y committees and the public, talk about how this Confluence park can be part of a larger picture, for sure. But it's just outside the scope of what we've been funded for in this initial space. But we are very aware of that and I think it's very exciting that there are these recreational opportunities right in downtown Montenegro on the water. But I was just standing down there with Jeff and Ricardo a couple days ago and it's really amazing to stand down kind of below the railroad bridge and get the feel of what it's like to be down at the river level. It's really a whole different experience. So. Ashley, I guess the only other concern that I have is I want this park to happen but we also have been kind of talking about what to do with the dam and all of those issues. And so I'm a bit of a lay person in this arena but if we were to remove the dam we talked about how that would change significantly the sort of lay of the land in their banks which could and probably would in some way impact this park. Right? I think if the dam that you're talking about is on the main stem of the Winooski Upstream from the main street bridge. So that's quite a distance from this Confluence Park area. No, it's the one by Shawts. The one that's right there. Small dam across the North Branch. No, no. No. So, Winooski. No, but so the one you're talking about. You're talking about Shawts parking lot, you're looking at that. Shawts parking lot dam. Okay, so the dam is not abutting this property that we're looking at for the Confluence Park so I don't know that there would be a structural issue. It would probably, it's far enough a way that it would probably be fine. Let me give another crack at answering that. So my understanding of the whitewater concept means removing the dam and then channelizing the river so that the water would move through that area in a more natural thing and then boulders would be placed. Yes, yes. And so you create a flow that would prevent ice dams but you'd still have the shells that would have the same capacity of the river but you'd just change the nature of the river that would make it much more river, natural river and more kayak and boating friendly. So that channelization would go up the stream so that dam is not a tall dam. So we're, and you can't put, whether it's an amphitheater or not is possible. You can't really lower that too low anyway so I think the engineering difference is not gonna be significant and I'm thinking with the little consult that they can figure the couple different heights on what that would mean with or without the dam. Okay. Any further things? No, because in your letter you do talk about being flood resistant so you obviously are looking at different high water marks. Right, and additionally I just wanted to add that with our point of having three options, three options is obviously the opportunities, if we had presented a blank canvas to designers the opportunities could be endless but we want to have some different options within different budget ranges and within different ecological impacts levels as well. So hence we understand that there could be a number of different opportunities depending on how deep we want to get into the options for recreation. So that's why we'd like to have the study focus on the actual physical land there that small parcel, very small parcel but then also to focus on in the river how can people get to the river and those I think are going to present where we will be presented with multiple opportunities that we'll have to weigh feasibility financially, ecologically. Glenn. I just wanna briefly say that I am not concerned about potential downstream effects of supporting this study at the moment. I think it's gonna be great. And I also want to recommend that everyone take a look down in that direction whenever you have the opportunity. I walk over the Main Street Bridge several times every day and I have seen otters and mink and beavers, both upstream and downstream of that spot along with tons of waterfowl all the time. So it's already surprisingly rich and I think it's gonna be really exciting to see the changes. We should vote. Oh yeah, do you have comments? Yes, of course. John Snell again. We did talk extensively about this during the Taylor Street Committee days and one of the problems that I am now seeing is that the Taylor Street building was designed by somebody and the shared pathway, if I may, was designed by somebody else and that shared pathway design was never really locked in because of the many uncertainties that there were. That we're moving closer to where that's exactly gonna be and what it might look like but to my knowledge, it's still not permanently designed. I think it is. Yeah it is, it's got an overview and... Well, let's say from the North Branch, from the North Branch East. All right, that's a bit wishy-washy as far as I know from the North Branch going toward Main Street. Over the bridge. Yeah, no I think that's a whole new bridge. New bridge and then it's coming straight out to Main Street. I've seen the drawings. What I'm concerned about is that there's all of a sudden a lot of parking in there and I've communicated with Bill about this that doesn't fit very nicely with the Consulate's Park as far as I'm concerned. There's two-way streets in there where I'd love to see options for one-way streets. We in fact had a, I think a fairly sophisticated design by the engineers for access to the river. That would go under the new pedestrian bridge and under the existing railroad bridge and would be fully handicapped accessible, big enough that you could get a canoe carried down and put in the water into the North Branch right at the confluence. That survived. Yeah. That design. It's not in the design right now. Wow. And so those things were discussed and kind of lost in the mix. Well, there were Army Corps issues too and water access issues and I mean, it wasn't just that let's put this in. I want to certainly want you to be able to finish your thought on there. Yeah, and then the kayakers too, that I'd love to meld that back into the discussion. Yeah. Well, I certainly hope that by the end of this we have some options for access to the river and whether it's on the shaw's side or on the confluence park side of the river that we figure something out. So, and your points will take in that the other side of the river is a lot of parking and let's, it is what it is for now and let's keep talking about it. So, thank you. Parking for the park. Yeah. All right. I hope it's clear what my, so in light of Donna's suggestion here. I'm still confused about what we need as a motion. I would move that we move ahead with the design and plans, right? And the river conservatory? They're doing the study on our behalf. Do we need to commit to anything? They're gonna, you're gonna provide us with some options and we'll decide if we like them, right? Well, we have to direct the city staff to include Confluence Park website on the website. And then Donna suggested that we actually just create Confluence Park or something. We've never made an official motion to support Confluence Park existing. So it seemed to me we'd need to make a motion that we wanna have that as our vision and that will direct staff to have a placeholder on our website. Yeah. Okay. So I would move then that we designate the portion on the map on page. I think it's page 18 of the Capital District Master Plan. I would move that we designate that space. I believe it's marked as number, is it number five? Four. Four. I would move then that we designate that area marked as number four on page 18 of the Capital District Master Plan as Confluence Park. I would further direct city staff to add that to our website as a coming attraction. Well done. I'll second it. Everybody can get behind. Do you have that image? I'm looking at it. Can you just like just turn your laptop around just so we can see like to you or to Ron? I wanna see. I see what she's talking about. Although this is, Oh, you're talking about from the. Right. Okay. This is called the Capital District Master Plan. Yes. Do you have that work? For that designation? Sure. Okay. Guys, you're stealing the plan. Okay. So there was a second. Make it work. Yes. Okay. It'll be what they designed. John's doing. I'm doing. Great. Any further discussion? Great. All in favor please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Great. Thank you. So excited about this. All right. Let's move on to talking about recommendations regarding the Emerald Ash Pour. So, how should we start this? I guess I'll start before the, before the ash pourers all come out. At the last meeting, we received a presentation from the tree board and folks about the ash pourer and its status in the city and requesting short and long-term funding. And it was left for the city manager to make a recommendation to the council for this meeting. So I did speak a bit with Jeff and tried to get an understanding of the current status of ash pourer versus what work is needed that's for that specifically versus what work is sort of backlog work that just we're behind on and would need to get done in order to deal with the ash pourer and that kind of thing. And so my