Okay so I'm gonna call the meeting to order and first thing to do is to review and approve the agenda. Do we have any changes? The only thing that I would say there are a couple of things that I would like to potentially refer to a committee. I think that we had planned to talk about the committee last time but I don't know I just like to throw that out there that there are a couple things I'd like to refer to a committee that we haven't yet talked about. I think we should just talk about it as it comes up. I think the reason we held off on appointing committees was to wait until we had a full council at the next meeting. Yeah it's not a committee appointment it's the creation of a new committee. Does any of this have to be pulled out? No. You can create new committees? No no I'm just saying as far as the agenda. Okay general business and appearances. Time for anybody from the public to come speak on a topic that's not on our agenda. Okay gonna keep going then. So consideration of the consent agenda. I am going to pull items E and F. I'm gonna pull E because I'm gonna not vote on it. If you have any questions about it I'm happy to talk about E but I'm gonna recuse myself from that one because it just in case people don't know I'm gonna be doing some professional development actually we can talk about it later and then F I want to talk a little bit more about any other thoughts. Is there a motion? I'll move to approve the consent agenda with the removal of E and F. I'll second it. Any further discussion? All in favor please say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Yes before you leave that though I would like to pass a comment on to Tom if you come up. Sorry go ahead yeah should I pass this before we voted on the consent agenda? Okay that wasn't good it but the bids came in with a widespread now you pre-qualified everybody I assumed. The sewer lining I believe was one that was who got the bid we give it to the lowest bidder I was just a little crazy how different it was. I haven't been able to get it up yet but that was one that's like a hundred and twenty thousand. Is it okay if we talk about this? Sure. Different strategies different technologies involved in lining the lining process a little better in situ form. It's been around for many many years. A lot of experience. I don't know all the details. I don't know that's actually not a good post bid review. But just their general experience and knowledge of it. We do have for example our own TV systems, video, internal pipes, video cameras others will require the use of their own systems. So it's a lot of it has to do with the technology that they're utilizing. If there was a way to express that within the material we got it would be really helpful to just some rationale when there's such a big spread I was just right. I thought there was something but I just maybe it was there and I didn't understand it but. So sometimes we do what's called a bid analysis to determine if there are any disparities or irregularities in a bid that might explain some of the differences in cost. So I think this was not done that I'm aware of. But we can provide that if you'd like an explanation of why the difference is. I think it's primarily the methodology used by the various contractors. They all meant specification. They are trenchless. It's formed lining pipes. Some have some amount of excavation and involved others entirely through existing access points. But we can provide that detailed explanation. Just even just a nod towards it would have helped me out because that's all I need to know. It was a different approach. It was rash. You could rationalize why it was there. Fine. That's all I need. Just a little bit. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, no problem. I feel like we might as well take up E. Any questions about E? No, I think it's great. Can I go too? I don't know. So I would move that we approve item E on the consent that we removed from the consent agenda. Well, it's already been removed. I said I moved that we approve item E as it appeared on the consent agenda. I'll second. All in favor please say aye. Aye. I guess if I'm really recusing myself I should have left. You can, you're not voting. I'm not going to worry about it. Okay. Moving on. So F, if we can take that up right now I think it would be good to just get all of those items done. So F is the investment policy addendum that is for the Montpelier Foundation and thank you Todd for coming on up. So just a little bit of background. This is a part of an ongoing dialogue that I've been having with the investment committee when we started to have a group that was managing investments for it. I raised the issue of what I would have called socially responsible investing. But that sort of leads to the question of who's ethics or who's morals. And so I think it's equally as well to frame it as looking at environmental, social and governance factors. And my understanding anyway is that we don't have, there's no ESG provision in this document. So I had some concerns about that. I would like to see us revise our senior center investment fund to have some policy guidelines about environmental, social and governance risk. And to be clear, having my understanding anyway of having an ESG policy helps reduce the amount of risk to a portfolio as well as helping uncover value. So it is, as far as I can see in our fiduciary interest to have some kind of an ESG policy. But I know you had just sent me something. What are your thoughts? So there was an ESG statement that was adopted back in December of 2015 by City Council. If that is a provision that Council finds extremely important that I think we need to gather as a group and vet that out. There's a little bit of a conflict between the fiduciary responsibility to maximize investment performance for the underlying funds and environmental and social responsibility as well. So that is a discussion that I think we should have at the investment committee level with our investment advisor and see what options might be available if that's something that Council is in quite pursuit. I suppose I have a couple of questions and I agree with Mayor Watson that this is a priority for me. Certainly understanding that we have a fiduciary obligation to these funds but also to the city. And I think though part of that means creating a sustainable Montpelier that can survive all of us. And so I appreciate that there are challenges with this but I know that there are ways that we can transition, like responsibly transition, not sort of all or nothing all of a sudden. And so I guess my question, if we send this to a committee and there's a, you know, I mean, I guess I feel really strongly that we as a Council should make a statement about this and then send that to the committee to sort the language out. You know, I appreciate that we pay someone to work with us on these from, I think it's... Maple Leaf Management. But I think that direction needs to come from Council that that's something that we're committed to and to do so in a responsible way. And I think that would give the committee a little bit more direction than just saying we want to talk about this. So to back up a little bit, we do, we have significant, we're not significant, we have a fair amount of assets invested currently in the capital for the senior center of the parks. This particular policy was adopted by the Board for the Bonn Player Foundation as what was going to guide them. However, City Council does have overriding authority over that umbrella. So when Anne and I communicated a little earlier today, the thought process was to move, adopt the policy as presented on the consent agenda, move the funding into the investment fold with Maple Capital, and then develop an ESG policy that would work as an umbrella against all the funds. And is there like some overarching, I mean is there some reason that we can't come up with the ESG language first before we approve this document? I think personal commitment, like we, the Bonn Player Foundation has been working on this policy for quite a while and they kind of want to see us making progress. But that's it. I can talk to Ed Flynn again and we can kind of work through that and get to where we need to go. The investments currently are held both at Northview Savings Bank, just a checking account that's not making very much money. And then the balance are in an investment account with touchstone investments, which was formally set in all funds. So part of the desire was to get that money producing more income. So that would be the only sense of urgency. They're not conflicting. One is just to join them all together and then the question I'm seeing. They're not at odds with each other. I guess what I'm saying though is rather than sort of setting this out longer, I mean if the Council in 2015 took it up, which I didn't know. I mean why are we just, it sounds like we would just be kicking the can like episode two, approve this now and then address it at some later point in time. No, I think the issue came up in the last 24 hours and just to get the interested parties together there's just, you know, there's coordination of that. No, right. And so I'm saying I think I would feel more comfortable having that ESG language, putting that in and then approving this document. And I have no idea how anybody else feels about that. Does anyone want to move this as it is for now? Yeah, Donna. I support waiting. That's fine. Maybe it'll tie in before our retreat or with our retreat that it's part of our goals and make it out more clearly for ourselves and then go to the committee and work with them. Okay, so I think we're going to let that sit for now. And yeah, let's use that as a motivation to get on some kind of policy statement or we'll be looking at this ESG policy and see how it, yeah, talking more about how it applies can be great. Can you send that 2015 whatever was voted on then? Perfect. Great. Thank you. Change seems everything. Yeah, so we're, you know, we're I mean, if we get the, yeah, I guess we don't know. I think if we set it though for the April 11 agenda just to check in about it to make sure it doesn't sort of fall. If we think we can, you know, get the investment committee together by then. That would be great. Okay, thank you. And I do want to communicate, you know, to the Montpelier Foundation Board that I'm very grateful for all of their work and, you know, I'm psyched that they're that we're moving in this direction to combine funds. I think that's the right move. Absolutely. Okay, thank you. Sorry. Okay, right. So without objection. Use the postpone word. So I had to see it. Got you. Okay. Two, two minor things that are tangentially related to this, not directly one, just with regard to Montpelier Foundation. I meant to tell you the other day. I did have a conversation with former council member of this and he would like to continue as a member. So she had been the council's rep. I just told her to share that. And secondly, just this is procedural for the rest of the night. I don't think, as I look at the agenda, it's going to make any difference. But anything, any actually ticket that does require four affirmative votes, even there's only five people. Okay, moving on. So the audit that we had postponed from last time work. I don't know if we tabled it last time.  Welcome. Hello. Introduction purposes. I am taught preventer, finance director for the city of Montpelier. This is Theresa Kaczynski, who's the managing partner on this engagement for Father Gilles Cagallan Valley. And beside her is Ruth Doctor, who is our senior accountant for the city. She does 95.9% of the legwork, pulling all of the audit documentation together, referencing the work papers, and ultimately completing the financial statements. I'm going to turn it over to Theresa for her portion. Sure. So this is the audit of the June 30, 2017. So this has been a while, but usually we try to talk about this at the January meeting, but that didn't happen this year.  And so here we are. So I know there's some new board members here since last time, so I'm not sure how familiar you are with audits. So what we do is we come in in October usually and test all the books. And we primarily work with Ruth and we also interview other staff members. And part of what we do because you receive more than $750,000 in federal funds is to do something called the single audit as well. So you should have copies, receive copies of both of those. So that's kind of what we do. So Ruth actually prepares the financial audit documentation. What Father Gil Seagallion Valley does is prepare the opinion on the audit. And this year, again, the audit was unqualified, which means everything was in accordance with governmental auditing standards. And we've had no findings on the financial audit. On the single audit that you also have, which is a separate copy, we found no findings on any of the testing with the major program of the grant that year. But there's a loose piece of paper that's called the governance letter. And that's what this is a letter specifically to the governing board. And we're required to give this to you. And I'm just going to, again, just say there's no findings on the single audit or the financial audit. On the part of the audit that requires significant estimates has to do with depreciation of all the infrastructure and the equipment. I just need to let you guys know that, that management, because you don't really know how long anything's going to last. So that's an estimate. Also, another estimate is the amount of doubtful accounts meaning receivables that may not be collectible. Another thing that's not really on here is that's an estimate is the pension. There's a pension piece of the audit that comes from the state of Vermont. And if you look at that, it won't go over that a little bit. It says there's quite a bit of an unfunded amount. At the state level, but that shoots it out to everyone that's in the state pension plan. And that was a requirement a couple of years ago. Again, that is an estimate. It changes every year. So just want to. On page two, we talk about corrected and uncorrected misstatements. What that means is there's some things that aren't corrected to the penny. And one of them that we found this year was just a small retainage payable that was not posted on one of the projects. It wasn't big. It was, I don't remember the exact dollar amount, but it was under materiality. We only proposed six adjustments to the financial statements and none of them were material adjustments. Ruth pretty much finds all the adjustments as we go. And so we didn't propose any material adjustments, which is great. And again, we had no findings. That's what I'm required to make sure that you guys all hear. If there was significant findings, they would be in this letter. So I'm going to go over a couple of numbers. But again, this is June as of June 30 17. So there's been plenty of changes. On page 15 of the audit, it talks about the fund balances of all the different funds. And it shows that the total fund balance of the general fund is about 1.2 million dollars. And they're all spread out for different reasons. Does everybody with me on that page? Okay. So in the general fund column it shows about the 1.2 million and how that's broken up and what things are restricted for or non-spendable for, which leaves the unassigned fund balance in the general fund at about 240,000. And then community development, all of that fund balance is either committed or restricted. And the capital projects funds shows restricted, committed. And the negative in the capital projects funds really has to do with timing of expenditures. It's not a negative. It's availability of the revenue that comes in. So that's, you know, and then there's other governmental funds that makes up all the other little funds in that the city has, which there's a lot of them. And then on page 19 it shows all the fund balances of your proprietary funds. So the water funds, sewer funds, parking and district P. And you can see down below it says total net position and there's unrestricted and then what's invested in all of the capital assets that you have. The water fund has a positive unrestricted fund balance. The sewer fund has a negative. And I think that actually was the change for that year was positive, wasn't it? Didn't it make up some? Well net position went up. Right, but I think the unrestricted went up on that. The parking fund has a positive unrestricted fund balance and the district heat has a negative. Obviously the district heat, you know, is a little bit concerning because it is the operating loss if you go to the next page on page 20 is significant, but that's something that you're all well aware of. And something we'll have to address, assuming with the next year's rates. Right. Okay, thank you. But other than that, I think that most of the, you know, the water and the sewer and the parking are mostly holding their own. Yeah.  