It is 6.01, Tuesday, February 20th. I'll first call to order the Cannabis Control Commission meeting. Please join us in the Pledge of Allegiance, led by Deputy Mayor Thomas Brenner. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. All right, we have one item. Jenny, you wanna come up? Or wait, is that you? Okay, thank you very much. I'm here tonight to present a renewal application for a retail cannabis license for Winooski Organics. Winooski Organics received a retail license from the city's Cannabis Control Commission back in 2013, I'm sorry, 2023. They were our first applicant and first cannabis license. This is a request for a renewal of that license, annually the state requires all cannabis licensees to get an updated license. We did receive notification that the state is intending to issue the state license from the Cannabis Control Board pending approval by the city's local Cannabis Control Commission. Included with the agenda was a memo outlining a little bit of the history. In addition, I had a conversation with the city's fire marshal and the city's police chief about any incidents or issues with the property. In both cases, they reported no instances or issues. In fact, the fire marshal was there back in October of 2023 to do an inspection as part of their annual inspections and no issues were identified at that time. So we are recommending that the local Cannabis Control Commission approve the renewal of the retail license for Winooski Organics. Excellent, thank you. Any questions from council? Any questions from attendees? Or if you're on Zoom, you can use the raise hand or chat feature. And if you're on the phone, Paul, can you remind us how that works? I believe it is star six to raise hand. Okay, thank you. Okay, hearing no concerns, does someone want to make a motion to approve the renewal of the retail cannabis license for Winooski Organics? So moved. Second. Motion by Charlie, second by Aurora. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you. Thank you very much. So that is the end of our Cannabis Control Commission meeting. Do I have a motion to adjourn? So moved. Second. Motion by Thomas, second by Charlie. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. That meeting is adjourned. 6.04 PM, I will call to order the Winooski City Council meeting. First up is agenda review. I understand that our guest for the walk bike master plan has a time constraint this evening and wanted to propose rotating that item G with item F, the Green Mountain Transit presentation to make sure there's adequate time. All right, do I have a motion to make that adjustment to the agenda? So moves. Second. Motion by Thomas, second by Aurora. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you. Okay, we are at the public comment stage of the meeting. This is space for comments from members of the public for items not on this evening's agenda. We do take public comment for every agenda item. So if you're here for something on the agenda or the public hearings, please hold for that. Is anyone here to make public comment outside the agenda? Anyone on Zoom? Okay. Moving to our consent agenda. We have our meeting minutes from February 5th. Payroll warrant, accounts payable, bankruptcy plan of reorganization, thrive fee resolution, grant letter for libraries, city manager review summary, annual Vermont agency transportation mileage certification and the Champlain Mill Bridge assessment reserve request. Do you counsel have any questions, concerns about any of these consent items? Good question about the final item. Yeah, I sent a reply like at four, it was a bit late. Okay. Do you wanna pull it off or follow up after reading it? I'll follow up after reading that. Okay. Do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda? So moved. Second. Motion by Thomas, second by Charlie. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you. Okay, council reports. Charlie, can we start with you? Sure. On Wednesday, the 14th, Mayor Law and myself attended a coffee chat with some of the news key senior residents at the senior center to talk about the budget and answer any questions that they might have had. There weren't a lot of questions. There were a couple of concerns about what exactly is included in capital expenses. A few people appreciated the work that we're doing and a few people had concerns about being priced out of the community. It seemed like a really positive experience overall and the seniors appreciated seeing some of council out in the community just being willing to, you know, hear their opinions and ideas. Thank you. Downtown Wondersky meets this week. So I haven't met with them since our last meeting, but just a reminder about more upcoming budget presentations and conversations. Wednesday, February 28th at 6.30, council members of the school board and city staff will be at the monkey house and then Monday, March 4th will be the final presentation at 6 p.m. at the school district. So we hope to see you there. And of course, if you have questions about the budget, you do not have to wait until those events you can reach out to anybody on council or staff. Thank you. Thank you. Finance commission did meet this month after a break during budget process and spent their meeting last week reviewing and providing feedback on the budget handouts and presentation, which have been incorporated now. Planning commission is meeting this Thursday at 6.30 p.m. to continue review of our land use regulations in response to the Homes Act. That meeting is hybrid, so you can come here or be on Zoom. Yes, that's it for me. Okay. So on Tuesday last week, we had a meeting of the Seat Healthy Connected People Commission. During the meeting, we had IQ and A with the new chief of police. We had a really great lively discussion and heard about some of the key focuses of the new chief of police on staffing back up to 15 officers, working on the constraints within the building, as well as finding ways to engage with the community and kind of do some level setting and make sure that the police are providing what the community is looking for. And then last Thursday, we had an inclusion belonging commission meeting. That meeting, a lot of stuff came up, and this is from the different commission reports around housing. So there was a really big interest in housing and how the IMB commission might be able to assist the other commissions in bringing different perspectives into the housing situation here in Winooski. So there's a lot of interest in that and maybe having a joint commission meeting if possible with housing, but maybe planning or some of the others would also be interested in that. That's what I have. Thank you. Britt. Thanks. The Infrastructure Commission didn't meet this month. We didn't have agenda items to warrant a meeting. We will be meeting next on March 21st, likely at our regular location up in the community room at the pool. I anticipate going over the second half of your work plan during that meeting, but we'll see what other items come up on the agenda in addition to that. The bridge committee met on February 7th. We just kind of reviewed notes from the public meeting that was held at the school at the end of January. The next public meeting, the date is not set yet, but the planning for that will be focusing on the Southern intersection on the Burlington side. And that's going through a separate, separate but related funding request. So there'll be a lot more announcements about that coming soon. And I believe there are project team is meeting with local motion March 21st and some other interested groups later in March. And format for future meetings might be more like an open house format. So just trying to accommodate different opportunities for people to access the project team and ask questions in that format and layout. The next airport commission meeting is March 6th. The agenda for that hasn't been set yet. It'll be on the Burlington website when it is. There's always recurring agenda items for the noise exposure map updates and sound insulation project progress. That's all I have for now. Thank you. Moving on to city updates. Yeah, so a couple for me today. So if you haven't already heard, I did a point as we're alluded to, Councillor Hurd just alluded to, I pointed former Manuski police lieutenant, Justin Heisinger to chief of police role. This was after a rigorous national search and screening process. And so I am confident that Justin is the best, is the best possible next police chief for our community. Chief Heisinger brings to the role of deep commitment to community policing, improving the profession and building meaningful relationships with residents, colleagues and partners. The desire for these priorities were evident in all of the feedback we received for this role and the department. Justin's law enforcement career of 18 years includes a degree in criminal justice from Champlain College and executive development certification from Roger Williams University and experiences a patrol sergeant, detective, lieutenant and interim chief. I do really appreciate the many community members who provided critical feedback, not only to aid this decision, but to inform how the police department operates into the future. We had 347 responses to our written survey and we did additional focus groups and interviews to capture folks who might not want to be comfortable responding in that format. And this and a bit more information is also in the Manuski newsletter in case you want to review any of the detail that I just provided. The annual town meeting day election will take place on Tuesday, March 5th, 2024 from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. at the Manuski Senior Center that's on 123 Barlow Street. All election, ballot and budget information can be found at manuskivet.gov slash town meeting. Early and absentee ballot will be available as always. Learn how to register and find helpful voting resources at manuskivet.gov slash vote. Recall that the local matters that will be on these ballots can be voted on by any legal resident in Manuski, not just citizens. And as Deputy Mayor Thomas Frenner noted, there are two more opportunities. Learn about the budget. And as he mentioned, you can always contact staff with questions that would be at budget at manuskivet.gov. We can call us at 655-640. Thank you. Okay, we'll move into our regular items then. First up, item A is a public hearing noticed for draft amendments to municipal code chapter 17 on housing to address short-term rentals. And before I open the public hearing to public comments, Jasmine, would you be able to provide an overview of the key components? Yes. Alrighty, good evening, everyone. So tonight's first public hearing for this evening is for the draft amendments to chapter 17 to address short-term rentals within the city. These amendments would begin the registration and regulation of short-term rentals in the city by explicitly defining short-term rentals by owner-occupied and non-owner-occupied requiring registration, implementing a license system, collecting fees from said license applications and allowing for city council to cap the amount of non-owner-occupied short-term rental licenses. At the last meeting, council provided feedback on the amendments, which included an increased non-owner-occupied license fee, an extension of the waiver period, and a request for a more explicit mention of the cap on non-owner-occupied short-term rentals. So revised language establishing the cap, which is in this new draft, requires the ordinance be amended prior to June 30th, 2025. To one, establish the cap and to the mechanism for allocation of licenses under that cap. These changes have been incorporated with the guidance of the city attorney. I made an additional change to the Certificate of Insurance provision after consulting with similar programs operating within the state since the major short-term rental platforms offer host liability insurance up to a million dollars, which is the industry standard, simply by marketing on their website. So anything on Airbnb or VRBO automatically has that coverage. This reduces the need for the city to track insurance coverage, instead requiring an attestation places the liability on the owner rather than the city if they misrepresent their insurance status. So this signature would also remove a significant administrative burden on the clerk's office to chase down and track and monitor these insurances. And there was a big concern about that occurring off the cycle. And then if someone received a license in January, for say, their insurance would not align with the rental registry time period. So this kind of removes that significant challenge that we were concerned administratively. So if the ordinance is adopted, staff will begin work on this internal policy procedure needed for this cross-departmental program, as well as begin formulating a public outreach effort to ensure community education on changes. But happy to answer any questions. Thank you. We will start by opening the public hearing to take comment from members of the public. We'll complete that work before moving to the city council portion. So at this time, I would like to open the public hearing and invite, first, anyone who's in attendance in the room, if you wanna speak or ask questions about this draft ordinance, please join us at the microphone. And if you could introduce yourself, please. Sure, I'm Robert Millar. I'm a Monewski resident, I'm also a member of the Housing Commission. So we spent several months on this.  