Okay, so since it's 6.30, I will call to order the self-growington city council meeting of Monday, January 3rd, 2022. So welcome to our new year. And I certainly hope everyone has had a good holiday and that 22 will be better in many ways than 2021. So with that, we'll stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. Also note, this is an important week a year ago. And it's so nice to be part of a functioning democracy in South Burlington where, while we have lots of differences of opinion, disability, and thoughtfulness in discussion on all those issues can happen and no one fears the doors will be stormed. So that's good to be here. It feels like a good way to begin 2022. So our second item is instructions on exiting the building. There's no one in the audience. I think we all know. Thank you for participating virtually. If you are interested in speaking tonight and sharing comment with the council, please put in the chat that you are interested in speaking. And I will be keeping a tally of those for the chair will not be taking public comment through the chat. You'd like to make comment, speak up. Okay. Item three is the agenda review. Are there any additions, deletions or changes in order of the agenda items? Okay. Seeing none. Oh, and Tom, did you have any? You got to remember to look down. Comments and questions from the public not related to the agenda. Are there any from the home crowd? Good night to stay at home. It does look like Chloe Alexander would like to speak. All right, so Chloe Alexander, you have the floor. Hello. Happy New Year. My name is Chloe Alexander. Wow, that's alarmingly big screen with my face on it. I'm a student at UVM and I've been living in South Burlington for for a while now with my mom. And I, I'm just here to make a brief comment asking the council to take action against climate change. And for me, when I look at South Burlington right now and all of the intended developments that we have in plan. I have to ask, you know, who it is we're putting first the developments, the developers pockets or mother nature. I just want to quote Rachel Carson. She once said that in nature, nothing exists alone. And I think that this is such a beautifully simplistic quote that we all must follow. You know, we must not sit idly by we must be nature's ally. It is important to put the environment at I would say the forefront of every decision we make, especially when we have the privilege and power to legitimately make change regarding it. I also feel like it's important to consider Vermont status. I think of Vermont I think a lot of people do too but as a as an example state. When it comes to the environment I think the rest of the country in many ways looks up to us in, in how we respond to the environment and how we respond to environmental crises. So, I would say because of this, you know, we have power influence and with that a responsibility to set a good example. And I think every action this council makes has the power to do, you know, waves of influence whatever South Burlington does another state or another town might do and then, then if the state as a whole decides to do so, we may influence other states and you know so on and so forth. And I think that, you know, any decision involving the environment no matter the scale whether it's putting pesticides on our lawns or building housing developments. It has a huge impact and influence and we must not minimize that and say no this is just, this is just one decision, I'm just one person putting pesticides on my lawn or I'm just one person saying that we should build a development it's bigger than that influence. Sorry my dog is here if you can hear her but it's you know it's, it's so much larger than any small decision and I think it's really easy to look at these things and to minimize them and say, no no no these are just, they're just tiny decisions but they're tiny decisions that they have a whole add up and tell other places, whether or not they should or should not be doing things and because of our status as environmentalists in this state. It's very easy to look towards Vermont and say but Vermont is doing this so therefore it's fine. This is supposed to be a brief comment so I think I'll just I'll leave you with that but I sincerely hope that you know we can put the planet that is kind enough to house us first and we can not neglect it. That's all. Thank you very much. I would encourage you to either come, yeah I guess the climate action plan task force, I think it's yeah so please either come in person or listen in I know you have school and lots of things to do but if that is of interest that I think they will always appreciate comments from the public. Sounds good. Of course. Great. Is there anyone else who wants to speak from the public. Okay. Oh, and I just want to note for the public. Tom Chittenden is joining us from home. He's getting used to doing all those meetings from home again. Right. And Megan Emery could not be here. She her flight back from France was delayed. So she isn't expected till tomorrow but she will have the opportunity to watch and listen and hear all of the comments. And we're not taking any action during the public hearing. Okay. Announcements and the managers report. Matt, any announcements. Okay. Tom, do you have any announcements. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I just want to use this kind of expressed my sincere gratitude and appreciation to our department of public works employees out plowing on the holiday and also during the snowstorm this past weekend. I saw as well as our firefighters EMS and policemen. I know I was sitting in my home enjoying hot cocoa while I saw multiple fire trucks, ambulances and plot trucks go by. And I just want to use this time to say thank you. Jesse, managers report. Yes, great. Thanks just quickly for you tonight. I did want to give you some data on the COVID situation in South Burlington. So as you know, VDH Vermont Department of Health posts community by community data every week. So in the period the last two weeks in the period December 16th to December 29th South Burlington had 270 new COVID cases. And this was up from the last two two week period of 82 and 73 respectively. So quite a significant uptick in COVID cases statewide right here in South Burlington as well. As a result, we are going you are going to start seeing some changes to some city programming. For example, storytime at the library is going all online back to our YouTube channel for the time being. The book discussions will be virtual held virtually things like that. And then we'll see some adjustments as we get into the new year. We will continue to comply with the state law that requires in person public meetings. However, we do encourage folks to participate virtually and join us in that safe way. So thank you to all of those. Thank you to all who are on go to meeting with us tonight. And we just encourage everyone to be careful, make good choices, get vaccinated, get boosted, et cetera. I do, I would like to, I guess, reserve some time for the beginning of the public works budget presentation to recognize Justin. Tonight is Justin's last meeting with us as public works director. So if I can kind of hold those comments until he's with us. Great. That would be great. And then two other quick things. The fire chief wants to people may have heard that the telecommunications companies are going to be phasing out 3G service over the next year with AT&T starting on February 22nd of that phase out. There is some concern about ability to call 911 for folks who have older mobile phones. So the chief just encourages everyone to reach out to their neighbors, especially elderly and neighborhood neighbors and make sure that that service is clicked over to 3G network. The telecommunications companies are doing proactive outreach, but sometimes it takes a helping neighbor to get those messages out. That would be really old phone style, flip phone, like old track or whatever. So, you know, people should upgrade. Yeah. And then just a new, new-ish thing. The library will be a permanent location for donations to the South Burlington food shelf. So there's a red bin in the lobby for the food shelf. And folks can, any day the library is open, come in and donate throughout the year. That's great. Yeah. That's all I have. Okay. I'm glad the library is providing that because I drove around with a whole bunch of food. And then I got the wrong day when I showed up and to drop it off, it was actually Thursday, not Friday. Except, so it would be nice to know there's a place I could just drop it off. So thank you. Okay. Item six is the consent agenda. We have four items, the disbursements, approval of minutes from December 6th and December 20th, 2021, approve and authorize the city manager to execute the South Burlington Champlain Water District MOU on water infrastructure ownership and responsibilities to the tune of about 154 pages. That was long and approve the declaration of official intent to reimburse the city for expenditures from voter approved bond proceeds. I have to admit I failed to get to Tim a small edit on the minutes from December 6th. And I wanted to insert a sentence. Is Sue on board? Yeah. Okay. I don't know if you were, I'm happy to pull them and send them in. It just was a, it was a sentence that stated that I wanted it to be clear that I had stated that I believe full coverage for mass in all buildings open to the public was the best course, but we, but I obviously didn't have the votes. So in its stead, I would support or did support the amendment as a partial solution, but I do want to go on the record as supportive of having expanded it. Can we amend that? The minutes and approve the consent agenda? Do we have to pull it and then what's the process? Well, sometimes we amend it on the fly. I could email the sentence to Sue or she could phrase it that way. Are you okay with that, Sue? Maybe she can't. Yep. Sure. Whatever works for you is fine with me. Okay. If you would like, I can just, I'll email it to me. I'll email it to you. Okay. I also have it right here. Can we do it live right now on this, on whichever page it is? Do you know what page it is? Yeah, I do. It's page four. It's the last paragraph. I just realized I did not start the recording. So I'm going to do that now. So it's going to tell you that I'm starting recording. Okay. This conference will now be recorded. Okay. Now, Sue, can you capture the language? So the minutes on December 6th, um, page four, the last paragraph, I would like to insert a sentence that says counselor really stated that she believed full coverage and all buildings opened to the public was the best course of action, but would support the amendment as a partial solution. And is that in the paragraph that says following public input, Senator Chittenden, blah, blah, blah. Yes. Okay. And where do you want that put in? Um, maybe or before in the vote that followed? I guess before the vote, the sentence that says the vote was a non unanimous. Right. Okay. So do you want to say that for me again slowly and clearly? And I'll, I'll write it in here and then I'll put arrows to designate. Do you want me to just pass it? Yeah, I do. Can I just use this and just here? Yes. It's okay with me. Okay. So we'll say asterisk here, asterisk here. Okay. Thank you. I'm sorry. I kept meaning to send it to you. And then I got a move that we approve the consent agenda with the minutes as amended by councilor really. Is there a second? Second. Okay. Is there any discussion? Seeing none, all in favor, please say aye. Aye. Okay. That's unanimous. Four. Oh, with one average. Thank you. Okay. Item seven is the FY 23 budget. It's the special funds, penny for paths, open space, and energy departments or. I guess you call them departments. Ashley Parker is here and we'll be presenting that along with Lou Brzeezy. He's going to do the, he's the energy project manager. And Ashley is the city project manager. Lou, do you want to come up at the same time? Or do you want to stay farther away from Ashley? And when it's your turn. Okay. They do have two separate presentations. Okay. Just for the public who may be watching as a reminder, this is our third night of budget presentations. This will wrap up our budget presentations. And then next week, you will have hold your public hearing on the comprehensive budget. Okay. Welcome. Hello. Happy new year. Happy new year to you. Let's see. So I, in your packets, you should have received a couple of memos from me. And as well as a PowerPoint presentation. I just wanted to preface my saying, feel free. You know, I want to give you guys as much information as you need. As much information as you need or as little information as you need. I have a lot of projects. So have to go through as thoroughly as you'd like. Essentially the PowerPoint tonight does go through my memos, highlighting the major points to consider. So I guess, yeah, you can go on. You can skip the overview. That's fine. The first one up is the open space project fund. So this is just showing you what I'm estimating to spend in FY 23 forward and also shows you what's remaining on our debt repayment. Overall, essentially here what we've got for this year. So the balance remaining at the end of FY 21 was approximately the $786,000 number. Over the last year, we spent about 67,000. And the loan repayment is pretty, that's the standard number every year. And accumulated loan interest was different this year. So that was something worth noting. Since the city took out the loan, it accumulated interest every year, but this was the first year that we actually tabulated that number and added it to our total. So that showed up this year at around 59,000, which almost wiped out what we spent in FY 21 as a whole. I also just wanted to highlight for you all some of the projects and things that we accomplished in FY 21. You'll see that here. We got a wetland delineation donut, Red Rocks. We've worked with UVM again this year on a project to do some volunteer stewardship work. We hope to implement this coming year. We have new wayfinding signage at Wheeler. If you haven't seen that, we also have completed a lot of great trail work at Wheeler as a result of this fund. We also selected a firm to start working on our design at the Hubbard Recreation and Natural Area. We've got some good climate research going on at Hubbard as well, continued invasive plant management, weed warrior work at all of the parks, and also a full season this year, which was really great of our community hike series. And the next slide is really just images, fun pictures to look at of things that we did this year. You can go to the next one, Andrew. I'm in one of them. That's one of my better pictures. I'm a warrior. Front and center. Yes, go ahead. I just don't want to compliment, actually. If anyone knows me, they know I'm at Wheeler Park almost every day. And the steps they're leading from the stream are wonderful the wayfinding signs. It's just a huge improvement. Thank you. Great work on that. It looks awesome. I also wanted to highlight for you all too this year. I didn't, I haven't done this in the past, but I wanted to note some things that as a team, we discussed removing from the priority list, which is what we use to do pro select projects for use of the funding. So this year and looking at the list, these things, you know, they've actually showed cut. They probably should come out before, but you'll see these three projects in there. What the task force at the time estimated each project would cost. That's what you'll see here. So these are have been removed. Yes. From the priority list. You can say the spreadsheet that we use. I see. And then you gave the reasons. This year, I actually am expecting a lot this year. I think that this is going to be a big year for this, for all these projects.  