recommendation was that I was reluctant and I'm reluctant to support a new position. We really have ever add new positions sort of out of budget and because we don't, you know, we just talked about adding positions for this. We know that there's the police want new people. We, you know, I think any department could come in at any time and make the case why they need a new person at this particular point in time. And so my view is that this is a very serious problem. We need to take it seriously. We've been put on notice for this. So I don't mean to diminish it, but we need to weigh the priority for this along with all the other city priorities when we're setting our budget. So for this year that we're in, we did set a service level for trees and parks. And then I'd be the first to say it's probably under staff, but they're getting the work done that we set out to do with the resources that we allocated. But we also had the foresight over the last two years to set 4,000 a year aside for the ash borer knowing it was coming and which is nowhere near adequate, I get that. But there was a request to treat some trees and request to cut some trees. And it seems to me that that could be done with that amount of funding, certainly with what was presented. But it's hard to say we're gonna hire a new staff person that we might then be cutting in a couple of months when we do the budget. And so that is my position. It's not to say that it's not necessary. It's not to say that it's not an important problem. But I think we laid out our resources last year. The voters passed them. And so that's where I'm at. Obviously I'm very clear that the tree board and the tree warden don't agree with me. And that's why we're here having this conversation. Rosie and then I'm gonna have some comments. Sure. It occurs to me that tree removal is a pretty specialized skill. And I'm wondering if we can at least in the interim contract out to deal with some of the backlog of tree removal to a private contractor and that potentially that would get us into a better position for the spring to bring on a full-time staff member or whatever we decide to do in the budget process. But that might be a temporary solution that would move us forward using some of that $8,000. I know that won't go a long way towards contracting out, but certainly we have companies that do this work. And I would assume we already do that sometimes. Yeah, I wouldn't. I mean, they do contract and I know it's pretty expensive per tree. I don't know how many trees you get done depending on the type of work. I mean, I wouldn't attempt to dictate how the 8,000 was used. So I would assume they would use it as much as they can. But I mean, I've said, I don't want to. So I'm also hesitant to add a staff person midstream here. It certainly is something that I would be up for talking about in the context of our budget conversation, but again in the context of all the other positions that we might be adding. Having said that, if there is a way, like I appreciate Rosie's comments about what can be done now. I mean, if this is something that we can contract out. So one of the things that I'm not totally clear on is if we were going to try to work on some of the backlog just like how much that specifically would cost so that we can be in a better position to deal with it in the spring. And then in the meanwhile, what needs to be done between now and the spring in terms of communicating with national life or talking with- Maybe in communities. Maybe in communities or like spraying trees, like what actually needs to be done like logistically like right now. And if we can take care of some of that backlog, like how much is that that we're talking about to contract that out? Yeah, Donna then Connor. And you may want to go to them first, but I guess I would like to frame the problem having lived here with the big flood in 1992 when we didn't have a clue how to really deal with it. And we came out of that and started having plans, strategies. And so I see this bore, this little bore as the leak in the dike. And we got to do more than just put our thumb in it. And maybe it's not a staff person, but it's got to be some personnel that can really lead the way because trees need to be constantly inventory.   Jeff can correct me. But even just doing the marshaling area is a major capital expense. And you got to go from the first tree you cut down that's infected, you got to deal with it right away. And they have a way to peel out. So then you take away the bore and then you have some wood that you can use and then sell and make some revenue. But as soon as we have that first tree we're behind the game. So I don't want to wait till we're flooding and have our boats are in the street. I want to do it now. And I know you supported, that's why we got the 8,000 we got. We had to push really hard with the other council to just get 4,000 each year. And it is a very small thumb in the dike. And I know it's out of sequence, but even if you're not dealing with the backlog just reading this plan as far as monitoring trees. And there's a state grant that's going to be out and they say they're going to award it to that community that is the most innovative of how they're going to deal with the ash bore. Because from my reading, the states and feds haven't decided how to do it. And so we could spend part of our personnel time that we'd be buying, not only inventorying the trees, but really working on a really clever, innovative way to make this Jeff would say lemonade out of this sour, sour lemon situation. And then get the support of the state grant, maximize our dollars and save our trees. Public outreach is huge. We have a lot of trees with private property. National life is huge. They haven't come to the table yet. So Donna, this is a grant through the state, is that right? Well, the state is, they'll tell you about, the state I believe is setting up a grant. And we don't know what the deadline is for that. No, we don't. Okay, all right. No, but it's coming up because they're behind the A-ball too. Right, sure. So I don't want us to take the backseat, I'm sorry. I want us to just really push out and look to where we could find some money for staff because I also know when you hire a contractor for a tree, I mean, Jeff will have the numbers. You're talking five, six times what we pay our staff. So I just really want us to take this serious. I don't want to have a flood of dying trees. Okay, thank you. Connor, did you? Yeah, not just a rookie question. Say we go through the budget process. We approve a position. What's realistically, what's the earliest possible? This position is on the ground. We could move it. Once town meeting approves the vote, I mean, technically the budget doesn't take place till July one, but we can usually move stuff quicker. We could start moving after that, after town meeting time. Okay, thanks. So I would echo a lot of what Donna said. I think these are the very things that city government is supposed to be focusing on. And I totally appreciate that we need lots of city staff, which is sort of one of the reasons that I was a bit reticent, quite reticent, about expending more city staff resources on putting together these parking garage contracts because I know that all of our city departments are already sort of tapped out as it is. I just, I'm wondering, I mean, to me, this is the kind of thing where I think we have the capacity to be innovative in these solutions. And I think it would make sense to bring someone in, I know $8,000 I don't think is nearly enough to do this, but to bring somebody in to, or maybe to have the tree board identify, like what are the most critical things that we can get done? What do we need to get that done? And I would support and ask to come out of some other fund to do that work because I think that we have a committed group of folks here who, I get lots of emails and volunteer opportunities and I'm gonna make it to one, I'm just terrified of ticks because I have Lyme disease. So I think this is the kind of thing that city government should be supporting and should really be finding ways to make this work. And I don't see a way around adding a position if we're already hearing from parks that we can't even keep up with what we need to be keeping up with and now we're adding more to that with a new park and all these other new things that are really exciting and happening here. I think I would push pretty hard to find the funds if we can identify sort of the most critical. If we can't get a staff person right now, if you could give us like your top five things and come back to us as soon as you possibly can, which I feel bad even asking because you do all of the things. If you could get us that list, I would be more than willing to sort of make that push to get those funds because I think this is the very thing that we are here to do. Sure, sure. Yeah, come up and introduce yourself. But, and I don't think I need a microphone. Yes, you do. Well, you do for the people at home. They're being recorded. Yes, you do. Please. All right. And what's your name? It's my understanding. And what would you tell us your name first? I'm just sorry. My name is Wanda Burrill