They all sort of blur together, you know, it goes. So just here to show my support, I think that, you know, this is very necessary. We've seen a large increase in the short-term rentals in the midst of a housing crisis. I think this is a very necessary step and a very measured step that, you know, I don't think goes too far or falls short. I think it's exactly where the city needs to be. Thank you. Anyone else in the room? Please join us. Hello, my name is DeCranel, I'm a resident here. And kind of echoing that, I think this is a great step forwards for the city and limiting short-term rentals. A lot of folks who live in the city live in apartments where one of the other dwellings is also an Airbnb, and this can cause issues for people where it's, you know, you don't have long-term neighbors. You know, it's not treated the same way if you are living there for, you know, a couple days rather than, you know, on one's end. And a lot of, you know, kind of surprising to find a lot of units in the city of Manuski are also purely just Airbnb's as well. They're just short-term rentals. So this is something that I'm hoping that the city council takes into account Airbnb's or short-term rentals in replacement of long-term rentals. So buildings where all the available units there are just for Airbnb or just for short-term rentals. They're basically taken off of the housing market as well as the rental market. And hopefully thinking long and hard about a rental cap as well as looking at the recommended fees for non-owner-occupied units as well as non-owner-occupied units I think ultimately the city, you know, to protect Manuski renters as much as possible. We wanna have a situation in which people that wanna live here long-term can live here long-term with a lease that protects them and not something that hinges on an agreement you made with the renter and Airbnb, you know, so then it gives people real protections, so, yeah, thank you. Thank you. All right, if you are attending by Zoom, please use the raise hand feature and Paul will move you over to speak. All right, Ashley. Hello, Ashley Locked. Oh, you can't see my charming face. You can only see my hair. Yeah. Sorry. That's okay. So, Ashley Locked, Manuski resident, we have a short-term rental out of our owner-occupied house and just in terms of the, so by the way, like totally fine with registry and rules and like, yes, even though I have a short-term rental, I have noticed the explosion of short-term rentals in the community and understand the housing crisis challenge. I would say that the rental that we have out of our house would not be a good long-term rental. It's more like a mother-in-law suite, but I digress. So in terms of the rooms and meals tax portion of the update to the rules, is that the need to get a license for that? Is that to ensure that we pay rooms and meals tax? And if so, I know that Airbnb, so we're on Airbnb, they collect rooms and meals on our behalf. That's the thing about going to the platform. Yes, that's correct. Yeah, so we have to explicitly put that just for the very, very small group of people who might not utilize platforms like Airbnb or VRBO and would then need to receive like more of the traditional paper-like state. But yes, Airbnb does automatically take that out and this wouldn't impact that portion of things at all. And yes, we heard from quite a few residents who do have situations more similar to yours where they are owner-occupied. And this is definitely not aimed at preventing that because we understand that that's a very valid use for people's properties, especially in lawsuits and things like that. Yeah, well, that's good to hear because I was like, man, do I have to get another leg? Do I have to get a completely different license from the state? And that could be a thing. Yeah. And then the second question, and I recognize that you, it sounds like you're going to be either forming a committee or the committee that has been doing this is going to be working on rules, but I would encourage you to think about the length of time that the Airbnb has been in operation or maybe even the length of time that it's occupied throughout the year. For example, just our place, I think last year we had like 98% occupancy. So the people who are coming to our unit comes to spend money in Winooski, comes to spend money in the Burlington area. And like, so we don't just rent it out for like a couple of days a month, like it's almost always occupied. So that is just my situation and my lived experience. But I would say maybe just thinking about some parameters around the length of occupancy. And I think that that is all I have to share. Thank you. Thank you. Are there any other attendees via Zoom who wanted to ask a question or make a comment? No one else in the room? Okay. Seeing no additional comment, I will now close the public hearing. And we'll move to item B, which is on for discussion or approval to adopt these amendments to the chapter 17. So now is council chance to ask any follow up questions or make comments. Again, thank you. We recognize that this was a serious need. So we appreciate all of the work that you and the commission did to fulfill that council ask. I received hefty-ish amount of emails from some owner-occupied unit holders who were wondering if we might reconsider that fee. I didn't say yes or no, because I thought it should be a conversation that we have as council. We did all kind of agree that we thought that was a fair number, but just because of the amount of people who reached out, I did want to bring that up to everybody. The non-owner-occupied fee? Or the owner-occupied fee? No, the owner-occupied fee. What is that, 200? 250? Some folks thought that it was too high. I did explain the kind of research that you had put in Jasmine of figuring out how many days most folks were renting and how much they could get for that. And I did explain that factor as to how you and the commission came to that fee.  Obviously, there are duplexes that have larger units. There are small, single-family homes that's not always exactly the case. But yeah, I was looking at the data today and the average yearly income for short-term rentals just generally was $48,000. And I was thinking about my apartment that I rent, about 2,000 a month, and that's exactly half of what the short-term renter average is making. Obviously, that can be higher and that can be lower. So, and I think proportionally, if you think about the 1,400 and the 250 being such a small proportion of that, that while I do understand that, that as a population that needs that additional income to maintain aging in place or paying for their mortgage or the property taxes, I think the income is still significantly more that I personally still think that that number is feasible, but again, up to you all. I see Greenheser-Henry's. Yeah, I have other questions and comments, the fees. I mean, we can talk about it now. The fees are an item D, just for actual approval, right? Correct? Sorry, for Chapter 28, yes. Yeah, for the fees chapter, the next public hearing. But yeah, contextually it's here. Right, and that's the thing that's like, I thought those people would be coming to public discussion, but they didn't. Sorry, I forgot to bring up their emails. Well, let's talk about that in the next item. Yeah. Other questions or concerns here? Yes. Go for it. So kind of carrying off for Ashley Luxe question, section 17.3, item B, the way that's written does make it sound like anyone has, in order to get a short-term rental license, they have to have obtained a meals and rooms license. There's not language that I can see as written that so long as, if it's on a platform that does it for you, you don't have to, at least maybe there is some language somewhere else that's drafted. No, I think actually Bob, the attorney, drafted that specific verbiage. So yeah, to the average person who might be reading this, that I understand how that could be confusing. But I think theoretically that's the process that Airbnb, you go through on Airbnb or VRVO, it's just kind of done by them for you. But yeah. In the insurance section, there is a line. If the owner utilizes an online platform that offers insurance that can count, can a similar sentence be included? Yeah. Because I think one of us raised that same question when this first came up too. When we get to the adoption language, we may just wanna have that called out in the motion. I think that would add clarity because right now we could be open to an appeal, I think as written, if somebody, our intent might be like, sure, if Airbnb and another platform does that for you, you're fine. But if I was a neighbor and I was like, ah, you should have licensed and they don't have this. Then that could be opening up the city to a challenge without adding that additional language. So I think it helps on both fronts. Okay. Yeah. That makes sense. I also had a handful of emails come in providing comment. Those folks were not here tonight to speak. Primarily on the owner occupied side of things. There was a question about the minimum of 14 days threshold. Is that pretty standard? I mean, oh, what got changed last time to the 14? Is that where you're? Oh, the definition for short term? Definition. Yeah. Yeah, that's the state definition. Okay. I didn't make up my own. Well, I wasn't sure if that was just best practice that you saw from other municipalities or ordinances. There was a question, you know, not like, there's so many different scenarios. And there's one person scenario is that they travel for work. And they are often trying to rent out that their owner occupied space, they qualify as a homestead. So they're under, you know, they have the 182 days threshold met, but they feel like the 14 days for their situation would be unfair and overly, like, overly burdensome. And so it's not, I just think about the goal of the short term rental ordinance and that's to increase long-term rental housing in place of short-term rentals that may otherwise be in use. So I wonder about this other kind of scenario where somebody's trying to get some additional income to pay their taxes or, you know, just to offset some of their other living expenses. The space wouldn't be appropriate for long-term rental, but we have some of these requirements would apply to them as well. So I just wanted to bring that up for you and for council to take the floor. Yeah. I would like to weigh in on that. So I rent my personal, like, actual house I live in a couple of days a year when I go to see family in Michigan, which is under the 14 day threshold. And I understand that is also the same threshold used federally for tax taxation. So when you follow your income taxes, if you're renting under that threshold, they don't collect. And so I think it makes sense, again, there to align. I also, from that perspective of somebody who is not taking a unit out of the market, don't find this burdensome. The only new burden to me, well, I'm under 14, so it wouldn't count. But if I was renting over that, there's a license fee now, and essentially that's it because the rooms and meals tax, the insurance, those are going through the platform. Presumably. Yeah, yeah, like, I don't understand how this is significantly burdensome for somebody who is able to rent their home out many days a year and make income to add on a $250 license. Yeah, again, I'm bringing a voice to comments that I got over the weekend for folks that are not here to speak tonight. I mean, I can't get to their situation specifically as to what they see as being overly burdensome. So I'm happy to, you know, I'm not sure if they've reached out to you, but I'm happy to forward the emails. Yeah, I think part of the struggle is that there's a lot of nuance between owner-occupied and non-owner-occupied, like someone that rents their house just a couple of days a year, someone who rents their house when they go to Florida for three months, someone that vacations in their house two months a year but lives in Florida, and then someone that fully just has purchased an investment property. And again, you could break that into lives in Winooski, lives in Vermont, lives out of state. And so I think there's so much nuance. It would be great if we could have this like very complex tiered schedule of fees and requirements because they do in a way kind of have like a value base in terms of the city's intentions of preserving long-term rental housing. But fees of administration unfortunately makes that quite difficult to navigate if we were gonna break all of those up into all these categories. So unfortunately that does mean that there are people on the very top and at the very bottom of that group threshold like someone who rents for 15 days a year who would have to pay that 250 and someone who rents at the very top of that but not into the non-owner occupied who I'm sure is making more than this person. But yeah, until I think we have five city clerks then maybe we could do it. And I think that's why we have the two different licenses because we're not trying to impose the same outcome based on those scenarios. And the fact that it's the state definition to me that just makes sense to comply with what's already there. Yeah, I think the same resident reached out to me as well. Yeah, and I will say the state continues to work on legislation related to this. Again, I'm not sure how feasible that is from a state perspective, but yeah, we tried to keep it to state definitions for Homestead for short term rental. I don't have a problem with aligning with state and federal parameters. Again, just bringing voice to comments received that were not presented tonight. Thank you. I see Ashley Luck has her hand raised again. Welcome. I'm not sure if it's appropriate for the public to weigh in and obviously I missed the call for emails, but I guess I'd look at this fee as just a cost of doing business. And the business owner or short term rental person needs to decide if the cost of doing business is more onerous than the value of the revenue from said business. It's like, I guess it's just like every business, right? You have to decide if it's worth still continuing because that's what's required to operate your short term rental. So for me, $250 is not onerous, especially when we're already paying. What is a little annoying is that we are already paying the rental registry fee. So, but be that as it may, cost of business, cost of business. So that from one owner occupied Airbnb short term renter, I do not find the cost overbearing, especially understanding that this is gonna add another administrative requirement on Wyniewski staff. And being on the finance committee, I understand the budget restrictions and limitations and the work that is asked of the city staff. So if this can ease the burden by potentially providing funding for more support staff to implement X, Y, and Z, then I am supportive of this. Thank you. Are there any other council questions, comments? The only one that I have, which I think I brought up last time, is how are we defining the second and subsequent, sorry, under 1716C1B? Yes, is that like a procedure? Yeah, so John, I don't know if it was us. We would throw it. Okay. Essentially, we didn't want to make specifications in this. So that they could be flexible, dependent on their load, the severity of the violation. If it's like a fire code, that's different than we could expect. Okay, that was my assumption, but I wanted to make sure. Yeah, so I view this as, if we find someone that's not currently on the public building registry, you know, it's education. Typically, the large percentage of the people don't know. We give them that benefit of the doubt. So like any other violation, it starts a 30-day kind of clock, if you will. I think it's reasonable to expect of them in 30 days to be registered and starting a process of inspection and getting, connecting the dots. If we go past the 30 days, if they've ignored us, then we start thinking enforcement. If they've engaged with staff, and again, they're starting the process of they should be registered and inspection has happened and we're in a follow-up or it's scheduled. That's kind of what we do every day with the public building registry. Okay, that's very helpful. Thank you. Anything else? One thing that's kind of semantics. Let me just pull it up. There were, there was just some like language opportunities for cleaning up the language. So like we use enforcement department as shorthand. But there are some cases where it just says the department. So I would only recommend just being clarity where that's. Is that in the short term? So are the other existing chapter seven? Looks like some of it is existing. 1708 Section E says the department. So, yeah, like it's not significant. It's just some language cleanup. Christine, do you mind? So, is that the only type of cleanup you're looking for? If so, I was just thinking you could, if council was a member of that change, then you could just send the places to Jasmine and we can do that cleanup if that's what's comfortable. Is there anything else like that? Anything else? Do I have a motion to approve adoption of the short term rental amendments to municipal code chapter 17? With edits to section 1713B to add language that if the owner utilizes an online platform to collect meals and room taxes, that that counts towards the requirement and to align references to departments to the code-enforced department. Code enforcement department. Thank you, Thomas. Second. Motion by Thomas, second by Charlie. