h i get i think there's some misunderstanding a little bit about the airbnb as well um the for sure some people are getting 500 a night that's a very nice property you're staying in though and mark that's market driven um and uh i i don't mean to allow for the the way that they handle some of those properties but i'm just saying that it is market driven um and i am definitely not booked every night and i have to make choices about whether or not i want to be booked at all and um i i think that airbnb is a company um i've been treated very well by them and i think that they are a solid company in my experience they're um support guests they support hosts my neighborhood all knows that i run the airbnb i have not had any complaints my but i'm unoccupied i'm there um but i just wanted to introduce you to someone in in your community who is literally i would be on the street without the airbnb and i think that they are a good company and it would be great if we could find a way to section it for the various circumstances and if you are out of town you're out of luck i hope i got it that's very confusing all this stuff thank you for listening thank you is there anyone else okay um yes hi hi i'm amy demetruits i'm the chief operating officer at the champlain housing trust and i'm here to speak in favor of the proposed rental registry ordinance because of the importance of it for tenant protection and long-term rentals so i'm kind of shifting the focus a little bit and wanting to talk about what did you say 3000 long-term rentals in the city we see it as an important way to protect long-term tenants it'll assure that tenants have safe code compliance home code compliant homes have clear information about the ownership of their homes a place and a place to turn with concerns about the condition of their home also for neighbors it makes sure that neighbors have a have clear information about who owns the rental properties in their neighborhood and a place to turn with safety concerns i appreciated the recommendation that affordable perpetually affordable housing had zero fee and it looks like that may be changing um and and here's really where the argument is you know the the inspection is really at the heart of this rental registry for long-term rentals um and i know you haven't gotten around to kind of figuring out like what that schedule is going to look like and i think you need to really consider how to maximize the impact of those inspections by looking for efficiencies so for example and here's my argument about going back to zero want the fee for affordable housing um subsidized departments are inspected annually by a number of different enforcement agencies including housing authorities the vermont housing finance agency the vermont housing and conservation board and HUD and so you might consider accepting an inspection from another entity as a substitute for the direct inspection by city inspectors and thereby you're freeing up inspectors to inspect homes that aren't regularly inspected as part of any kind of a compliance requirement also you might consider for larger properties not requiring or requiring that only a certain percentage of the total be inspected again in the say in the cause of efficiency and being able to spread those inspections out to as many properties as possible you don't necessarily want to go into all 40 units in a 40 unit apartment building you might want to do a percentage of those but you can um require that the landlord give notice to the tenants to all tenants and then the day the inspector shows up the inspector decides which units they're going to actually see so that the landlord isn't able to sort of just fix up the units that they know the inspector is going to go into you can also then provide the opportunity for the tenants to request to be included in the inspection or to provide anonymous information about conditions or concerns about conditions that they might have one of the things that I was a little bit concerned about in the ordinance under section six where there's the definition of violations you've included in the included in their noise or unreasonably loud activities whether inside or outside that violate the city's public nuisance ordinance and here in this conversation and understand a lot of the focuses on short term rental you may be able to have um impact and control over what's happening in the short term rental but for long term rentals um the landlord's authority over tenants and ability to um control tenant behavior comes through landlord tenant law and really the only um control is through eviction uh and so it's just it's difficult for a long landlord of a long term rental to have that kind of impact on noise that their tenant is creating and yet you're also saying that it's potentially eight hundred dollars a day for each um violation so that's just something i it'd be great if you could give that some thought maybe making it more targeted to short term rental for example but overall we very much appreciate this effort and and think that it will have um impact on tenants lives and their the safety of their home so thank you thank you okay the gal with the mask on and then the gentleman in the plaid and then the woman with the green sweater oh and then sandy hi my name is an old niki and i'm a short term rental host in south burlington of both a owner occupied and also non owner occupied which is directly across the street and i've spoken uh to you guys before as well i remember so i'm um you know i've i've heard from a couple of people who live near short term rentals and not to do my own horn but none of them are my neighbors and i just want to point out that all short term rentals that are not owner occupied are not shouldn't be painted with the same brush and i think that the issue is how they're being managed not necessarily that they're not owner occupied and if you try and put those issues together and say well if the person's there they'll do a good job managing it and if the person's not there and they don't live in that house in my case i live directly across the street but i don't live in that house um they'll do a you know they'll do a bad job managing it is getting away from the issue of what you really want which is you want them to do a good job managing it and you have put in you know ordinances around sound and you can put in language around other things um like parking and you can have enforcement and people can lose their permits to do short term rentals if they get a certain number of violations and i think that that's appropriate to get the outcome that you want which is well managed properties and you don't have to get rid of all of them i am embarrassed on behalf of the owners who are you know creating the problem in the neighborhood that i that i don't live in um because i because i don't think because i think that a short term rental can be a benefit to a neighborhood and not necessarily detriment um the other thing i wanted to point out is there's never been you guys have talked i've been at a number of the meetings and you've used the air dna numbers to look at how many short term rentals there are and sure um air dna does not differentiate they differentiate by whole units but whole units include includes you know somebody who rents out there's a few months but they live there the rest of time that's unoccupied it includes um accessory apartments that's unoccupied it includes um a duplex that one half is a whole unit and the other half is unoccupied so that number of 80 or 75 that you put down to 65 includes all of those and it's never broken out in any of these discussions how many of them are actually the ones that wouldn't be compliant and those non-owner occupied ones and i think in like last year in march when i went through all of them in south berlington there was about 15 i think now there's about 20 or 25 so you're not talking about 65 that are non-compliant you're talking about maybe 20 or 25 that are non-compliant um that i mean it doesn't matter a lot because i'm sure there'll be more projections but that overestimates the income that you'll get from them on those um fees by about 34 000 dollars that first year but if you change the fee to 1500 that'll change it anyway but i just want to point out that it's not 65 it's not 80 we've never actually established the number because we've never surveyed them all you could have that number if you established the rental registry you would know exactly how many there were but i think it's about 20 or 25 right now not 65 because a bunch of those are would be compliant within the ordinance as it's currently written so those are the two things i wanted to say thank you gentlemen and my name is uh rob chinden i am a long-term south berlington resident i grew up on dorset street and i own a i own a airbnb in starksboro that was my first house little camp that i started airbnb in part time uh to make ends meet and to help with taxes and now i live in south berlington full time so i owner occupy my south berlington house to help offset taxes and expenses and insurance and all those things that we all face as south berlington residents that are astronomically high my taxes when they went up 30 i think it was two years ago when the city reassessed how am i going to make this work i'm going to renovate my house i'm gonna i'm gonna rent it i'm gonna i'm gonna airbnb it if when i looked at doing a full-term rental first of all i'd have nowhere to live and then secondly there's it's bear it's hard to even make to make it work looking at the cost of a house in south berlington and taxes to rent it full time it's it's hard to make any money and even cover expenses so so i looked at airbnb said okay i'll renovate my house i'll dump a bunch of money into it i'll do this long-term planning and and i did that and and you know i'm one of the houses that's listed at 500 a night but i don't get 500 a night all the time i've listed high so i don't have to rent it out a lot i want to be home i want to be there i want to spend time in my house but i also want to offset my 11 000 year tax bill and my you know all the other expenses we all face as homeowners so you know i look at i look at the proposals for you know three thousand dollars a year a thousand dollars a year so jeez my taxes are already 11 000 a year and it's more and now i'm gonna rent it out more now i'm gonna have to justify being gone a weekend and a half you know averaged a month or or you know what if i want to sell it this is my generational property that i my grandmother built a house in 71 am i going to be forced out of living in south berlington because you know now i spent years and years working towards this goal and transitioning to being a landlord and doing airbnb and now the town's saying well we don't want this sell your house you're gonna lose your low percentage mortgage and you're gonna get eight percent somewhere else and i'm gonna spend another two thousand dollars a month somewhere else on on you know percentage rates so i just i see the fees and i see the the town regulation pushing back towards the citizens when we're just trying to make it work we're not all big bad airbnb business owners we're not all out to make cutthroat profit i'll agree with this other lady that you know i'm embarrassed by people that have bad experiences with airbnbers i mean i i treat it like a like a it's not a full-time business but i do treat it like you know income and how do i take care of you know my guest experience how do i take care of my neighbors and most of my neighbors that in starksboro they love my airbnbers they come over for you know butter on a sunday morning everybody's on vacation they're having a great time so you know i feel for some of the residents that have issues with people speeding or not knowing who the guests are but you're gonna have that with long-term residents nobody's doing a background check on the guy moving into unit three people speed down dorsal street every day and that doesn't change because of airbnb so i you know it's i just feel like it's big brother