and I think some of you know about me already because I got an award a while ago. And I, it's my understanding that there is, that there is another group of individuals working on this problem. And I've given them some information tonight to contact this group, which is called the Central Vermont Regional Planning Commission. And they meet, I think, every other week, not week, but every other month. And they would like to invite us to maybe go to one of their meetings and to talk with them about our issues and see what they're trying to do because they are meeting and talking about this very same thing. So I'm not in any position to lead the troops, but I think I could set up a meeting for somebody, maybe you two, to go and talk with them and find out, okay, what are they doing? If it's money they need, then are they getting money? Where is it coming from? There's a lot of questions there, I think, that haven't been answered yet. And we might be able to kind of come back with a report saying, well, this group is doing this, and maybe that would solve some of the problem. I'm not sure. Sure. So maybe we can have you coordinate with the Central Vermont Regional Planning Commission and. And their office is upstairs over right aid so you can walk to it. And we have a rep on that board, so we could certainly facilitate that. We have a member on that board. Okay, so I would get him to or her to connect with you and see if we can't move forward with that. That's a great idea, thank you. And by the way, I'm living in Montpelier now, so. Well, you're not in Berlin anymore, oh, awesome. Glenn and Rosie, and then I would love to invite Tree Board John, Jeff to come back up and chat. Other John. Rosie first, I think. Oh, whatever. So I confess when I was thinking about budgeting process, I was thinking November, I was forgetting the fact that then we go, you know, the whole timeline. So I would like to have more of a holistic conversation about how this fits into our budget in November, but I wanna be ready to move forward at that point before hanging around, waiting around for the new budget year. So I don't know how best to work that. Just timeline. Are you thinking of like trying to separate out some things for now and other things for that conversation or just leaving it all till the conversation November? I mean, I really like us being able to sit down and figure out, okay, staff positions, what are our priorities, and have that whole conversation together, but I am realizing that that means putting this off much further than I was thinking. And this is urgent, and if we're really, you know, if we're not able to get a new person on until late in the spring, even if we jump like on a little bit, that worries me. So I don't know, I don't know. Fair enough. Glen. I don't wanna be reckless with this, but I think I'm in favor of adding staff now. As far as I can tell, everything, including for example, making a list of the priorities and so on depends on more staff hours, and there are not staff hours now. The letter that we got from John Snell earlier this week and also the recent letter, I think, from Dan Dickerson, use words like exponential, and to me, that means the same kind of thing as a stitch in time saves nine. If we do it now, then we will have less to do later. And I think that that is an accurate description of this problem as I see it. So Donna's finger in the dyke analogy is the same to me. If you don't, you know, that dyke will continue cracking. You're gonna need a lot more fingers. So I would be in favor of more staff now. Do you wanna come share any thoughts or Jeff, whoever? Who can sit at the table? Thank you. And I'm glad I'm out here instead of sitting in the stairs.  So I just drove back from Michigan and I got to see what this thing looks like and it's horrendous. And if we don't hop on it and deal with it right now, according to the plan that John drew up that's a brilliant plan by the way and a lot of the other towns in central Vermont and elsewhere are stealing our plan and using it, it's that good. Then we're gonna see results like I saw in the way home which is literally I passed tens of thousands of trees along the roadsides that were dead. Many of them were so dead they were coming down, including into the interstate highway in some cases. I saw other places where it had just started. I did a lot of investigation and it's very clear that that's what's ahead of us. And I hadn't seen it with quite shocking results as I saw in the last couple of weeks. I appreciate being able to send that note to you. It was a little awkward to do that and thank you for just accepting it. Clearly one of the big issues is that the park's people are essential to making this happen. And I wouldn't say that Jeff's been lying to you over the past couple of years but we all know Jeff is enthusiastic. Where is he? I'm here. He's an enthusiastic guy who always emphasized the positivity in things. And honestly I think that when I look at what's available to us as a tree board from Parks Resources, I'm counting one person and maybe another quarter person. It's not two people anymore. And it's some volunteers that we can roust up but it's not what we need to deal with this problem. The 8,000 bucks is a wonderful offer. I would point out that when we came to you in 2013 we suggested setting aside $20,000 a year in which case we'd be looking at a hundred grand and that would be a whole different kettle of fish. But I think that given the limitations of parks right now and I'm not privy to all of it. So if I'm wrong, forgive me. But it's just not, we don't have the availability of what we need. And what we need is somebody that come early March, late February is able to just go right in and do the work that needs to be done. We're not treating trees now. We're gonna have to wait until spring to do that so we can't spend the $8,000 on treatment of downtown trees now to hire an outside arborist to come in and cut. I think sometimes you have to do it. There's a couple trees now that I think are beyond the capabilities of parks as good as they are and that's where you do hire somebody that has bigger equipment and more experience. But the $8,000 would go like that to bring it in. It's just not sufficient to what we need. To do work now is what we're aiming for is to get caught up on some of the dangerous tree work to hazard tree work so that come spring, parks people are available to work on the ash borer. And I'm gonna let John talk about some of what those needs will be in the spring, but they're gonna require somebody who knows what they're doing. And I see that person coming on now or very soon and being fully trained and capable by spring to be able to just go for it. Can I ask you a question? Sorry to interrupt. Do you have a sense or Jeff, do you have a sense of how much it would cost to contract out the backlog? I would guess about twice as much as if we did it ourselves. So there's a couple of types of backlogs and one is hazardous trees. And we're close to catching up to the hazardous trees identified in that inventory about four years ago. But the other thing that we're behind on and it could be neglected further, it's been neglected for a lot of years, but the longer you neglect pruning trees and doing the prophylactic care, the more expense you have in the back end. You have bad forks that get older and split and at a certain point they can't be pruned out of it. And we've been wanting to get to a neighborhood by neighborhood pruning program to prevent a number of those kinds of problems. And we haven't been doing that because we've been working on hazardous trees. So, and the other thing to put into the mix is if we wait too long so that we're in a busy time, then we have to hire someone with skills. We can't start them and train someone at a lower rate, which is what we'd like to do is start someone who's part-time, get them trained and then be ready to jump into action next year when things heat up. But you don't have a number for if we contracted it out just right now. I don't think I could give you a responsible number now, but I could get that to you in the next meeting. That would be helpful, thank you. Yeah, probably $20,000 would be my rough guess, but I'll give you something more accurate. Great, thank you. Before Jeff, is this yours? Yeah, Donna. Would you explain, because when I was at the Parks Commission last evening and heard you talk about what percentage of the park staff applies to trees, it's like the staff is split between the tree board and the Parks Commission. Is that one fifth? It's, no, well, it's Alc and I each doing one day a week, so it's two-fifths, two-fifths for the year. We have two-fifths of a position to take care of two and a half thousand, three thousand well, if you include the bike path and the public lands is probably 3,000 street trees, yeah. Thank you.  