Ruth has been drafting this audit for a number of years. I hear this might be the last time she drafted this audit, but I'm not sure. Oh my gosh. What are we going to do with this? She's threatening to retire. I don't know. Her retirement is continuing on selling her home. So we're trying to come up with all sorts of vision rumors as to what's wrong with it. As to the space in her backyard. Well, thank you. Any questions? So I had all my questions answered prior to last time in anticipation of it being on the agenda last week. So I'm feeling good about this. And thank you so much for your work on this. And it's delightful to have an audit with no findings. It is. Everybody works hard for that. That's off the top in particular that Teresa knows that that's not common with a lot of municipalities that no findings and no, they really have done a good job with the last few years. It's mostly because I've been on the other side. I used to audit the city. It's been a great role for her to fill to go from the enforcer to the creator. All right. Well, thank you very much. Thank you. Okay. So is there a motion to accept the audit? I'll move to accept. I'll second. Any further discussion? Please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay. All right. The flood mitigation study updates. This was as a as a scientist, I found this very delicious. Interesting reading. This is really like that you haven't heard that word before. I've been sitting in the seat for 23 years. I've never heard an agenda item called the list. It was good stuff to chew on. And I've been thinking a lot about flooding him up here for a while. So I'm excited to talk more about this. Actually, I think they're going to take just a second to set up. Oh, do they have a presentation? Yeah. Oh, so I'm going to move. Well, I'm going to help them do it. Okay. Take five. Whatever. Yeah. Whatever we ever just need. I was going to give some copies for us as well. Oh, I was just going to say welcome and go ahead. But if you have something else to say. No, I was just going to tee up the item before we get started. This is Jeff Tucker and Dave Conger from Du Bois King. In about, and I think they're going to go through the history of this. But after the 2007 flood scare. We engaged with the core of engineers and I took a while to get them to approve a study. And after a period of time, essentially getting all the details, they proved Du Bois King to sort of conduct the entire study on behalf of both the city and state and the core. And so they've completed the report, which you've received the draft report. They're going to walk through it. And then there are some next steps. And ultimately at the end of the day, not the end of today, but at some point we have to decide whether we're going to go forward with an actual project or what based on the various options or recommendations. So with no further ado, I'm going to turn it over to Dave and Jeff. Thank you. Dave Conger from Du Bois King. As Bill indicated, Du Bois King is the designer and report presenter for this study for the Ice Jam study for Montpelier Flood. Can you talk in your mic a little more directly? Absolutely. Are...is that better? Yes. Or too much. Sorry, I also have a little bit of a cold. So we were the performer for the risk mitigation study for the Montpelier Ice Jam project. As Bill indicated, this is intended to be a status report of where that draft report is, some of the alternatives we have looked at and sort of the next steps for the project to go forward. Can I ask you a question real quick about that? So, Jeff, I know you're with Du Bois King, right? Yes. And are you also? Correct. Are you with... Both with Du Bois King. Okay. Thank you. And our nice picture on the front here is a picture from the 1992 college study which a lot of this came from. We wanted to give a little background for those who aren't as familiar and this is more current background. You know, the city experienced a major ice jamming event in 1992. At that time, State Street as well as a significant portion of the downtown was flooded. At that time, the city and the Army Corps partnered with Du Bois King at the time to push for what would be called a reconnaissance level survey and study which was performed as I mentioned by DNK. At that time, in 1996, a report was completed which essentially identified ice retention piers as the most viable alternative. At that point, the project partners, the city as well as the state did not go forward in implementing any of the recommendations in the study. And as Bill indicated, the city experienced another scare in 1997 which prompted a restart. Pardon? 2007. 2007. Sorry, we're going backwards in time. 2007, which reengaged us to do a further detailed study of more specifically ice retention pier locations because going back to the reconnaissance level survey that incorporated other alternatives in a little more broad approach and then some things like flood walls and others that were kind of discounted at that first review level. So in this study, our focus was more into our locations for ice control structures. So the purpose of the study, identifying and evaluating alternatives to reduce risk from breakup ice jam induced events, that's the purpose of the project. As I was indicating the ice control structures, the primary focus in this study is the locations that those could be accomplished. And then following Army Corps requirements, the study evaluates the permitting required, the maintenance and operational requirements for it, hydraulics, economics, structural analysis, environmental and coordination of public involvement. So essentially with all those elements, it's determined to find what's the most cost effective and what's the cost benefit evaluation for any given alternative. I want to point out the structural analysis that really honestly is more of a study of the city of Montpelier, the buildings in the city, their commercial value. Because of course in a flood control structure, everything is about the cost for the actual project and the potential damage to buildings and infrastructure. So most of that is basically melded together to come up with, you know, here's the alternative and here's the cost benefit for those alternatives. As I indicated before from the reconnaissance level survey and into today, the single ice control structure with a bypass channel is seemed to be the most effective alternative to affect, reduce the potential for breakup ice events. So again, our focus was looking at locations for that. In this latest draft, we have five potential locations for ice control structures. And we'll describe a little bit of those now. David, can I jump in for a second? Absolutely. So I did want to mention that please and obviously jump in and interrupt if you have questions, you know, as we go along through. And David is going to be describing ice control structures. And I just wanted to mention this dates back to the 1990s when we did the reconnaissance study following the event. We worked, and many of these came from, we worked very closely when we say the Army Corps of Engineers that includes Corell, you know, the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Lab. Really one of the preeminent ice engineering experts around the world. They're out hand over New Hampshire. So they've had in the background of both on this current study as well as the genesis for this. So it's a way of background for you. So with these alternatives that are presented in this report, some of these will go into various locations. But the primary is that any ice control structure, the first ice control structure that would be installed would be one with a bypass channel. The intention for the bypass channel is that essentially ice control structures, the reason of being is to create a jam. And when you want to create a jam, it's not very hard to see that eventually, you know, water's going to fill up behind that jam. And thus the standard practice, and this has been done by Army Corps at other locations, is to provide a bypass channel that can take the water flow while maintaining the ice in this location. So for the locations in Montpelier, you know, Cemetery Bend, you know, the 1992 event was an ice break-up that filled up at Cemetery Bend, thus backing up water behind it. Unfortunately, State Street was the bypass channel. So our focus is to vent ice getting down to Cemetery Bend and then having a bypass locally where the ice control structure is to bypass flows around the ice control structure. So again, alternative one is a single ice control structure with bypass. Alternative two was brought into the mix because ideal location, you put the ice control structure just immediately above your condition where it would be, in this case, Cemetery Bend, there is no real location down that portion of the river to have a bypass control structure. So we had to move our alternative one site further and further up the river. So we have paired this in an alternative with a single ice control structure downstream from the bypass channel to catch extra ice kind of thing, with the exception that that does not have a bypass channel. Alternative three, during the reconnaissance level survey, more operational maintenance type requirements were, or mitigations, I should say, were explored and we re-explored those. Right now, the city, and this is kind of one of the things that, and Bill certainly is really into the details of this, has been doing continual efforts of doing mechanical and thermal weakening, everything from a long stick excavator to thermal weakening with the sewer bypass into the river. So as part of this study, we looked at those alternatives and is there a means to make those more enhanced, a stronger action? And that's, again, part of the study to see if that's a... Just to be perfectly clear for all those that are listening, it is treated sewer out of the sewer treatment plant bypass, not sewer bypass. Sorry, sorry, correct. Out of there is already appropriately being discharged into the river with moved to a different location. That is warmer than the normal one. Warm, warm treated water. And any, all these type of studies, there's always the no action alternative. So the locations of these alternatives, essentially, it's a little hard to see on this scale, but location A was the former Zorzi property. It was the first location upstream where there was real estate essentially, undeveloped at that time, that could accommodate a bypass channel. So our first ice control structure location, and just because the nature of the study and how far we are along the line before that became developed or under development for the gin milk, that was spirits. So that still is the basis because some of the modeling that Crell had done and some of the other things were already in place. So it still stays in the study as really our baseline for the project. That, again, is the single ice control structure with the bypass. Location B is the location for our second ice control structure without a bypass. That is just upstream of the dam by Main Street in the channel near, I guess that's the end of Stonecutter's Way. And then the three alternatives that we in the last year have looked at with the Zorzi property being under development was location A2 which is literally just upstream of the Zorzi property, straddling the railroad bridge and some properties just on the upstream side of the railroad bridge. Location C is at the former Grossman's property at the bend in the river. The furthest up location is at the Stevens Branch mouth. So alternative one, and we've discussed this a little bit. This is pictorial with a stream channel bypass, piers in the river, overflow in water into the sides. The advantages of this type of structure is it's a proven technology, fairly low maintenance. Once it's installed, the disadvantage is it has the potential for jam buildup in the non-winter times for tree debris, other debris that has the potential to jam it during non-winter events. It does have ecosystem impacts for the actual installation. In this study, these reaches, I should say, of the river have a state threatened eastern pearl mussel. Excuse me, I'm losing my voice a little bit. That species, a study was done where basically divers went into the river, identified the number of mussels that are present. Two things with that is that first, it's identified that this area is a habitat for this species. And the second is to just get an idea of the number of the mussels. The upshot, though, is the same thing that they do for the evaluation to determine if they're in place is the same thing you would do to mitigate. You would have divers go into the river, they would identify the area that any piers would be installed, and they would relocate the mussel to a suitable other portion of the riverbed. So even though it is a rare species, the impact of these would be fairly minimal. So that would be a cost as the construction occurred to relocate them out of the way. David catches his voice just for a second. Do you have any questions yet? I have lots of questions, but I might save them to the end. If I advise you more time, I'm happy to ask. Unfortunately, I'm on the back end of a cold, which is sitting in my mouth. I don't know if time will help. I'll just throw in one question here. As I was reading through this, you had some benefits at cost ratios, which I was glad to see. This is not something that I do for a living. What is a home run benefit-to-cost ratio? One was like 2 to 1, and another one was like 1.69. I was trying to gauge how good is that. It's good that it's more than 1 to 1. In the Army Corps world, they won't fund anything that's certainly below 1 to 1. Why would you? I guess this is more of my experience, and Jeff has probably more years of this. If you are really more than 1.2 or higher, it's a pretty good ratio. That's the basis, certainly, from the dollar standpoint. Usually, it's the municipalities of decisions of what are the other answerable impacts that may not be monetary that then become the question mark. In the realm that we are in, they're pretty significant. Going back maybe a minute here, one of the proposals, if I read it correctly, you suggested taking out one of the railroad bridges. Does that sound familiar? We can come to that. I'll hold that question then. Go ahead. I'll save my questions. If I start squeaking too much, you can just take over. Alternative 2, as I indicated before, is actually a two-fer alternative. It's always paired with a bypass channel. In this case, it is that standalone piers that are downstream of our primary ice control structure with a bypass. The advantage of this, again, is the further upstream we get, the