But I think especially at Red Rocks and possibly at Hubbard, I think we'll see a lot of movement, and maybe even some construction on some things that we've been waiting for, mostly in trail work, some stormwater work, that kind of thing. Also, what you'll see happening this year is that Wheeler, thanks to you guys, we have an agreement with the Audubon and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to do some habitat management work. I'm hoping that'll start in February or March. And so you'll see that kind of ongoing. We also have a few more signs that we need to add at Wheeler. So you'll see some new signs go up there. We'll start design work for signs at Hubbard as well. And we're going to continue. I'm hoping to finalize the Red Rocks Management Plan update that we've been working on for a while. That's almost there. And then a continuation of both of the weed warrior and community hike series programs. So a lot of stuff happening in the open space project world this year. And just again, some images of things that you can expect this year, some plans, that kind of thing. What was that machine doing? It's called, that's the Sobrontosaurus. That's what they call it. It is what, it's actually a really neat tool.  Looks like a mini feller buncher from working the woods. They're pretty cool. So can I just ask the, I think it belongs in this area. You mentioned somewhere this work with UVM and a class to sort of set up a management system. Yeah. So I'm very supportive of that. And I'm curious if you think it can go forward this summer when that's when Red Rocks is, I don't know if it's used the most, but it's used a lot in the summer. It's used a lot in the winter too, but probably more off trail activity in the summer versus clomping through the snow, I don't know. But, and I just curious where that is and kind of maybe just a sentence or two about how they think what their plan was or do you have a written report that I could read? I would just be curious. Yes, I can share that with you. I can get to Jesse or something. They did put a final report together. So they did a couple of things for us. We have some options. I've been working with Holly on this a lot because some of it involves some education because part of the goal was to train similar to the weed warrior idea and that you train volunteers to help us do a lot of these management maintenance tasks that we don't have the capacity to do with the staff level. So the idea would be to train volunteers to do trail monitoring. The intervail actually has a really great program that kind of is similar to this, but it's more focused on trail stewardship. So we are thinking about, Holly and I are trying to figure out how best to implement this this year. It's also provided us with some tools to create programming for even youth and some younger folks to get out there and learn more about their natural resources. There's a lot of camps and program offerings that they also put together to tailor with us. So, yeah, we're working on that for this year. So we'll see. We want to get it out for the summertime. Is there a budget, a line item for this? Or is this all volunteer? Not yet. We didn't have, they did not give us dollar numbers associated with it, but that's something that she and I will be taking a look at. We'll let you guys know. Well, please keep us posted. It seems like a good way to make some improvements there because people have complained. Because you are well aware and it's a pretty important natural resource for our community. Yes. I will keep you posted. Okay, thank you. You're welcome. All right. Next up is the big one. It's the bike pet improvement CIP. Also, I guess you could also call it the penny for pass CIP. A lot of these products are on the priority list for penny for pass. This is an overview of all of the projects that are being listed in the CIP for this next fiscal year and beyond. And you can go next one, Andrew. This just gives you, again, the overview of where we're at. So financially, at the end of FY21, we had a balance of about $400,000 a little over that. And throughout the fiscal year, we spent a little over $135,000. We haven't taken out the loan yet, so we do not have any debt at this time. So yeah, those are the basics. And then what I also did here was kind of go through the highlights from the year, things that we did. We completed the jug handle sidewalk project at this, you know, in FY21, we had started construction on Alan Rose. You'll know it's done now. So we have that fully completed in FY22. We had a public forum for the Dorsett Street shared use path project in February. We've also completed preliminary design. And we received our net NEPA categorical exclusion documentation for that project, and we're about to enter the right-of-way phase in that project. So we're moving along. We've also received some funding for two new crosswalks across Wilson Road. We received funding for a crosswalk at Kenny Drive Twin Oaks. And we also designed and permitted three new crosswalks across Hinesburg Road. And that's between Kenny Drive and Wilson Road. We also received grant award for the design construction of a shared use path along Spear Street. So those are all things that happened this year, this fiscal year. We all received an email from Bob Britt. Did you get it? Or maybe? Yes, I did. And he was concerned that the Spear Street bike path had been not thrown off, but it's when it will actually get completed was pushed ahead for a couple of years. And in some of your materials, I read that there was they felt that there was an alternative route along Spear Street. Now I don't know which part of Spear Street because it's a it's a pretty long street. But I wondered if you were familiar with his concerns and could comment. So I think there's two two different projects that are being discussed. So the first, so what I was referring to is what I call the Spear Street bike path improvement project or phase one. And that is essentially looking at a stretch of Spear Street between where the end of that infrastructure is where the infrastructure ends right past the forestry building. It would follow Spear Street all the way to Swiss Street intersection, kind of making it more usable for bicyclists and pedestrians make it safer. And then there's the rest of Spear Street that goes from that intersection to the town line. And so I think I know I saw something from him today that was referring to the widening of Spear Street. Yeah. And so that's a little bit of a different different animal. What I can say is there was a scoping study that was recently completed that looked at the whole stretch. And that's actually where we pulled the phase one Spear Street project from and it identify it actually say it says in the in the scoping study that this with a Spear Street between Swiss Street and Shelburne Rome or the Shelburne town line, excuse me is wide enough for you know, adding in some bike lanes. So I think that's what I that's what I was looking at today. I also know that Justin's CIP the public work CIP has some more information on that project but yeah. That's correct. Ashley, it's Bob Britt. Talking basically I was talking about a road project nothing to do with the bike and pen. Oh, okay. Sorry. So it was the wide the road widening to put in to to bike path lanes bike and pedestrian lanes on either side of Spear Street and and as you mentioned Helen that there is going to be we are working on an off road Spear Street bike path or bike way. So that's that's not what I was talking about in my memo or my email less yesterday it was the road project that I believe Justin will be talking about later. Okay. Thank you. I appreciate the clarification. Thanks. So this slide just shows you again so I did something similar with this memo for you all with the last one is I wanted to show you the projects that have been essentially removed from the CIP and why they were removed in essence. A lot of them have been removed because they've been completed. So you'll see Alan Road is coming off because we completed construction on that project very recently and Kimble will be completed in fiscal year 22 so that was coming out so you have a similar you have a similar similar similar slide there Helen can I ask you a question? Yes certainly. Hi Ashley. The you have a second slide on bike I'm wondering where the Dorset Street bike path near Cider Mill. Where the status of it? Has it been removed from the 23? No it's definitely still on there. We are just getting into the right of way phase for that one so we got some more work to do so it's not done. You can go to the next one Andrew. I'll clap on the Alan Road shared use path please. I'm thrilled that you're going to have those blinking lights and crossing places on a number of roads. I mean I'm a walker and it determines where you cross the road and if you do safely so. Actually doesn't give me an update on that today so the RFB is even replacing those throughout the city so you'll be seeing hopefully all those changed out over the next several months so I'm sure you'll be seeing some of the new projects that we've added and a lot of them are crosswalks this time around so those are some of the new ones that were added to the CIP identified priorities by the bike path committee. And next one. And then here are some more amazing pictures sorry one of them is sideways I don't know why and then Great has good balance and then here are just some expectations for this year's projects obviously Allen Road is completed so that's done in FY22 completion as I said earlier right away of Dorset, the Dorset Shared Use Path project. I'm hoping to have a complete design of three crosswalks across Melissa and Road so this grant that we have for those crosswalks and that's between Heinsberg Road and Kenny Drive we have to build those by the end of 2022 so December so we may even have them built before then so we'll see but that's the goal for that project we are looking to have crosswalk built across Kenny Drive Twin Oaks at that intersection that could happen as early as spring early summer so that's coming that's another grant funded project we have the three new crosswalks across Heinsberg Road and those will be completed this fiscal year you'll see that they have been put in place and so they're just awaiting additional striping and signage and yeah the SCP, the Shared Use Path at Kimball will be completed this spring as part of the Culvert project there and some more work with the Spear Street Shared Use Path project more designing more public forums your RFB will be finished this year so we have a lot of new projects or good projects coming in 2022 what are the upgrades of the RFBs exactly is it batteries and solar panels or circuitry that's a really great question I think it's a combination that's a good one for Justin I don't have those specs but yeah I believe it's a combination of both great last slide this is Bob Britt again I could answer your question the upgrade is to put a light on both sides of the road like most other towns have we were one of the first adopters so we only had one flashing light facing each direction and these upgrades will allow for two lights on each pole facing each way similar to if you've been down to Pine Street in Burlington so that's what the upgrade is to make it so that it's easier for drivers to see that they're flashing is it a complete replacement of the whole flashing light assembly Bob or is it just an addition of another plate I believe it's an addition but you'll have to ask Justin for out of the list of the 32 I forget how many there were but four were upgraded and unfortunately one of the staff got hurt so that person wasn't able to complete them but they're hoping to get them done in fiscal 22 thank you great so that's a snapshot of everything that I've been working on so I don't know if you guys have additional questions on something that I maybe didn't cover as thoroughly or if you have any other questions for me are there other questions Tom Chinden I can't see you I guess you would let us know you're all set Tim do you have some more so it's great that there's an item for all these new crosswalks when I was attending one of the spear meadows meetings with the DRB a long time ago I said there should be a plan to put a flashing light at the entrance on spear street so those people can get across spear to the side of the road where there's a lot of walkers and bikers and whatever and it never went anywhere and nobody added it to their requirements listing so I mean if you've got one at no one farm road you'll have one at pheasant way and it seems logical to put it at the next big development that's going in in the future that's all thank you always use those okay so Lou are you up next please thank you Ashley you do great work I really please that all the hikes and the weave warrior stuff continues I think it's a good use of your time and it really helps the public appreciate our natural resources so yeah oh yeah that one works just don't push us don't worry let's back up this line I'll move quick but anyhow the picture on the right is a tower out at the airport parkway water treatment plant that I have talked about for the last two years and I only put it in here because we're not going to do any more work on that and the next slide nobody right along tells you why I have not included all the financial charts that Martha has for putting the plan together because they're simple and they're brief and it would just be a lot of paper but the first project is a facilities review and stewardship project and we fund that at 10,000 a year and one of those studies last year looked very closely at that tower and expanded that tower study to include that whole part of the plant and what we found out was even though the temperature in that tank is 135 degrees Fahrenheit it does not use up as much energy as the three tanks beside it at 90 degrees Fahrenheit that are a whole lot bigger so we dropped the project but it was a good example of how you can use the study to make sure you optimize how you go after energy reduction the stewardship part of that is small projects usually in the $10,000 range they're easy you need a contractor but they're not for repair work they're not for repair work probably a good example was there was a corner in public works building that had not been closed off around a steel beam just because it was in a staircase but if you walked up the staircase on a day like today you'd freeze your hand touching we closed that in cost several thousand dollars to do it but it looks nice and it saves a lot of energy even though we're budgeted at $10,000 a year because all of these projects are coming out of the revolving fund together and like if we see a good project coming down the pike at $30,000 a year we'll just save $10,000 and so forth from a planning point of view key future project is the fire station and it is listed as a separate project we talked about it before it has been identified for years that the roof and the siding in the windows and so forth probably should be replaced but at this point in time it doesn't appear to be the right thing to do financially sometime in the near future that needs to be looked at we have a project programmed for FY 29 as far as getting it done but that's the second big project next chart Lou has that building had an energy audit a blower door test or something like that once every five years in between and as a matter of fact one of the projects that we did last March was specifically to have a weatherization study done in that building and that's where we came up with the conclusion that find it's a lot of money to replace the roof and replace the windows and so forth and if it was a house you maybe think about it differently would you have the bay there for the fire engines it's