We'll share it. The thing that's really crucial in this is the idea of exponential and that it's not just a linear thing that's gonna get worse and worse and worse, it's gonna explode in the spring. The small infestation that we saw probably less than a dozen trees up at National Life and by the way, those have now been ground up and burned in their boiler. That's gonna explode. That dozen trees could easily end up being a hundred or more trees next year. It could jump from there to four or five other locations. So you don't know how bad it's gonna be. Here's my question. You know that it's gonna be exponential. So what's gonna happen and I hear that and I heard that before and I get it and I factored that into my thinking, but what's gonna happen between now and then that's gonna prevent that? What's our new person gonna do between now and then to stop that from happening between now and spring? Thank you. We're gonna take steps to understand where the spread happens. So we'll be setting out traps that will allow us to identify if there's, in various areas around the city, if there are insects, are they there? We'll be able to do more branch sampling which requires a bucket trap going up in the tree and actually sampling branches of suspect trees. There'd be a number of steps, but the idea is that if we know where it is, then we can get these trees when they're first infected, excuse me, infested. And if we don't, then it becomes a much more costly issue because the tree becomes brittle and it's more costly to take down. Kit. I have a question. So Jack and then Rosie and then back to Donna. It seems to me that the only real concrete proposal we have before us tonight is the manager's proposal to authorize the expenditure of this $8,000. And I would like to invite you working with Jeff or whoever to come back with a real fleshed out proposal for how many staff, what staff and what they would do before we're into the, before it just goes on the city budget in on town meeting day. A question I have is with regard to the manager's proposal now, if we do what he recommends and authorize the use of this $8,000, could that be used usefully before some more comprehensive plan is adopted? From my point of view, and I'll let these two other guys talk to that as well, the thing that's needed right now is to hire somebody that not gonna be a full fledged licensed arborist that we can train up on safety, chainsaw, all the EAB stuff and have them ready to go in the spring. In the meantime, there's a lot of inventory work that can be done. I just, for Yahoo's added up my hours, I'm pretty rigorous about keeping track of that. And since the first of the year, I put 250 hours into this tree board. And I'm gonna be 70 years old for a month and I can't keep it up. And it's exponential, I can't do 2,000 hours next year. I can't. Can you inventory in the winter? Yes, absolutely. So you can still be assessing where it's at. We've inventoryed all that we have. Chances are good that it's not gonna spread a lot over the winter that we'll see. But there are things that we can do over the winter. So would it make sense to use this $8,000 not for treatment and or removal of ashtrays, but to begin with inventory and potential staff training?  I see. I think that's what makes the most sense. But I'll let these guys talk. What I have, but I could get you even more detail. So what I have in mind is that they would do the inventory. And a matter of fact, in October is the best time to do branch sampling. Right now we've tried to do it, but the larvae is in the tree and it's trees and working around and the research from other states that have done this has shown that late September, early October, you go to the distressed trees and you take branches and you look for the galleries underneath and that gives you an idea where it is. So then you can act on that over the winter or you know where to marshal your resources in the next spring. So that would be a key thing. And the other thing I would wanna do with that person is get them in a neighborhood program starting to prune some trees and get that experience in the bucket truck on the ground and get going with that. So it would be a two pronged. So I hate to be a little, you know, dollars and cents-ish about this, but there's part of me that's dubious that hiring somebody now and paying them through till March of next year would end up being cheaper than just paying someone who was a professional arborist in March. We wouldn't have the capacity to do the branch sampling in October and have a picture and a plan by then that would limit that and we wouldn't be able to do the neighborhood pruning program until March either. So we could jump into action with a professional in spring, but we wouldn't have taken care of any of the backlog. Yep. So we would need to pay the higher-paid person. That's the dilemma. Right, Rosie. So I'm just trying to think of all our potential options here and so I was interested to hear that you and Alec are each spending one day a week on trees and I'm wondering if we could use some of our money instead to contract out some of your other responsibilities to free up more of your time, as you're already trained and presumably able to do all this, that maybe that would be a way of in the interim dedicating more time to it and then we can have the conversation about whether we need an additional position, which we likely will, but then we can find the money in a more comprehensive. Yeah, or if I can jump back in, maybe even finding things that are occupying Jeff's time now or Alec's time that could be done either by DPW or recreation, I don't know. Sure. I think that's all part of, good part of the conversation. I wanted John Akulashik. I had an idea, I'm not sure we'll fly here. I worked for the state for over 30 years and as new administrations came in, they often gave us new jobs to do and when you're faced with new tasks, you have an option. One is to stop doing something that you're doing, that never happens. Option two was basically to take personnel from another area and at least assign them temporarily to help you accomplish the goal. So it's called, you know, other duties as assigned is how they put it and that gets you over the hump of the work. And again, I don't know if that would fly here, but instead of putting out the money to hire another person, which is what they really need, if you could transfer, possibly transfer a willing and able person from DPW into Jeff's group to work on this problem, probably for quite a few years here. That's just a thought. Seems interesting to me. Of course we need to have lots of conversation about that. We had it in the winner of DPW. Yeah, we'll pick up some of this slack from them. Yeah. Okay, so yeah. I just wanted to get back to your thought of paying somebody over in the winter. Yeah, yeah. I don't know what the cost difference is gonna be, but I'm envisioning that the kind of person we have in mind hiring now or soon in training up so that they're fully ready in the spring, compared to a fully qualified arborist, you're talking about two or three to one price difference. So we can invest in somebody and really have that payoff for a long time to hire an arborist in the spring, if one's available, because these guys are all flat out busy already dealing with this insect. I just don't see it as a viable option. So at this point, team, what is your pleasure? What do you wanna do? Well, I'd like to hear Bill's reaction to some of the ideas about shifting other personnel or shifting responsibilities of tree staff in the short term. I think those are all fine ideas and we'd have to talk about them. I mean, I think what we'll find is the situation that is being described in this department isn't that different across the board. DPW is way over booked right now and they're running at max and so are they gonna give up? But we can certainly have that conversation and talk about it and see whether it might even be that we could find someone for a short period of time until we do budget. Again, I wanna reiterate, I'm not saying sympathetic, I'm not unsympathetic to the situation that they need more staff, but there will be, we're gonna have some number when we do our budget, some limit. Maybe a different limit that it's been the last few years, but there's gonna be a limit and we're gonna want to include this position in these kind of things. We're gonna want to include, I suspect a lot more money for the Housing Trust Fund. We're gonna wanna to include positions for MIAC and energy and facilities. We're gonna want to include an additional police person. We have a long list of people. Some of those will make it and some of them won't. And I don't know right now which ones I would recommend because I haven't seen the whole and we haven't had that conversation. So hiring a person now that may, either we've prejudged our priorities without giving other folks a chance to make their case or putting someone in a position to get laid off. And Dr. I think, if you wanna identify a sum of money, and no question you'll get more done with your own employee than with a contract, but you can get some done. And maybe there's, whether it's trees being cut or I don't know if people can be hired on contract basis. My reluctance isn't against getting the work done. My reluctance is against making a commitment to a person that we hire and provide benefits and now as a job that we may or may not be able to make that commitment to them over the long run once we set