obligation to do what the charter tells us to do. And so I think I take the statement that says that the council shall make the appointment to be mandatory. And so I would be in favor of appointing someone even though it seems like it's kind of a pro forma thing with regard to, I do have some thoughts about the process too. I don't know if you want to respond to what I was saying before I do that. I do, because it talks about at least 90 days. And so it's not going to be vacant 90 days because the election comes before 90 days. So that's how I read it. And you lawyers have a different point of view. But it doesn't say 90 days before the next town meeting. It's 90 days left on the term, which she did. Does that make sense? And just to further that little line of conversation, I believe in my mind at least the changes that we might consider making to the charter are precisely that 90 days to the end of the term or the next annual election. So that we don't have to appoint someone for two weeks. I think you could actually just say 90 days left until the next town meeting. Because either way, that's the cutoff. Right, right. Okay, yeah. Connor, and then Jack. Just a question, what are the next two council meeting dates? The 15th, which is next week. And then the 23rd, which is a Thursday. It's the only Thursday council meeting of the whole year. And it's because we have to be within so many days of town meeting to vote on a budget. It actually has to do with the petitions. The petitions are due that day. And for you to finalize the ballot, you need to determine whether which petitions are on or not. And so you have to, if someone is legally black, can bring a petition in that day, you need to meet that night to consider it. So why meet Wednesday in the meeting in Thursday? So we've just always moved it to Thursday and finished up the ballot that night. So that would be in two weeks. And then there's two in February. I just say where I'm at, I think just for consistency of the last appointment, there's 10 to 25 signatures, letter intent, and even if it warrants a special meeting, do it as close as possible to that Thursday meeting. If it isn't that Thursday. I think that Thursday meeting might be a little tight to get everybody in. Didn't I mean? No. You mean get everybody in? I think he's suggesting a special meeting to consider the applicants. Yeah, maybe shortly after that second council meeting we have coming up. Or the next week, 29th, 30th? You're meeting next week, your meeting's next two weeks. So next Wednesday and then the following Thursday. So you're suggesting something between the 15th and 23rd, special appointment meeting? No, I think I'm suggesting something between the 23rd and the following one. Oh, after the 29th or the 30th, between? Yeah. Oh, so maybe... Because you want them in that next meeting anyways, I think. You're right, or it's like preposterous really to have them go to two meetings there. But that's what would happen if you do the... At the 29th. If you do the 29th or 30th of January, they're going to miss the 15th and the 23rd. They would only be here for the two February meetings. Yeah, but if you don't... Go ahead. The 23rd is too soon and you wait for the February one. They only have one meeting. So we're trying to give them two. I mean, you can't appoint someone at the beginning of the meeting and have them take the seat for the rest of the meeting too. That's true. That's what happened with Council Member Watson. Is that right? No. No. No, I was at the end. Yeah. Jack, go ahead. Are you saying that the 20... When you say the 23rd is a little tight, do you mean that it's too close to today or do you mean that the agenda is likely to be too full for that? Yeah, I'm just saying I think we need to give them a couple of weeks to get everything in. If we're going to signatures and the letter of intent, I think that's fair enough. Well, and that's why I have a slightly different view, which is that if an applicant wants to apply to be appointed up until March and they also want to run on the March ballot, then they will have to get 25 signatures to get on the March ballot and another 25 signatures to get appointed. So what I would suggest is that we simply ask for a letter of intent possibly coupled with the normal form we use for other appointments and dispense with the 25 signatures figuring that if the person wants to run in March, then they'll get the 25 signatures for that. But the due date for the signatures, if they don't need to do it just once, if they do it for us for their appointment, those signatures could also, they could gather them for the actual ballot, but they have to be in. The 25th, right? 25th, 26 something. I thought it was the 27th. 27th. 27th. 27th. They have to be in anyway, so they should just collect signatures for us and the ballot and get it done. I'm good with that. Unless there's someone who wants to apply and who's not interested, do you then require that person, well let me rephrase, or be more clear, if there's somebody who's interested in this very short appointment, who does not want to run in March, to be a part of them to get 25 signatures. Okay. That makes sense. That makes sense. Or no. I would not. I would just say letter plus a form for the short term, signatures for being on the ballot. Good. I agree with Jack more or less, that I think that since this person is likely to run and will have to collect signatures in any case by the 27th for the ballot, we needn't tack that on. I would say, I think there's an argument for appointing as quickly as possible, and in a way I would like to push for appointing by next week if possible. If it's just a letter of intent and the form that seems doable, I know there are already people who are interested, so it's not like we wouldn't get anyone. And I think that it is worth having someone in as soon as possible so that they can meaningfully participate in the budget considerations potentially and everything else. So a deadline of Monday, say? You know, it's pretty short. Yeah, I realize. Next Wednesday. What about a week from today? Which is the next meeting. No, our next meeting is Wednesday the 15th. Glenn's suggesting making the appointment on the 15th so that the person would then be on the council for our final budget meeting on the 23rd. I got the 15th with a budget hearing so we can add things to that agenda. Cool. Where did we... So I would say that feels fast to me, but I'm just one person here. I'm just going to say I think the process is under as much scrutiny with the public as the actual appointment. And I would worry if we did it within the next week that might add some credence to the idea that we had somebody in mind already, which I don't think we do. We don't. Glenn looks guilty. No, excuse me. I want to... I get that. And I think that the... In my mind, the election coming up in March is a very reasonable counter-argument to that, that regardless, the voters are going to get to decide who gets this seat within two months. I realize that two months of incumbency could be seen as some amount of weight, but I don't know. I think... I do want to balance that with trying to get someone in so that they can participate. And we have a full council with full representation of all the districts. I think I'd prefer it be coming to us in our board packet that we get sent out on the Friday the 18th so that anybody who had applied comes in our packet on the 18th and we consider it on our 23rd meeting at the beginning and that person could participate. I'm still thinking of... I mean, so this is making an assumption that we would appoint someone who would also be running. And we might, I don't know, but just in the interest of equal opportunity, if there were someone who was only interested in just a couple of meetings, if we decide, yep, you got to get us a letter of intent by Friday so that it can be in our packet or whatever, then for the next meeting, for the 15th, that, I mean, somebody might be out of town, somebody that, you know, like there's... I meant Friday the 18th, not the 15th. So I wanted them to have the letter of intent by the 18th packet for the meeting on the 23rd. Yeah, right, exactly. I'm agreeing with you. Okay. Yes, I'm saying like... because if we were trying to do it for the 15th, it would just be... the turnaround time is just very fast. But that's just my opinion, yeah. So the questions that I'm seeing are, what's the application process, what's the deadline for applying, and what meeting will we make the appointment at? Yeah. It feels like we're pretty much there on the process. I'm not hearing anyone say they don't like my idea. Can you reiterate? Letter plus application forms. No 25 signatures. 