less ice that we're able to capture at the primary location. It adds that extra capture requirement. When you get into the details of the study, you'll actually see that the cost-benefit ratio goes down for that. However, it's our feel from Crell that it's not being adequately modeled, and that it really is the preferred alternative to pair that ice control structure with a second pier location. But again, it does have other potential effects, and one which I'll highlight is, and this is a little bit of all of them, is it does have the potential for what's called induced flooding, in this case along Stonecutter's Way. Now, I would say, for the moment, don't let that frighten you too much, because some of this is modeling that needs to be vetted with the final design. Stonecutter's Way gradient-wise is fairly flat between Main Street and that upstream reach, and the amount of induced flooding is its inches. So there is the potential that further study would say, yep, we don't really have induced flooding, or we have fairly easy mitigation measures to compensate for that. Thank you. Just before we move on past this alternative, can I ask, am I understanding it correctly that ideally these two locations would be as close together as possible, the one is fixed near Main Street without a bypass, and there's another one somewhere upstream, and so that the one near Main Street gets as little ice as possible from between, should they be as close together as possible? Or are any of the upstream locations more or less equally acceptable? The reason for the location for the second one, in a fashion, actually we want that as far downstream as we can get it. In this case, because the East Branch, we don't want to go any further than we are without a bypass. So it's a little, in an ideal world, the one with a bypass would be where we have the single, just the peer locations. So it's to capture, be as far downstream as we can to capture. So ideally, as David just said, perhaps just to say it a little bit different, is your primary ice retention structure, again as Dave said at the beginning, it holds the ice in place for a certain amount of time. We induce a jam, and we induce it where hopefully there's not work intended, not hopefully where there's not going to be much damages, that proverbial, your rural area. So once we do back up water upstream of it, it's flooding, but there's nothing there to get damaged, right, if you will. It's not in the downtown urban area. So we want to ideally locate it as far downstream or as close as you can to the primary damage area, but there just really isn't any location for the full bypass. You know, we induce the jam upstream and the river really comes up. It has to have a place to go, as he said correctly, at what state street back in 1992. So, you know, we felt that this area by the railroad, you know, the former Zorzi area was as downstream as practical, but there's still a fair amount of ice between there and downtown. So the whole objective of the second area downtown structure was to catch and retain some of that intermediate, you know, volume of ice, but the modelings indicated not so significant where we feel it would work with what we call an in-channel bypass, because there's still going to be water flowing through these piers and underneath, you know, the ice. So they're really working in tandem, you know, with each other. So that's the purpose, and we do feel that that is, I think, one of the preferred options, isn't it? Yes. Alternative three. Essentially, as I mentioned earlier, these are some of the things that the city has engaged on to this point since the 92 event warrior operational systems, and it can incorporate breakage using long stick. They even actually have, the Krell has, I forget the name of the structure, but basically it's a boat that goes on the river and breaks up the ice. It's about a couple hundred thousand F of X. Oh, we had it. I didn't realize we had it on here. Smashing the ice up into pieces, the redirection of the clean water from the sewer plant, thermal water, to do weakening of the water. As we looked at these locations and these operational removals, basically it wasn't scalable. If it was the thermal or even the mechanical, there are things that the city still should do and really isn't very important to the practice, but they're not scalable to the type of ice break up that we experienced in the 1992 event. As an example of that, we looked at the thermal mass that we can get from the bypass from the sewer or outfall, and it doesn't have any thermal energy to weaken enough ice. I believe the city has a permit where it could be extended upstream to different locations to get to the locations, but right now there's just not the thermal energy to break up enough ice or weaken enough ice to get it to that next level of flood control from an ice break up project. The other portion to this for any of the mechanical breaking, everything's timing. The city has done a great job of learning what's happening in these reaches, what's happening downstream and the like, and again, it's just not being able to scale that up to a real large break up event type of study. Just a question, is this something you can use before the ice gets too thick to prevent it from building up? Well, it gets into the timing. If the ice can form fairly quickly in a break up ice is just that, it might be something upstream that breaks and releases, comes down to, in this case, grounds out by Cemetery Bend, and that's, I guess, essentially what the city is doing now is identifying locations where they can and where there's risk occurring in kind of in life situations with the stream. It's just the scalable of the whole river corridor being able to do that in nature to prevent a break up. It doesn't scale that. Yeah, my little brain was just thinking of literally in the downtown area where the river is going, is keeping that open so it doesn't form much ice. So that when you got the jams there wasn't anything that was hitting it would help it. We can't get the, I mean not when it's investment, we can't get that flow all the way up there, but it comes out a little below the high school and you can get it up further than that, but that's probably as far up as the Bayland Outlet Bridge is the extent of it. But what we do it preventively now, we see conditions starting to develop. We turn it on and it is intended to basically week it up a little channel so that there's free flowing water and that sometimes does help sort of keep the ice a little weaker so that like you said there's not, there's room for it to push through if it does jam up against it. It's not foolproof, but you know it's also, it has been somewhat successful and we've coupled that with having the excavator on site so again we can scoop out what we have to, but you know I don't think any of that will be enough if there were a massive jam and we couldn't respond. Right, but this versus being alternative one, two and three, it could be something working with another alternative. Thank you. Oh yeah, don't get me wrong, the current things that are being done should still continue. They are important. Absolutely. And as we say that the things that are being done, alternative four technically, I guess we really have no action is not occurring because the mechanical thermal type of work is ongoing and should not be ongoing. The pictures just to put things into context are different modeling and also observation of the 1992 inundation and it's a little hard to see at this scale but essentially the red and blue and purple that are heading up to the upper right is basically all the inundation that was up the east branch and the big blob in the middle is State Street and so as everyone knows the 1992 event essentially flooded the entire downtown. So that kind of is the no action highlight or low light. The next piece is, next steps for our team, the project partners is the City of Montpelier as well as the Army Corps. We are going to be setting up a meeting with the DEC as well as the city to review our draft report to kind of vet the recommendations and conclusions that we have in the report and then turn that around to a final report back to the city for approval which kind of will be the point where it will be, I guess your report to make decisions on next actions. Obviously it's a big step to build these structures. It's not necessarily a presentation but to put it in order of context it's about 4.4 million dollars to do both ice control structures 3.6 million if you were to do just the single with the bypass so it is a significant investment to get into and then of course depending on the idea to proceed seeking funding, doing final design, NEPA doing our final environmental reviews and construction. So that is I guess the end of the presentation and I know you said you had plenty of questions. Sure, yeah. Another point to you. Fair enough. Let's transition here again and turn the lights back on. Can we have these slides because not everything in your slides is in our report that was attached to our agenda. The. Yes, but we got attached to our agenda, not all the pictures and diagrams are in our report that's leaked. Electronic. Yeah, electronic. Electronic. We'll get that email out. Yes. Well, if other people have questions I want to give you or the public. Maybe we'll start and then. Next. Okay, so other questions that I had part of your report mentioned dusting the ice cover. Does that sound familiar? Yes. Okay. What are we dusting it with? Pixie dust. Oh, perfect. Just kidding. It's actually a measure to darken the actual ice to improve thermal conductivity to melt the ice. It's a practice that again has been done in different locations. I don't know the last time the city has done it. I assume that increases turbidity some amount, but it's minor because you don't need a huge coding for it. And again, it is one of those measures that it does help. The amount is not in my opinion, significant. Okay. On the potential locations for an ice control structure, I think it was, maybe you see that has the railroad bridge in it, but there was one part where you mentioned removing a railroad bridge. And it's, it was not like if that's a railroad bridge that is functioning, unless there's some other bridge that I'm thinking of, it seems like that would be pretty prohibitive. The reason we did, did that alternative was it was the most, the closest to the baseline alternative that we had for the project, which was the Zorzi property. A little bit of that is the, the modeling and the report that we have to do to meet the, to match the core of engineers. Now the, I will also say on that particular location, one, from a location standpoint, it still is our best location model-wise. Now, cost-wise, impact-wise, it certainly, you could do something there where a railroad bridge was replaced or other, you know, things brought in. It also has the disadvantage of requiring significant purchases of properties at that location that are currently developed. But we had to bring that into the study more to, to show what's the next semi-viable location upstream from the, the former Zorzi property. Okay. So there was one line in this that I was very interested in, which was that any structure in the river has the potential to cause flooding where it would not have occurred otherwise. Which I assume is, I mean, mostly referring to these, these structures, right? And that really, I mean, in part, they're meant to induce flooding elsewhere. But I wonder if that applies to other things. And I guess one of the things that was, at least to my reading, sort of notably absent was any assessment on the bridges, another bridges, I'm sorry, the dams that exist in the river already. And I mean, I, I guess I would have guessed that, you know, studies such as this would have potentially included like, would you recommend taking, I mean, there's taking out the dam at Main Street or the one up at Pioneer Street.  And maybe what that was not your understanding of like the scope of what y'all were working on. But that line anyway, any structure in the river has the potential to cause flooding where it would otherwise not have occurred. It tells me that, you know, in my, in my opinion, when I think about, you know, is it worth removing dams in the river? That tells me that it might be. Is that a fair assessment? I guess as the, as the potential, yes. Our, you're correct, our study did not look at, you know, the effect of removal of the, of the dams in this location. Alternatively, we actually looked at, and I think it was more in the reconnaissance study in 96 of, of utilizing the dams as locations for these, these structures. I'll preface, and Jeff could probably, because he was more involved in the 96 study than I, that the effect of going the route of upgrading these dams to have them having something more significant on top really would require significantly more construction and impact than doing just standalone ice control piers. The removal of the dams, one, it was not studied, but that's the condition that has been there since 92. That is the condition that the stream and the events have occurred. So to some degree, there is the potential that those dams are assisting in ice retention upstream and in the like. I think the only, the baffles on the main street dam were taken out. That was, was that before the 92 event? Yes, the closed pandemic main street, that was dropped back in the 70s, the 1980s. Okay, so that, that was before the 92 event. But yeah, we really looked at the Pioneer Street Bridge for several, the dam just upstream of the Pioneer Street Bridge, excuse me, that, you know, that one there. And, and Dave, it's correct. I mean, in, in some ways, and depending on the year, obviously, in the ice up freezing conditions, conditions that actually, theoretically, we can't help, it doesn't hurt. There's, from, from a pure engineering, I think, point of view, there's a fair amount of benefit of reconstructing that into a more robust, I don't want to say we dismissed it, but I think that just the, the reality of being able to, to use that and basically make it even more of a barrier, you know, for aquatic organisms and fish and stuff like that. It's probably just not really, really realistic at all. Versus the piers. And, and, and David can give a description of people aren't quite visualizing what they mean. It's almost like a bridge abutment, so water can freely flow around and it's not a barrier. So, so really doing a major, major reconstruction of the dam system stream of Pioneer for the purposes of ice. It's probably really not practical. We just didn't look at it. Much more because of that. We just didn't feel any traction at all in the regulatory realm. What's interesting, because I mean, one of those, the main locations is, it sounds like it's on top of the main street dam. Is that? It, it's just upstream. It's just upstream. Just upstream, yeah, correct. That's, that's what I feel like I have to chew on. But it's not a full river blockage, though. You know, water still during normal flow, even flood flow still flows through the piers. Perfect. Okay. Well, I think those are all the questions I have for now. Any other folks on the council? Yeah, Donna. So, when you go to D.C. under VNA for your report, will you be talking about your recommendation? Correct. Yeah. So that's what you'll be leading with. So, do we get input to that recommendation? Or do we just accept the report and say? So I think that the idea now was to, so first, you don't, you're not making a commitment tonight yet. This is a draft. This is the council's chance to comment on the draft and provide whatever they want, as I understand it. And then we are going to meet with the other partners to make sure they've agreed with the conclusions and the methodologies and that kind of