our full priorities. If there's an interim need while that's being discussed and you know, 8,000 and Jeff said 20, maybe we could allocate 12 and we could figure out where we could get that from and do something like that. I think then you're, but I don't wanna just say we gave them money if it's not useful to them either. So I mean, that's where I'm stuck, is that there's, I don't mean to be hysterical, but we could bring Tony in and he could talk about opiates and how the way they've been running short of a police officer for a year. And I'm sure we have an immediate need for another police officer on and on. So at this point, I would love to just, I guess, invite you all if you were able to come back with a more concrete number about if we were gonna contract out the, take care of the backlog. I guess I would invite knowing what that is and then having conversation about that in the meanwhile, so that at least in that way we can be more ready. That's just information. So that's hopefully an easy thing to ask for, but yeah, Jack. I'm especially interested in seeing a number for bringing someone in, not to hire someone as a permanent employee to start training them to fill this job, but what it would cost to hire a temporary employee to come in and do the inventory in October, which seems like that's a critical time. And that gives us a database for the rest of the budget season and for what the work is gonna be needed for next year. Yeah, go ahead and then, Toner? Sorry, there's a little confusion here. We did the inventory. The volunteers did the inventory. We spent a couple hundred hours probably walking the street. So the inventory's done. He's talking about the branch sampling. The branch sampling is a different matter. Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. So basically, I heard the phrase earlier, the status of the ash borer. The status of the ash borer is unknown at this time. We know that we had an infestation at National Life and bugs have left there. That's all we know. Next spring, we will know exactly how bad it is. John indicated that it could be hundreds of trees. We don't know right now. So the branch sampling was done on trees that we identified this year as being suspect trees. You're not just going to go out and do a lot of branch sampling on other trees. That's just not going to happen because there's 450 of them out there on the street alone to look for this bug. What you need to do is you need to set up a system in the spring and somebody to run the system where you're monitoring with green traps which are these sticky traps. You've seen the purple ones probably. These are green ones now that have a pheromone that attract the males and you set them up in areas that you have suspected infestation. You'll know about the suspected infestation in the spring when the leaves come out because a lot of your trees will have missing leaves in the canopy. That's where you set up your traps. That's also where you start talking about where you're going to set up your trap trees to remove some of the bugs. It's also going to be where you decide which trees need to come out now because they're infested and they need to be removed from the population before the adults emerge in May and June because if they get out, you've got a bigger problem. So it is exponential in that you have to be able to identify those trees in the spring. You need someone that's geared towards being able to do that making the decisions to say, we need to cut this tree, this tree, this tree, get them to the marshaling area which was mentioned earlier because you don't want to leave those trees where they are the bugs will continue to grow and emerge. Get them to the marshaling area, process them, sawmill, chipper, whatever. Remove those guys from the population. That's how you slow the spread of this critter. If you don't do these things and if you don't have somebody on top of this, the critter gets the upper hand and you're behind the eight ball and that's going to be old. That's just the pattern. It's been done before in the country. We know it. We don't need to fall into the same mistakes. And the adults emerge in May so we need to have someone... That's something to remove the trees before that. Before May. Chipped them, get that outer bark done, processed, destroyed, burn it up, process the rest of the wood as far away, give it to the low income folks that they needed, whatever. There's all sorts of stuff you can do with the wood. But unless you start acting on these ideas. Is this something that can be shared with neighboring communities? Is this something that can be done regionally? Or a marshaling area? Or the person, staffers? They don't even have a marshaling area right now. No, no, the staffing. The person... We're going to have a full, there's going to be full-time need in this position here for this person to keep track of the 450 trees that are out on the streets, plus the 170 or so that are along the trails in Hubbard Park, plus the fact that North Branch Park hasn't been inventoried, Blanchard Park hasn't been inventoried. You don't know the, there's more trees out there that haven't even looked at. You need somebody to take charge and do that. And they have to be on staff. They have to be trained. They have to be able to do that. That's my two cents. Yeah, Connor, go ahead. So I really appreciate what Bill's saying about some difficult decisions ahead. At the same time, this body has spent hours and hours on this issue. So almost by default, I think we've identified it as a priority. You know, I'm convinced it's a real intermediate threat. I have a tough time looking at these guys who have spent so many hours in a volunteer capacity. They're almost employees as it is, not giving them more resources. So I think I'm with Jack. I'd like to see some more numbers at the next meeting to see some options that we could review there.  Also, I mean, just thinking out loud here, but I wonder if this kind of a service is something that could even be put out to bid to Arborus, like if we can hire someone on a contract to do this for us for the year or to however many. Anyway, I'm just thinking of that. Okay, so for now. We squeeze them into the next agenda. Yeah, I think so. Straight forward sort of report of this kind of detail, the task and cost and... Rosie? It's actually just scheduling-wise. Well, I have some thoughts about the next agenda. Okay, this is not the right time to... Fair enough. Speaking of the agenda, actually, I mean, if we're... Well, did anybody want to make a motion or should we just move on for now? Okay. Thank you. So looking forward to more numbers. And about the next item. So theoretically, we would be taking up the Parklets at this point, but it is 10, 15. And I would love to push, I don't think that's an urgent issue. So if we can make the 12th, the first reading and then push the second reading to September 26, that I think would be useful. Yes, Rosie? I was gonna even suggest pushing it further because this is something... I mean, we need to know this win or what we're doing, but... Yeah. Figure it out in October. 26 for first, yeah. Yeah, 26 in October 10th. I think that... You mean for the Parklet? Yeah. Yeah, I agree. And then the ash borers can take the place of the Parklet on the 12th. Isn't it great that we have that here? Yeah, very good. That is actually incredibly helpful. That's great. Thank you, yeah. So I'm sorry, where are you moving Parklets? Yeah, we're gonna move Parklets to the 26th and then the 10th. Or the second? There's a fancy box of markers. Yeah, these are the markers. Wow. Do you want to... What did you move to October 10th? Is that a... Make sure it's a dry erase marker. Is that a dry erase marker? You should... No, you've got to use that. You've got to use... I was gonna talk about the ash borer for... You almost did it. Woo! Jack. Let's go. You can even erase the permanent ones. So I... You're gonna be messing with Jamie here, so... Just so you know. Let the record reflect it was Jack that almost wrote permanent marker. And October 2nd... That's now the 3rd, by the way. Oh, yeah. It's October... But October 10th would be the... September 26th and then October 10th. Okay. October 3rd is a special meeting. I'm gonna make the handwriting all consistent later. Yeah, well, right. Great. Jamie will, she's... Then we can... Great, thank you. Awesome. That's really great. All right, so, kicking the parklet for now. I think the only thing left to do is the point the VLCT voting rep. Are you all aware of what the VLCT is? Well, I feel like we should probably do like 20 seconds on that. Vermont League of Cities and Towns is the member association of all the municipalities in the state. It does, it provides insurances, legal advice, technical advice on all sorts of issues. But one of the other things is it also represents towns and cities at the legislature and they adopt a municipal policy each year. Full disclosure, I'm a member of the board of directors of the league. So just so you know. And I was chair of one of the policy committees, the Water Resources Committee this year. And the... So the membership votes to adopt this policy then just not unlike what we