big and it's not outrageously expensive to heat it so forth solar at airport parkway we have been talking about that for several years it's been delayed intentionally one we wanted to learn more about solar and the implications of putting it into a facility from what we're doing at market street Greg Yandell and I are doing a lot of work monitoring the system that's in it right here, right now and so forth the system if we install one there will be a lot simpler than what we have upstairs but the construction will be a lot more complicated because we'll need to do some framing and so forth so the numbers are in there as a design project started in FY25 the other thing to consider though and Justin will be talking about it later is the water turbine project and the turbine runs 24 hours a day 7 days a week 52 weeks a year etc and doesn't worry about whether the sun is up or down and therefore it may be a better project to move forward with to balance those two things and it may be the right thing to do both but it's 18 months ago some of us were very excited about it we've learned some more things we're asking some more questions and it's still on the drawing boards but it's not on the drawing boards for let's do it tomorrow I have an RFP that's drafted to go out to a contractor ready to go but it doesn't seem like it's the appropriate thing to do now but keep in mind that plant uses more electricity than any other thing in the city right so two questions I thought there was some concern from some state legislation I think it was state legislation maybe it was the whatever the I don't remember the name of the group that oversees all the they changed their name now it's the public utility commission public service I thought there was some concern or some diminution of the amount of energy that a municipality could generate for its own use but maybe that went nowhere I don't know there's a very strict limitation and as a matter of fact fortunately the project that out the landfill was in place before that was enacted because we are right now more than twice what the allowable limit is it concerns power that is in the network thing like you have for your house where the Green Mountain Power that you generate but don't use so it's different if you use it all for yourself precisely in essence the terminology that's being used is whether you're in front of or behind the meter the key is the right sizes so that you don't build too much solar capacity that then is more than your demand and then you have this differential that you can't sell back because you're not allowed in that meter what you can sell back is diminished from what it once was at this point we've reached our cap this building doesn't sell if there is any access it doesn't go anywhere right it doesn't do anything so is that part of this determination of which what's more cost effective we will be in a situation where we will not be selling any power to Green Mountain Power okay so if we generate more than we need it's like no in this that's an issue for this building at the water treatment plant it will not be an issue we could not generate enough power you need a roof over the entire site and then some more and then I just second question that subject has come up every time we discuss it though glad you had a question I should have a memory I guess I have to be reminded a couple of times it's a good question so I'm just curious what you mentioned these little $10,000 low hanging fruit or small projects so what is it that you spend in a year what's the budget we're budgeting $10,000 oh just $10,000 to do these studies the study I talked about on the tank was a $6,000 study we've had some others that have been three or four and it's a it's a resource for budgeting purposes keep in mind all of the projects that we're talking about here and all this money is being funded through the energy revolving fund so it's not online item budget that's coming out of public works budget or Greg's budget or something like that so how much is in the revolving fund do we know I'd like to know you don't want to know right now because it's a negative number because just about a year ago we made a decision to use the revolving fund money to fund the solar upstairs I expect that balance to be back to zero it shines in spring probably by mid-year okay thank you I keep a track on that every month and there's a little graph that shows what our plan was and what our actual was I was hoping someone did the energy committee and I watch it very closely they posted a really nice graph of a couple of days from late December of this building's demand and generation it was pretty cool we'll have to go back okay next slide summary as I just stated the fund supports all the projects it's integrated with capital funds for the other projects the point that I really want to make on this slide is the last line efficiency is awful hard to achieve after you have something you got to do it in the design process and right now we are in the initial not the very beginning but we're in the process of doing the design work for the upgrade of Bartlett Bay water treatment plan this is an excellent time to take a good healthy look at energy improvements there I trust that we will do the same kind of getting lots of people involved in looking at that just like we did with this building to make sure that it's up to efficiency across the board okay thank you any other questions Tom? okay alright when we have those big screens up Tom just put your voice on so we don't have to thank you very much okay let's see so we're we're going to have to vamp for a few minutes because we shouldn't start the public hearing until 7.30 do we have a 10-minute item somewhere? are there any reports from counselors on committee assignments? number 12 okay no? okay well for the airport commission I got an interesting email today the city of burlington and the mayor apparently wants to start paying the commission members a small stipend 50 bucks a meeting there may be more interest on the council for who gets appointed to that but anyway I thought that was interesting it's burlington is paying $30,000 then per person probably so we don't meet that often so we probably won't have any item 12 we've done is there any other business people want to bring up? no? okay well take a break? we can take a short break in 8 minutes we'll come back and open the public hearing on the proposed amendments to the LDRs and city council meeting and of Monday January 3rd 2022 and we will pick up with item 8 the public hearing so I want to welcome everyone tonight tonight we'll be holding our first public hearing on the proposed amendments to the land development regulations provided to us by the planning commission last fall we will be holding another public hearing on February 7th as well prior to this evening we've been provided the draft regulations warned these public hearings received a presentation from our planning commission chair and planning director and received recommended clarifications from the city's legal council the purpose of tonight is to hear from you we won't be responding to your individual comments except perhaps to ask a clarifying question to make sure we understand a commenter's point we also won't have a dialogue amongst ourselves we will take all that we've heard tonight together with the many letters and emails provided to us digest them and then have a council discussion next week finally I would like to thank the members of the planning commission and the city committees who have put just countless hours into preparing this work and to thank all the members of our community who have taken the time to review and provide feedback on these draft regulations in writing at prior meetings and tonight procedurally tonight we will have comments from the folks who are in person and folks attending remotely and I'll try to go back and forth from in person and remote if you're in person please walk up to the podium I'll probably call on you and then you can walk up for those attending remotely please indicate that you would like to speak in the chat function and our very able city manager Jesse Baker will keep a running tab of those wishing to speak if you are participating remotely turn on your mic and your video if you wish and lastly I'd ask that everyone please keep your comments brief and succinct and I'll ask you to try not to repeat comments made by others if needed actually I think we probably do need it because there's a pretty good list and there's a lot of people online I'd like you to limit your comments to four minutes or less and Jesse will time that so I can indicate to you has ended if there's time remaining for everyone who wants to speak and has already spoken I will entertain a second comment if it's new information so with that I'll ask for a motion to enter our public meeting so moved second all those in favor aye okay so let's begin and I'll start with Michael Simino yes it is I would suggest that you take your mask off when you're at the podium so we can hear you carefully and correctly thank you and good evening Mike Simino I've served on a few committees and for the purposes of this testimony this evening you could consider me a housing advocate several years ago there was some litigation between the city and J.A.M the golf course developer over some permits and ultimately that litigation was settled through a land swap the land swap involved 20 or 21 acres to the west of Butler Farms which the developer hoped to place housing on and the other property that was involved was some land that I believe was a part of the Wheeler Homestead seven acres and some change so the J.A.M ended up with the seven acres and the city ended up with the 21 acres and the litigation was resolved one significant irony of that settlement was that the voters were asked to approve it and another item in that settlement was that Wheeler be conserved now we're still waiting for Wheeler to be conserved it's been a long process but had Wheeler been conserved the settlement would have been unable to have occurred as well so I'm prefacing a remark that I think is more directly related to what we're here to talk about this evening there's been a great deal of effort has gone into the proposed land development regulation changes and some of the matters are pretty straightforward but I think that there are a number of others that are very significant could have significant impacts on the future of our community our environment our economy, our children and I'm feeling that we should be spending a little bit more time vetting what the potential outcomes of those changes might be or unintended consequences and I point towards go back to my preface of the settlement with the golf course and the city things are changing very rapidly in this world and who knows how we are going to be housing ourselves how we are recreating how we are conducting a lot more activities that we currently engage in and I think it makes sense for us to pause a moment before effectuating changes that are going to be significant and try to vet the impact of those changes a bit more and then we will proceed. Thank you. Thank you. So on the screen is Austin Davis from the Lake Champlain chamber of commerce so Austin if you will turn your mic on in your video if you can you have the floor. Thank you. Good evening. I'll be brief. I'll just reach some prepared remarks so I'm here today to address you concerns with these proposed land use development regulations that we see was having profound barriers to new housing and thereby hindering the region's climate mitigation and economic potential. We can have a single conversation with the business in our region or throughout the state and then we are working at the state, regional and local level on housing creation. We believe that South Burlington is geographically positioned to be an important part of the solution to these issues as it's just a short walk, bike or bus ride away from the state's largest employers as well as countless other small businesses. The primary reason I'm here today is for those reasons and it's also the reason why we sent a letter support for South Burlington receiving a RISE grant for the pedestrian interstate bridge over 89. South Burlington's role in combatting climate change is to build more housing close to employment and accommodations. The primary issue of concern for LCC are the new restrictions on habitat blocks, proposed buffer zones and conservation plan unit development. All have an impact on preventing density in an area of the state where additional density can be achieved through utilizing smart growth strategies providing much needed housing near regional growth centers and thereby reprinting sprawl into the rest of Shannon County and beyond. It's also been murmured that some of those proposed regulations would not withstand legal challenges in a longer period of potential interim regulation and more continued uncertainty in the region. All of these challenges to land use development are identified in the state's climate action plan as impediments to meeting the state's climate goals. I'll read very briefly from a part of the state's climate action plan. Lack of infrastructure, chiefly community wastewater and water systems makes compact settlement the challenge thereby causing housing development to follow the path of least resistance which is dispersed single family home development on large lots along rural roads. The de facto development pattern will only be exacerbated energy use patterns that will make achievement of many of the goals and objectives of the Global Warming Solutions Act a challenge and underscore the need to create an effective land use regulatory rubric that can achieve housing development and accessibility compact settlement, smart growth and adjust transition policy imperatives. That's from the climate action plan released December 1st of this last year 2021. Page 29. We believe South Burlington created massive win-win for the Vermont by facilitating the development of new housing in the region. This would in turn limit its carbon emissions by driving density while boosting the state's economy by providing a solution to one of the largest workforce impediments we see. In summary, South Burlington's contribution to climate action is to build more, not less while the sustainability of the region's economy will inevitably be tied to the housing choices you folks make. We respectfully request that you reconsider and amend these provisions and if not possible you will be able to implement these proposals which would limit new housing development in South Burlington. Thank you. Thank you. Next we'll have Lisa Yankowski from the natural resources committee. Thank you. Happy new year everyone. Thank you. Interesting. I'm following the gentleman who just spoke. Having grown up here, I agree with him about increasing the density of development but I also believe being on the natural resources committee seeing a lot of changes seeing a lot of raw sewage dumped into Lake Champlain where I grew up from the city of Burlington and seeing South Burlington get abused by a lot of Burlington in regards to traffic. It's interesting what he was proposing. I want to say thank you to the planning group and to the city council for your consideration. We of course are promoting increasing the buffers to protect our natural habitat areas here in South Burlington. It is very necessary. I live on the edge of Red Rocks Park. There's a lot of wildlife that does hang around that area I know because I see it in my yard going through plus we also have Potash Brook running behind us which we already know is an impaired waterway. So we are stressing please please approve the changes that are going to protect what we have here in South Burlington already. We've got some wonderful pieces of