Okay, it is 6-0-1 on Monday, November 6th. I'm on a call to order the Wenduski Liquor Control Board 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. Okay, we have one regular item. Welcome, Jenny. So, this is just a new license for specs. They added the tobacco license. These are the folks we approved last meeting, right? Last meeting. Any questions from Council? Okay. Do I have a motion to approve the tobacco license for specs LLC? So moved. Seconded. Motion by Charlie. Seconded by Thomas. Those in favor, please say aye. Motion carries. Thank you. Thank you. That is the end of the Liquor Control Board agenda. Do I have a motion to adjourn? So moved. Motion by Aurora. Seconded by Bryn. All those in favor, please say aye. Motion carries. Okay. 6-0-3 p.m. I am calling to order the Wenduski City Council meeting. First up is agenda review. I do have one proposed change from staff. Item D, the draft updates to ordinance chapter 9, was posted for discussion, but we have an option to set a public hearing and that would require approval. Would you all be in favor of updating that item to include approval? Can I have a motion from someone? So moved. Second? Motion by Thomas. Second by Charlie. All those in favor, please say aye. Motion carries. Okay. Any other agenda order concerns? Next up is public comment. So this is space reserved for any public comment on an item not on this evening's agenda. If you are here for the public hearing, for instance, or something else on the agenda, would ask you to hold off for that. Is there anyone here with a public comment? Please join us at the table and introduce yourself. Good evening. My name is Felipe Hoyos. I live on Hickok Street and I'm here to speak principally on some of the other topics, but I've been in conversation with John Rauscher since early in the year, probably January or February, about the lights out front from the Memorial Library. They are unlike any other streetlight in the city. They're extremely bright and they shine through my window. In fact, they illuminate probably everything in its vicinity. They impact a lot of neighboring buildings and I'm wondering if it can be addressed, if the lights can be switched out for some of the more standard ones that you see on all other streets. Yeah, it's a real nuisance. Thank you. We have John in attendance via Zoom. John, are you able to respond? Yep, I can. I'm actually in the back office so I can meet you if you want to chat further out in the lobby. Yeah, so basically we did reach out a while back to our electrician who retrofitted those lights because we, you know, on the other side we received complaints from the folks in the OCC that they were too dim, especially when they were coming into their office space. So they were upgraded to LEDs, I'd say like a year ago, and you're absolutely correct. There's a lot of, they seem to be throwing light outside of the footprints of the property. So we did ask the electrician to look at retrofitting some downward guards on those lights. So last I spoke with the electrician, they were going to have to retrofit some guards on those lights so they're more downward facing. I will reach out to them because I have not heard an update where they are with that and obviously the weather's getting a little worse so ideally he'd get those on before, you know, the snow starts hitting ground. So yeah, balls in my core, I'll follow up with the electrician and see where they're at with that. Thank you. And for the same reason that the weather's changing, the leaves dropped so now there's no sort of barrier between them and my house. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Any other public comments? Okay. Anyone online? You can use the raise hander chat feature if you wish to speak on something not on tonight's agenda. Okay. We'll move to our consent agenda. We have our minutes from our October 16th meetings, payroll warrants for October, accounts payable for November, financing update for main street revitalization, and professional services amendment, and the working community's challenge grant extension amendment. Were there any questions from Council? Very nice to see your hand is raised. Yeah, I'd like to move on to E. Sure. We'll pull E and put that at the end of this evening's agenda. Thank you. On the new item J. Any other concerns about consent? I was wondering if we could pull item F. Anything else? Okay. Do I have a motion to approve items A through D? So moved. Second. Motion by Aurora. Second by Charlie. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Council reports. Bryn, would you like to go first? Sure. So this past month we had a joint commission meeting with the infrastructure and finance at a broad level just started talking about FY 25 financing, capital expenditures, and needs. Must-do items and other items that have been pending for a long time. It was kind of table-setting conversation. Anticipate getting into the weeds a bit more. Our next joint meeting is next Tuesday, the 14th. We'll be meeting on the finance commission schedule for that. So look for details through the from Port Forum and other city channels where we provide notice for that. Anyone and everyone that has interest is welcome to attend those meetings or provide comment ahead of time. The bridge committee has not met. In October, we don't have a meeting scheduled yet. Anticipate while they're presenting tonight. So I'm sure we'll hear more about their timing for the next meeting as well as public next public hearing. Airport commission met last week. A lot of the standard agenda items. The technical advisory committee for the noise exposure map update they met in September, early October. I think actually there's no second meeting scheduled yet. But I've requested that it's posted on the BTV sound website when it is scheduled. I want to just continue to remind folks that if there are any questions or concerns to let me know and of course let the commission know as it relates to the noise exposure map update, sound complaints, et cetera. So I think that's that for my end. Certainly. On October 26th and 27th, I went to the 2023 apiary for movement builders which was a conference put on by the Vermont office of racial equity. I was able to attend both days along with chair Silver from inclusion and belonging and we were able to attend workshops such as essential concepts for data equity, inclusion inclusive recruitment onboarding and retention and reflecting on DEIJ and strategic planning as well as attending an ideal Vermont check in looking back at the past year and providing feedback on ways that the office of racial equity might be able to support municipalities better in the future. We have a meeting scheduled with city manager Wong later this week to review and share what was learned over the course of those two days safe, healthy, connected people meets on the 14th of this month. Inclusion and belonging does not meet this month however ambassadors should be attending the other commission meetings. I ask that my fellow counselors do what they can to ensure the ambassadors feel a sense of belonging and empowerment on the commissions they are ambassadors to and if there are any concerns please reach out to Jenny and myself. Thank you. My only update is that planning commission began reviewing the impacts of the Homes Act on our local regulations. So they've just started that conversation at their last meeting after tonight's agenda. We'll be able to provide some additional guidance for that. Thomas. At downtown Muriski's last meeting they discussed some grants that they're pursuing some current grants that they are working on and they also talked about the upcoming bridge construction and just general business concern about what that might look like for them. We also we haven't met this month yet but we'll be meeting next week but I did want to thank everybody who participated in pumpkin carving or pumpkin gutting or putting the pumpkins out or lighting the pumpkins especially lighting the pumpkins because that was very difficult this year. But Muriski's Halloween celebrations drew in more people than they did last year. It was really, really great. It was also many kiddos participating in trick-or-treating and just a lot of folks having fun so thanks everybody who helped work on that. Blingo is back tomorrow actually archives from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. and we have a date for the Muriski Holiday Pop-Up Shop. So just like last year various Muriski storefronts will be hosting different local artists from the Muriski area around Vermont and that will be November 30th from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. Thank you. Yeah, mine's pretty quick. The Muriski Housing Commission met on October 24th. Unfortunately I wasn't able to attend because of an emergency last minute. I have a meeting with Jasmine next week to set the agenda for the November meeting which will be held on the 28th and I'll have more to share at the next meeting. Thank you. Alright, city updates. Thanks, so the Battle of the Badges Blood Drive is happening soon which is the Muriski Fire and Police Department's host a blood drive at the Muriski Senior Center that's going to be on Friday November 17th from 12 to 5 p.m. Community members are encouraged to schedule their donation appointment and support public safety staff as they compete to see which department donates the most. Visit the news update section of WinooskiVT.gov for details. Join us and the Chinning County Regional Planning Commission for the LaFountain and Dionne Street presentation on Wednesday November 15th, 6.30 p.m. here at Winooski City Hall. This project is designed to explore potential street reconfigurations along LaFountain and Dionne Street based on public feedback. The presentation will include an overview of alternatives and comparisons of the project's needs, costs safety and mobility improvements, anticipated impacts and permitting requirements. Community feedback is needed to make this project a success. For more information, please visit CCRPCVT.org And lastly, Main Street Revitalization. The first official Main Street Revitalization project email update went out last week. Community members are encouraged to sign up for these updates via email by visiting WinooskiVT.gov slash Main Street. If you're new to the project, be sure to check out the information page on our website to learn more about the upcoming work to revitalize this important quarter of our city. Thank you. Okay, we are into our regular items. First up is the public hearing for amendments to the unified land use and development regulations. Eric, could you be so kind is to do a brief summary of the proposed changes? Sure. First of all, thank you very much. I was going to do is give a quick overview of where we've been to this point as well and highlight some of the changes. These are amendments to various sections of the unified land use and development regulations that the Planning Commission has been working on for probably the better part of the last year, if not longer. These amendments were first introduced to you back in June at your regular meeting on June 5th. You then had a detailed discussion on the amendments at your regular meeting on July 17th, which led to the first public hearing on September 5th. There was following that hearing, some additional changes were proposed, some modifications I would say were proposed, which led to another detailed discussion at your regular meeting on October 2nd, thereby leading to tonight's public hearing to take additional comments. So this will be the fifth meeting that you've had in one form or another to discuss these amendments. Subsequently, back at their regular meeting on October 26th, the Planning Commission reviewed the changes that are incorporated into tonight's agenda and updated the statutory report basically identifying compliance with the city's master plan and other goals and policies. So the Planning Commission has concurred with that report. So tonight's meeting is really to review the amendments and take any public comments with the possibility of taking formal action tonight as well as a separate agenda item. So primarily the amendments tonight are focusing on some cleanup, some clarifications and changes for sections 4.1 through 4.12. The bulk of that is coming in section 4.12 related to parking, both for vehicle and adding in new regulations for bicycle parking, both long-term and short-term bicycle parking. There's also, we've updated some of the options for relief for parking with our transportation demand management strategies, shared parking, location of parking, things of that nature. So those are included as well. There's also some clarification and moving of some information from the parking section into our site plan review section in Article 6, specifically Section 6.6. We've added some new definitions and we've also added a new section 5.15 to include options for adaptive reuse of historic structures in the various zoning districts to provide some additional relief for property owners that choose to preserve some or all of those properties. So as I mentioned this is the fifth time you all have discussed these amendments tonight, so happy to take any questions or comments or provide any additional information on what's included, but otherwise as I mentioned there's a separate item after this for potential action on these amendments. Thank you Eric. So this public hearing has been noticed for amendments to the unified land use and development regulations. At this time I would like to open the public hearing. I'll invite public comment. If you do have a question feel free to ask it as well. We have a number of people in here and on Zoom. So I would ask you to keep your comments to a couple of minutes so that everyone has a chance to speak. We'll start in the room and then move to folks on Zoom. So whoever would like to speak first I could start here in the front. It would invite you to come up here state your name and then share your thoughts. Good evening. My name is Nicole Mace. I've been a Winnowski resident since 2009. I also serve on the Winnowski Housing Authority Board, the Champlain Housing Trust Board and the Winnowski School Board of Trustees. But I am not representing any of those entities in my comments tonight. They are mine alone. Back in 2015 when form based code was adopted and I was on the City Council, I expressed concerns that redevelopment would lead to the loss of affordable housing and that the incentives built into the code would be insufficient to prevent the displacement of Winnowski residents. We have now almost 10 years worth of data to show that these concerns were legitimate. What we did not foresee back in 2015 was the severity of today's housing crisis which has rapidly accelerated the pace of displacement. When we do not build affordable housing, an existing housing is replaced with options that are either too small or too expensive or both. Our residents are forced to leave. This displacement is disproportionately impacting our BIPOC immigrant families. In 2022 the Council commissioned an equity audit. One of the findings is the approach to housing management and they characterized that approach as a, our hands are tied mentality. But this approach generates trauma for BIPOC residents and students. The city's awareness of housing issues and the actions taken to remedy these issues have not been inclusive of BIPOC and New Americans concerns and have been insufficient to effect change. I applaud the Council for efforts undertaken to respond to some of the issues laid out in the equity audit such as tenant education and resource connection and a focus on housing quality. Unfortunately I fear that focusing on tenant rights and housing qualities may be a factor leading to the increase in landlords selling their properties or evicting tenants so that they can rehab their properties and charge market rate rent. It's happening all over the city, displacing Winooski families as other folks here in this room can attest to tonight. Over a year ago I addressed the Planning Commission to urge immediate action to address the lack of affordable family housing in Winooski. In my view the changes under consideration currently do not begin to respond to the magnitude of the crisis. Put simply it has taken too long to do little. If we continue to lose affordable family housing we will lose what makes Winooski a unique and special place at socioeconomic, cultural and linguistic diversity. It will also cost us more. We built a school for a thousand kids based on demographic projections that predate 2015. Our new education funding formula prioritizes funds to support multilingual learners. The more school aged children we lose the higher our education tax rate will get. There are policy tools available to the council. Your hands are not tied in order to respond to the clear need to build affordable family housing. There are trade offs that need to be considered but we should not let analysis cause paralysis. The identity of this community is at stake. The values of this community are at stake. Please treat this issue with the urgency and seriousness that it deserves. Thank you very much. Good evening everybody. My name is Patrice Lumumba and I'm the wellness coordinator for the Winooski school district. I'm here because I'm advocating for families and students at the district. This year we are able to launch a housing initiative because family are struggling with housing. I come from this community. Family are struggling because they are all compounded in small spaces. I hope that the city council and the city can look into building more affordable housing for families. Just this year alone we have 16 families that we are working with and I'm working with Jenny Davis who work at Champlain Valley Union.  