do here. And then the staff represents that interest at the legislature. So each community is given one official voting rep. Anyone can attend, but only one, you have the card that you raise. And the city council designates that voting rep. It's great if it's a council member has been on several occasions in the past. I will be there, although it is on October 3rd, that's why I wasn't gonna be at the night meeting because it's a two day event. I was gonna stay over with because the league board is a thing at night. But be that as it may. So I can do it and I have done it. So you're covered. But if one of you would like to do it, it's an interesting thing. And then there's training sessions the next day. So if... I've done it, it's pretty fun. I would like to do it. So it is a daytime thing. I'm curious how do we as a city council decide what positions to take on the platform proposals? As I assume that we don't just pick someone and say, go do whatever you want. I distributed what they sent me to everybody. No one sent me in a comment. I was a voter. I think we sent it to everybody, yeah. I did we send it? I've done it every year, but one. It's attached to the agenda item. So the draft policy is there. So in year, we've done it a million different ways. We have in fact sent people with a do what you think is right. We have some years said, go and support the league policy is drafted. Other years we've actually had it on the agenda and gone through it. And taken, not starting every line, but if there were issues that people said, no, we want to direct our staff to seek an amendment. There is a process where tiles and cities can send in proposed amendments and those get voted on. And it's clear that some select boards do go through them with fine tooth comb. So you can do it however you want. You have till October. You can go and not be the rep. Yeah, you can go and not be the rep and discuss. You just can't vote. Right. Yeah, I've even just gone to the to the conference. Right. That's valuable as well. And that's changed though. One of the things that's different this year is that there the Wednesday, the third is the voting day. And there's just a couple of things there. And then there's like board stuff and a dinner and stuff at night. And then the next day is the sort of the conference thing. They used to cram them all together.  And the city of course covers the registration cost and costs for anybody who wants to go, including staying over if you want to. Where is it this year? I want to say South Burlington at the. Is it alternates? Yeah. Is it the Double Tree Hilton, which used to be the Sheraton? So the one out by the interstate? I believe that's right. Yeah. It's got it right here. It's really, there's so many good workshops and good discussions. It's really worth. It really looks very interesting. I've heard that Ashley wants to be the voting rep. Does anybody else have any interest in being the voting rep? I'll be gone. So I'm not going to fight you for it. No, no one else. Okay, I think we do need to vote on that. Yeah, I have a little bit, but I'm not going to get in your way. So do it. Oh. I do have a request though. There are some things in here that I find particularly problematic surrounding mental health, substance use and abuse and Department of Corrections that I would like to raise with the council. So I'm wondering if we could just put it on the agenda, not necessarily go through it line by line, but if people could just raise their issues with it. Cause there were some things that kind of really stood out to me and a couple of things that have come up that I've been following over the years. It's a fairly conservative group. Can I just say I got in a fight with the ED at the time a few years ago, because they were against the equal pay bill. Oh yeah. Oh no. Who better to go? Okay. I nominate Ashley Hill to be the voting representative for the city of Montpelier to this year's BLCT convention. Second. For the discussion. Vote your conscience. All in favor of saying aye. Never a problem. Aye. Great. Yeah. What is this happening? It's an October date. October 3rd, it's Wednesday and Thursday. That's why. Wanna put something on the. To the third is now the date of our special election. Oh that's right. And honestly, I guess it's just more of the kind of thing. Next one. No, I mean, 26th to talk about it. Right. Oh, I see, yes. It doesn't need to be like anything in depth. Like I just, I have some things that I would like to. Yeah. We can stick it on the end. Find out if everyone's on board. Right. Sure. Okay, great. Thank you for doing that. All right. So I think we are off to. Council reports. Rosie, would you like to start? Yep. So I was approached by Dan Jones of the Sustainable Montpelier Coalition about being part of a group that they are putting together of land owners around the rivers and downtown to start to talk about what are some things that they can do to work together, kind of having more of a, at least talking to your neighbor, understanding of what other people are doing so that might influence your own decision. And so I was approached about kind of attending some of those meetings and I'm interested, but I also wanted to come back to the council and see if this is something that you would like me to attend as a council representative or with just kind of a private citizen hat on. And I want to be really clear in understanding, what my role is. Yeah. Are you interested in, I mean, as a baseline, you're interested in participating in some way or no? Yes. So my understanding is there's a few meetings in September. Generally I'm really conservative about my ability to commit to stuff outside of work and family in this, but I think that I can make the time to attend of several meetings. So, and it's a topic I'm really interested in and I think that one of my skills is sort of thinking about all this, how do things interact with each other and it interests me. So I would be happy to do it, but I also, if someone else is really interested, I wanted to give other folks the opportunity as well. I think you should go and say that you're representing the council. Okay. Yeah. I was going to say, if you would prefer to represent yourself, if that's somehow easier, then that's fine with me too, but I might have been effectively out there. I trust in your judgment. I think we all said do, I mean, I think it's the same thing is that we're comfortable either way. But sometimes if you have your personal hat on, it can be very useful insight. Well, I won't make any commitments on the part of the city, but I just want to have a better sense of whether I'm, who I'm representing. So that's helpful. But I'd love to hear a report about her. Sure, of course. Well, thank you, Rosie. The only thing I have to say in case that she's not, doesn't want to put herself forward too much, I want to recommend my friend and seatmate, Ashley's op-ed piece in the Times Argus today on domestic violence. I thought it was great. Anyone out there who hasn't read it should. Thanks, Jack. I want to thank everybody who came out to vote in our election. I saw the email come out from John Odom that we needed more people because we had so many folks show up to vote. And that's how democracy works. So I appreciate everyone's efforts in making that happen. And I particularly really appreciate city staff and all of their efforts to make it go as smoothly as possible. And those lines were impressive. Yes, it was great. It was really good to see. Donna. Oh, you're starting over again, sure. I was going to hunt for the, one of the groups that I've just joined on my own is the Water Basin, a clean water act. And we're dealing with the Holmanuski area. Berlin Pond is in there under some very interesting ways. And already has some red marks about vulnerability and risk. This is good. But the Department of DEC, Department of Employment, Environmental Conservation. There you go. The water people, they have actually decided that they should start identifying pristine water areas, whether it's a pond, a river, and label them and protect them. What? Now, they didn't do that for Berlin Pond, so it doesn't mean we can't keep nurturing and get Berlin Pond up there. That's an incredible table of just how much trouble we're having, not just with runoff from farmers, but things are showing up in the water antibodies. I mean, it's just amazing in the water, in the sampling of the soil around the water, and it's very, very interesting. And the report is like, yay, but I could email, and the drafts keep changing, but it's really been very interesting. The other thing, I mentioned it before, but I will be gone, I'll leave the day after, I'm sure, our late 26th council meeting. I leave on the 27th for Sweden, and I come back on the 9th, the day before. So I hope I'm not late flying in. Have a good time on the third. May seem silly, but I just really want to thank Sue and Bill and everybody who was involved in that goat story. If you think about thousands and thousands of dollars, people would pump into marketing to get such exposure for city our size. I've had countless people from all over the country, even in Ireland, reach out and say, what a