Okay, hello everyone. My name is Wojtek Ticzynski. I'm in the TL of six scalability and together with like Shiam Gidi Gunta, who is like one of our chairs, we are going to make this six scalability update today. So let's start with clarifying like with what exactly do we focus in this SIG? And there are like four main and like one additional thing that we are primarily doing. Like the first thing is driving and defining really and what Kubernetes scalability really means, what dimensions it has, what do we really care about and what are our goals here? Second is like measuring where we are with respect to those goals. Third is ensuring that we actually meet the goals by contributing and improving the system, contributing improvements to the system and improving the system. And finally preserving that we actually don't regress from that point over time. And the fifth thing that I mentioned that is a little bit orthogonal here is also coaching and consulting like the overall community on how to put scalability into their design is how to think about scalability when implementing their features and so on and so on. So one thing that is worth mentioning is like you shouldn't confuse SIG scalability with SIG autoscaling, it happens a lot. Scalability SIG is about like how far in a certain dimensions you can go, like how big cluster you can have, how many pods per second you can schedule, how many load balancers you can have and so on and so on. Autoscaling is more about like dynamically adjusting both the cluster or what is happening in the cluster to accommodate the load. For example, cluster autoscaler is scaling the size of the cluster by adding or removing nodes. Horizontal pod autoscaler is like adding pods based on traffic and so on and so on. So this part is a different SIG. Here we are focusing on scalability. Okay, so let's go over them one by one. So scalability definition, what is Kubernetes scalability? The important thing that in general is you need to keep in mind for any scalability or performance improvement, related improvements is that we shouldn't be optimizing the system or pushing the limits for the sake of doing that. Like every such change is making the system a little bit more complex. So we should always be anchoring in actual user requirements and actual user needs. So if we ask users what they really want in terms of scalability, like they want scalable clusters, but what does it really mean? They don't really know it. In fact, in many cases they don't want to know it because Kubernetes is like their tool on top of which they build their businesses. So they don't want to understand every single detail of the underlying infrastructure. They just want it to know. They just want it to work. So historically we are thinking about scalability of Kubernetes as the number of nodes in the cluster, like how many nodes the cluster has. Well, it's very important dimension, very critical for many, many users. It's only like small part of the actual truth. Scalability of Kubernetes is in fact like a multi-dimensional problem. There are many, many dimensions that really matter on how well your cluster will be behaving if it will be able to run your workloads. There's things like podstern, number of pods per node, number of services, number of load balancers, and so on. Like there are dozens of those dimensions that matter here. So what is this scalability envelope? It's effectively like a zone or a subspace in which your cluster stays happy. What does it mean the cluster is happy? It means that the scalability, or in general, the SLOs are satisfied. Kubernetes isn't doing a perfect job in defining SLOs. In fact, I think scalability-related ones are the only ones that we as a community have defined. But in general, we should be talking about any SLOs that are defined for a given project. So what are SLOs? I hope you already know those terms, but as a service-level indicator, you can think about it as a metric. And SLO is service-level objective. You can think about it as that metric plus some threshold below which the system is healthy. And for Kubernetes, we actually have two really mature SLOs. For start-up latency and API call latency. We have few more that we are, sorry, taking us to the back. Those two are really things that we measure, things that are well-tested. Regressions on those are blocking releases and so on and so on. We have a couple more, primarily in the networking area, that we are already measuring. We have defined SLOs for them, but we don't really have defined SLOs. We didn't graduate them. We are not closely monitoring them and so on and so on. So given that at least some of those, for example, DNS part is super important in AIML workloads, which Kubernetes is more and more looking at. There's a bunch of work that we need to do here to actually improve it. And the first step would be to graduating and maturing those SLOs and starting to rely on those, really. So maybe just a quick case study. Defining SLOs is not easy. On the top, you can see how the first definition of the API call latency looked like from my blog post in 2015, so like almost 10 years ago. This is how it currently looks like, the definition below. So I am not going to... We don't have time to go into details here, but we clarified a bunch of things. We split it SLA and SLOs explicitly. We clarified which API calls matter, how they are aggregated, how do we are aggregating over time, over what time, and so on and so on. So in the end, what matters for users are two things. So first is what do we guarantee? And those are exactly the SLOs. And the second thing is what are the limits of the system? So how exactly this scalability envelopes looks like? The problem is that defining it precisely is pretty much impossible. Fortunately, we have like reasonable approximation of that. Things like number of nodes not greater than 5,000, number of services not greater than 10,000. We know many more. You can take a look into this link from the slides. There are still many TBDs there. Some of them we just need to document better. Some of them we still need to understand better. So there's still a lot of work here. So if you are interested in this kind of work, we have a lot of place where you can help here. And with that, we are going to the second category. So I'm passing now to Shyam. All right. Thanks, Witek. As many of you would have probably seen it by now, it's a pretty ambitious charter that we've got for the SIG. It's a pretty broad scope because it covers multiple aspects of the cluster because scalability is not really about a specific feature or a specific component, but it's really a property of the system. So how do we actually execute on this charter? And the answer is it's through a combination of tools, test frameworks, as well as processes that we've built and evolved in-house on the SIG over the years. Let's actually look into what those are, and some of those might be pretty useful for you as well if you're trying to run some scalability tests or evaluate the performance of your cluster and stuff. So I'll start with this. This is probably the most important tool we use. It's our primary tool. Again, it's built completely in-house within the Kubernetes project and in this SIG. It's called Cluster Loader 2. Essentially, it makes it possible to write scale tests in a declarative form, and this is something we actually learned the hard way over the years, writing end-to-end tests because scalability tests are mostly end-to-end tests or integration tests, and they can be pretty hard and detail-oriented to write, especially the way you simulate creation of workloads, the rate at which you do that, the kind of interactions you emulate. It can be pretty complex, and over time it was becoming unmanageable for us to write imperative tests, which were basically Go files. So we came up with this tool, which essentially models your test as a sequence of well-known operations such as create a set of deployments in this namespace at this given rate. So you can define functions for what sort of rates at which you want to induce load. You can define what sort of things you can create. And the best part is you can even leverage some built-in measurement functions that we already use heavily within the SIG, or you can also extend it because this tool is pretty modular. And all of this basically makes it easy as a user if you were to use this