property here. I just reviewed the management plan for Red Rocks Park and I had a talk with Ethan Tapper who is the Chittenden County State Forester. Very interesting talk did not realize that a major portion of Red Rocks was actually old natural growth that actually I found needs to have some protections done to keep that natural growth going and not overrun by invasives from the more heavily populated area of the park and I just say we do promote this. We did send a letter to the City Council. I hope you got it. Thank you. I think that's all I have to say. Thank you. Thank you and thank you for your work on the committee. And if you go down Red Rocks look there may be a couple of mini slides. Next is Lori Smith online. Good evening. My camera seems not to be working so I will just give a quick summary. First I want to really appreciate everybody for the hard work that's been done on this so far and I want to express my concern that the climate crisis which really is a crisis that we are all facing now as much as we all want to change there seems to be a resistance to actually changing the way we are living and protection of our natural habitat in South Burlington in Vermont is crucial and yes I agree that we need housing and we need housing density but we need to do it with a focus on protection of the environment which is going to support and sustain our lives and it feels like that often gets lost in the conversation about how we grow and develop and I just request that the committees really keep this in mind as they look at this and figure out how to do everything we can to yes reduce carbon emissions but also protect the valuable resources of our natural environment and that's what I have to say tonight thank you very much. Thank you Lori. Janet Belovitz just going to read from a prepared statement I'd like to start with a quote from Fred Rogers Mr. Rogers one of the greatest dignities of humankind is that each successive generation is invested in the welfare of each new generation I'm here to ask you to invest in the welfare of the next generation our proposed land development regulations have a new chapter for environmental protection standards these are designed to safeguard our natural resources for future generations rather than being reactive to crises our new LDRs must anticipate and address our current realities and respond to new science we must change our thinking and behavior to be responsible stewards of the resources our city is fortunate to have this is both fiscal and environmental stewardship with the above in mind I urge the following changes all wildlife habitats are protected including the area to the east of spear street which is part of a forested area connected to the great swamp and the wildlife habitat located on the hill farm supporting areas around wildlife habitats are included as protected areas so that wildlife can survive environmental protections for agricultural soils grasslands and farmlands are located contrary to our neighboring towns of Winooski and Burlington I see us continuing to choose to build large scale housing developments on open lands instead of redeveloping for housing the many vacant commercial spaces that blight our city core we blindly step over the abandoned buildings and once again build on a field or a hill or a forest as if these resources are infinite just because we can doesn't mean we should some may call our proposed LDR is the most aggressive in the entire state rather than applaud them for being exemplary and forward thinking in terms of climate change mitigation indeed some may say we are over conserving swaths of south Burlington for the wrong reasons I ask what is over conserving what are the wrong reasons these are important questions to debate and in fact what led us to enact in term zoning three years ago some may say if UVM or another landowner threatens to sue the city the city council should back down to protect us from lawsuits the city council is elected to represent and govern for the good of all residents our local democracy fails if elected officials cede their power to the largest landowners who demand that new environmental protection standards cater to their private needs it is the decisions we make now that will write our city's future and tell the tale of our values I look at my grandson Wyatt who just entered kindergarten at orchard school and wonder what will south Burlington be like 20 years from now what do we hope for it to be did we have the foresight and courage to make hard perhaps even unpopular decisions because it was the right thing to do you have the power to enact strong land development regulations that mitigate climate change and put us on a sound economic and environmental path I'm counting on you to do so as are the plants, animals soil, air and water that sustain us but have no voice thank you Evan Langfield thank you the comprehensive draft regulations became available for review in the fall since then we've been unable to review questions related to those regulations with staff due to their availability the current 180 day period prescribed by the state where changes can be in effect but also amended is designed to ensure important regarding intent and application get answered we hope the council ensures that this occurs especially for those projects currently underway which offer significant growth potential for the city the current rules have some logistical and implementation issues which may not be apparent to those who are not involved in the day-to-day development work for example they remove the current PUD review and flexibility from the districts not included in the new PUDs and do not replace that authority with commensurate tool to allow for flexibility and better outcomes in those districts no planned unit development tool is available to large areas of the city all north of the interstate and in areas where development is generally accepted as a community goal and in many cases like with O'Brien brothers where permitting of major development initiatives is underway in addition common practice that would not be familiar to anyone outside the planning and development community is being reversed these minor decisions such as to potentially eliminate footprint lots from planned unit developments or to not allow two residential uses on one lot could have consequences to homeowner association rights or to finance availability or project permissibility under the rules we will offer our most significant questions to the council for review and we will appreciate your consideration in understanding and approving of answers prior to the adoption of these regulations while we do not expect to agree on every answer we hope that we can take the time to have the conversation and we are eager to participate thank you can I just ask you Evan in terms of you're going to just so I understand you're going to submit some questions or to the planning department or both in the near future we would be submitting our questions to the council this week this week okay so we would have them in time for discussion next week yeah the intent would be to have them to you by Friday okay thank you thank you let's go back to John Beausage good evening thanks for giving us time I'm not really not interested and I thought maybe you would be voting tonight I'm glad you're not but what I'm most interested in is in what you believe and what you value because what you believe and what you value will eventually determine how you're going to vote on our LDRs and as representatives of our city I feel you must express your reasoning before you vote on any of the LDRs because all residents need to know why you voted as you did so remaining quiet and just voting at the very end of this process is not an option I don't think because this is so consequential transparency and honesty before the public is really what's going to be needed and I think you can do this easily by answering these six questions and I'll email you these questions tomorrow sometime I think you really need to address them let people know where you stand question one do you believe in the science beyond the climate crisis that we are in an emergency code read situation and that we must act now and not have any more time to delay do you believe that two do you believe in and do you understand the guidelines from the Vermont economic progress council on smart growth development do you believe in smart growth development as it's been defined for our state three do you believe we need to develop within the core of our city and not develop any more in the open spaces and natural areas so we can mitigate the climate crisis right here in our city four do you believe that affordable housing needs to be built in the core of our city near transportation lines and other amenities like schools and stores and not in the open fields miles from everything that people on a limited income need nearby and five do you believe that growing the grand list by building more homes never never really fully covers the cost of increased more homes and the municipal services that are needed to support those new homes and families and finally do you still believe in your own 2018 interim bylaws which already emphasized the requirement to preserve our undeveloped natural spaces and encourage development only in the city core along transit lines if you could answer those questions for us sometime before you vote that would be wonderful thank you very much John can I just ask you I wasn't it wasn't clear to me what you were asking in number five regarding um I'll tell you what the there's a thought there's a feeling out there the history is that if you build more homes you get more revenue your grand list will grow and you'll have more income to lower the tax rate and that just doesn't happen over time you end up raising taxes because the grand list the revenue coming in doesn't cover the cost of snow plows teachers DPW workers, police fire it's a math question well math was never my strength but I understand the question now thanks a lot okay now we go to Chris Jensen I've got my microphone working yep and your video and my video is working I better be careful what I do with my face thank you for the time thank you for all of the work that you and the planning commission and the open space committee and seems like five or six other committees have put into putting together what I know has been a good faith to to redraft the LDRs so that they promote open space and environmental considerations and address climate change I am concerned I represent owners of property at Heinzburg Road and Allen Road that will be impacted by the proposed LDRs and have been following this process since the open space committee was talking about the arrowwood report and it was represented at that point that that report would not be used as the basis for zoning we had concerns that it was primarily because it's not based on considerations on the ground and I will I'm going to try to be brief tonight because I know you have a lot of comments and we will be submitting more detailed comments in time for you to discuss them next week but my primary concerns are that the proposed LDRs are not based on conditions on the ground they are based on parcel size and we've got a lot of talk about protecting our resources and protecting city resources but what we're talking about doing I think we need to be honest about this is telling the owners of large parcels of land that they can't develop their land and the city is not going to buy that land so we're talking about protecting resources on the backs of particular landowners I will be honest with you I think that's a taking and I think that there are some real problems with proceeding that way I think that it's arbitrary and capricious the parcels were not chosen because of actual conditions but based on parcel size neighboring parcels with potentially more natural resources are not impacted by the proposed LDRs I don't think that's fair I'm not sure that also that it accomplishes the city's goal of protecting resources and smart growth current LDRs allow the city enough flexibility to protect the resources that actually need protecting and that this is going too far although I recognize it was for a good cause and those are again we'll submit more detailed comments those are my primary concerns that I wanted to voice tonight and again thank you for your time and thank you for all the work you've put in thank you very much okay now we'll go to Jeff Nick good evening thanks for having us kind of a lively discussion this evening already I'm Jeff Nick I'm one of the owners of the Hill Farm which some people seem to be very concerned about so just to start we've been following this closely and we're we're kind of surprised and dismayed in a number of things one is the regional plan the ECOS plan and ECOS stands for environment, community, opportunity and sustainability the very things you are all concerned about and many here in the room are concerned about but this document takes a different look and it's been largely ignored in your current LDR suggestions it talks about land use and job growth and looks at the Hill Farm in particular as a place for employment and where job growth should be in terms of smart growth principles putting dense development in within the existing sewer districts and where utilities exist and I'll read a quote from the ECOS plan it talks about development patterns and reduces energy consumption for transportation it says your homes that are in close proximity to jobs and other services making shorter and making travel walking, biking, transit car sharing more feasible so it actually is suggesting that there'd be a net benefit to the environment by developing close to the rooftops to the existing infrastructure your own city plan has been largely ignored in this effort and I have here the map 11 which talks about the future uses on the Hill Farm it talks about medium to higher density non-residential and medium intensity residential to mixed use on roughly 50% of the property the current LDRs are not robust enough they're only suggesting 20% non-residential development on that property and it adores the effort so far really ignores the planning principles which encourages zoning and LDRs to follow the goals set forth in both your municipal plan and regional plans and I don't see that happening in terms of the Hill Farm and it's really an opportunity here on that particular piece of property to achieve a real work live play environment but that's largely going to be lost if these go into effect the other item I like to talk about are the habitat blocks you've held this study in high esteem the arrow would study and those folks have admittedly never stepped foot on our property they're just taking a very high view but you're poised to take 40% of our land out of development we've hired our own consultant the natural resources consulting services which we'll be submitting to the council that took a very in-depth look at our property, walked the land matter of fact they've been on our land many different times over the last 10 years because they've done the wetlands survey for us they've looked at this and said well they really have three types of wildlife to consider you have your riparian and your aquatic wildlife which is a long potash which is protected within the state's 50 foot buffer you have adaptable wildlife which can adapt to suburban circumstances and you have wildlife that has generally left the area already due to the proximity of the interstate Route 116 all of the residential development around this and industrial development so our consultant is suggesting that this is not very critical habitat at all it also suggests that walking trails is another reason that animals leave and there's walking trails all over the Wheeler Farm so to hang your