fantastic city that is to live in. So I say it with all sincerity, great job on that one. And the names, what could be better? Ruth Bader and Ginsburg? I'm not eating enough. You're not eating enough? Yeah, well, that's, yeah. We may have to stop, because they're not actually. We just legalized the substance in my elbow. Get more goats. As usual, join me tomorrow morning, Thursday, at Baguitos, 8.30 to 9.30 to talk about whatever you like. It's been going really well, and I continue to enjoy it. And I want to tell a very brief story about a whiteboard. Here in Montpelier, early when I was here, I signed up to be a substitute teacher at the high school, and the first day I walked into the classroom, it was empty, I took a marker and wrote, Mr. Hutchison on the smart whiteboard, and then looked at the marker. And after that bone-headed move, I was really proud of myself that I thought hard and looked around the room and found the alcohol-based hand sanitizer. All right. And wiped it right off. So no one knew until right now. So in light of that, it just might be wise for us to maybe take that down, so it's not necessarily here in the off season. I mean, we have hand sanitizer somewhere, it's okay. Maybe we just eliminate the permanent marker. Or just turn it around, or do you know what I mean? Are you afraid we'll get extra comments? Yeah, maybe, right? Well, then we don't necessarily have to leave the... Or any of the other markers, you know, around. Yeah, okay, I'll talk to you soon. Yeah, we should figure something out. Put it on the city's web page, put a picture of it on the city's web page and take it out of the room between meetings. Oh, it could be a Facebook post every day. That would be a great Facebook post. Okay. All right, team, I have a few updates. So bear with me.   So shout out to them. That's thing number one, thing number two. I just wanna relay that I had some comments from people about the recertification of the Marshfield Dam that we might be looking into being a party to the certificate of public good for that because it's potentially affected as to the health of that dam. So just a heads up about that. Third thing, one of the things that came up in our discussions with the new hotel proposal was the capital Plaza, Peshara's, et cetera, wanted us to check in with you all about the possibility of doing some kind of a deal on water rates. And so I just wanna ask, is there any interest on giving them a water rates deal? And you can tell me now or you can tell me later or not. I know what Ashley's response is. Is anybody interested in talking about water rates? I think that would be really not. Okay, I'm just doing my due diligence. She's just honored a commitment. I had to, thank you. Our answer was we don't think so, but we'll ask. But we'll ask, that's what we said, so I'm asking. So we, she kept her word. That's it, that's all I needed to do, thank you. Okay, great. And so that's another thing. So now there's a couple other things that I wanted, I'm really excited about that. I wanna talk about super briefly. I think I've sent you all a copy of the potential language for a charter change. So I'm very interested in your feedback on that. I mean, we have some opportunity to talk about that more formally. I don't see it on the September 12th. Oh, wait, no, it's September 12th. So next time, if, so I have some ideas of ordinances that I would like to have conversations about. Charter change or ordinance? I'm sorry. There's some ordinance, there's some ordinances if the charter change were successful then. Right, yes, of the proposed charter change language is that it's just an exploration of what it means for a public welfare. So I just want you to know that there are three things that I'm thinking about for potential ordinances and I wanna invite you, if you have ideas of what ordinances might be enabled by that charter change language, I would love to get your feedback about that potentially before the 12th so that we can try and collect that. Just like us to be really aware of public meeting law and maybe we should post what you shared in terms of the potential charter changes or something. If we're all gonna be providing you feedback, I just don't wanna do that outside of a public venue. Okay, that sounds great. Sure, great, thank you. So first thing, I mean, is a plastic bag either ban or tax? I mean, that's sort of what spawned this. But I also want to explore the possibility of a city-wide contract for compost and that could potentially go through the Central Vermont Solid Waste District with an agreement with them. So they would explore putting out an RFP, et cetera. So if you're interested in having more conversation about that, that's something that I would love to put on an upcoming agenda more specifically. Is there interest in talking about that? Yes. I'm not interested in taking up more staff time particularly but I don't think this would take up that much. Or at least right now. Right, well anyway, yeah. But we can talk about that. So I'm seeing general interest in talking about city-wide compost. So that's another thing and then there's some energy code ordinances that I'm really interested in. I'll tell you more about that later. That is it for me. Thank you for bearing with me through all of those points. That's why you ended the meeting at 10.15, I understand. I'm sorry, Ann, I didn't get it. Did you send it with your city email or your personal email? With the city email and I think you even wrote back thanks but I can send it to you again. Because I'm searching for it here. He said it was August 15th. If I'm thinking of the right thing. Sounds about right. Should be about then, let me, I can tell you. Well, I've been having trouble and Seth tried to work on it but now he's jamming me out of Google Drive so. Oh no. All right, John, I think you're up. I just say thank you Ashley for the kind words about the election. However, long lines of the polling place are a sign in fact that democracy is not working. Well, it was unexpectedly long. And so does a desperate call for help there at the end of the day. So all of which is to say, this is the second primary in a row where the crowds have been much bigger than expected. So I think for the first time maybe in our forever, Montpelier voters have discovered the primary. And I think it's here to stay which means I think that's gonna be the last time we follow the tradition and have it down here. Lost Nation isn't gonna be happy, but I think that's the last election of any kind we're gonna have in this room. At least with the current administration issues. No, I think part of it. And machines didn't work either, it's like wow. We had machines jam up but there was a particular reason for that and I know how to fix them next time. Yes, at one point I called out that we were moving to hand count which was something I never thought I'd hear myself say, but we got past it. That's a long time counting. And Donate is August 15th that I send it. Okay, I see you. If you need again. I'm signing it. I just have one minor thing it's not gonna pass but Donate reminded me of something which is some of you, especially those who were on last year, remember that we had long prolonged discussions with the state about Berlin Pond and whether we should sue them, et cetera. And ultimately we ended up agreeing that we were gonna have this containment area on the pond and they were gonna put rules in for that. And not too long ago, we got a letter from the state basically saying you don't really need any rules. You can put floaters or whatever you want in the pond to mark the area. Well, that's great. It doesn't provide any enforcement. It doesn't, it's just, so what? What happens if someone violates it? So we are pushing back and saying, no, we went through a process, we agreed. But we also may say, hey, listen, we're gonna reconsider a legal action. And I know there wasn't a lot of stomach for that, but we might have to have a stiff upper lip on this that we caved a lot and got little and they're not even giving us the little. So I think we need to push on them. I think ultimately we won't have to bring legal action. But for some reason, they just don't seem to want to promulgate these rules. So anyway, that's happening. So that's it, pass. That's it. I'm done after that. Gotta get the shots by a lot. All right, I think that is it. So we'll do a journey without objection. Oh yeah, thank you. That's what you said. Right? I am viewing your question, your magical thinking. Guessing. I was really surprised they ran it. I wrote it.