thing. They'll, you know, provide their science staff on it more than an elected group that we are, that we are the client. So that includes the state and the feds. And then after everyone's come back, then they'll be a sort of a final report presented and we can accept it or not and then make a decision of what we want to do. And assuming they do. So, you know, I mean, they are funding partners as well as, there's funding partners on the study, but then presumably if we were to go ahead with a project or not. But if we are, then we would, they would be funders to that as well. So the state and Army Corps would have to be willing to go along with us. I don't, I doubt the city would want to shoulder all of that on some of that. Oh, Ashley. Yes? Sort of piggybacking on what Anne mentioned. I think it would be really important for everyone to be able to see sort of what the potential looks like for flooding given each option. I realize there are so many variables there, but you know, people's properties are impacted and regardless of whether it's rural or, you know, in the sort of urban core. I mean, I think, I think that's something that we would need to know. At least I personally would like to know before making a decision about sort of how to proceed here. Certainly understanding that it would be a rough estimation. You know, here are the possible areas that would be impacted by this. And I think residents should, should have access to that information too. I think that I'd like to have a public hearing to sort of get input about this. And, you know, given the changes to the zoning, I think that this could also sort of raise some other issues depending on how we chose to proceed that we should be fully aware of or at least as aware as we could possibly be before making, at least before I'd be comfortable making a decision. And maybe that's not possible, but it sounds like it might be possible to at least identify certain areas that would likely be impacted by this choice of need. Right. And I think that they're all very excellent points. What our intention was just kind of a very brief, if you will, half an hour brief overview. And, you know, we've generated and are generating some significant amount of engineering and scientific that really looks at existing conditions and very much counsel to your point. You know, flood levels under various conditions, under existing, and then under each alternative what is the increase or the induced flooding and where is it. So a lot of that technical information, you know, has been generated. We've got appendices and stuff that really is quite thick if you were to print it all out. And so one of the things we would ask you folks to be thinking about is what to do with that as we ramp up to meet with other project partners to talk about, you know, the more minutia of this and yes, the recommendations coming out of that and what we'd like to get from the city manager would be for you folks is, you know, is there, you know, a public informational presentation or maybe some workshops or something like that. There's a bunch of different ways to do that.   And then look, I think, for some direction of how do we present that? What is the form? We certainly don't expect the, boom, here you go. Please make a decision today. That's obviously not acceptable to you guys. I think it's important to understand. We'd like to wrap up this project. It's been going for a long time. But it's also been going for a long time and so we want to take the time to make sure we do it right. It's not like someone's waiting for it, you know, to be approved by next week after seven years of work. So this was, it was at a place where it was ready to be presented to you all to start thinking about it and be aware that over this year we'll be looking at these issues. Well, I guess to that point, I mean, it has been a long time. And, you know, when I think about, you know, flooding in the river, I do think about the contribution of the dams to that flooding or the potential that they have. And so I don't know if not this study, then who would make that evaluation. And so I'm sure it's probably late in the process to suggest, you know, to you all that like, that would be a valuable piece, at least for me. I don't want to speak for everybody else, but in terms of assessing whether or not removal of dams would benefit the ice situation, or even, I mean, again, I recognize this was about ice jams. I also wonder about like just the fluvial flooding that might contribute to. And I think it's worth recognizing, you know, in the benefit analysis here too, just the recreation sort of aspect of that as well. So that the dams do present a barrier to literally, to recreating. So I just want to make sure that that is a part of the assessment. So I see you all taking notes. I wonder if that means that you are, that that is a possibility or not so much. What's your thought on that? I mean, I guess on the removal of the dams, I think we will bring forward some of the information that we had done in the reconnaissance level survey and put it into this study, which sort of dusted off, you know, put it in here based on the current thinking. I believe the answer essentially will be, as we kind of indicated that theoretically, they're actually helping. But to identify that the fact that to remove them, it has a larger ecosystem impact versus the dams in the south, beyond the fluvial side of this for removal of the dams, that would be probably beyond our study to be able to look at that, which does get into, as you said, and you're very correct in identifying that the ice control structures, if other counselors aren't aware of this, they do nothing for a fluvial event. Really, this is just for the ice breakup type event. Fluvial events is really governed by the channels of the stream in the flood area. So again, this does nothing for those potential events. But again, the study is also looking at the ice events that historically have occurred to come up with a cost benefit based on ice events, not fluvial events. So it is just comparing that type of flooding event. Thank you. And then again, the last item on the recreational aspect, absolutely, we can incorporate a discussion about that. Sure. Donna. You know, you have this wonderful graph showing your locations A through D. Is there a way to interface each of these locations with the map like earlier you showed in 1992 where the water went? So if we put it here, where would the water go? If we put it here, where would the water go? Could you turn that into a map kind of visual? I think that might be similar to what your comment is. The map that we hatched up there, which had the three different colored ones, was an inundation map in that case for the 1992 was our base model year. We certainly can do that base year for one ice control structure inundation, two ice control structure inundation to see the delta between the 1992 event and if that would occur with our structures in place. The one thing I would caution, and I think it will be very good for if we go forward with some kind of public presentation, is that you back that away. Everything that we do is based on probabilistic evaluation. So that's a snapshot of a particular flood event and everything that we do is based on different events over a course of, you know, a 200 year type of look at things. So it's good graphics to get a, you know, sort of the gut check of, you know, how is this going to impact things or improve things? But it doesn't necessarily get all the statistics, you know, that we get into when we're doing the cost-benefit evaluation. But it definitely is a graphic that gives you a good sense of, you know, what happens when you put these in and we can certainly provide that. Ashley. And the only other thing, and I can't remember if it was in the 2010 piece, I think when the city sort of revisited this the last time and now we're here, I think I read somewhere that the city spends approximately $450,000 annually on flood cleanup. Is that, am I right? I remember reading that somewhere. I don't know where I read that. I remember reading that as well and that like if we do nothing, the annual damage to downtown, I'm not sure that that was money that the city spent. I think it was averaged out. Okay. If we have a catastrophic flood event, then we should expect that. Because I remember that number two, and I think that what it means is if we have a catastrophic flood and we spend many millions of dollars once every X years, then that means $450,000 per year. I found, yeah, future damages without the project are expected to average 431, 275. So I guess one of the things that would be really helpful to me, you know, sort of thinking about dollars and sense of this whole thing, that you're still sort of putting together what these estimates would actually look like and all of that. But it would be really helpful to sort of get an idea for sort of what those funds are, like what those funds actually are and sort of how they're used and what part of that is to help local businesses sort of get back on their feet versus how much of it is directed at city, focused cleanup and sort of those kinds of things. Because I mean, right, there is, I'm not saying, you know, that this is the answer, but there is a world in which sometimes a project is cost prohibitive, you know, when you sort of look at what you would expend versus how much it's going to cost you the project. I'm not saying that that's sort of where we're at here, but it would be really helpful to know what those numbers actually mean, like I assume those are the do nothing numbers and sort of how that breaks down versus like what the sort of long term cost savings would look like obviously assuming we have a major flood event every year, but, and I had one other, oh, the other thing, I would encourage you to sort of talk to downtown local business owners, I don't know if that would be through Montpelier Alive or whether that would go through Bill, but I think that it would be really valuable to sort of get their insight on all of this because a lot of them have been affected, even this year there have been a couple of floods that have had a pretty big impact for some folks, so I think that would be a really important perspective to hear sort of about what the options look like and obviously if we're going to have to fund this, if we do decide to go forward, that means a bigger conversation with lots of people. And I do believe some of those damaged estimates are based on those histories within businesses and one of the, I don't mean to speak for your study, but I just remember that one of the things that we do is actually inventory every property that was in the potential area, what was in it, what was potentially there, what its risk factor was. But that would be very helpful to see. Well, I'll give you a little nerdy information. The number is specifically damaged to buildings and infrastructure. So it's just buildings and infrastructure. So the way that's done is through the Army Corps, they have what they call depth damage curves, a certain amount of damage value to a property with a value property off of the census. I'm not sorry, not the census, but the assessment of any building is based on the location it is, the depth of the water that actually is occurring to it, and then it's calculated to assign damage for that type of residential building, commercial building, and it really is calculating that and then basically annualizing it to the 431 number. So again, it's not something that's going to happen every year, but it's annualized over a time period to see what that damage would be if nothing is done, based on city assessments. And maybe this is something that the city, should you remember you're live, or the business association, something, but there's obviously also a cost to business owners when this happens. And obviously, if the option that we choose is to do nothing, I think we need to be informed about what that would mean for businesses that are likely to be affected because we have an obligation to them too. Yeah, I'd say businesses have been very engaged, and certainly even when we have flood risk, when we notice ice jamming or rising, we typically meet with them to communicate with what's going on, and they're very aware that the gauges are public, and I know many business owners in vulnerable places monitor our gauges very regularly and use that as their own for their own preventive measures. But even then this winter, we had one that popped up in the middle of the night, and we had some downtime flooding in basements that came really fast because it was a jam that came and left. So I want to start moving on, and so it comes from the public. So if you would state your name and your address, or like the street you're on, and just, you don't have a timer today, so... Oh, yeah. I suppose I could. I am a Montpelier resident of Liberty Street, but I'm wanting to submit a statement on behalf of the Vermont River Conservancy, where I serve as the Development and Outreach Director. Vermont River Conservancy is a non-profit land trust working statewide to protect land along our waterways for public access, ecological health of our rivers, and to work towards more flood-adaptive communities. The Vermont River Conservancy has reviewed the study, and the point we would like to respond to publicly is 5.2, the flood mitigation alternatives. BRC believes there is another option, an alternative approach to flood mitigation called let a river be a river. I know this may sound like option number four listed in this study, which is no action, but our alternative is rather the opposite. It, in fact, is several different actions coming out the problem from several different angles. We as a state have learned a great deal since Tropical Storm Irene about the power of rivers. BRC has worked closely with state agencies, municipalities, watershed-focused organizations, as well as FEMA, and we have learned collectively that we simply cannot control rivers. The more we build around rivers, the more we install infrastructure that can age, the more we try to manipulate rivers, the more vulnerable to flood events we become. Rivers are becoming even more dynamic and powerful with climate change, and the accompanying extreme weather events are hard to predict, but what we can be sure of is more flooding more frequently. For years in urban areas throughout the country, we have industrialized, channelized, walled our rivers with concrete, and essentially turned our backs to our rivers. Montpelier is no different. As the main stem of the Winooski meets the north branch in the center of town, they are surrounded by parking lots, roads, concrete walls, and gas stations right at the river's edge. There are far more gas stations along the river in Montpelier than there are places to access and enjoy our rivers. Fluvial geomorphology is not going to change. The facts of river dynamics are not going to change. General laws of hydrology and physics are not going to change. We need to change. There's time for Montpelier to turn around and face the river. How can we change? We can't lift up our structures and simply rearrange them on a whim. What we can change is how we relate to the river. The alternative that BRC would like to offer is a holistic approach, taking into consideration our place in the watershed system. Examples of techniques within this approach are learn from the past. The report notes that the 1992 flood event damage in Montpelier was an estimated $5 million. As Councillor Hill mentioned, what did that number consist of? Are there behaviors we can change to avoid some of these damages? Upstream, downstream collaboration. When there was a threat to release some water from the reservoir in Marshfield during the flood event in May 2011, the connection between