hat on the Harrowwood report is suspect I would believe your timing time is almost up can you wrap up really quickly since you're going to submit these reports to us so the uses that are currently proposed for the Hill Farm which is residential and multifamily with some light commercial uses again we believe that this should be an area of employment we also believe that senior housing and congregate housing would make a lot of sense here but currently written a wake robin type development which would be fantastic for this property to be allowed because it's not on transit so what you're missing is transit could come to this site or a project like congregate housing could have their own transit so I'm not sure why that use would be excluded medical office would be another one some light industrial like an on logic type development they wouldn't be allowed to go here a cider mill you've enjoyed Chittenden's cider mill for years in your community but we couldn't do something like a citizen cider here so those types of uses I think would really be important to look at more closely and we're willing to sit down and work with you, thank you thank you very much Andrew Chalnick is online hi, thanks Helen good evening so yeah my name is Andrew Chalnick I'm a member of the earth and energy committee and the climate action task force thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight I know the planning commission has worked really hard for three years on the draft LDR so I know they're all volunteers and I know the process has been deliberate and careful but while the draft LDR do provide for some increased natural resource protection they in some cases remove protection and unfortunately fall short of what science tells us is needed to protect our water, air, biodiversity and to address climate change I submitted a common letter in the science and where the regs fall short but I only want to focus on one tonight the minimum density requirement this requirement would the minimum density requirement would require on its face, dense housing on meadows farmlands, grasslands and buffer zones that the experts and science tells us need to be conserved now I know we can't protect natural resources completely people may choose to develop their land but to force, to require development on important natural resources potentially against the will and desires of landowners just doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense over the course of developing LDRs I heard a few rationales for this one is to provide development certainty in the face of potential community opposition but does anyone survey landowners determine whether in fact this is the case folks I've spoken with kind of disagree and are mostly against the provision most of the folks that I've spoken with want to protect their land and would be adverse to being required to build a minimum number of homes what makes the vision particularly perplexing is that it seems the houses don't actually have to get built they just have to be a master plan for the next development showing where the roads and homes would go so it's a rather strange requirement and it's hard to discern the real purpose perhaps it's just to limit the size of homes or size of lots I'm not sure but I would suggest that the provision be looked at again eliminated and then we have real conversation about what the intent is I want to also address the comment from some that developing South Rowland will somehow help to conserve open space surrounding towns one can observe that this is obviously untrue developers will not be satisfied with building out South Rowland but will if we allow it move on to surrounding towns once South Rowland long has open space to build on to protect our natural resources that address climate change all of our communities need to be vigilant in the face of relentless development pressure anyone who maintains that developing South Rowland will help mitigate climate change simply does not understand climate science or what smart growth means climate science requires that we maintain our meadows, farmlands grasslands and forests these are our carbon sinks our sanctuaries for flora and fauna our filtration systems for pollutants and our buffers against increased flooding that we now know is inevitable I'm not blind to the need for housing we need places for people to live we don't need to put those houses on the fields where those grasslands and soils stay in nature and nurture us smart growth means availing ourselves of infill and redevelopment opportunities in a way which protects the environment there are creative opportunities to repurpose large-scale commercial areas it's sometimes hard to feel the climate crisis where mountains are so blessed with natural resources and things seem business usual but they're not if the natural world falls apart the man is not far behind water and food we need nature for life we are part and parcel of our natural world unfortunately many parts of the world nature has been treated as disposable and we are seeing the dire effects of that the city has the power now to protect this one special corner of the earth and I so hope that we don't miss this opportunity thank you thank you okay next up is Linda Bailey good evening wow we have a divided community I think we know a lot of ways on this there have been a lot of people speaking this evening that have already covered a lot of the points that I wanted to make about how well of these proposed rules bed vetted the arrow would report and that didn't have any real on the ground look at what animals actually are in these places don't get me wrong I really think that humans need green space to be healthy and we have actually a lot of green space in our city already protected this is a map that the city has made and it was attached to one of the agendas earlier this fall I don't remember which one but there is a great deal of properties that are already conserved and owned by the city that we know aren't going to be built on one of the things that I think South Burlington does is it feels like it's in a bubble that what we do here is the most important and the only thing that affects our environment which is certainly something that is on everyone's mind these days but I'd like to invite people to open up Google Maps the view that shows color not the properties not just the roads and ask for a picture of Chittenden County and you'll see that the side that is Burlington and South Burlington has very little forest on it well just to the east of us and even much more on the rest of the state there's a great deal of forestry I think that it would behoove us to help our town our state our country and our world if we did look at the fact that we are in the heart of the most densely populated slash working job opportunity area in our state we need to look at not pushing everything away from here I can tell you that I spent several years commuting to the general area here for work that our long commute each way burned a lot of gas and didn't do much for my quality of life being moved here to where the jobs are helps and I think that we could do a lot more dense planning the this proposed land use is amazingly restrictive it even tells people how they can build the front porch on their house or what it has to look like and I think things like that are way more restrictive and don't look to people being individuals which even living in a city you want to be an individual another piece that I find of concern is it sounds like from my reading of it that the preserved conserved areas are being set up to be conserved forever in a day I think it would make a lot more sense to our children and our grandchildren if we set it up so it could be revisited every decade or two instead of locking out that land from doing anything else thank you next online is Rosanne Greco good evening councillors I am not going to repeat anything that I said in the written comments that I submitted to you but as I heard other people speaking I felt like there were some pieces I'd like to add to it I didn't realize people were going to be submitting questions to you a developer said he had a list of questions he was going to submit and then I heard from the council and suggested some other questions that the councils might consider in their deliberations which I think is wise I'd like to ask the council maybe to consider a few other questions while I do agree with what John had said he asked things about whether you believed in science and believe is one thing but facts are another thing so I'd like to rephrase that a bit whether you are aware or do you have knowledge of the health benefits both physical psychological emotional and spiritual of land of open space of trees of fields of soils of wildlife are you aware of the benefits the scientific benefits of that land that no housing development can ever provide you the second question is are you aware of the direct connection between these open lands and the climate crisis Andrew I think just mentioned a few minutes ago and I would hope at this point you're aware of this but the criticality of these natural resources to sequester and store the carbon producing the more of these open lands that we destroy science is telling us the worse our situation is going to be and I am going to repeat a smidge here in what I sent to you and that is if you destroy these lands you're destroying their ability to save us but if you add houses on to them then you're creating more carbon emissions and greenhouse gases and you will have nothing to sequester them and then the third question is are you aware hopefully the environmental benefits of saving the open spaces is powerful enough but there are huge economic benefits are you aware of the economic benefits of preserving the open spaces you commissioned a report from earth economics that looked at only 20 parcels of land and came back with a $16 million benefit per year to the city by preserving those lands are you aware of that if you are that should factor into your decision and there's a few other things that are being mentioned here I mean housing obviously is the key that developers and the construction and associated industries are pushing but housing can be in places other than open fields and to think that that is the only place to build is not looking around the city and as others have mentioned to you there are so many other opportunities in the urban core built up core and here's another thing it sounds as if through some of these discussions we are redefining terms we are now calling our rural spaces urban cores they are not they are rural spaces we also are redefining smart growth there's a definition of smart growth and growing and building on rural lands is not smart growth so anyway I could go on and on forever but as I think Janet said earlier on when she quoted about thinking thinking about the future I encourage you to use the thought process that the Native Americans do about thinking the 7th generation someone just said something about revisiting this well if you build houses over your soils and stuff there will be nothing to revisit when we realize we could have used those trees to purify our air and the soils to purify our water and such so think of the future generations and what they will need to survive and if you understand the science not just believe in it understand it I think that would guide you to the decision about the future generations and how much of the natural world that we have because our future generations will rely on it thank you for doing this sorry for being so long winded you were just a little bit over thank you next is Dan Albrecht thank you members of the council Dan Albrecht resident of Proctor Ab and speaking only on behalf of myself first I wanted to suggest corrections to the extensive work done by the planning commission and all the people who provided input into it there's one item here that particularly bugs me because it just seems so counterproductive and punitive this is pages 335 and 338 in the big red line version where it's section 15a of the subdivision standards this stuff about buildable areas defined as the total tractor area occupied by the following legal and site limitations hazards and level one resources some other language hazard and level one resources must be excluded from the calculation of buildable area and what the work here especially the natural resource standards obviously changed a lot of and added some resource protections and as somebody who has a staff person for regional planning helped you guys develop river corridors that makes a lot of sense the state has been talking about a long time but what I can't understand is this concept of like okay so you identified where you don't want the development but then you discourage development in the area of a given parcel or a lot that doesn't have these resources you've immediately taken away density for I can't figure it out if you've identified where not to build in the area that you can build out then why wouldn't there be units in there humans are not a plague upon the landscape and so that just seems counterproductive you can have your cake and eat it too having both conservation and housing on a given lot it's the same principle with clustering which has been around for years of leaving the back half of lots and even towns with really what's the word exclusionary zoning practices like five or minimum lot sizes which won't go named here at least they allow the concept clustering one acre lots and then the back lots so this is by taking away this buildable area just seems competitive so that's sort of my very specific comment I'll have others the planning can't be done here on a vacuum and as a member of the DRB I've just been recently reviewing proposals for beta air which currently has about 270 employees and is doubling to over 500 on logic which has a couple hundred couple hundred more so that need for workforce housing and so we have I get the concept of preserving areas for the broader goal of global women but we can't plan in a vacuum the growth the jobs are here we're one of the few towns in Vermont that wants employers and we invest in good infrastructures to support employers for good paying jobs but these people are going to have to live God knows where and so if we don't accommodate housing at the same time in these regulations these people will just do their sprawl commutes and just because they're driving a Tesla won't save the impacts and all may make people feel good or whatever maybe they have a wood stove out in the woods and they feel good about having that Vermont lifestyle and driving some beat up old Subaru but in the end it's just it just doesn't make sense so we've got to accommodate the housing approximate to the employment that's we know the transportation impacts are the best way to fight global warming our efforts here a little parcel here in a parcel they're admirable but they might make us feel good here while we're doing something in our town and we like the fact that we can go take a walk in certain parcels and we've got quite a few areas of that already but it's just going to displace the people to outside we've already seen it we have certain communities that effectively zone people out and I don't want to become one of those communities so thanks thank you Chris Trombly everyone first I just want to say this is such a respectful conversation and Helen you're chairing a civil discussion so thank you welcome the you know I just Chris Trombly resided 16 Dubois meeting committee and vice chair the board of civil authority but today I'm you know speaking as a resident only you know I largely support article 12 which includes the environmental protections such as the 500 year floodplain the wetland buffers corridors and it protects our important tree canopy it is a