Welcome, everyone. It is 6 o'clock 2 p.m. on Monday, September 18, so I will call to order this meeting on the Muskie City Council. Please join us in the Pledge of Allegiance led by Deputy Mayor Thomas Renner. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Okay, first up is agenda review. Any concerns with the order this evening? Okay. So we're ready for public comment. Now is space for anyone who is attending who wishes to comment about something, not on this evening's agenda. If you would like to kick us off. You want to please come introduce yourself and then we will hear you out. Hi, my name is Carol Cannon. I live on Richard Street. I was here, I think on July 17th to ask about getting speed bumps on our street. And we had a petition. I think I gave it to John. I can't remember his last name. Thank you. And I don't know what's happened and I'd like to see, I'd like to know if anything will be happening. The police chief texted me or emailed me that they were going to put a speed card on our street. And then apparently the speed card is no longer. And they have to look into getting another one. So we've had police cars go down a street once in a while. But, you know, it doesn't, it doesn't seem to make any difference. And of course the cars aren't speeding when the police cars are coming down the street. I have neighbors, the villamiers who live at the corner, the yellow house that looks like it's cantilevered out over the, if you're at the end of Richard Street. And they were saying what about and since they're, they're doing the, the painting of the lines, they could maybe put letters stop when you get to the stop sign. There's one on Berlin Street and one on Richard Street going down the hill. And I don't know if it would make a difference. I think there's, it's posted at the Belleville View end of the street that it's a $214 fine for going through the stop sign. I don't know if anyone cares, but maybe, you know, long letters that say slow as you're driving from the hill towards Belleville Street, something to at least jar somebody. I don't know if they do that, if they have those stencils, they must, they must have every kind of stencil, right? The people that are doing the, the stripes, striping. I would guess, but John, could we invite you up here to respond? Yeah, we have an extra microphone. Okay. So, yes, we received your petition. So the way we track it. So you're on our city website, we have a list of all the streets where we've received traffic calming requests. Are you John Rocher? Yeah. Okay. I only saw you this one time. Oh, okay. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. So we do track all the streets that we receive requests for. So if you go on the city website under the traffic calming evaluation header, I think it's, if you go to current initiatives, traffic and parking, there'll be a list on there that shows all the updated streets. So, Richard Street is a priority street to review traffic calming. It is, when we ranked it, it is out of maximum of five points, it scores a four, which is one of the highest streets on here. So it's, it is going to be one of the streets that we look at first. Once, once we, once we started getting some funding to be able to actually do those, those traffic studies. So I think you included the calming plan from Burlington. And it seemed, I don't seem to weird it sounded as though things don't get done unless someone gets hurt. I think I put some sarcastic thing about and in one of my emails to you. So that is one of the criteria we look at five years of this of historic accidents on street, but that's not the only, that's not the only criteria review. So when we do a traffic study, we'll actually go out and you've probably seen those tubes and like some other things where we'll check to see what the 80th percentile speed of a vehicle is to see like, okay, are these, are vehicles going over the speed limit and in that traffic calming manual, which we have our own now that's also on that webpage. It lays out if it meets one of those thresholds speed, any accidents cut through traffic, then that gives us the green lights to start looking at traffic calming measures. So I know when we bought our house in 1980, the Hill, I don't even remember the name of the street. This is terrible. The Hill by Villamires. It was, it was one way. And so that you can only go downhill. You couldn't come up the Hill and I know there are people, I don't know who they knew, but they got it to be, you know, two way. But I was talking about it with the Villamires and they would not be able to get it. They have a carport and they wouldn't be able to get into their carport. They'd have to come. It's, it's a weird corner and they would probably, I don't know if it was, it was Villamires that got it to be two way, but. Look, Claire Street. Look, Claire Street.  But they're, they're still speeding. So do you have any sort of any time plan? So we would need to procure around five grand to do the study. So that's kind of where we're at right now. And we are getting pretty late in the season to start looking at those that type of study. So when we get into the budget process for FY 25, which will be starting very soon, we'll be talking about tonight. We will be looking to try to get some additional funding for next year to do that work.  Yeah. There is a parking spot that someone was kind enough to put for the letter carry where he parks his truck. So I wouldn't want to, if anyone was thinking about it, I don't want to block where Jason parks his truck. We always like to keep our letter carrier happy. I will, I will contact you before. Okay. We do anything. Thank you. Thank you. That'd be great. Yeah. If that's, if that's anything that I can say, Hey, we've got this, you know, that's an easy short term thing we can try. I, you know, no promises that's going to help. And I don't know if you had heard me say before that they don't really stop when they get to the top of Leclerc when they're going off of Richard Street. And apparently they don't, I don't know this because I'm not on Berlin Street, but apparently they don't stop at that stop sign either. I guess really people don't really stop at stop signs anymore. Do they? It's, they just kind of do the role. But, and also the Bellevue and, but anything that can be done would be greatly appreciated. And you may see me here again, but I'll keep asking. Yeah. Thank you. I admire the persistence. Thank you. Where I always have been happy. Thank you. And thank you, John, for the response. Is there anyone else who wanted to make public comments? If you are in zoom, you can use the chat or raise hand feature. So next up is our consent agenda. We have our city council and liquor control board minutes from September five. The payroll warrant for August to September counts payable for September 13 and another established certificate and agreement for 25. The music falls away. Any questions or concerns on the consent agenda? Do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda? Second. Motion by Thomas second by Charlie. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you. Council reports. Can I start with you? I will share that our fans commission met since our last meeting to discuss our budget goals process and helped identify information that we shouldn't that staff is going to include in the memo for us as we have that goal setting conversation. Planning commission. I've been sharing updates on their process of looking at a design review district for several months. That work is actually pivoted. So instead of a design review district, which we talked about before where an area of the city would be set up to apply design review in order to retain historic and cultural buildings. Staff has been able to find a new pathway where we would actually create a local historic register instead and apply that review only to specifically identified buildings instead of having to do an entire district. So more to come on their next meeting in October. And then finally, I'll share that Elaine and I met with the superintendent and school board president to coordinate on content for our shared meeting. October 11th. We will be joining the school board for their regular meeting. So I just wanted to thank everybody who was involved in one of ski second annual pride celebration. It was one of downtown one of ski's most attended events again. So thanks to everybody who came out as a vendor who participated who offered their artistic services. It was a really, really great event. And a big thank you to downtown one of ski and the city for organizing and planning was really, really, really great. Downtown one of ski will also be here tonight. So I won't give too much of an update outside of lingo continues on Tuesdays. So check out downtown one of ski dot org to know about locations and times. Thank you. Where would you like to go next? Certainly. So we are next meeting of inclusion and belonging is not going to be until next month. That's going to fall on the. The 12th. For updates with state healthy connected people. I unfortunately wasn't able to attend last week's meeting. But the discussion was around reviewing the scholarship policy and the scholarship program usage data. So I'm sure Ray will be following up with the council when there's more to share on that. Thank you. Sure. There's there was a airport public meeting this past Thursday, the 14th. One of the agenda items was sound progress on the sound insulation program had a couple members of the community reach out to ask questions about that. And I forward that on to airport officials to follow up. But if there's anything else. That comes up folks can reach out to me and I'm happy to facilitate that getting answers and responses to your questions. So my airport doesn't meet again until October 4th. We won't see an agenda until maybe the late the week before. If there's always an agenda item for noise exposure map updates and sound insulation progress. So if anyone wants to attend those meetings or wants to offer any comments or questions ahead of the meeting, they can send those to me. The next infrastructure commission meeting is this Thursday at 630. The agenda announcement went out this afternoon. I believe we'll be looking at the long term options for traffic calming and streetscaping for La Fountain and die on. I know john has no gender item to do a word plan update so I won't cover cover anything else of that but that's that's it on my end. Thank you. Okay, so it's with some sadness that I need to reiterate the announcements that was made in press release and was picked up by a few news outlets that our police chief has decided finally to resign. Retirement he's retiring so lots of thanks for his 30 years of dedicated public service leadership and for our community. He started as an officer in 1996 and worked his way up through Sergeant interim deputy chief interim chief and then finally became the chief in 2014. So we certainly appreciate how well he's gotten to know this community and how well he has served it. Noting that we won't be doing anything in public unfortunately for him at his own request, which is very painful for some of us. But we will be of course acknowledging his accomplishments personally. So it's not because anything went wrong just so you know why there's no public party. It isn't a very important role as we know for this community in particular. So in the hiring process going forward we are securing a