upstream and downstream communities was starkly evident. What if communities worked together to plan for flood events and considered ways we can work on a watershed-wide level to mitigate damages to our most vulnerable areas? One example could be ensuring we have flood plains protected upstream so that high water has several places to dissipate as it makes its way downstream. Face the river. If we provide community members and visitors increased and improved opportunities to relate to our rivers through public access points, the economic benefits could be great. There are examples throughout the country, even the world that we could look to. Urban whitewater parks, parks that host music, farmers markets, and food booths right at the river's edge, and gardens that also serve as stormwater treatment are just a few examples of community assets that are not huge economic losses if they flood. Bringing people to the river not only connects people to the natural world and their community, it can generate economic benefits without the vulnerability of building a permanent structure on a flood plain. The opportunities with this approach are incredible, and embedded in all of this is an eye on flood mitigation. BRC would like to help foster this different perspective. We see an unprecedented, exciting opportunity in Montpelier. This city is poised for change in many ways. There are numerous projects happening that promise to benefit the economic and cultural vitality of this city, including but not limited to one Taylor Street, Hampton Inn, affordable housing behind the Christ Church, an extension of the bike path, Caledonia Spirit, and a pedestrian bridge. Note that each and every one of these projects is along a river. Can we set the intention now to bring people to the river? To consider the natural characteristics of our rivers and to let our rivers be rivers. Can Montpelier finally, once and for all, face the river? I haven't worked out the timer yet, but that was 5.14. And if you want me to, I'll be glad to do it, but people need to know exactly how much time you're giving them. I think for now, why don't we just calibrate ourselves? Do you know what I mean? We're learning that this much writing is about five minutes. This is a useful calibration. Hi, my name is Scott Muller. I'm a Montpelier resident. A few questions and some comments. The first off, has this been the first chance for public input on the draft? Then I would really request this study to improve it. Section 9 is entitled, Coordination and Public Input. If there hasn't been any, those sorts of statements should be taken out of the document. The second is, as a member of the River Conservancy and the Sustainable Montpelier Coalition and other relationships with the river, as an environmental engineer, there's a lot of things that jump out of this study, and one is simply the lack of integration with all the other river activities going on in the space. And so, the document was clearly written over a long period of time, and parts of it sort of contradicted itself. One of those to your point earlier, Madam Mayor, was in the first page it talks about the importance of gradient in a river to control floods. And so I didn't really understand how you offered recently that the dam may be mitigating flood activity. So I would really encourage looking at removing those dams and the impact and the need for more cement in the river. The other is that there's a lot of drivers of change in this corridor that are happening. One was just, as Ricardo was mentioning, straightening out the river and pouring in cement. That has changed the whole geomorphology of the river, so now you have a flat, wide river that's filling in with sediment. Those flooding characteristics are very different than a normal meandering stream that can handle larger flushes. So when you frame it as a do-nothing approach, that's a bit specious. I really think you need to look at a lot of the other solutions such as dredging, such as encouraging meandering in the river. Some of those areas, as Ricardo mentioned, have been filled in and gas stations placed right in the natural course of the river. There's nine gas stations in the flood plain right now within a mile radius downtown. So what is clear is that this mitigation structure, no matter how much money you spend on it, Montpelier is going to flood and it's always going to flood. And if you look at NOAA's climate data, since 1950, there's eight more inches of precipitation that we're dealing with. The volume in the stream has gone up 25% since 1950 and it's continuing to climb. Montpelier is a city of five rivers, right? So there really needs to be a mature discussion that's integrated across all disciplines, rather than just building more cement in the river. It's a great opportunity to do that. There's many other cities that have done it. Most cities in the country built their backs to the river and are now trying to turn them around to embrace this as an asset. Another example is downtown Denver. In 1968, when they had their huge flood, they created a Greenway Foundation and it was actually the losing candidate that was put in charge of that. All the businesses, all the residential uses, all the different ecosystem ecological services in that corridor were represented. Now that's one of the highest per capita income zip codes in the country. It's a really nice place to visit. I think that's about all I have to say. I would just encourage more public involvement in this discussion. There's a lot of other options besides just continuing to harden infrastructure, throwing more good money after bad. So count on the resources of all the different organizations in the city to help explore these solutions. One that I thought was really interesting that seemed like an add-on in your study was rubber dams put in at the end. I think many council members remember in 2014, we were here talking about removing the Bailey Dam and putting in a whitewater park there. That's a multi-million dollar asset the city can develop that many other cities are. The most surprising part of that experience for us in presenting that case to the city was how little the city knew about the river. The city didn't know that they owned the Bailey Dam. People didn't understand that that was a reflection pool for the Golden Dome. If you drive down Berlin Street, it's a beautiful picture of the dome reflected in that pool. So there's a lot of integration to happen. There's a lot of information out there to do that. Downtown Boise actually put in one of those inflatable rubber dams. Again, they control this. That is about the price tag you put in there. That inflates and deflates to change the shape of the wave. Some Tuesdays it's for surfboards. Wednesdays it's for kayaks. So there's a huge asset there on top of this mitigation that I think is easier to sell to the public. And then the other was what we discovered was I think perhaps how much we're all underestimating the contamination at Grossman's Lot and the sedimentation that's occurred above Bailey. Someone needs to test that sediment. It's probably severely contaminated. Good luck. Count on our help. Thank you. Scott, can I ask you one question? Bailey Dam, is that the same bridge as the... The closed pin dam? Is that the one that is at Main Street? Yes, right outside of Shaw's. I just wanted to make sure I had the right name. I mean, it could be confused with Bailey Street where there is no dam. And there's probably a sliver of history that would make the report better of how that ice mitigation structure was not working there, which is why they took it down in the 70s. That part was missing from the report as well. The ice mitigation instrument wasn't working there. Okay. Thank you. It also about five minutes. I'm trying to... Calibrating. Yeah, it's good to calibrate. Okay, any other further discussion among us? Okay, great. Thank you. So we're going to end up getting another... No action required. Yeah, we don't need to do anything now. And just to put it out there, I mean, we are... I mean, my hope still is to have a stormwater group that's thinking about how we implement our stormwater master plan. And this seems to me like it would fit in with a group with that kind of expertise as well. So I could see that group taking this on. It doesn't exist yet, but when it does... Okay. Thank you so much for all of your work on this. This has been fascinating. We look forward to coming back. Sounds good. Okay. So we're going to move on to just as a... Did you have something?  I was going to get it out of your way. I've been... So I did a little bit of estimating ahead of time as to how long our agenda would take. And we're only 20 minutes behind. So... We were doing great until I just had so many questions about study, you know. Okay. Delicious. Agenda item. Okay. So I'm on citizen voting in elections. Also a fascinating topic. I'll take that one because it came through me and I realized there's a couple big things left to go. So I've got a lot to throw at you, but I'll try to keep it quick. So the reason I'm bringing this to your attention is that over the last, I guess, three town meetings, I've had questions from various folks asking... Always about their spouses. Why their spouses who are non-U.S. citizens can't participate in the city elections and the municipal elections because they're, you know, they're longtime residents, been here for decades. Maybe they've got kids in the school, they're property owners. And I mean my response has always been like I was being asked, you know, I don't know why or there are so many songs about rainbows or something. I smile and I nod and I thank them for their concerns and I just sort of like... But because I'm taking a class and getting a certificate on election administration, I have come to find out that it is not a crazy question. In fact, there is some degree or other of non-citizen voting in San Francisco where non-citizen parents can vote for school board, Chicago, a similar arrangement, municipal voting in Tacoma Park, Maryland, since 1993 in Hyattville, Maryland, Mount Rainier, Maryland, Barnsville, Maryland, Martin's Additions in Somerset, Maryland, and Chevy Chase. And those are the ones I could find easily. Internationally, it's an enormous list of countries that allow for various degrees of non-citizen voting. Even at the national level in some cases, but often, you know, at the subnational level, countries like Canada, Switzerland, Israel, Ireland, Denmark, Finland, Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Estonia, Greece, it just goes on and on and on. So this is not unprecedented question. Now I spoke to a couple of folks in Maryland. I spoke to the city clerk in Tacoma Park, Jesse Carpenter, and I also spoke to the city clerk in College Park, Jeanine Miller. In College Park, they recently passed something at the city council level, but there was a lot of pushback, as she said, from outside groups, not so much folks inside. And there was enough hubbub that when a problem was found procedurally with their vote, they just didn't go back to it. So it did not happen in College Park, Maryland. But both clerks didn't indicate that there were any legal implications, any consequences, for example, like there are with sanctuary cities. And I think it's because sanctuary city has got that shingle on it. It's like sanctuary trademark. It draws a lot of attention. And this does not so much, at least at this point. There are certainly places where it's been attempted and it hasn't worked, hasn't been approved. You know, closest is probably Brookline Mass. It was voted by the town and it was scuttled by the legislature, and there have been efforts off and on in New York City for some time that may be getting some footing now. Just for quick background, I don't want to ramble too long, but I want to give you all the facts here. There is also historical precedent for this. There was non-citizen rights in most states for voting, at least with municipal elections, 40 states at one time or another. And those got scuttled by constitutional amendments generally between 1880 and 19, as recent as 1926. And this is also when poll literacy tests, poll taxes, things like that were come up because there was a real anti-immigrant surge. In Vermont, the constitution changed in 1828. So unfortunately, we were a little ahead of the pushback on immigrant surge there. Now, I should mention with Maryland, it would be a different process here. Maryland is not a pure Dylans rule state, so they have some home rule. So it's a question for them of just passing it and moving on. In our case, the process would have to be a charter change that would go through the legislature. Now, the impediments that are there is, first, there's the constitutional question. And our constitution looks a lot like Maryland's constitution and a lot of other constitutions. I believe the section 42, where I've got it here, of every person of the full age of 18 years, who is a citizen of the United States having resided in this state for the period established by the General Assembly and who is of a quiet and peaceable behavior and will take the following oath or affirmation, shall be entitled to all the privileges of a voter of this state. Now that of this state, the state privileges would drew my attention. And I actually talked to Dan Richardson, who wrote the memo that I sent you all out, and that was something that was a fairly conservative memo and he was acting in a fairly conservative capacity as an attorney. I spoke to him and he said flat out, he agreed with my interpretation, he said, I don't think meaningfully section 42 is an impediment to this. Your impediment is going to be in the legislature. So this is the challenge that's out there. My feeling is that since it's theoretically possible, even though it would face extraordinarily long odds in the legislature, obviously it would be a hot button issue, that the least I could do now that I know it's possible is not take on any kind of advocacy role, but facilitate the conversation. There are logistical issues. We do share our ballot with two other entities, the Public Safety Authority and the school board. And I've talked to Brian Ricca about letting him know that this is being talked about. So there are ways around this. So what I would suggest, and what I'm going to move forward on, this doesn't require any action on your part, but I think you all should be engaged in this, is I'm going to set up a couple community conversations, a couple community meetings. One, just to have people show up and talk about it. See if there's actual interest. See if anybody shows up to, yeah. So this is one of the things that I was hoping that I intend to form a committee to focus on social and economic justice issues here in Montpelier. I think it's an area where we have a lot of work to do. And this is one area where I think it would be really good for that committee to do some work. And I would love to sort of be a part of that conversation because I think that the decisions that we're making as a city impact everyone that lives here. And I want to make sure that we have a full, rich conversation about that. I think it'd be great to be involved. My recommendation would be that you let this go as an independent conversation so it doesn't interfere with the other things that the committee wants to work on, but it makes total sense. So if there's interest in a first meeting, then there can be a second meeting to talk about logistics. And then if a chart or change, and you've seen some language I sent out that's, I sent you all kinds of stuff. I just dumped stuff on you. There's language that could be barred from another municipality there, and there's certainly other municipalities I could talk to. If there is desire to pursue a chart or change, and this far out we've