Welcome, bienvenue ladies and gentlemen to the European Day of Languages video show, paying tribute to excellence in language teaching and learning all over Europe. My name is Juliette and I'm the lucky one who will be your host today. We are going to check out a range of exciting projects, putting languages in focus in all sectors of education. But before we embark on this journey together, it is my immense pleasure and honour to introduce to you the EU Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth, Marie Gabrielle. The Commissioner is originally from Bulgaria, but I believe she will speak to us in French this time. Madame Gabrielle, à vous la parole. Bonjour à tous et à toutes. C'est un grand plaisir pour moi de vous présenter ce kaleidoscope de projets qui ont reçu le label européen des langues au fil des sept dernières années où ont été financés via Erasmus Plus. Le multilinguisme fait partie des principes fondamentaux et de la même de l'Union européenne. À travers ces politiques en faveur de l'éducation et de la culture, la Commission européenne soutient la diversité linguistique, cette richesse exceptionnelle qui s'inscrit pleinement dans notre patrimoine européenne. J'y attache une énorme importance. Le programme Erasmus Plus a soutenu plus de 19 000 projets portant sur l'apprentissage et l'enseignement des langues dans tous les secteurs de l'éducation, de la formation et de la jeunesse. Le label européen des langues est destiné à valoriser et encourager davantage les initiatives innovantes dans ce domaine. Les projets que nous allons découvrir ensemble montrent à quel point le travail de l'apprentissage des langues est un processus tout au long de la vie. Il commence dès le plus jeune âge, à l'école maternelle et primaire, continue à se profondir dans l'école secondaire, accompagne la formation professionnelle pour continuer à l'université et accompagner même la formation des adultes. Nos états membres et les autres pays qui participent à la mise en œuvre de la belle européenne des langues ont fait un travail tout à fait remarquable pour soutenir ces projets et je voudrais très sincèrement les féliciter. Il faut continuer afin de préserver notre richesse linguistique. D'une part, nous devons continuer à préserver les méthodes d'enseignement qui ont fait leurs preuves et qui contribuent à notre excellence européenne. D'autre part, il faut enrichir le multilinguisme et l'apprentissage des langues en emparant des opportunités que nous offrent les nouvelles technologies. Ainsi, nous assurerons que la diversité linguistique ne reste pas simplement un beau principe, mais qu'il se traduise dans des idées et des projets concrets auxquels tous les citoyens européens peuvent être associés. Nous devons travailler pour avoir plus d'enseignants de langues excellents. A cela s'ajoute le défi de permettre aux élèves d'échanger avec leur homologue à l'étranger, notamment grâce aux nouvelles technologies. Tout cela existe déjà dans le programme Erasmus Plus, qui s'achève à la fin de cette année 2020. À partir de 2021, le nouveau programme va continuer à vous soutenir, afin que vous puissiez porter davantage de projets linguistiques, tout en vous aidant à mieux les valoriser. Je me réjouis de la collaboration continue avec tous ceux et toutes celles avec lesquels nous partageons la même passion pour les langues. Je tiens à vous remercier tous pour votre créativité, votre engagement et votre implication dans cette belle cause, le multilinguisme. Et je vous lance le défi de continuer à oser la diversité linguistique et par votre travail d'un inspiré d'autre. Merci. Merci Madame Gabrielle, pour vos mots visionnaires et encourageants. Mesdames, messieurs, la Commissaire européenne nous a rappelé combien les compétences linguistiques sont au coeur de la vision ambitieuse de créer un espace européen de l'éducation. L'aptitude à parler des langues étrangères est une compétence nécessaire, non seulement pour étudier à l'étranger, mais aussi pour rivaliser sur des marchés de l'emploi de plus en plus internationaux. Language is also a question of equity and inclusion for people living, studying and working in a different country from the one they grew up in. Learning the language of the new host country can be a tremendous challenge. Without a good level of literacy and language competences, you may lose out on many opportunities in life and work. We have asked all participating countries to show us some of their best language projects over the past programme period. By using innovative methods, great language teachers turn the language classrooms into exciting places. You will also see examples of projects that focus on linguistic diversity and the wider benefits of multilingualism. You will discover how languages can be combined with the learning of other subjects. This education actually begins with language and language is the beginning of all learning. So let's now visit some schools around Europe and discover what is going on. Digital tools have opened up lots of new possibilities for language teachers to bring languages to life and make learning interesting. Here are some inspiring examples. I teach in a very small school on the countryside. Our resources are limited. It's super important to bring in the world into our classroom and for us to come out in the world. We need to make sure we make this journey possible. Imagine if they can learn from students in another country about their history or culture. Hi, we are a class in Jonslund School, Sweden. We would like to know. I hope they walk away from my classroom knowing that the world is much bigger than just this area. That they can do things and that their voices are heard. Education is us learning together. You just have devotion, passion and a bit of creativity and there are endless possibilities. In 2017 we began to teach modern languages through remote learning at a rural secondary school called Hakka Centralskola in the very north of Sweden. Students from different schools can be taught at the same time in the same language lesson. The variation keeps our students motivated throughout the whole lesson. The students follow the language course and practice all the skills included such as writing, reading, listening and speaking. Our goal is to continue to develop and improve our working methods to reach more pupils in sparsely populated areas and enabling them to learn languages by competent language teachers. Let's take the communication to another level. Let's keep alive the relationships between human beings. Let's keep alive the communication between us, especially in those rough times. Could you give us your taxi bill please? Have come good. Just with one click you can discover a new world. The E-Mate app is suitable for learning, training and teaching. E-Mate, your virtual companion, is European Union Multilingualism Activities Throughout Teamwork to carry out Erasmus vision. Sabine, Claudia, coming back to my first question, why would I do it? What are the benefits for my school? I would say there are lots of benefits for schools. First of all, there is this authentic opportunity to produce texts and also to edit texts in person's writing. Normally this is done for teaching purposes only, now there is a real possibility and a real opportunity to publish texts. In publicity, there are authentic reasons to publish on the app platform. Additionally, you will have access to all these authentic texts and videos and fantastic games and learning materials. Also, the teachers at your school will have texts in eight languages. I don't know how many languages are taught at your school. Eight languages, materials and teaching tips for teachers on the teacher's heart. The practice of learning a foreign language through the intermediary of another discipline is called in French, Émile, teaching an integrated subject to a foreign language. And in English, Clil, content and language integrated learning. The methods are not all the same, but the fundamental idea is that each teacher has a role to play in the master's of reading and writing, in the school language and in foreign languages. A collaboration between teachers in languages and teachers specialized in an essential discipline. Clil stands for content and language integrated learning. For the last year and a half, we've been teaching transition years history and culture of France through French. We're currently taking part in the Clil programme. I'd like to get a better understanding of French history and culture. And obviously by the end of the year, we all want to be able to improve our French. And it wasn't really focused on grammar and you didn't feel like a pressure to pronounce everything right. It was just really fun. Definitely, fifth year of French was less daunting when taking part in the Clil module the previous year because we were immersed in more French. Discovering science was initiated by college children who are in Paris and primary school in the middle of the language in Pakistan. During the project, students did research on Nicholas, Tesla and Blu-ray Noff and they improved their knowledge in English, IT, maths, physics and chemistry through different activities and workshops. They've learned how to think outside the box, accepting diversity. And with students exchange, they had an opportunity to peek into another culture and fell in love with another way of doing it. There are projects that have found links between learning languages, sustainable development and visions for a distant future. There is no limit to creativity in the classroom where the living languages are taught. Awareness of how culture affects communication is essential in all human interaction. Many projects seek to develop students' curiosity towards other cultures and languages or enhance their tolerance and positive attitude towards people who are different from the norm. Others aim to prepare students for study and work in different cultural settings and develop a broader view of what European identity means to foster responsible citizenship skills. That's how we created a European story, in which we found a red thread that links Latin, Italian, and Portuguese Latin to the text under the form of basmets, novels, stories from the national folklore of each country. They wrote them under the form of a script, adapting them to their contemporary realities. And then, during a five-day mobility period, they put an original piece of theatre and we believe that each time a great success. Werdala International School celebrates the diversity of the cultural backgrounds of its students. As a member of the Council of