We are struggling to move this family out to bigger units. For instance we have a family of 11 people in a three bedroom place. I mean we can't move them anywhere. Even if we try to move them anywhere they learn or doesn't want them to move in a four bedroom place because it's too small for them. So I hope that the city can look into ways in logistics how we can build bigger space for families because we come from a family that is not only two of us. It's at least 11 of us and we want to make sure we have a space where our children feel safe. If a file comes family can evacuate safely. We just don't want to put a family of 11 in this three bedroom place and they can evacuate safely. So I highly recommend that we look into that because we have many many family in my district right now that are struggling for affordable housing. Yes we have houses. I mean housing is about some of them are small they might be affordable but we need many bigger affordable housing for our families. So that's the reason why I'm here and I hope that that could be considered in the long term for our families. Thank you. Good evening everyone. Thank you for giving us the time to speak. The co-founder of the Wunewski parents and units project here is a grassroots community organizing initiative led solely by immigrants and refugees from many ethnic groups Somali, Nepali, Congolese, Burundi, Arabic, Latin American communities Korean, Burmese etc and many others. This is a topic for me that is very emotional because the project has lost huge huge leaders due to housing. The older co-founder, the reason why Wunewski parents and students project actually exist is no longer living here. He was devastating to me personally to lose my partner like my camarada, my person on the fight the ones that we went to he was doing outreach with me door to door in Elm Street every time, every day not even earning anything because we were in a transitional process where we were finding a foundation to get some money and resources for this initiative. And they move they were still in touch, they begged me to come visit them they have a beautiful house in Pennsylvania with a pool I'm actually jealous I want to move I will help the displacement cause if I did but I'm tempted and they trying to convince me but I'm just letting you know that like him and his whole family who literally adopt me, they fit me when I was doing community organizing and down there they were like grab me and literally pull me out and sit me down and put food on front of me and don't let me go until I was done eating and they will fit me and if I finish it they will put more food on my plate and they just take care of me in other words what I was doing that work and it was too devastating for me to see them go but at the same time I understood I understood they want the best for their kids the school wasn't really good for what they wanted, their expectations for the kids were high like any parents right, have a good expectation high expectations for the kids and they were that was not the case for them it bothered me because someone who started all, who wanted it to see those buses more than me probably on the street wasn't able to be here to see those buses running and don't have their kids utilizing those buses but because of him because of his tenacity, his determination and his commitment to the community, those buses are running and he was not even, he's not even to even enjoy it the hell out of me, this is what is happening to the community members in Wynoski, I do not live in Wynoski, I do work 100% for Wynoski and you all know it and the people who have left, they were not the only case but there was the one who really hurt me the most because he was more invested probably than me and I'm super invested in this and to see him go it really hurt my soul and I think was one of the days that I met Nicole he cried for all the reasons but I cried that night too because they were leaving a week after and I was in a hurry to have those buses but yes it was really horrendous to see them go and like them there are many orders that have left, they were strong community members, they couldn't reach so much this community but they are gone now, they are gone because the apartments are not only small but the apartments are in terrible condition, the landlords are not doing much and I don't understand why we don't have supervision or anything that can prevent us to have a procedure where we make those landlords accountable, they are charging every month their money and they are getting paid and they are not having those apartments in well condition, why? Let's not even talk about the number of units, the units there are available are not even in appropriate conditions to be safe for kids, for any family, so let's even start from there and then also speed up a little bit of the process to allow or facilitate other organizations that can build decent places for low income and this is what it made Winuski great, the diversity and we are losing it at light speed, it took us so long to get here but it's not taking any time to be as wide as any other rural area in Vermont and it's going to be on you, it's on you sorry but it's on you and if you don't do anything about it now that's going to happen and it's going to be on you we are here to help, we wanted to support this, we wanted to do work with you and their community, let us know what do you need to move this forward, thank you. Thank you for letting me speak, I will just whatever everyone say, just emphasize it but my first suggestion is, is there any initiative that Winuski had ever talked to a developer and to make housing better than what we have there are a lot of houses, new houses but those are not helping us as New Americans because we are big families and new apartments are all one or two, which that segregates us from the rest of us to live in those apartments and I will suggest again if you guys can have initiative of suggesting any developers make it easier and then we needed this kind of apartments in this place because majority of people who live here, they can't go to two or one apartment bedrooms and what I see here I observed around here, we don't have we have a lot of houses here, we have new houses here, new apartments built but none of those we can't move to because there are one or two apartments so that's my request if you guys next time suggest that developers to consider these people who live here, I came to Winuski 2010, January 15 and it's my second home which I will never forget because it was very cold and I came from Kenya which is hot and I lived in West Street for six years which I will never forget because that's my second home and it's going to be forever, even if wherever I go I'm going to remember it so I will please and please help these people because this is their home, they don't know where else to go and most of us we are scared if we go out of Chinatown which we all help each other and come and language barriers only we have maybe 10% who speaks English and the other hundred people live on this, their life lies on these people for anything they need help so if one of us move out of there they don't have help which I think I speak Christian before that every year 15 people move out of here which they are moving their crime because they love the state, they love the city but they can't live because of housing problem nothing else, those are the problems why they are moving out of here and then the one which you go there they call back, they told them how nice and easy and cheaper and everything is better than here and the city where they move also consider them I talk to them personally over the phone and ask them what service they get, they were very considered as welcomed, the city takes care of them that the landlords will not harass them, that's one thing they told me, that the landlords are not harassing there because the city has caught up, caught up to that they can't, they have a policy that they can't move out or they will tell you can call this number if you have a problem and then it will help you where we don't have it here, the number to call leave of that, I don't think anyone of us even come to the city to talk to any problem so I will say I know it's a small city where we don't have a lot of spaces and a lot of money or whatever it is but if the little we have, if we do well and know the problem of the resident here I'm sure you will help and you just need to know I'm sure a lot of problem that we are sharing here which is a long time problem so please consider this community and help them to get a home. Thank you. I'm back. On June 23 Governor Phil Scott signed the housing opportunities made for everybody act. This landmark piece of legislation made possible by a tripartisan collaboration is designed to limit the barriers that exist to addressing this state's acute housing crisis that we've heard just now from four different witnesses. The intentions of the home act have merely set the floor but this seems to have been lost on our planning commission. The proposed amendments the ULUDR appear to try as hard as possible to abide by the bare minimum of requirements set by the home act. This is outrageous to all of us here. Nowhere in the state does it make more sense to increase density than in our great city. We have no opportunity for expansion or undeveloped lands to build on. If we want to increase our tax base increase the utilization of our school campus or otherwise continue to be a home to diversity of backgrounds and incomes we have no choice but to build up. I am pro density because I love my neighbors and I want more of them and we seem to be losing them because I think our local businesses deserve to thrive and grow because it's better to walk and bike to places than to drive because the state is number two in homelessness in the entire country and that's a shame because if we don't do it then who will do it? Furthermore it's simply unfair to limit and this is getting to specifics it's unfair to limit development of multi-unit housing to the downtown core and gateways. It should not be the case that if you want an affordable place to live in Manuski you must live in the busiest and loudest corners of our city. All this serves to do is segregate our neighborhoods. Changes may be hard but the alternative to change is sclerosis and that is even harder. I'm dismayed that I have to keep showing up and express my regret for the decisions and discussions that were encountered to the greed upon solution to our number one problem. That problem is insufficient homes in places where people want to live. The solution is more homes in exactly those places. People would like to live in Manuski Vermont's Opportunity City, it says right there. We should facilitate that and I understand based on his comments Mr. Warwald is somewhat maybe the rest of the planning composition is somewhat exasperated by the amount of back and forth but simply the bare minimum is not enough. I mean we've got to go above and beyond. Eliminate minimum lot sizes. Eliminate parking requirements. This city can't build on its own. We are relying on people with capital to go in and access sites and build up there and if we want the kind of multi-family multi-bedroom housing that people have expressed a need for we have to reduce the barriers that exist for that and principally that's cost. So we just simply have to make it cheaper to build in the city and we have to make it easier to build in more places. We cannot restrict this growth into a small number of places. That's all. Are there additional public comments? Please come up and if you could introduce yourself. Good evening. My name's Tom Buckley. I live on Hall Street and I'm here on somewhat different topic but the same proposed changes that you're looking at. Over the years I've done a number of volunteer things for the city of Winooski but tonight I'm here as a member of a fairly new organization the Winooski Alliance for Active Transportation. It's really a group it's a grassroots group that's trying to help move forward with the adoption and proliferation of alternatives to fossil fuel transportation basically. I'm just here on behalf of the discussion that we've had to support the changes to the parking ordinance, specifically the bike parking but I also think lace throughout the changes here are a number of positive things that will help as development goes forward to reduce fossil fuel use or at least encourage the use of alternative transportation. We're just here to encourage your adoption and thank you for bringing it forward. I know it's been a lot of work and we appreciate it. Anyone else in the room like to speak on this topic? I'll do a second call after I invite anyone who is attending via Zoom. If you can use the raise hand feature or the chats we can add you to the meeting to share a public comment about the proposed land use regulations amendments. Last call for public comments? Okay seeing no additional comment I will now close the public hearing and we will move to item B which is the discussion and potential improvement of these amendments. So, building off of Eric's table setting these changes have been worked on for like a year-ish or so by Planning Commission they do include new bicycle parking incentives for adaptive reuse for EV parking and some public transit stuff and added shared use which could provide some of like relief for development. We heard from Planning Commissioners before at the previous meeting about there not being drastic changes related to parking here in this version as they're going to be reviewing our regulations related to the Homes Act which will reduce our minimums, our base minimums and then also means we need to rethink the incentives that we have right now for priority housing so there, I think there is an option here to adopt what we have today and then provide additional direction for the work that is coming in the future or actually has just started and will be getting future changes for but open to any further comments or questions from you all. I'm concerned that if we approve this today that it will never get back on the table that we discussed building units with more bedrooms. I've heard over and over again that it's not viable because contractors won't do it because they don't make money on it but that's just not an answer we've heard from so many different angles that that's what we need in our community and that's been the one thing that I've said every time we've had this conversation. We need four and five bedroom units in our community. We have to figure out a way to get them. I think you started to make a sound before. I agree that these are far from I think what we need but I'm hoping that we can improve. I'm in favor of approving them tonight to hopefully give a little bit relief and to kind of be able to then move on to the discussions related to the Homes Act. And I think through that we can really dig into the multi bedroom as Charlie said the four and five bedroom. I don't want this to clog us getting to that conversation I think it's more my concern. I would hope that this does provide incentives but we definitely need stronger ones and I think that's the next step with the Homes Act. I agree and I'm very sorry to you all that you came here thinking that we haven't done enough for housing. I recall some discussions where we pushed for more incentives and pushed for less parking and that's where I think we've ended up in this back and forth with this document five times you said Eric or something like that. The last time we discussed this we talked about the fact that it has been coming back and forth and we do have this legislation from the state that we have to consider so I would agree with moving this forward as is but really trying to put what we want going above and beyond of what HOME does make us do for this next round of conversations and try to start it at a place where Council and the residents of Winooski are really hoping for it to be at. I would like to make a motion and move to adopt the proposed ordinances as presented to us tonight. Second. Motion by Bryn and second by Thomas. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Aye. Motion carries. Yeah, yeah. For folks who are going home you know Michael Bryan and I currently chair Planning Commission. I appreciate your comments. There is frustration I think all around on how slow these changes are coming but we have as you said Christine or Madame Mayor sorry. We have been discussing this for well over a year and trying to take into consideration all the stuff that comes with changing regulations. It's very difficult to, we can't understand how and what size properties are built. All we can do is incentivize them. That's what we've tried to do and I would hope that if someone has specific ideas that they think will help to come to the Planning Commission and talk to us instead of after the fact hearing you're not doing anything like I said.  I don't know your name sir, you didn't introduce yourself. My name is Felipe Hoyas. I spoke in favor of eliminating parking minimums and he said we're not that kind of safe. We're not what? We're not that kind of safe. I think you misquore me but this isn't the time for you and I have discussion. We can have it at the Planning Commission Thursday if you want. Okay. Anyway come to Planning Commission or send us comments with your ideas of how we can improve things because we're going to be talking about Act 47, the Home Act and how we have to change our zoning to meet that. I'm not sure, I've read through that Act a couple times and I'm not sure except for the parking minimums and densities and we are the densest city in the state, pretty much in New England. But come to the Planning Commission and give us your ideas and we can debate them and understand that you come with an idea doesn't mean that either the Council or the Planning Commission is going to adopt them. We're going to discuss them. We'll give them due consideration and we'll make our decision based on our discussions. So thank you. Again Thursday night we have a meeting, we have a hearing on the proposed changes for historic preservation cultural and archaeological things. That's it. Thank you very much. Thank you Mike. That is a good segue to our next item which is on for discussion approval. This is policy direction for Home Act impacts. So as was mentioned already this evening, and thank you all for speaking in public hearing. If that's what you wanted to do, feel free to exit. It is not rude or bothersome. But please also feel free to stick around because I think this next item is very much connected and we'll take public comment as well. Additional public comment for every item. So the Home Act was intended to increase affordable inclusive housing in Vermont. The bill created resources for construction and rehab of affordable housing units. It's intended to prioritize the needs of low income individuals, families and vulnerable populations. It also included municipal zoning reforms, lowering parking thresholds, increasing building and lot standards and permitting both duplexes and quadplexes by right. These changes impact all of the new ski. So by December 2024 when this legislation takes effect, our parking minimums will be lowered and quadplexes will now be allowed by right throughout the city. Duplexes currently already are. So this is an opportunity for us as I shared earlier the Planning Commission just touched on this at their last meeting but they'll be working on this for the foreseeable future. Here is an opportunity for us to provide some direction as they approach that work. We heard a lot tonight that I think can inform that. I invited all of you to consider what you would want to see prioritized in that work. And then I also want to invite our city manager to speak to some information that she included in the memo. So Council's role is to set policy direction and we do also have some policy direction from the master plan in terms of you know quality and affordable housing for all of new ski and which includes our larger families. My concern is that so we just hired an out just we hired a housing initiative director in May she's been getting her feet under her and working on certain things spending the housing trust fund accessibility short-term rental regulations. Things that will make hopefully a little bit of difference. What we don't have yet is the data that I think would have would be needed to inform specific targets. So if Council would like to provide direction and the other thing to notice that as the Planning Commission Chair mentioned this isn't necessarily something that you can zone your way out of. So there could be other things in fact what we've heard from developers is like Mike was saying they can't or maybe it was Charlie actually Charlie was saying they can't afford to build multiple bedroom units they can't afford to build affordable. So that's true to me it's like okay well we need to provide the money so that they can do it. We can't necessarily incent our way into it. So it could be that these changes need to be happening in other ways not necessarily through zoning by laws but either way you know there's there's some work that needs to be done by the Planning Commission to explore what the impacts of the whole Mac and what we can do what we need to do. There's other initiatives that the Housing Initiative Director is working on and she's taking input for certainly on specific ideas or trying to get creative with this problem. I'll also say that we don't necessarily have the data on what the city would be paying for to support that housing and it could be that it'd be fine. It might not be so one example is so Corley was speaking to the housing units that are not being kept up to our code right now. This is not for lack of action on our code enforcement team part. They're out there every day trying to get landlords to compliance. Is there a better way to do that maybe with our current rules and our current staff? I think we're definitely doing the best that we can. So the question is if we were going to make that system better what would that cost? We have two and a half people doing that work right now if we add, I don't know, if we add ten more units how much more work is that? Can we absorb that with our current staff? If it's a hundred more units how much work would that take can we absorb that with our current staff? I don't have the answer. And I understand that you don't want to let the perfect be the enemy of the good but we don't have enough of that data right now. We need to be working on a staffing on it this year as it's one of council's priorities for us as staff and without that I don't know what this community can necessarily afford to do and I'm not saying wait forever. I'm saying if you keep the policy direct if you inclined to do set policy direction now my recommendation is to make it more general and or open-ended so that we're not boxed into a corner when we start developing some of those answers to those questions. What can we afford? What is it going to take? What will it cost to provide the services that come with that housing? Thank you. That is our role is high you know kind of high level policy guidance. I think to the planning commission chair's point earlier, if folks have specific individual ideas that might be better shared in a different format but I would be happy to kick us off with some thoughts about that policy direction I think we can and also to Elaine's point I think what we're providing now may also provide guidance to our housing commission's efforts. So for example we know Jasmine has applied for a municipal planning grant to do some of this study perhaps that could help with research that could inform some zoning updates could also inform whether we should be looking at other ordinance such as replacement ordinance or inclusionary zoning and things of that nature so it is a multi pronged issue but when it comes to the exacting zoning I personally would like to give some direction that as we work through these changes we need to one be thinking about how to preserve existing affordability family size units and home ownership to be thinking about how much stronger incentives for those I think the incentives that we have in place now have not proven to stimulate much of that housing being added number three I would want to make sure that we are engaging stakeholders including the housing commission, the Vermont Housing Finance Agency and local builders of both affordable nonprofit and private market developers to ensure that the changes we make are functional and then the fourth thing is to maximize in support of infill so our master plan states infill as one of our strategies for growth and so we have duplex by right and now we are adding quadplex by right I wouldn't want that to mean so in theory a quadplex is cheaper to build because of the shared infrastructure so I wouldn't want this to mean that now you are putting up one structure for units but you need four times the land in order to put that unit up versus if it was a single unit development so I don't want to see any changes that are decreasing density and think we should allow these changes to actually make an incremental increase not so much that it changes the significant character of the neighborhood like I don't think we need gateway size development throughout the community but we should be working with these changes and not trying to mitigate them in any way I do okay I do worry about that changing character why is that necessarily a bad thing especially considering that we know that there is segregation in our city thinking about making all of our neighborhoods more accessible to all of our families seems like a good thing so I think that's like one of my initial reactions I'm also kind of concerned that we're going to shackle ourselves in what ifs and not dealing with the data that we are getting from our residents data is not just money, data is stories often times in Vermont we see these insignificant numbers and we can't disaggregate data because it's too small but in that case we need to use stories that's the data that fills in when we can't disaggregate the numbers and the numbers aren't always necessarily telling the stories that we need I do think there is some data that we need but one of the things we are applying to a grant to have a housing equity on it like that's data that is important and I want to hold the importance of that but also thinking about we can't hold off forever like this is an urgent thing we have been waiting for a long time and I feel like we have this really great opportunity to make a step forward and what the planning commission, I want to see the planning commission bring to us how can we maximize these changes, how can we make sure we have that and then it does come back to the council and that's a place where we could bring in additional data and that's again thinking about not just the staffing aspect but what it would, if we are able, if we get that grant what is our kind of looking at equity and housing, looking at our equity audit and housing, we already have some data too, I don't want to disregard data that we already have that feels like it's telling us that we need affordable housing I think there's a concern that I have too if we don't, if we do go with like the minimum then we're almost asking Winooski to continue to be gentrified, I don't want to see Winooski be gentrified, I want to make sure that people are able to stay here that people aren't pushed out of the state like they're not just unable to stay in Winooski, they're pushed out of Vermont entirely when Vermont needs young people, Vermont needs families, Vermont needs workers, I can't help but think of we have these understaffing concerns in some of our departments and in our school but if we had affordable housing that people can afford when they're making city staff salary when they're making our teacher salary which we know is not as high as our surrounding neighbors we're bringing, we won't get more workers to fill these roles if they can't live here, if they can't have housing here we have an issue with being able to have enough firefighters that are within a range well why don't we make sure that they can live here we say that they can't live out we need to make sure that we're engaged to be able to come in and access and make sure that we're responding in a timely manner we need to make sure that people can live here so that's one of my big concerns as we're thinking about well how can we take care of the folks with bringing in more density but how we can't even fully take care of the people like we need workers and we need them to be able to afford to live here just thinking about that and we have this capacity in the school but the school also needs workers so there's a lot tied up in there and I think I guess where I want to end with is I don't want to be stuck in that what if by some miracle a bunch of developers come and want to put up affordable housing that sounds wonderful that is not necessarily going to happen as you said we need more incentives I don't want the tax number is not I don't know that data I don't I think reflects you know a very distant what if I think with these zoning changes we need to incentivize affordable multi bedroom units My concern is that housing units of any type if we grow the amount of housing we will have to increase taxes to the point where it's the tax bill that becomes unaffordable the taxes are paying for services I just want to make that clear