tool to kind of define your own tests and extend it to new use cases. There's a link at the bottom. You probably will be able to download it. Sorry, open it from PDF. All right, so the next tool, Upper Sleeve, this is a pretty powerful tool, too. It's called Cubemark. Essentially, it's a cluster simulation What it does is it kind of brings scalability testing within the grasp of a common man because the thing that deters most teams or companies or even individual developers is not being able to afford huge amounts of compute and access to those sort of resources that we use within the SIG for running the scale tests in the project. So essentially, it lets you simulate the behavior of a real cluster specifically in terms of the traffic pattern that is received by the control plane by creating fake implementations of Cubelet, Cubroxy, and those sort of components which essentially run as pods. So the whole blue octagon that you see that represents the base cluster which is where you actually run real Kubernetes control plane and real Kubernetes nodes. And then you launch these hollow nodes as pods on top of these nodes which then act as nodes of an overlay cluster that we're building which is the Cubemart cluster and make it talk to a new Kubernetes control plane. So yeah, it's also a pretty powerful paradigm if you've ever played around with it. You'd probably know the power that it gives you as well as some of the limitations that come with it. Okay, so we've talked about the tools that we use to actually run these test tests and kind of create these scalable clusters. As the next step, how do we actually make use of these? Like now, great, we have a cluster, we have these tests running. How are we actually going to measure performance and like kind of monitor things like memory usage, CPU usage and stuff. So there also we've kind of built a whole set of observability and debugging toolkit within the SIG. The first one is Perf Dash which is, I put a screenshot here and there's a link at the bottom. It's a public URL where you can access it. It essentially shows various kinds of metrics of individual components and systems within your cluster as well as end-to-end metrics like pod startup latency, maybe DNS latency, I'm not sure, but stuff like that. The X-axis essentially is over time as we keep running these jobs over and over again. These are the metrics that we see. These are values that we see for the metrics and it is pretty useful for us to also inform about things like how the patterns of various API metrics and performance of various components change over time as we optimize certain things or we make larger changes, maybe architectural changes and stuff. And the next one is for each of the test runs for these large cluster test jobs that we run, we dump the whole set of Prometheus metrics from the control plane components and a bunch of Kubernetes components on the nodes too as Prometheus snapshot, basically for the metrics that are captured through the job run. And if you want access to them, you can essentially use these with a bring up your own Grafana UI instance and point them to the metric snapshot and you'll be able to see how these things work. And the final one is profiling. This is basically for the more savvy profesh scalability or performance experts. We use these sometimes when things go south and let's say we've run into unusual API latencies and we cannot quite explain it with logs and metrics or let's say we see that processes get umkilled because the memory kept growing. So for these we also capture the CPU profile, memory profile. I believe we also have the ability to get log profiles for measuring how bad log contention is. And these are again also part of the output that these test runs view. Okay, so now we've spoken about the toolkit, we've spoken about how we can actually go around observing and debugging scalability. Now what does the SIG actually do in ensuring that the Prometheus project continues to scale to basically 5,000 nodes and all the other dimensions that Wojtek mentioned earlier. The first one is we capture the various scalability properties of a Kubernetes cluster through a series of test jobs. There are kind of two dimensions around these. The first one is the scale at which we run these. We don't just run the 5,000 node cluster test because it takes a while. It is expensive and also the feedback loop is lower for it. So we kind of complement that with a bunch of smaller scale tests that we run more aggressively to kind of catch regression sooner. Some of those are also run as a pre-submit. So if you submit a PR to the Kubernetes project, you essentially are evaluated against at least 100 node cluster, for instance. And the other dimension for these tests is what they actually exercise and what sort of things they actually make sure that they scale. And this includes a whole slew of different test suites that basically come from different sigs and things like storage, network, various benchmarks like for scheduler, for DNS and stuff like that. We'll talk about that in a sec too. Yeah, so we've got this whole battery of tests. And yeah, so this is the test grid again. There's a link at the bottom. This, the six scalability tab essentially, if you go there it'll show you this whole slew of the tests, test suites that we run. And it's pretty diverse in the sense that it runs on different kinds of compute like it runs on EC2 it also runs on GCP and Cubemark test as well. As well as they they test different kinds of things like for instance, we run tests against the tip of Golang version that we use to the point that we've actually caught regressions with Golang in the past with the Kubernetes scale test and have them make changes in response to those. Similarly we have a bunch of benchmarks and experiments and you can see many of the experimental tests are failing I guess probably because they're experiments that make sense but yeah, I'll definitely encourage anyone who's interested to understand deeper about what what sort of things we cover here to take a look at that dashboard. And with that I'm really, really excited and happy to announce on behalf of the SIG we have recently started running the 5000 node scale test upstream as part of AWS too. This comes in as a huge news for the SIG for a few different reasons the first and the foremost one is it essentially finally helps us to decentralize these tests have them run on multiple providers have have multiple people develop expertise on running these tests, the infrastructure and being able to debug issues as well as it allows us to wet different kinds of infrastructure. So there are some differences for instance how the AWS test runs that uses cops and the GCP tests run using different bootstrap scripts so the idea is to actually use both these tests fungibly as in both of these provide signal to the users as in how good we are doing and are we doing well and being able to use this fungibly is really powerful because sometimes when we run into an issue with one particular setup we can kind of have the other one as a hot standby and like increase and decrease their frequencies and along the way gather all these benefits that I just mentioned. Cool. So okay so now we also have CI tests for scalability actually running. How do we make use of these? How do we leverage these? So there are two themes, high level themes. One of them is we use them to catch regressions and these are used to basically ensure that we launch releases of high quality as well as in general the other thing that I was talking about is be able to catch general performance bottlenecks in the system. So that's one of the things that I mentioned earlier. So scalability was a pretty broad horizontal property of the system and we discussed about this earlier and indeed it is pretty sensitive to all sorts of things like you can have a scalability regression come from pretty much anywhere across your cluster up and down the stack. So for instance we've seen some really interesting performance regressions with Golang releases which explains why we added them as tests later on and quite often these are actually things that within Golang they don't actually change semantics or some of the API behaviors and stuff of the programming language but they let's say change the underlying implementations of something. The Net HTTP library there was a function for HTTP to serve which