European International Schools, Werdala offers internationally accredited curriculum from pre-K levels up to an accredited IB program. Many of the students engaged in the project were reluctant to work together. Many of them had problems with the development team. First of all, they had this work for them and for them. The project is definitely universal. You can bring it to every square, aiming at the problem of the power in the middle of the alleys. The project was created as an answer to the phenomenon of cyber power that took place in our school. The important thing is that it was entirely based on the authentic experience of our students. They very much engaged in the implementation of this project. For me personally, the extraordinary experience was that they met victims of cyber power as well. It was really an incredible experience. The goal of the Erasmus project, plus the suppression and prevention of chicanery in schools in Europe, was to create this important sociological phenomenon of the school environment connected to the project, which was the school of the United Kingdom, Finnish, Portuguese, Hungarian, Turkish and the main coordinator was the German school. Multilingualism keeps the brain on top. In addition, the appreciation of linguistic diversity is a question of social justice and inclusion. There are schools where parents ask their children not to talk about the language they use at home once they have crossed the school gate. These children are forced to leave behind them an essential component of their identity, which will have a negative impact on their trust in them, their motivation and their school results. Hello, I am Joanne Duarte and I am the head of the 3M project. More knowledge with more knowledge. In this project, we work together with 12 Frieze-based schools to develop and implement an inclusive approach to metallurgy in education and to evaluate it, so that everyone in the class can get a role in education. Last year, we won the European language award with this project. Second prize and public prize. My name is Miriam Günther and I am the project coordinator and researcher at the 3M project. I am responsible for the 3M toolbox. In the 3M toolbox, all of us have developed multi-use activities. You can navigate within the toolbox and select lessons, on lessons or projects, on lifetime, on core goals and on skills. This project from Italy is about plurilingual education, tested and implemented in several primary and secondary schools. It uses all the languages of the children in the classroom as resources, a training course for teachers has been created based on this project. This project from Denmark, Wise Words, is aimed at informing pupils, parents and teachers about the value of maintaining the language of origin as a personal treasure. It's a powerful testimony to the strength of multilingualism. The youngest children in early childhood education and daycare can all become multilingual. It is just about finding the correct way of providing opportunities for that to happen. When they are preschool age, they are like sponges when it comes to language. So, we have just seen a lot of topics about language learning, digital tools, cultural diversity and many other subjects. Now let's hear from Mikael Toch. Mikael is head of the unit Schools and Multilingualism. Mikael is originally from Germany and to celebrate this special day, he is going to speak both Italian and German. Talk to you. Where are you from? We are from the national community that have promoted this work, that have supported these projects. I would really like to thank both the promoters and the national agencies. The teaching and learning of languages is a very important and fundamental part of the Erasmus program. Obviously, we believe that these projects will also be a very important part of our future program. We also have an idea of the potential of the European Label of the Wing, as many of you know, which has been one of our most important projects in the last 20 years, to show the potential of this program. We would like to strengthen the existing conditions of the Erasmus program. In practice, we would really like to use the Label in all the member states of the European Union. So we have more projects and also in the community, even more active. The learning and teaching of languages is what we heard from Ms. Commissioner Maria Gabriel. In the centre of our ideas for the development of a European training space. That happens a lot. We also made some ideas about the priorities that the European Language Label should have in the next years, in 2021 and 2022, for the selection of new award winners and new projects. We have three priorities. One of them is the use of digital methods in teaching and learning languages. We really have to use the possibilities to support the learning of languages, both in learning of languages and in teaching, but also in testing and evaluation. We have experienced the importance of these digital methods, especially due to the corona crisis. The second priority and the second point that is important to us is language as a means for the promotion of chances of equality, educational justice, social unity and civilisation. The third and last point Lars really did not read the teaching and teaching in the language class. We know that there are many, many member states in the European Union who have too few well-educated language teachers and we really hope to be able to design projects that take care of themselves. They really create a good and continuous education and an attractiveness of this profession, so much for this profession, to make it visible. The European Day of Language is your day. Today we celebrate together, the European Language Day. It is really a very great day. We are all looking forward to be able to celebrate together. Today we celebrate and tomorrow we will be inspired by your great ideas, by your ideas. You will inspire more people and my colleagues and I here in the European Commission will continue to do everything with the Erasmus Program to support other instruments in a good exchange. Thank you. Thank you, Miguel. We are all glad to hear that the European Language Label will continue in the next Erasmus Program. With more awards throughout all program countries and that in the next year the European Language Label will be awarded to projects that support language learning and digital tools, for professional development of language teachers. Let's continue the discovery of our projects beyond general education, the professional training university training and adults this time. Language learning is not less important in professional training. On the contrary, for certain training, language skills are essential. There are also methods where practice is more pronounced than theory. Other initiatives are aimed at people with physical or mental abilities. Others are still trying to recognize skills acquired outside of the teaching system. The areas of Paris Charles de Gaulle and Paris Le Bourget are important for international projects and investments. The major challenge is to facilitate access to job opportunities. The goal of this project is to allow young adults from the area to benefit from a qualification program organized around the validation of both a professional project and language training. Digital tools have been used by some projects to put in place practical tools and platforms for online or blended learning. In order to support learning throughout life some projects put in place interdisciplinary approaches cultural centers. Cultural centers, museums and libraries play an essential role. Art has always been used as a tool to teach languages. Some projects go further than simply enrich vocabulary. They open the mind to creativity and expression through works of art and theater. When speaking about language learning and adult education one cannot ignore the role of digital tools. Language Voices Platform combines free downloadable resources with Language Voices Cafes. These informal meetings facilitate access of migrants to second language studies while enabling them to integrate a community of learners and tutors. This is key in establishing a quality of life in a new country. All teachers need guidance on how to adopt a pedagogy which is inclusive and linguistically sensitive and how to manage diversity in the classroom. Learning related language courses for teachers of foreign origin is essential for their professional development. Teaching academies and other higher education institutions have developed courses to prepare teachers and educators for their rapidly evolving roles. Strong school partnerships are key to continuously developing and innovating the teacher's education. They provide for the exchange of good practices and allow for a certain mobility in the classroom of the first language teacher. The teacher is the same as the teacher from a different place and is taught in the classroom. There is no need to do this only with one foreign language abroad. It is important that the teacher speaks often and often after learning the language that we need to use. I am very happy to have the opportunity to learn the language. It was very exciting for me to learn the language in the classroom in the same way that I have the opportunity to learn the language. I think that I can learn a lot in the classroom and both in the classroom and in the classroom in the classroom. My income is in the classroom for one who is a professional from a different place in the classroom that I have learned. I think it is better to learn both in the classroom and in the classroom. I have always been a teacher and I like to teach the students in the classroom. I am very happy that I have learned the language in the classroom in the classroom in the classroom and she was a professional in school and she waited for the teacher as a child that she couldn't go to Iceland she learned Polish and waited to say she could go to Iceland but the teacher helped her in every way. Ladies and gentlemen you have witnessed an excerpt full of projects We hope you enjoyed it. The projects put forward have been nominated by the national organizations that have managed the Erasmus Plus program or the contest for the European Label of Languages. They have already received their prize, but I think you agree with me that they still deserve to be valued for their remarkable work. We warmly thank all those who contributed to this caleidoscope of joy to learn languages and this tribute to language diversity in Europe. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.