that that's the tie that I'm making that's why I'm talking about money obviously we don't I don't want our family to lose from here either I'm worried that we all have an unintended consequence if we choose a policy direction that is not mindful of tax impacts on affordability I appreciate that clarity I'll let council share first before moving back to public I wonder if there is a way you know as you said we set a high level policy so far high level policy is that we won't planning commission and housing commission to work on getting more affordable housing with larger units in Wynowski is it then not the role of staff to weigh that and to make a recommendation that would allow for that to happen with a tax base that makes sense to keep up our services like can we not set our policy can we not set our high level policy and then be given a policy that gets us what we need in a way that allows for the tax base to work for it so if we want no that's fine I mean and I understand you don't know but I think you know if we look at the last document the planning brought to us that took a year using like over a year to get that document to us and you need more time to get this data I would think that planning coming up with ideas off of our high level policy desires and the data that you need to come in isn't going to be that far off when they're going to be done their process if this is a year long process hopefully less but we're going off of history I just think I completely understand I've had multiple conversations with everyone about services in the city so I understand what you're I don't want there to be a case where we don't have enough firefighters which were already almost there for an added population but I would hope that we can find a way to draft that policy that gives us the taxes that we need in those areas that we're going to be increasing density and height of buildings so that we can try to provide homes for more folks that's the holy grail that we're after as staff so if you wanted to direct us to do that we will look for it when I said I don't know it's I don't know that we can get there I don't know if it's I don't know if it's possible to figure out later right if we're saying here we want the work of updating zoning to be guided by the preservation of existing priority housing which we have previously said is affordable family size and home ownership opportunity because those are the things we lack that we also want a lens of how to create more of those that those recommendations will come back to us at some point and then we need to evaluate is this the right pathway forward I don't see that we're ever going to know exactly what it costs like clearly more units means more code enforcement more fire more police the decisions we make about like community services programming are less specific or some of the other programming that we have going on you know what is the financial burden it depends what the mechanism that's created is in zoning or in ordinance right like that would inform what is the staffing required to administer it and then there's the staff recommendation to us if this is a good idea or this is not really tenable yeah I think we'd be really holding ourselves back if we ask if we don't ask for a large policy objective from the commissioners but I think what we can align to here is do we we've got this act that is reducing parking requirements and adding quadplexes do we want to see that maximized or minimized or somewhere in the middle and how it's applied right so we already getting reduced we have existing incentives do we want to see those reduced accordingly by the same amount or like percentage if we're adding quadplexes by right do we want a quad to have the same land dimensions as four single units or no I think that's where like that is the piece where I think the bigger density impact however I think we also need to keep in mind that what we set up in here creates options it's not a requirement I don't believe we're going to see a ton of folks convert their properties you know when we're talking about residential zoning district you will have some people that are investor owners or that want to add on but a lot of people just move in their home and they're not going to make a change right away it's speculation how much impact it will have right and I think you know that is a key point is that we have to set up the policy that will allow folks to do that the likelihood is that the neighborhoods are going to maintain the feel that they have maintain the reason why people moved in there but we need to be able to create the options for those things and my view is the minimum of what we should be doing and I think not only is it the minimum of what we should be doing but when we're having our discussions about the original proposal that we just spoke about a lot of us were suggesting things that go further than the home act does so I think we're already kind of mostly in agreement that we wanted more I think the other thing to keep in mind is that gateways are where we're seeing more development and so when we think about preserving existing affordability or family units that's where like there's a mechanism missing either through an ordinance through the housing commission or a zoning incentive or something I'm sorry I just noticed you raised hand yeah I mean there's no there's no rush you're kind of filling in conversation as it works out my some of my questions are related to so through this this statute I guess I just have questions right now and not and maybe not necessarily as much of a policy direction I think I'll get there as I have more clarity of what is included in here and what's not for example so quadplexes but I don't see a bedroom number affiliated like a with quadplexes so it could be four one bedroom units is that right Eric correct me if I'm wrong but I believe all the statute does is allow someone to build a quad by right that's correct yeah the statute does not is does not have any information on the number of bedrooms or the size of the units generally that is going to be set by what the market is providing and what the market is saying to the developers we have in our municipal code we do have minimum sizes for bedrooms or what what needs to be included for it to be considered a bedroom but there's nothing in the home act that would specify the number of bedrooms that need to be included in a dwelling unit that that's very helpful to know and understand so for me that that puts a flag up as a policy opportunity for us and and how we may want to consider like okay if these quad units are allowed by right are we able to then incentivize a minimum number of bedroom units with that or require a minimum number of bedroom units so again policies and policy questions that that we can discuss further I think other questions I have are so with these statutory requirements on municipalities does that remove our ability to apply impact fees so thinking about a lot of the new development happening in South Burlington and they're you know the consideration of an educational impact fee I don't know that we would need an educational impact fee it's just an example of like we have a rather large amount of capital improvements that we need to address roads, sidewalks water lines sewer etc like at what you know to what extent are we able to have some impact fees for these for development so that that does not weigh so heavily on our existing tax base and encourages that when there is this infill when there is this new development it's ready and and it's not deteriorating like it's in good health for when the new units go in and are built so impact fees is another question like to what extent not transportation since we already know that's extremely hard to access for impact fees but are there others that we can and should consider ahead of the developments going in and that infill like I certainly want to continue to encourage some of the infill I think that's you know come up in DRB and the last year or two years or so relating to setbacks relating to parking there are lot sizes that I see that that could be subdivided and is there opportunity there for encouraging more infill so those are some of the things I think about at least high level for person policy I don't know that having I think Eric you might have mentioned previously having a single zoning district no longer having a B or C but having a single zoning district I would need a lot more information before I feel comfortable saying yes to that but I'll leave it at that for now I don't believe that anything in this precludes us from exploring impact fees you do make a interesting point there about perhaps like dimensional reductions as incentives for larger units but again I think that's too in the weeds in something that the planning commission could look at in service of wanting to maximize these changes to preserve and create priority housing. Questions, comments? Nicole? Thank you. Sorry I just got to know if anyone else wants to speak please do it through the microphone. No one on zoom could hear very well. Come on up. I would suggest to that we should have run for like immediately for bedrooms and such they like that we can stop and we can start from a little bit of three bedrooms and then go up like that because we're a small city we know it's going to be hard for us to start from that and then my suggestion is I don't know how you guys are connected to juggling housing they're doing a lot of development and they can help us you know to get some of their development around I know they did one already and then they can do another two maybe it will be better but I will suggest let's not start with the four or five bedrooms start with the three bedrooms and then little by little we can go up. Thank you. I just have two questions. The thing is like I said earlier I come from this community the community is very big right and Elaine I'll just I mean again I just have a question I mean maybe a question for you. I want to know if putting a family in a three bedroom I mean in a three bedroom I mean family of eleven in a three bedroom it's a city court if you meet a city court I just want to know I mean that's one of my question I don't feel I mean that makes any sense right I just want to make sure that you guys understand me very clearly. If we place a family of eleven in a three bedroom place does that meet the city code right now the question is if a five commoner three bedroom place who's responsible for that family right so building bigger we have to make sure we think about these families right so if a file come and destroy that family I want to know who's responsible for those family does that meet the city code. That's my question John do you want to take that? John Audis fire chief director of code enforcement so specifically around the question of number of people in a space that's square four digits per person and it's you know so each space each unit is going to be different it's not you know every place is the same and that is in the city code so we experience a lot of new families coming into Winooski and there's they're helped they're housed and we don't know that they're putting a large family into a two bedroom there isn't a two bedroom that's going to with eleven people there's just no way that that's going to fit into the city code with the square footages and they're not they're not a lot of a lot in the square footages we don't go around and measure each room and that sort of thing we use that as a tool basically to help mitigate a situation it's not like we go in through our regular code enforcement pieces and we're pulling out a tape measure and telling people they need to leave the hometown and want people to feel like that but there are instances where people are housed and it's not appropriate square footage. Does that answer your question? I asked the same question about the city they said what they call city I'm sorry sir could you come up to the microphone otherwise the people on zoom can't hear you. Yeah that city code I asked about the city the same thing and they told me it's only adults to be count as a code but if a family a mom and dad and their children what I was told is the landlords scapegoat and bringing that code but I was told if family, mom, dad, if they have five six kids and they can leave in those kind of apartments I don't know about that code with one escape they have a different code that says okay this is the square foot and this is the number of people who can leave which I think that need to be changed since we have large families joining to the city if there's no many adults if there's only a dad and mom and then the children I don't understand why we have to have a code to that but I have them to live together the family. I think a few things come to mind and I just want to get to the kind of the basis of your question I think in current state and chief correct me if I'm wrong if you were to follow the code on a lot of these homes that you go into technically the families who are living there shouldn't be living there but because you're not 100% like measuring and everything you're allowing folks to stay where they live and not putting them in a situation where they need to try to find a new house that's correct it's a calculated risk if you will so we know if there's good detection good egress if the square footage is numbered as a match but we have good egress and that sort of thing then it works we do know that overcrowding taxes the buildings most of our buildings are older the infrastructure within the building isn't able to sustain that sort of overcrowding so that's again those are the situations where I use the word game day situation where we go in and obviously we want to know where the family's at and I don't recall since I've been here that we've declared a unit inhabitable or had a force to family to move or anything like that we've brought in other resources to try to get them house obviously that was easier in years previous it has taken it's become harder to get resources thank you thank you yeah I think it just speaks to again to the policy that we want to try to make sure that it's not just incentives but other factors that will enable for these larger bedroom homes to be built because we know that folks are living in smaller bedroom homes which are likely not safe I think one of the things I'm hearing from that is if we're thinking about bringing in more housing being a bigger burden on our fire services it sounds like not having the right housing right now is not only a burden on our fire services but is endangering our residents so thinking about just the way that you know having the needed housing might actually bring up make us better fitting code education piece for me to realize how bigger families how they make those spaces work in their family unit and one piece to this community hasn't talked about a lot is residential sprinklers and everyone thinks they're super expensive but that is a way to sprinkler building offers a lot more flexibility if you will and allows us to push a little more so that may be something this community needs to look at in the future as an incentive to help Felipe Hoyos I wanted to echo the mayor's feedback that we should go above and beyond what the home act is laying out that minimum lot sizes for multifamily structures should not be equivalent or anywhere close to four times the equivalent density of single family homes I also just I don't have the numbers with me either but I believe in my heart of hearts that increasing density means more efficient city services for everybody and improves affordability I just paid my utility bills and I paid my taxes and I'm under no pretense that those things are going to ever go down but I'd at least like for them to slow down the