i i feel like it's too much regulation for you know for 25 35 houses in the entire city there's there's 9,093 houses according to google and we're going to write heavy-handed regulations for 0.5 percent of the houses it just doesn't seem like the amount of effort put forth by the town is necessary i just don't feel as though it needs to be regulated uh you know something you guys were talking about earlier was decoupling the short-term rental from the the the rental registration and it's frustrating once you go down a path where you put a bunch of work in and you and you have all the meetings and talk you just want to keep going and just get it done get a project done now just go on the next thing what else we got on the queue maybe it's not a bad idea maybe it should be decoupled maybe maybe instead of racing to regulate it's just well we're not ready yet let's just show that it only affects 25 houses maybe it's not the time so um you know i've just unfortunately i'm late to the discussion here um somebody actually one of the homeowners reached out to me on airbnb i said hey there's a city council meeting come like oh yeah i better this is gonna affect me you know what if i what if i have to sell my house that's scary um so unfortunately i'm late to the discussion but you know i hear some of the concerns that you know you have about smoke detectors and co detectors primarily for the rental registry and you know there's ways that those things can be self reported if you get your you know you want to take a video on your phone and send it into the phone number and somebody in the in the regulatory body can say yep okay they walked in from their house and there's an address and there's a smoke detector and there's a co detector you're good we don't need you know some regulatory body walk in to every single rental it just it just seems like it's just too much and i just don't see i don't see the need for it i just don't see the need to continually regulate and overregulate to the point where now we're trying to pay for the regulations but now the regulations can't feed themselves now i've got to over you know charge our residents more money and i just i'm sitting in the back row going is it necessary why do we have to raise all this money why do we have to do the regulations at all it's just it's it's frustrating on on my end and i'm sure a lot of other peoples as well but you know i think at the end of the day the air b&b owners we're not sitting on a gold mine we're not out to make cutthroat profits some of us are out to keep our property and to not be taxed to death sir well thank you appreciate that thanks and then um the gal and then sandy and then vince is there anyone after that okay you want to take a break after you yeah okay since you're already up there we're needed um well thank you for this um for all the work and effort everybody's been doing on this issue um can you tell us who you want oh yes norah sanicle um south berlington um laura hill orchard neighborhood so i wrote um an email earlier to the to the council with a focus mainly on um uh long-term rental and just keeping the focus on some safe on safety right and not backing off on um keeping that in the forefront of people's minds and some of the discussion tonight has i don't know where it's going to fall in terms of who it affects but i do want to just put up another plug in for funding safety upgrades whoever ends up on the registry for long-term rentals and funding safety upgrades some of them may be um not super expensive but might be meaningful to that person renting and some of them are going to really save lives so i um i just want to um put a plug in for that and so it asks for people's support um the other thing that um and this is just every other issue was already addressed tonight but i just also want to put up um support out for some education on what the safe housing look like um i think um that can come in a variety of ways we've already mentioned it um around putting FAQ on different websites we can do workshops i think i think there's just even simple things that people don't realize or don't know that to ask for or don't know what to look for right if you haven't rented or haven't rented a lot or i think education is really going to be important both of tenants and and of landlords and it was an education for me and i thought it was honestly quite helpful and and i don't feel like it's i don't feel like it's undoable i think part of what i'd like to see around education is like this is what that just give people facts because right now it all feels very overwhelming to people the change feels overwhelming but i think if you just simply get the layout okay this is what you need and they might realize they already have it um and they might realize things that they don't have and that those things can be repaired or fixed so thank you thank you very much now i think we have three more four more four more i mean it you know people keep thinking so we're going to take a um five minute break thank you so i'm going to call back to order the south brilington city council meeting of monday november 6 2023 and and listen to the few final people who would like to comment on the residential rental ordinance understanding that when we go forward they'll be another time to bite this apple but we can um hear from you tonight so i think the next one up was um sandy and then vince and then you too is that it oh no and ryan okay so there's five and then i think everyone in the audience is spoken so okay make it brief please we've heard a lot this is i'm sandy duly i've lived in the city maybe 50 years at um this is a totally new subject um and it it may sound like it's not important but i think it's really needs to be checked out on page two it talks about one of the areas that would be exempt or not considered rental units includes congregate care facilities that is a very broad heading in our regulations that includes congregate housing now i know of three apartment buildings in the quarry hill development that i participated in the drb process this was john dinklage long before kim and others that are were permitted as congregate housing they essentially are apartment buildings for older residents that have a community room they live totally independently these are private their own unless they've changed ownership they're owned by cupola golf coursing which is part of the delori family um i do not i do not think you intend for them not to be counted and i also think there are a lot of them around the city i communicated with paul connor and he couldn't he said it was he he essentially said there is no count of how many buildings are congregate care in the city you'd have to go through the addresses um the incentive for developers to use to especially if they want to serve older people and older people need housing um the incentive to apply for a permit as congregate housing especially if it's part of a larger pud is that the units do not count in the density calculation and and so there has been an incentive for um that means you can put more units in a on a specific um size property lot my concern is two fold one is that you are exempting essentially apartment buildings for older people private some there may be some affordables that are permitted as congregate care and that it's not your intent not to have them included and inspected and the safety things the second thing i'm concerned that that 2,500 number is not good because it probably includes those they're probably at least close to 100 units in those three buildings that are in my backyard um and and so i i'm virtually certain there are more congregate housing um buildings permitted in this city that if they continue to be exempt they won't be paying 150 dollars per unit um and i think it's far more than 100 so i i just want thank you you to accomplish what i think you want to accomplish and i want you to get the money that you think you're going to get okay duly noted thank you sandy hi my name is vince bouldock and i'm a member of the affordable housing committee but i'm really addressing you as a individual citizen um i have um two goals in mind two two issues one is to save the city budget as much as possible let's be efficient and the second one is to reduce um inspection fatigue as much as possible um i can imagine what it would be like to every year um have to go through inspections um especially if i'm in one of those 900 affordable units that as amy referred to i've already inspected by some other different form of organization and they get another letter saying we're going to be doing an inspection sometime between eight and 12 and you know next thursday please be home and you have to take a day off from work um that's that's just exhausting and some of it seems redundant and so um i sent you a letter uh this this morning i thought i'd sent it before but let me just recap uh what it says in order to lessen uh fatigue and save on the budget let's make as much use of scientific sampling as we possibly can especially in the multi um multifamily units which a lot of the rental units are we really only have to inspect a percentage of them every year and we certainly don't have to do all of them for a for a couple of reasons one is they were all built at the same time within that unit of 40 or 100 and they already have some form of professional management working on them so i don't think you know so it'd be easy to just do a sampling of them and sampling as you well know i'm not reminding you of i'm not saying anything new just reminding you how valuable sampling has been since we started using it in the 1950s the department of justice uses it all the time the crime statistics we get are based on based on samples the numbers we have in a number of smokers alcoholics people with people with uh with cancer drug users that's all based on on sampling the department of labor uses it all the time for determining inflation and unemployment rates and they use tiny samples probably less than five five percent on all social surveys use sampling and they use samples of less than than one percent the uh uh political polls all use sampling of very small uh samples as as well um yeah yeah and i heard a cynical comment made about that by you're probably right but at least they're close within a couple of percents um industry uses it for quality control all the time they don't have to test every product coming off the assembly line they just do one one out of a thousand the census uses it for determining the uh the even the the population uh in the inter sensual uh years family income um housing housing value uh income family size fertility expectations uh what we know about uh computer use in this country is all based on samples so anyway i won't go on those are just a few of the obvious things that we use sampling uh for uh you know if you if you find as a revenuers found a vat a big barrel of a liquid in the warehouse they didn't have to drink the whole thing to know that it was moonshine you just need a sip sometime and uh the same is true for the same is true for this so let's use sampling as much as we possibly can save a lot of money save staff a lot of uh effort reduce the fatigue of uh over inspection it just makes complete sense that's that's my only purpose thank you okay and that's what we tend to do i think that's no we aren't going to do same oh okay thank you um yeah okay hi my name is christie i'm owner occupied short term rental i live up on dorset street and um i just wanted to give a little perspective because we've been talking about how much people are charging for their airbnb's and things like that and people always ask me you know now that you have your airbnb can you retire this year i've made eleven thousand dollars that's it and it slowed down i have no more for the rest of the year because it's basically from april until about october that will help me pay for the improvements on my house because my house was built in 1806 so every time i turn around there's something else i have to do to it so it helps me to stay