got a whole year, my strong recommendation, because there will likely be pushback from outside sources, that before, even if you all are supportive of it, everyone I've spoken to in a community in the position of leadership is actually supportive of it, I would recommend you let folks then petition this onto the ballot just to demonstrate that there is a base of support for it so that you're not taking on that, you know, the type of pushback you could get, particularly from outside groups without some demonstration that, yeah, people are into this. And then, you know, that's not, wouldn't preclude you from passing some sort of resolution of support, but I would just be my recommendation, we're talking way out here. But yeah, so this community discussion ball is rolling, and I just wanted to get the word out and bring y'all in on it. I would just say, John, I would enthusiastically support exploring this option. So many barriers to citizenship exist in our country, and just even on the campaign trail recently, I spoke to so many people who were not US citizens, but were very much a part of our community, and I believe deserved that voice. So I think at least having the conversation, that should absolutely be an option. So thanks for doing this, John. Sure, and just to be clear, you know, places that do this, they just don't hand them a state ballot, and they don't hand them a federal ballot. They're just getting a city ballot. And it's really interesting the idea of thinking, is there a difference between being a citizen of your country and being a citizen of your community, which I never really thought of, but I think the community probably should have, to just define what it considers a citizen of its community. When these constitutional amendments were passed, I think there was the fear of foreign nationals, maybe infiltrating, you know, governments. I would say that's a bit far-fetched, that the British are going to try to take out Mayor Watson. It would be the French. And I'm Irish, so I never say anything good about the British. I should toss into that a couple years ago, you all may or may not remember, Burlington had some questions like this on their ballot, and that memo you actually that I sent out was prepared for Burlington City Councilors. They did not go for a charter change to make this possible. I'm not exactly sure why, maybe they just thought it would be too daunting. They instead put a question on the ballot that would have urged the legislature to begin the process of a constitutional amendment that would give municipalities the freedom to do that. And it failed. I just want to make sure that I make the point that this is very distinct from that. I think what folks are talking about, and certainly the discussion that is beginning under me, as I understand it, is that it's about us. It's about what Montpelier wants to do, what Montpelier should do, and not about something about the rest of the state and what the rest of the state should or shouldn't do. It's an internal conversation. I think that's an important distinction. Just one sort of, I think it's just a terminology thing that I struggle with. I used to work in immigration law before I came to Vermont. And I see, talking about non-citizens and residents, I'd just like to be clear in the terminology that we use here. One of the sections said resident alien, which is, I mean, I guess the proposal is to allow lawful permanent residents. Yeah, that was just on the cover sheet. I just sort of Googled what the legal term was. Yeah, no, no. I just want to make sure I understand to you what the proposal is, which is lawful permanent residents. So people who are here with a green card is... Yeah, although, I mean, the proposal will be whatever the folks who put together the charter change want it to be. I mean, I'm not handing them one. And I also want to say that I want to facilitate this conversation. It's fascinating academically, and it just feels like an extension of my job. Should I decide to take on some sort of advocacy role in this, then I would, of course, recuse myself from certifying the final vote on the ballot, just the same as I would have done if I'd drawn an opponent, probably get the VCA chair to sign off in my place. I think this is going to be very interesting. I'm looking forward to the results. You know, if you have a meeting, do people show up and, you know, how do they want to frame it? So just keep us posted, I guess, on the timeframe and how we can help get the word out. Sure. Okay, any other... Yeah, please. My name is Amanda Garces and I live on Kent Street. And I have been here for about a year and a half when I moved here. I was really afraid that I was going to come to a state that was 93 percent white and my kids were not going to identify with my family and me. And I found a very multicultural place here in Montpelier and I'm very excited to be here. Latinos are... We are the first, the biggest growing population here in Vermont. And I really would like to encourage you to not be afraid to become a sanctuary city if needed to be... Or to really think through this to the community. We have our kids in school. We really have a very big Latino population here but it's not just Latinas. We have refugees here. As you said, becoming a city is really, really extremely difficult and sometimes it takes a lot of money and hurdles. In the meantime, people are here being part of your community in school, at work, buying food, buying in the local places and we would like to have everybody have the chance to vote. I don't encourage for this to be on a ballot. I think that this should be something that the city council should promote because it just opens up more possibilities of hate towards us. So I think that taking a stand for people is really, really important and I think that we are here and we're not going anywhere to be part of it. I am a citizen so to make that clear I voted in these elections and I would love to have my friends vote it. I know many of them who are involved who wanted to vote but couldn't and who are part of a lot of committees and are part of making the city better. So I really encourage you to make a difference. I also would love to have the undocumented population included. They might have kids in school, some people are married to undocumented and that's just the reality and I'll be more than happy to support. I have been an immigrant rights activist for many years. I'm on the board of migrant justice and also have been involved in many of the research that you have mentioned as well. So I'll be more than happy to provide that support. Thank you very much for your comments. I'll just offer clarification on the process. Unfortunately because we are a Dillon's rule state which means as they like to say that towns are creatures of the state it can't avoid the ballot. It has to go on the ballot and then if it's approved it then has to be approved by the legislature who could just drop it. So the question is whether it goes on the ballot by having the council just vote to put it there or whether there can be a petition of 300 people that would then put it there or you know they could do both. It could be a thousand. Scott, yeah. Just a quick point of clarification. Is it possible then if it has to be on the ballot that it can be a phased approach? Could it just be the school system voting for the school board? Or does it have to be comprehensive municipal elections? Well the charter change would be whatever the charter change would be although I think since the I mean it's more complicated with the schools I mean obviously this is the municipality so we're talking about the municipal elections for the schools I'm not sure how the schools could do that for one thing it's with the new district the Merge District with Roxbury it's no longer a department of the city it no longer has that direct connection to the city it's an independent entity managed directly through the state so I'm not sure how that would even go but that would have to be a conversation to have with the school board and they'd have to look into that and they'd have to get the process and going on their own. Would you take some sort of charter vote of the two community you know the district members and then... Well it would have to be the school district bylaws of course Roxbury doesn't have a charter but the school district however their governance structure is set up for them to make changes to that I'm not even sure where to begin with that No we're all making it up as we go along so there's no link to property taxes then with school voting with this new district merger how is that... you know for my family personally it's difficult that my wife can't vote as a green card holder despite pending property taxes and things so now that there's a district merger property taxes are still supporting the district school Right, right, I mean your tax bill to give it like a funnel you've got the school taxes you've got the municipal taxes they come to and they spit out under one paper unless this God awful bill in the legislature right now passes in which case that's a whole other story but so yes I mean just because all those property taxes appear on one bill the municipal and the school are really a distinct are still distinct entities even though they're both getting funded from property taxes there would have to be two separate ballot process so the school would have to... I think that's all we're trying to say yes voting on the school still affects property taxes like it does now it's just because they're not under the municipal charter anymore before the merger if the city chose to amend its charter that this is how anything under that charter would have affected now they're not in our charter so I don't know what their process is their own thing so if it were to work essentially we would have to give non-citizen voters a ballot that did not include school questions or public safety authority questions unless those two entities also great questions I think there are going to be a lot of questions to be sorted out and that's fair okay thank you John again for taking that on okay apartment inspections so this is an item that I feel like I had a hand in originating back when we put together our goals last year and anyway I guess I'll turn it over to you Bill to talk about where we're at with that so this is a combination of a holdover from the prior council's goals and for me keeping my word to council member Hill who would push particularly hard for that to be on the goals and at one point we had it scheduled over the winter and I asked her could we please wait until after we got through the budget and everything and then we had to change so this is so it wasn't whatever that thing that made you not able to vote was about this with the disqualifier it could be a good behavior and peaceful peaceful that's right so essentially the issue the goal was to sort of discuss whether the city wanted to take on an apartment inspection program and that could look like a lot of different things in its most concise sense and we have folks from the planning office here Mike Miller in fact helped run one in Barrie so he could explain how these work particularly but essentially there's a fee paid by department owner and there are regular inspections to determine presumably life safety items there's a lot more to it than that it's a lot of big undertaking so sort of two part question number one is this something we want to take on if the answer is yes we at least want to look at it and take a deeper dive then the suggestion is to form a working group maybe not unlike the sprinkler committee to then really say does this make sense you know let's look at possible ordinances let's look at what it really is going to cost and see what are we trying to accomplish by this if not that then is there something else we could do that helps tenants in their living conditions and those kind of things so to me it's sort of if one then two is my suggestion so yes I want to do this I will be as loud and non-peaceable as I have to be about it so one thing there's an affordable housing coalition here so it seems like something that they should be involved with and the housing task force also this committee that we will get up and running for social and economic justice they think having renters have access to safe affordable quality housing is a huge part of that conversation and I will volunteer as tribute from the council to be heavily involved in that from district comments we should move forward on it I have a committee so just as another so I had a conversation with the housing task force about this a little while ago and their thought was well we don't seem to get so let me preface this all back up to two steps by saying I think this is worth looking into but just I want everybody to be aware of the conversation that I had anyway which is that when I went to the housing task force they said we're not getting the kinds of complaints about housing that suggests that there are life safety issues to be fair that might be an indicator that people don't know who to call or it could be that because we have effectively a 0% vacancy rate that maybe they're afraid of complaining that's also possible so another one of the things that we talked about in that conversation was potentially the need for some renter outreach get in education letting them know who they ought to be contacting and what qualifies as something you should be complaining about and that might help inform discussion on a need for inspections so that also feels like a good place to start in my mind I'll just leave that there I want to be clear to say that implementing a program like this is a very heavy lift and this is not just what's passive policy so I think part of what I would hope would be studied is does it make sense to do that what are the actual scope of the issues and not a full inspection but how do you get at it what are the best ways to get at it I'll certainly want good quality housing for people but I think we just want to make sure we're actually solving the problem that we're trying to target and that we're looking at all the possible ways to do that am I the only renter I'm officially a renter okay so I can tell you this is an issue and I've had some great places to live here in Montpelier that have been apartments and I've had some that are way subpar but setting my own personal experiences aside I think that there's a whole lot of latitude in this if we go into this we need to address a problem that in my experience exists and I know plenty of other people who have this and I didn't take it that way it doesn't necessarily have to be this is the sort of thing where Arlington has a renters bill of rights for example that's one way that we could do some renter outreach and give people a way to address these disputes or how to if this issue happens here's what your options are and so I don't always see things so starkly contrasted but I think that there's a lot of room here to do some really meaningful work in Montpelier that hasn't always necessarily had a seat at the table good one other small point just to keep in mind and I'm sure we will to keep a light touch in some of this because I can imagine situations where renters might be in a terrible place that is still better than no place and if the city comes down on that it could make that situation at least for a moment worse just to keep that in mind as this goes forward thank you great oh yeah please so I just wanted to Mike Miller I'm the planning director and so I just wanted to go and say suggest that if you're looking to do something let's try to target the problem we're going to have a committee to explore whether or not we need an inspection program an inspection program is a tool to fix a problem let's find out what the problem is