significant step forward with principles consistent with the Vermont climate action we are placing a climate that's warmer and wetter each year and requires an approach to our land use I guess my only feedback is that just the city seeks any independent council to fully understand a financial risk if taxpayer dollars are at risk or if some adjustments are needed I understand there is some contested and if there are adjustments that are required we can have an open mind about that but in housing you know the the Vermont climate action plan recently released on page 30 has a great summary that is worth sharing it's brief the influx of out-of-state residents to Vermont during COVID-19 pandemic and others transitioning second homes to primary homes provides a glimpse into what could be the leading edge of climate influence it's not driven migration to Vermont in the northeast this has resulted in housing demand outstripping supply leading in increased housing prices availability excuse me and the exasperation of housing fairness equity and justice issues lack of infrastructure which South Carolina doesn't have chiefly community wastewater and water system makes compact settlement a challenge therefore causing housing development to follow the path of leases resistance which is dispersed single family home development on large lots along the world roads this development pattern will exasperate energy use patterns that will make achievement of any goals a challenge and underscore the need for creative land use planning and regulation rubric that can achieve housing development accessibility compact settlement smart growth and just transitions policy you know so I'm encouraged by a lot of what the LDRs are including here I would ask that the council consider amendments from the affordable housing committee for the remaining parcels outlined in the case for housing report and these are consistent with this passage from the climate action plan we cannot claim to be an inclusive progressive community and with declaring a large portion of our city off limits without considering who that impacts so thank you thank you Chris and thanks for all your work ooh alright huh okay Sandy Dooley I'm Sandy Dooley and I'm the vice chair of the affordable housing committee and I've lived in South Burlington for 45 plus years and I love this community and I thank everyone that's worked on this and a lot of people have talked about larger issues for the affordable housing committee's proposals but I have a few nitty gritty kind of issues can you move this mic just to touch closer thank you that's much better I noticed this morning that there's a proposal to reduce the maximum density allowance in the southeast southeast quadrant NRNRT and NRN districts have units per acre plus any available so choose affordable housing bonus units to 1.8 units per acre this there are 100 parcels which comprise 186 acres in the southeast quadrant that fall into this these are small parcels between one and three acres this would 400 potential housing units from possible development by this single sort of stroke of the pen by itself we need housing and the other thing it does is that it essentially makes all of these parcels exempt from the application of inclusionary zoning rules because you never get to 12 if you have 3.99 even if you had four acres times 1.8 you never get to 12 and that's the maximum and that's where affordable housing kicks in 12 units in your development I really I don't think this was discussed by the planning commission and I'm not saying there is no good reason to suggest this change but I have a feeling at least in my view I would feel that these consequences the loss of 400 potential units and the exemption from inclusionary zoning would outweigh those negative consequences would outweigh any of the positive ones I guess as a principle I would say the city should not take any part of the city make it exempt from inclusionary zoning which is proposed in these changes in which I firmly and enthusiastically support then there are couple sort of nitty gritty questions that I raised earlier in this process that have not been addressed one is under the proposed rules for traditional neighborhood development there are 12 defining characteristics that's quote defining characteristics unquote of a traditional neighborhood development there in no place is there a guidance on how these 12 criteria were defining characteristics should be used and and many of them are very specific about having a grocery store nearby or transit or whatever and I just as I said in an email today I see this as a Pandora's box for the DRB you know anyone could say without some guidance you could say well they have to meet all 12 criteria or they have to meet at least 6 or whatever the next thing is the conservation easements that would be required for conservation PUDs in certain districts in the southeast quadrant from personal experience of my parents land I know that there is no cookie cutter sort of specification you can take off the internet for a conservation easement and what are the uses that might be permitted for example community gardening or farming or a Christmas tree farm or a winery so you're nearing a little bit over we probably can get back to you a second time who would pay for this who would be responsible for this you're requiring property owners to conserve 70% of their land in certain places so who would pay for this and then the last one is there are the additions to the natural resource protection especially those south of known farm road I've never seen any policy basis no recommendation from arrowwood or anything like that I made a request quite a while ago for the planning commission so these last ones not the first one but the last ones are all things I've raised earlier and I want them on the record now thank you thank you very much Rick Dahlstrom he's online hi there thank you for taking the time to listen to me before I get too far I just want to ask you I didn't get any response from the email that I sent to everyone on the council so I just did you receive my email I don't know if you send a response we did receive quite a few I believe we received yours I read all of them I don't know about anyone else and they will be in a packet so but I personally did not respond to any it was I was away it was Christmas and I just didn't respond sorry I'll just make the assumption that you did receive it and I won't go over everything I just want to reiterate a couple of things that are important to me I have a 44 acre parcel and to reiterate what Chris Janssen said that the LDR would unfairly impact people like myself that have the larger parcels the current NRP is about 40% of my property and the proposed NRP would be over 95% of the property I think that's a bit excessive and that's also in my letter but I just wanted to reiterate that part I do have plans if you will if I can get it through the city of using 10 of my 44 acres that would leave 34 acres for conservation I want to do that on my own and I don't want the city to tell me what I have to do with my own property I like the space that I've got looking out my deck I like watching the deer and all the animals but I think it's my responsibility to maintain my property for conservation lands now just also to explain a little how I feel about the people that want to conserve the trees I've spent about 45 years of my life through the military and the airlines flying over many parts of the world and most parts of the United States there's a lot of trees there's a lot of plants the people that live in cities tend to drive a few miles around and say look at all the trees we're losing and they don't travel where there are a lot of trees and this world does have a lot of trees this country is not in the position that Brazil is in burning down their forests of clear cutting but I just wanted to say that we're not in imminent danger of losing a lot of trees and the benefit that we have in this world thank you for your time and like I said I'm glad you got my email so that you can review it thank you have a good day you too thank you very much Noah Hyman can you hear me we can thank you Noah yeah hi so I am also a property owner I don't think I need to reiterate all of the many things I said before that I'm for conservation and I believe in the science of climate change I would like to know um if there's anything um more that we can do to protect landowners I have no plans of doing anything in developing but I don't know what my children will do or my grandchildren will do um when I'm not here um and so that is one of my concerns um but having said that I do believe in the science of climate change and I would err on caution I would err on the science and if the plan that is put forward now is the only plan um I believe it's better than what we've had um I don't think South Brompton has been doing enough I believe that um the construction has been rampant unorganized for all community and I believe that I happen to be in a place in life where um if the plan goes forward the way it is I'll be able to figure out how to get through it I'm not going to lose my skirt on conservation and I believe that it's important enough that I must say that if it's go forward with this plan or not I say go forward with this plan thank you thank you um last one who signed up is Alan Strong unless there's okay why don't we go to Alan Strong and then someone in me pardon me what would you I'm sorry your pen oh and Richard Cape excuse me he wanted to be laughed I knew I would forget it okay so why don't we go with Alan strong and then we'll have two we have two in the audience here okay yeah thanks so much Helen and thanks to the council for taking time to hear from the public and I guess I'd also just like to say thanks to the planning commission for all the work that they've done my name is Alan Strong resident of the orchards and also was the chair of the interim zoning open space committee and I am going to actually reiterate one just one quick point that I made in the letter that I sent in and that is the fact that actually right now in South Burlington there are currently over 1200 housing units that have actually been given some sort of some sort of approval for development and if you look at the census data from 2020 South Burlington grew by pretty close to 2400 people about a 13% population growth and if you take those 1200 houses that are already in the pipeline and you multiply by two people in each in each home that's already our you know that's already the same amount of growth going out to 2030 so although I you know I certainly know that we need affordable housing we need housing close to transit lines and housing in compact development there's a lot that's already here in South Burlington and a lot that's already going to be coming so thanks again and I'll stop there thank you very much we have well Richard Kate let's go for him he was on the list good evening hi uh don't envy your task for eight years I sat at the similar table in another Vermont city as a city council and then as a city manager so I was at many many discussions about zoning so I'm Richard Kate I'm vice president for finance administration at UVM I have provided written comments that represent the university's position I just wanted to reiterate a couple points one is that UVM's biggest concerns here have to do the fact we don't think that the environmental mental protection standards in the LDR reflect the reality of the state statute 24 BSA 4413 that has to do with the fact that schools such as UVM that are that are listed in the statutes have another layer of protection in terms of what can be done with their property and we feel that the EPS go a little too far in that regard in terms of limiting our building so the request is that there be acknowledgement in the LDR of UVM's rights under the existing statutes and that the habitat block definition be removed from the university's lands now having said that that's not because we want to go and build on those lands tomorrow or anytime soon or ever it is simply that we have an obligation as does any entity to protect its own interest according to the laws of the state UVM has been preserving those properties for a very long time the first one was purchased in 1904 and we have almost 500 acres of land in South Burlington I would argue that perhaps you would see a lot more development on that land if UVM had not owned it because we have kept it and we preserved it and we have designated part of it as natural areas and I think that's the point again this is not an argument UVM does not pretend to know how many housing units should be in South Burlington we will figure that out of where they should be but we have particular rights under the statute and we need to retain them when I was an undergraduate at UVM half a century ago many of the lands that UVM currently owns and many of the other lands in South Burlington they are currently wooded were open fields as was the case throughout Vermont because first because of the sheep that were bred all across the state at the end of the 1800's and then the cattle that were there thereafter so the environment in these areas and their ability to support the habitat has changed over time UVM is not again is not saying it needs to change but we need to preserve our rights and that I will leave it all with that thank you Sarah I'm sorry why don't you go I'm sorry I can't recognize you with the mask the gentleman with the mask I signed the note here but you didn't get it are there other names on that list? no just mine is on there my name is my name is Al Seneca from Allenbrook Development and I think you misspelled my name on the November 8th is it E-N-E-C-A-L? S-E-N-E-C-A-L but I was I think unless it was another guy by the name of Al Sacco that owns Allenbrook Development that's how it was listed on that our apologies no worries I just wanted to so I prepared a little bit of a letter and again I wanted to make sure that everybody saw this this was this is the 490 pages that was provided to us by the planning commission and we have a very short period of time to read that I'm not sure everybody in the room has read that completely and understands it all but maybe they do I don't and I just want to make that clear again my name is Al Seneca I have a couple of pieces of property that in the city that is undeveloped at this point as I said I was here on the November 8th City Council meeting I feel like you know something is being pushed very quickly here and maybe I'm wrong but maybe I'm just getting late to the game here so I'll take some time to read this and try to understand things better but the items on your list that I want to address is number one it was A, the wetlands it appears that the city wants to increase the wetland buffers from 50 to 100 which has been said but only in certain areas of the city why would the wetlands be less wet in some areas where you're leaving the 50 foot in other areas where you're requesting the 100 so that's a little strange maybe I misread it but that's what it seems to be the other thing is the state of Vermont and the Army Corps of Engineers already regulate the wetlands and their buffers and they're at 50 feet and those people seem to be very professional at what they do they've gone to school for that stuff and now the City Council and the Planning Commission is overriding that do you guys have specialists that are saying that their regulations that are existing are not correct just something to think about in section E where it says zoning change the zone changes that are proposed in the west of Heinsberg Road immediately south of I-89 this sounds a little bit like a riddle I own some land there but I'm not sure my land is even included in this I bought Jeff Mix property and I also bought the Rye housing