in my house to take care of my house to upkeep my house do i want people staying at my house no i would rather have my whole house to myself but this makes it so that i can continue to live there and take care of the home the way it should be and when it comes to inspections i understand our houses should be safe it is safe enough for me to stay in it so it should be safe enough for people to also stay in my house but some of those things that improvements that would have to be made would be more costly than what i make each year so it's just something to think about that we're all not making 500 dollars a night we're not all booked all the time we have a limited season for the most part and a lot of people that stay there like uvm parents and things like that so it's a good service for the community for people to be able to stay in my home and it helps me out as well so you know just something to think about that we're all not getting rich off of our short-term rentals so thank you thank you yes you and then ryan thank you good evening um dealing with a little bit of laryngitis so i'm going to be brief because of that uh my name is daryl cambell my wife and i uh own a home in south burlington and we've operated a short-term rental for the past 14 months i do want to echo uh gratitude and thanks to the council for your consideration of this this is a tough issue and also to you uh steven and jesse for your work on this uh first i want to express very strong support for the creation of the rental registry for long and short-term rentals uh i was at the august 21st meeting online and i stated this then uh wholeheartedly agree that ensuring compliance with an accountability for adherence to codes uh is vitally important and i think the rental registry is a very effective way to do that the current draft gets this 100 right when it comes to running a short-term rental and you're hearing this tonight most of us are small independent operators people who use the income so that we can live here raise families and in the case of my wife and i so that we can retire here to be with our kids and our grandkids i'm going to retire we're going to retire in four months and this is where we want to be this is where we've always wanted to be i lived in vermont for 23 years until i relocated and now we're coming back and yes that makes me and my wife the evil dreaded out of state airbnb operators right now but i would just encourage council to consider that there's always a number of different stories the reasons why people are doing this we are not real estate developers we are not corporate conglomerates we care about this community we love this community and we intend to work here to be here to work to make it better this conversation has been initiated at least in part because of the housing challenges in in the city um i suggested to council that that there was a way to create balance and meet the long-term goals without imposing any disproportionate burdens the current ordinance as it is now drafted i think takes a very significant and a meaningful step in that direction we appreciate the recognition and acknowledgement that existing short-term rentals can have a place within the scope of a sound and reasonable long-range housing plan there's a requirement that was added an existing non-owner occupied short-term rental property would no longer be allowed to register as a non-owner unoccupied short-term rental once its ownership is transferred or sold we think that strikes a very reasonable balance that makes sense um then some discussion about the fees certainly notice the thousand dollar fee and now it's i guess 1500 um i i think there are a range of opinions on that issue probably but uh i don't intend to argue that understand the rationale and and it makes sense uh to uh to impose a fee like that especially for what it goes to i want to note one requirement then i'll close i think is particularly vital and i for one i'm really glad that it's been included it goes to some of what we've heard tonight um there are indeed some residents in the city um you've heard from several of them tonight back in august and probably in between meetings as well that have some really bad experiences being neighbors of uh of properties that are utilized as short-term rentals excessive noise unruly behavior we heard a lot of that uh but i can tell you that that is extraordinarily disturbing for folks like me and my wife who run a sound good respectful short-term rental we care about our neighborhood we take care of it we have a local property manager who helps us out and i would dare to say that that is the majority of owners i understand that those things still happen though and that that's a problem it really stinks if you have to experience that but here's what's important about the ordinance as it's written under section six and seven of this version of the ordinance entitled violations and enforcement uh respectively the city would now have the right to impose not only some pretty stiff fines but to revoke or suspend what would now be a required registration of short-term rentals for anybody who allows that to happen uh and given that all short-term rentals would have to be registered uh that would effectively put an end to the problem if it is appropriately enforced that's a solution that doesn't exist today and it's an important one to put into place um those of us who don't allow that to happen who take good care uh we act as good neighbors we pay close attention to what's going on in our places i think you would find and we'll find a great deal of support for that in particular in the ordinance in general so in general um and in conclusion i just want to voice my strong support i thank you all for your work in creating what uh at least to me appears to be an overall fair equitable and effective um ordinance to achieve long-term goals thank you for your time appreciate it thank you ryan clean up batter here i'll lower this because i'm short um ryan doil i live in the brookwood neighborhood um i like the progress i've seen in this since the last meeting and andrea's amendment i think was really good to um we get down with these last four speakers like daryl christie and and rob who are whereas we're getting a little closer like this gray area of making sure that what we're writing is kind of protecting this flexibility and housing and affordability and so i just want to try to throw some more highlighting to that and i fit into that category as well i don't use airbnb anymore i just used furnished finder um it allows you to make sub leases so i don't have to you know pay extra fees to airbnb and i'm very unlikely to get a short term renter um but in the case of trying to do that for travel nurses i might have a gap that's three weeks long and still need to make some value out of that spare room just to help cover the costs and so it does get a little bit messy with you know how much are people using airbnb for their listing or not um and how much short term renting they're doing compared to long term renting the the mode figure for the spare room that i rent in the out of the house that i rent on airbnb was 35 dollars a night and that's the mode right so you know somebody books it for six weeks and they get some kind of a discount you know that's really nice i have more consistency i want to charge them less um that's really different from you know the people with fancy houses who are charging people a lot for a couple of nights and i think a lot of these people who also do it in their own home i think like christie said it's not like always fun having people coming in out sometimes there's a great novelty and joy to it um but it's really just try to help meet those costs um and there's also people in this community who rely on it i've had i think 13 or 14 people stay with me for anywhere from three to 20 some odd days because they still had to work or go to school here but their lease either hadn't started yet or had already run out and particularly when we look at people in that grad student range um or just young adults who are still here after college jumping into a hotel situation can be really cost prohibitive um even like the anchorage in which i think is always the cheapest place can still be very expensive while over a hundred dollars for kind of random nights and of course during peak season you know more than 200 and that's the cheapest place around here that i know of so for people to be able to slip into sort of unfilled spaces it's important to keep some of that flexibility in the short-term portion of this document um setting that aside and looking at some of the long-term things um i want to echo some of the other things like norris says about safety um i'll just use my own example of um you know who's responsible for changing the filter on the furnace and what merve rating should they replace that filter with and how often right if you're in a rental situation that's not necessarily a multi-unit with a very set h-back unit um you know you get into these questions of a landlord might never replace the filter or replace it with like a merve five or something like really cheap and so as we get into something like long-term and what is really you know affecting health and safety is getting into a little bit more of these details that make sure that like as norris says there's education to the landlords about being a good landlord but maybe even codifying some of what is a good landlord so that things like filters which greatly affect people's health and obviously will affect the people who can't afford to own uh very specifically um and there's lots of little examples i can send to you in an email i won't take up your whole time with my three pages of notes that i took but um i wanted to sort of keep this ball floating when you look at the long-term side of things and the outreach of how to make sure that the landlords in this town can be the most effective landlords they can be that really help all the people renting be as safe as possible um in ways that are helpful and less um focused on necessarily just the infrastructure like the um fire alarms but the lots of extra subtleties of safe and healthy housing thank you thank you all right one for follow-up make it brief please well we're going to be here a lot later than you no i had two other big topics i understand that i do apologize but for people concerned about the uh the renter retribution the retribution from landlords to renters if they're complaining about their apartment you know the water's not working the smoke alarm doesn't work um they're uh one can understand the problem with sampling because they might not catch those and renters are oftentimes reticent reluctant to approach the landlord certainly not a second or third time for fear of retribution so in the model of sampling say we do 10 units out of 40 in a building um what i think would be an easy way uh around that would be the city sends out a letter saying uh we're going to be doing your building next next thursday we're going to be selecting uh 20 units and before we select those uh if anyone wants to be sure to have their apartment looked at anonymously send us a letter and we will be sure to include you in those 20 and so the person is completely protected and yet you're still using sampling thank you thank you so is there any other thoughts people have yes and i'm going to be quick um so listening to this whole conversation i think where we arrived at was addressing some of the community concerns but not all i'm going to suggest something um which makin suggested earlier was similar which is a sunset so um which is a halfway house between everyone what everyone wants you know maybe a three-year sunset a four-year sunset but at least the neighbors by the lake know like they can count on it right 2020 something this nightmare is over and the other folks have a number of years to you know figure out their lives and you know figure out what they want to do with their other unit and we you know it's not a perfect solution but maybe it is a solution i i