essentially in the default implementation in Golang they added a new case to a switch statement which seemed pretty much harmless at the time but it kind of ended up blowing up the whole cluster and we kind of went back to them and got it fixed. And similarly they could even come from operating system things like your syscuttle settings without provider like how your controllers are written the kind of traffic they induce on the control plane and then the most common categories which is the API machinery and there are a few examples of issues that interesting issues that we recently caught I'll talk about for those in the next slide but yeah for these regressions we end up catching them quite quite a good success rate in these tests and many times we debug them ourselves and try to fix them or often we also tries them to other six because it's all around the stack. Okay so these are probably issues from within the last six months to one year. They kind of highlight different flavors, different nuances of the issues we run into. It's a super hyperlinkified slide so I'm sorry if it's all too blue for you but I just kept the links in there in case anyone wants to actually go in and see what those issues were about. So the first one, this is a rather newer issue where we saw that under certain load patterns for newer versions of Kubernetes when a client was making a watch request to the API server, Kubernetes client without specifying a resource version we see that some of the watch events were being lost, they were being missed and we kind of did a whole drill around this to try to get to a repro and essentially what we found out was when many of such watch requests on a high churn cluster, let's say you have so many pod mutations happening, arrive at the API server at once and when combined with this resource version not being provided it basically the behavior is the API server forwards those watch requests to HCD and all these watches get multiplexed onto a single GRPC stream and the way HCD handles these watches kind of makes that has certain inefficiencies that were basically highlighted by this issue. So it exposed a whole bunch of things it kind of is a regression because it came up as a consequence of us fixing a bug or fixing a property in the API server but it did expose a whole bunch of latent issues with HCD similarly there are other issues around things which may have been not technically regressions there may have been issues for a while but we did end up catching those through either tests or basically experiments and we used them to essentially improve our performance for Kubernetes users around it. All right with that I think I'll hand it over. Oh sorry I think I think I have another slide. So quickly another thing we continue to keep doing is we are adding more and more to the test suit we are improving these coverage especially as new use cases evolve like the AIML use cases for instance that Voithec mentioned they require us to be able to handle high throughputs being able to handle high steady state number of nodes running in the cluster and so on things like HPA DNS that Voithec mentioned I believe he said some of those are work in progress but we might have missed them more recently so yeah I think yes we have DNS we just are not blocking releases on that on the regression so okay so going a little bit into like the last category of driving scalability improvements are basically two main buckets of things that we are doing in this area first are like improving reliability at scale without really pushing the limits effectively you can think about scalability as reliability at scale so those are ensuring that like your cluster keeps keeps running and keeps being healthy within the within the existing limits but under like new circumstances under when the upgrades are happening and so on and so on and the second area is like pushing the limits which is pretty clear what it means so most of like given the 6k scalability doesn't own any production code pretty much all of those improvements are joined with some other six most of them or maybe even currently all of them or almost all of them at least are joined with like CIG API machinery and CIG at CD so just looking into some examples some most notable examples from the like what is happening now and what was happening in the last like couple months we finally GAIT API priority and we started in December in December after four years each like I think we started like the first alpha release was 117 so like it was a long journey but like we finally GAIT it doesn't mean it's perfect but it's certainly is in a reasonable shape and we have a stable API there were a bunch of like improvements to upgrade experience more is coming there are some caps that are being worked on now that will help with another parts of like upgrade experience graceful shutdown is one of the biggest example that we that we've visibly improved over the past couple releases and there are two more things that are worth mentioning here one is consistent list from cache we know that HCD is one of our biggest bottlenecks in the system for pushing the boundaries pushing the limits the limits farther so effectively as much load as we can offload from HCD and serve it from API server caches the farther the system can go and consistent list from caches is one of the biggest improvements in this area like currently we can serve list request from the cache but like we don't guarantee any consistency for them with this improvement we will be able to ensure that they are consistent we were planning to to have it better in 130 but unfortunately due to some issues on the HCD site itself like namely with the feature that we are heavily rely here the progress notify features on HCD our testing uncovered like some corner cases that are not handled well so like we need to postpone it and fix those issues first and the second thing and here that is worth mentioning is like streaming lists it was similar it's very similar situation we were planning to get better in 130 it's not because we are relying on exactly the same feature from HCD but what it does it effectively allows us to to mitigate or work around a little bit the limits of how large the response can be and so on by using watch protocol to actually stream the contents of the list so from the user perspective they will get exactly the same but like we will be using a different protocol here and from like pushing the limits category like the most important ones are around improving CRD scalability scalability of CRD is one of the biggest problems that we have comparing to built-in resources that like we still need to take that into account we are working on on introducing binary encoding for CRDs currently CRDs are only like JSON only support JSON protocol the seabor based encoding is happening we are again planning for alpha and 130 it missed that unfortunately there are a couple more like more localized improvements for both like CRD scalability for like but also like other more generic improvements for like faster compression and so on and so on one thing that is not in the slide but is probably also worth mentioning is like open API improvements like we those aren't necessarily focused on like the largest clusters but they help a lot for how the open API how many open how many resources open API generation uses and finally like there are a bunch of improvements towards high bot throughput which is very important use case for AML training in particular for example and I think that's all what we have here like if you are interested in this area more we have bi-weekly public meetings we have Slack channel, we have mailing please come and join and help us with making all this happen yes thank you and I think we still have two minutes so like if there is any question yeah two questions Yuen Chen from NVIDIA firstly do you think the current definition scope or the scanning test can apply to running emerging AI workload in GPU clusters or in particular regarding the reliability we know the GPU class and very and not reliable at all so any plan and on the GPU cluster AI ML workload the scanning test or tuning support we would love to I think the problem here is obtainability of GPUs they are like super expensive so those tests will also be super expensive so if we have those if we can get those resources sure we can definitely do that I think the problem