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries, thank you. Okay, we are onto item C, the Champlain Housing Trust Development Services Agreement. We'll introduce if you don't mind. By all means. Unfortunately, Ray had to be out, so I'm pinch hitting from him and of course Michael Monti is here. Tried not to ask Ray questions, he's online because he's too committed. So reading mostly from Ray's cover sheet, in 2007 the city of Winooski acquired the properties at 32 Mallets Bay Avenue and 21 Hickok Street from the Palmer Lowe Agency to serve as the site of the O'Brien Community Center. Significant renovations were funded through a combination of grants, donations and a $2,200,000 bond that was approved by voters on September 25th, 2007. The renovated building reopened to the public as a community center in 2008 and has continued to serve in that role since then with a variety of human services agencies leasing space in the building over the years as well as housing the community services department and the city of this library. As discussed with city council at your regular meeting on May 15th, 2023 and October 2nd, 2023, city staff had had ongoing communication with staff from Champlain Housing Trust to explore a partnership that would better support a vibrant, functional and financially sustainable community center. I'll note that we are confident in this partnership because of Champlain Housing Trust's track record with other projects in combination with their mission. At your regular meeting on October 2nd, 2023, city council provided confirmation by consensus that city staff should continue to work towards creating a development agreement and operating agreement and lease agreement with Champlain Housing Trust, sorry, yes. City of Nuske and the Community Health Centers of Burlington. So in your packet you have in draft form an option agreement, memorandum of understanding and lease. Collectively these are known as the transaction documents. Staff recommend that city council approve the attached or the resolution that's in your packet. That would authorize me, the city manager to execute those transaction documents so long as the final versions thereof remain in substantial conformity with the document drafts as presented and substantial conformity would be reviewed by the city attorney. Given the anticipated use of new market tax credits as part of the financing for this project, we anticipate what's known as ministerial amendments to the draft transaction documents, which is why we aren't able to present the final versions for approval at this time. Note that the project does require some zoning changes. The Planning Commission reviewed these most recently at their regular meeting on February 8th, 2024. The application to the Planning Commission asked to re-designate the O'Brien Community Center as a civic use building and to rezone the property at 21 Hickock Street, which is an adjacent also city-owned lot. Currently has some of our community garden plots. It would be rezoned that 21 Hickock Street property from residential C to gateway. This latter changes in anticipation of merging the two lots at 32 Mallets Bay Avenue and 21 Hickock Street. The Planning Commission set a public hearing for March 14th, 2024, at which it will formally take up the draft amendments related to this proposal. Michael Monti is here from CHT to share more details when you're ready. Well, good Michael. Thank you. I'm mostly here to answer any questions and to ask for your support for the resolution. With this, we will assign the agreements in terms especially specifically to the option agreement, which will provide the City of Winnowsky sort of resources and support to pay the existing bond that it now has. We would hope that we would actually be able to finish the transaction within the next three to four months in terms of actually owning it. Certainly made commitment that we would begin managing the property, certainly on July 1st. That's our target date. So I've been spending quite a bit of time. We've been spending quite a bit of time putting together the details of it. It continues to evolve, I would say, mostly in a good direction. On occasion, we find things, we go, okay, so what do we do about that? But I think for the most part, I think we're heading in a good place. I could tell you that the project is probably more like a $17 million project. It's not a cheap, inexpensive thing, but there will be class A spaces then for all the users. CHCB, certainly the dental clinic and a new library, as well as the community spaces and event hall. So that's pretty exciting. We're really jazzed up about it. We had a meeting today with one of our board committees. We look back on what we did with the Old North End Community Center. I feel like it's similar in terms of its intent and purpose. And we think that ultimately, as good as what it is there now, we believe that we could make it a lot better and a lot more accessible to the city of Winooski residents. So I'll answer any questions in these documents and I think we'll stop there. Thank you. I'll speak first to the zoning piece because this was discussed at the last planning commission meeting that I attended. So they had some questions about wanting assurances that the use of the property wouldn't change. And I see in here the language about the intent is to retain it as a community center and honor the leases. Do you know how long, like the longest existing leases or what the average is term? That exists there now? Yeah. I think that you have another 10 years with the UEM Medical Center. I think after that, Howard is, I think actually month to month starting July 1st is what they like to be. And I think CHCB is some reoccurring terms as well. But there'll be a new lease with CHCB. Clearly, UVM will be glad to accept them as they continue. Okay. And CHCB would like to actually purchase their property. So at some point in seven and a half or eight years, there'll be a condominium there of which we will own half and CHCB will own half. And we're ready to sell back anything to the city if it wants to at that point as well. But principally, that's what the end result will be in about eight years. So CHCB will be there forever. It has those civic uses as a zoning. We're gonna impress in the deed a covenant that indicates that these should be for community uses or civic uses to make sure that it is forever. So that if the CHCB decides in 20 years that they're no longer in healthcare or they wanna do something else and they wanna move to a different location, another civic use would go into that location. That's true of any of the uses there. So we'll always be guided by that civic zoning use as a part of the deed, not just as a lease agreement. We did it all the time with covenants on property. Properties are guided by either public use or affordable use or something. Right, so. Also my understanding there can jump in here. There's two protections. There's one on the side in the deed from CHCB's perspective, but also if there was gonna be a change, the Planning Commission would have another crack at it because it would have to be conforming to the civic use designation. Excellent. This all sounds like it meets the desire. So thank you. Not to speak on behalf of the Planning Commission, but that was the impression that I got from that meeting that they feel assured, but of course there will be a public hearing and they could change the plan. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I had a question that might be better suited for you, Elaine. There's notes in here about the city and CHCB being responsible for their own fit-up and furnishings and I wonder on the city side, have we estimated that? Have we budgeted for that yet? So we haven't estimated it per se that I'm aware of. We do have magically some fit-up money. Again, Angela found money out of nowhere. Angela, are you there? I am, yes. Is that permitted? Take credit for that. Sure, so the purchase and sales agreement that is proposed with CHT is enough money to cover all our debt service payments with the bond bank as of right now. We will be making a interest payment that is included in this fiscal year's budget in May. So that equivalent amount of money from the sales price that CHT has pledged would be available for fit-up. Great. We're also, you also had the library grant on your consent agenda, which would help with that. In addition, we do have some designated reserves for the O'Brien Community Center facility within the capital budget that could be repurposed for fit-up at this space. Okay, thank you. My last question is the reference to the $500,000 development fee paid to Champlain Housing Trust. Who is making that payment? Well, we are. Okay. And whenever we do a development project, included into the project is a development fee. So whatever we raise, whatever we do, however we bring money in, it pays us a fee. We do this with our partnership properties and our affordable housing properties. The level of work that happens here, nobody's getting paid for that. None of the time is being reimbursed. We've already hired someone who helped us raise $2.8 million to do the capital campaign. All that work basically happens as part of the development fee. And so we will, it comes out of the project itself. Let me just say this. Also, we're investing a million dollars into the project. So we could have just saved half a million or something like that and kept it ourselves, but I think this is the more reasonable approach to doing it. And also recognizing the true cost of how we do business and allows it potentially to use and have to leverage other resources as well. Thank you for that clarification. Those were my questions. Do other folks have any? Bryn? Sure. Thank you. Will this? This is nothing short of exciting. So really happy to see this moving along so quickly. I was curious if there's any language that gives the city right of first refusal if there's ever any additional property turnover from CHT? We glad to, pretty straightforward. We'd be glad to make that as an additional option too. If we decide we want to sell, that we would actually certainly turn to the city as the first option to purchase. That's easy. Yeah, I think that for me, I think that would be nice to at least have the opportunity who knows where we'll be and when or if that will happen. But I think just in terms of future planning, it would be nice to give our future an opportunity to have at least a consideration in that matter. Easy enough. Other councilor support that change? Yeah, I think it's a good idea. Yeah, excellent. Thanks, Bryn. I was wondering, and just the matter of, it's hard to predict the future. If there's any language to be, the lease agreement for the library and the office space, is there any clause or termination language if for some reason the city needs to or wants to build a new library that is separate from where it's currently planned to be located? That's a question to me. I would say, termination clause. Yeah, we haven't discussed that. But I think again, what we have often enough with some of our sort of nonprofit partners is give us notice. And if you give us enough notice, then we'll come up with somebody else who wants to use the property. Haven't really had that happen much, but that's an easy and straightforward thing to do. You have a lease agreement, you have to give us six months notice or nine months notice, or years. I mean, if you're going to build another library, you're going to have a year notice, probably. I would imagine. Several years. Maybe several years, yeah. But I think we could build it and notice that, yeah, we intend to build something new. And as a result, then we will come up with some other kind of use that meets the civic guidelines. We're just doing that with Howard Center now at 322 St. Paul Street, as an example. It was a group home. They gave us notice. We asked them to give us a nine-month, a year's notice. They did that. And so they've been building a new property, a new facility for themselves in Shelburne. And we're about to sort of think about how to reuse that property now. So that's fine. That's okay. It makes sense. Yeah, again, far off proposition, if ever, but again, just contingency planning for clarity of expectations. Right. And I would think that that was more protection for CHT. So, I mean, of course, we don't want to open ourselves to liability. So if there was a minimum, you would want us to put in there where we can ask counsel to include that. We're prepared to give you one way. Use it as long as you want and then if you want to leave, you tell us. So, no, you don't have a minimum notice period that you'd want? Yeah, I mean, a year would be great. But I'm just making that up right now. So it could be shorter or longer. But yeah. Do you want to think about it? Yeah. Well, we can make a motion that says language to the effect. Yes. And accept any time period that is... Just looking at additional notes I had. I think the facility improvements will kind of cover it. But is there anything that would prevent ourselves or other tenants from doing any energy efficiency related updates? No. Do you have something? Yeah, I think my one question, and this is probably to both the city and CHT is thinking about that community outreach and getting community input. I know that that is thought out for the like the building design plan. But I'm also curious about, I don't think we've really done that for like, how the community feels about us selling the community center. And I'm just thinking about some of the stuff that came up around selling Memorial Park to the land trust districts. Yep. Yeah. So I guess that's kind of my question is like, what community outreach have we done to let them know about this beyond I guess these meetings? We've been sharing it whenever we've done like the informal meetings through the engagement plan. Yeah, this, it's really a council decision how much engagement you want on the sale. Okay. It's, I've been including it in updates and we've been sharing it for almost a year now. Personally, I feel like I haven't heard substantial concerns because with the understanding that it will retain it's all of its community functions. Can I say, we've had informal conversations. I guess, well my conversations are informal but we've had formal conversations with a variety of folks who want to continue to either use it or to maybe potentially use it that haven't been here yet. And so we have a whole bunch of space in the back which has not been really programmed shall we say they're available for nonprofit uses. I'm open to sort of having conversations about that in terms of who they would be. The way it's, the way the event hall is operating will be pretty much the same I think although I still have to do a little bit more about how it's operating right now precisely. So we're open to sort of like a continuing sort of like dialogue about the event hall use and the kitchen use and the nonprofit uses assuming that CHCB is doing their stuff and the library is overall there for the community. I think the concern I've heard from several, some residents and also folks outside of Winooski, a concern with CHTs rentals and like a concern about the upkeep of those buildings and also some concern around like the folks that have serviced those buildings and not being necessarily as welcoming and inclusive as we would want. So that's part of why I wanted to raise this. I'd love to hear more about what you just said. Are they talking about specifically about like the Illinois Thin Community Center in terms of? Housing, housing in particular. Yeah, so I do know that this is a different program but I wanted to make sure to raise it because that. I'd love to have more