Good evening and welcome to the pandemic version of Montpelier Civic Forum, which means, of course, that we can all vote absentee, except for those of us who want to go and vote traditionally on Town Meeting Day, which is Tuesday, March 2nd this year. And we have an excellent election. We've got great candidates, we've got great City Council candidates, and we have good school board candidates. We also have one person running for a five-year term on the Parks Commission. We also do our regular shows, which include Anne Watson talking from the mayor's seat on what it's like in Montpelier, going from one side of town to the other at projects which are ongoing, projects which have been pushed off, and projects which might never be. And we do our budget shows. We're doing one with Jim Murphy from the school board. That's a good show. And we have Bill Fraser, our city manager, along with Anne Watson, our mayor, talking about the city budget. That is tonight's show. And I want to thank Anne and I want to thank Bill for coming. Thanks for having us. Yeah, thank you. We do this every year, pandemic or not. And the reason that we have Anne on is because budgets are built not out of nothing. They're built on policies. And Bill helps to construct off the policies that Council and Anne set. Now, this is not a zero-based budget, is it, Bill? No, we set targets. And maybe Anne can explain how the Council reaches their policy direction, but we set a target of how much we think the community can afford and what the key priorities are, and then try to build a budget from that. But obviously, maintaining our services is typically one of the areas that the Council gives us guidance on. And so the costs of doing that are somewhat fixed. So last year's budget really is the starting point of this process. And then what we do is we adjust to current priorities, current realities, and current, basically, desires. So the budget starts, in a sense, right after the last town meeting day when Council goes on its retreat and sets its objectives. Would you say that's when the budget kind of starts? Yeah, you know, it's kind of a funny process because the Council that's voted in on Town Meeting Day then goes to create their budget in sort of late March, early April. And that helps set some of the direction of the work of the Council and some of the staff for a good part of the rest of the year. And it's still the old budget through the July of that year. So whatever direction we set in April ends up kind of affecting a little bit of that year's fiscal budget, but it also helps inform the budget that we decide on that October, November, and December. Bill, there are some people watching who don't know who you are.  How long have you been City Manager? I'm just finishing my 26th year. Ann, how long have you been on Council? I was originally appointed as a City Councilor for District 2 in 2012, which means that it will be 10 years next year. So we're not dealing with newbies here. Bill, how have City Council's priorities changed over the years? Because I'm going to ask the same of Ann. You've watched and helped that process over many, many Councils. How has that changed? I would say not drastically. It's usually incrementally as community priorities change over time. We all know that Montpelier has a high tax rate, so our constant has been to be careful with that, not to inflate the budget too much because of the tax burden that people have. I think infrastructure has been an issue, although that became more of a priority in say the last 8 to 10 years. Things like economic development have risen and fallen. Environmental issues rise and fall with the Council. In more recent years, we've seen some of the social issues come to the front like homelessness and those kinds of things that really weren't issues before. I think early in my tenure, it was really about the nuts and bolts of operating the City. I think over time, we've gotten more into things like funding Montpelier alive and more of the whole community-based funding and looking at things as more as a whole, which I think actually has been healthier for the City. But it definitely changes and each group brings a certain philosophy to it. The change of one person can kind of change the rhythm and philosophy of the Council as a group, so it's interesting to watch. The last 10 years, besides that one person bringing energy efficiency awareness that you brought to the Council, what else has changed in the 10 years? Well, I was going to say some of the things you just said there, Bill. I was thinking about the emphasis on infrastructure as well as social issues and the environment. Those have become more important to the Council over the last few years, I suppose. And parking remains a constant for 26 years? Absolutely. It was talked about in my interview. What are the Council's priorities and that shape this budget? So the Council has some large categories of goals that have been in place for a few years now. And those big categories are things like community prosperity or actually this year one of the goals is around COVID-19 recovery. It's also about having responsive and responsible government or sustainable infrastructure, that sort of thing. And those certainly play into our decisions around what we put money towards in the budget. So one of the things is having an inclusive community and that I think also speaks to the money that we put towards the Social and Economic Justice Committee. There's $10,000 in the budget for them to work with a consultant on doing a needs assessment for our community. So that's just one example of how those big goals have affected our budget. And so under those big goals we do have more specific targets that we're trying to hit, like how that plays out for that year. And those change from year to year and we'll revisit that again after Town Meeting Day this year.  There are three different measures sitting on this ballot of which you're one. Major measures, Kellogg-Hovard, the schools and the city. Roughly what percent every year of our tax burden belongs to the city? About 40. Approximately 40 percent and I think that may be including the Kellogg-Hovard. Kellogg-Hovard Library is $350,000. It's a big number but compared to the $10 million for the city or $20 million for the schools, we tend to fold that into the municipal tax rate. So the combined of the ballot items in the city's budget is usually 38 to 40 percent of the total tax bill. Let's start off with Kellogg-Hovard because that kind of is out of your control a bit. They're requested to come in roughly zero or in terms of an increase. It was exact same as the last two years. Bill, in terms of the public budget, you issued a 179 page budget summary. So we're not going to go through line by line of 179 because we don't have enough bandwidth to do it. So this might seem a bit disjointed but it really isn't because we're going to go through a lot of different, as Ann said, we're going to go through a lot of different subdivisions in this. Let's start off on the higher level of this. How much is the city asking for this year? The city budget is actually down about 2.5 percent from last year, the overall budget. And that is because we started the process with about a $1.4 million budget gap due to loss of revenues and some expenses going up and shifts for expenses. And a very unusual thing that we had a 27th pay period which only happens once every 12 years. So of course it would be during the pandemic year. Could you explain what that is? So that most of us who don't think in terms of bi-weekly budgeting? Sure. So a normal 52-week year has 26 pay periods, assuming people get paid every two weeks. But by quirk of the calendar, every 12 years there's a 27th pay period. It just happens to fall within those 12 months. And so that adds about 6 percent to all your personnel costs. And that happened this year. So on top of an already difficult budget gap that was added to our challenge. So as a result, the overall budget is lower than it was last year. However, because some of it had to do with lost revenue, the tax request is about 0.6 percent up from last year. You know, half a percent. It's really one of the lowest changes we've had at some time. And that was something that was really important to account for. Now you've already made adjustments, downward adjustments in the budget before this? Correct. As we went through the pandemic, we had to downward adjust. Our parking revenues were next to nil at one point. Our local options tax. Our hotels didn't have many people in them. Our bars and restaurants literally didn't have people in them. What did that look like? What was that hit? Hopefully. I think you probably know the numbers better than I do. Well, I don't know them off the top of my head, but it was very significant. So we've actually had two, you know, when this started almost a year ago in March of 2020, we were still finishing up fiscal year 20. So the first thing we had to do with a quarter of the year to go was to make some pretty harsh adjustments for the last three months of the year to try to bring the budget in. Because of parking revenue suddenly just stopping local options tax, stopping other fees for service, just dropping out of the bottom. So we had to furlough a fair amount of employees. I think about 20 ultimately ended up being furloughed. Fortunately, the federal subsidy with the extra $600 a week helped keep them whole. So we didn't have to hurt any of our employees financially, but it saved the city quite a bit of money. Those employees were furloughed right through to the end of July. So not only through the end of the fiscal year, but into FY21, which started on July 1st. We then had to make those same adjustments for the fiscal year we're in now, FY21. And so that involved keeping positions vacant, rolling back capital projects, rolling back equipment, rolling back funding to various agencies. So when we came to do the FY22 budget, we really had all the good news, we'd already kind of thought about it because we'd had to do it for FY21. So we assumed that revenues were going to stay at the same lower level for FY22 now just so we're not talking inside baseball here. We mean FY22 means fiscal year 2022 starts July 1, 2021 and ends June 30, 2022. That's the budget we'll be voting on in March. So we started with that rollback budget as our base, not the approved budget, with the assumption that it was going to be at least till July 30 of 2022 before we were fully back on our feet financially as the pandemic ends, hopefully. And as I recall, I think the last three months of the FY20 budget when the pandemic started, if I recall, I think the estimates were something like half a million dollars for those three months. So projecting out it was going to be something like two million dollars, which turned out to be not about one and a half. Yeah, right, which was in the right ballpark. Guys, this is inside baseball. I want the viewers to know that we recognize that this is inside baseball. We're going to be throwing a lot of numbers out tonight. But at the very end of the show, we're going to talk about the next fiscal year because we've cut back. We've continued the cutbacks. Is it a dam that's waiting with a lot more deferred spending and we're going to end the show with that discussion because it's a legitimate discussion. Is this the Montpelier City government that we really feel we need? Or is this an austerity budget that really pinches more than Anne and the rest of the council would like to pinch? Well, let's stay in this budget. Bill, what has health insurance been like for this year and workers' compensation? So, fortunately, this year our health insurance rate was actually in the single digits was about 5%, which still is high. But in the health insurance world, last year we were looking at over 20%, which really was a budget buster for us. So the fact that it stayed stable this year made a huge difference as we were trying to balance this big gap. Do you anticipate that last year was a blip that won't be repeated? I think health insurance is a world of its own. So you don't know what's happening in the world of health costs. One of the things that does drive is our experience as an employee group. We are no longer for reasons that we don't want to get into unless we want to do a whole show on it. We are a pool of ourselves. We're not in a larger pool like we used to be. So an unusual experience or two amongst our employee group or their families can really drive our rates up because of the costs. And what had happened the prior year essentially was we spent more money on health care than our premiums had paid for. So the rates had to catch that up, but this year we were able to manage our costs. And we do. We work really hard on employee wellness and managing costs. But there's nothing you can do if somebody has a catastrophic illness or an accident or those kind of things. And we want our employees and their families to have that coverage so that they can work with peace of mind. What is the new spending in this budget? Approximately 100,000, 200,000? How much is embedded for new program initiatives? Well, I can speak to one of them anyway. There is, it's $10,000 I believe, that is dedicated towards the capital area neighborhoods. That is a program that was an initiative of the city many years ago, but had sort of fallen by the wayside. And I think has a lot of value for the community. It is a mechanism like getting neighborhoods together is a mechanism for communication between the city and residents, as well as just improving quality of