25 signatures. And I like Donna's idea of giving people to the 18th just because we don't want to make it look like we're greasing it for a particular person. We make the appointment on the 23rd. I don't think that gives a lot of incumbency advantage. If it were me, I'd feel kind of sheepish putting out flyers that say, re-elect Jack McCullough when I've only been in the office for a week. Lauren. I think the process question makes sense to me of the letter application. If somebody was running, they would get the signatures. If somebody was running, then they don't need to. I do wonder about the timing. I'm just thinking, so if people apply, and we were going to appoint them at the beginning of the 23rd, and then they're going to be a meaningful participant in the budget discussion, are we then presuming that every person knowing that we've all seen lots of presentations and details of the budget is everyone who applied in the hopes that maybe they'll get appointed, expected to be up to speed? And really be able to come in and jump in and into the budget in a way that's really fair to them and to representing that seat. Maybe, I'm just throwing it out there, that's like a challenging position to put somebody into to come in in that situation. So even though I want District 3 to be represented as soon as possible, it also seems a little unfair to somebody to ask that of them, like be appointed that night and then become a budget expert in the city's budget and make really meaningful contributions. Just throwing it out there. Well, to that end, I would encourage any candidate to come to our next meeting, at which we're the 15th, which we're going to continue to talk about the budget so that they are up to date, particularly about that topic. But otherwise, I think you're right, there's no way to necessarily prepare someone. There are meetings, either with Council or Bill or whoever, that can be helpful. Watching the recordings is always good fun for anyone. And that person could consider on that kind of issue just abstain from voting because they don't know and that's totally legitimate, but it gets them a little bit of breathing space in two February meetings. It's a little bit absurd, I know. Okay, so it does sound like we are sort of settling on a couple of things, so one being the criteria, well, the application process being a letter of interest, going through the regular application, filling out the application form that we have online, and then in terms of timeline, we would be appointing someone for perhaps at the beginning of the 23rd. We can discuss what we want to do at the beginning or the end, but sometime during the 23rd meeting, is that... I think in the end we'll probably have a motion about all this, but yes. So I'm looking at Bill for staffing. So normally it's not Thursday the deadline or is it Wednesday for things to go into our agenda packet? I'm looking at staff time to put... Well, normally it would be the Thursday or Friday before the meeting. Okay, so if the 18th would be fine. We could make it the 17th, so it's in our packet for the 18th? We could make it work on the 18th too. It's just going to be a list of the... Okay, as long as it's fair to staff, that's all. It's just going to be a list of the candidates in there. Is Cameron going to do it? No, it'll be Jasmine. Jasmine, okay. While we're still talking about this, any comments from the public on either of these points, either the process, what's required, or the timeline? Laura Rose, just a comment on your proposed amendment. I don't think it's all right to not put somebody in. And what I would prefer is that we amend it to have a special election so that the public can consider who they put in. And I think that eliminating appointment if we don't move to electing is not in the public's interest. Thank you. Well, and that's something that we'll probably talk further about when we take up that language, so thank you. Do you have a comment about this, Maureen? Yeah. So just so unclear what's on the table right now. Because I missed part of this. I saw somebody at home. That's okay. So where we're at right now is for this appointment, asking any candidate to have a letter of interest and... So you're going towards appointment, right? Yes. I just want to say I'm a Morgan Brown District 3 resident. And I'm glad I was able to get here in time to comment. I just want to say that I very much support the appointment process. My read of the language in the charter is... And we really... District 3, in my opinion, needs full representation. Glenn does a real good job, and I thank you for your service. And I also want to thank Ashley for her wonderful service over the years. But we need full representation. I know it's all messy and stuff and whatever. But for what little time it might seem to be, it's important. And then we'll have the election for both seats up at Town Meany City Meeting. And that's how we do it. And that's what we need to do. So I support that process. Thank you. Any further comments? Okay. Yes, Jack? I have a motion. Great. That we appoint the council member to fill the time between now and Town Meeting Day by the following process. We require all applicants to send a letter of interest and the city's board application form to the city offices by Friday, January 18th. We would take up the applications and make our appointment at the meeting scheduled for the 23rd. We would invite the applicants to address the council and most likely go into executive session to consider and make the appointment. I have one change to make before there's a second. I think the Friday and January is the 17th, not the 18th. Okay. Thank you. That's my mistake. Second. Okay. Great. Yes. Any further discussion on this so far? Okay. All right. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay. Great. Yes. My only suggestion was going to be depending on how many people we get applying, we might want to think about starting that meeting at 6th. If we do this at the beginning of the meeting. If it's only one or two people, probably not the big deal. If we're assuming everyone's going to have speeches, sometimes people have supporters that speak for them. It's last night to do the budget. That's a good point. Just want to be here till midnight. When do we have to make that decision next? I could wait and see. I mean, we could talk about it next week, but we won't know until the 17th how many applicants we actually have, but maybe we could set a number if it's above a certain amount or something. Clem. They both have weirds. This isn't quite directly related, but while we're talking about the vacancies and the upcoming election and so on, I want to clarify a question in my own mind about the one-year term and the two-year term for candidates running for the open seats in District 3. Are they required to choose before they get on the ballot whether they are running for the one-year term or the two-year term? Is that how it works? You can run for one or the other? That's yes, but the authority is the clerk. Okay. Yes, they have to pick one or the other. Okay, thank you. Okay. Question? Connor and then Jack, yeah. Could a candidate run for both? Yeah, I mean they have to give me two petitions. Right. For sure. That would create another problem if they won both. Yeah. Jack, did you have something? Same question. Okay. Okay. All right. So there is one other aspect of this that I think is probably worth discussing. I just want to say publicly, like what I am interested in in terms of the appointment, so much of what I think makes a good city counselor is someone who is willing to do the work, who is going to read the material and be prepared, someone who is going to be willing to make the time commitment, not just to being here, but there are other committees that we do attend. I suppose if there is like, you know, basically if you are on for the month of February, it's a little more limited, but that's really important. And having some interest in the topics we're discussing, obviously very important. And bringing expertise, I think that helps. And then I will say, I just want to say it loud that I am interested in a person who is not running, because I would have some preference for someone who was not running in March, just so as to not tip the scales. However, that's not the only factor. That's something that's one of a part of multiple factors that obviously we'd have to, for my own part, I would have to consider. But that's just, but I do have a preference for a short term, just until March candidate. But that's, again, that's just me. Any other thoughts that you all have on what you would look for in someone that you were appointing or anything in that regard? Not that's fine. Oddly enough, I haven't really thought about that specific question, I think. Because in a way, what I would look for is someone who fulfills the basic requirements of living in the district. And then after that, I feel like it's sort of case by case. And also it feels like it's really dependent for me on the circumstances. Who's on council now? What balance do we need? It's all sort of, in my own mind, my own decision-making process. This is all pretty vague and wishy-washy. So if they're a member of the district, resident of the district, that's about it. I did forget one attribute, and that is someone who disagrees well. Being able to disagree well with people, I think, is really helpful. Just to balance your bias, I'm not opposed to somebody who wants to fill in the portion, the short portion, also wants to run. Because it's a lot of studying, it's a lot of time, and if they have that drive, that's not a detriment to me at all. So we'll balance when we're off. That's great. That's fine. Jack. I agree with what Donna said. One thing that really kind of follows up on Ann's comment about disagreeing well is that sitting on the council, I think it's important to come here and be able to listen to your fellow council members and be persuaded. People come and they have strong opinions. That's perfectly fine. You come here, everyone has valid comments to make, and I expect people to have open mind for the debates. Okay. I'll get Connor. I would just say during the last appointment process, when your seat was vacant, Mayor, I sort of looked for somebody who fit the character that you brought to that position. And I think it was only a year ago that District 3 voted for Ashley Hill, and she brought a very unique perspective as far as looking for working families. And as we looked at this budget, I think somebody who brings those same sensibilities to the table would be somebody who I'd be looking for in the process. Okay. Just run that up. Great. Great. Any further comments on this? Okay. Obviously, we don't need to vote on this aspect of it, but I thought it would be beneficial to just have that out in the public. Okay. So I think we, unless there's further comments from this, from the public on this aspect, no. Okay. No? Okay. Okay. Well, hi. Thank you. I just want to thank all of you for the difficult task that it takes to run the city and the council. Thank you, Glenn, for your two years. I am running for his position. The ballot is already in the town clerk's office with 40 signatures. And here's my letter of interest. And I will submit the application tomorrow. It's online, he said. Gene, tell us who you are. Gene Leon, 265 Berlin Street. Thanks again. Thank you. Any further comments? Okay. All right. So thank you all. So we're going to move on in the agenda. Thanks for taking some time there, team, to figure that out. I think that was an important discussion. So we are now up to the interim River Hazard Map amendment. This is a public hearing. And so I'm going to officially open the public hearing. I did. Yeah. Small victories. And welcome, Mike. Good evening. Mike Miller, planning director. So this is the, I guess technically the, the second public hearing, but the third discussion that we've had on this, the last meeting, which was the first hearing was postponed due to some snow. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to stay for that one, but I don't know if you want me to go back over it real quick. There were just two proposed changes. One is a change to the map, which appeared to be a map mapping error, which included some areas in the River Hazard area or in the River Corridor that should not have been included in the River Corridor. And then there's a second set of text changes to the River Corridor, again dealing with accessory structures. And there's a strikeout version that you have in the memo that I sent. From the meeting two times ago, when we talked, we had talked a little bit about reviewing the applications, how this came up because we were reviewing applications, and I wanted to clarify that statement a little bit. We talked about, or I had talked about, in this case, these were projects that would be denied under these rules that we thought met the spirit of what we would like to have. But I also wanted to point out, when we get these applications in our office, we also look at the other side, projects that get approved that sometimes we think, you know, is this something that's in the best interest of the city and is this something that Planning Commission and City Council should review. So I didn't want the public to come away with the sense that we're just here to find ways to go and let projects happen. We're continually looking at the rules from both sides. When a project gets approved and we kind of scratch our heads and say this is really what we had envisioned having a certain project happen, we do look at both sides. And in this case, the projects were proposed in the River Corridor, we felt would not have a significant negative impact on the River Corridor and would not create a public safety hazard and therefore we felt with some changes to the rules, we could strengthen those protections as well as provide a structure for which a project like this could be approved. So I just wanted to follow up. That was one of the two things. The second piece that was asked to take a look at was regarding the language that already existed for storage of materials. I believe the mayor had a comment that isn't there already language about storing materials and there is, it's 803E in the River Hazard Rules and what that talks about is a requirement and this is the federal language on that which says landfilling, parking recreational vehicles, junkyards in storage areas or facilities for floatable materials, chemicals, explosives, flammable liquids or other hazardous or toxic materials are strictly prohibited within the floodway. So certainly when we were talking about this, wanting to restrict the storage of hazardous materials within the River Corridor, we certainly could replicate that type of language which is already takes place and is required in a portion, we could extend that to also include the River Corridor. Those were the two pieces that I just wanted to go and mention. Sorry, can you just say the last, but again it's not included in this, but we could include that language. Like it's just a reference. Yeah, we had talked about allowing the construction of a structure in the River Corridor and the concern was what if they, we had talked about the storage, the structure is of low value and used for storage of low value contents and the concern on council was that it doesn't address low value hazardous materials and maybe we should also have that reflected in there and I thought that it already was in the flood hazard rules somewhere and it was, I just, and I found it to be able to point out that there are rules that we could simply reference or to replicate and repeat in that provision as well if you'd like that amended to reflect that. Lauren? Thank you for looking into that. I, to nobody's surprise, would really encourage us to do that. It's great that there's language. We can just mirror and make sure that we're not approving things that become a risk to public health later on. However, we can reference it or add that language and just, you know, make it consistent with what we're doing in other parts of the floodway. Seems great to me. This is a second public hearing, right? It is, right? Yeah, so, so we could be theoretically like voting on this tonight, right? And so is it just thinking back to the previous conversation that we just had about like, oh, we need specific language to that end is, yes, go ahead. Are we positive? Because we had postponed the last public hearing. I mean, it just says public hearing on our agenda. It doesn't say public, second public hearing. So we had the first one. I thought that was not yet a public hearing, but it might be. Oh, maybe. We're only, because these are interim rules, we were only actually required to have one public hearing. Gotcha. And because I missed it, we have a second. Okay. So it's possible that we could say, yes, come up with that language. We would like it to reference the, you know, that you can't store hazardous materials in the flood corridor. And then potentially be voting on that at a next meeting. Is that, or next public hearing? Yeah, whichever you guys want. If you can vote to adopt as amended or we could go through and schedule it for next week as well. So either way. Yeah. Okay. Donna, do you have some? Well, I was just wondering if you could give us the reference. So if we wanted to make a motion to adopt the amended amendments as proposed, plus that. Because everything else has been included in our agenda and people have seen, but we would need the language for the section for hazardous. It's an 803 E. 803 point E is the hazardous materials. And I think the intent was that it would be included under number, under number three, which the proposed is 711 point D. And I think it would be number three. Letter C. Well, can you, can you just say that? Like that. A lot of the numbers there. I see it. Point D. And we've, we have numbers one, two, three and four. Yeah. And this, I believe was to be added to number three, lowercase letter C. I mean, could you say something as simple on the number three C after low value contact and no hazardous material per 803.3 hazardous material section? I mean, could you do it that briefly? I, we could potentially have found that language. I would just maybe want to add a few more words just because I don't think people would maybe think that, you know, a shelf full of pesticides is a hazardous material, but it is. So, like, so the language is in there, which maybe is just a little more descriptive for people. Chemicals, explosives, flammable liquids or other hazardous or toxic materials. Which is the language. Which is the language. We want to include the language, not the reference. Got it. So it's just a little, a few more of the words from that. But at least that, landfilling and parking recreational vehicles, which probably don't either. You're proposing to add in words starting with, starting with the word chemicals. So low value. Yeah, I think for that, it's floatable materials. Low values and does not involve chemicals, explosives, flammable liquids or other hazardous or toxic materials, period. A little semicolon. Semicolon, yeah. Semicolon's very important. Laura, did you have a comment on this point? Yeah. And you assured me that no changes would be retrospective to projects that are already applied for. And I'm just finding that I don't believe you. And that you're behaving not how you told me you would. I can tell you, I don't believe we've applied any future zoning to prior projects. Because we're not allowed to. Current projects are getting the zoning changed without public input so that the projects can go through. And I would just like to state that in a time of environmental change, the protection of the waterways and slopes of our city are of paramount concern if we are going to survive droughts and floods as they become more and more frequent. And building in the river corridor to allow projects that you want without a full public hearing, which I was assured we would get. You know, you just keep changing the zoning and citing projects without informing the public about which projects these are. I don't know if you're informing Council of what the projects are. And it's inappropriate to just change the zoning without full hearing. Okay, thank you. And I guess I would say that, so we are following our prescribed process. And then this is public hearing. That's why we're doing this, because we want your input. I was assured that we would have the full process of multiple hearings and, you know, that anything that was adopted would never apply to projects that were being applied for currently. It would just be future applications. And is that true? That's what you told me. So you have a couple of things there. One is about applying to future projects versus past projects, and the other is about public hearings. So one possibility is that we could potentially have... So the process for changing anything like this is you need at least two... Well, unless it's interim, you need two public hearings. We could still do that. We could have another public hearing on this topic. Though this is actually at least the second time that we've discussed this, but fully, you know, properly warned. You know, we're not... We're certainly not hiding anything. We've warned these topics just like every other topic. And then the other issue about future projects is that... Well, I was just going to say, sometimes we write the zoning and then find that the intent was not... Well, that the wording doesn't always work with the reality. Like there are unintended consequences. And so it's really important that we're able to learn through this process that we can get closer to what the intention was. Is there anything further that you would like to add? I think I understand her concern. And it's two different things. So someone who's actually filed an application, they