rate of increase and I do believe increasing density in the city is going to help with that I'm really glad the fire chief is here sorry I don't know your name as far as the 3 plus bedroom multifamily component goes the reason the developers say it doesn't pencil out is largely because of construction costs or at least like that's a huge component of it and I don't know what the specific ordinances are here but just from my own casual reading on the topic I do know that in a lot of places fire codes will limit multifamily construction of like single staircase buildings versus double ended corridors and I know that you are in a very conservative industry and rightly so but perhaps it's a good idea to bring you into the conversation and talk about how to change the fire code such that this type of structure this single staircase structure one of what I grew up in one in Queens in the fall they're safe they're used all over the world but a lot of times you can't build them in the United States so that reduces the opportunities for 3 plus bedroom units and that should definitely be another avenue to explore is how can we loosen up some regulations and of course like we want everybody to be safe and you should have the sprinkler systems but let's not be onerously restrictive and perhaps that can help with affordability as well couple questions I believe that the council have to decide what is your priority is your priority equity inclusive and creative unit they're affordable or your priority is how affordable and how to deal with the money and the stuff I think that will guide you simply what you need to do if you have you set up your priority straight it will tell you can we afford losing more qualified individual the Winooski parents and student project do outreach and not only do outreach but we train individuals to become leaders we invest on them and the investment that we have put in many of the individuals that we have recruit has gone out of the window out of states many of them many brilliant people brilliant people that could done amazing things in this community in this state I have trained them to go and do great things elsewhere I have recruited them to do great things elsewhere many of them I just told you of one of many in fact one of our bus drivers a women from the Somali community a women learn how to drive a humongous bus I would even dare she has the guts to be able to go from being dealing with kids I guess if you're dealing with three you can do it at all but I was so proud of her she got her driver's license and she moved that can you Winooski and the counselor can afford losing more amazing people and displacing more people like we have what are your priorities can we have volunteers we got we created a workforce training program to create more bus drivers that can feed the action that of those kind of careers and professions in place can we find more volunteers in the community to become firefighters I bet you that we can I bet you that we can find more people to help the lack of stuff that you have or create a more efficient system where you can actually have less stuff and do more by going to the you know the low income neighborhoods you all know where it is and if you don't know it I don't know where you're sitting here because that is the places those are the places where you should go and do checking on those apartments instead of waiting for them to come to you you go to them there is a saying if the mountain doesn't come to you if you don't go to the mountain let the mountain come to you because that needs to happen so I'm just responding to a couple questions but at the same time I'm asking you a question that can respond the way you should be focusing your attention the problems in the future are in the future the problems now that's why you need to resolve now whatever you do now it's going to impact many years in the future it's going to set up or be staying the way this community is right now or destroying it all together and it's not going back it's not going back the decisions that you're making right now are determinant and you know that and if you don't know it please realize how important it is because as we speak we are losing people amazing people how can we afford more of that if not let's do whatever it takes to get those units in place to set it up ourselves to actually know for the problems that we have now for the upcoming people who we need more youth people what is per month thinking that we are what is per month thinking development is the way of creating more opportunities so we can stay here we need people who are able the people who are able to come out of better ideas of how to live better or a higher standard of living somewhere else they pack and move I just I have somebody who's moving tomorrow to Miami tomorrow so it's like every minute you're wasting is more people that are leaving just see it that way based on this discussion I have drafted potential language we could vote on I'll try to share my screen here wonder for in addition to this we have our equity assessment worksheet that we put together and one of the things we have on here is that it can be used by commissions if we're requested by council we request that the planning commission use the equity assessment worksheet we also request the same thing with the housing commission the first question with our clarifying purpose is what does the proposal seek to accomplish will it reduce disparities and discrimination does it line with our strategic vision and master plan goals and does address items in the equity audit like just having those questions will be good Mayor? Yeah Brenda is that you? I'd like to add or for discussion consider adding directing staff to explore impact fees safety impact fee on the priorities and strategies I would not want to ask them to explore additional ones until our next prioritization session. I would disagree but I'd ask the other councillors what they think about exploring other impact fees in addition to public safety looking at additional impact fees to improve infrastructure related to sidewalks and roads. Oaklea for that request be better to ask the housing commission to explore those fees okay staff. Not really? Initially. I was suggesting staff. I wonder if this because I think there's definitely interest there I wonder if that's a different conversation though because this is very much focused on our commission direction we want to talk about staff direction I think that needs more input from the city manager I would agree with that and that this is very specific to commission direction in regards to the home act if we want to talk about impact fees I think we do need to warn that separately. Are there thoughts does this feel like the right direction to provide? I would like maybe to specifically name I really like the commission to look at how much land area for development could be gained by reducing a lot I know that's a little bit more specific than the general directions but I think that's something that's really worth looking at as we go into the next year or so. I believe Eric has already done that work. Can I find that on the city website? Probably not. Eric are you still with us? Is that accurate? So yeah I'm getting ready to log off to go to another meeting but some of the work has been done it is not published on the website it's mostly been used in the context for informing some of the planning commission discussions it depends on what specific information you'd be looking for it's something we can do it's just a matter of how much detail you're interested in and what specific information you're looking to get. I can email you. Would anyone like to make a motion to approve this language as direction to provide to our commissions? Second. Motion by Aurora, second by Charlie, all those in favor please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstain? Did you say an aye? Brin I didn't hear you. I didn't raise my hand sorry. Okay I have my document up still. I can carries. Thank you. I will email that language to you and the folks. Thank you again all for participation. Our next item is yeah we can but before we do the break the next item is about updates to municipal ordinance related to code enforcement. If you wanted to say but by all means I will call a five minute recess. We'll reconvene at seven forty eight. You're welcome to exit. Yes. So we are on item D which is now on for discussion or approval. Draft updates to municipal ordinance chapter nine. Good evening again. Just leading up to this this is mainly a cleanup and some updates worked a lot with the housing commission. Doing this update. Our legal has seen this. The clean copy is kind of has come out of legal. There will be a couple other tweaks. I'm not sure if Elaine wants to speak a little more to that as we've been discussing short term rentals. This draft has some definitions but there's a couple tweaks to that that you will see before or during the public hearing leading up to the public hearing. So my goal tonight is this quickly lead you through some of the changes and if you're so inclined to set a public hearing we'll go there. On page three some of the we looked at a lot of the definitions. There is a difference between a seller and a basement again we're starting to talk and realize the short term rental definitions. Guest is their host and the operator those sorts of things are in the short term rental world that we're you know you're all going to be working on in the coming weeks and months trying to capture. So we're just being proactive and putting it in this document. We may in fact have to revisit these documents as we get finalized on the short term rentals. Greenbelt again there is a huge focus in this update on our ability to deal with garbage waste, blight on the street if you will and or on properties where we're seeing things other than household garbage so we're seeing wood, cars construction debris that sorts of you know those sorts of things our previous ordinance was weak and so we're taking advantage of trying to strengthen that and give staff more tools and more resources to deal with the concerns that we've heard. We've brought into new lead law pieces the inspection repair and cleaning practices and the inspection repair cleaning practices certificate. So not only are people having to fill out certificates they're also during construction there's now a certification which contractors need to work in older buildings if it meets the definition of you know the lead law. If they're replacing windows or doing renovations so you know the state strengthened that again we're not being more restrictive than the state you know whether it's our building codes or these codes we are doing with the state adopts. Things like normal wear and tear seems pretty simple but we get into those debates with folks what is normal wear and tear so we took a shot at trying to define that on page four roof you know what's a roof and then we find ourselves in the debate of what's a roof what's an attic so again we're trying to you know define those the idea is to allow people to advocate for themselves and educate themselves you know to don't always have to interact with staff they can again go advocate and educate themselves. On the bottom of page five again you're seeing the short term rental that may in fact that language may change by the time it comes to the public hearing we're working as quickly as we can with that it's interesting to see how that's going to mesh into the not only this code the housing code but the public building registry parts of our code. On page six skilled manner is a big one that we looked at we spent a lot of time on this because how you fix something and I fix something are very different so we again we wanted to define that and try to get a baseline so it isn't me versus you we're in the code it's defined I have some we have a document that we can go to some history in the document I mean this isn't language that we just dreamed up this is a this comes from best practices in the construction building world those sorts of things. On this section page five if no one has questions actually 906 sorry service and notice of the violations you heard me say in the public building registry our ordinance previously told us to notify all landlords and tenants of every inspection by registered mail and that sorts of thing we're not resource we're not staff for that so in working with our legal the first inspection our general inspection when we go and say there's a missing smoke detector we're going to informally through our process of having our iPad and doing the inspection having the owner agent sign that inspection that's the informal notice that we've given him or her that there's a violation during a 30 day kind of correction mode if we go outside that 30 days and or we start enforcement then we would notify the tenants right because it may eventually impact their ability to stay there or it may put them in harm's way in some cases so it's kind of a tiered system in which we're going to use obviously if there's immediate life safety issues we will notify the tenants but as a general rule we're going to deal with the owner operator and go through the process questions so far I just highlighted so excuse me will I flip through the document I'm going to fly over to page 14 again we spent a lot of time in garbage and rubbish and sanitary you know a lot of property complaints and this goes to the community risk reduction right how can we reduce people's concern of public health of having trash on the green belts and then the roads and streets and sidewalks so we really focused on you know how we can give staff the resources to deal with that this does limit people's ability to leave their rollout totes on the city green belt again it defines the city green belt and city right away they're not allowed to be out the day of pickup and then they need to be put back are we going to go around the city and start writing tickets for this likely not we know our problem areas most people are very respectful and accountable for that but we have some that are not and this will give staff the ability to not only deal with the immediate concerns but hopefully keep it from happening in the future do you want questions at the end how have we or have you all discussed a minimum amount of trash cans for a unit I ask because there are some streets that I notice trash collection day where the trash is like pouring out of the few trash cans that are outside of like a multi-unit building so I'm assuming there's just not enough trash cans for the dwellings so we have not, Burlington does that Burlington says if it's XYZ unit you have to have XYZ container what I would say is this ordinance allows us if we see that happening that staff would now have the resources to require that to be picked up more frequently which would likely lead to the owner operator getting a bigger container or something like that again I just highlighted the 9.17 just because we spent quite a bit of time in trying to deal with concerns and I will, there's probably three or four properties when this ordinance kind of goes into effect that will help staff and help alleviate some valid concerns that your constituents have in the community that our current ordinance just doesn't give us the resources to deal with other than that it's really, we reformatted the chapter again under legal's advice we kind of looked at how we approach a building you know it doesn't make sense to start the ordinance with looking you know at the roof if we start looking at the foundation type just some operational pieces to help the people responsible to be able to again advocate and educate themselves. Look to me like not a ton of changes since the last time we saw it. There's not. I really