support that um i also want to thank uh sandy duly who always points out stuff that i wish i had i had noticed for the congregate care facilities that's where my great-grandmother lived um and where they did not have working smoke detectors um and i want to say that a lot of the language under section three and goes all the way down to three that c one and then roman numeral three um that there are six months there's language about six months and that comes back um later uh in the uh existing short term rental unit that is not owner occupied tenant occupy with permission of the owner there's a six month more than six months so i just want to make it clear if you own the the the home that you are renting out even on a weekend from time to time or a room from time to time you you will remain um under the um the annual fee as opposed to the um kind of the the existing short term rentals by existing short term rentals that refers to more than six months am i correct in that what does that six months have to do i believe the six months you're referring to in the section you referenced is the if you discontinue the use as an existing short term rental you basically lose your grandfather's status um so you'd have to comply with all the other requirements for a short term rental so for instance if you are non-owner occupied and you have a short term rental and you discontinue your short term rental use for a period of more than six consecutive months you no longer can register as a short term rental so how about the owners who say you know in order to pay my property taxes i need to rent out my house for let's just say eight weekends per month per month per per year i'm sorry that's i believe the six months uh requirement that we're talking about only applies to existing short term rentals the ones that are non-owner occupied or non-tenant owners are occupied if you are an owner occupied and you rent out your rooms um and you take six months off that you're still allowed to you still meet the requirements of the ordinance you just you never you don't fall into the grandfathered status of an existing short term right very good i i want that to be clear to people here who are who have been coming forward and saying you know i'm doing this to pay off my my property taxes if you live in your property um you you fall under um you would not lose that that ability that right that status i just want that to be clear i i i have to say that the argument um that the residents on austin and and the the neighboring streets bring forward about commercial versus residential that that is quite convincing to me and it would break my heart to vote against the rental registry um but i i feel that if that argument has has merit that for us to allow commercial to to exist potentially indefinitely in in a residential area um is i mean indefinitely for the people around them i i have a problem with that i do have a problem with that where people find themselves in a resort area so i i am a favor of sunsetting and if three years four years is something that is is is palatable i i that seems like a reasonable time to me but it will allow people to use their their homes in a way just like we said here if they need to rent it out while they're living there you know that that's something they can do so to pay their bills i think we have some direction which is great thank you so but i don't think we're ready to mourn our first reading it so i think we need to bring this back to you one more time with what we've heard tonight um have you provide additional comment and then mourn our first meeting i guess the only i i know you want to move this i do i see three heads nodding towards the sun's i mean the sun's okay all right yeah all i needed i did i saw two but i wanted to make sure i had at least three no but i do think we have in place um some certainly if you are sort of scoffing this and you continue to rent your house to people who are noisy or don't follow these rules you can get your ability to be an airbnb in vermont whether you live in texas or florida is revoked or can be so i think there is there are several ways to get to the the um well that you you almost won't need a sunset because they won't they won't have a license to um rent their home as a bnb and if they can't make the you know $80,000 a year whatever it is on on the waterfront um they'll sell it but we'll have a way of providing relief even during the sunset period yes i think we will you know good relief because that's where you hit them in their pocketbook one quick question yes so the grandfathering and the sunsetting is for existing yes what's keeping people from buying no well how does that address your commercial concern well i think the other piece excuse me is we really need to have um the um planning commission or look at some okay um ldr's that make a distinction between well no going forward it's going to be limited to owner occupied it'd be prohibited on any order we're only talking about the right right going forward this becomes an issue so you'll be able to have some but but the owner occupied is not actually the problem it's the right out of strength right okay super and the sunsetting we're talking about as i understand it is only on the existing short-term rentals it's not on the right regular short-term rent right right okay great and there was also amy dimetrovitz how do we pronounce her name say it again dimetrovitz dimetrovitz where she said that the tenants being penalized $800 a day for noise that that could be something that we could um modulate moderate make more moderate for the long-term rentals as opposed to the short-term rentals i thought that was reasonable okay thank you you're not back to square one it's just a few thank you gentlemen thank you that's why we pay you the big bucks guys okay um moving on to item 11 the draft of the climate action plan so while these guys come and get set up yes in four years the um standalone air b and b will cease to exist in south berlington okay so they could be a long-term rental or something okay let's move on climate action plan just a few table setting things so just as a reminder last fall you adopted a climate action plan we committed at that point to do three implementation plans this is the second one we are bringing to you we had received a grant to do this one put out an rp could not find a consultant there was not a responsive consultant to that rp so we redirected um some of lue our energy project manager's time to put this together and nick um our one of our city planners was very helpful in doing that so they are here to present this in advance the f y 25 budget conversation it was great those uh those of you who have seen me present before you'll recognize that these are not my slides uh fellow named andy bermdahl who was doing a community outreach force on a regular basis put them together and they look a whole lot nicer than anything you've seen from me on the agenda uh very quickly uh these are the things we're going to go through i won't bother to read them off and we'll just click along so let's go to the next one um the climate action plan that you all approved over a year ago now set up a target based on 2019 baselines um they are rather aggressive targets as you can see the point that i want to make with this slide is that the data that was used to put this together is we've very definitely defined we know exactly what it is we can refer to it at any time and what we measure in the future will coincide with this so it's not like there's any fuzziness at all about it um and so forth so the state is all 2019 2019 the year was picked uh and this might have been discussed previously to be before covid so you wouldn't see the impact of covid isn't it in the thing yep yep as you can see the the target numbers are pretty challenging uh where we are right now um the target is uh 95 percent reduction by 72 um right now i i can look at where the technology is and where we can get reductions and out of the 1431 metric tons of stuff that's coming out of exhaust pipes and chimneys i can identify reasonable ways to get rid of about uh 900 of them that leaves that's almost 70 percent but it leaves us some real challenges to go for total by 2050 yep yeah just right now i can see that sometime we can do that when we do it is a matter of funding and so forth but the technique for instance i include in that like an electric pickup truck okay when will we replace the whole fleet don't know but electric pickup truck is in the foreseeable future you know it's gonna happen yeah we'll get we'll get into a little bit more of the timing in just a hundred years old when this happens i don't know why i'm worrying about this it's a long time away so forth anyhow live to see this i don't know yeah um someone will thank you for it well we hope yeah um another point that i want to make is that we took a look at how much money was in the cip in fy 24 that would cover this kind of activity and it covered almost 80 percent of it so it's not like we've got to start from zero and build up to fund all the things that we need to do um the last point on the right hand side of part of the slide is that everything that we've got to do involves equipment that's going to be replaced at least once and many times twice between now and 2050 so if you miss it tomorrow you got a chance to get it sometime later on not saying that we want to but let's look at the plan itself very quickly um this is an outline and we put together and the things that are kind of uh tan light i drafted something real quick that was easy to do we're ready to go we'll tweak the words and so forth the real catch is right there in the middle what are the planned actions that we we need to do so uh let's let's go ahead well let me let me talk procedure just a minute data collection we've been doing that since i came on board which was before 2019 uh status reporting my suggestion is that council get a briefing twice a year once kind at the end of the fiscal year another time this time of the year so it rolls into the budget cycle and hopefully we'll get into a mode where the cip and this plan just dug together and keep going and we're working hard to make that happen real soon um and plan updating this isn't a plan that make an aisle finish up in i think next couple of months and there it is every time you have a review it all to get looked at it all to get changed as we go now let's look at where we are can i say are you are you gonna what are you gonna talk about staff engagement pardon me staff engagement were you gonna do that here no we'll get we'll get there we'll get there no carry on no no problem where where are we right now uh up in the upper left hand corner the city started this work a long time ago you know it it's not something that just started a year ago or something like that we we've done some major things the solar arrays the thermophilic digester that's going to come up again in the discussion because it's a major problem to change it but led lights i put the word everywhere up there if somebody gives me a call and say hey there's a light that's not led we'll get somebody to go change it but there are very few left that we know about it um but since 2019 of the 1431 we've taken care of and i got to look at my numbers here 160 of those we've gotten rid of just building market street helped out quite a bit and the fact that gmp was declared to be um fossil fuel year 2020 uh that helped a lot but other little things um police types hybrid police cars uh just a couple they're buying more uh and an idea that came up just about the time we started this thing was let's get get it so that the people in fire station two down on Holmes Avenue can do up on uh Shelburne road rather than going all the way over the patching road that saves a thousand gallons of diesel fuel a year so um yeah so where are we going in the next couple of years we're going to move around this this graph and to your point about uh when does this happen taking a look at the budget and i'm going to show you a spreadsheet and a couple of