then come under the rules that were fall-off, that happen as they were filed. Period. That's it. Nothing can change. What I think you're referring to, and I don't mean to put words on your mouth, but I'm just trying to understand your concern, is that people who have raised the possibility of projects and found that the language didn't work for them, we may have then said, hey, that wasn't what we intended and you may be referring to Sabin's pasture when the zoning line was moved or in this case. But in those cases, and actually that particular project was discussed pretty openly as part of that process, it was very clear to the public what that was about. But no application had actually been filed to become vested in a certain sense of... So that's the only thing I can think that... I mean, but when I watch behind the scenes in talking about specific projects, they're just hearing Mike say that, well, we've found this to be difficult and we want to change it, but I don't hear any specific discussion of the project. In a lot... So how did the people making the decisions about the regulations know what the issues are? So in... I mean, we've gone through a number of these zoning fixes and a number of them, there were not specific applications that we had. They were hypothetical. In these cases, we've been pretty open about the fact that there were two applications that are in... They weren't... have not been submitted because they will not be approved in the river corridor and these were in the river corridor not in the flood hazard. The one project which we pointed out is on Cummings Street. It is on the north side of Cummings Street and it is basically how we discovered that the map had an error on it. The state model clips the river corridors at these roadways because basically the state is going to defend or we're going to assume that if a road gets washed out, if the river moves, that we will put the roads back in. If you look on all the river corridor maps, that's the way they're written. For whatever reason, this river corridor crosses Cummings Street, goes on to the other side and affects an ability of somebody who wants to put an addition on the side of their house and we feel that's not appropriate. That's not the intent of what that district was meant for and therefore the map should be corrected and therefore that project would be allowed to move forward. It can't move forward if the vote is to keep that area in. The second project is north of that. Also in the river corridor, it is not in the flood hazard area. It is a project where somebody has had a business for a long time and has needed to put some cover, a cover over their sand pile to protect their sand during the winter to keep the snow and the rain out of it. It's a relatively cheap structure. It's not in the flood plain. It is more than 50 feet from the river. Again, it was a project that we simply pointed out and said we don't have the ability to approve this project but it seems like a reasonable project because it is a low-value structure. It is intended to allow for the continued use and we could think off the top of our head of other examples that people may want to try to do. If somebody had a horse and wanted to have a shelter for their horse to be able to get under to get out of the weather. Again, it's a low-value structure. It's not storing contents that are dangerous. It's an ability for somebody to be able to make a structure. That could meet a certain rule. It is certainly within your powers to go through and say that's not the intent. We were pretty clear when we amended these rules in the underlined version of things we added. You'll note that we have identified we don't want to have residential structures in there. We don't want things of value. We want to have the applicant certify that they understand that these structures will be, that things will be developed in a hazardous area. And the applicant acknowledges inherent risk to property by developing in the river corridor. So in these cases, there are a number of properties that exist along Elm Street where a lot of their backyards are all river corridor and low-value structures are permitted by the state in their model, and we felt we need to have a little bit more clearer set of guidelines in there. So that was our intent. So there are two projects that are proposed, two projects that are awaiting application. Thank you. Any further comments from Council or the public? Before you go again, Laura, is there anyone who hasn't spoken on this topic who would like to? Anything from Council? Yes, go ahead, Jack, and then Lauren. I just want to observe that I personally and probably other members of the Council, but just speaking for myself, rely very much on the professionalism and integrity of the employees of the city, including the zoning and planning director, the zoning administrator, and other professionals who are involved in evaluating the needs of the city and the implications of changes that are being considered, and I think based on the representation from the director of planning and community development and the study that all the members of the Council have made of this proposed interim change that it's in the best interest of the city to adopt the proposed change. Lauren. I just wanted to echo from last time I just, I remain concerned about with climate change, increasing flooding, I think encouraging any development in our river corridors is short-sighted, so I mean I'm going to continue to generally oppose this. I do hope that the hazardous language, which I did email everyone a proposal that just excerpts exactly what's from the floodway language that Mike had provided to us, so at least if we are developing, we're not creating an undue risk by storing hazardous materials, so if that didn't come through, let me know. But yeah, just philosophically, I just think expanding development within our floodways, seeing what's happening in Australia right now, we know that natural disasters are going to continue to get worse and worse in building in these areas, just I don't think we should be encouraging in our policies. Anything further over here? Glen, and then we'll go to Laura. Thanks, Lauren. I'm not the expert that you are in that, and I think in my mind on that particular subject, I feel like in my mind there is a balance between not building in vulnerable areas and also continuing to work on development where it makes sense in terms of the density of our city and where things already are. It's somewhat unfortunate in some ways, but we are centered right on many rivers, and I think it's difficult to entirely pull back from those rivers. My feeling on the proposed change is that the structures we're talking about are minimal enough that I am willing to support it with that balance of concerns in mind. I'm just wondering why zoning has to be changed with broad strokes when a variance could be issued for a particular project, which would still leave protections in place. Of course, I want to protect against hazardous materials immediately, but as far as building and slopes, waterways, why can't individual products receive a variance? Because that is within, I believe, the control of the design review. Variants are tricky. They are allowed under state law, but they're very limited in what they're allowed to do, and so it's very difficult to legally get variances. The other thing that variances open a community up to is being arbitrary. You're far better off to come up with rules that say, these are the situations which we will approve, these are the situations we won't approve, rather than moving to it generically doing variances, because over time somebody is going to go and say, but person A got a variance and I didn't get a variance, and I have a very similar project, it becomes arbitrary and you can end up in court for making arbitrary decisions because of the way variances are. I wasn't on the council at the time, the zoning ordinance was adopted, but I was pretty actively involved in the process, and I know that one of the goals of adopting this new ordinance was to reduce the need for variances, so what you might call changing with broad strokes, which I don't think this proposal does, someone else might, I would characterize as adopting standards that are generally applicable to any proposed development that meets certain criteria. Okay, so what's your pleasure council? I got an email from Lauren setting forth the language, I understand if she wouldn't want to make the amendment, because she's not supporting the overall amendment, but so I will move that as an initial, I would move that we adopt the proposed interim regulation with the addition of the following language in subsection D3C. Insert the word is after $10,000, and then after the word contents, insert the words, comma, and is not used for storage of chemicals, comma explosives, comma, flammable liquids, comma, or other hazardous or toxic materials. Oh, second. Further discussion? All right, all in favor please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay. Oh, right, yes, thank you. Are you a nay or a staining? Nay. There we go. Okay, thank you, and thank you for the thoughtful discussion. Is that approve the amendment or that approve the whole thing? The whole thing. Okay. With the amended language. Okay, thank you. And so just as a final thing, these are interim, so they will be valid for only two years. So at some point we will be back to go through a full adoption process, which obviously takes about four to six months. But this will also give us an opportunity to use these rules for a period of time and then be able to evaluate their effectiveness, their things, and then we'll be back to adopt them. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Okay, so we are up to talking about the amendment to the dog ordinance. Oh, yeah, question? No? No, I had, I wanted to clear it with council member Babes. You wanted me to read the changed language out loud. That would be great. I just, before we jump into that, I just want to check in with folks. It's 8.30. Do you need a break? Are we still good? We're good? Either now or after this, before we talk about the budget. That could be good. I still am going to be out of here by 10. And I think giving ourselves at least an hour for the budget I think would be a wise thing. So I'm hoping that we can, you know, I'm hoping this is not controversial. So let's do, let's do this now. Yeah, go ahead. If you want to read the language. Okay. So I did send this out as a memo a couple weeks ago. So this would be an amendment to our dog and animal ordinance or dog and animal control ordinance. It would be under definitions. Section 8, nuisance. So what this is proposing to do is make this language align with our other noise section in our ordinances. So it would have the same language. So this would mean the, the proposed language would read, nuisance shall mean any dog or domestic pet that chronically disturbs the quiet comfort and repose of others by frequent or continued barking, howling, yelping or screaming. And then we take out the section that says barking, whining, calling or howling for a continued period of 20 minutes or more. So this takes that whole section out of time and just leaves in the language that's in our other ordinance about noise. So that keeps that consistent. And then that section goes on to say this definition shall not apply to dogs in a kennel or a boarding facility which has received zoning permits under our city zoning regulations or working farm dogs that are barking in order to herd or protect livestock or poultry or to protect crops. A nuisance dog is also one that causes damaged property. Before we get into it, I'm going to clarify something. This is not technically a public hearing but we are going to potentially vote to put a public hearing on the agenda. Okay. Yes. Thank you. Just clarifying that. And Donna, all that language. Yes. And that was our intention was to get the dog ordinance and the noise ordinance to say the same thing. And this simplifies it very, very well. Any discussion on this? Is there a motion? I'd like to make a motion that we move forward to have a public hearing to adopt a change in this ordinance as proposed. For what, for the 15th? For the next meeting. For the next meeting. We have a first reading, right? We'll check. Yeah. I mean the language in the packet says council should discuss options and opt to hold public hearings. No, I'm just trying to think. I know we discussed this earlier. I'm trying to remember if that was the first public hearing. We've never posted it as a public hearing. Yeah, we've just discussed it. Got it. I was trying to get the council's commitment to make a public hearing to change it. Okay. So for the 15th then. That'd be great. Second. Okay, further discussion? All in favor please say aye. Aye. Oppose? Okay, well that was fast. Thank you, camera. Not controversial. Do we want to take a break? Yeah. Okay, great. Let's take a five minute break and then we'll get into the budget. Okay. Yeah. It just really is mostly like today. Okay, so we're going to come back from our break here. One possibility is that we end up deciding on a budget tonight. I would love to get there. We may not. But Bill, did you have anything you want to say? So just a couple things. Typically what we try to do tonight is at least have the council adopt a preliminary budget so that when we have the public hearings next week and the week after, we're actually presenting to the public what the council is proposing as opposed to what the city manager proposed to the council. It doesn't mean you can't change it over the next two weeks. But at least it's a direction. This is the spreadsheet. Now I will confess this is a shared spreadsheet with Todd and he's locked some cells that I don't know how to unlock. So, for example, I am told that the Ash borer now should be 14,000. Actually, I can add an extra 4,000 here. Can't I? That I can do. That's it. So anyway, these are this. I want to clarify a couple things. The LED lighting bond, I don't think we have to worry about that. We're still putting together information on that. So we may come back with something at a later date, either next year or fall. So you don't need to worry about that. Just, but I can't eliminate it off the page yet. I will buy next week. So that's really it. All of the items that are still in play, although I mean, obviously the whole budget is in play. These are some of the things we talked about before that are already included in the base budget. And, but these are the items that we sort of talked about as not in the budget, but things that we wanted to discuss. So we've got the Homeless Task Force, which the total ask was 56,400 ash borer, which is 14,000. The energy plan, we do have a place to fund that. So that does not need to be an add-on. We've now got that in the budget. The energy plan. Energy plan, yes. For now, unless you want to move money around, that also came from the capital plan. Okay. The downtown Wi-Fi. Again, we hadn't recommended it because of the price, the rec center bond. That's 300,000 is at its peak in another year. It would not actually be 300,000 the first year, just to be clear about that. But that's the highest hit. And again, it could be a decision whether to add that to the budget or have us go back and come back and say what we would take out to fit that in. Again, that would have to come from the capital plan. And I don't have in front of me the debt schedule for the first year. Probably by the end of this meeting, someone named Cameron or Kelly will have that number. But it's 114,000 or something like that. Excuse me, Bill. Since you're talking, can we interrupt him or not? Oh, sure. Yeah. So on the rec bond, I guess I see it as a capital. Right. And we talked about the CIP having things going off. So the more the staff could look at that and deal with it as a capital versus. Oh, yeah. No, that's right. I think so. That's a policy question of yours is do you add it onto the budget or do you have us put in? But if you want to put it into the capital plan, which is frankly what I think we would do, we've just got to look at what's in it now that comes out because we still have to fit it in. And so I would think that you would want to know the consequences of that. Yeah. Just for the sake, are you not able to edit? No. That's what I'm not able to do. But in the far right column, can you write final numbers? I can make final numbers if I click X's here and I can add or I can put minuses in there to change the final number. So for example, let's say here's one we know we want to do, although it's already in somewhere else in the budget. So if I just hit X there, now that adds that to the final column. So I can do that. But we couldn't, for example, delete that one because we know it's already in. Right. But as long as it's not X, it's not in the final total. So right now the final total column is here. Thank you. The final total column is here, this line right here. So right now none of those are in. And so I would just say we leave that out knowing that it's funded elsewhere and then when I can write a note on it, I will. So the first year is, hey, look at that. I got it right. Wow. The first year's debt would be 114 for 114.236 for the Breck Center bond, not 300,000. But it would then go up to 302,000 the next full year. And that's if we decide to put it on the March ballot and it's actually to be fair, even if it's on the November ballot. It's probably going to be the same. It would be the same because... It depends when we float the bond. Yeah, it probably would be the same. Because either way it's still in fiscal year 21. Right. That's helpful for me to think about just in terms of like, is it March or is it November? Either way, if it passes, we would have to account for that. Donna, do you have something? I guess it's still looking at it within the CIP as a whole. It might not be the same dollar value to our tax property. Is that correct, Bill? Well, so we're probably talking an inside baseball here for those that are following along. We have a set sum of money for capital budget, 2.2 million or 2.4 million, excuse me. From that we take our debt payments and then everything that's left is what we fund annual capital projects. So the notion would be if we've added new debt it would fall within that 2.4 million dollars. So the good news is we don't have to raise the taxes to pay for it. The good news is that's $114,000 to $300,000 in the next few years that we wouldn't have any annual dollars that goes for street sidewalks and other things. So it's still a policy choice. We're either not spending it somewhere else or raising more. Or we could say, no, we're going to raise the capital plan by $100,000 and raise taxes to do that or cut somewhere else in the budget not related to the capital plan at all. But either way, it still costs us that sort of money. If we put it in the capital plan it wouldn't raise the bottom line of our budget but it would mean we'd have to identify $114,000 of items that are in there, $35,000 of which are the energy plan and $20,000 of which are a car float spark. So those are the types of things that would be in play. As we've been trying to make progress in our capital plan to be fully funding streets and sidewalks and whatnot, presumably if we did that that would take away from that upkeep or is that... Well, it would and I don't have that chart in front of me actually I probably should have brought my book but the good news is that some other debt would be falling off so even though we might be adding $300,000 we'd have to take a look at what those numbers are. I know the last couple years we've been at a real high in annual money so I think I figured out that we'd only be back to like last year's level of street funding so it wouldn't be a drastic drop but I'd want to really walk through that more carefully. I'm sorry I'm not ready to do that. Tonight I would have been had I not been servicing doing service to the state, jurid judicial system. Any other... So before we go into proposals any further clarifying questions people have about what is up here? Yeah, go ahead Don. You said the 35 was already in and you just mentioned Confluence Park already has 20? Well, so yes. Well we could... I believe we could find it and I say that I'm kind of out on a limb when I say that but I did talk