is having those resources to be able to test on those or simulating it somewhere else which if someone have time and ideas how to do that then like we would definitely appreciate the help here okay yeah that's my follow up question I think class node to my best knowledge have some kind of the 14 injection kind of feature any updated plan because that's something probably I think we can do and yeah simulated GPU thingy other thing is that something you think could be valuable so yes I think like there are many places where we can improve stuff it's a matter of like having capacity to do that like I would love those to happen if there is anyone who can help with that like we definitely can help with making that happen from like guiding helping with reviews and so on okay great so finally and how do you compare the cuba mark with the cork which is definitely we see and yeah receive increasing adoption and do you think potential can integrate the cork into the scalability testing replace even cuba mark I think we should think how to converge those two into something a single thing yes I didn't have time to look into that any in the past few months but I definitely would like to converge and have like a single thing instead of like evolving two things in parallel that effectively serve the same purpose okay great thank you very much okay I think we are out of time so thank you very much once again and if you have any other questions like we are both here like feel free to catch us during the conference somewhere on the corridor so thank you


Get away from me! Dude, the shark is going up the stairs!  Real is the game, you know, my god, I'm swarming with Roblox players around me and today we are in a playroom story and I believe it's made by Mr. Packstabber though and that makes like the really good obbies, so this should be a really good made game and when you're in the comment of the week, goes to High Tran. Alright, and also one last announcement, shout out to cool guy Tristan because it is his birthday, happy birthday Tristan, and I wish you the best day of your life. Alright, so let's begin with this aquarium. Bus departing in 10 seconds, 9 spots left. Alright, let's just jump in here, enter bus.  Oh no. Alright, let's see where this thing takes us. Wow, it's obviously going to take us to the real aquarium. What am I even talking about? I should just be quiet for a second, huh? Oh, alright, let's go. Oh, what is this? Oh yeah, and I did buy the Become a Shark Game Pass. So they bought a camera, so that should be interesting. I really want to be the shark. Oh gosh, oh look, the aquarium is there. It seems like we have arrived at our location. Bye bye school bus. Okay, oh, who are these people? Ms. Frizzle. Hello class, and welcome to the aquarium. Hello Ms. Frizzle. That's a pretty funny name. Mr. Slinger, I hope everyone is excited to be here, just as much as we are.  I've been waiting so long for this moment. Loving now, before we get to the building, we must cross the road. Remember kids, look both ways before crossing the street. Yeah man, you do not want to get hit by a car. That would totally be painful. Oh dude, there's cars. Someone just got smacked. Oh gosh, dodge the cars, come on. Oh no, they just hit that person. Okay, cross the street to avoid cars. Okay, seems like we've made it safe and sound. Good job everybody, so far so good. Oh, look at this place, it's pretty cool. Oh, I got a badge for touching the fishes. For feeding them? Feed the fishes, Ward. Good afternoon everyone, glad to see you made it. All here safely. Hello Susan, I will be your tour guide during this amazing visit at the aquarium. All right, this is a pretty looking aquarium. Thank you for having us, we are glad to be here. Yeah, look at me, very happy. Wonderful, now you can, now that you can see that there's some slight renovations being made to the gift shop, but now that we won't stop, I couldn't read it. I'm so excited, I could eat. Oh, so they added like a food place to the place. Thank you, I'm sure with such a long trip your tummies are empty. In the meantime, why don't you guys take a look while I go and set up with your teachers? Okay, yeah, I can't wait. All right, so they're gonna set up our lunch while we go snoop around and get into some risky business over here. I think I will stay here and supervise the kids while they explore. Sounds great. All righty, man, let's go see what we can get ourselves in a bit of trouble.  Oh yeah, I have a camera. Look around 60 seconds. Oh look, Nemo's right here. Hey Nemo.  Oh dude, there's an octopus over here. Yo, this is pretty cool. Okay, sorry, sorry, what? Oh yeah, they're fixing that. Oh look, there's a forky. What? Why is there forky's around the map? All right, I'm gonna go upstairs, the power box is there. Let's go check out up here. Oh my god, this is a pretty cool aquarium, yo. Is there a forky out here? No, there's no more forky's. Oh, we have to collect three forky's throughout the map. So we have one so far. I know this game, all right. Well, you better lead us to victory, man. Oh my god, what is the FBI doing here? FBI, no, get out of here, man. I do not like the FBI. Okay, let's go over here. Oh, squid fact. Did you know squids can change colors? Squids are just like snails, but without the outer shells. That's a little weird. Squids are the fastest invertebrates, invertebrates. There you go. Okay, class, let's all gather up so we can eat. Okay, it seems like it's lunchtime. Real you're the best, thanks, man. Okay, yay, we can't wait to eat. All right, so it's lunchtime. Where are we gonna eat, though? Okay, kids, so we have prepared some hamburgers and hot dogs for you. So pick the one that you would like to eat. I'm gonna go with the hamburger, man. Okay, because I'm not a big fan of hot dogs, but let's take this burger right here, Chasburger. It's pretty simple like a Chasburger. Okay, everyone, take your seats and get your food. Oh yeah, let's look around for a forky. I'm gonna try to collect all the forkeys in here. Excuse me, Ms. Frizzle, I don't feel so good. Oh no, what have you guys done to my food? What is wrong, everything okay? Uh, well, obviously not. I'm allergic to potatoes, but I couldn't help myself because fries look so good. Oh no, we're allergic to potatoes, man. Quick, someone look for their backpacks so we can give them their special medicine. Oh my god, okay. Oh, the backpacks right here. I saved myself. Don't worry myself, I got me. Okay, phew, that was a close one. I was so scared, but thankfully they're okay now. All right, so we almost died due to a potato allergy that we wanted to eat fries. Well, the show must go on. Now that everyone is full, let's go back to the lobby. Ms. Frizzle and I are going to head to lunch and we'll be back shortly. Why didn't they just eat with us? You're in good hands. Just remember to behave and have fun. Why didn't they just take lunch with us while we were eating? Whatever, man, all right. So now, what's this? Oh, we're inside of the food court? Wait, are we inside of the food court? That's a little weird. Okay, everyone, we're about to enter the tunnel. Here you will find our most exotic sea creatures. It will be a lot of to take in, so be prepared. Yay, all right. Oh, okay, so we're going to go in the tunnel. That's underwater or something. That should be epic. I can't wait. All right, let's go. Well, what are you talking? Let's move it, sister. All right, there you go. Oh, let's get my camera out. Yo, this is dope. Where are the sharks at? I want to see this. Oh my God, there's a shark right there. Oh, there's two sharks. Oh, no, that's a killer whale. Wow. So think about it. I haven't been to the aquarium in real life. I really want to go now. I have never seen anything like this before. Dude, that shark looks epic. I'm glad everyone is enjoying this view. This took about a year to build and perfect. Come on, guys, let's head to the middle. Oh, look, there's like music playing right here. All right, let's take pictures of, I don't know what, but we're just pretending to take pictures. So let's just snap some pictures. Oh, look, SpongeBob's house. Yo, I'm so happy we came here. Yeah, this is a pretty nice place. Oh, look, there's like a pyramid over there with shades. They even have sharks. Yeah, I'm gonna turn it into a shark later. Yes, of course. The sharks are our most popular animal here. Yeah, because they look so