charts that says that it looks uh like we can get about halfway around the circle or halfway to the goal for 2030 in the next by 23rd we aren't going to make there we'll be short by a little over 300 times the average cost to do that above and beyond the cip looks to be about six hundred thousand dollars a year where we are right now um i can go through the things that we're going to do you can you can read them uh and in the interest of time i'll just move on down at the bottom why can't we get there faster two major problems getting people to do the work we've gone out on quotes they don't come back etc we've got grants out you folks have approved to go for the grants we've been awarded the grants one signature went in in april just found out today that oh yes tomorrow or wednesday i forget which there's going to be a webinar to tell us how to fill out the application that we need to fill out to send in to make it go forward that kind of stuff is just eating this stuff alive the uh the the second part of that is again we're going to replace these things if we bought a piece of equipment two years ago with a 20-year life i don't think we as a city want to go buy another one to be a little bit more efficient we've got to keep those things in mind so so where do we go after 2030 that moves moves you around the red line down there on the bottom shows you where the 2030 target is um i've done a little bar grappling over on the right hand side if you want to march down and where that fits time wise i don't know before i get the question over on the left side it says 70 confident of meeting the goal in 2050 jessie was right on that real quick i'll tell you the same thing i told her i looked up at the sky i reached in my pocket it's a best guess but what i've been following and it's not just me all the department heads are looking in their areas and so forth and what has taken place in the last 25 years i feel pretty confident that we ought to be able to get awful close to that when it happens now why can't we the thermophilic digester is almost 300 of these metric tons that is a very big investment that's a city made 10 or 15 years ago it is the most environmentally friendly system of its kind in the state that's natural gas look it is running on natural gas it is the biggest natural gas user by far matter of fact i think it's around 60 percent of the total in winter and it's like 90 percent of the total yeah if you got to keep it up to 135 it takes some stuff but and there are ways to change that system but it's another 10 million dollars to do it and you might not produce the same quality sludge that we do now and if we have to ship it far away you're going to have diesel diesel gas four times as much as we're doing now because we produce the best sludge in the state right now yeah well that's the word around well we should check out our biosounds the city the city made a major investment and we we've got to be very careful about how we treat it then maybe we can do some things with it the diesel fleet is another issue i am convinced that there are a lot of diesel vehicles that we have now that could be replaced with electric vehicles but they are special to units we almost had a street sweeper come up for a demo a couple years ago when they had a mechanical problem in the transit vehicle uh adam is planning on having a front end loader come in in the next week or two he's trying to make that a ring why can't we look at a biodiesel and renewable diesel and maybe adjust some of those engines to run on on on solely on that is certainly an improvement that we ought to look at and there's there's people that we're working with with roman clean cities coalition that are big into that okay and so forth but it doesn't it's a little bit and when we when we need that much one problem is distribution in the state uh and so forth and then there's other certain kinds of heat that we're using particularly in the fire engine bays and in the maintenance bays and the technique that's being used now is the best anybody knows about and nobody sees anything on the future so i'll put that on the list so um overhead tubes that have a gas fire in it that gas fires down the tube and it radiates down yeah and uh raised a question with several people and you know yeah get your shields on your lawn chairs so forth so um let's take a look a look at the funding numbers that i've used just go ahead and move it on yep um that's the spreadsheet that we put together i can't read the numbers from here it's uh it's actually it's actually two two sheets and i hope that what you got in your pocket you can read if you have questions uh but let's let's go ahead and move on to the next one and down there in the bottom is then the uh the numbers that uh were were put in the the cip and the comparison to what our numbers roll up to uh and so forth um so those are in millions right everything's in millions i understand you folks talking millions over five years pardon me yeah yeah yeah or five six years nine over five years with 14.6 and a current cip yes difference of 3.3 million that we need to come up with oh okay and the beautiful thing about what lou and nick have done here is build this align to our cip so we can overlay it on top if you are interested in a budget proposal aligned to this we can layer it on top to see how we adjust our current cip to achieve these goals yeah for instance if you buy a new police car and you buy one without any environmental things it costs a certain amount of money another 15 grand gets you a hybrid and those kind of deltas we can isolate okay there's the cip cip capital action plan also addressed the desire to increase renewable energy you've heard me talk over a couple years about the water turbine i won't go into that again solar arrays did a quick look uh using google earth identified 13 sites and since then found another one that's probably bigger than any of the ones on the list but that potential looks like it's almost twice the solar capacity that we have on the roof so we're certainly gonna be looking at that key thing is part of the bay renovation there could be all new buildings new rooms line them upright and there's a lot of space there when we have the restrictions that you've heard about before about being limited as to how much solar we can use through uh i want to say rebate that's not the right word net meter thank you and so forth the state is been looking at that uh several of us on the energy committee sat in on a state sponsored meeting last spring clearly it's being discussed but it ought to be encouraged to do something about those limitations if we move heavily into solar we're net metering into the school system right now it's a good thing to do we'll have to be careful about how we do it and the school was looking at doing some solar work themselves and so we got to we just got to make sure it all meshes together nicely i would point out however that renewable electricity doesn't do anything to get rid of greenhouse gases but it's the right thing to do we will move forward with it we went out to a bunch of people i think we've talked to almost all the employees in the city um got ideas from a whole bunch of people i've got a spreadsheet that lists well over a hundred replies a lot of more duplicates variations we picked out some of the big ones here to put on the list and we call these policy considerations they aren't direct dollars and cents some of them are things that we do already and the point that i would make to myself and to all of us is when we're doing these things we need to tell people that we're doing them so that they know that we're working the issue because the whole reason for having this government operations thing is to be a leader for the rest of the community so what are we doing right now actions underway my next list is to get a written report uh this is not really a draft this is kind of a summary of the draft or let's just see what would be in a draft but to get a draft together and i think uh we ought to be able to take care of that in the next couple of months um field mowers we've had three demos over the last five years adam tells me every time they come back they're a little bit better and we're in a process of putting together a technical spec so we go out and get them bid before it looked like we only had one possible now it looks they're coming do we buy the next thing that's available do we wait two more years for it to get a little better we'll we'll have to to bring that up let me make a point each time we make one of these major investments you folks will be involved in it you know you know so it's not like you sign off on the plan and you just spent 60 or you know 600 000 or so for it um the fleet assessment thing uh we're working with the vermont queen cities coalition um to make that happen uh they accept applications once a year and that time's coming up shortly um charging stations there's no point in buying electric vehicles unless you can charge them we've got a grant it's one of the ones we're waiting for some action on for the police station and public works so forth um let me just close and are you for those um charging stations who you're working with the school department because they've put four electric buses and are planning to do get more and they must need charging stations at the bus barn which is yeah oh yeah uh but one that's the wrong place for public works just to get to them uh i've certainly talked to those people but you don't want to buy those kind of charging stations unless you have to they are big and they are expensive oh okay for the buses pardon me the buses yes so they're specified for that yes they can't be used for other big machine oh yes and then and if we get into big diesel equipment converting we will need those stations and when we look at what we're doing for charging stations in the near future we'll certainly ask the question what's the gross capability and so forth uh you may or may not be aware of it but those buses have the capability of pushing energy back into the grid overnight and when they're parked and so forth so it's uh and that's uh part of the technology that's coming on board um in in wrapping this thing up from my point of view hopefully this plan results in a concrete reduction in greenhouse gases that's what we're trying to do over a time frame that's financially responsible and takes advantage of the anticipated technology advances in the future as they come along and we'll have to monitor it every day every week for the next 25 years any questions or what a surprise um Councillor Chalmick thank you Councillor really um three points um one is and we've talked about this loop but there are as you know really really robust credits so and I'm happy to go over you with some of that detail and spreadsheet but for instance for commercial vehicles you can get up to a $40,000 credit now that had been just available to businesses commercial electric vehicles so some of the um diesel things we're using now they're I know in the world there are electric replacements like Norway uses electric cranes electric dump trucks and those things are eligible for huge credits in the US so let's let's let's keep an eye on those two developments um carbon capture maybe not tomorrow but there's um right now a small scale carbon capture business that works with small businesses that might be an opportunity for the digester and you can get $85 a ton credit from the federal government for every ton of co2 captured that credit could well pay for that something to also think about um yeah that was it okay did you see the article and um I think it was the Wall Street Journal about cement that they're making cement that absorbs carbon yeah that absorbs carbon yeah no the three where the that the commercial the credits Norway has has you know big diesel what had been diesel machinery that's all electric now and carbon capture okay yeah any other comments or thoughts or questions well this when does this start so this is the first and then we'll get it next summer the council will