say give the housing task force an assignment to identify how to improve the quality of housing and we can move forward with trying to find tools that will improve the quality of housing or if we have health and safety issues task them with coming up with programs and recommendations for how to fix health and safety issues as opposed to saying how do we get to this inspection program which maybe you know let's find a problem that makes this a solution that we can adopt let's start with a problem and then we can all work together to kind of come up with the best solutions and maybe it's an inspection program great thank you I think that makes a lot of sense let's start with assessing the problem any other okay great so it sounds like we're holding off on that is that the plan we're going to go through add that to the list of committees I can see that being even like a standing committee like me right okay great administrative department presentation okay my goal for this is to make it as brief as possible as you know we have planned to have presentations in all the departments and I think the larger departments will have much more formal presentations accompanied with site visits these are not particularly controversial areas but we do have the finance director is here the clerk is here I'm here we can make so I think the main point of this was to apply so the whole presentation is the one chart with the list and I want to make sure that you're clear what each department was responsible for what the staffing level were who the people are that do that and I think in terms of I think the clerk and the finance director can talk about emerging issues in their department I think largely for the manager's office the city and the council's goals and priorities and those sorts of things that's really what we're responding to I think internally it's a lot about approving our technology, approving our communications approving those kinds of things how we can do all of that better with the public and with you all and for the assessor I did speak with him and he just asked me to share that we are there is a boom in the housing market right now prices are going up at a 92% valuation rating versus 100% when you reach 80 you must do a complete revaluation so we still got some time to be anywhere from 2 to 5 years before we have to do it again but it's not forever either because we're now seeing sales maybe $100,000 over a price assessed value so what the state says is we want our assessments to be as close to reflecting the actual market as possible anything below 100 is a difference between our common level of appraisal and the actual values so it's dropped down to 92 now he thinks that when this year's sales come in it will drop even below when you hit 80 you're required to do it so he's just saying that is an emerging issue not maybe for this year but we could be thinking about maybe starting to set money aside for that it's not an inexpensive proposition it's certainly very big issue it's been through it before as a resident it's certainly as a council member and a city official it's not the most fun you will ever have but it's important because it's an issue of equity it entails creating a new property value for every property in the city everyone gets a new inspection cost and you have valuation computer models and all of you are on the board of civil authority so that means all the appeals so someone whose house might now be valued at 200,000 gets a new value and it's 300,000 and they're like my house isn't worth this so then they appeal and you have to make sure you have the right number of bathrooms and bedrooms and the biggest problem we face with these it's just totally understandable it's based on total value so when you do these the value goes up to the tax rate drops but intuitively a person says well I was like 200 now and 300 my taxes are going to go up by a third because they're not factoring in the tax so you have a lot of understandably paid people and it's just a lot of work and it's a lot of you hear a lot of complaints and the process takes a long time and it's very important to do it right again someone's going to say well here's mine and my neighbor minds this and my neighbor's that why and sometimes there's a good reason it's like oh well we missed two bedrooms and they have three so you got it then the neighbor gets an increase but the flip side of it is the most important thing of our tax system is that it's got to be equitable and if we're basing our revenue sources on the value of property it's important to keep it in the reason the state requires of course is there's a statewide property tax so they want to make sure that those values are more cost-effective and that's why they factor so he just wanted to say that that's not imminent this year but it's also not like a decade away and similarly a couple years ago he pitched a proposal for a revaluation of personal property which is the business personal property that we've already exempted the lower amounts but again you've got we sort of are relying on self-reporting and again it would be a proposition but it would create more equity so if that's something you want to hear more about we can arrange all that so I'll let the fine instructor the clerk talk about any if they want to about any emerging issues that they have my emerging issues are other staff in time you heard earlier Ruth is planning on retiring this year and we're fortunate but our other staff accountant Heather Graves is scheduled to go out of maternity leave in September of next year which is right about the same time as the audience is kicking off this year yeah sorry September of 2018 I apologize this year we're auditing 17 we're even budgeting 19 it gets confusing so that's really the big item on my horizon is how to manage a staff person a senior staff person that's departing how to build an incoming staff person and then also fill the voids some of the ways we can get theirs through efficiencies in our processes but those very efficiencies require time investment on the front end which is something that's at a premium for us right now so streamlining the processes working through staff transitions and also looking at IT infrastructure improvements in the next couple of years or sooner we have things that need to be addressed we have aging servers we have discussions to move to cloud-based services that are pretty important but also impact day-to-day operations within the city and everything comes at a cost as well so we have been limping along but then something that needs to that we need to take a serious look at so beyond that I think those are my four charging issues what do you all need to know is coming you don't need to know about that I would say in the clerk's office we've been short-handed there's a staff position that hasn't been filled but honestly there's been so much streamlining of the clerk functions and processes over the years we made it work for this last election and I think we may just be able to keep that up but we almost for sure have to get temp help around the general election or we'll be doomed the other issue that could be on the horizon you all should be aware of H911 which is now in senate finance I was hoping to go down and testify on it tomorrow but I forgot I had a previous commitment but I know some of the clerks are getting involved this is on a fast track it was a committee bill out of Ways and Means it came out of Ways and Means it was through five days and if it passes it's a massive education finance thing and one of the things in it would it would require us to send out two tax bills one for and I didn't actually verify this but I think it's for the state part of the property tax and everything else so that would be it would double our costs for printing it would take a lot more person power the amount of chaos it would cause I cannot understate people are going to be confused they already call us confused all the time the amount of calls we're going to get people stopping in confused and angry is going to skyrocket delinquencies are going to skyrocket because people are going to say I paid my bill what is this so if that happens we're in some deep do-do so if you all anybody who knows any legislators and wants to lean on them please get them to strike that that part of it that is a potential lurking issue right now it's in senate finance and you know Anne Cummings is the chair and she's a former mayor right there on the wall so hopefully she has would have a particular appreciation for the kind of bomb that would be in my office and lastly we want to make sure you guys have any questions for any of us about the functions of these offices again we can certainly take you on tours of city hall and what we do but just in general what goes on I realize these aren't the most nobody who runs for office to talk about accounts payable but nonetheless it's an important function it is essential but you want to make sure you had a chance to get familiar with this now or at any point in time any questions for any of these folks or on this document okay I have one oh yeah I don't have a question but just thank you thank you all you're essential sorry you don't get your stars on a regular basis it's better if you have a clean audit that's right that's a really big deal that's like regal stars so I have one question it's about this document that we have here with the structure in terms of key functions maybe this is not a key function but under the finance and treasure heading I just want to honor the work that I know you are y'all are doing about keeping track of our energy for the city and so if it were me I would suggest that we wait it is me I guess I would suggest that we add a bullet point for energy tracking unless we decide that that function lives with someone else well it certainly lives in the finance office I realized as I'm looking at this I actually didn't put accounting on there it belongs in accounting it's a keenness putting that information together has been arduous and Kate Stevenson may disagree with your opinion of us taking care of that per se but we are working diligently to get the baseline information the addition of the solar panels on log road and novice broadbrook and Sharon have put a little bit of a wrinkle in some of our billing procedures so we're continuing to work through that we're continuing to work with the vendor to get it so it's a little bit more clear to us and hopefully we'll be presenting to council next month that will be happening next month as far as our FY17 energy usage and the improvements will be made so bear with us yeah I understand that's even a new process but I do hope that eventually, right, I will not be sitting here and I hope that that is a practice that continues even beyond you know, my advocacy for it so, uh, super, thank you wow, second meeting she's talking about her exit strat you know, someday it's gonna keep it in mind alright, thank you I guess that's it for this item unless anybody else has a comment and at any time if anyone has any questions as you know okay, so we are at council reports what about your committee assignments just kidding the add-on item about we have a committee on committee stuff yes, sorry, thank you right so that was the add-in I forgot about the add-in so, uh who am I turning to for this one you wanna explain this one so, the committee on committees which is actually a thing that exists at the legislature as well so people who gave me some grief for that I did my research and it is actually a committee that exists in many different places so we met and one of the things that I've been really interested in doing since stepping onto the council is really making sure that we have an equitable process by which people can apply to be appointed to committees and to sort of really get a full idea a full picture of who someone is as an applicant and so we met and made some changes to created an application form really and really just sort of wanna get a sense for why people wanna serve on these committees and sort of what they're looking to do on these committees and the other piece is ensuring that committees are state meeting requirements state open meeting law requirements and posting their agendas and getting their minutes up to date as well and it's an ongoing process for all of us here in the city but it's something that I really am committed to doing I want people to be involved in our city governance and I think committee service is a really great way to do that and I wanna make sure that we're sending a message as a council that we will consider every applicant and look at these factors we're really clear in including on our form and it went through a few iterations thanks to Connor who put it all together it went through a couple of iterations on the committee and what we have brought to you as the council is what we distilled it down to you so thoughts on so really we're looking at this document that you put together yes so the idea is that this is something that for any appointments we would ask somebody to fill this out yes right now we just ask for a resume and some aspect of why you're interested in the committee and this would be a form that we would use and I especially like the second paragraph that's really talking about we're seeking diversity right up front and likewise on the last page we talk about that we really are asking people and are going to be accountable for participating in the committees so it's a little heads up when we come to reappointment there'll be some assessment going on I'm just hoping people don't find it intimidating that's the only thing I worry about it it's three pages but the idea is to try to emphasize as much about people's interest as their professional life and get a more balanced picture of the person I think we could probably make it like an internet based form where you can just fill it out and you don't have to worry about finding a printer and then being able to read handwriting but I think I'm not always fond of standardizing things I don't tend to fit well into square boxes you know round peg square hole but I think there's a lot of value you know sort of just just observing city politics as someone not on the council and sort of being here now I think this is a really valuable tool for us to have so I have a few questions do you have questions first so I mean one of my questions was how do we anticipate receiving this one possibility is that it's electronic and people can fill it out online I love the idea of not requiring a printer I think for other folks who who who maybe are not using computers I think it would make some sense to have printed versions of this available absolutely so there's that other questions I probably should have suggested this before now but I had a couple of questions about the form one place I know this is a small edit but one place you asked like do you anticipate being conflicted and there's just a yes or no and it would just make sense to me that if someone were going to answer a yes to explain like I run an ultimate frisbee day camp through the wreck department so does that make me conflicted let me just tell you that up front so then you right so offering a place where people can explain their conflict I think would be good and then later on it it has a place for it says please note that members will be evaluated on a regular basis to ensure that they're active participation and contribution to the group's goals and mission I think what you mean there is we're just going to check attendance unless it means more Jamie who's been just an incredible assistance to all of our council craziness but especially all the committees and the committee appointments when I went to talk to her she talked about how important it is and she's willing to keep attendance she does get minutes but