project so I'm assuming that's in this change is that correct I don't know okay we'll neither do I so it would be good to find out yeah good to find that out we think so okay so that's something we think so yeah and again the map is in this 490 pages so I'll get to it I will get to it as you know but we need what's that it is on Landon Street that's correct I never received a letter from Planning from Zoning from City Council that I recall maybe I have that said that they were going to be changing the zoning on lands that I own maybe I'm supposed to recognize that in the paper and I'm not supposed to be notified but is it true that people don't get notified that you're changing the zoning I personally don't exactly know that answer to that you don't get noticed I'm here to put the vote in that people that own land that you're going to have a substantial change to their property they should be notified I mean it's easy to come in here and say I think we should make these changes because no changes are affecting the people that are saying that but when you take a person's land and cut the value of it in half don't you think they deserve to be notified about that maybe okay I'm probably running out of time here I'm on cue on that same report it says minor and technical amendments one of the minor amendments proposed is a change to the setbacks of buffer strips between commercial and residential properties both of my properties that are just land right now about residential properties so I'm not sure how that will impact them or me at this point because I haven't read the regulations 100% but at one time I believe both of my properties were residential and before I owned them they were changed to commercial so now as after I purchased them now there's going to be a change where potentially larger setbacks around those residential properties are going to impact only my property not the residential property so there's so much to look at to study and it has a huge impact on some people and none on other people and it just doesn't seem 100% fair that any change like this would be just put on a person and then ask them to just absorb the economic impacts or whatever impacts without even contacting them. Thank you for your time. Thank you very much and I think last is Sarah Doc unless there's someone else but we're almost on time so that's good so Sarah welcome Hi, thanks. Greetings everybody I mean to be last I just was sort of figuring out what I wanted to say that would be something new two points I guess that I'd just like to throw out a number of people who have spoken are landowners I'm a landowner I'm lucky enough to own quite a large piece of property and I guess I don't view this as my personal bailiwick to do with just as I want to I guess I have more of a stewardship kind of view of land ownership that we're each one of us here just for a finite period of time and if we're fortunate enough to live in a beautiful place and have land it's truly something that we should take seriously and steward for the future of the community so that's one point the other point I guess is just every time we discuss this I think about the geographical implications what's the geographical unit that we're considering right now the state of Vermont I don't know if you know but the state of Vermont is unique almost unique in the United States to favoring a town form of government New England generally has this rather than a county form of government as is the case in most areas of the country and with that in mind we citizens take a view of our own municipality that is a little different from the county-wide view we only have jurisdiction over our town or our city and though we cooperate in many ways on a county level like the Regional Planning Commission does great work to help us all do better work in our own towns and cities at the end of the day we can only affect change or make policy on the very local level in the state of Vermont and that's what we're doing a country that I admire many things is England and 50 or 60 years ago after the war they came to a realization there that land was finite and that they should make policies that provide for like a green belt around each major settlement so that there's breathing space for every community by creating this green belt between communities and right at the moment we sort of kind of have that around the edges of South Burlington with Lake Champlain and Muddy Brook and Williston on that boundary and then Shelburne on the southern boundary but it isn't a given if we build right up to the Shelburne line or we build right up to Muddy Brook so what we've been gifted here in this community is a situation that really plays into the idea of a green belt and I would like to see us retain that the last point I'll make is if I'm completely in favor of affordable housing again in the more urban core but if people honestly think that they're going to get affordable housing on land that's going for $10,000 and $30,000 in acre it's not happening it's going to be bigger more expensive homes and you know we've already seen the results of that in our more rural areas of the city and I don't think any of us really want more of that we might want more affordable housing but I don't think we're going to get it in the rural districts that's enough for me thank you for listening is there anyone else okay well we heard a lot and I thank you all very much for your thoughtful statements and hanging in there with us I would entertain a motion to close the public hearing second all in favor and so my thanks to everyone as I said at the start we'll be digesting all of this information to some of the reports that have been suggested that will be sent to us we'll meet again next Monday and that's when the counselors will have a chance to begin their conversation or discussion so again thank you very much yes thank you for the civility and the tone of gratitude it's lovely indeed okay we now move on to item nine which is another FY23 budget presentation public works sewer, storm water and water enterprise funds with Justin Rebedo well Justin, in packs can I have back my you certainly may please so I do want to acknowledge before Justin starts and Tom is here with him as well to just acknowledge that we are celebrating at this meeting Justin Rebedo's last council meeting with us as public works director perhaps we'll see him back here in some other capacity in the future but for right now just want to pause and take a moment to thank Justin for his service to the city he started working for the city in January 2010 close the door it's a little noisy Travis just don't fall off the stage a second time I should have thought do I want him to actually walk up there thank you so Justin joined our team in January 2010 after holding similar city engineer positions in Burlington and Stowe I just want to call it a few characteristics to leadership team and staff Justin is not only known as the expert in all things infrastructure and public works but is also the colleague who we can call on for advice and support and just guidance and a sounding board and he's always there and willing to pick up the phone and have those conversations on a personal note when I started talking about coming to South Burlington often folks would say to me oh my gosh you have the best public works director in the state in that city and I can verify having been served with Justin now for couple of months that that is absolutely true and it has been an honor and a privilege to work with him and we also want to thank him for being so generous with his time during this transition so we look forward to what the future will hold for him and we are so thankful for his service and know that he will be here for us as we need him going forward as well so just want to please join me in thanking Justin for his exemplary service thank you so much for all you've done it's been a pleasure thank you Jesse sure so I just want to say how much I appreciate Justin's hard work and perseverance on all issues having to do with public works in the city he's obviously an incredibly knowledgeable person and very intelligent about all these issues that come up and our infrastructure is so complicated I don't know how he does it right and it's a shame that we're losing that resource not because it's your resource but you have all that in your brain and I just really appreciate your dedication of the city and late meetings that we've had over the years and all of the information that's been dumped out and reports for us to read and so I and we are going to miss you and I just want to say thank you very deeply and wish you all the luck for whatever comes next I would echo that and one of the things Justin that I have always been impressed with by you is you know when I send someone to you where they have a question you really get right on it and you get back with them they don't always like the answer that goes but you really you really treat our customers well I think and I appreciate that because that is a skill and an attitude that not all public servants have and you do and I thank you very much for that thank you Madam Chair just to reflect on both Helen and Jesse's comment when from a constituent services point of view every time I've sent you a question where I didn't know what was up you knew exactly and you answered an email not during office hours and I thank you for that as a young city councillor and seeing you work in Montpelier testifying I thought why isn't he running the state well maybe that's his new plan maybe but I've admired you from afar and then got a great chance to work with you in the short time that I've been a city councillor so thank you Tom wants to put his sense in too I just have to because Justin I hold you in such a high regard I'm really sorry to see you go and I would ditto everything that's been sent so far and I really hope there are ways for us to continue to engage you with South Burlington in the years to come so I hope you keep us close and that we keep trying to connect with you back and whatever engagements are possible to have you continue to offer your expertise appreciate that thank you okay so now to budget budget time all right thank you Justin Rabbit who public works director and Tom DiPetro present deputy director of environmental services and as of January 10th will be the interim director of public works so certainly in very capable and experienced hands Tom has maybe in tenure by a handful of years at least two or three there you go I was right the first time so we put together a budget presentation that's in the was in the format of some of your prior presentations I'm sure deputy deputy senior manager Andrew Baldock has the actual budget available if we want to talk about line items but here we want to just give kind of more of a general overview in kind of the first budget cycle with the new administrative team so it's a little bit more of kind of an intro one-on-one type then perhaps in years past but I think it serves as a great starting point for tonight's discussion as you've seen before here's just kind of a brief outline of what we will be sharing with you tonight and this is the composition of our department so a couple of folks that were speaking on the LDR issue just talked about some of the services we provide and I'm glad to see some of them weren't politicized as over the years things like water and wastewater capacity have been tonight the discussion was really more from the ability to provide service and the main function of this department is the provision of service customer service is what we preach to our staff because predominantly they're out in the field and they are represented as a view and of the department and of the city and so as you can see here these are various divisions and the number of employees within each as well as their core responsibilities it is worth noting that the stormwater laborers of which there are four of the seven stormwater staff in the winter those folks as well as a handful of parks employees and other employees a lot of those people have CDLs and they also provide frontline winter service so the general fund receives additional benefits over the winter months from some of the utility funds that help us out with fighting so the person driving down your plow down the street may very well be a stormwater employee or a parks employee kind of in winter it's an all hands on deck situation well our budget is we're up to 16 million dollars I think when I first started we were probably in the nine eight or nine million dollar range and this is my 12th budget budget session but to put that in perspective it's just short of half of the city's overall budget obviously the majority of that is within our enterprise funds water wastewater and stormwater but speaking specifically about the budget we view this year's budget as a gradual return to kind of the pre pandemic and you know maybe there's a new normal and the hopes of returning to pre pandemic funding levels with commensurate rate increases maybe that's will be at least temporarily a relic of that period and not as applicable going forward in future budget years but because of that reality we still find ourselves about a quarter million dollars short of the council's prior stated goals of getting our citywide annual paving program up to a million dollars and we did an analysis a few years back that you know again just math based in terms of the amount of assets we have and what their life expectancy is that we should be spending about 1.2 million dollars a year on paving certainly with inflation and the growth of the city that number probably has crept north probably to 1.4 if I were to harbor a guess just in terms of having us be able to tread water and keep up with current deterioration you refer to assets you're talking about the city roads correct for example south you know when south village comes online when rye comes online that new infrastructure is what I'm referring to and I think perhaps even to us from a more serious nature because we I think we all as a community feel we all drive the roads we all get a sense of whether there is or isn't enough money a lot of that's a very view point understandably so but I think perhaps more importantly we feel we're really getting behind the April when it comes to the expenditure within our fleet our current budget of proposed budget this year $250,000 to put that in perspective a frontline cloud truck depending upon what size we're purchasing is between $150,000 and $180,000 so at a quarter million we basically we're buying one cloud truck of which we have to be replacing at least one a year and another pickup truck or two or some other smaller piece of some other smaller piece of equipment I also understand the give and take and the political realities of the decisions that the council and accordingly the administration have to make and I know that I'll pick on my friend Paul Conner for example you can't go to planning and say give us $400,000 there's not $400,000 to give so we understand that as purchasers we're in a unique position within the city as being the purchasers of these large semi-discretionary capital assets so when the trimming needs to occur we're often the first place and we always participate that in that discussion very jewelry and and acceptingly but it's to the point now where every time we're not replacing something that needs to be replaced that's vehicular down time so we're losing service out in the field but also the corresponding expense and the backlog that that creates in the mechanic shop so hopefully at some point we're able to and we have a fleet plan we have a fleet plan that projects out 10 and 20 years for all of our funds and hopefully we're able to be in a position from a revenue standpoint where we can continue this infusion