want to reiterate that you know Winooski codes are not more restrictive than what the state adopts. We do the national electrical code, the plumbing code, NFPA and the Vermont rental codes so when this ordinance requires a screen and a window it's the Vermont rental code that is so anywhere in the state people are required to do that it's not enforced everywhere in the state and I think that's what sets us aside you know some of the quality of life issues and I hear that you know we must remark some days and that's you know this minimum is not hard to obtain in the right circumstances so typically there's something going on right we have an absentee landlord or maybe overcrowding or maybe the age of the building so I feel this ordinance is fair to does it do enough in some instances? No. Do I think it's a fair equitable ordinance on both sides? I do. Thanks. Let me just get the right page. Section 9.16 D looking at heating temperature requirement so I can't help but think about like a minimum cooling temperature requirement and if you know as we look at climate change and impacts on adverse impacts that heat excessive heat has on households and homes that are unable to cool adequately if there's been any consideration to have a similar requirement for the ability to cool if there's a certain temperature exceeded outside. So admittedly I've never heard of such code the state does not have such code something I can research more and try to better understand Yeah it looks like Houston, Texas has one and some other areas in the United States that do have excessive heat more on a more frequent basis but again just kind of advocating for our rental population and kind of being forward thinking about climate change and just starting the conversation of is that something that would be worthwhile to advocate for our rental population especially considering that housing quality as it is is poor and I don't know what percentage of homes in Winooski are weatherized but that those factors how adequately there's air sealing and insulation impacts the temperatures inside the homes as well so again just want to notice that in here and wanted to have the at least bring delight that having a cooling temperature may be something that we should consider in the not too distant future as well. Other questions? I sent one question ahead and this might be another one that is a little bit for the nearer future because it involves short-term rentals but I was wondering would a change in a unit from like a long-term rental to a short-term rental count as a change in use and kind of trigger that need for an inspection or are they similar enough that that wouldn't be the case? I think we're discussing that as far as with Eric with zoning and I don't know that the use will change but we're potentially talking about increase in inspections so I think that that would potentially change but I think that the use would technically be dwelling unit if I'm Eric left so I'm pretty sure that that is what the use will remain. Thank you. Any questions from members of the public? Either in the room or via zoom? Looking for a motion to set a public hearing for our December 4th meeting understanding that short-term rental language may be updated by then. So moved. Second. Motion by Thomas, second by Charlie. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks Chief. We are on to item E, non-union wage plan revision. Jesse is... Welcome. Thank you. All right. I'll keep it pretty simple. So we're looking to approve an update to the language of the non-union wage plan. The non-union wage plan was last approved by council on November 5th of 2018 and this policy is required to be reviewed every five years. The proposed revision addresses a few issues. Firstly it brings temporary and seasonal employees into the non-union wage plan. This category currently covers lifeguards so every summer since we have the pool open now we'll be able to have the lifeguards in there. It separates out non-union police employees in their own sub-pay plan. This is justified given their significantly different responsibilities compared to other city non-union employees. It relieves some payroll compression by having the step increases match those of the FOAP agreement. It addresses the concern by our police chief executive search firm that the starting pay for the chief's position would not attract quality candidates. And it adds clarity in a few other sections. This will not cost any additional money in the current fiscal year however long term this does increase the earnings potential for the police non-union positions. Thank you. Any questions from council? Thomas? In the switch, sorry, the knowledge skill and experience section we've got amounts of years of experience that are being equated to a specific degree. I'm just wondering how we landed on those years of experience and if they're well, I'll find out how first. That was in the previously adopted version of this policy. That was created by I believe Julie Hulbert and so every year of education is the equivalent of two years of experience. Have there been any thoughts about reducing those years of experience? As a college graduate with a master's degree myself, I don't necessarily know if I would have taken eight years of work experience to learn what I learned while I was getting a bachelor's degree. Could have learned it probably in two years. I think it's going to depend on the requirement. We don't have many jobs here that specifically require like a master's degree. I think mine is one of the few jobs and I can tell you that I would have needed that much experience to learn what I learned in college. Most of our jobs do equate experience within the job description as well. So are most of our jobs requiring an associate's degree or do you say a bachelor's degree? Because I get that a master's degree is an exception. I don't think most of them are either of those either. What are required a lot of them are it could be a combination of education or equivalent experience. It's not one or the other can be a combination. It can be just experience. It can be education but it's open to a lot of interpretation there. It's not a required one to have the degree. Also not required to have the years of experience as well then? No, it's any combination thereof. So if the job here required a master's degree but you had a bachelor's degree it could be equivalent. So there's no financial impact. That's summary that's provided with this agenda item. Based on our current workforce now what would the increase to the general fund be with these changes? There is no increase with the current workforce. They would slot into this current pay plan at a new step compared to where they are in the existing pay plan. So the only thing that would change is over time they have a higher earnings potential. Specifically currently our lieutenants will cap out next year at step 15. This revision to the pay plan puts them in the middle of their pay bracket around step seven or eight. So they have an additional seven or eight years of earnings increases over time rather than capping out next year and only earning COLA. So for the FY budget estimate what percentage increase on the budget would be needed to cover that change? No different than what was going to be in the proposal. I've already done the analysis. It's essentially the same year over year. There's no change to next year's budget based on this. Is there any logarithmic increases after next year? They're in a new step plan. So their annual step increases would be now set and increase. But that would be built into all future your budgets and I can't estimate how much that is because it's also impacted by cost of living increases. So no ability to forecast at all? Not at this time. I have not done any of the background information on that. For me an acceptable unknown variable like we never know what benefits are going to cost based on people's elections. We could have vacancies. We could have people with different skills and experience levels so we can't pay what we're going to pay every year. And we were experiencing a pay compression issue with these specific positions where in order to come out of the union and enter into a leadership role at the lieutenant level, you needed to start halfway through the pay scale to even consider coming out of the union. Otherwise you would automatically take a pay cut in addition to never being able to earn over time again as an exempt employee. I appreciate that you're able to find a solution for that. I think you need incentives to move into the leadership role. And also that this pulls in temps and seasonals creating more pay equity for our staff. I am generally supportive of these. I have a follow-up question. So the last comment Angela making sure I understood what you said exempt employees are now eligible for overtime? No they are not. So in addition to no longer being eligible for overtime in order to come into the non-union pay plan we had to start somebody very high in the pay scale around step nine or ten or they would be taking a pay cut. And so it would limit their ability to continue having step increases as a leadership member rather than just staying within the union. Thank you for clarifying. Does someone want to make a motion to approve the non-union wage plan revision? It's almost. Second. Motion by Thomas, second by Aurora. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstain? Abstain. Okay motion carries. Thank you. Item F, small business Saturday proclamation. Elaine are you introducing? Should I? Sure. So small business Saturday is an annual annual thing. The city of Munozki has been invited again to participate to our to demonstrate our commitment to our small local businesses. The data is set nationally so that's going to number 25, 2023 small business Saturday. And it draws national attention to the important role that small businesses play in boosting in our economy, creating jobs and maintaining our neighborhood character. And it's generally supported by downtown Munozki as an event. So we have a proclamation that was offered by the organization small business Saturday and a fact sheet there if you're interested in more data. Thank you for doing this for as many years as I've been here. Any questions? Comments? Could I add to the whereas? Or maybe include it in the second whereas, whereas the majority of businesses in Munozki are locally small businesses. I will support that addition. Any questions or comments from members of the public? Would someone like to make a motion to approve the small business Saturday proclamation with Thomas's edit? So moved. Second. Motion by Charlie. Second by Thomas. All those in favor, please say aye. Motion carries. Thank you. Okay. Item G. Legislative priorities. So last year we put together a letter to send to our state legislators outlining priorities we would like to see them implement in the legislative session. The deputy mayor and I met with both of our local state representatives to update last year's version, removing things that had been accomplished and then updating based on any new information they had. So this is a draft. I'm hoping to get input from y'all and then at our next meeting in December we could finalize and send it off ahead of the new session to help guide our representation. I want to keep in mind this is already pretty long. Maybe there's already too much here. It's ideal to be focused on a few actionable priorities to really get the attention and maybe get some action. So if there's anything folks would want to see add removed or changed, let's discuss. Brynn. Yeah I'd like to add a request to have the legislature allow municipalities to have more authority over adjusting their local options taxes. Right now it has to go through legislative review. I think there is a bill on that that was introduced in the past. It would be great to encourage that we are in favor of it. Do others support that? Yeah. Okay. Thank you. I also reorganized this from last year. We are leading with our housing priorities and what we would like to see in addition to the home act work. Particularly wanting the state to also focus on creating the larger family size housing. Then renter protections come next. I have heard that that is on the docket for action this session. And then more of like the safe healthy connected people area of focus. And then finally some things related to education. Want to make sure that the education funding formula that that work carries through is that will have a significant impact on our tax base and our schools resources. A couple things. Sure. Thank you for acknowledging that it's already very long. One of the items I think it's the first in the housing quality. Item one. I'm wondering if we really need the final sentence. About a study on evictions process. I added that in following the training sessions at the school. A couple of tenants who showed up to that meeting and then another community were talking about being endangered by neighbors in their apartment complex. And the landlord unable to get them out. I think that it's about. Yeah. I think my main concern is the issue with not paying rent. Because I feel like that's not necessarily like that could be more like a cry for help or someone who needs support. The hazard I understand. I can take that out also because there's funding to help folks in that situation. So they should be accessing that first before. I'm kind of evicting someone. So that was one thing. I think it's in the more safe, healthy connected. I was wondering with one item one on the which calls out like the language access plan. Actually sorry item two where we talk about the community media. I was wondering if there should be just like a shout out to like the language justice project as an example of that work. Check it out. I'll put it in there. I think it's a good example of some of the importance and I don't think it would take too much more words. Item three I was wondering about making it more general if there's like specific reasons why it's that but I think like there's need for more accessible and better language access for training in other fields too. I think I was specifically thinking about fire and teachers. Like I would love to see some more flexibilities and alternatives that take into account our diverse communities lived experience. Yeah, so this has been focused on the Vermont police academy because that's been a specific issue raised by our staff. We could name it like add a sentence on naming that we need flexible pathways for these other careers too. I feel I think a lot of the I'll just ask you. Most of the training that you all do for new firefighters you do that internally or is there an academy that you also send folks to. So we currently require 80 hours which is done at the county level that is not recognized by the state. If we go to fire one cert which most departments do that is about 300 hours. So for Winooski if we start paying people to go do that becomes a pretty expensive piece especially when people are staying on the average of three to five years. The payback is not all that great. So we do an 80 hour class locally and then that kind of preps people to challenge the fire one if they choose to move on and that sort of thing. We give them an opportunity to go do it but they're doing it on their own time. So at a state level that might not be their purview. I mean I could just add a line that all state certified professions should have a flexible pathway. They're hearing that certainly on the fire and EMS side. They're hearing it's not just Winooski. It's statewide. There's a huge shortage. It's not just the state of Vermont but it's across the country and that happening. When I came into the service 30 years ago I was able to do modules and get my certification