cool. Uh-oh. Oh my God, dude, what is wrong with the shark? Well, well, well, what do we have here? I am the ghost shark and this is my domain. I don't like having people here and taking my friends when they belong in the ocean. You will never get out of here alive. Oh my God, okay, so there's a ghost shark and this is like, he's not too fond of us being here. Dude, what? He can teleport out of the water. Oh, oh God. You're like finding all the parts to turn the lights back on. Ha, ha, ha. Well, I mean, he is a ghost shark, so he can be out of water. Dude, that's pretty crazy. Oh my God, it's so dark. Oh my God, what are we gonna do? I don't know, guys. Everybody for themselves. Okay, I don't know, but I'm scared. Somebody called his mommy, man. Wait, guys, where did Susan go? Susan! Dude, Susan just vanished. She was just standing right here before the shark came. Dude, I think Susan is a shark. No, she's not the shark. What? Dude, the shark trapped her inside the aquarium. How? No, Susan, you're on your own. I am not going in there when there's sharks on the loose. You gotta be crazy to go in there. Oh no, what should we do? Let's just go out the door and go back and pretend this never happened. We have to go save her. Okay, I guess we do. Don't worry, guys. I have an idea. All right, Dylan, let's see what your bright idea is about. Quick, get to the pyramid. Oh my God, we're actually out here swimming. Okay, where exactly is the pyramid? Dude, it's so dark out here. Somebody, show me where the pyramid is. Dude, it's too dark. Oh, the pyramid's over here. Okay. Oh my God, there's giant tentacles over there. Hopefully the whales and the sharks don't need us. Okay, Susan, this better be worth it, man. Okay, we have 10 seconds. Oh, maybe there's a forky somewhere here. Is there a forky here? Forky? Where is the little fork? Oh, God, there's a cage here and it's broken. It does not look good, man. Okay, so now we're here with Susan. Now what? Find the key for the cage. You gotta be kidding me. Susan, come on. If you want us to help you get out of here, you gotta participate. Okay, where's the key at? It might be back here. Okay, nice, you found it. Okay, good job, Dylan. You found the key. Okay, oh my gosh, that was so close. Susan, are you okay? I think she's fine. She looks a little too happy to be in that cage. I'm okay, thanks to you guys. Quick, get back to the tunnel. Okay, so we're just leaving here? All right, whatever, man. FBI, FBI. Boy, these are sharks. What are you going to do? Arrest them? You're going to arrest sea creatures? Where's the tunnel? Okay, go to the light. Follow the light and then we'll take you to the tunnel. Wait, okay, I think we're safe here.  Get away from us, Nemo. We're not food. Remember, fish are friends, not food. I think that's what they say. All right, let's go over here. Oh, say you like to twist it and happy birthday, man. Come back to the tunnel. All right, I believe we're safe here. We just have to wait for the time to deplete. This game's not easy. All right, we'll see for ourselves. Well, now the shark is still come at any moment and the lights are still off. That is true. Don't worry, let's just quickly find all the parts so we can turn the lights back on. Okay, so now we've got to find all the parts. Follow Susan. All right, Susan, you better not take us anywhere dangerous. Did she just stop for the picture? Okay, it's just us, fellas. Oh, we're back in the lobby. Oh, look, there's a part right here. Okay, there's one part right there. Can we go over here? Oh, gosh, what was that? Why? Somebody just blew like a whistle or something. Oh, look, Starbucks. I want Starbucks. Star bills. Star bills. That does not want coffee, bro. Who keeps whistling? Okay, so we need one more part for the generator. Oh, it's up here. Voila, there you go. All parts found. Yes, and the lights are back on. Okay, what are we going to do now? That is one good question. Let's get out of here. Oh, gosh, right. Where exactly, though? When are the teachers coming back? Hey, what did happen to the teachers? I forgot about them. The doors are locked. Oh, great. So now we're stuck in here.  Oh, great. So since the whole power ran out and missed everything up, the only way through the generator is through the gift shop that it's locked up. Oh, yeah, I think it is boarded up. We would have to find something to break it open. Why can't we just throw somebody at the door and break the glass or break the window? Uh-oh. Oh, my God. The shark is right here. Try to leave right here. Not if I get you first. Oh, my God. Survive. Oh, oh, no. Where's the shark? Oh, it's over there. Oh, my God. No. Okay. So this thing teleports great. Ow, ow, ow, no. Get away from me. Dude, the shark is going up the stairs. Oh, goodness. Okay. Where has he vanished? Why don't we take pictures of him since he's a ghost? Ah, take this. I think he vanishes. Okay. Now he does it great. Oh, my God. No, please. I beg of you, Mr. Shark. Oh, my God. That person's over there is about to die. Okay. Let's go. No, let's go try to save him. I'll take one for you, man. Oh, my God. No, no, no. Okay. Now it's all like not looking good. Dude, the shark just fell from the second story. Okay. That was pretty intense. The teleporting shark. This is too scary. I want to get out of here. I just want to go home. I think we all want to get out of here, guys. The feeling is mutual between us. Quick. Let's find something. Break open the doors to the gift shop. Find the hammer. Okay. Where are we going to find the hammer? Um, hammer, hammer. Where are the? Okay. Maybe upstairs. Oh, this is where you got it. Okay. Maybe the hammers up here. I don't know why a hammer would be up here, but let's go check it out. Did you guys find the mighty hammer? No. Hey, stop snapping pictures of me, buddy. Dude, the hammer's right here. Oh, no. That's a forky. It's a girl forky, basic vanne. All right. Pretty cool. We need one more forky guys to collect all of them. Okay. Break down the plank to the gift shop. Okay. Let's go break this so we can get out of here. Jabronis. Okay. Sweet. Oh, gosh. What happened here? Great. Now it's like an abbey. We have to go through that to get to the generator. Unfortunately, we do. Okay. Don't worry. We got this. Right. Let's see how this goes. Ow. What? Oh, gosh. No. Okay. Let's revive ourselves. Great. I did not see that electricity. No. I am back. Don't worry. Okay. Let's jump this. We go over here. Ow. I just got smacked by the giant tentacle. Oh, no. It's not looking good for those guys. Can we press this? Get back across. Dude, now we have to cross back. You're kidding me, right? They just had to make us go back and forth. Huh? Ow. I keep getting smacked by that thing. Okay. Let me heal myself. There you go. Head to the doors. Let's get out of here. Dude, are we finally escaping guys? Is this really it? That is easy. You guys are amazing. Now let's get out of here. Come on, Susan. What is Susan doing? Oh, my God. That's a shark.  Dude, this shark just knocked him up. I told you this is my domain. And what happens here is wrong. Huh? I will make sure you all struggle before I decide to release you. Dude, just let us out of here, man. For now, you will be kept here until I have decided to let you free. So we're being held captive or hostage by a ghost shark. I can and will get my revenge. Just got Susan. Oh, my God. Susan, what have you not told us? We got the bad ending. No. So we got trapped here forever and ever and ever. You know what? I don't think I want to go to the aquarium anymore, guys. After seeing what happened here. We got held hostage forever by a ghost shark. A ghost shark. Like, what is a ghost shark? I never heard of a ghost shark before. That was crazy, yo. It was pretty cool overall. And I like the aquarium. Because I don't think an aquarium camping game has ever been made before. Might be the first one. So that's pretty unique in a way. Oh, man. All right, we'll say bye, tweeter. There you go, little buddy. Yeah, that was a bad ending. I don't even know how you get the good ending. I don't know what we even did wrong to get the bad ending. But, too shame, man. But thank you guys for watching. Thank you guys for the amazing support. If you guys enjoyed the video, make sure to slap the like button. If you're new to the channel, make sure to subscribe and turn that notification bell on. And I will see you guys in the next one.