she's also looking at some committees she doesn't get minutes and she doesn't get their agenda so she ends up putting an agenda so there is some level of participation that we can garnish through her and then I think there's other levels that we can ask chairs to do if we decide to do more I guess my suggestion would be like that for someone who likes to get an A that might be a scary statement because it's not clear how you're being evaluated so if we said we're going to check to see if you're showing up to your meetings and we're going to check to see that the committees have logged their minutes or whatever it is if we can be just really specific about that rather than are you contributing towards the group's goals and mission like that that's a little the minutes and the agenda get down to more detail that we thought would come later because the individual person is here whether as the function of the committee comes back to minutes and agenda versus the person can be responsible for attendance and you could word that instead of participating but also that when they come they're contributing to the goal the working of the committee so if you have other words that's fine but I don't know I guess I want more than them attending and sitting there like a warm body or being disruptive yes so they're supportive moving forward I don't know how we would evaluate someone on that on that second part we do all the time we ask the chair and we go to reappoint we ask all sorts of questions and evaluate them on that so I thought up front we could just tell them we're going to evaluate them on that exactly how and you could say something like sort of please note attendance being prepared productive participation adherence to open meeting laws and public record laws are very important and please acknowledge if you understand this or something like that that was good at least somebody got those words write that down thankfully participation work has it exactly so how do we want to move forward with this I mean so I think what the committee was looking for was an approval from the council to go ahead and certainly I think those changes I consider that a friendly amendment and so I think what the committee was looking for was council approval to go ahead and use this form we have some committee appointments coming up and obviously we have an appointment to meet next week and just to sort of to sort of get people in the process of starting to think about all of these points and not just longevity I also just want to check in with Jamie about this because you're going to be the person who you know taking taking these documents or if it's electronic you know vetting them somehow and when people just submit a resume you'd probably be the one that was like actually you got to fill this out right and just do you want to come up here so on the 11th there are appointments to four different committees and we've already advertised for that we already have it doesn't matter to me my concern was how like you know for people who aren't going to get electronically they might have to come in to pick it up I get people who mail resumes and letters of interest so it would just be another step you know someone coming to City Hall to pick it up or calling and saying how can they get it so but I really I think it's also just maybe a suggestion Bill the things that you were saying regarding the evaluation what if it's you know I agree to you know all these things and if be evaluated based on my like yeah just to check off the box I have a suggestion for moving this forward is perhaps if you're in general agreement with this you can authorize the city manager's office to implement this with making the minor changes as discussed and we can sort out how we want to do it and then we can figure out how we're going to mail them to people and you guys don't have to worry about it and they can print them off and fill them off on mine and then we can set a start for the next round of things that aren't already in progress we'll say after these people 11 appointments we'll start this would anybody like to make a motion thank you so moved second and it's clear what we're voting on city manager giving us free reign I did leave on people's desk three items related to committees these committees have gotten this through emails again and again Jesse Baker sent a lot of things out about the open meeting law and taking minutes and wonderful Jamie has followed up on this so I just thought you all should know what we've been asking them and hopefully that we will offer them a workshop this coming year Vermont Leagues of Cities and Towns really does a wonderful job about the open meeting law I think it would help all of our committees and many of us great okay I think we're now at the point of council reports did we vote on that oh we did not vote thank you I was just like oh yeah clearly every vote counts thank you okay all in favor please say aye aye great all right oh my gosh for the third time council reports I think we started over there last time he did so Donny you want to start something well I had the privilege of helping law station theater with their egg hunt today and especially a lot of little toddlers but the family started lining up at five o'clock the door does not open till five they all rushed in and within five seconds it seemed but definitely five minutes like some 200 eggs are gone and they're all full of candy it was just wonderful and I really appreciate law station theater sponsoring it working on a little side project here I was interested in finding out that Montpelier did not have a sister city so I did call sister city international I do think it is a great way to have a cultural economic exchange with another community that you maybe share something common with I asked a number of people and one idea that came to mind was we do have about 282 Bosnian refugees living in Montpelier and the surrounding areas here I think it's a segment of the population that at times can be ignored and given the Islamophobia going across the nation a good way to address this might be entering into a sister city with a Bosnian community a lot of these folks came over here from an absolutely war torn place Sarajevo for example people lost an average of 30 pounds during the Bosnian war so Vermont refugee resettlement would be happy on working with that but I just wanted to open up the concept of it and I'd love to work with anybody who had an interest in it maybe it's another community we look at but I just think it's a good idea and I'm happy to report back to you I want to announce here that I've been holding a weekly morning talk every Thursday morning for the last few weeks and that will continue I have a venue for the time being Open Hands Cafe in Christchurch Parish Hall every Thursday from 8.30 to 9.30 and this is basically a way for me to hear directly from residents for me to pass on anything that I might have heard here and answer questions and I look forward to continuing it if nothing else it's a good place for me to get some email done if no one shows up and Open Hands Cafe is a great place if you haven't been there George Estes makes really wonderful scrambled eggs a nice quiet at least when I've been there really quiet 8.30 to 9.30 every Thursday Open Hands in Christchurch Parish Hall I would just like to applaud our police here in Montpelier for a very successful rally this weekend and also commend our youth and everyone who supports them in all that they are doing to be engaged in the process I attended and was really really heartened to see so many young people that were so attentive and were so connected to what was going on unfortunately it's a really tough topic and it's a very emotional topic and a lot of people have had a lot of really intense experiences around the firearm conversation even the people who were there to counter-protest really conducted themselves in an upstanding manner and it was a wonderful event that was well attended by folks from all over the state I also ran into some Canadian folks that attended the event as well so I really want to commend the city on making this an event that was open and accessible to everyone including dissenting viewpoints and for really maintaining an environment that supported everyone there so I have just a couple of things apparently April 3rd is a national day of recognition for AmeriCorps members and I was approached about passing some kind of a resolution recognizing them and so I have some languages that we can start with for that I don't think we're going to get it out in time for April 3rd but those do a mayoral oh is that so ok I would move that we delegate the authority to the mayor to acknowledge all of our AmeriCorps volunteers here in Montveillier I second that they've been wonderful wonderful discussion all in favor I great you know, thanks for the list cool I'll forward on that draft language anyway ok so that's one thing I just wanted to check in on the status of timer or like a tablet for the time for people still hoping for that I do think it was good that we actually spent a little time calibrating tonight I mean I appreciate that thoughtful comments written out the pages took about 5 and a half minutes is that a reasonable amount of time shorter made it better on the topic I really do feel like it's tough you know, I know you want to create a consistency but if there were 20 people here 5 minutes each we couldn't do it I think sometimes you have to say how many people want to speak on this sure one minute each and then say and we're going to time you even if it's just using our phones right you know, maybe we can I think still having some kind of visual for speaking up if you turn it can you turn it sideways is there a way to like crop it up the person standing next to you yeah, that would be I mean that would work Jamie and I have talked but it's trying to do something we have to constantly be okay okay and then the other thing projected especially though when you have it written out to me, I don't want somebody to read it word for word I would rather they just pull the essence and give us that the dark, the printed to our considerations later the thing that's on my radar too I mean it's nice to be talking about it when it's not but to figure out what our protocol ought to be when it is an urgent question we're going to give people a heads up you've got about 30 seconds left or try to wrap it up in the next minutes or whatever it is however long we if you give me an I would give you one I actually do have cards I do it all the time range and red depending on so maybe that's if there's a lot of people here to talk about something we'll see what the interest is and then I think another key issue is what else is on the agenda too like you know if we have two or three major topics and we've got to get through them all like tonight you all know there's probably no real heavy lifting after the flood thanks is there is there been zoning or something after then it's also like we've got to keep going just going I was I was some places have a sign in sheet for people they have clipboards over there and if people are here to speak on a certain issue sometimes it's really helpful to just be able to check that list and see how many people want to speak on a certain topic and then you can allocate accordingly if we know that we have X number of minutes and there are X number of people it's another way and maybe even like having you know just a welcome to a city council meeting you know here's the agenda if you want to speak please sign in on this list and for this topic and it just seems like maybe that could be a way to sort of get an idea to gauge like a picture doing that when there's a topic that we know is going to bring out a lot of people so okay well all options another idea you know because the other thing is they come in during meetings sometimes they come into the back a lot of times we know which item people are here for too just because of who they are but you could always say at the beginning of each how many people are there are there people here for this particular item sort of make sure you have a chance to be heard or feel it out point out I just forgot that I was going to make was about the reading it is something I tend to agree to too on the other hand having watched these meetings and so they've written it out because they want to remember to say what they want to say so I know they're reading what they've already written but they still want to say it so I think we need a little bit two pages of reading to me but likewise I think there should be the encouragement that people should expect to only speak once when you have a big crowd we get people speaking three or four times and I just don't think that's fair and I'm wondering if like just maybe like an just a list of sort of expectations is the right word or just like what to expect at a city council meeting you know maybe speaking one time it just seems like something that would sort of help to manage our expectations coupled with the sort of desire to be transparent in what we're doing as city government and including people in that process it might be a nice way to sort of handle some of that I don't know if dissonance is the right word yeah well just having I think especially with contentious topics having clear guidelines guidelines that would be I'm putting that I might do this I think you're right as well let's come up with some guidelines shared understanding I said that's it for me oh I got nothing I do have two or three things good news the MOET permit was issued this morning so that's zoning permit was issued so now we're setting a closing date so that is very good news that's happening city clerk informs me that the charter changes have been sent to the secretary of state and we're both monitoring to see when they appear before a committee we'll do some promptings and get those the ones that were just passed sorry I just want to back up so so you're setting a closing date for the MOET thing really soon and then setting a party date the day after sorry yeah anyway when there's actually something so the charter changes we're monitoring that I emailed out to you that there's a public safety forum on April 2nd just FYI you're all welcome to attend if you wish Chief Fakus is on one of the committees I also wanted to mention the protest thank you for mentioning that Ashley it really was a great event in the city and I really want to commend our staff and the state was there all day starting at 8 in the morning I don't think you know maybe some when the police are here doing their reports maybe you can ask them what's the preparation that goes into that really goes way beyond what I think people really understand and the things that they're watching for that the citizens are you know for example a state worker happened to come in cleaning an office during the event and open the window and you know the state police were right on top of that like why is a window suddenly opening and you know boom and those are things that you don't think of but they were like you know it turned out it was just it's persecuting somebody so I mean they're really diligent and it takes a lot of prep for these meetings that we know are coming the ones that they're also friendly, professionally friendly it's amazing that is part of the cost of serving the capital city when we talk about the needs of our local services their and to be fair state police and capital police were great partners lastly we have talked about the strategic planning session this is a first in my career that everyone could do the dates on the first throw throughout even now it's a check just in case so it was so that's a go the question I spoke with the consultant today and I'll send you more information about this because it really was just wrapping