conversation. I'd be glad to talk more about all of that. We do have a fairly robust resident services staff that are available to folks who need support and services. Our maintenance folks have been sort of a little bit behind on a range of issues principally for catching up, I think still from COVID, but now finally I think getting to a place where they have been. I think we probably meet all the code requirements and then some. We provide no more than 3% increases. People have a right to stay forever. People can move to another property. People have just caused eviction. So we do a whole range of things I think in terms of the people in our properties that I don't think any other landlord does. So I'm trying to defend ourselves a little bit, but at the same time being willing to hear what people are saying about that. Yeah, I can pass along some more specifics. Yeah, but I just wanna check in on this. And I know employee retention and stuff has been hard everywhere or just hiring folks has been hard, so. And I think to your point, I think I've at least communicated, we have always been intending to have a community engagement session on site. I think I have communicated that in terms of design, but that it actually would be full scope like programming, how do people want to experience this space? It's not just about the building. So there's still opportunity for that. Okay, that sounds good. Thank you, I appreciate that. I would say though that some expectations should be set because we, yeah, it's already 17 million dollars. Reacting to things, not designing from scratch. Yeah, yeah, yeah, thank you. Are there any questions from members of the public or comments or folks on Zoom? Okay, check in. Can I add one more detail? In case anyone was wondering, Vermont Works for Women is not going to be impacted by this project and they have essentially like almost a forever arrangement there. So when Michael is responding to the question about what leases were in place, he was talking about those that are affected by the project, but correct. And we met with them very a long time ago and they had some needs within their space, which we'll see if we can accommodate and make things work better. But I'm not sure exactly where they are in terms of their, they had a renovation project in mind. So I haven't spoken to them in nine months, maybe more, but we will follow up with them. We'll get a follow up with all of the existing tenants and as well as doing some communication to the community about what's going on. One at a time. Please join us at the microphone. Just a quick comment. Just I thought whatever our brought up was actually a good point. I've been aware of this project for a while myself, but I think one thing that I learned here tonight, which I think maybe would impact all the people's decisions who are maybe concerned about the project is a use case of the building and future plans for it. So like the idea that you will also add housing to this, we're not doing that. Oh, we're not doing that. We're not adding housing to it. Okay, well, future use of the building, I suppose, it's nice, you know, I wasn't necessarily sure that what the situation would be with the current tenants. I think like more clarification to that for the public would be good, but I do agree with what's been said is that, you know, this has been public knowledge for a year now. And so I think if you are following up with local news, you're probably aware of this project, but you might not be fully aware of the finer details of that, who's gonna be staying, you know, what that means for certain people, what the community health center necessarily, you know, where that plays a role because I mean the community health center and the library obviously are very large, very large end points for the community. Yeah. Thank you. I will be communicating about this again this week following this meeting. So we'll take some of that in. Robert, were you coming up? Sure, I got a very quick question. I was, we talked a lot about the real tenants. I was just curious about more de facto tenants. I guess I can sit here. Just communication with, you know, folks who are making use of it on a regular basis already and I'm just curious what that's been. So to clarify then, all the current tenants who are there will be able to stay and I'll have new offices. So that's clear. There was a long list of de facto tenants, but I think people who are using the kitchen and other spaces there, we're ready to sort of, we need them to continue. That's a part of what we really want them to do. You have a very active community center that way. We, I'm talking to Harmony tomorrow. Sort of just as a make sure that she's still in place and ready to go. So there will be this, I mean, this will be clear. We're going to do renovation and development and construction here. There will be some disruption, you know? But only because we're redeveloping the property now for any other reason. But the long list of folks that Ray sent me, I think at some point, they're on our list and then there's no reason why they can't continue to use space. Ray is engaging for some reason. Sorry, Ray, I didn't mean to. Oh, no, no. Yeah, I was just going to confirm that. Yes, there's a long list that we're figuring out a plan for communication with. So good question though. Thank you. All right, anything else? It sounds like we, someone might want to make a motion to approve the resolution authorizing our city manager to sign the transaction documents so long as they do not change substantially with the addition of language to give the city the right of first refusal should CHT ever decide to sell the property and ensure a notice period in the lease to terminate tendency. So moved. Second. Motion by Thomas, second by Aurora. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it. Okay, let's move on to item D. A public hearing has been called for amendments to municipal code chapter 28 on fees. Do you want to do a real quick overview, Angela? Sure, so this was presented at the last council meeting adding in extension and short-term options for sidewalk permits, the addition of the short-term rental licenses fees, increases for non-residential fees for all of the community service programings, the addition of a rubric for community service programs to be used by SAF to set fees, and then some fees related to parking services that have not yet been codified and some clerical updates. A few notes from council at the last meeting were integrated into this draft for clarification. Thank you. So we'll start, is there any public comment on this fees chapter? Reminder, if you're on Zoom to use the raise hand. Okay, seeing no public comment, I will close the public hearing and we will move into the council discussion item E. I think we have a question you advanced earlier about the owner occupied license fee and whether or not we wish to make an adjustment to that. And somewhere to counsel our belief that was just passing that on, I don't actually have the hope to change that fee. I think Jasmine's context supports the administrative overhead, so. Okay, are there other items in here? Oh, Bryn, I see your hand. I don't know if it's just me and I know Ray walked through last, I don't ask anything, but the rubric is still confusing. I think it's because it's in red lines still and it's harder to read that way. Say more, Bryn, say more. I tried to walk through a hypothetical over the weekend and I, I don't know. I think because it's used by staff, I'm not super concerned about that. And I could see if someone did have a concern, they could, exactly, sit down and be like, can you walk through these steps? Like, I think I was looking at like, well, I don't need equipment, but it's still, I still get a ding for not needing equipment. It's not a zero, it's a one. But that just means it's the minimum score is seven. So if you get minimums, it's the lowest fee possible. And I think nine times out of 10, even when there's, there are very few programs that I think are completely equipment-free, right? There could be snacks, there could be pen and paper for arts and crafts activities. I think there's always a little something that we end up needing. So I think, it's not 500 bucks, but it's often 20, 25 bucks, fruit snacks at Costco, that kind of thing. Yeah, I was thinking like gym rental, which may no longer be a thing in the very near future. Yeah, I mean, what I will say is that we use this for two and a half years with Essar, I think to really good effect. And I felt like the numbers that came out the other end, mentioned this at the last meeting, were really on point with sort of industry numbers and comparables in other communities. So I think when we get a number that's not, we have the flexibility to sort of vet that and say, whoa, okay, this program is way too cheap. It costs us way more than this. We need to come back and do a resolution with council to set that price. So I think we're not gonna just kind of blindly use that rubric. I think it's a tool for us to start from. And then if we get into more of the depth and say, you know what, we actually do need an extra staff person, that's gonna bump this up and it's gonna make it more expensive than I think we come back and deal with that individually with you all through a resolution. Okay, sounds good. And apologies for sounding like Darth Vader right now. You sound better than you think you do. Oh, that's good. I'm sorry I don't feel well. Christine, I don't have anything else. Okay. Anyone else have any concerns, comments, changes? Okay. Do I have a motion to adopt these amendments to municipal code chapter 28? So moved. Second. Motion by Charlie, second by Aurora. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you. So we're now on to item G because of the agenda adjustment. Probably not in time though. This is on for discussion approval, the Winooski Walk Bike Master Plan. Thank you very much. I'll do a quick introduction here and then kind of turn things over to both Brian and to counsel for any comments or questions. First of all, thank you for rearranging the agenda to accommodate Brian's schedule, albeit barely. So anyway, this is a, we are here to talk again about the Walk Bike Master Plan that was developed for the city of Winooski. This is a project that was funded through the Unified Planning Work Program, which is a federal program with the Chittin County Regional Planning Commission. This project started back in January of last year and was wrapped up later or at the end of last year as well. This was presented to you in draft form on December 4th at your regular meeting. At that meeting there was some minor comments that were provided mostly related to a couple of the priority items that were included in the document, the priority projects, sorry, related to the downtown area wide study and some of the time frames for short-term, medium-term, long-term projects. Those have been incorporated into the draft that was included with the agenda. In addition, at that meeting, there was a request to have the plan be reviewed by the Municipal Infrastructure Commission, which was also done at their regular meeting on December 21st. At that meeting, they provided comments requesting an additional table be added that reviewed the priorities in a timeframe option rather than just the priority option, which was included as table six in the draft plan as well. In addition, there was comments received from the Winooski Alliance of Active Transportation, both just recently, which were all, I believe you were all included on that email as well as comments prior to the Municipal Infrastructure Commission, which is what led to the inclusion of the additional table. So tonight we have the final draft plan, as I mentioned, for your review and consideration. One of the items I wanted to touch on related to the priorities, really the intent of this plan is to be a high-level planning document for you all to use however you see fit. There was a scoring matrix that was included with the plan itself, which is included in table two on page 20, I believe, of the document. That utilizes a lot of the information that was provided by the consultants and the project team to develop how we establish the priorities. So with that said, that priority list is not intended to be an order of operations. So if something is a higher priority because funding becomes available, that's certainly within the purview of council to pursue that instead of an item that is ranked below it or above it on that priority table. The priorities are really intended to reflect the evaluation criteria that was heard during the planning process and all the public outreach. So anyway, just wanted to touch on that as well. But otherwise, pretty much most of the information is the same as it was presented at your December meeting. I don't know, Brian, you want to? Oh, the other thing, we did include, I emailed out and is included on the project page an appendix to all the public comments so you can see all of that information which fed into the priorities and how we ranked some of the projects. So, Brian, I'll turn it over to you for any additional comments. I don't think I have any additional comments. That was a great overview of the process since we saw you last. The significant, if you will, changes to the current draft from that previous draft. At the conclusion of this, there may be some minor text edits, but I think Eric wanted to call out the new table, the additional language, and also just highlight that this is a guiding document for council to consider. And then to his point, it's up to you all to decide on what's most important at a particular point in time to pursue further. Thank you, Brian. While we have you, I have a couple of quick questions. One, just to address the comments we received from the W-A-A-T group. You know, they have a suggestion in here about adding in recommendations for policies for public bike parking, bus stop access, wayfinding, safe routes to schools, complete streets, quick build framework, and transportation demand management policy. I just want to ask if the team actually researched any of that. I'm grateful that Watt brought these to our attention. Some of them we did discuss as a project team throughout the process. Some of these, you know, bike parking, for example, is a part of your draft regulations. So I don't know that they need to be in this plan, particularly if you've got other city documents that guide that. The transit stops, you know, that's, in my opinion, that's more of a GMT purview rather than the city. But again, that's a relationship that you all could have with GMT.  