What's up everybody Jason for jazby's case breaks comm 2019 20 panini mosaic blaster 10 box break random teams number six Just sold out guys, and again. This is a early bird spot giveaway So if you buy one of the first 15 spots you get entered a winter free spot 10 boxes mosaic blaster We're no veteran common ship except for Luca LeBron and Yanis and again blaster edition last 10 boxes here Looks like Joe might have put an X All right, that is yeah like an X on all these boxes Let you guys know it's from the same case and again early birds So we use the same dice really here for the early bird customers Whoever's that number one gets a free spot. We'll post you in here or paste you in here And then of course you get around in team So good luck us. Let's roll it and we got ourselves a one out of four or five times. Good luck one two three four five and Looks like Tim after one of four or five times is the early bird winner. Congratulations, man so You got a free spot Now it was a five still one and a four Right on my customer names on one two three four five Natalie down to Justin boom Let's go five times here one two three four and five Golden State Warriors down to the Los Angeles Lakers As a Natalie of the Warriors Arthur with the calves waltry of the Pacers Tim with your free spot nets Ryan P with the Celtics Leave out with the 76ers Adam with the Wizards Andre with the Hornets Demetrius with the Rockets Rosario with the Mavericks Jason with the Hawks Natalie with the Clippers and Thunder Ryan S with the Spurs Tim you have the Nuggets and Magic Tom Jones You have the pistons leave out with the heat Justin with the rocket or sorry with the Kings Robert Gras you have the Celtics so I'm in with the Bucks and Blazers Demetrius with the Suns Cory with the Jazz Demetrius with the Raptors Ryan with the T-Wills Billy with the Grizzlies Demetrius with the Bulls Anthony with the Knicks and Justin with the Los Angeles Lakers So there you go if anybody wants to trade I'll give you as a quick minute And I believe Ryan see a saying Spurs and T-Wills are up for trade You Sorry, I guess someone wants to trade I'll give you a little over a minute All right, so here you go here's the 10 boxes So four four two on the top.  So I guess I was trying to be conservative They say we're gonna keep the money that we originally thought we had And that could be a good thing or you might wind up with nothing if you try to keep the money I'm now That's pretty cool Alright guys Zion base tied your own you got a green Larry Nance tied your own rookie old school Jalen Noel Donovan Mitchell Little taco Wow, we got a little orange fluorescent Larry bird Celtics gonna Robert and that is 17 out of 25 very nice Teen USA, of course, that'll be going to the Celtics Successful pack you got a Zion base He refined a little personal or a successful box and then you get a Larry bird orange fluorescent Oh Bowl Bowl John wall Jackson Hayes will to win Donovan Mitchell We got a silver prism Anthony Davis Darius Garland Will to win LeBron James Green And a Kevin Durant. He is bad guys and he looks like he didn't even miss a step Jerry Colver Eric Gordon and Cody Martin Oh, we got an autograph and is DeAndre memory scripts for the Hawks Paula Jimmy Butler little Zion NBA debut Rui Hachi Mora. You got a Hassan Whiteside. We got a silver NBA debut Jordan pool PJ Washington, Jr. We got a rookie Cameron Johnson retail green Nicolo Melly, you got a Brandon Clark and it days dice these LeBron James MVP for the Cavs another MVP for the Cavs Paris Leveret, and we got a quendari with a spoon. There is basically Campbell Walker PJ Washington, Jr. Thomas Brian Luke Conard Isaiah Roby Penes do that right now. I'm the last box before we start going to the next one Darius Garland We got a Nicolo Melly But another Zion base very nice Russell Westbrook Duncan Robinson Wesley Matthews tied Jerome Old Tulare bird Derek Rose Anthony Davis there. We got a Luca Samanich and taco By the way All right, next box Almost got a million bucks not sure hunter, but if you were grab a spot, you never know What are we at? 18 left Almost halfway Those men just grab your spot Still got to do one more break after this so we still have time of course Five boxes John Morant Sardis off you got some Zion rookies in the first ten boxes See we can get some in the next couple RJ Tobias Harris What a little Tyler hero? Kyrie bull wall Bruce Brown God game James Harden Kendrick Nunn little PJ Washington, Jr. Green Cameron Johnson, you got a Patrick Ewing Gordon Hayward the Andre Hunter How about a silver Rui hachi Mora for the Wizards? Going to Adam very very nice Stuff curry Talon Horn talker just been going off Jerry Culver. How about a Ignace Rose dyke is in Jordan pool? Grant Williams and we got a little nausea little The under hunter Kevin love After today hunter, I'm gonna have to get you a hoodie of this You know what I mean? Yeah, that's under the combo Gary Harris Pashall Jaren Jackson, Jr. Romeo Langford Luca Donchich Brandon Clark No beaver is not Should be the job here Wow Are we gonna hit a monster right now? I feel like we're about to hit a monster So I hit my finger right here guys and like the card flipped and there's an autograph right there It looks like the right colors and I thought I seen a really really buff guy So let's see and if this happens guys, this is coming out of a 10 box blaster So no one can say why blasters? No one can anything good in blasters. All right, so this is what I'm saying. All right, I Seen these arms and no God more man. Oh such a tease That those eyes arms You got me at one more still not a graph though Ryan But I've just seen this and I was just like oh Nellie our last box Paula God game Luga Donchich prism silver There is Bayley Bradley Beal PJ Washington, Jr. Silver dr. J Zion green NBA debut that makes up for that box right there. All right guys and there you go I On that one more Bambry John Moran hero Rui silver James James Orange fluorescent very birds I on Zion pull James Zion not a bad blasters Oh guys a lot of Zion rookies and John Moran's two autographs Appreciate it guys. This was the mosaic blaster 10 box break round scene number six on Jasper's case breaks calm


Welcome to ongoing election coverage by town meeting television. This is one of many forums or presentations that we are bringing to you in advance of the local elections and town meeting on the first Tuesday of March, March 2 2021 town meeting TV election forums and presentations introduce you to local decision makers and connect you with the issues shaping your community. The topic of our meeting today is South Burlington city budget and ballot item presentation. We have guests with us, Kevin Dorn, city manager, and Tom Hubbard, deputy city manager. Hi Tom, hi Kevin. Hi, you're joining us.  And at this point I can just turn it over to you Tom and Kevin we're eager to see your presentation. Okay, great. Kevin you want me to start with the budget piece here. Yeah, please go at Tom. Hey, share my screen. That come in through okay. Good. All right. So Christina I think for the viewers I think I just like to start with maybe sharing the message I shared with council this has been one of the most difficult budgets to put together, given the times that we that we're in these. These are difficult times for everyone and some of the information that you'll see in the budget tonight reflects that. This is the one is one of the lowest tax increases that we've had in the last 10 years in our budget and it has some sacrifices some compromises some reduced services and some reduced staffing all as part of it. So I'll begin by maybe looking at some of the major considerations that both the city administration and the city council looked at, in terms of formulating the budget and certainly there was sensitivity towards any tax rate increase, especially with the challenges of the pandemic which we continue to move through. We're not not even out of this year, this fiscal year yet, which we know is going to be problematic for us. We have tried over the past years to maintain the current level of service across all our departments. There's a note here that says we're possible this is the first year in the nine years that I've been putting the budget plan together that we haven't been able to maintain that same level of service across departments for every department. So there's a little bit that we'll talk about tonight. The budget does meet all our contractual obligations all our bonded debt obligations. There's support for our capital improvement plan which I'll talk about it's, it's not a full funding of the plan, but we'll address that. So that's the annual assessments and support to other entities I have a separate slide on that and we have continued support for some of the council initiatives and the budget. So let's, let's take a look at the numbers here. I want to start at the bottom in the blue down here the $50.7 million. That's the total of all the expenses in all of our funds. So it's comprised of three different entities the general fund, which is the $26.7 million. It's also made up of our enterprise fund