plan is to cure a search firm to help in a professional support of this process of the search process for a new police chief. And we will definitely be thinking about good ways to engage the public for input on what we need in a next chief. This includes internal community and external community so to speak from the organization that is so stay tuned for more information on that. Winooski River Bridge replacement project. That's the Winooski-Browington Bridge over the Winooski River. The first public meeting on that will be tomorrow night. That's Tuesday, September 19th at 6 p.m. at the O'Brien Community Center here in Winooski. Please join the Vermont Agency of Transportation and the project partners to learn more. Ask questions and get involved in the process. Interpretation will be provided for Nepali, Somali, Arabic, Swahili and potentially Maimai. A virtual attendance option is available as well as light refreshments and limited child care options. For full details please visit our website at Winooski-VT.gov slash news or call<PHONE_NUMBER>. We are hiring. The city of Winooski is currently hiring for a public works department equipment operator an entry level position responsible for a wide range of work associated with maintaining our streets, sidewalks, water systems, facilities and grounds while operating a variety of vehicles and equipment that do not require a commercial driver's license. We are also hiring for a brand new position of part-time fire inspector who will serve the community by proactively reducing risks of fires across the community, life safety and public health building inspections and daytime emergency response at the Winooski Fire Department. Training will be available. You can learn more and apply at Winooski-VT.gov slash jobs. And finally construction update, the Vermont Agency of Transportation project at U.S. Route 7 and East Allen streets are resuming. Laying closures may be required throughout the week until the 21st of September. Delays may occur especially in the evening hours. Work will be done at night from 7 p.m. to 6 a.m. Residents should expect increased lighting and noise during construction. Work on the inspection and expansion joints on the Winooski-Berlington Bridge is also scheduled to begin next week. Please anticipate laying closures and possible flagged traffic at this location. As a result of this work delays might occur to your commute. Sign up for project updates at Winooski-VT.gov slash news. Thank you. So we'll move into our regular items now. Item A up for discussion or approval are inclusion and belonging commission appointments. Welcome Jenny. Hi everyone. Can you hear me? Yes we can Anna. Welcome to the meeting. Thank you. I don't know if Jenny wanted to say something before me. I was just prompted to unmute. So Councillor Hurd and I are here to seek the approval of our two commission applicants for this evening. Sarah Marshall is joining us by Zoom. We had conducted interviews with both of the applicants. With myself, Councillor Hurd and our interim chair Parker Silver. And we sent those, their applications on to the various commissions to seek approval. And those were granted. So their terms will expire on 6 30 25. And we're really excited to have them join our commission. Lily Hammerling was traveling. So she had sent me just something to say tonight. So her name is they. Pardon me? They. They say. Hey all, my name is Lily Hammerling and my pronouns are they slash she. And a person of the global majority. I've lived in Vermont for 10 years and moved to Winooski last year. I'm a carpenter, a craftsperson and homesteader. And I applied for this commission because I'm interested in learning about how we can challenge systemic inequality and accessibility. And problem solving solutions that serve the community. So that is from Lily. And then we have Sarah. We have Anna. Sorry. No, no ways. Thanks Jenny. My name's Anna. I don't think that I can put on my video, but I think that's okay. I use she her pronouns. I'm also traveling right now. So I'm kind of in a hallway right now. So sorry if it's loud. But yeah, thanks for inviting me to this today. I'm excited to be a part of the commission. I'm from Burlington, Vermont. So I grew up there, went to CCV in Winooski after high school and then went on to UVM. And I've been living in Winooski now for a couple of years, a little over two years. So I'm just excited to be a part of this commission. I think the way that when you see starting to address inclusion and belonging is pretty cool and like an integrated way to hold all the other commissions accountable. So I'm excited to be a part of that and to be a part of addressing some of the challenges that I've kind of been seeing through my time being in Burlington. So, yeah. Their application and lilies as well, a lot of really good experience. So we're excited to speak for myself excited to have you and volunteering your time. Did anyone have any additional questions or comments? All just one question is just thank you. Well, would someone like to make a motion to approve these two appointments. So moved. Thanks. Motion by Charlie. Second by Bryn. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you. Thank you. Anna, have a smooth trip. Okay. Thank you and thanks for having me. Thank you. We are on to item B on for discussion approval. Introducing amendments to municipal code chapter 17 and set a public hearing date. He's online. Yes. Okay. I told him not to come today.  Are you ready? Now we see you. Yes. So good evening. This is the introduction. After complete legal review of this ordinance update. With the public building registry. We had worked through the housing commission. We've worked through several other pieces with the council and draft form. And again, there was no real changes in the legal review to some, to some extent, but it was a general cleanup. In general, that's what most of the work in this ordinance was, was general cleanup and updating from the last time that we had visited the ordinances. And to be clear. Are you seeking a public hearing for both chapters? So 17 and I think nine is the other one. We are seeking public. The legal review because of schedules this week with the other chapter. Okay. Were there any questions from council on these? Any questions from members of the public? If I may. Yes. So we're asking council to introduce this so that it can be discussed at the public hearing. That would also be said today, hopefully. So when there's an ordinance change proposed. Council has to formally introduce it to start the hearing process. I don't have my language handy for that. Oh, what is the statement that you need one of us to say? I'm going to have to look it up. Apologies, everyone. Yes. I think you can just introduce the by title. If you want to wait like a minute, I'll look it up. We can wait in awkward silence. I could have included that. I also should have looked it up in advance. So I'm just looking at the charter ordinances in general. That's section 402. An ordinance may be introduced by any member at any regular special meeting of the council upon introduction. City clerk shall distribute a copy to each council member into the manager, et cetera, et cetera. It doesn't actually provide the language. So I think you can introduce it by saying the motion to introduce it in a motion to set the hearing. Yes, exactly. Okay. Very well. May I have a motion to introduce amendments to municipal code chapter 17 public building registry. So moved. Second. Motion by Thomas. Second by Charlie. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Motion carries. Okay. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Thank you, staff. We are now onto item C, the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission annual report presentation. Welcome Charlie. Thank you very much. Thank you for making time on your agenda for me. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So this is my kind of annual I often refer to as a customer service check-in to make sure we're providing the services to you in the way that you expected. The report is included in your packet. You know, I'll just kind of briefly summarize that maybe touch on a handful of topics. The first couple paragraphs kind of just give you background about the commission's makeup and history and a little bit about our budget and how we leverage your local dues to bring in more state and federal funds to the region, which has been going up over the last few years. So, yeah, I think when I started this, this was like, we used to do a 10 to one return. We're now up to $13 to every dollar you put in. So, but that's also, I think, just a statement of the needs at the state in particular where they're directing more money to the RPCs to work with our municipalities on a variety of issues. Many of what you're talking about. So, your representatives are listed below there. Thank you for volunteering. And there's a link. This is kind of a little new feature, a QR code for anybody who, you know, looks at this online. You can click on this link and get to your report on our website. Lives there. So, if you ever need to or want to refer to it in the future, I think we have at least the last three years of your annual reports on our website. And each municipality has a page also that has some of the projects that we're working on are on that page as well. Turning to the second page or at the bottom of the first and on to the second, our specific things that we did with the city in the last year. And this is again the last fiscal year. So, as of the end of June, there's happy to take any questions or feedback on how any of those went. Just a couple notable ones that we worked with you on your ADA transition plan on the pedestrian facilities. So, we're able to use our transportation funding to work on the transportation related. So, sidewalks, ramps and curbs, et cetera. Unfortunately, we can't use those for buildings access, but hopefully our portion was able to help you out with that work. And then also just you kind of continued investment in your stormwater system. We've been working with Winooski and a few other towns to just get some better data for stormwater planning. And hopefully that's still going on and will extend to do this fiscal year. Nothing else I want to touch on there. Any feedback on any of those projects or or any other projects that we were working on with you? This is your chance to tell me how we should get better, but. I will just share that these are all really important infrastructure projects. You mentioned that touch on topics we are hearing from in the community a lot. And so, it's nice to have this sort of support coming from you and something we can highlight for community members of there's a lot of work to be done and we're making a lot of effort and thankfully have state and regional support on that. Yeah, thank you. No, it takes teamwork. The next section on the top of page three is the Transportation Improvement Program. There's a link to it if you want to see more detail of what's happening in other municipalities, et cetera. Winnicki has two projects in there right now. The Mount Bay Rail Crossing for this fiscal year. So, I'm not sure when they're going to get started. Oh, maybe that's, no, that's not the East Allen Street project you were talking about. You know, that's interesting. That's somewhere else in the tip in like a paving or some other project. And then there's also Vermont 15 improvements we've relayed to Florida Ave. That is pending in the capital program. So, we'll see if that gets scheduled this winter when a V-trans comes out with their proposed capital program. The last three to four pages really talk about just regional projects that we're working on without regard to any specific municipality. I'll touch on a few of those. We are updating our ECOS plan right now. That's probably going to extend through 2024 with more engagement, especially for priority or marginalized communities and kind of getting into public engagement and racial equity. We have been investing quite a lot over the last couple of years. We've hired a full-time equity and engagement manager and we've formed an equity advisory committee. We had an organizational assessment done. So, that's kind of looking backwards. Right now we're doing a mix of internal and external things. We are finally getting to an equity statement for our organization.  