get it next summer yeah you're going to miss you've missed the point you missed the point you were here when it started five years ago all we're doing is starting to document it and put it into a formalized fashion but we're going to receive it twice a year we're going to receive a report so starting well that's my recommendation more than the plans do we need to approve so hold on time yeah yeah so lose absolutely right we've been doing this for years this is just a way to codify and tell the story of how we're doing it and quite frankly to me one of the most important things we've done is engage all the staff and helping us up with the solutions so it is that pulling everybody in the same direction and not imposing on to people how to make these changes you will get the kind of lose document of this plan in writing in a couple of months what you will get more immediately if you give me head nods is this built into the FY 25 budget so if you want to meet meet this this timeline that lose laid out for us we have to start for just this implementation plan not for the transportation implementation plan or for the building thermal implementation plan build up six hundred thousand dollars into our budget every year for the next through 2030 at a minimum that that could even flow as we hire this does suggest I want to call out here on the slide adding staff to do this to do all of the chasing grants chasing rebates those revenue streams could change as we have dedicated people not just our 20 hours of thankfully 20 hours a week of lieu it could change the revenue picture but right now this is the expenditure picture we need immediately to get going and to start making all the decisions within this lens well I would like to see it built into the budget yes I think yeah and my understanding is that industry has responsibility over 50 percent of emissions municipalities have responsibility over 25 percent of emissions and individuals have responsibility over 25 percent of emissions so we're doing our part and we have to educate the public that this is this is not inconsequential every everybody has to do their part it's it's been a while since I was involved in those kinds of discussions but I think here in South Burlington the city the city government part is a lot smaller than the 20 percent you talked about you get into big cities like Baltimore New York etc that may be true but I think the real role is to be the leader can I just point out that on the Champlain Parkway a couple of the foremen use electric scooters to go back and forth up and down the road as they go look at and review each part of the project as it's being completed and to communicate the guy zips up and down back and forth yeah they used to use some kind of a truck right electric scooter it's really fast and excellent yeah neat all righty thank you so much keep up the good work and we won't be here to see it happen but okay moving on to um almost our final um the TIFF so receive an update on the status of the TIFF projects with the focus on right away and financing um let's just start at nine ten we're a little bit well I'm pleased to be here now yes um I took in that a few more times the next couple of just a teaser so uh for the record Alana Blanchard community development director um and if I could share my screen I just have some summary um slides and some updates on the bridge that I wanted to show you um let's see oh wait I showed it sorry I didn't share it to Alana I showed it to your video screen that won't work okay now that should work okay thank you let's see my glasses just to find the little button there we go okay so um so uh so um I'm really glad to be talking to you tonight um because there's a lot of work that you'll need to do um over the next year and uh this winter so um this it made sense um to give you an update now just to really let you know where we are and where the projects are um we're at a pretty critical moment in the TIFF district uh we're coming up on our March 31 deadline to incur TIFF district debt we have one project that is nearly ready to go out to bid the city center boardwalk we are in right away with three other projects um uh in various stages of right away of the walk bike bridge everything is um all the offers are out to the landowners um and then um Williston Road and Garden Street are later uh in the process um and then we're looking at um those bonds um and then hopefully construction contracts so um the city center boardwalk um we expect it to be complete um and ready for use by the public by the end of 2024 it's 100% TIFF district funded uh we have updated not me the engineers updated the cost estimate for this project um and so the estimated cost um and all of the owners cost that's all the engineering costs um and um other design costs uh inspection um this one does not have land acquisition costs but if there were that would be part of the owner's costs um so the entire budget is uh two million um and uh so we'll be using um TIFF district financing as well as existing um impact fees uh in order to cover that um cost and existing remaining funds uh the walk bike bridge um is uh currently the budget is much higher than um it was originally projected in 2021 and that's a big reason to be here tonight and let you know where it is the drivers for that um and we were alerted to this um following the public outreach so during the public outreach multiple members of the team as you knew it was many different firms came together under the leadership of BHB so there was a construction firm um there was a bridge firm and then BHB which has their own structural section so everyone was doing separate cost estimates and they're all like we're fine we're good and then at the next meeting they were like we're not good anymore um so during that year um steel went up astronomically in costs and then there was also um borings that were done so we um learned a lot more about the soils because we had an alignment so we knew exactly where the footings needed to go um and then a small piece of that is that the original grant was a partial grant it wasn't the full grant that we had requested so we started out with a little bit behind but as you will see um our gap is much more significant than that um and then just overall inflationary costs and in construction um so initially when we were told about this there was a lot of value engineering that occurred I wanted to show you um this uh illustration I'm sorry this plan which is uh one that the design team is they're in process of putting together the layout of the bridge so it's narrower than it was but it maintains the 14 foot um travel way and it also includes space for landscaping there's no longer a separation over the bridge between bicycles and pedestrians but there is a pedestrian gathering area um that is between the two landscaped areas this was really important because it allowed us to reduce the steel significantly so there had been two tubs two steel tubs supporting the bridge structure and we went to one um as you can see there's still a lot of space for landscaping um and it we're maintaining the same clear area for bicycles and pedestrians um in this um advanced sort or later version of the bridge design and then uh and this shows um the alignment is very similar to what it was before we the big changes are that the quarry hill access has now been resolved we are still working with the landowners they seem very positive um I will tell you that um it's not going to be may not be um inexpensive um but we do believe it's an important acquisition in terms of the overall usability of the of the um of the structure and then the university mall access was moved north so it had been sort of a standalone abutment from the bridge structure and now it aligns with the existing existing wall that supports the access to the bridge so that you're sort of eliminating one wall um and you have three walls instead of four walls and plus the walls are a lot shorter because you're starting down the slope of the access to the bridge and I can show you I think um is the the building at the top where it loops around is that the um that's the cbs yes that's correct so this is probably why they still haven't done any landscaping up front um I just I I'm not sure what their obligations are so but I do know that um that we will make a lot of changes in that area if we're successful in acquiring the property um because the whole the path that is currently on dorset that same width will be carried around the cbs and there will be a buffer between um between the curb and the shared use path in this alignment so we we are going through property acquisition there's no guarantee that any property owner will provide the land so everything you see outside of that red dotted line um is on private property and because of the obligation and there is a typo in the memo the memo said that we have to complete our right of way acquisition by december 2024 it's by december 2023 so okay essentially next month so so that's so we are um very dependent on the goodwill of the property owners in terms of providing those signatures and the easements in order to get what's called right away clear which is a v-trans review process and that allows the federal obligation to have been met for that milestone so the gap funding our current budget we started out with 14.5 million in 2021 so the current budget is 22.5 million and that is the budget that we developed in this summer with the project engineers and that we have been using for grant grant applications so so far we've applied for four four grants through two applications we have another federal one that we're expecting and we're we've also been talking with partners about potential other opportunities should we not be successful um this is a good time i will say there is a lot of funding because of the bill the BIL federal bill for infrastructure um and there is a good emphasis um within this administration on walking and biking and connecting communities so that has been good but it doesn't mean it's not competitive so um we'll see but we have had strong support um from the uh from our delegation and we also received a letter of support from the governor so that was so is it the eight million that we're looking for this yes so we are looking for eight million in gap funding and we're telling a lot of people so if you see folks let them know see anyone right yeah well also part of why we want to come to is because we're telling a lot of people we thought we should probably tell you too but naming rights naming rights yeah no i don't have that kind of money so um so the Williston Road streetscape um also in right away the budget is 2.6 million that's actually for projects that were at the 60 design level there had been a lot of engineering and we'd also been inflating the costs a lot to get from where they were to 2021 and so the gap was not as large fortunately um so this one has $800,000 federal grant the tip is only 50% so we always knew there would be a gap um and we're we had planned to we had programmed in the CIP to fund that through um through a city grant but at this point we're recommending that we use impact fees for a portion of it and then um apply to the state for their pedestrian bicycle funding for gap funding to complete the project and we'll be eligible to apply for that once we've completed our right away acquisition um so we will put that money back into the impact fee fund we would no it would we would put those two pieces of money together to come up with the gap so it's about I I think it's um 4 480,000 is our gap um and then Garden Street um we uh the city budget is 12.8 million we have the remaining amount of TIF that is available um out of the amount that has been authorized by the voters is 11.1 or 11.2 million uh and so uh we have already used 700,000 in impact fees which are existing highway funds so we've been using that to fund the design cost so that we're not carrying costs as part of this project um and then uh this has been in the draft of the transportation impact fee so