expenses, which is about $14 million, and our special funds, which is about $10 million. The only part of what the tax rate is based on and what taxes are paid on is the general fund expenses so I want to focus on this number first, all our expenses total just over $26.7 million. The revenue in the budget that offsets that a bit to the tone of $9.3 million, which leaves us in the general fund, the need to come up with $17.4 million raised from the property tax. To listen to last year, this is just under $146,000 increased expenses. There's also a bit of a reduction in our revenue that we have in this year's budget in the 22 budget. The tax rate increase of just under 1% 0.98% and just over a one half cent increase on the tax rate, bringing us to a decimal rate of 5597 a lot of numbers there and I think what what the taxpayers want to know is how does this impact me, you know, how does these numbers reflect what it is that I'm going to pay an additional taxes so we have our tax assessor every year give us the average cost of a condominium and a primary residence in South Burlington and those numbers are reflected here. And for the average condo owner, this would be a 13 just over $13 increase per year $1 a month, and for the average homeowner and $18 and 76 annual increase for $1.56 a month. And just to point out this is for the fiscal year that will begin on July 1 of this year and run through June 30 of 2022. Some of the major expenses in the budget include items that are in what we call the capital improvement plan this is a 10 year plan of some of the more major expenses reflecting such items as the annual paving projects. Tree care and replacement fleet replacement police computerization parks improvements and fire and rescue equipment. This is just a snapshot of one page of the capital improvement plan. It's part of the general fund budget. And I want to talk about this a little bit because this is where some of the cuts came from in this year's budget. And I wanted some some of the reductions and want to begin by saying the capital improvement plan for FY 22 is actually $400,000 below what's currently approved for FY 21 the budget we're currently in some of the cuts that we had to make included in the budget and might have to go to the west and several of the departments. Specifically, some of the trucks in the Department of Public Works, some of the police cruisers in the police department were also cut. We moved some items to out here is meaning instead of funding it and if I 22 is been bumped out to FY 23 or FY 24. here was a replacement ambulance. That's about a $400,000 purchase. We had a reduction in paving. We had hoped to be able to put a million dollars worth of paving projects into the FY22 budget. It's now at $700,000 with the approval that the city council has given. And we have a reduction in dollars for tree removal and replacement. This is really part of the ash tree removal with the emerald ash borer and trying to get ahead of things. We had $100,000 appropriated for that originally and we had to cut that back to $50,000. So those are some of the major items in the capital improvement plan that had reductions in funding. We also reduced a number of other items within the general fund working with our different department and department managers. We also had cuts to our reserve funds and the stabilization fund which we established last year. And we have some unfunded staff positions I'd like you to take a look at. So for the viewers, seeing this for the first time, here's a number of positions that are not gonna be funded in the FY22 budget. There were, since the pandemic onset, we've had a number of vacancies within different departments that have been created. And we also had some positions within the FY21 budget, our current budget that we have not yet filled. So this is a reflection of that positions that will continue not to be funded through FY22. One police officer, one firefighter EMT, the city planner position, a deputy finance officer, a parks laborer, and an HR assistant. These are positions that are not included. We have four other positions that have been merged to two positions. The administrative assistant for both the police department and the fire department, which are currently two separate positions will be merged into one. And the tax collection and tax assessing, which are currently two positions will also be moved into one position in FY22. Some of the expense factors, as I mentioned, were included items from the capital improvement plan. We still have about $2.5 million worth of capital improvement expenditures in the FY22 budget. The health insurance increase we're looking at this year is a 5% increase over last year. We had a slight increase in the pension. We have agreements with the three collective bargaining units, our workers' comp, property and liability insurance had increases. There was a reduction on our investment earnings. And anybody who has money in checking accounts or savings accounts right now has realized how much that interest rate has gone down. We originally were looking at a 2% interest on our various checking accounts. We're now at a 0.25 interest for those accounts. Well, that might not sound like much for the amount of money that's invested from the city when we talk about over $50 million. That's about $200,000 worth of savings that we'll lose projected in the next fiscal year budget. We have increased funding needed for the opening of the new public library. This is reflected in both additional staff and equipment for the new building. And we have a decrease projected in our revenue from the local options tax. And this is mainly in the rooms and meals tax side of things we're projecting a $250,000 shortfall. So that's gonna definitely affect us on the revenue side. If you take a look at just these factors alone that's about $1.3 million worth of costs that we had to find within the budget to make that out. Some of our funding assessments include the Wynoski Valley Park District from Porch Forum, CCTV, the Vermont League of Cities and Towns, Regional Planning, our County Court costs and Green Mountain Transit, which really makes up as you can see the total assessments that the city has just over $836,000 GMT alone is over 528,000 of those assessment costs. And Tom, right now. Sure. Just to let you know where we have a half an hour for this presentation where we've reached a halfway point. Yeah, thank you. Okay, great. Thanks, Christina. So some of the major expenses here just to graphic our HR and benefits just under 20% the police department, which is our largest department and our largest staff just under 20% and then fire and highway both coming in around 13% of our costs there. As we look at the revenue factors we're projecting a 1% growth in our grand list. We have increased revenues from the ambulance fees, city clerk fees. We now own the building at 19 Gregory Drive. This is where the police department currently is and we have two tenants there that will help offset some of the costs for running that building and we have retired debt on our public works building. That's about $100,000 that we no longer have to pay on for the principal and interest. We'll continue to use our special funds, our grant money, impact fees and the allocations approved from previous bonding by our voters for open space projects, communications equipment and our penny for pass. We continue to work on some savings initiatives which also helps our revenue and you can see the list here of some of the different ways that we'll continue to be able to save money by utilizing each of these different energy projects grants, the stewardship and so on to continue to save money for our taxpayers. If I have time, I might come back to that slide. And again, on the revenue side, the biggest bulk of this, the property tax, 65% local options is about 14 and our ambulance buildings about $715,000, $720,000 there. These are all the services that make up our different departments and are funded by property taxes. We also have some funds, the enterprise funds we call them that are based on user fees paid by the rate payer and that's for water, sewer and storm water. And here's a look at the utility rate increases for next year with water, our partner with the Champlain Water District that will be just under an $8 increase, storm water holding steady at $1.44 and a proposed increase for sewer is less than what the increase was last year but it's at $5.17, a total of $14.50 for the year. Here's a look at our tax rates over the past 10 years. You can see that FY 21-22, just over the half cent is definitely the lowest that we've had about a penny and three quarters on average over the past 10 years. Again, just a summary of the impacts. We kind of covered this slide before. This is what it means to the average homeowner and condo owner. We have a couple of different articles on the ballots for this year. Kevin's going to talk about article three with our tax increment financing. I've just addressed some of the budget and we have some elected positions that will be part of the ballot in March. These