And then we'll follow that with a code of conduct. And we're also putting together a pretty detailed equity action plan to kind of guide our efforts to address equity issues over the next few years. Happy to take any questions on that. Other topics, we just completed a Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy. This is a federal, not mandated, but there's federal requirements if you want to do one of these programs from the Economic Development Administration. We are actually doing this with Addison, Rutland, and Central Vermont regions. So, it's kind of a four-region economic development strategy, which is a little bit of an odd geography. So, we made up a label West Central Vermont that doesn't exist anywhere else, but kind of covered that geography. But those four counties are the last four that don't have an economic development district. And so, EDA kind of wanted us to fill in the rest of the state. And so, we just partnered up. And it is forming the basis of our economic development strategies that will be in our regional plan. And housing remains a big topic. We're continuing to work on housing policy, particularly at the State House. There's a lot of other topics I could mention around energy planning, walking, biking, emergency management, health equity I'll touch on also. There is a, this is on page five near the end. There's, one of the things that came out of that is a health equity planning toolkit. So, I recommend taking a look at that. And there's also a mapping tool there to look at race, disability, poverty, and English ability. So, I don't know if that will be much help in Winooski, but at least it's available county wide. And I think I'll end my report with that. But happy to take any questions on anything on here or feedback. Charlie, do you know the timeline for the equity action plan that you all are working on? The timeline, yeah, roughly, I think it's probably going to be, I think the code of conduct is going to take two or three months. I think the equity action plan we have a draft of, but maybe within the next four to six months to really get it finalized. And is that internally focused on the RPC itself? I think, yeah, it's a lot about what we can do and what role we play in the community. And actually one early thing that's likely to be in there is hosting some sort of regional equity convening. We were trying to get it done before the end of the calendar year, but I think it's probably going to be in February now, probably a Saturday morning. If you remember like two years ago, we did an equity workshop. We had probably 80 folks. It was virtual. It was 21. And so we're going to try to do this one in person. There's also more work has gone on in our municipality. So we're hoping to get a good mix of community members and municipality reps that are working on equity to just share how things are going, give each other feedback and maybe with a little bit of emphasis on housing also, just because it's been such a big topic in the state house. That's great. Looking forward to seeing that come together. You guys have questions on other topics or that, Vren? Yeah, one thing that has come up for us and I mentioned to some of the team, some of your team before, we, city staff continue to share with us that there's only one contractor that does line striping. And so we're competing against other municipalities both for time. And when there's only one that doesn't really give any market competition. So that said, they can kind of set the rates however they want to. And it doesn't provide the health and safety we need for our own community when they're prioritizing larger projects and other municipalities. So it would be great if CCRPC could help navigate finding additional line striping companies and seeing what we could do to solicit more interests for those services in the area, even if it's for a limited time attracting an out of state company or even trying to offer some startup funds of some kind to encourage a new company to come to the area. But that's something that we continue to hear from our community that as a high priority need and something, again, we continue to hear from city staff that there's only one and we're not necessarily a high, a large project for that company to prioritize. Yeah, thanks. Yeah, and Elaine's aware this came up recently with you're not the only municipality to have concerns in this topic. And I think South Burlington is pretty am I sharing too much? I don't know. Maybe there's an unnamed municipality. Does that work? He rolled the tape back. But I think there's definitely some conversation with across the municipalities and municipal managers about how to acquire and there may be one, maybe one town buys it and then shares it. So I think there may be more than one way to solve that issue. But you know, I think it's also I wish this was the only topic where that same kind of story is playing out. You know, we're here in the same thing around like traffic signal timing and just other public works needs and more. So I think, yeah, we're gonna have to find creative ways to deal with these issues of scarcity in services. So hopefully that's one that that may have an easier solution than others. Stay tuned. Elaine will update you more. Yes. Yeah, I appreciate that. And I do think it takes it will take some creative thought. So to the extent that CCRPC can be helpful and supportive in facilitating those conversations, that would be awesome. Thank you. Charlie, can I ask about the economic development strategy too? Sure. It's, you know, it says in here that this will be used to make granting decision is called out. So is this more of a tool just for that to figure out where to target funds or would it be like a guidance that we could look at of maybe what we should be thinking about in our economic development? I think it's both. It does have some of that kind of policy direction and ideas, but it is, you know, at one level, it is kind of a requirement to access, but specifically EDA funds. And so they ask, do you have a sense is like the first question before they open up the door to funding. So it is really trying to open up the door to EDA funding in particular. And EDA has a very significant focus on addressing poverty. So I do encourage you to keep your eyes open for opportunities there and we're happy to help with a grant application or anything else if you see an opportunity. And we'll do the same thing. We'll share if we see one coming across that looks like it might be something that the city can take advantage of. And EDA stands for Economic Development Administration. Thank you. Yeah, right. It's federal. It's under the Department of Commerce. And he used to not get a lot of funding, but in just in the recent years, it's really gotten a lot more funding through Congress. So I mean, who knows what will happen in the next month or two, but there is quite a bit of money there right now. So just to back up to Brent's point earlier, I will say I don't know if most people realize these things happen, but Charlie himself facilitates of the Chinning County Manager's Lunge, which is often where unusual or creative ideas take root, like the community outreach program provided a service provided by the Howard Center for Social Worker Co-response or standalone response to otherwise what would be law enforcement calls that came about because of a lunch, one of the lunches.  Thank you for that. Not everybody does it. Appreciate it. Yeah. I want to ask our representative, board rep, Michael Ryan, if he, if there's anything he wants to add. He's attending on Zoom. No, I can hear me. Yeah, we can hear you. Okay, I've got nothing to add that that Charlie didn't cover. No, thank you though. And and thank you as I guess you're now our alternate rep, Mr. Madam Mayor. Yeah, I'll see you at the meeting. All right. And since the former mayor said hello there, just notable, he has celebrated 25 years on our board this summer. So a long term of service.  Didn't you, Charlie? Well, when you start when you're 10 years old, Mike, good things can happen. Good point. I'll invite public comment as well. Anyone who's in attendance, if you have a question or comment, feel free to raise your hand or leave a chat. Looks like we've got somebody. Go ahead, Mariel. Hi, thank you. It's Mariel Matthews with Winieski partnership for prevention. Can you hear me okay? Welcome, Mariel. Thanks for the update, Charlie. Great to hear what's going on. I will definitely be reaching out for some technical assistance around utilizing some of the mapping stuff that you just mentioned. I also wanted to promote since you brought up the Health Equity Summit or I think it was you were talking about potentially convening a Health Equity Summit. Dr. Marissa Coleman also asked me to promote UVM Health Networks Health Equity Summit, which is coming up on Sunday, October 29th. There's a poster presentation and Monday, October 30th, there are workshops and sessions that they're hoping to bring a large crowd to. So mark your calendars, mostly for Monday, but also for Sunday evening. That's all I got. Thanks for that. Thank you, Mariel. And good to hear from you. Same. Are there any other folks on Zoom who want to ask a question or make a comment? Anything else for members of Council? All right. Well, thank you as always, Charlie. Yeah, thank you very much. So we'll move on to item D on for discussion, introducing the Chittin County Regional Planning Commission Brownfields program. Welcome. Thank you. The Council and members of the public. And so I'm Dan Albrecht, senior planner at Chittin County RPC been there 20 years now. Also, my colleague, Darren Chibler on the line as well, too, who helps me with the program. Paul, can you bring up the slides? Paul, are you there? Oh, there we go. Great. If you can go full screen, that'd be great. Okay. Yeah, so I'm Dan and I was Darren on the line there. So brief you on the Brownfields program update. Just talk a little bit about recent projects, our protocols, what it is we actually do and what we don't do. Next slide, please. So one key thing about Brownfields is it doesn't have to be a property that's actually contaminated. It's just the perception of such and all. And then that's a key thing because a lot of the Brownfields work that is done. I mean, the high profile project, big industrial areas are obviously dilapidated properties, but a lot of what takes place in Chittin County. We're growing area. There's lots of development activity by both the private