we're recommending that that be used for the remaining um the remaining gap that um in order to fund the entire project so that those funds would be brought in at the end as part of the construction all of the impact fees would or grant funding if um if there's no impact fees would be brought in at the end of the project so that would be part of our contingency owner's contingency costs as part of the project budget so and this is the TIF fund that we need on the ballot this March that this is the TIF fund that has already been voted on it's already been voted okay yeah but when we say 2024 TIF fund that means the winter bond okay and here we go we already have votes uh positive votes on all of our debt so we don't need to take anymore out we need to draw down the debt okay that you all will approve but the voters we don't have to ask the voters no convoluted way like this no really isn't your money but we need your approval okay yeah you just say yes the voters have already said yes um so we're going through modeling um and putting together the application for the Vermont bond bank we're also looking at other potential funding sources um and you know making sure that a bond anticipation note doesn't make sense we don't think it does but it may by the time in a few weeks I don't know everything is really strange right now so in terms of markets um the good thing is that the bond bank what they've seen in interest rates for municipal bonds is not or not have not climbed as high as they have for consumer lending so but well it's it's an uncertain time so we'll see we'll be in close contact with them um and we're we're there's some things that are in the model that went to the voters that were adjusting and weighing so the model to the voters had things like level payments we're looking at level principal payments which changes our upfront cost but may reduce the overall cost so we're just looking at all the different nuances and how the model is structured and we'll be bringing that to you on December 4th um and that would at that time or at the following meeting we would be asking for your approval to submit the application to the bond bank um assuming that that is who we are applying to which generally they are the least expensive option uh and then um in terms of right of way um we're as I said um we're looking at acquiring 30 properties plus or minus and so um there will definitely be things that will be brought to you over the course of that process um and uh and may involve the necessity hearing and then in terms of contracts we're really hopeful that we'll bring um contracts to you for city center park and for garden street um this this winter so thank you the necessity hearings I mean condemnation is that is that what that is and and so generally um condemnation is doesn't actually what some many times that doesn't actually happen oftentimes a necessity hearing sort of sets the clock for all the negotiations to wrap up um but uh we will not even go through that process for the bridge for example so what do you mean dorset to bridge so that is the block between Trader Joe's and Healthy Living uh we if we're going to be working on the park we'd like to do all of that work at the same time and since the properties own it's all under the same ownership we don't think that's a heavy lift to get that piece at least going um so it's the bridge to city center park yeah it's the bottom line here we might have to go back to the voters on the bike bike bridge no the bike bridge what if we can't show the gap I mean so that's that's a great question um the there when we when we look at this project we see it as a regional project that has regional benefit and so yeah I think and that's how we've always approached it um it's a great east west connector it's a connector between as much as it connects us to our neighborhoods that are just west I think for most people they really see it as connecting to the hill or connecting to the downtown or connecting those places to city center and so because of that there are many many places we can go for funding um aggressive I would just add again says I think Alana's done a wonderful job really keeping our V trans and VH VHF VHW FHWA federal highway partners close to this project they meet every two weeks together so I think everyone's aligned to we have to figure it out together whether that's through state money federal money institution money so she is being super aggressive going back to the voters is our very very last ditch yeah attempt okay that was the chair thank you the junior high best ball be aggressive be be be HGG RSS IVE okay thank you very much much more to come thank you Alana hopefully aggressive okay item 13 is filling um or or asking Larry to fill in a little bit um tidler had two um openings and I know that you served on natural resource and conservation um and Andrew has indicated that he really liked to continue doing that he did yeah he did to me yes he said to me um but you could certainly show up at the meetings they wouldn't I mean if you had nothing to do that later it's just because that those two committees that Tyler was that's that's the request is for me that that is unless there's some other moving around that people would like to do amongst ourselves um if you wanted I I'd be happy to do bike pad if you want to be the official liaison to NRCC I'm still going to show up to NRCC because I'm very interested in the progress of the tree ordinance so I'd be happy to do that okay as opposed to what was the other committee well um Andrew said he it's bike and pad and then the other one that Tyler had was recreation and park all right so either of either of those is fine well how about you then be the um for the next four or five months the official natural resources and conservation liaison and the the recreation and parks and then Andrew will um he'll do bike pad and you and you unofficially no officially you'll do bike pad no unofficial oh yes and then you'll you're officially energy great I mean any of us can go to any of the me right okay yeah can I just say I think that's a really great plan with the task force we really need the school safety task force and the bike pad committee to be very yeah good job you will be a busy little beaver but that's that's good all right um can you just can you make a motion to approve that oh so moved thank you second all in favor thank you okay um other business we I would like to suggest that perhaps we talk in public right now about maybe voting on Charles Johnston to be on the development review board I'll make that motion I'll second that okay is there any um conversation I mean I I think he seems to have the right credentials and um Gabe Gabe um had some bigger thoughts that um seem to be more aligned with other committees so we can I do appreciate Gabe's courage yeah yeah I do too love yeah really figure out how to engage him yeah I totally agree with the okay all right so if you're in favor of that um are ready for the vote all in favor um of appointing Johnson to the okay hi to the DRB I that sounds unanimous is there any other business I was I was just curious when the um channel 22 interviews were done was it after our meeting on Thursday or it was after our meeting on Thursday Friday it was Friday who was interviewed Jesse the superintendent was interviewed and then I was interviewed so we can watch that yeah certainly can yeah I'd be interested say it was not my best interview oh and yeah I probably should have done it but I had a surprise visit for my daughter and grandson so just got busy with home life um I find it yeah it's it's it's I guess I'm disappointed that that is the takeaway of the community member I didn't watch it but I I read um you know the the script or whatever that and that it that that was the takeaway of the community member because I felt that Thursday we had had a good meeting so did I and I thought we had a plan going forward and and I also thought that I I heard from the superintendent that she wanted us to talk about our our joint successes and I thought that could have been shared in that news report the task force and the could have been seen as a joint success so so they do talk about that they talk about it but it's it's framed in a way that's oh you watch more no there's there's written I didn't watch it but it's it's more of a written thing that you can read the people's comments you know they give the and I are we still are we still you are still we are still on so we should probably um I would entertain well this was other business that was other business so is there any other business so are you finished I I don't know I guess so but I I'm frustrated I know I'm sorry that it didn't come out as the very positive yeah um conclusion and meeting that we had we had a lovely dinner and good conversation and a plan going forward yeah we didn't agree on everything but we did we had a very good so could could that be a joint statement that could be initiated by the two of you to the two school board leaders that we're going to have a joint statement that's something the superintendent asked let's make joint statements of our you know of what we have agreed to do together we certainly can make joint statements it's hard for me to be honest it's hard for me to know how to navigate this when the majority of the conversation with the superintendent has not been through me so if you would like if one of you would like to take a leadership role and in helping politically to make that happen I would be happy to do that I'm happy to try to do that thank you all right and and really you know accepting her offer I'll help you I'll help you with that nice great and accepting I did express some concern about us not not dealing not addressing the immediate issue of construction and children going to central school I don't think that was resolved in a very good way or wasn't resolved at all but I you know there's a there's a short term fix as opposed to the longer term safe the safety school safety designation so although the challenges are a short term experience because once the road is built out you won't have sidewalks that are blocked right exactly you know so it's it's should be sooner than later hopefully well we have done a we have made a huge amount of improvements around Marca in the last six months Taun DePetro and Erica Qualan have spent an enormous amount of time making incremental change we can always do better we can always get safer but we have done a huge amount to make sure that the students are safe going to central school I would encourage the five of you to really think about when you're talking with the community and our partners at the school we employ experts in infrastructure let's center let them let's make decisions based on engineering and data yeah please include them in conversations and we can always incrementally get better and we've made a lot of improvements and is this a perceived problem or a real perception right yeah well not at all the intersections but maybe that's my view but we're making a lot of progress no I think some of the instructors are dangerous even with the button people don't always follow the law they're busy they're complex so okay any other business no all right so I'd entertain a motion to adjourn made and sex second yeah all in favor hi hi thank you Larry our meetings aren't always quite this long how did that happen we're