with Todd about it when this first came in and we thought we could probably... Our bigger concern was the other 27 out of the parking fund we believed we could locate the funding for this but again it would either be reducing some other project or whatever, fitting it within the sum of money. The energy plan to be clear is we had money in the capital plan already for energy improvements and it was split into two components and one of the components was $34,000 and $35,000 was the estimated cost of the energy plan so we thought, well, that is a place we could go to get the energy plan so that would work. So tonight if I want the 20 for the park do I have to put it in or do I assume that it's there? I would assume for tonight that it's covered. Okay, thank you. If I change, I'll let you know before next week's meeting. One clarifying question I have about the last one there, CVPSA. I think I'm going to probably ask this of Donna as our rep on CVPSA. Can you tell us about what that's for and I may have some follow-up questions for you. Right, it's a telecommunication study regionally. It's also in partnership as the council wanted with Central Vermont Fiber and we're also hoping to bring in the hospital as one of another partner and so the whole study is in two parts. It's like anywhere from 50 to $85,000 and we're asking for 25 from the city of Montpellier and 25 from the city of Berry and the public safety authority is putting 35 of its 47,000 cash balance in for the project and so the first phase would be doing a full assessment of all the 23 towns in Central Vermont going in and actually looking and talking to the towns and the far places and the emergency squads and seeing what has radios, what has towers, where fiber can work and where it needs to be strengthened and even cellular service in some places and then it would come back with it. The second phase would be implementation business plan like what would be the solution of the problems and the needs we currently have. So we'd be hoping to take phase one to be able to find grants to match to then implement the actual business plan to how we actually make those improvements happen and the partners and the shared revenue. Does that make sense to people? That's helpful. Connor, go ahead. Yeah, no, just a question. What if Berry doesn't vote for us? Then we'll have to look to see what we can do as a smaller part. So we want to get the first part done without the assessment done then we can't go forward. I don't know if this is something you've discussed yet but I'm curious about who's the first money and who's the last money there because if the range is from 50 to $85,000, I mean, if you get 25 from each community and it's only $50,000 then that's on us and not on the CVPSA, potentially. Okay, it's a good question. I'm sorry I didn't make it clear in my email. Is that actually the $35,000 that the PSA is putting up is for phase one to do the assessment but we really want to do hard the vendor with the anticipation of a contract for phase two and so that the first part we would be paying for and we would go ahead and do that but we really want to be able to go right into phase two if indeed it passes on the ballot and if we only get it from one town then that we have to decide if we want to try to implement enough to help Montpelier and the 17 towns that Montpelier has a contract with because Capital West, which now is a member of the Center for Montpublic Safety Authority has a lot of needs out there and so it would benefit Montpelier as a contractor with those towns. And are those towns also going to be asked to contribute funds? For the next phase we would hope so but we'd have to go again, the Capital West does everything by contract and that's the whole problem with Capital West is that they have no taxing power so you have to go individually in each town and we may end up having to do that but this first part that the Public Safety Authority is funding with its fund balance we hope would be able to go to each town and say see this is an objective study of what is wrong, what the problems are, what the needs are and this is how you get there and without that as much as we talk to them they just shake their heads. So we're hoping this is a substantial study that people will then look at and be able to quantify what the needs are. Is that your question? Yeah, it does. What is the CVPSA's authority to just put something on the ballot? We're the same as a school district. So like, I guess technically John can be here, my assumption is that if you didn't want us on your ballot then we could print our own ballot. No, is that right John? Yeah. So at some point you're saying yes you can be in our ballot then we don't have to spend the money to print it but it would be done at the same time at town meeting. So, but it's here because you're asking us to put it into the regular budget? I didn't actually, I just listed that because it was a new ask and so it was going to have a tax impact and so I thought we should at least make sure we're thinking about that. Yeah, I wanted you to be aware of it. So is it safe to to say that your CVPSA is going to do that regardless? Yes. Whether we approve that or not? Yes, the lay of the land is although we would like the council support in both cities we need to move forward and just see what the community consensus is. Okay, so I mean one possibility is that we put an X there to just account for it if everything passes including that or at least aware of it but another way to approach it is that this is separate. Not us. And then we just have to make that distinction I'm happy to talk about it either way really but I'm okay with leaving it off for now unless you have other people have other thoughts it's almost semantics as to whether or not it's not semantics but it's very much like the items that you heard from the community fund tonight that they know certain organizations are going out by petitions you can or cannot assume that they're going to pass it's up to you. They're not necessarily part of the city's budget proposal on the other hand we've always like for example the color-covered library is a separate budget item I mean a separate ballot item we account for it because we know we're assuming it's going to have to raise the taxes for it. Does this 3.6% account for the library? Yes. It accounts for everything you've seen if I can go back up above here yeah there it is right there library, county tax, all those kinds of things plus all the operating costs of the departments we're happy to talk about as well so it basically includes everything and not anything here although like I said the energy plan and the conference park we think we can fit in although like I said if the choice is to go ahead with the rec center bond that's going to have $115,000 impact you know something's got to give we've got to raise the money for it or take something out that you know then we'd have to see where those two items fell compared to everything else that was in the list. So it seems oh sorry go ahead Jack. Yeah that was what I was confused about as I was looking at this with regard to the rec center bond and the lighting bond which we're not talking about now is that I usually think about a bond as a separate vote which with the people voting yes do you authorize the special assessment of X whatever it is? Yeah although that isn't really what we've done we've done recent bonds well so the most recent bonds of course was the parking garage which is setting up out of its own fund and the wastewater plant which is out of the wastewater fund but like for example we did Northfield Street the water and sewer portions came from the water and sewer funds but all of the road fund portions are in this capital plan within that 2.4 million so we accommodated for that within that fund so we didn't actually raise the general fund taxes to pay for it we just took other things out of the capital plan and that's how that plan is designed to work but it's also designed to work and I'm sorry I don't have a visual for this I promise you I'll have it for you next week that as other payments are dropping off you know that if you have 4.4 million is set and other debts dropping then your annual is just increasing on its own so you can fill that gap with new debt payment and still stay within Well I think we got an email from Cameron, I think it was earlier today that showed basically our debt, well there's the debt policy Well that's right it's relative to the debt policy but one would assume that total debt including the REC would still, that would be reflected over time with the decrease of other bonds, anyway what I'm saying is there may be roughly a picture of that that exists in our email You haven't heard of me as well I printed them out Is that this thing? Creation homeless It was on the back on the back of the REC one The grey bar was the policy limit for debt, the blues with garage and OE is organics to energy I assume, yep and then the orange was if we added the REC in with that as well but this assumes that we would just bond for the entire amount so for the REC that would assume that we would bond for for the entire value of doing it I'm trying to make that fit in my head with like, are we reducing projects? Probably yes Unless we, yes If you have your budget books some of you may on page 17 is our debt page So I'll give you a little example of what we're talking about So here we are at FY21 and we're projecting so you can see we've got in debt this year $627,000 and then $1.25 million in annual money and don't worry about the equipment line on that, trying to inflate that because our equipment has been flat for so long but anyway if you look at FY22 you can see the debt drops by $100,000 so that increases our projected and then you can see how that continues to sort of how that plays out going forward and then at some point I just flattened out the debt because I figured other things would be coming in so in theory depending on the timing if that were $114,000 even if we had the $300,000 $100,000 would be absorbed in that but then this $1.4 would drop down to $1.1 or something like that which if you look at it is really where we were last year so it's