sector and the nonprofit sector. And it's simply put to whether it's our program or whether it's a bank. People don't want to invest in a project unless there's A, you know what the real cost might be and B, you don't want to purchase anybody's liabilities because if you buy it, you own it. So next slide, please. So our Brownfields program has been around since about 2006 or so. And over the years, we've gotten a lot of EPA grants. They're what's called community wide assessment grants. And they're pretty, they're highly competitive. And also we write lots of grants and I get help from your staff and others on reviewing my grant applications and things like that. But usually every couple of years, we're lucky enough to get one of those our most recent one. I wrote the grant about a year ago and it was awarded this this past spring is a EPA grant of $500,000. Most of that funding is for consultants. We do charge staff time to it, but the program runs pretty smoothly. In recent years, the legislature has passed through funding to ACCD, Agency of Commerce Community Development, which then farms it out to another RPC and each of the RPCs are getting about $100,000. So we've already spent about a two $100,000 grants and there's a third one that will start this fall sometime. And basically what we use the funding for is we hire engineering firms or what the parlance is called a qualified environmental professional or QEP to do assessments or plan for cleanup. It's very key to stress this money is not for the actual physical cleanup of a property that we have. Next slide, please. So the way it works is that you have property owners or potential purchasers come to us and request assistance. And we have to check that the property is eligible and typically that involves whether or not the current owner or the immediate prior owner caused some contamination there. What's called is there a liable party or and is that party viable to be able to pay for such studies. So once we determine that usually there's a there's also principle of an innocent purchaser protection and sometimes there's innocent landowners who bought a piece of property didn't have any studies done and then you know they bought the property in the 80s looks clean whatever and then low and behold there was a fuel tank or something like that. So once that eligibility is determined we hire them to do the work the environmental site site assessment. Once you go through assessment work and you actually know what you're going to build or have a clear idea and you write a cleanup plan and depending on the relative how dirty the dirt is sometimes the dirt so dirty you got to take it out. Other times you can just say all right we'll put the parking lot on top of the old industrial dirt and just make sure it's safe that way. And it depends on the use whether it's residential or commercial or open space. And again distress we do not pay for actual site cleanup. Next slide please. So the most basic one is a phase one they're just a few thousand dollars. That's pretty much like a desktop exercise but it's fascinating in particular because it's basically a literature review and the consultants that we hire they they look at course deed history you know what activities took place on it and there are many interesting things that happen in the days before zoning and all of what people did in buildings and there's also fascinating fire insurance maps that are hand drawn for when you ski that you can figure out what was what it's kind of interesting there were dry cleaners everywhere like nobody nobody had a washing machine so everything was dry clean only. So that's just basically a desktop exercises. Next slide please. And at the end of a phase you go back one slide you may have done to. Okay so phase two typically at the end of a phase one the consultant will say maybe it's like there's really no issues to be concerned about there's no abutting or nearby properties that have had contamination issues. There was nothing at the property that took place that is suspect sometimes a phase one is all you need to establish like there are no environmental conditions here what they call recognized environmental conditions. But in Burlington and when you ski in other areas with history of industrialization and property development there's a good chance you you know better play it's better play it safe and do a phase two and that's typically like soil sampling groundwater sampling sometimes it's the materials in the building asbestos lead paint PCBs etc. So that's a phase two which is typically more extensive and involves involves testing. Next slide please. And then the final thing that takes place is once you've done the studies you pair the studies with what your redevelopment plan is. So if you're doing residential those have the strict standards in terms of soil what the levels that you detect certain chemicals at. So if it's residential those levels are more strict than if it's commercial or an open space or a parking lot or something. So the consultant will then prepare a list of action alternatives that can be leave the dirt in place but you can't put the building there or you take the dirt out which is great that's expensive. So different ways things and then they'll write a corrective action plan based upon the alternative that's chosen. Next slide please. So we have a committee here called the Brownfields advisory committee we have we have John Rosher here is one of our committee members we have somebody from Burlington CEDO we have Lake Champlain Basin program some of the other community health center folks a couple different people and what we really focused on when we write our grants like the story we tell when we write our grants to EPA we can't talk about unemployment we don't have that. We've got poverty issues but it's not as stark as you know a mill town or something or a large you know neighborhood in Chicago or something or old really heavy old industrious. What's our number one problem? Housing. So we scare them with all these stats like our vacancy rate is less than 1% and the rents are this and it's crazy. We need more housing so that's the real priority so when we look at an application we say well what's the plan and use of this property. So we really try to we're tweaking some of our guidelines of how we fund things but we're really looking at what's the new housing units what's the new square footage of commercial space and then what's new recreation or open space and then there's other tangible public benefits transit or solid waste management or you know a park or a trail there's all different kinds of things but that's how we decide the relative amount of support we give for projects with municipal projects and projects from the nonprofit sector generally being funded close to 100% and then private sector projects usually like a cost share element there so next slide please. So prior projects in Winooski back in it exists back in you know ten years ago we did a big project or excuse me one of our consultants did to map where all the likely underground storage tanks were and have it in a database format and then some of the key projects we've done over the years Winooski falls for Winooski falls way that's the big green parcel open space right next to the bridge there and I won't get into the details on that but Winooski hotel group came to us and we did all the so the phase ones and we did a phase two there they did they paid for a phase one we did the phase two and then things kind of bogged down with you know the act 250 and all that kind of stuff but that property you know it's been studied it's I don't believe there was significant cleanup costs you know manageable that's where a gas station used to be way back in the day so that's parcel is something to think about we talked about it in our grant Myers pool one great small little project we were this helped out early on just to figure out I looked at the old report from then you know they looked in there was lead paint but only in one part of the building there was the caulking there was the tiles floor tiles things like that like if you see a nine inch tile not a 12 inch tile if it's nine inches it's got asbestos most likely so but that helped give you guys the information you needed when you guys did your plan to rebuild that pool a lot 7d of course you'll hear more about that right after me from John we helped pay for the phase one and then the corrective action plan on that project and then one of the you know a great shining example of making zoning work with form-based code and then we did the phase one for what used to be the Andes cars there and so yeah 31 apartments I mean that's so you're doing great work it's it takes two things you need brownfields redevelopment and you need change the code and things happen low and behold and then we did do a phase one for 40 when you ski falls way that's the green lawn space in front of waterworks that's the city on parcel there so we did do a phase one and we almost got we got started on the phase two but then we call it off with the city because the deal on the potential property swap fell through so next slide please so yeah just some pictures obviously what used to be there what's there now 355 main it's called garden garden apartment garden city gardens yeah next slide please and of course the pool you know and all right next slide okay so I just wanted to just open it up here like when we wrote our grant application we highly asked you to like highlight your target areas what are some parcels you're looking at so you know for when you ski falls ways that's been studied but if somebody wants to redevelopment or do something the next step would be well what's the read what the actual redevelopment that goes there and then you would just do a corrective action plan and that's a cost relatively easy to cover it's usually less than 10 grand it's not crazy but that again it's a parcel we talked about the city knows about of course 40 when new ski falls way I mean we could if you wanted to you guys could move forward coming to us with a request for a phase two you'd know more what actually is in there by doing some sampling it used to be like a snout a smelting furnace way back in the day around there but if you want to kind of keep tea up that property for doing something next step come to us for a phase two we can get it done and then you know oh maybe it's really not that big a deal or oh we know we need to add you know $50,000 for cleanup costs or whatever but that's one and then of course we've already seen it you know your main arteries tell you know I would read any property owners here or people who are thinking of purchasing property and we've already worked with several in the development community already mr. Degas being a good example for one project so he's in communication with us about other projects you know so whether it's a developer the nonprofit sector or you own property on here you know come to us and you know maybe you're your it's a way to if you're going to sell your property who's ever going to buy your property is going to ask the same questions anybody else answers so to some extent by doing some of your own homework or like oh maybe my good it's starting to check the boxes to get your property ready for sale and stuff so so reach out to us reach out to our committee talk to John as well too so yeah next slide please before you yeah I'm so the question I have is probably