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All right, let's get started. Hello, everybody. This is September's engineering update and I am Stan who I'm gonna first start by welcoming a number of new members I think I might have missed Greg Stark from last time he wasn't on the team page, but now he is it is But I also want to welcome Mikkel I think I misspelled your name there, but sorry about that. I'll fix that later a Daven Walker for support and Alex Straighten for support as well. So welcome board. We really need your help Get lab 10.0. I think I want to highlight this. I read the blog post. There's too much to cover This is the this is the draft post. It's not actually published yet, but I encourage everybody to read it The big highlights from 10.0 are going to be auto devops the new navigation But there's a ton of other stuff in there that I'm really excited about stuff like S3 support for LFS and things like that that will really help a lot of our customers and get lab calm. I Just want to talk about and highlight some great work had done This is sort of behind the scenes that necessarily isn't called out in the least post But I know that Fati started this and with the help of Jacob Shatz and Phil and Flippa and Torrey Sean Dow would review all this stuff. Basically they took our existing issues and issues discussions and Refactored it in the Vue.js. Well that two benefits one Decrease the technical debt because it's much easier to test and debug issues with code written in Vue.js But also it made things faster because we instead of loading everything at once We are now loading the page and then pulling in other things asynchronously. So in some ways it's it's it's not exactly a direct performance improvement because we're moving stuff outside of the load but at least the user is perceived that the initial load will be faster and If you look at the issue there, there's a bunch of other related issues that say we can make this go faster. So I'm hoping by 10.0 we can get this number from Originally, it was about two over 2.8 seconds now. It's under two seconds of 1.8 I think we can get it down to under 1.5 or even faster by this Friday or this this Thursday when the release goes out So super excited about by those improvements. I think they're it's it's again not highlighting necessarily in a release But it's something that we should be proud about and and shows that you know refactoring does also pays dividends as well Yeah, it is the beginning of the performance improvement. There is a lot more there I wanted to talk a lot about geo because that has been on my mind and You know, what's going on in 10.0? I've talked a lot in the past about the previous architecture with system hooks basically every time you do something like you push a Hook goes out to the secondary and then it does something but we've removed that completely Essentially, we've moved a lot of code as a result if you look at the numbers there They're 63 change files, but close to 1500 lines of code deleted as a result So oftentimes you measure the progress by the code you delete but not by the code you add The new architecture has this geo log cursor. We've documented that we've added to the Documentation thanks for tone for removing system hooks and Gabriel for adding the diagrams of documentation around it What that means for most customers is that? You've got to now move your geo installation to to make SSH look up to happen over the database traditionally It's been done by this Authorized keys file that you have to manage is really hard to manage Big customers are having trouble can keep making that consistent But we've we've we've made a lot of progress in figuring out What's the story for sent us users some sent us 7.4? Have a good story because the new upgrade in September makes it this possible makes it really easy out of the box to enable this Something Gabriel's been working on for a while. This hash store support You can look at my last update to see the details, but there is now a setting in the admin page to enable this It's it's been a like a feature flag because we're still testing it out making sure that there aren't any corner cases but essentially the idea is that we don't have to touch the The path of the repository once it's there as It's a meetable name. We never have to rename it So that will help with geo and help with get lab comm quite a bit But we're still making sure that it's working before we enable it for everybody There were a bunch of security fixes Nick came in right away and just saw immediately some some Potential security holes and patch them right away. So that those went out With nine five and also with 10. Oh and then we fixed some other customer issues For example, people a customer had an issue cloning LFS objects from the secondary and we fixed that pretty quickly in nine five The next slide really talks about what does it take to make geo production ready? And this is sort of the test bed that we have set up right now If you heard if you hear that word test bed a lot, this is basically what it is We have production instance in Azure It has a sanitized copy of get lab comms database. It also has one file server from get lab comm They're in total of 16. I believe so we've only taken one just take a snapshot of one of them And then we have another geo instance in a different cloud. It's running a different database It's the secondary of the primary and then also a separate file server So we're essentially trying to test get lab comm or at least some subset of it and just see how this performs I'll give you a little bit update of where we are right now What we found immediately was that large databases Need some optimizations and Nick added some great optimizations at least get us out of the rut where we were before Where we weren't thinking we were basically retrying the same Projects are failing because the query was too big and we've added a workaround to at least make that go And 10.0 we've identified that we want to use postgres foreign data wrappers Because we have a primary database on the secondary and also a tracking database on the secondary to track what we've downloaded what we haven't downloaded And so this foreign data wrappers allows us to tie these two databases together in a nice way and make queries that are less expensive Yeah, we're also testing geo that's bigger than any customer that we have I've been on calls almost every day last week with customers setting up geo and they have far fewer repositories and geo seems to Work for them right now We've worked out some issues and we've identified them, but it's at least we're progressing and getting customers using it For get lab comm repositories are still sinking way too slowly. They're going but they're way too slow right now You can see at the chart below We started this last week and it's only up to point oh six percent part of it is that We are Too conservative about how we're scheduling things so a 10.0 We're gonna focus on increasing the parallelism and reducing the scheduler delay Based on the schedule delay is the time at which we decide to go say hey Go clone a repository from that primary and we're just too conservative right now. I wanted to highlight sort of The work that we've done over the last releases and just see What our time is being spent on on bugs from previously so these are called regressions bugs that surfaced from the current release things that work in the previous no longer work in the and the blue line is the number of closed issues the red line is the total closed issues for that release and Then the orange line is percentage of the issues relating to that so you can see in high point. Oh About 20% of it was Regressions it crept up to 40% 9 4 it came down to 20% but it's 9 5. It's closer to 40% so It's not great to keep introducing new things But you know, we're spending a lot of time trying to fix customer related problems or things that surface And we're gonna have to figure out ways to address this so that we're spending Less time fixing things that we broke and getting ahead of that and to be fair some of the stuff The regressions are things that we saw and release candidates so they didn't actually get out to customers But in general our testings we should have caught that before or even went out concerns Things that we need help with unicorn metrics. I promise you the same has spent a lot of time Putting metrics into unicorn so that we can instrument things like how busy are our workers or HTTP workers and things like that But we haven't been able to enable them because they there's some concurrency issues They're really tricky and Pavel's been sick and unfortunately Haven't had the bandwidth to address that but once we get that in that will enable a whole new level of monitoring Within our application that we really need We're seeing a lot more performance issues not only on get love calm But I'm we're also seeing with customer related issues. I think there must be at least The number of tickets every every week we see that say hey this thing is loading slowly This thing is timing out and support engineers have had to get on the phone and benchmark and profile and find things that are clearly just not optimal so Keep in mind that performance optimization that we will do in and get lab calm Benefit our customers as well because they're also running into these things and if we solve it for us will also solve it for them We're still getting a lot of error 500 things that shouldn't happen. We should be more graceful about Failing for example, so if we don't have a commit for example, we shouldn't totally bomb out and loading a mercy quest We should at least load some stuff but what this really translates into is increased load to the support team because either it's a get love comm user or it's a customer that says why is my page not loading and I Think we've pinged a lot of people on how do we improve these things? But essentially it boils down to just making things more fault tolerant and if something does go wrong We at least handle it and gracefully capture it and provide more feedback to our developers about what exactly went wrong Again the last slide. I really highlight the need for integration testing. We haven't put in much enough time in this for example, you know LDAP logins Google auth have At some point this past release is broken for people and that's really unacceptable because that is fundamental to get lab to get into get lab you need to be able to log in and We have unit tests, but in the end things have to be tested as a whole So there's a great project called get lab QA if you haven't looked at it It's a great framework to add these integration tasks We need to put more time and effort into those things so we reduce the regressions reduced amount of time We're spending on fixing things and more time worrying about the cool stuff that we want to build Really the plan for the next five weeks for geo obviously I've mentioned that we want to significantly increase the performance of that really the Goal there is to make that ready for production for get lab calm and to migrate to another cloud if we want to Gave will have been working a lot of finishing a tool that will help us migrate to this hash storage format. It's still in review Sid mentioned this NFS circuit breaker that will enable availability on get lab calm that we're still improving that and There are still some cases we need to handle so that doesn't get too trigger happy We need to reduce the amount of false positives there and have the unicorn metrics to monitor that as well We're going to Q4. So we need help defining these okay ours for all of engineering They're gonna be I think a lot of them gonna follow on Q3, but we need to flush those out Hiring we're really gonna increase hiring across engineering You can look at the jobs post and there's a lot of different positions available today So if you know people who are good fit, I'll talk about that in the next slide But you know people who are a good fit, please reach out to them. You need their help He led 10.1. You can look at the kickoff documentation for more details and then the summit Looking forward to meeting everybody and seeing everyone there that will know a coincide with the release of 10.1 So it will be exciting to be in the same place when the release actually goes out I think last time in Austin it went out this following Saturday of the summit Which is not ideal because people had to travel and get back so Hiring as I said, there's a lot of positions open anywhere from the Julie to front and back and developers and yes, there is a referral bonus Thanks for that reminder Sasha Any questions? All right, I don't see any questions. So thanks everybody for your time