but it allowed me to get on the job and it was a career path. I didn't have to go right to college. I could do these modules and work up through and look where I am today right. And somewhere along the way the state did away with that and we're coming full circle and they're hearing loud and clear that they need to create some flexibility. Thank you for that context. The one other item is more of a new one but it might already be it sounds like it might already be being dealt with at the school. I didn't know if we wanted to call out specifically thinking about civics trainings or maybe just making various civic resources more available and in more languages. Did you want to share an update on that? It is definitely something that the state has a priority on. I was able to connect the Secretary of State's office with the school district. That said, I don't know if we want to call out our support in it because it is already happening but it is happening and I know the state wants to grow the program so I also don't know if we want to add to making it longer when we know it's something that the state does want to do. Fine either way. I could add it, you know there's the commendation here on the education funding formula. I could also do efforts to bring civics education. Anyone else have any questions? Comments from attendees? Okay. Thank you. This is just on for discussion. As I said, I'll bring it back to our next meeting with these edits for approval. M.H. Finally the Burlington-Monizki Bridge Replacement Project update and presentation John and I assume multiple guests will be available. Are those taped down? Oh, they might be. Excellent. There we go. Yeah, we have an extra up here. Thank you. Oh my goodness. You don't bring the sticker? I closed it. We'll run through this a little bit. It's not much different than the public meeting that we had about two months ago so if you were there you're going to be fairly aware of what's going on but I'm going to walk through for awareness. Take questions at the end. Good. So sitting around the table with me tonight we have Bob Kleinfelter, E-Train's project manager, Carolyn Kota, E-Train's structures program manager, myself, Joshua and I'm an E-Train TV project manager. I think Judith might be online. As far as the agenda goes today it's going to be just a quick overview of where the project is. We're going to walk through past, current and future efforts that we're doing and then just a little bit on what I call project delivery, just how we're kind of putting it all together. Starting off real quick with the project location I think most people are aware where it is. It's kind of a little bit off-center to the left on the screen everybody sees with a big yellow box around it. Taking a closer look here, kind of a bird's-eye view of the project itself. We can see the bridge crossing the river several mill buildings around the area. We have a dam off to the side many different buildings on the south side in Burlington as well and of course the circulator up there just kind of poking off the screen. But to really try to capture what this project is I've tried to pull it forward and highlight it here so this is essentially the limit of the project that we're here to talk about. Might go a little bit beyond this one way or another but that kind of puts a boundary around what we're looking at. Really within that there's two focal points. There's the bridge itself that crosses between Burlington and Manuski and then we have the intersection in Burlington. We're not really talking about the intersection tonight too much. They do play together and they will be one project but our focus tonight is really the bridge. So I wanted to walk through past efforts. We're here today November 2023 but a lot has already happened. So every project goes through kind of a three-step phase in its life. The first phase of it's the project definition trying to figure out what it needs to be. For this project phase happened back in about the April 2017 time frame through May 2019 and really that overall phase tried to define the purpose and need. That's really figuring out what the project needs to have needs, what the needs are of a project and then kind of setting the goals of what it needs to accomplish. It went through head of public meeting, had project advisory committee meetings, town council or city council meetings, went through and had a traffic study and alternative evaluation and eventually came out with a preferred alternative being defined. Two reports came out of that phase. The first one is the bridge scoping report. This really summarized all the efforts that occurred to making that project definition recommendation and the second was a bridge grant application. That first one, that bridge scoping report was wrapped up in 2019. Like I said it's a big summary of all the efforts that occurred all the different meetings, the data gathering, the alternatives assessment and really at the end of that report recommended a bridge replacement. Complete replacement not reusing anything. A big focus of that report and the recommendations with a huge focus on bike pet accommodations. You'll see that over and over again and it's part of what we've been talking about too with the public. And it also got a little bit into the conceptual construction methods to try to identify what are those next steps. It didn't get specifically into looking at site impacts and specific durations but a concept of how it could be put together. That overall report also talked a little bit about what the replacement should look like. So on top here on screen we have the existing bridge, roughly 57 feet out to out. It's got four travel lanes, two six foot sidewalks. The recommended replacement is closer to 78 feet. It's not specific, it's not perfect, but it's in that ballpark. The big emphasis, that big change in that roughly 20 feet is really in those shared use paths. You can see they went from a six foot sidewalk to a 12 foot path each side. Plus there's barrier separation that adds another roughly three to four feet to the overall bridge width. The rest is within those travel lanes going from about 10 and a half feet to 11 feet and giving little two foot buffers to the sides because we're introducing a barrier next to cars and we need that snow storage, that drainage, etc. From that point efforts turned towards actually securing grant money. So a bridge grant application was prepared, which we have the cover shown here. And those obligations associated with getting the money was to improve safety, address bike pet accommodations, compliment the natural surroundings and provide an appealing bridge. So that all happens before. So we know where we're going with the project and we know what it needs to look like. We have a path forward. So now we're talking about current effort that started really back in about February or so and they're expected to last until about mid-2026. That's what we call the project design phase. So we really put the project together so it can be constructed. All the things you see here on the right side typically happen during this project design phase. We happen to be focused on about the top four at the moment. Certainly there's overlap in everything that's happening here with coordination, but the big focus is on these top four here, refining the preferred alternative, getting through the preliminary design, more traffic control analysis and starting that right-of-way process. So I wanted to just walk through that pretty quickly. We are starting to refine that alternative. As I mentioned, it is going to be a full replacement. It's going to have four lanes and it's going to have bike pet accommodations. But there's little nuances throughout that entire thing that we can change slightly. So going about this takes a lot of interaction with the public, stakeholder engagement, property owner meetings, talking with the utilities and talking with the environmental coordinators. And the little conversation bubbles you see there are just some of the things that we're starting to hear, starting to learn about and starting to take into account in the design. That preliminary design is also ongoing. So these are kind of concurrent efforts. We received a ground survey back in I think the May timeframe that really put all the different horizontal constraints and vertical information all on one screen for us to really figure out what's going to happen with the bridge and what we're really going to impact and have to relocate. The bridge and the intersection were scoped separately. Those went through that project definition phase separately. So we're looking at combining those into one project and making them merge together and work. Now we're also starting to look at constructability and impacts and sequencing a little bit deeper too to understand how this project gets put together. And I mentioned that the scoping study got into that constructability a little bit. And within that report they actually recommended something called a lateral slide technique, which is what this diagram on the right is trying to show. So if you bear with me for a second, if we want to start with the top image there this is looking from Winooski back towards Burlington. Step one would be to build a little piece of the new bridge off to the right so you can see kind of a little piece off to the side there. We'd build that little piece that would be used for pedestrians, that would be one of those shared use paths. Once that's in place we'd transfer utilities over. We would then go upstream of the existing bridge and build the rest of the bridge. It would be on temporary supports. And then during a bridge closure we would close the bridge to all traffic, maintain pedestrians on the little piece that's already built, demolish the existing bridge and slide the new one in place so the new bridge would be more or less back where it is today. But of course doing a bridge closure for say four to six weeks really impacts a lot of vehicles. So we're not taking that lightly. We are doing a lot of maintenance and traffic analysis to really figure out what's the best solution. How can we mitigate congestion to the extent practical. There's 25,000 vehicles out there, 300 pedestrians. We know we need to balance impacts to the traveling public, but also to the safety of the construction workers on site. That's definitely a necessity that's going to help drive productivity and keep costs in control. So in order to do that we are looking at utilizing a handful of different scenarios. I've got a diagram at the bottom that shows several different lane closure and bridge closure type options we are investigating to understand what's going to be the most effective methods. That is going to be an ongoing effort. In doing so of course we need to figure out how many crossings are there over the river, what are the different traffic volumes, what are their capacities and if we were to send people to one of these other locations what does that do to all the other intersections that they have to drive through to get back home at the end of the day. The most obvious detour is using I-89. It's right off to the side. It's the shortest detour out there. But that only accommodates vehicles. So we know no matter what we do we still need to maintain pedestrians on site at all times. So that is definitely a factor that's going to be in all of this. I'm showing the shortest detour possible and to end of the bridge that's not to say this is going to be the final detour especially down perhaps around the VM hospital. But we also need to look at what's happening with all these different intersections as well and see if we need to find ways to encourage people to go elsewhere on the commutes. And finally we're also starting the right-away process this kind of an evolving process that starts with just figuring out who owns what, getting all those boundaries mapped, starting to talk with property owners about potential impacts and things that we might not be aware of and then going forward from there with appraisals and eventually offers and negotiations. So this is just beginning but of course it'll take us all the way through to right up to construction. So that's a quick snapshot of what we're working through at the moment. Obviously I mentioned there's future efforts within this phase as well so utility relocation, environmental coordination and something called RFQ-RFP development which is some acronyms for design build contracting which I'll get to in a couple slides here. So utility relocation. Just a quick map off to the side here showing that there's a lot of stuff buried out there. Lots and lots of utilities. We have a pretty good handle based on record plans but those aren't perfect. So we do have plans coming up to get out there and do some test pits. We are working with Department of Public Works trying to figure out the best time to do this, what the traffic impacts are going to be and what the best bang for the buck really is at the end of the day. That'll help us better identify what's out there, avoid conflicts and avoid surprises during construction which always leads to more money. As we work through the final preliminary designs we are starting to talk to utility companies about relocation plans, construction sequencing, getting utility agreements in place eventually and I do want to point out that municipal utility relocations are project reimbursable. One of our next steps as well though a lot of it's ongoing at the same time is to get into environmental permitting and getting some commitments in place and there's a lot of different permits on this project but one in particular that I wanted to talk about was the 106th process so I'm going to hand it over to Rita for a second to talk about that. Okay, hi everyone. So I'm a historic preservation consultant and we are helping this project navigate two regulatory review processes. One is called Section 106 that's a federal review process. It's really consultative in nature and it involves a lot of public input. It involves just really making sure that a federal agency in this case it would be like a funder, a grant funder and all any other federal agencies that might be involved Army Corps that they are considering the effects of the project on historic resources and we all know the bridge is very historic very significant built in 1928 after the 1927 flood that destroyed a lot of infrastructure around the state so that process will really allow us to consider the effects of the project on the bridge which we know will be adverse because the bridge is going to be gone and then through that there will be mitigation proposed and some of that with this design build process will be kind of creating some parameters depulations for the final design to make sure it's really going to be compatible with the historic environment and also to make sure that there's going to be no unnecessary impacts to historic properties that could be avoided with certain design considerations and then we have Section 4F and that's not listed here but that is a more substantive process by which the federal agency in this case Federal Highway they're really required to select an alternative that has the least amount of impact on a historic resource we all know the bridge has to be replaced all these studies have shown that so that's not the problem it's really just demonstrating why and how this new bridge will be compatible with the historic environment and really similar to Section 106 so there will be ongoing involvement this is also you know throughout the design process consultation with the Vermont Division for Historic Preservation and they will be reviewing all of our materials and again a public process to collect feedback and that will dovetail into a lot of the other