just not going to be feasible but I think about the the National Guard property that is anticipated to be just decommissioned where is that property next to Richard's Park off LaFountaine Street on the east side of town okay what will happen after it's decommissioned who will own it and what kind of zoning districts in it right so right so for example I mean I don't know what the decommissioning process entails if there were kind of demo the whole thing right just wondering I guess if I don't know if they typically work with you all on this sort of thing I've never I've never had an interaction with the guard on this kind of thing so but that would be of interest potential interests because they're they're charged they're funding for maintaining their other properties comes from sale of lots of existing so if it's a way for them to reduce their cost they might be interested right right I'm just wondering if their standards for decommissioning require them to clean it up to pre-purchase conditions what they have a you know there was none they're not going to leave like a pile of oil barrels there I would think not so but like I say if a most basic thing to one of the most basic steps even if a property is cleaned up a phase one which just costs a few thousand dollars and takes a month to get done establishes in the record before you buy the property that a consultant said hey this is the condition of the property before it was purchased so it breaks any chain of liability if you don't do a phase one you could you can reasonably say well we weren't the national guard we didn't do that and but it still makes it clunky to us so the state has a program called Brella the limited liability forgot the whole Aquinas brownfields reuse environmental limited liability but that's you enroll in that with the state we help with the phase one it breaks the chain of liability you're clear to move forward with a purchase knowing nobody's going to point the finger at you later for old contamination so even even if it's a clean property if somebody wants to buy it and it's housing so yeah we could definitely help out yeah great thing thank you yeah and then the last you know item here we're trying to think about you know this grants going on for four years we're coming up to the winter time we're trying to think of other ways to do some outreach we'll try to probably do some signage maybe at least put it up in the community center maybe do just a table on the farmers market sometime just so people are aware of the program and all again it primarily involves you know multi-unit we're not looking to help single-house transfers but if it's three three or more units four more units with the changes in the state's s100 and you know so people got a chance to boost the number of units you know we might be able to help out with that depending on the number of units and all and then of course you know local realtors just so they're familiar with it so I mean any other ideas like we can we can hit up to spread the word out you know that's what I'm kind of looking at you guys here that's kind of why I'm here tonight too but yeah there's I mean it's from porch forum yeah yeah we can do a posting on that through our account as well you know I mean we if there's like flyers or information certainly there's more even more events that we could yeah well I know Eric like you can just you know if somebody comes in asking zoning I want to buy this property and they have concerns you know we can especially anything they can do multi-unit anything in your form-based code district I mean we're seeing it happen and now and I you know I come to work every day here you know so I kind of depending on which way I go I kind of see oh that property what the plan for that is you know so and I can and I can have some private conversations with you guys about certain properties of you know yeah I I could come up with some more ideas and thinking about the housing aspect of this you know there's several connection points we have with different people in the housing community yeah so yeah we I mean we work with Champlain housing trust all the time and so I imagine all the larger players are aware but yeah yeah we can always remind yeah we have multiple consultants on retainer for us ready to go so we're kind of kind of make it happen and stuff so yeah I was just gonna ask if any of the material has is translated into any other languages talked about it and we put it in our grant talking about doing that so I might look to you guys for some guidance on some firms to hire for that you know we've got some contacts that our equity staff person has been working on but you guys obviously has the most familiarity even just at the most basic level to people know what's what yeah and also is probably familiar your equity coordinator but you can reach out to Paul Sarn to the okay great no thank you that's a good suggestion yeah so are there any questions from members of the public feel free to use raise hand or chat for an I see your hand is raised yeah curious so we have a couple of properties that I'm not sure if my internet is working sorry you can hear me alright so we have properties in the city that have had fires in the past year 90 12 months or so is there any ability to access funding to help revitalize those properties their multifamily or business commercial mixed commercial housing I mean one of the things that happens during the environmental the phase one is the one it's right the consultant in addition to a property record search they always check with the fire department any incidents there you know and check with other you know you know local residents or prior owners prior operators prior renters to the extent that they can so that would be identified and that would be you know I guess if it was a it was a building that was still charred or something like that that would be part of the environmental assessment presumably there's some sort of clean up ramifications of ash and smoke damage and all that kind of stuff so that's all part of what we call hazardous building materials assessment you know which involves not only issues of contaminants but issues of safety as well too and sometimes our consultants will hire subcontract with a structural engineer you know how much of the building is salvageable so so again if people are coming to any kind of multi-unit four units or more you know especially you know that's the kind of thing we can help with whether it's the the current owner or a potential purchaser that's awesome thank you additional questions well thank you for coming in Dan well thanks for having me I've heard of the brownfields program many times but now I think I fully understand okay alright thanks very much thank you and thank you Darren okay we'll move on to item e on for discussion or approval the musky Falls East lot 70 revised design approval John did you want to see anything up before sure yeah I see Bill and Doug are in attendance okay yeah I'll do a quick intro so this is kind of a housekeeping item I would say we've talked about a lot of the changes on this project but I don't think you've actually seen it in sort of rendering form in a while so back in March 2020 the city council authorized the application of the active 50 permits and then subsequently I think it was in June of 2020 city council approved the design at that time and then it and then it went on to act 250 application and approval that was back when there was a VIC component on north end so as you know we've that has kind of shifted to housing given COVID and impacts there and and we've talked about that and sort of documented it in our agreements but this is sort of the the the rendering form so you can see the pre-picture of what it will actually look like so so we just wanted to get this in front of you and get any feedback because this also plays into our local zoning permit application so in order for Eric to sign off on the local zoning permit there's a few to-do items that we have to do one is make sure we satisfy act 250 and then also you know we have to go through our internal zoning approval process and the council approved design is one of them so we want to make sure you had a look at this again so I don't know Bill if if you're there if you want to go through some of these renderings or I think that would be useful because I think several of us maybe didn't even see the previous yeah yeah this is 2020 so we've been working at a while yeah welcome Bill hi how are you good how are you doing this evening I'm well thank you so I don't know if I can share screens but it is that does that work at this point I can do that and run through a couple of things briefly yeah it says that I've been disabled from sharing so just give me two seconds Bill no worries with me tonight are Doug Netty my my senior partner in this project and also Greg Gossens who's been retained to help us with the hotel and the housing design moving forward um let's see here we can get this to work you guys able to see this screen now great so the this is this is the for the counselor's benefit this is the same document that's in your packet this is this represents the level of design that was approved by Act 250 back in early 2020 uh and really we brought the first time we brought this to the council and sort of two parts the the first element was where these elevations which were part of the Act 250 approval which sort of set the tone for the scale massing of the buildings and then we came back at a future date with more detailed three-dimensional renderings which were more along the lines of the drawing that you see here so and when I go back and forth here um this sort of elevation level these flat images were the first level that we sort of went through with the council and got approval for direction and then came back at a future time in June of 2020 in this case with this same uh taking these flat areas you know sort of rendering them in a more photorealistic way and being able to discuss with you um more specifically things like how details of the building would work material palettes these sorts of things and I share that because our intention tonight is to focus on this first level the same way that we did the first time so the intention is to basically say where are we today relative to where we were in early late 2019 early 2020 with these elevations so I'm just going to run through these very quickly when we talk about south elevation here we're really talking about standing in front of river run apartments you know for all intents and purposes and looking up the hill in that direction so to the to the tallest building you see off to the left here are city lights and these other two buildings these mast and gray are part of keen's crossing so this is the hotel the way that it was originally conceived you can see at the bottom right that the building sort of screens or hides a three-story parking garage that is the city-owned component of the project that goes all the way back into the hill that's the only place you can see it from this particular elevation and then everything else you can see on this particular rendering is the hotel originally was a mix of eight and nine stories six stories above the parking garage and then a sort of wrapper building at the lower level which was intended to be the lobby and an entrance component so this is very similar to what happens at spinner place for example where you have a narrow building