The Safe Roots to School program, again, in my opinion, that would be a school request. Local motion manages the Safe Roots program for the state. I don't know that the city itself would need to make that particular request to participate in the program, but I think would be a partner in that, given the role of the school and the community. The last bullet, the TDM policy, again, I think that is a component of one of your recent draft documents. So I'll just add on to that, the TDM, the Transportation Man Management Policies and the public bike parking are something that we incorporated into the latest amendments to parking, our parking regulations. So we do, while there's incentives to reduce parking in exchange for the Transportation to Man Management strategies, we do require both short-term and long-term bicycle parking to be incorporated with projects that may be slightly different than what they're asking for here, but we have made steps in that direction to increase the amount of public bike parking we have available in the city. Okay, thank you for that. And then the other context question. You know, their other ask was to elevate the downtown study. So ahead of that are scoping for Malts Bay Ave, East and West Spring and Weaver. And are you able to speak to how those three roads came up higher in priority? Yeah, the downtown area-wide study, again, even though its ranking isn't as high as it could be, we are mindful of the Main Street project that's in process, as well as the Whenuski River Bridge projects that's in process and in design. And we don't wanna get ahead of either of those projects. So our recommendation, which I think is reflected in that prioritization is, and again, it doesn't have to be the Council's number six. It can be when the time is right, even next year, ask the RPC to help study the downtown area as a whole so that any proposed alternatives would reflect the design results of the bridge and Main Street so that we're again, I'm not ahead of those. That makes sense, thank you. If we're not bound by this priority, it's Council can change what we think is. That's correct. Yeah, as I mentioned, the priority ranking is really based on the evaluation criteria that shows up in Table Two. So based on either, for example, improving equitable access or addressing improvements to safety for all users, improving walk-bike network connectivity, access to key locations, those were all factors included in the waiting and to establish that priority ranking. There's nothing that says you have to follow that order. You can elevate projects or lower projects as you see fit. I will say though that there, that is quite a list of criteria that went into the prioritization. And then just in case you needed a doc, two dots connected there. So what Brian was saying about Main Street or for the public's benefit, perhaps in the bridge projects, those will change traffic patterns. And so if we studied it now or even try to project what it might be, it might not be accurate. So it would make more sense to do a study and then base changes on what the actual traffic patterns will be. That makes sense. And that's a good point. That's why we also wanted to update the language so that it's not circulator specific, but it is a downturn area wide, right? Part of the system. I have more, but I will open up to others. I have comments. I think just reading through this again, kind of just highlighted how it was important that council prioritize infrastructure in our budget. The community cares about getting around biking, walking, and that's very difficult to do with the current state of our roads and that all ties into this. So we have to take care of it before maybe even we can kind of address everything here. I appreciate the section on lighting. I think that's huge, especially given the really bad accident that happened in the circle recently that was due in part two, the lighting situation there. So that section of this document I find particularly important. And just to thank you, last time you were here, I had asked about the dollar sign designations and what that meant and the way that you have changed it in the document makes it a lot clearer. So I appreciate you doing that. Okay, thank you for those comments. Quick correction, page 14, the street network doesn't include the new Molly's Way private road. Yeah, the picture is older. I want additional question. On page 35, where it's talking about formalizing the connection between North Street and Tygen Street, I am curious why the recommendation to replace the paved path with concrete sidewalk, like what is the difference or benefit to doing that work? So you said page 35. PDF page, or like Adobe PDF, 30 in the document. This is under the second, the explore options for private. Yeah, it says reconstruct existing paved path to concrete sidewalk. My guess is that because that current asphalt path is not ADA compliant for surface or width. So I believe it would be, and the concrete would be easier to maintain for a longer period of time, but I don't know, Brian, if you- Is concrete easier to maintain though? Like, I feel like our sidewalks are in much worse condition than the Riverside multi-use path. The concrete material has a longer lifespan than asphalt. Yeah, but I think, as Eric points out, it would be to meet ADA requirements. But I don't think that- Okay, thank you. I think that would be not necessarily materials based, but the width of it. The ADA piece, I understand, like expanding the width. I was curious about the materials change. And then this is more for Elaine. This recommendation about sharing the city snowpawing plan, is that something staff could implement like annually when we start parking ban communication? 30 in the PDF, 25 in the document. Oh, John is with us. Welcome. Welcome. Yeah, regarding the sidewalk plowing, I think we can share the general plan. We do have the prioritized sidewalks currently in our transportation master plan. However, it does tend to change pending our staffing. So, for example, earlier this winter, we really were understaffed and didn't have EO-1s to do a lot of the plowing work.  But now that we're getting a little bit more fully staffed, we can get back to the prioritized plan. I will say it also depends if we have all sidewalk plows running. We have, you know, we're up to three, thankfully, right now. So, we've got a backup sidewalk plow, but when we go down to one sidewalk plow because of hydraulic leaks or whatever, that kind of throws a wrench in our plan as well. So, I think we can show the prioritized plan, but expect it to change pending staffing, pending, you know, equipment. Yeah, and I don't know how realistic it is to communicate those changes as they're happening. Well, what I am suggesting is start of season communication. Here's what we aim for. There are many factors, just FYI. But I could make a note of that myself in my monthly newsletter. Did anyone else have questions, comments to get into here? Any members of the public? I see a hand raised. Hello. Welcome, Tom. Hi, good evening, folks. My name is Tom Buckley, and I'm a resident of Hall Street and also a member of the Winooski Alliance for Active Transportation that you've discussed already. I think to be brief tonight, I wanna first thank the consultants and the Regional Planning Commission and the council for moving this plan to where it is today. It's an excellent document, and I wanted to be clear, and even though we've offered a lot of comments on it, that we're very much in support of the plan and your adoption of it. I was glad to hear the discussion of the comments that we offered already. It's gratifying. I think we're gonna continue to offer comments because, you know, that's the advocacy that we're here for. And I, God, we appreciate your receptivity and comments on that. I think specifically, what I also heard was something I was gonna raise. And that's the downtown area. I mean, it has already been raised, but I think that while I understand the idea that we really wanna understand the traffic patterns from Main Street and the bridge before we get too far in the planning, but because of the public safety concerns, and I know Thomas mentioned recent pedestrian accidents there, we would like to keep that really, see that kept really high on the agenda. And for, you know, the planning for that and for any changes to the circulator to be interactive with the development and the implementation of those other two projects. So, you know, originally I was gonna say, I think we should raise it, you know, from number six to higher priority, simply because of the intensity of pedestrian and bike activity there. But I think I've also heard that, you know, if these numbers one through six are not hard and fast, and as long as that there's a general agreement that this is a high priority pedestrian, bike, intense area, then, you know, that does it. So, those are my comments, and thank you for the opportunity. Thank you, Tom. Thanks, Tom. Yeah, I think to that point, if I may, I would just again reiterate that the intent of this plan is really to be a guidance document. It's not intended to lay out detailed specific projects that need to be implemented, which is why there aren't a lot of detailed specific projects, so that we can really take the time to study some of these areas more directly and figure out what needs to happen when the time is right and when the resources are there to really make those projects happen. Oh, Bryn? Yeah, thanks. I wanna thank CCRPC for, you know, adding meeting, unexpected meeting late in December, so I know that that was well attended and offered some really valuable input from both the commission and members of the Lewinsky Alliance for Active Transportation. So, I know that that was an additional ask on you and your schedule, so thank you for accommodating that. Thank you for all of the effort that's gone into responding to questions and comments as well. I think this is really exciting to see this move forward and to have this document in place. Certainly not perfect, but looking, but much more progress and guidance than we have currently, so big improvements there. For me, one comment, table five, page 44 of the PDF, page 39 of the document. I just wanted to call out, I'm not asking for it to be removed, but when we, item 11, Memorial Park Intervary Center, there was, you know, we met with the Lewinsky Valley Parks District and I asked about this at one of our recent meetings and even in that conversation, it was kind of like that's a fairly long shot, if ever, type of a project. So, I don't know if long term still gives hope, but I think that type of project is so significant that we would have to have that in collaboration with Burlington, perhaps the state, other partners in order for that to have any chance of moving forward. And I know you kind of know partners on the funding options, but I almost would, you know, I don't know, note just all of the collaborative, multi-municipality effort that would have to go in to make that come to fruition. I will say for some of the big projects that may seem unrealistic, we've seen in recent years, the federal government making significant federal grants available. And when you have something that may seem out of reach, identified in a document, it makes it closer when those rare opportunities come about. They take a lot of work. And you, not insignificant, but not out of the realm of possibility. All right, anything else? Sounds like someone might want to make a motion to approve the Winnieski Walk Bike Master Plan. So moved. Second. Motion by Thomas, second by Aurora. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Thank you so much. Thank you for sticking around. Thank you very much, appreciate it. Please feel free to exit rapidly. Thank you all very much. Okay, thank you. It is 7.38. I'm gonna call a five minute recess to reconvene at 7.42. We are meeting back to order. We're on item F, Green Mountain Transit Presentation. This is just a discussion item. Elaine, do you need to do any introduction? Welcome. What if I want an introduction? No, thank you. And we'll save a little time. So, good evening, everybody. I'm Clay Clark, the general manager for Green Mountain Transit. And I do wanna start off by thanking Elaine for the great read ahead that she included with the agenda really helps sort of set the stage for us. And we have on the line my phone a friend in case we get some technical questions. Nick Foss is our finance director and will be available if you have questions that I'm unable to answer. And I wanna start off by just reminding folks that GMT is a municipality of municipalities. And so we are comprised of or managed by a board of commissioners that are selected by the different municipalities that are part of our organization. And Austin Davis, who is Winooski's rep is the chair. And so I work with Austin as my boss pretty much daily. And he does a ton of volunteer work on Winooski's and GMT's behalf. So super appreciate that. He made the unfortunate decision to procreate. So he's tied up with baby Raren, which I don't know why anyone would do that, but that is his poor life decision. So thinking first about our ridership. I like to start with ridership because that's the service that we provide. And I like to keep things rooted in that. And so coming through Winooski is one of our most populated routes, which is the number two. And last year we moved 417,000 riders on the number two. And then of course there's the number nine, which connects Winooski to the Downtown Transit Center. And there was 170,000 riders on the number nine last year. And the thing that I wanna bring up when it comes to the number nine is that overall, we have rebounded our ridership from the pandemic. But number nine has rebounded and grown. And it's actually a 43% increase in ridership on the number nine since the pre-pandemic. So really happy to see that that is a service that continues to be popular and is growing in usage. So getting to the unfun part, we're talking a little bit about money. Overall the GMT urban operations takes roughly $20 million a year to operate. And it provides roughly two million rides a year. So the very simple basic math is it's about $10 per ride as the overall cost. Looking at that $20 million, $3.6 million comes from municipalities. And so that's a little under 20%. And 2.6 of that comes from Burlington and South Burlington. And so with the remaining million distributed across the other municipalities. So looking at the assessment for Winooski, there's an overall 9% increase to $248,000 this year. That is certainly higher than we would like. And we recognize the impact that this has on the community. And I'm gonna walk you through a little bit of how we got to that. So the fixed route assessment, which is for the portion of number two and number nine that's in Winooski, that comes to about $132,000 of that assessment. And that increased by 8.1% over the previous year. Usually our fixed route assessments are increased by three or 4% as just a flat increase. And then our board every few years will do a true up exercise to get us to the costs. And so that's why you see a higher increase in this year. And the larger increase was for per paratransit assessment. So anyone who is living within three quarters of a mile of a fixed route, which probably is 100% of Winooski would be my guess. They're, if they have a disability that prevents them from being able to use the fixed route service, then they would get paratransit provided by SSTA. And that's a door-to-door service that we're legally required to provide with the Americans with Disabilities Act. And that increased by 9.9% over the previous year. The thing to keep in mind with that is that that is based on actual usage. And that also is a cost that split 50-50 with GMT. And so Winooski's portion is 116 and then essentially GMT funds the remaining 50% balance out of our own reserves. The overall, the paratransit program saw over 20% growth system-wide last year. And so even though it's a 9.9% increase for Winooski, Williston had a 55% increase in one year for their paratransit. And so this is a program where if individuals use the service frequently and they move from community to community, it really can cause the assessment to go up or down sharply. One of the things that I'm happy is that our board has adopted a new paratransit assessment model that will be a running three-year average in the hopes that that will then cause those peaks and valleys to be not quite so peaky or