Hello, my name is Dr. Nishant Yagnik. I'm head of neurosurgery at Manipal Hospital Gurgaon and today I want to tell you about a very You know difficult to diagnose but often a very curable problem which is that of spinal tumors and spinal pain now a lot of patients have cervical pain back pain and Many people believe that this is just something very benign This is something that just goes on and you can treat it with a bit of exercise in physiotherapy I want to tell you that we are a center of excellence in the treatment of spine and particularly spinal tumors now What happens is that if you have a spinal tumor particularly your symptoms won't resolve they will start progressing and Once they reach a certain progression that is the time that patients usually come to us Now that is often the time when things have been delayed for so long that we are not able to Preserve their function despite the removal of the tumor So if you have a chronic back pain or if you have a chronic cervical problem Which means it's been going on for a while and it is progressing and especially if you have features such as numbness Weakness and difficulty in urination Then you need to come to us much earlier with our latest techniques of Endoscopic and microscopic approaches incision sizes The level of comfort of the patient the speed with which you can get back to normal life has become much much smoother Than it was even five or six years ago So if you have a persistent progressive Chronic and very long pain in your spine you need to come see us before it's too late. Thank you


Can I talk to Sébastien? Thank you. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Yes, I'd like to share a few thoughts about the way the world economy interacts with world politics somehow. My starting point would be to observe that what makes probably the present situation quite unique is the intensification of grid power competition in the context of close economic and financial interdependence. This has translated recently in a situation where we see that the multilateral frameworks are somehow destabilised and overwhelmed, as witnessed by the spread of economic restrictions on trade and investment flows, of exceptional duties, the tariff duties, on the spread of economic sanctions and so on. On the witness also by the spread of uncoordinated industrial policies and increased state interventionism. So this is a situation marked by increasing geopolitical tensions, but I think it's fair to say that at least until now the result has not been, at least not to a large extent, it has not been decoupling or fragmentation. We've seen a kind of plateauing, and Gabriel showed it in figures a moment ago, in terms of the intensity of world trade. But there is no established trend toward decline in economic and financial relations at the dual level. There are some cases, some specific places where this is indeed, there is a decline, and this is, for instance, the case in terms of the bilateral trade relationship between the US and China for well understood reasons. But it is remarkable that even in that case, for instance, study after study, it is shown that when the intensity of direct trade between the US and China is declining, indirect trade is actually increasing, meaning that the US is sourcing less imports from China, it will be sourcing more from a variety of countries, say, Vietnam, Mexico for instance, and these countries themselves are sourcing more components from China. Meaning that aiming at decoupling what we are observing actually is not decoupling a fragmentation, it's more diversion with ensuring cost and opacity. And questions about whether this is reducing in any meaningful terms, risk or degree of dependence. So, I think somehow we have to live with this inter-economic and financial interdependence. Of course, the situation of geopolitical tensions and economic interdependence create a very strong temptation to leverage interdependences for political purposes, to weaponise them, and I think that's really a defining feature of the present situation. But it's also a very difficult objective. Difficult because economic and financial exchanges are defined by a principle of mutual benefits. They are taking place because they are benefiting both parties, meaning that it is very difficult for one of them to usefully leverage them. When is it possible? Well, when there is a situation with a very pronounced asymmetry. And only in such case is it possible really to efficiently leverage these economic and financial interdependences. And I think this is a reason why in the recent examples of weaponisation of economic dependencies, we are seeing the increasing importance, the overwhelming importance of finance, of information and knowledge. Because these are interdependences, these are activities that rely upon very concentrated networks. Think about the monetary system with the role of the dollar. Think about international banking transaction with the role of the SWIFT system. Think about information with social networks or about high tech and semiconductors, for instance, with intellectual properties. In each of these cases, you have very complex networks where a few short points, as Henry Farrell and Abe Newman have called them, are taking a central importance and can be leveraged and have been leveraged for many of them recently. So it's a situation that in a recent paper published together with Thomas Gommard, we define as geo-finance, meaning to reflect the fact that it is marked by an increasing politicisation of financial and information flows. And it's somehow different from what we used to think in terms of geo-economic competition in the 1990s or the 2000s, which was mainly taking place within the framework of multilateral institutions. In many cases, this competition and this weaponisation is in breach of international commitments. So I think it is not surprising, given this situation, that economic security is becoming an overarching concern for governments. With mainly two objectives, the first one is to reduce vulnerability and build leverage with regard to these short points, to these critical notes in the world economy. And the second one is to control or at least master, to some extent, foundational technologies. And here I think the interaction is very strong with climate change because climate change is already an ongoing revolution in terms of for industry, for trade, for raw materials and energy. It's redefining the key technologies. It's redefining the way markets are working. So the challenge today for many governments is how to improve economic security. In a context where increasingly, for the reasons I described, they are not considering international markets, world markets aren't secure enough. In a context as well, I think it's worth emphasising that where isolation is clearly not a solution for two main reasons. The first one is efficiency. International division of labour is a sine qua non of efficiency today, especially for sophisticated technologies. And the second one could be term, was term a relational power by Susan Strange. The need to have allies or at least to have partners to support your views. And we see that in this context of tension, this is increasingly important. So relational power requires openness, requires significant economic and financial relationships. So this is a challenge. I think it is really important to emphasise as well that increasingly the response of governments is using more ambitions, more widespread industrial policies. And it's worth as well emphasising that while in the 80s, for instance, economists were commenting a lot the fact that some policies were used as a way to kind of appropriate rents as rent shifting policies. The typical example for that was the competition between Airbus and Boeing as the efforts of governments to somehow appropriate the oligopolistic rent in this sector. Today it's more about control, about power than about rent. But the same kind of logic is taking place. A logic where everyone is trying to appropriate and everyone needs to somehow to retaliate to what others are doing. So I'll conclude just by emphasising the threats involved in this trend. The threats, of course, are additional and useless costs from an economic point of view linked to these additional obstacles and constraints. It's also in the additional rigidities ensuing from this constraint and I think that means a lot in terms of adjustment capacity for the world economy in the time to come with, of course, a significant risk of escalation. All this for a benefit which we can discuss but I think so far is very limited in terms of de-risquing as the term, the fashionable term, put it. And finally, the last and probably most dangerous threat is that all these constraints jeopardise the capacity of coordination at the world level. So I think this is a very important challenge in terms of economic governance globally and I think part of the response should lie around somehow ring fencing the security concerns in the world economy and the world finance and as a precondition probably to update coordination and rules in other sectors. Thank you. Thank you, thank you very much indeed. Sébastien, I take it that your exploration of the impact on global economy and trade in particular and also the overall industrial diversification associated with the tensions associated with this will to de-risque to have a world in which we would incorporate precisely these major changes in the global tensions is something which is very important. I take it that with global trade being under the impact of this French shoring, re-shoring or whatever of course it has a cost first and second it has an impact on global growth and it has also an impact on inflation to be frank. So all this is intertwined in a way which is very striking. Sébastien.