which is providing a sort of active screen in front of the parking structure so that you don't have to look at it when we look at the same the same building from now from Abinaki way so this would be if you were effectively this is not a view you really have in real life you'd have to be standing in the middle of the site where keen's crossing is but for elevation purposes this is that direction so the hotel on the right here and then on the left the original three-story commercial office building that was going to be BEIC's headquarters and sort of a narrow space in between where the there's some air and light that travels between the two buildings and the parking structure you know travels as you can see with the wooden screen effectively in this direction there's three levels one level that's accessed from the top at the new efficiency at the time what we were calling efficiency way now community way one entrance point here to the second level of the garage and then a third level of the garage it's accessed opposite the turnaround at the end of river run this is looking at the project from the from the Casabat park area again these elevations sort of give you a flat view so this is an actual view that a person could really have unless you were floating in the air in the park but it does give you an instruction of how this all fits together so to your left here is river run on the left hand side of the building is the hotel the the office building and then three levels of parking which you this is really the only view that you have where in fact you can see all three levels of this this parking and this is before any of the plantings that we have would grow up and you can see here this boardwalk that comes in provides for a reconnection of the wetland which is currently broken up by the roadway that goes out to Casabat park now that would be relocated and elevated so that the the wetland can be connected and finally from the north from basically from the VEC side there was a level of parking that was screened by the two-story office building so these were filed these were approved by the city in early 2000 originally and then filed with act 250 and approved you can see the little stamp here in a basically a two two sheets so this represented the design element of the project from them so act 250 effectively relies on this approval process that happens at the city council as most of you may remember this is a little different than how zoning works in the rest of the city this downtown district has a different relationship with act 250 and a different design review relationship that happens directly with the city council rather than through the typical drb process so i'll just stop here for a minute and ask if anyone has any questions about what originally was approved council any questions okay you can you can proceed though great thanks so what i have here again this is taken directly from what was submitted in the councilor's packet and what's available online so this is an image that represents the same scale as the the original approval this is looking from the south effectively the same generalized idea the main elements are a change in sort of the overall aesthetic of the building there's some elements that are different aesthetically we still we have one less floor on the building effectively than we had when we started the original approval was for 125 room hotel and the proposal that we have the current layout of the building provides for 115 keys the lobby and sort of cafe elements happen at the ground floor level including a little outdoor patio that stays as it was before along abnaki way and then at the roof level is where really the the main community elements of the building happens so there's an elevator that takes you to a rooftop restaurant and bar there's an outdoor seating element that'll be seasonal looking out to the west and then on the east end a series of three meeting spaces that could be opened up to combine to provide for group weddings and other group events that could be hosted at that particular level as well so not a lot of change in terms of where we got from 2020 to 2023 many of you may remember that we were in front of you last summer in 2022 in May actually with a concept we were looking at that was going to eliminate all of the rooftop space in favor of a lower and larger hotel building and we've cycled through various elements of that over time and kind of returned if you will to where we started so this concept is actually quite similar to the original concept it may be a little different than what some of you remember seeing last year this is where we see more of a change is this is a long abnacky way so here we have the hotel element which is really again the same massing as before about half a floor less high than in the original concept and here in the on the west side is a concept for the workforce housing that we have designed to replace the veic element so this is unlike the hotel which is quite far along in development the this is really a placeholder here to the west that allows us to talk about the scale and massing of the building and how it differs from what you've seen in the past so there's a little more distance between the hotel and the housing building the footprint of the building is compressed a little bit in the north south direction and there are effectively two additional floors on the building at the west end so there were two tall commercial floors originally which take up about the same amount of space as three residential floors and then there's these two additional floors that happen at this level the garage the screening the planting how the building relates to the street overall remain the same this is the view from the park level there's some changes in structural method in terms of how the building is being built there's more steel and in this particular element than before the hotel on this side the orientation of the boardwalk has changed slightly in order to accommodate some changes that we made in response to some fire and other access concerns that were raised about the original plan and then the housing massing here facing out towards the park in this direction and finally the north elevation again parking and other elements of this street concept remain exactly the same as they were this lobby element is the same it's really the addition of the two additional floors there's a public space that's planned here I say public there's a place that's public for folks who are within the building an outdoor seating area and some community space that's planned at the roof level for the benefit of tenants so in terms of where we stand tonight our goal would be to have your acceptance of this direction that we would then use to develop the same level of additional plans that we brought to you before but the importance of this approval would be to give us some clarity of direction as it pertains both to the scale of what we're doing and just kind of nailing down the previous discussions that we've had over time in a more formal way talking about hotel and housing as these uses instead of housing and instead of office and hotel so I guess with that I will take a breath here and allow you folks to ask any questions that you might have thank you thank you Bill I appreciate the walkthrough comparing you know where we've been before to what we're looking at again today because it has been so long and I'm personally excited to see the the return of the rooftop space over I see your hand is raised yeah I was just wondering Bill if you could just go into more detail about kind of the rationale of the space in between the two buildings so it sounds like it's four lights so I was just wondering if you could talk about it especially because it's a little bigger in these new renderings sure and really I think in as a concept here let me just go back down here so what we can see in sort of the original design element of the commercial building was you know the sense was that there was less of a sense of conflict the south edge of the the south edge of the building are you guys no you can still see my screen yeah okay great I just it look it flickered on me for a minute here so the south edge of the commercial building it's really the change of use that that triggers it and that is to say we specifically sort of laid out the commercial use in such a way that it wasn't really as much of a conflict with the hotel use you know because residential and hotel have more of a similarity in terms of when people are home and when people are using their buildings the thought process was that the north facing hotel rooms and sort of the residential building itself would benefit from just having a little bit more space in between you know and so it really is more use driven than uh a specific you know code or or other you know practical reason it's just the the idea that we thought that the buildings kind of got more similar in terms of their use and therefore could have a little more breathing room gotcha and does the change really affect the number of units you're thinking about for either building it doesn't the hotel effectively is in the same footprint as it was before and you know by keeping in that that sort of long bar if you will sort of a traditional double loaded building kind of wants to be the width that it is you know regardless of making it wider wouldn't necessarily might make the rooms bigger but it wouldn't create more of them and from the and that's also sort of an efficient way for us to build the structure you know we had looked at the concept we brought to you last year was an L shape building that was lower and the the reality is that that's a somewhat less efficient layout for for a hotel so that this allows us to be a little bit more a little bit less common area a little bit more you know utilization of space is a little higher and the apartments right now we're looking at somewhere between 80 and 85 apartments in this in this combined building and you know we sort of think that's the scale that makes sense for the marketplace and even if we had more room that thought processes that kind of represents the upper bound of what we're comfortable seeing on the site and what the parking garage will sort of you know allow and carry as a replacement for the VIC or you know office use so I don't think the in in neither case is the is the scale really affecting the you know sort of density it's just the we have the benefit of creating the extra space and so we did okay thank you for that explanation sure do other folks have questions oh comments yes oh bill thank you for those things for showing us these renderings I have to say these renderings gave me the most amount of tweets I've ever received of people asking if that was a rooftop bar so folks are definitely excited for that so thanks for keeping it in the plan um and this may be too early in terms of my question but do you have any ideas of when you'll break ground on the apartments and also what the kind of final final build date is for the hotel sure well I mean everything is as you know it's been a challenging couple of years in the construction business so we're all trying to get our arms around how quickly things can happen the hope is that as most of you know we've started some preliminary site work for the parking garage and you know there's been some some work going on already down there to remove dirty dirt and sort of move some utilities