valley. And I'm gonna talk a little bit about, I think that we'll see a decrease in paratransit use over the coming year when I talk about fares. So thinking about the things that worry me as a general manager for Green Mountain Transit, I'm sure you'll be shocked to know that it's people and money. And so first, labor pressures. Last year when I came here, I told you that one in three of our routes, or whenever you would see one of our buses, there was a one in three chance that the person operating that bus was on overtime. We're now down to almost one in four. So we've made some progress, but still obviously overtime is a big challenge with our cost containment, especially because we still have to rely a lot on forcing in order to keep our service reliable. And with forcing, first off, we don't like that because we don't want to force anyone to work when they don't want to, but then there's also a double time so it makes it even more expensive than just normal overtime. And so labor pressure, the lack of CDL drivers is definitely a long-term threat to us being able to maintain the level of service that we currently have. The other long-term threat is the fiscal pressures. And so our COVID relief funds will be exhausted in fiscal year 26. So for quite some time, we have operated more service than our revenue would allow for. And we've used our reserves essentially to pay for that. And we're gonna run out of funds at the beginning of fiscal year 26, so run out of reserve funds in the beginning of fiscal year 26. And fiscal year 26 is the budget that we will be giving you a draft assessment of in November. So it seems like it's long away, but it's really just nine months away from having to have that budget in place. So one of the things that you're gonna see is that in the coming months, we're gonna be talking a lot about the service reductions that we would have to go through if we don't have other revenue identified for us from the state of Vermont. The urban transit areas, urban transit providers, I'm sorry, across the country are facing similar fiscal cliffs. And for many of our brother and sister agencies, the only way that they're able to maintain service is by having different funding models for public transit than have previously existed. I can tell you that the legislature asked for a study on how to come up with non-federal match to help with this problem. They received that study in January, but my perception is that there's not a lot of interest in following those recommendations. And so I'm not imagining that we're gonna have additional state support unless something changes there at the State House. And in the coming months, we certainly will be advocating for something to change, but it seems like a lot of folks have their hats out this year because the fiscal cliff is something that I think most municipalities and organizations are confronted with. Could I pause you? Yes, and I have just two more quick things and then I was gonna make this a conversation instead of me talking to you. If you wouldn't mind. Continue, continue. So the last two things that I just wanted to bring up is that we're returning to fair service. And so one of the things that we have done is spent a lot of our reserves on operating fair free service. And we were hoping that that would continue, but we were unable to convince the state that that was a good investment. And so our new fair resume date is April 1st. We had hoped to be able to do it by March 6th, but our apps are still not available for download through the Google Play Store and through the Apple Store. And we're just not comfortable proceeding with only giving our riders a week or two to be able to get their account set up and everything ready. And I'm happy to talk about fairs afterwards, but that's a rabbit hole we could spend several hours on, which I think you would probably be bored to death about. But the reason why this is important for paratransit is that just as the fairs are coming back on fixed route service, it comes back to the paratransit service. And so we are expecting that there will be a decline in paratransit use and it will look more like some of the older patterns where people would, instead of taking a daily ride, would go two or three times a week instead of five times a day if people were using that, say for grocery shopping and other items. So we think that that will provide some relief to municipalities on their assessments. And lastly for future considerations, at our last public meeting for the budget, Elaine brought up that the current assessment methodology that we use really doesn't take into account the municipal financial demographics of the population. I think that there's a lot of things have changed in the world since we last set our assessment formula. I think Elaine mentioned in her read ahead that our assessment formula requires the approval of three fourths of the municipalities. And so we tend to not change it very often. And once we get it, we stick with it for probably too long. And I do think that it's ripe for us to reconsider that. But the thing that will be a challenge is that whatever methodology we come up with, three quarters of the municipalities would have to agree to it in order for us to use it. So that's me talking at ya and now I'm happy to have a conversation and answer any of your questions to the best of my ability. Thank you for the overview. What I wanted to ask about was you alluded to service reductions without alternative state funding. Is that while fares are also returning, do you still anticipate service reductions? Yes, because the fares essentially aren't new revenue. They're just meaning that we'll be using less reserves. And so we expect to generate about $1.6 million a year in fair revenue and in our funding gap, it's gonna be around $3 million a year, even with the fares included. The gap I'm wondering about is like pre-federal COVID funding, was this gap there? Like why is it now not sustainable to have the same service that we had? So I can tell you that in 2020, GMT started the process of service reductions because we were almost in the same situation. And ironically, the pandemic and the COVID relief funds bailed out our financial situation to the point that we were able to maintain service levels and use those funds. And in hindsight, we probably should have continued with those reductions, but the benefit has been that for four years we've had the extra service and that there's been no financial barriers to that service. And so the cost of that now is that we're gonna have to either find new funds or really have a radical rethinking of our system. Because the thing that worries me is that it's a $20 million operation with a $3 million funding gap. And so that's roughly 15%. But with so much of our costs, fixed costs, and in order to cut service to get that $3 million, it would be significantly more than 15% of service. And we're probably talking 25 to 30% of service. My hope is, is that when people who make decisions about money start to see the true impact that these reductions would have, that there maybe will be an appetite for additional funds provided. And what's your timeline for kind of doing that work or publicly sharing more details? So we're gonna set up a meeting with municipalities and local legislators in March. And we present, we're essentially doing the coffee talk at the state house where you take over the cafeteria's coffee room where we'll have all of the boards up that show what the service reductions would look like. The transportation bill that funds everything from public transit to road repairs will still be in play at that point in the beginning of April. I have to say, as we have just finished our own budget process, completely understand the restraints of finances. The service cuts, however, are concerning is one thing that I hear from folks all the time is that the Wanooski bus routes are always very full to the point of being uncomfortable or not allowing for all types of folks to get onto the bus. So I'm assuming that we'll either see a drop in Ryder Sheriff, people no longer using it, or just even more crowded buses and more folks waiting. Yes. Is, are the reductions that you're gonna be doing equal across the board? Or will you look at routes like the ones that we have in Wanooski and see how popular they are and do less cuts for a route like that? So the board is gonna be establishing the criteria that they'll use. I don't want to pre-judge what they're gonna come up with, but I would be shocked if it was not some sort of combination of cost per Ryder. And that that would then mean that the most heavily used routes would be sort of the most protected. The bad news is, is that I think that a lot of our commuter routes that are very sparsely used, there's a good chance that those would be significantly reduced or even eliminated. Because what we've seen since the pandemic is that there was a very large overall dip and usage in 2020, but that rebounded in our urban local routes and it has not rebounded in our commuter and link routes. And so the commuter and link routes are still operating at about 50% of their pre-pandemic ridership. We believe that that's largely in part to the rise of telework and that a lot of folks are just not needing to make those trips as often or at all. And so it definitely could, my guess is that what you would see is as much retention in the high use corridors as possible and then the lower use areas, seeing the biggest impact. The other thing we hear, I think all of us hear a lot is a bus that would take folks to Shaw's and Costco. I know that that's not something that I believe you're looking into. The question I get all the time is how much would that cost if the city were ever to be able to subsidize something like that? Is that something we could get numbers on? I know you probably won't have them right now. I can tell you, we certainly could provide numbers. To me, I think one of the biggest problems with our assessment methodology is that it really discourages route changes because then that requires a new assessment methodology. And so I think that that's why sometimes in the past, I know that Winooski has been interested in additional service and we've had a hard time, kind of letting you know what that would look like and that is because of that. I can tell you my hope is, when I look at the GMT Charter, we were celebrating our 50th year. I think our charter probably needs an update. And certainly one of the things that I feel like I'm running a stodgy bus organization because we have systems that are kind of set up that way. And I think especially when we're looking at the need to be somewhat nimble based on funding realities, I think that that's really hamstringing us. I appreciate that, thank you. Did you say that the municipal share of the operating costs is like 20%? A little under. Yeah, so we're already spending 140,000 a year? So 248 total and 131,000 for the fixed route and 116,000 for the paratransit. I would extrapolate that it would be incredibly expensive for us to pay for a full route. Yeah, I'm not assuming we'd be able to. I just, the question has come up so many times and people have, I recently posed the question to Elaine that folks keep caring that we can't do it and just want to know how much it would cost. And I think if we had a number that was unreachable, we could at least relay that to people or come up with plans. One of the things that also makes it challenging is that it depends on what particular programs are available for a particular year. So for example, if there's a federal program called CMAC funding and that offers a 20, 80 split so that it's 80% paid by the feds, 20% by the local. And so if there's a year where there's plenty of CMAC funds, you may be able to get a new route paid for like under that. If they're out of CMAC funds, which they presently are, then it's okay, you want new service, it's 100% you have to pay for, which is obviously hugely different. Just for that year, how long going? Usually CMAC lasts three years. Yeah, so to Thomas' point, just having a number, because that's not what people are asking for through your bus route. Yes. Rough ballparking, it's fine. We are not requesting deep analysis. And so would that just be, would that be a new route? Would that be a change to the nine so that it would include... I've heard loop, like a loop in Winooski that also extended to the grocery store area. Okay. It would change to the nine probably? Yeah. Okay, that would probably make sense. Is there any way to get data on how Winooski residents are using paratransit? Would there be some kind of reasonable trade-off for how many of our residents are going to the store or Costco and coming back per week, right? I think that we would be able to get numbers on the usage by municipality because that's how we know how to assess. I don't know if we have data on what the trip is for. Right, okay. Because one of the things with the ADA program, like when SSTA does Medicaid transportation for non-emergency medical transportation, you know that if Medicaid is paying for it, they're going to and from a doctor's appointment. But since this is sort of a replacement for fixed route service, which people could use for anything, then people are able to use the paratransit for anything. And I'm just not sure if we track that, but let me find out if SSTA does track by usage. And SSTA performs a service for us under contract. Bringing a 40-foot bus into somebody's driveway would probably be kind of awkward. I don't love the idea that we would see reduced numbers by making things less accessible, which is what the fares are going to do. What would need to happen for the fare? I'm sure you get this question a lot. What would need to happen for the fares to not come back? I could tell you at this point, the bus has already left the station. And we've invested over a million dollars in fare technology to get our $1.6 million a year, which I found sort of frustrating, but hey, that's the way it panned out. I think that frankly, I just don't see happening considering our urban areas going over a fiscal cliff in 26, the rural transit providers, their fiscal cliffs look mostly to hit in 27. And I think that you're gonna see them, some of those organizations by necessity returning to fare service as well. And so it feels to me like the current trend is moving towards return to fares. One of the things that worries me immensely about our service, I think that the largest barrier to getting new riders is perceptions about our service and safety on our service. And one of the things that I'm surprised about is that we get more feedback from our riders asking for us to return to fares than we do for people asking us to extend fare free service. And part of that is a perception that some riders have that people are using our buses to get out of the weather, to be sheltered during the winter, and that there's an overall sense whether accurate or not, that I think that a lot of our riders have a sense that fare free service has not made the service better for them. Yeah, that's what, yeah, but what I'm seeing with our data is that we've had, you're telling us that we have a 40% increase, which sounds like Winooski residents, that fare was a huge barrier. Concerns about how other municipalities may view our residents, which is not fare. But I don't know, I know that I guess more for the council and thinking about how do we advocate for what's best for our residents because fare reductions, like there's currently, if you go to the two, if you go on an Amtrak ride and