outreach that will happen. Safeways nicely into the design build contracting stuff here so I mentioned design build and developing an RFQ and RFP the request for applications and requests for proposals basically it's asking contractors to submit kind of a bid package to us to select from in order for it to move forward with construction so what is design build contracting and how is it different so design build contracting actually puts final design and construction under one umbrella one lump sum cost that the contractor is responsible to complete it also in doing so places additional risks on the contractor because they're generally better to control those risks and helps to reduce the cost to the state in doing so. Generally speaking it promotes innovation improves design construction efficiencies typically lowers construction costs and lowers construction schedule. So just kind of a quick comparison typical design bid build in which the state would go through and completely design the entire project to the point where they can hand to a contractor to construct. Looks generally like you see on screen here lots on VTrans plate contractor does construction which I know waters it down they do a lot. The little arrow down below shows kind of when the contracting would happen as well right so the state would go through and define the project do the coordination do the design and then we'd get to the contracting. Design build contracting shifts some of those obligations some of those responsibilities from VTrans to the contractor and share several others and in doing so pulls that contracting forward. It gets them to be on site a little bit faster and gets them building the project a little bit faster and you can see we're in that coordination phase. So what does this mean? I know Britt I kind of mentioned a second go with 106 but this kind of goes across the entire board. We are developing essentially a set of guidelines a set of specifications that the contractor needs to work within to complete this project. It needs to be encompassing enough that we know at the end of the day we get what we want but it provides them flexibility to be innovative with their designers they can actually use their equipment use their comfort zones their means and methods to drive construction schedule and reduce cost. But at all times we're always maintaining a checks and balance system with the contractor to make sure it's going to be a safe bridge that everybody can feel proud of. So then segueing here into the project delivery just a couple slides about the project. I kind of mentioned the schedule a little bit. We talked already about the project definition phase really starting back in early 2017 here and that project definition phase wrapped up in 2019 and transitioned into trying to secure some funding. Moving forward here you can see we're starting off this next scale of the timeline. We're in that concept design phase we are refining the preferred alternative we're still collecting input we're still doing our due diligence our design our impacts all of that's going to be used to then transition into those environmental commitments right of way and utility clearances before we can really put out some paperwork to contractors for them to bid on the project. From there we start getting into construction we won't see much in way of breaking ground until about mid to end of 27 is a guess at the moment. And then construction is anticipated to last about 2 to 3 years which would put final touches on site sometime in middle of 2030. Final site restoration plantings and so forth. And then project costs I mentioned we did get a raise grant that was valued at about 24.8 million. The total project costs including the intersection engineering everything else about it is going to be in that 60 to 80 million dollar range. We're still very much in the conceptual phase so we need to refine that number as we go forward but that's a projected number. The bridge itself is going to be split that's the upper pie chart there. It's going to be split with 80% federal 10% state and 5% each city. The intersection itself is 100% federally funded. With that I will open it up for questions. Can I ask why the intersection is 100% covered and the bridge is not? It's... It's related to safety funding. Safety funding. The different source of funding. Okay. Do others have questions? I was at the hearing that you all did. Thank you for that. Thank you for coming out with us all night. There was a very impassioned conversation from those in attendance about just the walkability and bikeability of the bridge. I know you've spoken about that. You've shown the schematics of it. I think now I believe people's concerns are when it gets turned over to the contractor. And if they try to find ways to make things cheaper it seems that it's a really easy place to make things cheaper by reducing that walkability and bikeability. So I just want to make sure that there's a way when you express what you want it to look like, that those things are really key in what you want there. It will be because we will be specific as to it will be to... I'm just going to use the term sidewalk feet wide each side and that there's going to be four lanes of traffic. Those are specific things that they will have to incorporate into their design and their construction. The typical is the typical. They can change things a little bit here and there but the project is we get our 106 based on a certain bridge width and length and it's the aesthetics and other things that may...and we're going to incorporate some of that stuff into what we're going to say it needs to...it might give you like three or four examples. We talked about this the other day and a contractor could select that the cities, both cities agreed on these five bridge railings. And the contractor can pick what they think will be the best but it's...that's the nice thing about this. One of the reasons in one thing that Josh didn't mention, design build is really critical for this project because of the raise grant. So we run a huge risk if we don't obligate the construction funds in 2026. If we don't obligate those funds on time we will lose the $24 million. So the best way for us to move forward is by doing this design build effort because it allows that final design and the contractor to be working together but we've obligated the construction funds. So it is really critical and we've had a lot of success with design build projects here in the state of Vermont. And we can be as stringent as we want with the specifications but it's a delicate balance. If we're too specific that's how we normally do business and it prevents the...like Josh mentioned the innovation in savings and cost. So it's a balance there but we're very cognizant of making sure we don't leave anything holes that the contractor is going to poke through that would result in any...like they couldn't reduce the width of the lanes or the path. Those sort of things are fixed. And there's a number of things we can fix that way and then other things like whether it's steel girders or concrete girders that's the sort of thing where we probably would leave it up to the contractor because they can... those sort of things where in the end the bridge functions the same way but it allows for some savings and costs potentially. And we will have...I mean just once we have that design consultant and contractor on board we're still going to be meeting with them all the time and approval on everything as it progresses through the actual construction all the way to the final construction. But this design team...I may not be there but this design team will always...will be part of that. And we'll also have our construction...Betray and construction staff on board all throughout and they partake in this whole design build process as well. And I think that's a big component of some of the future public outreach that we're doing. There's going to be several more meetings and some of that is I think looking to the public to see what are some of these areas where we have flexibility in that...I think one of the comments that came up was having an outlook like on the bridge, like a bump out, you know, just to kind of get out of the path of traffic and whether there's a bench there or something so I think that was an idea that came up which is certainly something as an example that we could consider or there's several other ideas that could come up but yep. That's reassuring. There are any questions from members of the public? Again, if you're on Zoom, you can use the chat or raise hand feature. Brynn? So I was wondering if VTRANS has looked into or considered the per capita cost of a split, 5% share with Burlington. I mean I know technically we own the bridge but thank you for all the work that you've done to getting the funds from the federal government and grants and from the state to support this. I'm also curious on a per capita basis what that 5% looks like for our community versus 5% for the Burlington community and if there's any additional support that VTRANS could offer to help mitigate that impact to our community. So on any town highway funded bridge project the town share is 10% for the project. It's in the state statutes. And so in this case this bridge is owned 50% Burlington, 50% Manuski. So that's where the 5% comes from. It's not based on per capita, it's not based on what it costs for this community versus your capita versus the city. It's just that you both own the bridge and it's 50%. And I think and I understand your concerns we also have communities in the state of Vermont where they have a 10% share and their population would be 700 people so their tax base is very low and the bridge project it's not necessarily $60 million but it's $10 million and at 10% that's a huge impact to those communities as well. So they don't, when they came up with this 10% share at some point it was just, they looked at the entire state as a whole and they didn't look at communities and their per capita. So in this particular case this is a a split between the two communities. Now I know that there is the Act 153 which says that if you detour traffic and close your bridge to pedestrians and traffic, if you do not use a temporary bridge, the share for the project can be reduced to, it can be split. So in this case it could be split to 2.5% Burlington and 2.5% Tumanski. However in this scenario we are maintaining pedestrian traffic at all times. So there's a cost associated with that, whether that cost is associated with building part of the new bridge to maintain the traffic it's not a temporary bridge but it's part of the new bridge. There's a cost associated with building this structure in pieces. So there is no reduction at this point. It's still I cannot say that your share will be 2.5% because we're still, we're not closing it to everything because there's a savings when you close it to pedestrians to traffic. The construction can go a lot quicker because we'll be maintaining pedestrians 99% of the time and there's a cost associated with that. And the whole idea with that Act 153 to reduce the share was to lessen the cost of the project by not putting in a temporary bridge, not staging construction. I've had other communities, I know one community in particular where I had, they were adamant they wanted the 5% share and with some of the same reasoning that I've heard around here but we just could not justify it and they couldn't get any grants, they couldn't do anything like that. Carolyn, can I ask who makes that final determination? Because the language in Act 153 is not that explicit. No, it's not that explicit. I agree. There is something else in the Act 153 and I was trying to draft something for you a few weeks ago. It was really difficult and I was trying to do the math myself. But there's another thing in there about if you're at the tax, if you have to increase your tax base to pay for that funding there's an opportunity to reduce the share. We will in fact have to increase our tax base. Well I know that but it has to be a certain number and I was actually looking at your tax rates and trying to figure it out myself to see if it was something that you would be eligible for. So in that same statement, in that same area that you found about the Act 153 there's also, I think right below that paragraph there's a little blurb about that. But I don't know if it's enough to make you eligible. I don't know how much you would have to raise your taxes for a future bond like what that number would be whether you'd be eligible or not. And I think, so one thing Josh had put up there, we are looking at several traffic scenarios like closing this bridge is a huge problem for the whole area and impacts on emergency services so I mean just because that's possible it may not be the best answer for this project and that's something we're still going through and taking a really hard look at and we're meeting with the stakeholders particularly emergency services that will be directly affected by that. I mean this is a, you know, obviously a lot of emergency services go over this bridge to get to the hospital so if that's closed that's a problem if, I mean 89 gets shut down all the time when there's accidents, right? So if this is now out of service we shut up 25,000 cars additional onto the interstate and it's closed. I mean it's just snowballs and the problem is even if we were to strike the interstate to three lanes temporarily which is something we're looking at that helps get through the interstate but as soon as you get off it whether it's in Winooski or Burlington you have nowhere to go so and all down through Main Street in Burlington we met with Burlington Fire last week and with that being divided up through UBM that's currently a huge problem for them to get through there with fire vehicles and emergency vehicles because the raised island is middle so there's a lot that goes into it. I mean we haven't, it was scoped as a closure but we're not convinced necessarily that that's the best answer for this project just potentially four to six weeks but that could be a significant impact on not only just the traveling public getting around but impacts the life safety as well so that's something we're looking at and we can come back once we have more information on that to share and there's also likely some pretty substantial cost savings with fees in the project and some of the traffic scenarios we're looking at so I mean we're trying to save money because you have a 5% share as well as Burlington the state has a 10% share of that total cost and then the federal government's going to pick up the rest but that's a huge impact on our program. The year that we're building this bridge there may be no other town highway bridges being built that year just because it's coming out of that Tom Highway Bridge program so it's significant so our idea and another with Design Build 2 is the hope that there's some constructability innovation that we're not even necessarily thinking about that a contractor might be able to do to try and reduce that cost just a lot of options. Well Caroline I appreciate it I will follow up with you next week on Act 153. I already saved the habit so I will send it to you tomorrow or Wednesday no guarantees tomorrow but we're trying to do it tomorrow when I get home tonight. Thank you. I see a hand raised in our zoom attendee list. Paul if you can bring them over please. Hello, good evening. My name is Jake Buden I live on West Canal Street. I also attended the September outreach meeting at that meeting the majority of residents expressed concerns of the safety convenience of a pedestrian, bicyclists and public transit users had been deep prioritized. My question for HNTB and V-Trans is when will the residents of Winooski presented with alt