not out of whack where we are now it's certainly not increasing funding for a road and costs are going up so I don't want to make this sound like it's something it is we're putting less money we're prioritizing where we're putting our money or we can choose to continue raising the capital plan which is a tax increase or we can cut into other places in the budget so we could do it this way for a year or two see how it's going and we could come to a point where we think our annual expenses we need to put more money into that we don't have to make that decision this year but I think it's good to do it with eyes wide open and I'll try to put together a more up-to-date slide of this for next week's meeting so we can really see it and maybe have some dynamics as we plug different numbers and we can actually see how it works one of the things that I know has been sort of in the background of the debt discussion ever since we we decided on the parking garage and the wastewater facility is whether those sources of debt should be treated the same way as other sources of debt because they're not within the they're not being paid up by the general funds of the city and I know we have a policy on how much the debt should be by percentage but the water resource recovery facility is paid by users not by tax corrects so our policy actually addresses that it talks about overall debt with everything in and as a percentage of total revenues and then there's a separate part that talks strictly about general fund and the percentage of general fund debt and I think those charts show those at least they did so it does show us going above the general fund policy that's correct at least for a couple years so do you have a recommendation as to how to treat this in this document how to treat the rec center line absent well I don't have a recommendation because it's really a policy decision I mean it's really up to you whether you want to increase taxes to cover it or how you choose to look at it philosophically absent any specific direction from the council in other words if you take no action if you say we want to do the rec center and we go forward and put it on the ballot what I would do as a default is put it into the capital plan and then say to you here's 114,000 I think we need to cut out of the capital plan because that's how we've set up the capital plan so that's the default system so I don't know if that's a recommendation or just saying that's I think if you until you see I don't think you can really decide how you want to handle it until you see what you've got in there and what the total impact is I mean and maybe go back and revisit I don't really want to suggest we go back and cut other parts of the budget because we're already so tight but that's always a choice that you could make I mean this is probably besides also the LED bond which we're not talking about again that's another one that what we're hoping is that and that's what we're working on is that energy savings will basically pay for the annual payments so that wouldn't that would be kind of a net zero I mean it's certainly the largest decision on here yeah and so I mean if we just I'm assuming like we're going to put an X by the CVPSA because if we include the library in this number then we have this precedent for other items that are going to be on the ballot so we should probably include the CVPSA in this number right there's this right the precedent and then if the rec center bond was the only other thing that we add to this add to the budget I mean that's 300 if it's 300,000 dollars 15 this year that's why the minus 185 that's 115 that takes us to 4.6 percent which that to me seems like a lot but but that's also a separate question I almost wonder if this is a decision that should be really decided in November with that bond vote if we did it in November I would love to talk about just this item for now because it does play so you know it's such a large factor other thoughts on this rec issue go ahead Glen I think honestly in a way I think that this among other things is making me reconsider my support for the rec center project as a whole it's not that I think it's a bad project but it is I can't say it's one of my top priorities and given the other items on the ballot or I'm sorry on the budget and seeing the hard cold numbers here in this form it is I guess yeah I don't know how much more I can say about it but it is concerning that's why my questions have been about the capital plan I think the rec bond really needs to be within the CIP and and whether we do it now or November I mean I know I made the motion to have advance for March but if that made a difference in getting it supported then I would make another motion to move that to November if that's what it needs be so I went to the rec center public hearing last night there was definitely a really good crowd there was a lot of enthusiasm in the room a lot of love of pickleball a lot of pickleball love and you know it seemed from the really nice and quick turnaround summary Cameron did from the the input people took the time to write down after you know a good hour and a half of presentation and conversation I mean I left with two impressions from that meeting one there seemed to be a lot of support and enthusiasm for the project I also felt like there was a lot more community discussion to be had so November I'd gone in kind of being like let's see if we can make March happen and I left feeling like having that conversation with people led them to get more comfortable with it but there were a lot of questions people came in with so I think giving the time to have that conversation with the community to me made sense so I mean I I would love to see us move forward with that I'm still you know it probably in November I would push for I'm still struggling a little with capital and how that actually changes the number for this budget if we put it entirely in the again it's a shell game not that our budget is a shell game but it's moving money around yeah sorry about that Steve and Tom if you put the money in the capital plan you don't have to raise the bottom line so it's essentially will be a zero impact the problem is then we'd have to cut 115,000 out of the capital plan so that would mean maybe it I mean I'm just saying this we've got 55,000 in the Confluence Park and the energy plan there's two things that could go there's you know some I don't have the list of streets in front of me but there's whatever streets are in there you know other projects would have to then be removed to pay for that so it's still a cost it's just not a dollar cost but so if we took that out you know we could keep the tax at you know 4.3% and fund it I just funded everything else that sort of people have shown the most enthusiasm for just to get as a comparison but make no mistake that's there's still 115,000 of something else we're not doing if we fund it that way or we add it we say we're going to add that on top if we ended up doing it in November I mean it seems apparent to me that we're going to need to do it at some point that was pretty clear I think as well and so if we did it in November does I mean that shifts things so we could look at that again lay that out and see exactly how that looks because we'd have to think about when we actually issued the bond for the construction so it might actually push that whole bond payment into the following fiscal year depending on when the work was done and so one of the conversations I had last night about the WREC potential was that even if we had it on the March ballot and then approved it presumably that money wouldn't be available until July 1st still or is that not fall the same? well I mean it's once you pass a bond you can start we get a bond anticipation note or we can do a short term borrowing to spend money for example the parking garage is a good example we've been spending money to develop the project with borrowing assuming that we're going to be able to issue the bond but that bond was a year ago in November and we still haven't floated the bond because we're in limbo with it so those bond authorities last a few years sometimes you don't issue them immediately so you could pass it at a margin still not at half a year it's like 12 months well you don't usually float the bond until after the project is over so we just would do short term borrowing so it is possible that even if we pass the bond this year I'm saying this and with all the caveats that Todd and Kelly may tell me I'm crazy but for reasons other than normal it is possible that the bond payment wouldn't happen in this fiscal year in which case then we'd build it into next year's budget regardless of which time we do develop it he's first just say right now for me I think I would have trouble putting the whole thing in the capital plan if a constituent were to ask okay where's that money coming from 115k and I could just say I don't know at this point that seems like that's a pretty big policy decision in itself that we'd be shorting at this point yeah and I in all fairness with regardless of where you come down on this tonight even if you just say we'd prefer to do it in March or November my thought is we would come back next week and say you know here's the list I mean we're not talking about indefinitely this is just unless you say no we don't want to cut anything out we want to raise the taxes I think it's that kind of specificity you're not doing anything final for two more weeks so this is the discussion of the options well I feel bad that new council members have not attended the capital improvement plan committee meetings I mean the education by the staff there I think we should have a workshop with them because it's it does make it very tangible it's to me it did and so I would invite us to make sure we do that in the coming months but I'm really very supportive of the rec building being made totally usable it's a very used but could underutilize building and the multi generations and multi activities that are there and the ones that can be there I think it's really important to move forward November may make you feel better but it's still money out of the budget and the bonding takes a while we have