are different ways that the voters can cast a vote. We expect all ballots to be mailed to our active voters around February 10th. They can either return that to the clerk's office, drop it off at city hall or they can bring the ballot to the polls on March 2nd if they choose to vote that day. And I hope voters will. And here's where the different polling stations are and they'll be open all day from seven to seven. And for additional information, I'm happy to keep this up here as Kevin gets ready to switch over to talk a little bit about the bond vote. Here's our website, has our complete budget posted on there. There'll be budget booklets available. If any taxpayers would like one mailed, they could call and leave a message at the city manager's office to be mailed to booklet. Any questions about voting should go to the city clerk's office. And any questions at all about the budget to the city manager's office or a finance office and the numbers are indicated here. So in a nutshell, I'm happy to come back to things, but I wanna let Kevin have time to move forward with his. Thank you, Tom, that's so helpful to have all those resources posted at the end there. Thanks, Tom. Excellent presentation. I wanna talk about the article three on the ballot. And on March 2nd, the voters will be asked to consider just over $4 million in tax increment financing debt for a project in our city center. I have a map on the screen here that I hope everybody can see and so that I can orient you following my cursor. Of course, Dorset Street here and Williston Road. What you see are four segments of roadway that we refer to as Garden Street. This section here, just for orientation, this is Trader Joe's and Healthy Living. And up here is the iconic Al's French fries, just near on Williston Road. Let me talk first about what the project is and then what TIF financing is. Currently, this section of road is completed. So if you go into Trader Joe's or into Healthy Living, you know that you can drive in this section of road. The project encompasses some additional underground infrastructure for this section and sidewalks on the south side. The northern section up here labeled C is to make a connection between the northerly point of the privately owned land owned by South Burlington Realty LLC and Midas Drive with some additional improvements on Midas Drive. So that is the bulk of the project for which we're seeking just over $4 million in funding from the voters. Section D up here is a future project that addresses this unusual design for the White Street, Williston Road, Midas Drive intersection and would ultimately add some additional capacity improvements at the Heinsberg Road and Williston Road interchange or intersection. The section you see labeled B is the responsibility of the developers of city center. And this area of the map is generally what we consider to be city center. It also is the rough outline of our tax increment financing district which I'll talk about in a moment. Section, the northerly section of Garden Street is already completed. This is an older map but people who frequent that area will know that there's a large affordable housing project built by Champlain Housing Trust which is right here. This section has had the base construction and all the infrastructure put in and it's just waiting to be completed and that will happen as soon as some additional development occurs here in city center. So that's the project. It's roughly improvements to section A here and complete construction of section C here. What this will do is allow for traffic to flow going northbound on Dorset Street to flow over to Heinsberg Road or over to Williston Road avoiding what everybody considers to be the most problematic intersection in the state where Williston Road and Dorset Street come together but also allowing people to access the future city center growth in this area. So what's tax increment financing? This is a tool that's been available by the state legislature that allows us to keep incremental revenues that come from growth in this area and reinvest it in projects such as this project. This would be if approved the fourth time the city has used tax increment financing. The first was to complete our city center park which you can't see on the map, which is down here for some final funding for Market Street which has been completed and to partially fund the library city hall which is under construction right here and will be open in mid-summer. Again, what we do now is tax the property taxpayer for both municipal services and educational services. All this property you see just like people's homes and businesses is taxed at a base level today. But as these properties are developed and value is added, that increment gets taxed and the state allows us to keep that increment of taxes and take that and pay for the debt on projects like this. The net impact for the taxpayer is $0. So this project will not cost the property taxpayer additional dollars. It's the development of these properties and the taxes that will be generated that will be allowed to pay for these projects. So again, critical piece of infrastructure to support our downtown, to support our need to reduce traffic at the Dorset Street-Wilston Road intersection paid for through tax increment financing, no additional impact on the property taxpayer. And with that, I'd like to turn it back to Tom so he can hit a couple of those points on the budget. Great, and we're at five minutes to the hour. Tom, you may be muted. Tom, you're muted. Sorry about that. Christina, I was just wondering if we had any questions or if you had any questions. I was gonna go back to one of the slides here. Great, I don't have any questions and I see for my producers, we don't have any phone calls at this time. So please feel free to go back to a slide that you want to review. Okay, I'm trying to pull this up here. So I just wanted to talk a little bit about more about some of these initiatives because this is important because these types of things have been able to save us money so that we haven't had to increase the tax rate as much as would have been required to do. The energy projects, these are efficiency projects that we continue to utilize the proceeds from our solar landfill project. And we're able to take the revenue generated from the solar on the landfill and put that back into energy projects where we save money, like replacing all our street lights throughout the city with LED and our traffic signals and be able to use that for other purposes. Grants range drastically. We have stormwater grants that are in the hundreds of thousands of dollars and we have grants from the state like for our digitization program where we're putting all our records up online that are about $20,000. So we continue to receive money for that as well as some of our paving for the roads. Stewardship, this is just ways that we take care of our current facilities with preventative maintenance and improvements. The pension program, we realized a number of years ago was gonna be unsustainable to operate a separate pension program. All new employees currently now go into the Vemur's program. The South Burlington pension program remains at 100% funded at its present value and 90% funded at the GASB requirement for the entry age normal. So the pension program is in good shape there. The health insurance alternatives we've looked at, we've joined a captive insurance program gotten away from the major carriers and joined a pool of like businesses to ourselves and been able to save, I'm sorry, a substantial amount of money just this year alone by switching to the captive, the city was able to save $168,000 with a 5% increase versus the 12% increase that the major carrier was gonna have. We continue to look at lean process in our payroll system, in our accounts payable and through the continued digitization program that we are able to pursue with our records. Shared services include our outreach program with our mental health counselors. This is an initiative with Howard Mental Health where mental health counselors work with our police department and go out at site and deescalate the situation. And there's five different counselors that work on a regional basis. We continue to look at regionalization and FY22, we're looking at starting up regionalization of our dispatch services. And then just with sustainability we continue to evaluate ways to make things more affordable, more efficient and better for our community, the environment and our climate. So I'm glad we had time to come back to address that just a bit more. So thank you for that. Great, thank you so much, Tom. And thank you, Kevin, for the excellent presentation. That's so helpful. There are a lot of people out there who, I know want this information and it's gonna help them make their decisions for voting day. Thank you for tuning in to town meeting TV ongoing coverage of local community candidates, budgets and ballot items. You can find this and more at www.ch17.tv. That's www.ch17.tv. Don't forget to vote on or before Tuesday, March 2nd, 2021. Thanks so much, Tom and Kevin.