out of the way to allow the rest of the the brownfields work that we was talked about a few minutes ago to have that particular work happen and get done here so the hope is that by the construction of the parking garage has to lead the other buildings by about four or five months because obviously the buildings that are sitting on top of the garage so there's a certain amount of structure that has to happen uh but the hope is that as soon as the buildings can handle it uh that is to say they're done enough to be able to build above we can effectively start and continue with these two buildings um but uh you know Doug's here with me I'm sure he could chime in as well you know we we have lots of great ideas about how we want to move as quickly as we can but um you know we have to sort of look at this one step at a time in terms of having just broken ground on the garage we need to stay focused on that until it's reached a certain point but the design process for both of those overbuilt buildings is you know been re-engaged at a hundred percent and is moving pretty quickly great thank you Bill Bren I see your hand is raised yeah thanks um I'm looking at the design with the garage and the open space is how um you know how how does that maintain seasonality with the with snow and ice um for the top of the garage that's exposed let me um let me cycle back so a larger you know one of the it's not why we designed it this way but one of the advantages of this redesign is that the footprint that's being constructed on here is a little larger than it was before so there's a little bit less of the condition you're talking about but there is a a piece here of the of the overall building that is exposed to light and air and we did work with John and public works to make sure that the clearances and other elements of the garage at this level were such that the city would be able to maintain uh that particular component in the same manner as let's say the seventh level of the garage next to visac that is that is also similarly you know open to light and air so um I don't want to step on too many toes trying to describe how John maintains that and his staff but I know that that's been an ongoing concern um to make sure they can get the appropriate equipment and and what have you in there um okay that level three section we we've sized that clear height so that we can basically run a bobcat and some of our larger trucks to do um snow clearing when needed um we even looked at at one point trying to cover that space and it just it it wasn't feasible or affordable um so the structural engineer even you know started pricing that out and unfortunately that didn't didn't really work with the project budget so um but that is the one level that's uh it's got some expanded height to allow us to move some snow around okay it's subtle that I think I can kind of see it now um with a closer look at the rendering um next question so the you know I share council runners um you know enthusiasm for for the update and um I am also curious you know there's some really great design elements on the west the south and the north side and be curious to see if there's um any ability to include some more design elements for the east so that either it blends in um maybe a little bit better with the natural surroundings or if there's like uh something to consider um as you kind of get further down the road with um complete uh development uh like a larger mural similar to um a wrap that you know a building wrap that might just bring a little bit more community some community art to the to the city something that could be attractive for that space I think that's a really interesting idea I know that we we've talked at some length about um also the south facades of the housing building as being an opportunity to create some some interesting uh dynamic you know artworks and things so that folks who are looking out the north windows of the hotel are looking at something other than you know a blank wall for example so I'm sure that that that there's no reason in my mind that conversation couldn't carry over to you know some thoughts I think the challenge with the elevation that faces out on the park is always the conflicting idea of you know trying to come up with something that draws attention to itself versus as you say something which you know kind of wants to fade away um and and in this case in this case because you know it's an urban environment in one way or the other you're looking at a facade of a building as you are walking back from the park um you know it's a somewhat limited viewpoint most of the time people are seeing it going uh yeah it's a very limited view from the interstate so you're basically in the park if you're seeing it um and so my you know my first reaction of those things is to try to mute them and kind of keep them simple um but I I'm sure that you know one of the reasons we have Greg with us tonight is to make sure that he's heard firsthand uh any ideas that you've got so that we can you know look at them more carefully as we keep going yeah I I uh I understand I I'm just thinking you know either either blending in um uh if that's if that's the best um option or again some community um related art that um that could just you know emphasize the value that the that the structures are bringing to the economic development aspects of the community yeah well I think either of those things could work and and they both make some sense so I appreciate the comments sure um that's it for me thank you for um providing an update on zoom is there any public comment or question for tonight I I am not hearing any concerns bill it sounds like someone might want to make a motion to approve the revised designs second motion by Thomas second by charlie all those in favor please say aye hi the motion carries thank you so much thank you for your time folks we appreciate it exciting progress here we're excited to be uh seeing machines moving around all right um it is 7 36 p.m I would like to call a five-minute recess before we move into our next item so we will reconvene at 7 41 do we have everyone online if calling is back to order at 7 42 p.m uh we are on item f our strategic vision goal area update for municipal infrastructure welcome back up john great thank you so this is our first report out of the 2023 2024 work plan so we have three items but or six items and three of them are pretty massive initiatives that we've been working on a long time so don't be fooled by the short list so the the items are the abanaki garage main street manuski river bridge as all must-do items big capital projects um and then there are some planning studies and infrastructure discussions below that so go through these briefly um abanaki garage I I think we just covered that pretty well um so not much more to add on that project um I actually the one thing I will say so um bill did mention there's some work going on right now so the the construction work that's happening currently is related to the brownfields solar mediation work that was partially covered earlier so that is the corrective action plan where we're excavating some of the contaminated soils and prepping the sites for the future garage so yeah very cohesive agenda tonight um the second item main street so some some pretty big news on this project we we open bids um on august 23rd we received uh three bids from um pretty well-known contractors in the area the low bidder was kubricki jointa um who are actually they've been doing some v-trans work in town recently uh their bid was uh 22 million 654 thousand and some change uh so a little bit higher than our engineers estimate so we updated our engineers estimate right before bid um that estimate was 18 million so not hugely surprising to be honest we expected some um higher bids given you know workforce issues and inflation things like that so good news is we're on the low inside we are still below the uh the 23 million dollar bond threshold um so we are working currently with our funding partners USDA uh Vermont agency natural resources um to review uh potentially some additional loan dollars um from the funds that were obligated by USDA back in 2019 so the really great news is that we are still holding a 2019 obligated loan that we received from USDA so very good interest rates that we have for the project right now um so they're looking at um if we can increase the loan and it's and it is a little tricky I can't really give you too many numbers at this point because it's it's based in the different sort of funds so sewer funds water funds general fund so we're hoping to come back to you um in October um and present sort of the funding package for the project um so that is that is our big task right now we are also working through some value engineering um we this isn't typical but we we had a meeting with the uh apparent low bidder to discuss some potential um items that we could reduce or uh eliminate from the scope that went you know necessarily detract from the overall project um and they were receptive to that so very good news so combination of things trying to potentially lower the cost and procure some funding so the other um note on that on this project as we as of yesterday or day before we received a one million dollar tree grants through the usda um I think it's the usda urban and community forestry program so that's really great timing because we're going to need some additional dollars on the project so that would go towards the streetscape or street tree scope of the project um so planting of the new trees and uh we talked about the um silva cell system that will you know help promote tree growth and some of the structural soil so really good news to to get that award um so we're we're starting to work with uh those folks to see what the grant requirements are John went through some hay to get that one for us so who goes to John I gotta say it was one of the easier grants so I will yeah surprisingly speaking yeah we'll see we'll see what the next level of you know the the hard part is like jumping through the hoops of the grants sometimes but yeah no we're very excited to get that um any questions on main street at this point uh Winooski river bridge as Elaine mentioned there's the the large public meeting um sorry I see Brin's hand just oh sorry yeah John if you could just elaborate um the uh term of art value engineering it's not something I'm familiar with or something I've heard before yeah it's a fancy word for saying how do you reduce the cost of the project what can you cut out so we're looking at items for example um you know some of the light pole prices came in much higher than we expected so can we use a different light pole option or um there's some stormwater um improvements that we might be able to modify to make it less expensive so yeah it's just a fancy term we use that make it cheaper sure yeah I guess you kind of were touching on the the question behind the question which was what are you looking at for value engineering elements yeah a lot of the underground work is sort of set in place there's not much scope we can reduce there um so utility I'm I'm speaking about utilities like water mains or mains stormwater lines there's there's really not much that we can change there so we are looking at some of the streetscape features um so one example is um tree grates were really expensive like half a million dollars expensive so that's an item where we may be able to remove some