to set up where people are going to be while we're building this renovating it all these activities whether it's the daycare seniors the basketball the pickle I mean so I would rather have many more public hearings every other week if we have to and move it forward that's all I think it's a real real important statement of our quality of life and services and to feel that we have a fitness room an exercise room I think we'll be amazed how much it'll be used so I I feel strong about it but I do think it belongs in the capital plan and if we need to add money to make it happen in the capital plan but that's where it goes so to point you to this if you again if you have your budget books on page 53 54 and 55 is that in the general fund yes there would be in these books right after the tab there's a CIP tab you get a you can see so we're in FY21 that's being proposed so you can see kind of how that breaks down you see the debt service at the top the annual capital the equipment and this is showing the additional 25,000 and then it breaks down roughly into the categories that we budget then if you go to the next page you'll actually see the specific projects that are included in those dollars and then there's a summary kind of so 380,000 for streets 25,000 for bridges 55,000 for retaining walls 121,000 for sidewalks and 176,000 for storm water that's where this money would come from it would be out of this list of things or we could raise the budget or we could raise the budget and I would just say this list of things is what I hear more about from constituents than any other thing in the budget just be very wary on this so I think where I'm at right now is I agree that I don't want to see this list of things cut but I do want the WREC project to move forward whether that's in March or November and so I am not totally clear as to how much we ought to be including here if it's different from March versus November we need to figure out when we would actually be making the bond payment but then that does potentially kick us up to at least that's if we funded everything else so I took out the bond payment for now and funded the ash borer the homeless task force just as a starting point and I left out the energy plan and the confluence park assuming they're in the capital plan already the survey we can do we can figure that out it's my annual the bond that we're putting off so just to get some sense of what that looked like so you knew where you were at right well and if we include the WREC so we're at 4.3 right now we have yet to talk about those other things specifically but actually could we take out the ash borer and the homeless task force just for now anticipating that we're going to have a conversation about them but then if we include the WREC center bond so without them we're at well 3.8 now with CVPSA and we were at 3.6 and then if we add in the WREC center knowing that that would be a separate bond issue that'll be 4.6 how do people feel about if I'm hearing you correctly Donna you would be more in favor of not having it easily raise taxes having it come from the current capital plan well there's two points one is really knowing when we're going to bond and incur the cost and secondly in what way within the capital plan are other things moving out and does it need the 314 or is it 50,000 more we may have to increase the capital plan but again even doing it now when does that bond start having payment so I feel it's a little illusionary to put it right there at the beginning of this so one possibility is that we could hold this as a placeholder for now know that we need to revisit it we'll have that all for next week so maybe we can move on from this conversation unless there's other thoughts I just think that there's a good nice turn out on everything for last night I had a different meeting last night and I do think that the voters of the town are going to come out and support the renovation of the rec building I think it's going to be a valuable thing and we've seen just in the last couple of weeks there's been a lot of news coverage on TV of the new YMCA up in Burlington it's a nice beautiful place a lot of light and equipment and everything and I think if people can imagine our rec center being something like that I think people are really going to be enthusiastic about it so I do think we should I think we have to move forward with something I think we should move forward with something that people are really going to want to like and use it any other comments about the rec at this point? okay, other thoughts on other topics anybody want to advocate for something? I'm going to talk about the ash four I forwarded you all an email when Bill first started talking that Alex sent and he's available for questions in the back of the room I had felt that the council had made a commitment of $15,000 a year starting to really build a fund when all the trees start getting infected and that we have to deal with it and we luckily got a head start on it thanks to the tree board and the park staff but I feel we can't ignore it and Alex laid out where the 14 would go and I think we have to address it trees are essential and we need to protect them Alex, you want to say anything? help me, help me and did you see the email? did you all get it? and so like that first expense I believe it's not going to be once you have that portable saw sand saw mill you'll be using it for the continuous treatment of the ash four, is that correct? yeah, so first of all sorry about this is so late to sort of a weird twist of fate that happened back in the FY20 budget congress which is when we asked for $14,000 for FY20 for the ash four and by total coincidence there was $14,000 of there about currently in the ash four reserve fund and I just had a miscommunication so I asked for $14,000 and he saw $14,000 and he said okay perfect well said and really what I wanted was an additional $14,000 so this year's $10,000 on top of last year's $14,000 I didn't want to ask for the full $24,000 some things have been cheaper we've gotten some grants in the meantime so I asked for this year's $14,000 and the background is that the EAB problem is the ten year window and the biggest impact is in year six through eight and just based on what we're seeing around town we feel like we're in year two through four so we want to spend the money before the impact so that we're ready and set and I think we're doing frankly I think we're doing a great job and I thank you for supporting the last couple years so this feels like the last year the impact that we need we feel like we have the right staffing situation probably won't ask again next year but you'll need but you'll need the stuff the inocuation that you do on the trees but that's more reasonable more reasonable amount here I was trying to find out what is that $2,000, $3,000 but as the trees get more that will go up I'm just going to make another plug in the lobbyist position sorry are we good for that I'm here before anything regarding EAB and this request I think we should be doing it I think that it's coming we know it's coming we need to be preparing to we need to continue to work on addressing it Glen would agree with that it also feels to me from all of the presentations on this subject that we've heard over the last couple of years that this is money that we spend now so that we spend a lot less money in the future because it if we're not on top of it it will end up being significantly more expensive to deal with the larger problem that we will have neglected so I agree any other thoughts on this? I will say for myself I'm also interested in this especially knowing the background of like this was basically an effect of a miscommunication and knowing that we'll be able to use the mill every year afterwards I mean one question I guess I still have so I'm just looking at the request replacement plantings are those for trees that have been taken out? yeah so basically the ideas are removed I mean presumably also with like the insecticide treatment I mean there's some trees that we're just going to keep injecting every year because they're continuously right or regularly so I mean I assume that that should eventually be just built into the budget because that's going to be an ongoing expense is that more or less? and that piece of it is not I would say that's not a burdensome part of the budget for it once you have the staff that's trained and you have the equipment to inject an ongoing pesticide that's just a little budget line so is the staff training line for the insecticide treatment? yeah well no that's a tree risk assessment training the staff we're sat on the insecticide we treated last year we have the equipment the staff training is about the safety of these trees okay fair enough I mean yeah Lauren and just confirming this is equipment that you need enough of the season something you could like share with another town or where it's used that much that there's no opportunity for like a regional band saw yeah no we absolutely can share with another town and part of what we've part of what our approach has been to say let's be a model community for how to respond to animal damage and so what we want is there are a lot of surrounding towns that would be processed responsibly would it be possible for you to come sit here so that you're picked up by some microphone thank you so much no big one check one two there we go alright let me start with just our own situation so with Montpelier a lot of towns I want to say it's a luxury but they have the ability to remove an ash tree and the most responsible thing to do is just to leave it there because if it is infested it's not going to spread so if you are East Montpelier that's their approach they're just going to leave it there it's on a rural roadside it's no big deal for us that's not an option in most of the places that we're removing ash trees so the purpose and the thinking behind the mill was it's going to it's going to allow us to bring a mill to our tree and create an added value product out of all of this potentially valuable wood instead of just chipping it or burning it for firewood and then the regional piece is about well can we be a model community where