life, particularly during a time of unusual isolation. And I think it's worth funding. I feel pretty good about that since it was a city service not that long ago. Can I go into other city services that are funded in this budget that people don't really think about much? Sure. The social worker with the place. What's going on with that? That's continued. In fact, I can give you a quick overview to answer your initial question and follow into with the exception of the capital area neighborhoods that the mayor mentioned. There are no new programming items in the budget and I would say reductions come across the board. So we're holding six positions vacant right now. We've reduced capital spending, we've reduced equipment spending, operating spending and funds. Some funds to our community agencies have stayed the same, but overall funding. Others got had drastic reductions. So overall, our community spending is down and, you know, therefore our external programming is down. And that reflects in some cases use. Obviously rec programs aren't running the way they used to be or senior programs. And but certainly one of the challenges is that we still have service demands, you know, the snow still falls. There's still crime. There's still, you know, police things happen, ambulance fire calls, those kind of things. Those those don't really pay attention to the economy or the pandemic they they have to be responded to. So how do you maintain a core level of safety services and basic services for the community? And respond to this crisis. Let's stay in recreation. Does budget assume we're going to have the pool open this summer? No. But I will also add that typically the pool is self supporting. So if we were to open it, we and it projected that revenues would support the expenses. We would do that it wouldn't. It's a city projecting that the recreation department will hold summer camp as it did last summer. Yes. Is the city projecting that the senior center will be able to accommodate seniors in that center? We don't know yet, you know, may depend on the level of vaccination. You know, seniors are one of the most vulnerable population in this pandemic. So opening them up for congregate activities is very challenging. They have had quite a bit of success with online classes, you know, virtual classes taught by senior center instructors. So that has has been a good source of continuing activity, but we don't know when we'll be able to open a full suite of activity. City Hall. When will we have City Hall? We tried it for a while. We had several days a week of City Hall. Do you anticipate during the spring that perhaps will several days of City Hall again? Again, it all depends on external factors. We're the city and I think wisely the council and staff made a decision very right at the beginning of this that we were not epidemiologists. We are not pandemic experts and that we would follow the CDC and the state health department that we would we would accept their guidance and follow it. That we were not in a position to make our own rules or regulations or policies. And so we closely monitor the governor's press conferences twice a week and we update our policies based on what we were told. And we had opened up to City Hall two days a week and we're starting to relax based on the case count in Vermont. And then in fall when the case count started going up and the state was asked as a whole to ratchet back down, we responded in kind with that. So we will reopen all of these activities when we are told by people who know more about this than we do that it's okay to do so. Now you had said that there's six positions that are waiting to be, well, that are still open. Parks picked up a position, didn't they? So a year ago, Parks added two positions.  So yes, so those are still, those are full. So we have six vacant positions that normally we would be filling. Two are in rec. One is in police. One is in finance. And maybe two are in finance. Let me think. Police. Yeah, I think maybe two in finance.  So there's one in DPW, one in finance, two in rec, and one in police. So six. We're out of the weeds now. Anyway, anyway, so those are, those are being held until we are on financial footing to be able to restore them. We specifically call that as being held. We're not cutting those positions out, you know, forever and ever. Hopefully we can restore those positions to levels of service. Parks, because we had two retirements in rec, which were both field maintenance people, parks has agreed for this year to assist in the field maintenance. So one of the reasons we didn't need to reduce in parks was that they are going to do double duty and help mow fields and those kinds of things for the rec department. We may need to find some summer help, but we will not have the same full kind of time staff, but we're also not, we don't believe we're going to be running leagues and all those kinds of things on those facilities. Now I have to give the viewer a warning that we're heading back into the weeds again. The school resource officer and that position, the schools fund half of it, the city funds half of it, that person is on the police department. Is that included, that position, now that they're no longer in the schools? Is that halftime that's moving back from the schools back into the cities part of that police position that we're down one? Are we down a half a police position instead? No, do you want to take that one? Yes. Why don't you go? So maybe I'll just use raw numbers. The police have had 17 sworn police officers, including the chief, captain, everyone who's actually, you know, able to serve as a police officer. One of those 17 was the school resource officer. When we did our budget, we weren't sure what the school was going to do, so we did not plan on any revenue from the school. So when we didn't get any, it wasn't a surprise. So we now have 16 police officers instead of 17, the person who is functioning as the school resource officer will simply be a patrol person. And we're still holding one position to get back up to 17 eventually? Eventually when we can financially, correct. There's two different budgets. There's the operating budget and there's the capital budget. What is the capital budget about? Normally the capital budget totally would be about 2.4 million, but that includes debt payments. What does the capital budget fund? It funds debt payments for capital projects. It funds major projects. Typically public works projects, road reconstructions, road paving, sidewalk constructions. Bridges, retaining walls, those sorts of big things. This year, I think, for example, one of the things you said you wanted to talk about, there's funds in there for the reappraisal. Major things that aren't operating costs. And then we also have an equipment fund. And so we did take money from there because, number one, it was going to be difficult to manage projects because of contract or restrictions. And number two, they're also the kind of things that we can put back in easily as if funds come in, it's easy to, it's pretty simple to say, okay, here's another $100,000. Let's add one more project to the list as opposed to hiring a new employee or building a new program and those kinds of things. So in terms of capital projects, are we down in spending from where we were last year? Or are we holding constant? We are, well, we're down from what we budgeted from last year. In the end of the day, when we actually had to make the reductions due to the sort of emergency provisions, we're not that much down from where we've actually spent. To your question that you posed earlier is, is this sustainable for the future? That's our challenge is how do we then make up for lost time for two years of underfunded capital in a community that really desperately needs capital projects done? And that's one of the things staff is already working on now for next year's budget is to have a plan for how do we play catch up. Sustainable streets. That's something that John Holler talked about, level street funding. And it was a priority and had watched that while on console. Trying to put away, what, about $500,000 to keep the streets at a level where we're not playing whack-a-mole. What happened to that this summer or this coming year? Well, that is one of the reduction areas, absolutely. And so the question is how can we, we have a sense of the amount of money that we need and so we are looking at ways that we can restore that in next year's budget assuming that we are back to some normal level of revenues. And it may be even, I don't know, might be a short term bond where we front load some money to do a lot of improvements more quickly to catch up for the lost time. It may just be reallocating funds to those projects in the short run. It's absolutely a need. We need to get back on that schedule. It was a smart schedule. And we had reached the level of funding that our goal had been set. We were maintaining the streets in the way we wanted to and we've definitely fallen off right now. I think, well, if I may, I think one of the important factors in making this budget and knowing that we were making these cuts now for the FY22 budget was to go into it eyes open knowing that we would need to play catch up in the future and being honest with ourselves about that and was that the right decision for this moment in time. And we felt like it was and I'm really glad actually that we are preparing now to make those catch up payments and do those projects in the future. Now that also includes major equipment as well. That's right.  Ambulance. Yeah, there's a schedule for all of those purchases. So we've delayed an ambulance purchase. We've delayed police cruiser purchase for two years. So yeah, there are things that are queuing up. Let me go through a few programs and if you could explain to people the housing trust, how much are they in for and what did they come to console for and what projects do you anticipate them doing? I believe they asked for $40,000. Well the housing trust fund had hoped initially to be at $110,000. That's what we had funded them at in theory in last year's budget. We ended up dropping them to 60 I think in the current year and then I think maybe 40 for this budget coming up. I don't have the exact number but yeah. So they understood that they have some money left over as well but maybe you could talk about some of the things they do. Yeah, so one of the great programs that they offer is the first time home buyers program so that if someone is looking to buy in Montpelier they can get a small grant to help make that happen. They anticipate that there are larger projects that happen in Montpelier to increase the amount of housing and they're able to give a significant amount of money to those projects when they are ready and when they're about to potentially happen and need that funding. So things like the French block over Obachan's got received money from the Housing Trust fund, great projects that need a boost to get over the finish line. Montpelier Development Corporation, are they in the budget? No. They are not in the budget. They were in the past. Yes. What did they come for money or was it just there was nothing there for them? Well, so the Montpelier Development Corporation has gone through a little bit of a transition over the last year or so in that they changed the model of how they operate. Since their beginning they had an executive director that was really their sole employee and there's been a bit of turnover in that position and so they've actually moved to a new model that is project manager oriented and they also had some funding left over. So this year, especially as they're in transition and they had some money left over, they are not included in the budget for this year. But they're still operating? Correct. Yes. We anticipate seeing or I should say I believe that board will continue. We're having discussions with them about how to structure this going forward, but they were very gracious. They understood the circumstances, they understood where they were and they said, hey, if you need to hold us at zero for this year to get through the hump, we understand that. But normally they had been previously funded for $100,000 per year. During last year's budget recisions we dropped them to $75,000 in FY20 and then excuse me, 21 the year we're in now and then for 22 we've got them at zero and then we'll be discussing where we go from there. Now we're going back into the weeds again in warning. They were budgeted out of the local options tax, weren't they? What is the local options tax and what happened to the local options tax during pandemic? We definitely had a drought. The local options tax just for those who aren't familiar with it is a 1% rooms, meals and alcohol tax. And that's alcohol sold in restaurants or bars, not alcohol that you buy at the grocery store.  