you get in late at night, there is no two on Sundays, which is ridiculous. So you can't use that one piece of public transit to get to the other piece. And again, not putting- Oh, I understand. Just pointing out the layer, there are these already huge gaps. And I know, I've run into trouble using the bus and then at a certain point in the evening, suddenly it's an hour plus between either the two or the nine coming back here. And again, thinking about the safety concerns, weather concerns, like that's not great in our cold winters or for some of our younger riders who need to get home. I don't know. Just want to share some of that feedback, both with you and with my fellow counselors of, I don't know, this is just so important. And it's one of those other things that I know is we're scrambling for money to make it feasible for every day, residents who need it the most. And it really is something that it seems like we need the feds, the state, but maybe even more so the feds to pay attention to, especially in Vermont, especially with our residents, our American residents who are coming in might now have access to a car for a long time. Like it's so key to how the new ski functions. And I appreciate that it sounds like the ridership will be taken into account with potential reductions, but to me, this is a huge area for us to advocate for, especially as well, thinking about just safety in general. We have the buses from the school now, which I think are huge, but there's still sometimes gaps in that, like after school activities and stuff like that. And our students don't, unlike the Burlington students, because I think the Burlington school district pays in to GMT or the city covers them, our students don't get to ride the bus for free. So students that are commuting into a new ski or out of a new ski, as well as those just within a new ski itself, that can be really challenging. Like I remember seeing a family that would get on the bus over here, and then they get off to get back on the nine, because it's not a circulator. So they had to do the whole transfer process from one nine to another just to get back to school. So I think, and that was when fares were in place. So I think the little machine was very confused about doing a transfer from a nine to a nine. I don't know, it's just a huge area for concern that I think will continue to come up. And I think what we're hearing from some of the Burlington Bridge conversations are people wanting to see those alternatives to cars being the more accessible, easier option. And how do we do make that possible too? No doubt.  Thanks. Holding on Aurora's question, I don't know what the terms are. The time periods for the Winnuski members are on the GMT board. I don't know if those are slated in June, like our others. I'm wondering if next month it may be appropriate for council to consider placing a council member on the GMT board. And if that's something we want to raise as an item for discussion next month. We will be looking at our regular appointments, post town meeting day. I do not know the schedule on the GMT board, but I'll look at that with a lane. And I do know that Austin's term as president will end at the end of this year. And I don't know if he's planning on staying with us or departing there. And obviously if his term expires, he would need to be reappointed by all. And a fiscal year or end of calendar year, sorry. They are fiscal years, my understanding that they all run July 1st to June 30th. Right, and there are three year terms. Yeah. One thing, I just, sorry Brynne, to jump on that really quickly, honestly it's always been very interesting to me to potentially look into serving on this board because I have used this in a lot of different ways. However, at least previously the board meetings were not accessible by bus. So, which I think is, you know, who's on the board and that's not necessarily, I think we have a really great Winooski wrap and we have no control over what the other cities do. But that's always something that struck me at least in the past is that these meetings weren't either accessible or easily accessible for someone who was riding the bus. I think with Zoom that's probably helped, but. Yes, Zoom has definitely helped. I can tell you that GMT headquarters is on the number five and so that's where our in-person meetings are now. I'm not sure if we're at a different location before, but you know, the number five is half hour service so it's not always convenient. And I do know that a lot of municipalities send a select board or city council members to be their rep on the commission. Well, I've seen both that good and bad because it also tends to be that, you know, the people who are the most active and capable tend to also then be the most overstretched. And so the challenge that sometimes happens with GMT is that for whatever reason our history has been that all of our board meetings are during the workday.  I think previously they were kind of before the workday and thus it was really, really hard for the bus schedule to align. So we had a board meeting this morning that started at 7.30 a.m., which like why we would pick to have board meetings start at 7.30 a.m., I don't understand, but I think it's cruel. No, sorry. And I, you know, one of the things that I would love to see is that when you have a board that's made up of folks who are selected by municipalities without coordination, I'm sure you won't be shocked to know that we have an entirely white board, you know, who is running an organization that, you know, serves a diverse population. Brenda, do you have a separate question? Go for it. The Wundewski Alliance for Active Transportation had a question in their walk, bike, master plan recommendations relating to bus stop, access and amenities. And the CCRPC mentioned that we should talk to GMP about that. So. I heard that. Yes. Happy to ask GMP about that. Yeah. So what I can tell you is that we have about 800 stops in the urban system. Some of them are maintained by us. Some of them are maintained by municipalities. Some are maintained by private organizations like the universities. And so it's really a stop by stop specific situation. And so if you have a place where you think that there should be a stop, then you would let us know. We'll do an assessment on, you know, the pickups that are there. One of the things that I'm really happy about our new fare system is that we'll have much more granular data than we've had in the past. So that we'll have a better idea of, you know, not only just how many people get on a specific stop, but we'll know how many of the people getting off on this or getting onto the stop are using a discounted pass because, you know, they're older, disabled or whatever. And so I think that that's gonna be, you know, super helpful for us. So, yes, we are involved with the placement of all of them and whether we maintain them, build them, all of that just depends on each situation. Thank you. Are there potentials for scholarships for folks to get bus passes? I heard they're reduced fares for some. Is that something that's been looked into? So as far as by scholarships, do you mean like having some people be able to have free passes? Yeah, like there's a process to apply for a free pass. And so we don't provide free passes, but there are people who ride for free because another organization is paying for it. And so, for example, we have an unlimited access agreement with the University of Vermont. So that anyone shows their, you know, UVM card, they're able to ride for free. And one of the things that's also nice about this fair system is that because it's account-based, we're able to establish partnerships with employers and schools in a much easier way so that say that you have a new employer that, you know, comes into Winooski and they wanna pay for their employees to be able to have free transit. We would actually set up a separate portal to our fair system where they would be able to manage the fair payment for all of their employees and, you know, within that system. And so that is something that we're gonna be, you know, right now we're just focused on getting the things on the bus and working and people being able to, you know, come in and pay. And then once that gets, you know, where it needs to be reliably, then we'll, you know, expand there. I can tell you that one of the things that the board just authorized for me to do is to start the work on creating a GMT-affiliated nonprofit.  And I think that we're gonna need to be more entrepreneurial because coming to you all and asking for more money every year is gonna probably be harder and harder. And so one of the things that was discussed about the nonprofit is that would even be able to have a, like if people wanna contribute to a free fair fund or something along those lines that we would be able to set that up. Which, you know, we haven't even started the paperwork to create the nonprofit yet. And so probably we won't be there when I come back next year. But it is something that we are thinking about. Is there anyone attending, wants to make public comment or questions in the room or in Zoom? Please join us. I hate to do it, but I have kind of two questions. Maybe they'll play into each other. My first question, let me see, being how do you feel or how do you see, you know, obviously you mentioned that at the moment, you know, I think you said one-third or two-thirds of current drivers are already doing overtime with switching to a fair service. Do you see that getting better? Do you see GMT being able to bring on more drivers? And then I think my second question, let me see, actually might have already gotten answered. I think that's kind of it for now actually. Sure. So let me talk about what we're doing to help with getting new drivers. Let me talk about what we're doing to get new drivers. When I arrived last year, we kind of had a absurd practice that was set in our union contract, where for the first year, a driver that came to us, even if they already had a CDL, would work at a significantly reduced rate than the other drivers for their first year. And so when I got here, we would ask somebody who already had a CDL to work $21.50 an hour, you know, to drive a bus, and with the folks that are already here making $6 an hour, you know, more. And so one of the things that we did was did the unusual step of opening up our contract, mid-contract cycle to convince the membership that that rate should be, you know, the full rate should be from day one. One of the things that kind of surprised me about GMT is that when somebody turned one year, they would get the full rate and they would be at that rate whether they were at one year or 30 years. You know, and so it didn't go up, which no place else has been like that. And so as you can imagine, there was some friction about, well, I had to go through my year of reduced wages, why should new folks have something different, but we did some negotiating with them, we gave them a Christmas bonus, and they agreed to that change. And that's why we've gone from about one in three routes being covered, or runs, I'm sorry, being covered by somebody on over time to one in four. And we're also negotiating with them on the next three year contract, which, you know, it's in a public meeting, I can't really say what I expect the rate to be while we're negotiating, but it's gonna be a pretty attractive rate, you know. So my hope is that that will get not just people that already have CDLs, but people who've never thought about driving a bus to realize, wow, I can make, you know, $60,000, $70,000 a year as a bus driver, and that's before over time. And so because really the most important thing when it comes to employee satisfaction for our drivers is do they like people?  If you like driving, but you don't like people, probably should drive a truck, you know. And so I would like to have people that, you know, I'd never thought about our career, but just like the thought of driving around and picking up friends all day would be, you know, kind of cool. Just remembered my hope follow-up, for sure. My other question would be, you know, I've heard of a determined fair rate. Maybe it's, maybe I misheard, but have you come up with a fair rate that will be proposed in starting April? Could you explain a little bit about why you chose that fair rate? You know, I know you've elaborated a little bit already about what it costs the average ride. And so the fairs rates in the system was set last year and we went through a series of public meetings to get feedback on those. And first off, what we did was we simplified the fair structure. Previously there had been different prices for local commuter and link. We've set them all at the same price. And what I think is more important is that in the past, if you wanted the best pricing option, you had to pay money up front for a monthly pass. Now, asking somebody who's, you know, struggling to make ends meet to fork over $40 or $50, which is what the cost of that pass had been up front, you know, that's just not realistic. And so not surprisingly, only about 17% of our rides came from somebody who was using a monthly pass, which is, you know, the best pricing. Under the new system, we are not selling monthly passes. We're doing it the opposite way, which is that we have established a fair cap. So once you spend a certain amount of money on a day or a certain amount of money in a month, then the rest of your rides are free. And so the standard fair price for a full price rider will be $2 for the ride. The discounted price for anyone who is under 18, 60 or over, or has a self-identified disability, we don't, they just have to tell us they have a disability, is $1. The daily cap is the cost of two rides.   And the cost or the cap for the month is $50 for a full price rider and $25 for a discount rider. And so when you think that we sold $50 monthly passes in 2005, and so, and the other thing that's nice is that now you can use that pass to go anywhere we go so that the link routes, the commuter routes there, so it's, from an inflationary perspective, it's a great bargain, but we still know it's not zero. And one of the reasons why we're comfortable with going from $1.50, which used to be the price for the urban fare to the $2 is like, wow, that's a 33% increase, but we fully expect that a lot more of our riders will be getting that best pricing benefit from hitting the cap. So the overall financial equity should be much, much better. Thank you. Going back to that second question, I do wanna pause and say I do appreciate all that you are doing to try and make this. As accessible as possible, given all the constraints, so I definitely wanna recognize that. I do wanna follow up on one of Nick's questions, and I think, I know this has come up in like our meetings before, but the way that when New Ski was able to train our school bus drivers, that program of being able to get interpreters to help our new American residents who are really interested in driving a bus access the getting the license. Yes. Does GMT do that, or have you looked into it? I can tell you, we do do that. We have one of the things I love about GMT, it's the most diverse workforce that I've had to the luck of being a part of since I moved to Vermont. We have, I would say a third to a half of our new drivers are new Americans. And so, there definitely is a pathway. We will pay for people to get their CDL. And also thank you for reminding me that, and with our return to fares on our website, we have videos in 14 different languages on how to use the new fare system. And because we know that we're serving our students in a diverse clientele, and that those riders are sure to have questions. Thank you. Thank you. Well, thank you very much for coming in to share all of this with us. Please, I don't know, we'll be on the lookout for the March event at the State House. Yes. See how we can help with the advocacy there. Yes. Oh, thank you so much. Good luck with the rest of your meeting. And have a good night. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, we'll welcome Eric back for item H for discussion, approval, proposed changes to municipal code chapter five, related to sidewalk use. Thank you very much. So just to clarify, primarily on for discussion, I think approval in this case would be for approving the setting of a public hearing.  So, this is a discussion on potential changes, draft changes to chapter five of the Winooski Municipal Code. This is a document that we've been working on for several years, most recently reviewed by you all back, I believe it was almost a year ago, back in January of 2023. At that time, there was specific language included that limited the amount of sidewalk space that could be used by businesses, creating a two-foot buffer off of the curb line and some other specific changes. Since then, we've been reevaluating the language that's included in the draft and really wanted to bring this back to you all, taking some of that previous language out and having this be more of a clarification of what's currently in this chapter and also providing some additional detail on the permitting process and the space that's available rather than limiting what could be used. So, a lot of that previous language related to the area has been removed and now it's really more just for clarification and cleanup. So, what I'd like to do tonight is just kind of walk through some of those specific changes and then take any questions you may have and then talk about next steps. So, any questions before we start on that? Great. So, looking at the document itself, as I mentioned, a lot of this is really just cleanup and clarification. So, some of it relates to adding new definitions. Specifically, for example, on page two, there's a definition of live public music or performance. This was previously language that was included under section 5.05 on page seven of the document. It didn't really seem like it fit in that section specifically so it's been pulled out and is now a definition. So, we're also introducing this concept of the permitting authority, which by definition would be city council. However, it could be another entity that's designated by city council. So, for example, we do the event review committee for certain events are reviewed by that entity. So, for the purposes of some of this language would be the permitting authority. But by and large as it's defined and as it's referenced in the document, city council is the permitting authority. And please at any time feel free to stop me for clarification. Some of the other definitions, sidewalk space, storefront were previously included so nothing has changed there. There is a new definition for temporary because we recognize that some businesses may only need temporary space. For a sidewalk sale, for example, Golden Hour I believe does just seasonal events so they wouldn't need full-time occupancy of the sidewalk space. So, we are accommodating for those temporary uses as well. Some of the other changes that you'll notice are related to the update for the alcohol licensing with the change to the State Department of Liquor and Lottery from whatever they were, the Department of Liquor Control. So, those are some of the amendments that we're including as well. There's also some clarification for, sorry, there's on page six, we're removing a redundancy in the revocation and suspension of liquor license. That was, there was two different sections. One was revocation and suspension of liquor license and then there was another section later on for I think it was just revocation of a permit. So, basically combining those two into one section, completely some additional cleanup and clarity in the next, on page seven, again deleting some of the redundancy or removing that the language from some of these sections and providing more clarification in future sections. So, for example, under the large strikeout in the middle of page seven, most of that language has been incorporated later on in the document. So, we're not losing it, we're just moving it to a more appropriate location. That probably where you're gonna see the most new language, I should say, for this document, not necessarily new to what you've already reviewed is under section 5.09 under sidewalk use permit. In here, we're adding some new definition, or sorry, some new language to clarify, for example, under section 509A2 that we have a duration of sidewalk use from April one to November 30th. However, there's new language added that would allow for an extension of that. So, we do have a few businesses that do extend their hours for other events outside of that timeframe. This would accommodate their permitting at the time of application, rather than having them come back in at a later date to resubmit for an update to their permit. That could all be handled at the initial time when they do their sidewalk permitting at the beginning of the year, or whenever they would do that application. Most of the other text here is the same as what it was previously. As I mentioned, we've deleted some of the text out of this section related to those specific sidewalk use areas. Again, just clarifying the designation of sidewalk space under section 5.10, and what can be placed in the sidewalk space, how we're maintaining the clear spaces, et cetera. Section 5.11, we're adding in new language here to designate that when applications for sidewalk use can be received by the city, specifically not before January 1st of each calendar year. And that was done specifically more for an Angela, I'll look to you for any clarification here, but really more from an accounting standpoint to make sure because the sidewalk use permit fees go to downtown Winooski, we wanted to make sure that we could track when the money was coming in and when it was going back out. So we weren't overlapping fiscal years or calendar years to make sure that we were consistent in how that was being accounted for. Let's see, not really anything new in the rest of that section. Again, language that has been seen previously. Under section 5.11.03, we are including, we're leaving in the language that requires the city be named as an additional insured, but we're removing the amount, the dollar amount that was previously included. So that could vary depending on the situation, but we're not specifying a dollar amount any more in this instance. And then new language for temporary sidewalk use, what that looks like under 5.12 and combining the denial revocation suspension of a license or permit under section 5.13. So really what the intent of all this is is really more to clean up this chapter and clarify some of the aspects of business usage, sidewalk usage, the temporariness of some of that usage as well and take out some of those more limiting factors that were raised as concerned by some of the business community. So that's really the intent here is to kind of bring this back forward for to clean this up and to make these changes as necessary for council. As a point of reference, if you are so inclined to set a public hearing, we did not list a specific date in the cover sheet, mostly because we were mindful of council schedule starting with after town meeting and when that actually is. So wanted to be mindful of that going forward. So did not add a specific date. And I guess, Lane, I look to you for any guidance on the dates of that might be available. So. Right, if you were ready for that, that I'd ask if you wanted to decide today whether, because the challenge is I'm going to be away. And so I, if it's the 18th, I'd plan to be remote, but I will be in the gratitude time zone. I also have issues, April. It would have to be in April. All right. The other thing I just want to back up to add is that staff doesn't tend to continue to pursue the formal plan. Yes. Thank you. At this stage, it's just clean up and that we'll have another chance to discuss the other pieces. We haven't let go of that for yet. All right, questions from council. Thank you for the walkthrough, Eric. Yes, thank you. Bryn. I think there's a big improvement. So thanks for the work that's gone into making these changes. Definitely feel like you've done a lot to respond to council requests as well as feedback from businesses. I have a question that I'm not even sure if it's in this chapter, but I'm just thinking about a situation where events come up, but like downtown Winooski may be the most appropriate person to apply for a permit for use of a particular space. Does this allow for that? So I guess it would depend. So in the example of Winooski Wednesdays, that is a review that goes through our event review process because they're generally using the Rotary Park. So this would overlap from the context of if they are selling alcohol for the entity that is serving that to be licensed. This section would cover the licensing of the entity serving the alcohol, but not the event that they're having unless it meets the thresholds where it would come to council for your approval. So there's separate regulations that would dictate the event itself versus the licensing of the entities participating. And at those events, Winooski Wednesdays, sometimes there are other businesses that table and sell their products or services. Does this allow for that? It would. I don't think that it's, I believe again that is covered under the event review process rather than under this chapter specifically. This chapter is really more related to permanent businesses that are operating within the city. Okay, just wanna make sure that nothing in this prohibits that other process. Not that I'm aware of, but I will double check to make sure that it will not. Okay. That's it for me. I know when we were starting this document, you had attended a downtown Winooski meeting, actually a couple of downtown Winooski meetings to go over this. I didn't know now that this is rounding up if you were planning to attend another one. I know that public comment for that group can be difficult to see. Most of them, their businesses are at their busiest peaks when we're having our meetings. Right. Happy to attend additional meetings with downtown Winooski, absolutely. Great. I'll let Melissa Nova reach out. You can give them a little summary about what's in here and what is not. And Melissa is aware that we are planning on still exploring the option of taking away the parking on restaurant row and changing up the fee structure for parking to kind of make up for that loss and to see if they would be in support because we understand from council's feedback that you wanted this to work for everyone as much as possible. So that's, we would be continuing to pursue that with Melissa and the rest of the businesses downtown. Great. I think the only thing I have marked is just possibly clarifying the language on 5.10 B, that's on page 11, which I think it says shall be illustrated on the application, which I assume means that a graphic would be included showing. And I just wonder if illustrated might not be clear enough. It's like something like illustration and picture or I don't know. Yeah, that's a good point. I'll double check. So we do have a new application was developed for sidewalk use. So I'll double check the application itself to see if there's any clarity there to make sure that it's explicit what we're looking for in that section. But if not, make sure that the two are aligned. Sounds good. Yeah, I think as long as those are aligned that'll help too. Yep, absolutely. Any questions, comments from members of the public? I like the subject. Elaine, do you know what dates in April we plan? Even though we have not even approved a meeting schedule yet? Let's see, if I had my counter in my office, I drew them out, but what's... Should be the first in 15th unless there's some kind of holiday. Yeah, that's fair. And I would also just while Elaine is getting that, I would just remind council that because this is a municipal code update, it would need to be introduced formally by a member of council for the potential changes. I would lean towards the first as I'll be out of town on the 15th. Perfect. If you're interested in my input on this one. I am. I would advise that you would be. Okay, so I don't, I never remember how to do this, Elaine. Correct me if I'm doing it wrong. I am looking for a member of council to introduce changes to municipal code chapter five for sidewalk use. So introduced. What's the language? Just that he's introducing it. Yeah, it's very weird. That's all you need to do. And so then I'm looking for a motion to set a public hearing for April 1st, including this language and ensuring alignment between 5.10.B and the application. So moved. Did I miss something? No, I just wanted to clarify. It's sort of like a, like when in the legislature, there's a sponsor for a bill, it's kind of like that. Yeah. Okay, so I've got a motion by Charlie, a second by Aurora. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Public hearing set. Great, thank you all very much. Thank you. Okay, on to item I. This is on for discussion approval, adopting fiscal year 2025 fund budgets and capital plans. And our next three items are kind of wrote. We have to do them following the budget that we already adopted. Any other introduction from staff on that? Can we lump them, can we consult them? Do I have any questions, concerns on item I? Any questions from members of the public? Do I have a motion to approve adoption of fiscal year 2025 fund budgets and capital plans? Unloved. Seconded. Motion by Brent, second by Charlie. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Item J, resolution for fiscal year 25 wastewater rates. Any questions? Members of the public comment? Do I have a motion to approve the resolution for fiscal year 25 wastewater rate? So moved. Second. Motion by Thomas, second by Charlie. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. And K, resolution for fiscal year 25 water rates. Any questions from council? For members of the public? Do I have a motion to approve the fiscal year 25 water rate resolution? So moved. Second. Motion by Aurora, second by Charlie. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you. That is the end of tonight's regular agenda. An executive session has been warned, pursuant to state statute section 3133, the discussion of appointment or employment or evaluation of a public officer or employee. Find that this is a matter that would not be appropriate to discuss in public. I am looking for a motion to find that we should have this discussion in executive session. So moved. Second. Motion by Thomas, second by Charlie. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. And now I am looking for a motion to enter into executive session inviting city manager Elaine Wong. So moved. Second. Motion by Charlie, second by Aurora. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. So we're now gonna go into executive session. This is the only topic that we will discuss. When we exit the executive session, it will be solely to adjourn the meeting. All right, we're going in the office. Yes. Motion by Thomas, second by Charlie. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries at nine out two.