when I first got here the city had some fiscal issues and the fleet was in an area that was severely underfunded so we've really come a long way in kind of recognizing the value of investing in it I just don't want us to kind of start creeping in the other direction hopefully going forward we can pay attention to that on the on the non-general fund side sorry a little bit rain on the parade there on the general fund side but on the non-general fund side the good news is water wastewater and storm water are extremely not only fiscally healthy it's one thing to have a fiscally healthy fund but if it's not doing anything then what's its value and I would put any of our utilities in terms of value up against anyone else's in the state in terms and I think we have a slide in here it might actually be the next one I put this together I should probably know this is a study that Champlain Water District does so this is an our information Champlain Water District does an annual comparative water rate study and you can see we're the lowest of the responding communities in the county and that's not because we have we turn a blind eye to our water infrastructure you know it's a well run system some of our some of the rates as you can see here of our neighboring communities are 50% excess of ours and I also know a few years ago the city of Rutland commissioned or they kind of voluntarily asked for utility rates from all the users in the state and on the wastewater side of the corresponding communities our wastewater rate was the lowest responding so again we I think we not only do we have funds that provide good value and do it at excellent money but also the rates as proposed are anticipatory of future large capital expenses for example within the stormwater fund Tom and his team will be spending for how many more years on the FRP for at least at least the next eight years until until there's a chloride regulations at least the next eight years we're going to be spending millions of dollars a year on stormwater improvements specifically designed to to de-impare which is not a word but to de-impare our impaired watersheds primarily through the removal of phosphorus in wastewater the the current rates are anticipatory of the 15 to 20 million dollar upgrade that's coming in a few years at the Bartlett Bay wastewater plant at water the rates there's enough of a reserve fund in the water fund to deal with any future anticipatory capital needs so that's the kind of a long way of saying that even though we're not not spending money they're healthy, they're well staffed and they're poised to meet all their financial demands over the coming years I think this ties a bit to the LDR discussion we don't pretend to swim in that end of the pool but what does public work do? How do we try to contribute in addition to the work that's done at stormwater and wastewater and make no mistake your real boots on the ground environmentalists in Vermont you missable utility employees the people that really care about water quality working in a wastewater plant because you have to love it and want to work it I think Andrew ran on a tour this week of the wastewater plant so those are your true boots on the ground environmentalists and we employ we employ some of the best but so what do we do on the general fund side? we can drive down the street and raise the truck bed and just have salt come spilling out well there's an obvious there's a direct impact to water quality as well as a financial impact so through the leadership of Tom and our deputy director of operations Adam Cate we've really modernized our winter maintenance fleet to the point where it has onboard recording and reporting that's automatically downloaded when the vehicle returns to the shop the driver also has multiple points of intervention and they can provide in the application of both salt as well as liquid additives our trucks have 50 gallon liquid tanks on them and they can add some liquid to the salt mixture depending upon the conditions all that's kind of a long way of us saying over the last we've been tracking this data in earnest since fiscal 14 and you can see we're down almost 40% in what we're spending per lane mile in maintaining the city that doesn't mean our roads are 40% less safe there's certainly such a thing as salt overkill and the application of winter salt if you go to without naming any names any large commercial parking lots you'll see what over salting looks like so I think we're providing in some cases actually a much better level of service because of some of the pre-treatment methods we do to our roads instead of just waiting and plowing and salting the bleep out of them so another way in which over at public works we're trying to do our little part of being kind of being environmentally conscious the team was recent Tom and the team did a great video in conjunction with the University of Montt Extension service do I have that right? Sea Grant and I believe City Manager Jesse Baker has passed it on to the City Council so we're constantly getting called by local media to share our experiences so not only is our work kind of now being it's well recognized but we find ourselves as we're out kind of learning we're on the cutting edge of hey you guys should be trying this we checked that box four or five years ago so I would be remiss if I kind of didn't mention this type of work that the team has been doing over the years and again back to not to toot the Horn of Stormwater but just to look at this graph in real simplistic terms the line, the horizontal line at the top of it is what the state what the state has set as a target for the removal of phosphorus and then you can see the blue line that is the cumulative phosphorus that we have removed since 2006 through all of our various stormwater projects as you can see we're just about there and we didn't put a chart on the wastewater side because it doesn't lend itself to a pretty chart but we are permitted to discharge 920 pounds of phosphorus from our two wastewater plants in the Lake Champlain we discharge roughly 90 pounds of phosphorus a year that's 10% in fact Tom go ahead I'm sorry to interrupt Justin my apologies can I ask a question? Sure Justin I love this chart can you refresh my memory what you would attribute such the large increase in phosphorus reduction in 2018? Just more projects in the ground we are able to construct more projects get them in the ground we shifted around that time period to utilizing treatment wetlands over detention ponds and our designs more which have better phosphorus removal I think you'll see another spike in the coming years here as we've got other projects coming online hopefully ARPA funding etc we should be well on access to that target very shortly additionally we've added professional technical staff in stormwater so that's an additional person who can carry an additional project load because again there's only so much that Tom or two people can do now we have for a few years had three people so we're also able just to deliver more projects as well quickly just back to my wastewater point I had mentioned that we're discharging at about roughly 10% of our permitted capacity we were doing so well that we were threatened to be sued and they wanted the state to lower our permit threshold basically to that 10% level no one else in the state was doing this and there's a cost at doing this because some of it is chemical a lot of it is a lot of other data intervention points and testing points that we have in our waste stream so there's a fiscal cost doing this but we feel the reward certainly outweighs any of those expenses we were successful in convincing the state that they would essentially be it would be sitting a really bad example to other communities it would be a disincentive for other communities to try to achieve so why don't they just please leave us well enough alone because we had demonstrated many consecutive years of performing at this level without additional regulatory involvement but they eventually went away but that was a very real issue for us about two years ago and I guess my question when we look at the graph so is the state's goal it's like 130 right in order to get there I mean is it conceivable to get there that's a pretty small amount to improve and at some point you know yeah you can always improve but the cost benefit maybe just outlandish so it is it's certainly possible we're going to well exceed that target really well due to the fact that we have flow restoration plan so that's a stream flow TMDL and some of the pious broke and Bartlett broke so we still have to do stormwater projects for that reason those have a co-benefit of phosphorus reduction okay and so we're going to that's phosphorus from some other communities we have to deal with it as well as ours yeah as well it's sure but it's a impaired waterway from not just it's not pure when it gets to south burlington and then becomes impaired so what issues could we be facing in the coming years from a regulatory standpoint 2012 upgrade of the airport parkway wastewater plant contained a substantial investment that allowed us to produce a class A biosolid compared to a class B biosolid the main differences class A biosolids have they can be land applied and they with much less restriction and they do not need to be land filled that fact in and of itself alone has saved the our wastewater ratepayers over half a million dollars a year and it's prevented until thousands of trucking miles to Coventry and back in the associated impacts on the environment however land application of biosolids science be damned seems to be a hot topic every now and then down in Montpelier every time someone else trips over their feet and lands in their own pile of class A the rest of us get brought down for a talking to so this is an issue that our team is very aware of and pays attention to in addition to that they're actually they just announced a settlement in Brattleboro and I forgive me I get my B's wrong it was either Brattleboro or Bennington where they had the severe PFA's issue Bennington thank you it was a 35 million dollar settlement so not to diminish the impacts that PFA's can have however in our consumer stream just like all the the medicine that we use and where does that end up ends up in a wastewater stream there is no EPA approved method for removing PFA's out of the wastewater stream so PFA's are there they cannot be they cannot they are presently not being measured at wastewater plants however since it does have a very understandable and very large black eye against it in the state of Vermont PFA's are going to be continue to be under constant regulation I believe even more so going forward and so all we try to do in Montpelier and both Tom and our wastewater superintendent Bob Fischer are very active in statewide peer groups as we just try to bring the science side discussion in a very respectful manner to the table and hope that folks can at least have all the facts in hand when making these decisions in Montpelier so I you know we have just for a couple years now with the pandemic we've kind of been lacking a legislative the formal bigger legislative breakfast so this is our legislative breakfast spiel if you will moving on to the spotlight category as we talked about the proposed budget gets as close on the general front side while through our utility rates as I mentioned what I believe is kind of our cutting-in environmental stewardship with enterprise funds I mean there's a reason that our team is asked to participate locally, regionally at the state level with media with peer groups because people recognize the good work that Tom and the team have done on a kind of a little kind of more dour serious side attention and recruitment is you know us too you know just like the pizza shop down the street and we've been lucky enough to be able to fill vacancies and not have a staffing exodus but I wouldn't be you know I just we need to recognize what the current reality of kind of employee expectations are particularly as if the city may be growing in housing units I know you have an interesting discussion coming up in the weeks ahead I was looking through actually in an unrelated manner Jesse asked me to send her something from many years ago and it sent me down a rabbit hole and I found our 2006 winter maintenance policy I talked about the cute little 69 miles of roads we had well we have 90 now we have 90 we have 90 miles of roads that's 20 more miles than at least this 2006 winter maintenance report purported to have I wasn't here then I can't ascertain the if that statement is accurate or not but it whatever the number is it's more than it was in 2006 and and we're in the service provision business and the speaker earlier this evening asked a very pointed and and I think good question of what's the actual return on a growth and grand list relative to that commensurate demand for service for where that growth is occurring and the city may get to a point where it has to have a our high I I showed you how many highway employees we have the same amount of highway employees we had in 2006 and in 1998 in 1992 you know the that team hasn't really that team hasn't grown yes we've added stormwater and yes we have a lab tech over in wastewater but you know the the folks that are doing the potholes and the paving and the plowing the line striping it's still the same same amount of people so I would suggest that the council consider the service police and fire have to provide service they don't turn off however within public works there are certainly discretionary levels of service that can be provided and that should be a discussion if growth continues if there's other budgetary pressures whether they're Roger ballot initiatives or just the reality of today's today's revenues you know maybe we maybe in neighborhoods with sidewalks on both sides of the street we we only do one you know maybe we so there's a lot of ways of looking at this that aren't just go by for more power trucks I guess is my point because as discussed earlier those are pretty darn expensive as well as the people needed to staff them so we just wanted to kind of highlight that discussion this certainly is by no means a new discussion it's when we've been having internally for years but at some point at some point you'll get enough phone calls telling you that we aren't doing our job and I'm sure you get plenty of them today and you're able to put them through a reality filter but eventually you're there might be enough smoke where there's fire and you know I guess that discussion will be yours in the future and it's not to note we wanted I should have had that as my last bullet point I should have had I don't know something else happier but sorry I will end on a happier note I think I just want to call the council attention you got the full complete public works general fund budget and enterprise fund budgets with a complete budget on December 6 it's on the website what is new tonight is the water utility rates that was an unknown number when we put together the previous budget so that's on page 195 of your packet it's right before Justin's presentation and it includes that water rate proposed water rate for FY23 at $33 and 37 cents per thousand cubic feet which in the final results on that chart is an impact across all utilities to the average property owner of $16 and 80 cents a year is that going to be a specific vote or is that just incorporated in the budget so if we passed the budget that's what we would be it's like the tax rate when you approve the enterprise fund budgets at your next meeting those rates will be established into FY23 what is the percentage increase 3% 1.67% in storm water 1.95% in sewer and 3% in water and Joe Duncan the general manager of Champlain Water District is online as well because the way