And while there is some of that going on in you, whether it's takeout or small, it's certainly not at the level that has occurred. Certainly rooms are not being used at the rate they were used before. So we've seen about a 30% drop at least in local options taxes and we budgeted for a fairly significant drop. Hopefully we'll be wrong and we'll get more. But we tried to be conservative in our approach. So obviously one of the major things that's funded out of that is the economic development. So it made sense that since that was a drop in revenue, that would be an area that we didn't spend. Montpelier alive. Are they in the budget? Yes. They are in the budget, but I believe there's not funding for the July 3rd celebration. Right. So the operations for Montpelier alive remain in the budget at the same amount, but some of the extra event funding has been taken out. So funding for the energy plan or for Confluence Park? So yes, there is funding for the energy plan. What is the energy plan? Yeah, fair enough. So the city has a net zero energy goal to reach or achieve net zero energy or to produce renewably as much as we are consuming by 2030. That's the goal. So we've made great progress towards that. Actually, some of the data that we got from the energy committee had reduction in the amount of carbon emissions the city was producing. At about, we reduced it by 56% over the course of 10 years or so, which is pretty exciting. But there's a lot of work that still needs to be done. And so in order to plan the route, how we're going to get to net zero by 2030, there's funding in that budget. And yeah, we're going to be announcing who will be doing that work for us, who will be our consultant pretty soon. Confluence Park, is there anything in the budget for changes in Confluence Park? Not specifically. That would be a major capital project. We've got a design, we have some cost estimates, and there's some grant funding being sought right now. Ideally, we would try to do that with as much external funding as possible. But we could use existing city funding if we needed to match. But right now, there's not a specific fund to just go build it. Let's stay in the neighborhood, the parking garage. What is the status right now of the parking garage? Are we still in court? Is it budgeted so that we can stay in court as long as we want or need? Nobody wants to stay in court for as long as we need to stay in court. Where do you see that during this year? And where do you see the issue of the parking garage? Yeah, so it is still in litigation right now, and we are just waiting for some decisions to be made about that. And once that happens, if we get the green light to go ahead, I think we'll have to, we'll assess it based on the economic and pandemic conditions at the time. And I think we're all hoping that we'll be able to return to normal levels of travel at some point in the future. And certainly with the vaccine rolling out, I'm feeling pretty hopeful about that. And so we'll see. Has the Bishara family said whether they're still in for a hotel? They are. They've been very active. We have regular conversations with them, regular discussions about the status of litigation. They remain an active partner. As the mayor said, obviously once the litigation clears and we have no idea when that will be, at this point a trial is scheduled for probably late summer, early fall. There are going to be some motions coming actually at the end of this month and then decisions on those which will set the stage for what is left to be litigated. If the appellants choose to appeal decisions to the Supreme Court, that could add another year or so to the process. And I think what will have to happen is due diligence at that time, we will look at the market for hotel, we'll have to look at the finances, how much is it going to cost to build these. And all of that. I think it's interesting, you know, this is kind of a, the city right now is in a little bit of, it's an interesting quandary because the funds, the funds essentially for the litigation and all of this are coming from project costs. And if we were to discontinue the project, we would have to, so we have an approved $10 million bond for the project. If we were to discontinue the project, we'd have to issue the bond for the approximately a million or a little bit more that we've already spent, which means taxpayers would be paying for that for nothing because there wouldn't be anything built. And on the other hand, when we get to the end of it, with so much of the project costs being eaten up in litigation, you know, we may be looking at how to fund the difference. So it's certainly, it sounds like a lose-lose. Well, it certainly has created, and it may be the intent of those that are appealing it is to drive costs up into delay. I don't know, but it certainly is creating a situation that we have to manage and watch very closely. Let me take you out of the city budget. We're going to stay in budgetary stuff. Water rates. How are those handled this year? What do we anticipate for water rates? Yeah, so there's a plan over a very long period of time about how the water and sewer rates will change over time so that we can achieve a sustainable level of quality of infrastructure. And we actually just had a meeting about this not that long ago with the city council. And this, we approved some rates, unless we're having another hearing about them. I think we might have another hearing about them. So the council approved the budgets for the water and sewer budget. And the rates will be set in June, the anticipation. So the plan that the mayor referred to calls for us to try to add a 1% premium on top of whatever inflation is in a given year to help fund the infrastructure. So inflation this year ran about 1.4%. So I think we're probably looking at 2.5% rate changes in water and sewer to do that. That's also aided. And I think, you know, just, you think simply adding a percent over a long period of time, would that be enough to pay for the infrastructure? But there are other things to consider. There's some major debt coming off the books in a couple years. For example, the water treatment plant is about $400,000 a year in debt payments that we pay for it. And that will be coming off the books in three years or something. So without having to drastically raise rates, we suddenly can free up $400,000 a year to go into infrastructure. So part of it is managing what we know are those kinds of costs. Now our sewer rates, that's the water treatment plant over by Dog River? Yeah, the water resource recovery facility. Yeah. Boy, you have such a nicer way of putting it than I do. Is that budgeted so that we're already budgeting all of our changes and the like? Has that already been factored in or will that be a step increase every year as well? I believe that's similar. Because again, the wastewater rates, the sewer rates, aren't just on the plant. That is also old sewer lines. Those break and leak as well and require management. Some of them need to be increased in size. For water, it's called the distribution system. For sewer, it's the collection system that need a lot of underground work. Remember, we have an old city, so some of these lines are quite aged. There is some major work going on at the water resource recovery facility. The artist formerly known as the sewer treatment plant. That's very exciting. That is going to allow us to take food waste, generate more electricity to operate the plant, to reduce our costs, bring in more revenues. That was a bond that was actually approved the same day as the parking garage. No, thank you. I was struggling to come up with it. That is the savings from that is projected to sort of balance out what we would have had to spend if we just done normal maintenance and normal upgrades on the plant. Our reappraisal.  Bill, could you explain the reappraisal process in terms of you reach a certain level and then the city is asked to reappraise properties? Where are we in that? And explain the process. I hacked it. I did a hack job. Sure. The basis of a fair and equitable tax system is our tax assessment since property taxes are our major source of revenue.  It doesn't mean that they're the same value, but it means that they are meeting today's market value, not 10 years ago. Because those things could change or the relationship between commercial properties and residential properties. So equity is very, very important. The state because now there is a statewide property tax for schools. The state has set a standard that when you are what's known as the common level of appraisal. So how accurate are your appraisals? If they dip below 85%, then you're required to do a reappraisal and we've just hit 84 point something. That's not good. So we will be, we haven't gotten our notice yet, but we've known it was coming. So we actually already have contracted with the firm to begin work in 2023. The FY22 budget has half of the money in it and the FY23 budget will have the second half. Approximately how much is it? About $240,000. And what they do is they will visit or try to visit every property in the city to not only appraise its, you know, they will do statistical analysis of sales and to look at condition improvements since the last time they looked at your home. So that they're not only comparing, you know, are these both three bedroom homes with two bathrooms in the same neighborhood, but one is in really great shape and one is in really poor shape. You know, what they try to do an estimate of what the then current market value is. What people don't understand is that we have to, we have to tax people on their most recent reval, amount, revaluation amount. So the last one we had done was about nine years ago, 2011 I believe was. So we're all still being taxed on those values. As many of us know, you know, properties have sold in Montpelier at very high prices and very quickly. But a home could be valued at $200,000 and just recently sold at $350,000. We don't just change that value to that new sale amount. We are still at the $200,000 value. So that's where these inequities start stretching. Some homes appreciate faster than others or some buildings. Suddenly what was fair. So what you're saying is that your neighbor in approximately the same home is paying taxes on $350,000 and you're paying on $225,000? No. What I'm saying is that. I knew I'd mess this up somehow. No. What I'm saying is let's say both of you were at $200,000. So you're both paying taxes on a $200,000 value.  You're still both paying on the $200,000. So what we need to do is to see first of all is to reflect their sale and their improvement and then see what is the best analysis of what your home might be worth. It might be $280,000 now. There's might be $380,000. So instead of keeping you both at $200,000, it's adjusting them both to what now is currently fair. So what I think a popular concern with reappraisals is as people see maybe their home might double. It doesn't mean their taxes are going to double because everything's going up. So our tax rate is based on the total valuation. We don't get more money from a reappraised life. It's a common misconception that the city's raising the grand list and can suddenly get a whole bunch more money. We still only raise what the budget, the approved budget is. It's just redistributes how it's paid in a more equitable manner. There are more houses sold in Montpelier than there are commercial properties. Yes. I think that's a certainty. Yes. Is commercial downtown and commercial Montpelier also going to be appraised at the same time? Everything will be. All property will be. How do you establish a fair market value when you don't have properties selling that are approximately the same in downtown? So you do look at whatever sales exist. You also look at real estate sales in, say, Washington County to get a sense of what commercial sales might be. And then we do a survey of rental income. So if a business is a tenant in the building, unlike a home, a home is sort of, someone just says, I'll pay this much because I want to live in this home. It's got nice features. It's got what I want. Commercial buildings tend to sell or be valued based on how much they can generate. How much rent can I collect? How much will the storefront get? How many apartments upstairs get for me? And so we have to develop schedules that say, OK, a square foot of downtown rent is going for this. On average, not necessarily a specific rich building, but it might be OK. $16 per square foot, I'm making that up, is the main street rate. And $17 per square foot is the state street rate. And apply that to those buildings. And then that figures out what their market value might be based on their earning potential. So if I can summarize this in two points. One, we shouldn't be fearful of the reappraisal. That it isn't going to mean dramatically higher taxes. Not necessarily. However, it is fair to say in any reappraisal, anytime you redistribute things are based on equity. Some people whose properties have appreciated more than others are going to see a higher than normal tax increase. And those whose properties have not appreciated as much as others will actually see a tax reduction. Last time, I think the average was about a 30% adjustment. So for homes that were around 30%, their taxes didn't change. And then people above or below that mark. I will say not to alarm people, but I just think it's a reality. The last three reappraisals we have done have seen a much greater appreciation in residential properties versus commercial properties. So every time we've done it, the tax burden has shifted slightly to the residential sector. And as you mentioned, there haven't been a lot of sales, particularly with the current economic conditions. You know, I suspect that might happen again, but I don't know. Ann? I don't think of anything further to add. Will there be houses and savings faster by 23 that will be factored into this? Well, I think it's probably fair to say that we are looking at all the things that the city can do to help enable that. So, you know, just for example, one of our most recent council meetings we were talking about, just some of the zoning needs that might need to be adjusted in order to realistically accommodate housing in savings pasture. And so I think, you know, we're certainly hopeful. We're not holding our breath, but trying to do what needs to be done to plan for that to happen. So just to follow on that, the city has been working actively with the property owner, owners, and those zoning changes, which will actually be on the council agenda next week for formal hearing to be adopted. We're at their request feeling that it would make it easier. We believe there is intent to move forward with the project at the end of the day, and we are working with them about possible infrastructure funding using the tax increment financing district. What is tax incremental financing? So people refer to it as TIF. It is a program where anticipated new revenues from a development can go and pay for related public improvements. So maybe an expanded sewer line or a new sidewalk or those kinds of things. I think the best example we have in Montpelier is the parking garage where the anticipated tax revenues from the new hotel, which don't exist right now, would then be used to help pay for the garage, which is a public benefit, but also necessary for the private business to happen. So in Sabans, it could be some water and sewer infrastructure. It could be sidewalks. It could be maybe a roadway into the property if it were to become a public road. So we're still working on those kinds of things that would be of public benefit, so private benefit, and that would allow them to build their homes. Since we consider new residential properties a public benefit, and they would be adding new taxes to the Grand List. We've already been doing sewer work along Berry Street in that area, haven't we? We had to do a project last summer kind of quickly because of the rail line relocation, and they were on top of some sewer lines there. So we did have to do some work, but there's more to do. It's an old line and it's undersized, so it would need more needs to be done. If I'm correct, Jim Lane that's next to Distillery could in theory go all the way up that hill? It could. Jim Lane was located in a way that to be directly across from what will be the entrance to any Sabans pastor so that it will be a four-way intersection all lined up. So that was planned and that is where the entrance to any Sabans pastor projects will go. Ideally that would be, I don't know that it would be called Jim Lane on the other side of the road. It's also where the railroad crosses the street, which again was intentionally designed. What about the state property next to where the Beverage Store used to be between Shaw's and the art store? Are we purchasing that? Is that already budgeted for? Yeah, so we as a council decided that that was a priority, a property for us to own. We wanted to make sure that we would have control of what happened there and that did mean finding some money or basically coming to an arrangement with the state so that we will own that property. So that leaves open the possibility of whether it could be a park space or a building. So that's yet to be told and we've had a little bit of discussion around that but not very much. If the state said yes, would it be in the budget? The state has said yes. The state gave us terms for purchasing it. So it would be spread out over two years in the current fiscal year. So we've got to just reallocate funds out of our current budget and then we budgeted the second half in the FY2020 budget. So that purchase is budgeted already. It's not contingent. And then the elephant in the room, the recreation center, that's a very, very large ambitious project. Where does that stand right now? Yeah, so that is also on hold at the moment and we were able to make great progress on it so that we were just about ready to go to the voters, to the public for a bond. But then the pandemic hit. And so I anticipate that that is one of the things that we will revisit when it seems apparent that our economy has really returned. Obviously we're not there yet so it's hard to anticipate when that will be on our radar again. I promised I would end with the next year budget. Not this one but the following year. We have six positions that are on hold right now. We've got a truck and ambulance. We've got all of this that's been sitting there backed up. Does that budget look really awful in terms of sustainability? I know it's impossible for you to say given a steady growth curve. So if our revenues return to the level, so this has all been predicated on a loss of over half a million dollars in parking revenue. And a loss of a hundred or so thousand or more in local options taxes. We've anticipated and we don't know for sure a loss in payment lieu of taxes from the state. The reason for that is not that the state is not a fair player but the state's payment lieu of taxes fund comes from local options taxes around the state local sales taxes. So our assumption is if those taxes are down statewide the state will not have the revenues to make those payment lieu of taxes. And there are a few other assumptions that we've made. If our revenues come back to normal our budget will come back to normal and we would be allocating funds back into those capital projects, back into equipment, back into the services and obviously we also have an opportunity to look at how we might reprogram any of those funds since we would be coming in. So there's a huge contingency there but if things go back to normal then our budget shouldn't be any more difficult than it is. Except for we have backed up need. Right. So that's a challenging of itself for the capital, for the equipment and the capital. So we need to figure that out. But just in general it shouldn't be more challenging than a typical year. I think what my concern is and we've really talked about this as a public, you know it comes back close but not quite. Right. Like we get 80% of it back then what and I think that's when you know that's when then we could be in for a real challenge. I imagine that the state is cutting you people in to the could-be's of COVID funding for state and local governments. You know as to what that could mean, the local government section of that as well as cutting you into the potential talk of infrastructure funds. That's another major project that Congress is discussing. Is that happening, those kinds of discussions? Not to the level of specificity that I think you are assuming because the state doesn't know. You know it's still things are being discussed at the federal level. We occasionally get something from our congressional delegation saying here's what this proposal might look like. But the state doesn't know what they're going to get, how they're going to get at what funding it's going to be and who it's allocated for. Does it go to the community development fund and then be granted back out? How much would the state keep for its own needs? I mean they're hurting too. Their revenues are down. So I think there's a lot there. I know the city and the league of cities and towns are certainly advocating for funding to come to local governments. National groups like the National League of Cities, the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the International City Managers Association are heavily lobbying Congress for direct appropriations to towns and cities because you know we're really bearing the brunt of direct services. Now if you have these projects all lined up then you have all the planning of these projects all lined up. In which case when funds come in it should be fairly easy to sit and be able to put the bids out and get these things done, yes? That's correct and we do have that list. We haven't shared it with council yet that's coming right up soon. One of the next couple meetings we're going to share with the council are a list of staff's proposals of what the priorities might be and then the council will move those around however they see fit. So right, the idea is hopefully we can plug and play if money comes. The show that you're watching right now is a triangulation. We are a triangle. I am here. Anna's here. Bill is there. Is that a relief not being in a Zoom? It certainly is an unusual, gosh, I mean I spent all day today on Zoom meetings. Today was our remote day with students and normally I'm in a classroom with 12 other humans and we're all masked and six feet apart but it's certainly nice to be able to actually be a distance from each other but be able to see your faces. That's a good segue. As I'm a distance from you but I'm going to be voting on Town Meeting Day and actually I'm going to be voting with my wife on Town Meeting Day as we always do and I would encourage you not only to vote but to vote intelligently which basically means you've watched this show, watched the show that Anne did from Mount Pylir from her perspective which was a very good show and watched the candidates as well as the school board candidates. Jim Murphy with his show on the school budget as well as our candidate for the Parks Commission for a five year seat. All of them are great candidates. They're all very, very good shows and get out and vote and encourage your friends to vote. That's really important. You could do it F's and T's. It's not that hard to do. It doesn't take that much out of your life but do it for the sense of civic spirit for our town. Thank you very much.


Texas woman refused service by cashier who hates people like her. In spring, Texas, a woman ran into her local Kroger grocery store to grab a few things and get on with her list of other errands to run. However, things didn't go as simply as she had hoped when she was refused service because she disgusted a particular employee who took one look at the shopper and said that she was sick of people like her. Meredith, who didn't feel comfortable releasing her last name, had checked everything off of her shopping list and headed to the register at the front of the store. As she put her items on the conveyor belt, she soon found out that the cashier at Kroger had no intentions of ringing her up. The employee then said that Meredith's shirt was a slap in the face, and the clerk was doing everything she could not to cry. So, what was so offensive about Meredith's top? It had a message that read, police lives matter, with the words, all lives matter, underneath. Texas woman refused service at Kroger by cashier who hates people like her. Meredith and the shirt that got her kicked out of Kroger. She made me feel ashamed to have the shirt on and I don't appreciate that, Meredith said. Meredith said a teenage cashier stepped away from the checkout line after seeing her shirt. She said she then overheard the girl speaking with a coworker. She was stating that the shirt I had on was basically a slap in the face to her and she was doing everything she could not to cry, she said. This wasn't the first time Kroger has been accused of turning away a paying customer for the same reason as Meredith was denied service and like the others before her, she wasn't going to let it slide because Meredith was wearing her blue t-shirt that simply said, police lives matter, all lives matter, for a reason. Meredith happens to be a police officer's wife and she was showing support for her hero husband who puts his life on the line daily, serving and protecting the offended clerk and the other citizens of spring, Texas. Sadly, the cashier didn't like what she was advertising and refused to ring her up, regardless of the fact that the employee is not in charge of anything other than running her cash register. Right after Meredith left the store, she let others know what happened to her there, including Kimberly Collie, who is the executive director of the Blue Bow Foundation, which supports police officers and their families. Collie was disgusted by this employee's actions, but more so by the complete lack of response on the matter from Kroger. Our husbands risk their lives every single time they put on those uniforms, their walking targets and this is the least we can do to show there is support out there, Collie said, according to KMOV. She added that her non-profit group, which used to support the store has cut off all ties with the retailer. ABC13 reported that, Meredith said she complained to Kroger about the conversation multiple times but hasn't received a response despite promises her concerns would be addressed. That mirrors Kroger's response to the police officer who was refused service. They spoke with her and then never responded. Meredith doesn't want the cashier to be fired, but she doesn't think that the store should refuse service to somebody over their shirts. Texas woman refused service at Kroger by cashier who hates people like her. Meredith and the shirt that got her kicked out of Kroger. Meredith said, it's important that people in the service industry know that no matter what, if someone walked in with a Black Lives Matter shirt on they needed to still be serviced. This is now at least the second time a Kroger employee is accused of disrespecting either a police officer or their family. A worker at a Louisiana location reportedly refused to serve a female cop and the store didn't seem to care when it was brought to their attention. Any business that doesn't support police, especially when they go as far as to kick them or those who support them out of their establishment, doesn't deserve the protection they rely on from law enforcement when called upon. These companies should be blacklisted by police and forced to sort out tense situations for themselves. Maybe after a few weeks of this, as well as a loss of customers who don't feel safe shopping there, they will learn that they can't rely on their disgruntled employees or Black Lives Matter to save them.


Hello, everyone. My name is Torgan. I also work at chain security And today I'm going to be talking about what I call future block MEV In proof of stake.  To understand that first we have to talk about block production and how it changed With the merge that happened a couple weeks ago So in proof of work every miner tries to mine every single block and What that means is at no point? Can you know who the next block producer is going to be? But in proof of stake, that's a little bit different And there we actually decide ahead of time who the proposer for which block is going to be And in particular for Ethereum We use the Randall value together with the current validator set to do this And that means that you can always know all the block proposers for the current epoch and for the next epoch and Since two epochs in Ethereum take about 12 minutes. That means that if you are a validator on Ethereum You will know up to 12 minutes ahead of time when you will actually be the one that is able to produce a block So now what do you do with this information? This is what I call future block MeV so if You are the block producer for a block you can control the transactions that are included and the ordering of the transactions So if you know that in some block n plus one you are going to be Controlling that block you can do some weird stuff in the block before that in block n which you wouldn't do usually So one example of that would be that if you want to do an oracle manipulation on uniswap The way that you do that is You buy some asset like here. We have some asset that is worth one And then you buy enough of that to let's say move it to six And then the uniswap oracle will always record the price in between two blocks So it will record this price of six at the end and we'll take that into its Average that it reports now usually this would be very expensive to do because everyone would see That this price is incorrect. So there's obviously a really big arbitrage opportunity that somebody could take To like sell this asset at a higher price than what it is actually at And that means that for the attacker this would be really expensive But because now we're assuming that the attacker is actually the block producer for block n plus one they can just put their own transaction at the very beginning of the block n plus one and They can guarantee that they themselves are going to be the one that takes this arbitrage instead of anybody else So essentially they are able to hide the med From the other searchers and here we're assuming that there is some mechanism in which they can Make that first transaction in block n without going through the public mem pool So maybe they put it like through flashbots or something and that means that people will only see the transaction on chain At the point where it's already too late because the next block is going to be produced by the attacker And nobody is going to have any time to react before that happens And so one Example of what you could do is if there was a lending protocol that used such a uniswap oracle You might be able to manipulate it enough to get some To get something into the liquidation level where it can get liquidated, but it wasn't able to before and then That liquidation will be available in block n plus one and again because you control it No other searcher is going to be able to compete with you for it because you can just put your transaction Like in second position for example in that block So then you can trigger a liquidation without having to compete with all the other Searchers out there. So what are the main takeaways? first of all the block proposers improve a stake are Known in advance and that is different than it was in proof of work and second of all this information is valuable So for example, you can use it through Doing manipulations or creating MEV and hiding it like I said here But you could also imagine that you could maybe sell future block space and Guarantee that to people or you could even incentivize people to Create a lot of MEV in a block that you will control like you can imagine if there's some NFT project They might not care exactly in which block they're going to be launching so you could just tell them to launch in the block that you create and then all of the Gas that is going to be spent on minting those NFTs early is going to be in your block instead of somebody else's so I wrote a paper on Oracle manipulation and a blog post on how that changes After the merge. So if you guys are interested in learning more about the Oracle manipulation side of it I highly recommend checking it out


Today I am going to talk about the comparative method in the study of all the Chinese. Here is my outline. My talk is in four parts introduction. The traditional approach is the theological evidence. I am going to talk about some basic words lacking theological evidence. I am going to talk about the correspondence between all the Chinese and me. Middle Chinese is the theory of the three dynasties, the 6th century and the 10th century. All the Chinese are languages of Chinese classical texts and common answers of varieties of Chinese. It could be 11th century BC to preaching the dynasties to 221 BC or for my 10th dynasties to 206. As you know, Targaryen reconstructed Middle Chinese based on the category of the chain. He used a bunch of data from Chinese dialects and I saw in Japanese and Korean and Vietnamese. It is believed that modern Chinese dialects descended from Middle Chinese. Min dialects spoken in Fujian province are not listed in Middle Chinese. So Min could be descended from all the Chinese or could be sister language of all the Chinese. Here, I don't think it is appropriate to use the term Chinese because all the Chinese. As I mentioned, all the Chinese are languages of Chinese texts and common answers of varieties of Chinese. So it is difficult to define what is all the Chinese and what is both Chinese. Min is really useful for reconstructing all the Chinese. But Calvin did not make use of data from Min in his reconstruct of all the Chinese. Maybe at the time, the data from Min is not so documented. But at this time, the data from Min is really well documented. So we can use the data to reconstruct all the Chinese. So after Calvin, scholars such as Breibach, Benedict and Starrtsing and others, like Gonchi also working on the bi-languages and all the Chinese and the Nazis also working on this. And then they tried to apply composite methods in the study of all the Chinese. And these studies based on prot-min reconstructed by J. Norman. And in Norman, he proposes that some prot-min onset related to non-synetic languages such as Huma-Mian also called Miao-Yao-Kradai, Taikarae, and the bi-languages. And for example, like some words like dog or this kind of stuff. And then, so five years ago, Baxi and Sagao, they published a book about the study of all the Chinese formality. And they emphasized the importance of applying composite methods into all the Chinese.  And they also used all the Chinese long words to Huma-Mian and bi-languages. But the problem is that we still do not know whether these long words came from Chinese languages to other languages or came from other languages into Chinese languages. I think some words came from Huma-Mian to all the Chinese. And some words came from Tibetan language to all the Chinese. But anyway, so these long words enable us to reconstruct really complex onset like KT and NK or M-Shua-K, this kind of stuff. But some scholars in China still have believed that comparative method is not always useful in the study of all the Chinese. In fact, there are some words we cannot rely on the comparative method at all. So for example, the word for west has been reconstructed as, because there is not evidence to reconstruct other onset. So let's take a look at the table. So the word for west, she in Beijing, she in Xi'an, and Xia and fly. And so a sign of Japanese gone, a say in sign of Japanese gone, and a sign in Korean. So the word for onset is must be reconstructed as. But Angri and Sagao, they postulated SN onset based on the theological evidence, which is Shi'an connections. So these two characters share the same phonetic element, this character. So they must be homophones. So they reconstruct voices M. And I used the X-ray documents, so archaeological stuff, so bamboo sleeves. And I reconstructed SN onset for the word west as well. And I think the data from Tibetan language could be useful. So some words lack the traditional evidence, theological evidence, and others lack the comparative evidence. So in any case, we need to make more and better use of theological evidence and X-ray documents and the comparative data, just like Gala did in the early stage. So the aim of this talk is applying comparative method to the study of all the Chinese. And we construct some basic words lacking theological evidence. Before we go into that basic words, I have to talk about some traditional apologies. So theological studies developed in the Qing Dynasty, so 17th century and 20th century. So rhyme is seen in Shijin, book of arts. But of course rhymes do not tell us anything about the onset, so I'm not going to talk about this today. And a textual variation. So there are a lot of documents, so classical documents, excavated documents in China. So these documents show us the amount of the textual variations. So for example Zhao, so Zhao Wenzi, an able person, is represented like this. So Zhao Wenzi, Zhao Wenzi, Zhao Wenzi. So we can assume that these three characters must be homophones or near homophones at the time. So we reconstruct like this. So DR for the word for Zhao and DE, Shao and ST for the word Shao. And so we can use these textual variations to reconstruct all the Chinese onset. And the phonetic long characters, it is called Jiajie in Chinese. So this is indispensable data to reconstruct all the Chinese. And these long characters are used to represent another homophones or near homophones. So like this character, Duan, meaning tip, represent this word meaning short. Because these two words are homophones or near homophones. So let's take a look at the sound change. So Duan meaning tip, T-O-N, and Duan meaning short, T-O-N. But so these two characters are near homophones except the tone categories. And then next is the phonetic series, so-called Jiaxian series in Chinese languages. So this is a set of characters sharing the same phonetic element. So let's take a look at this character. So composed of two parts, tu, meaning art, dan, meaning dawn. So this is a semantic element and dan is a phonetic element. So this phonetic element represents the sound of this character, tan. And 80% of Chinese characters are phonetic elements. So we can use this phonetic element in the Jiaxian series to reconstruct all the Chinese at the time. So these red-colored characters, they share the same phonetic element. So dan, dan, dan, and a bottom here is dan, right? So these characters have the same phonetic element, dan, meaning dawn. So they were homophones or near homophones at the time. And these characters are the traditional category or initial category in the traditional studies. So dan represents a voiceless unaspirated dental stop or something like that. So this is about the sound chain. So tan, t-h-a-n, d-a-n, t-l-a-n, so t-a-n, kind of like this. So traditional approach is highly reliable, and we are working on it right now. So not always rhyming the classical texts, right? And not always have the Jiaxian connections. Not always represent the sound being used at the time. So some basic words lack theological evidence. So it is not easy to define the basic words, right? For convenience, I'm just focusing on these five words, water, a few, head, hand, animal. So the word for water has rhyme evidence, so I check it in the box. But it doesn't have any other evidence, no other evidence, so I didn't check it in the box. And these five words had S-Y on set in middle Chinese, actually C. And these S-Y on set came at least from five old Chinese on set, or maybe six. But anyway, so the word for to write, writing, came from S-P and changed to S-Y. And slow, easy, came from Voices L, changed to S-Y. Indulgent came from Voices N, circumstances came from Voices N. So two paradigm came from Q-H. So they were artistic in C-Hian connections. So if S-Y has C-Hian connections with T-T-H, T-T-S-Y, T-S-H-Y, these on set in middle Chinese, we can reconstruct S-T for this word, kind of like that. So, yeah, so as I mentioned above, so if S-Y has C-Hian connections with N-N-R-N-Y, we can reconstruct Voices N. And these five words came from any of them, so S-T, Voices A, Voices N, Voices N, and Q-H. And so the word for water and a few, so no evidence for the word for water and a few in the classical text, so I didn't check in the box. So, you know, rhyme data does not tell us anything about the on set, so we cannot use this data to reconstruct all the Chinese on set. And so some scholars think the word for a few has been thought to have C-Hian connections with Miao, meaning very small or minute, and Xiao, meaning small. But under the C-Hian principle, middle Chinese S-Y does not have C-Hian connections with M and S. So there is no M and S, right? So I think the word for a few does not have C-Hian connections. And the word for head and head, so actually the word for head has C-Hian connections with Da, meaning way, so both two characters share the same phonetic element, right? Head. But we don't know whether the head came from S-T or voices L based on C-Hian connections because so S-Y, if S-Y has C-Hian connections with D, we can reconstruct S-T or voices L, right? So this data, so Dao, is not useful for reconstruct the word for head. So we still do not know whether it came from. And the word for hand, this is really a complicated problem, but in 1995 I pointed out that the characters Chou and Chou, both meaning hand characters, the textural variations, and the characters Chou, meaning hand, and Chou could be the phonetic element for the character Chou and Chou. So these two characters are textural variations, both meaning hand characters. And Chou and Chou are phonetic elements. So if they are phonetic elements, it could be homophones. So Chou and Chou have the nasal onset in phonetic series, so Nio. So they share the same phonetic element, right? So since both two characters have S-Hian connections with Nio, and Nio has nasal onset, so we can prostrate the voices nasal for these characters. And I'm going to join Sagao prostrate the voices nasal onset for the word hand for this reason. And what interests us is that both head and head are homophones in the Middle Chinese, like Chou, kind of like that. So if both hand and head have been homophones in all the Chinese, it would have been difficult to distinguish between two, right? But eventually the character Chou replaced with the character Chou, also meaning head. So in the early Middle Chinese, so before hand and head matched into one. So this is very interesting. So as I mentioned above, these five words don't have theological evidence, so we cannot reconstruct all the Chinese onset. So let's take a look at the correspondence between all the Chinese and Nio. So by eating the Chinese name of Baxi, he wrote the paper in Chinese, so I just write his Chinese name. And he noted that Middle Chinese S-Y correspond to voices and aspirated African T-S, and aspirated T-S-H in Amore Siamen. And the correspondence of T-S in Min to Middle Chinese S-Y reflects all the Chinese S-T. And the correspondence of T-S-H in Min to Middle Chinese S-Y reflects all the Chinese voices resonant, so voices N and voices L. So Akitani and I reexamined these hypotheses by means of the data from a broader range of dialects and excavate documents, so let's take a look at this table. So these two words have S-Y onset in Middle Chinese and correspond to T-S, so aspirated African in Min. And these two words have S-T onset in Old Chinese, so they were attested in S-Y connections and theological stuff. And these two words like test and word for slow have S-Y in Middle Chinese and they correspond to T-S-H aspirated African in Min. And these two words have voices L in Old Chinese, and they were attested in S-Y connections. So we can use these corresponds to some basic words like in theological evidence, so let's take a look at the word for water. So water S-Y corresponds to T-S, so an aspirated African in Min, so we can reconstruct the word as S-T. But without this data, we couldn't reconstruct basic word water, right? So this is really interesting. And then the word for a few, so a few is the same thing, so correspond to T-S, so an aspirated African in Min, so we can reconstruct this like stale kind of like that. And word for head, so as I mentioned above, so head has S-Y connections with Wei, and Wei has D in Middle Chinese, so we don't know whether it came from S-T or voices L. But only Xiaoman Amoy, the word head has the aspirated T-S-H, so we can prostrate voices L. In addition to this, the onset L, voices L is artistic in the great documents from the clone, so I got this phrase, let the people step on. So this character, Tao Wei, represents the step-on Tao. So step-on Tao is reconstructed like LU, based on Xiaoman connections. And then here's my hypothesis. So the characters having L only can represent words having L in the bamboo slips. So the word for Wei represents the word having L, so we can prostrate L for the word Wei. And also the head is a phonetic element Tao, right? So we can reconstruct voices L, kind of like this. And then the word for hand, the hand is S-Y in Middle Chinese, and it corresponds to T-S-H aspirated Africa in Min. So we can assume that the word for hand did not come from S-T, but this data do not tell us where the hand came from, or voices L, I will link it. So we cannot reconstruct the word for hand on set. So in this case, we can use the anger's high perspective or Sagao's perspective. So use these textual variations to reconstruct the onset of the word for hand. And the word for a wide animal. So a wide animal does not have a situation in connections, and a data flow mean does not tell us anything about the onset, only the entire frequency. So there's no correspondence. But we can find a phonetic clone. So the character wide animal represents the word show, meaning keep. So this word, keep, defend, does not have a situation in connections, but the data flow mean could be useful. So the word for keep on the defend S-Y corresponds to T-S. So based on this correspondence, we can reconstruct the word for keep and defend S-T. And based on the high process I mentioned above, so the word having L must represent word having L. So in other words, word having T must represent word having T. So based on this hypothesis, we can reconstruct the wide animal like S-T. So I just added data flow mean. So these five or six or seven words that don't have theological evidence, but if we use the data flow mean, we can reconstruct these words. So the thing I want to do is that I want to make this data available openly because the probability of reconstruction is different from each words, right? So I want to make it available openly. And then in addition to mean, so guzhan, so a variety of Wajshan dialects spoken in North, Western Hunan show the same correspondence like Midochene is S-Y, guzhan T-S. So to write an aspirated African, T-S and T-S, the word for word T-S, the word for a few T-S. So yeah, Wajshan is here, fujian means here. So some schools think so mean, they put mean and Wajshan into one line, but I'm not sure about it. So Baxiang and Sagao said some features in Wajshan appear to be shared with mean. So about they maybe shared the retentions rather than shared innovation. So it would be premature to put them together with mean in a separate group. And then I know some scholars with Wajshan and Tzaijiya, Tzaijiya is spoken in Hunan province, or no, Guizhou province, they put them into one branch. But I just came back from Guizhou. I'm researching Tzaijiya languages. I researched 600 words, something like that, but I couldn't find the same correspondence like S-Y and T-S. So we're still working on this. And I added the data from Guizhou and Wajshan. So as I mentioned above, so I want to make this data available and then let others do know the probability of reconstruction. So conclusion. So it is indispensable to use theological evidence in all the Chinese. But some words, of course, lack these theological evidence. So in this case, we have to use comparative data. So as for reconstruct of Middle Chinese S-Y, so the data from mean dialect is really useful and helpful, but they do not always show us about every difference in all the Chinese phonology. So some words lack the theological evidence and others lack data from dialects and other languages. So in any case, we have to make use of these data, both of these data, theological evidence and comparative evidence, just like Bergstein and Sakal did in the study of all the Chinese. So thank you, thank you very much.