of those tree grates and just use mulch and it's actually probably a lot easier to maintain so um and I think that works with our grant as well because we uh we didn't expect that that value to be that high we expect to be like a hundred thousand dollars so that's one item um as I mentioned there's a kind of an odd stormwater we had to get a stormwater permit for the project that was a um gravel wetland that's kind of in the median up by colchester uh it it's it's not very maintenance friendly and it's kind of it'd be a really difficult feature to maintain so we are working with the state right now to look at can we do something different that's less expensive like pervy's pavers or some you know something along those lines and and not have to build this um pretty complex gravel wetland in the middle of the street so like a bioswale is that what you're referring to yeah it's it's a little more intense in that it's um it's a full-on sort of gravel wetland system um and we think there might be a better less expensive option that'll um they'll be much easier to maintain okay right thank you I appreciate it so moving on um when you ski river bridge the first public meeting is going to be held tomorrow the o'brien community center from 6 to 8 so that'll be our first sort of public kickoff of the of the project scope um you know as you know it's very early phase so this meeting is more about um introducing the project to the public getting feedback and um and kind of incorporating that into future design work for the bridge it's still very concept level at this point um but we want to start those discussions early so that um that'll be a great conversation and looking forward to what feedback we get tomorrow night John will that meeting include some history on like the alternatives considered and what was selected I believe so so they'll definitely lean on this scoping study that was done like five years ago I believe now um because that is why kind of why we're we're here at this point is we use the scoping study um and they looked at a few of those alternatives so yeah I'm trying to remember I've seen sort of some draft slides and I think they go back to that so I'll take a look and make sure they're covering it tomorrow night I'm just thinking about scenarios where folks suggest an idea that like it was already considered and didn't work out well or something to kind of get ahead of that yeah okay good point but I'm sure the presentation is pretty well set so I'm not asking for any yeah so hopefully a good turnout tomorrow night it'll be should be interesting to get everyone's sort of take it's obviously like it's going to impact a lot of folks so um you know we're going to have to balance everyone's sort of needs um whether you bike across it walk across it drive across it so um and this will be the first of a few public outreach meetings we'll be having so keep an eye out for some additional ones there's there's I put a link in the um in the memo for the the launched webpage that we have for the project similar to exit the ddi exit 16 project um i'm talking of that project do you know if that will be finished before the bridge project starts or they both going to be happening at the same time yeah so the main street in the bridge you're saying sorry the diamond interchange yeah so the the double diamond interchange they they just finished up the sort of phase one work the the phase two work which is the the main work hasn't been hasn't been bid yet I think there there's some I don't know I don't know if it's legal issues or what but so it's unclear how those schedules will line up it could get really messy traffic ones yeah impact people's like we're impacted the top and the bottom yeah pretty interesting yeah so I suspect um that the exit 16 work will be completed I would hope prior to us getting into the bridge project which is like 2026 yeah yeah unless something really really jams it up on exit 16 so then the other ones are more of the planning scoping finance items um the when you ski bike pedmaster plan is is ongoing um Eric is leading that charge with ccrpc through that grant funded program I believe they're starting to talk about some potential projects and sort of digesting all the public feedback that they have received so far as you've noticed there's a lot of notifications and signs and ways that you can provide feedback so now they have to sort of process all that data and then base infrastructure financial needs we will definitely be talking about that f y 25 that's kind of the point of the budget um and then uh the same with the lefountain dion scoping study we are um is is councilor oak leaf mentioned we will be continuing that discussion at our thursday commission meeting where we're going to look at some potential uh long-term alternatives for that that quarter we talked about some short term low-cost options last time and now we're getting into sort of um hey if we can reconstruct this what's what will it look like right any questions from council or from uh if you're attending via zoom member of public want to ask a question or make a comment remember you can use the raise hand feature or the comment box okay thank you so much john thank you we will move on to item d on for discussion update from downtown wnuski welcome back melissa um for those of you that don't know me my name is melissa corbin and i am representing downtown wnuski uh last we spoke was probably um april time frame and you all had a lot of questions i had a lot of questions i was brand new to the job just a couple weeks in and i had no answers to your questions at that point in time um and so i'm kind of looking at this discussion as my first like six month assessment where a few weeks a month short of that but um oh yeah there's a powerpoint we don't have to follow through it if you don't want to but it exists there if you um if you want to follow along um so i think what i'm going to do is just kind of go over the structure of the um of the organization for any of you that are not as intimately involved in it as maybe thomas or elaine and then go into the financial um forensic project uh that's gone on since my start and give you the high level overview of that um and what we found out and kind of what we're thinking about going forward and then at the end there's a recap of the programs that we have done this summer the farmers market and such and a little bit of a financial assessment related to those and also programmatic outcomes that aren't necessarily tied to finances for the organization um and then hopefully in the next month or two all of this information will feed into a budget for 2024 um i have initial plans for how our cash flow is going to keep us a float um through the end of june of next year um but it is a little dependent on um some grant funding that's kind of out there um in the wings that i should know about in the next 60 days so i'm not going to give you the hardcore plan for what the future is here and tonight but i do have an idea of what it's going to look like i just need to get a couple more pieces of the puzzle put together uh so the first slide just has our basic organizational structure which is the members of our board of directors for any of you that are not aware who's behind the scenes and doing a lot of volunteer work for the organization and for the city our city council liaison and our staff members i'm at 32 hours a week currently and sarah who does our farmers market management and handles our social media works around 18 hours a week on average so in april um when i first opened up our quickbooks file um there was just a lot of warning alerts that were showing up on the screen i'd never seen before i started to run reports and i just didn't understand that there was not there wasn't any real like information and ascent my initial assessment was that it looked like payroll was just running through quickbooks but it wasn't actually being used as a financial tool and i just thought that i had to be wrong um because i'd never seen anything like that so i reached out to um the accounting firm that i used for the last eight years in my prior role that i had a lot of trust with and just asked could you just look under the hood for an hour or two and just see if i'm really missing something um and so unfortunately he came back to say um that my my concerns were confirmed and that there there were needs for immediate attention um then at the same time i found some paper files that revealed some um failure to file notices with the irs so this was all kind of happening um the first couple of weeks of my job i'm sorry i'm like old now so i have to take my glasses on and off to read and look at you so apologize if it if it gets uh distracting so we um we realized quite quickly that our board voted to approve for us to move forward to mobilize a team of three cpa's and myself uh to assess at a high level what our tax liability was um at a state and federal level the ebt reconciliations from the farmers market um initial assessments look like they were a little bit off um and needed to um to make sure that we were um filing things properly both state and federal level uh bank reconciliations uh weren't done because there wasn't any information in quickbooks for it to reconcile to it seemed like things were kind of being done on side spreadsheets so we needed to tie all of our all of the input that needed to go into quickbooks needed to be tied to bank accounts thank you sorry if i'm not being as loud as i should be uh and then we had no chart of accounts and program evaluation and that was one of the things that you brought to me in april saying where's the money coming in where's it going out how's it being spent what are these events that we're doing or these programs that we're putting on what are they actually are we losing money are we making money what's the impact and does it have anything to do with money or is it just the programmatic impact um so that needed we needed to create those that chart of accounts to be able to allocate the funds that were coming in through sponsorship dollars or city dollars um or community donations and then the programmatic costs that were going out and uh we also i needed to take a look at the grant funding that had been received by the organization and the sponsorships they were small in numbers so it wasn't that difficult to do but i wanted to make sure that we were allocating grant funding to earmarked programmatic grant um categories and that sponsorships from sponsors that were wanting to sponsor certain programs were making sure that those dollars were tying out so that was where we started in may and between the four of us we kind of broke them out into our areas of expertise um tax liabilities not anything that i've had a tremendous i've had no experience with in the past so we had brought somebody on to our team who knew that very well i've also never worked with ebt so that went to somebody else as well um i worked a lot on the chart of accounts and program evaluation as well as the grant and sponsorship appropriation of funds and also assisted with the bank reconciliation but the nitty gritty every single two dollar item or seven dollar item was done by an administrative staff member that cost less hourly than i do so in june we got some initial clarity to the severity of the finances and essentially we assessed there to be a twenty five thousand dollar tax liability plus unknown fees and penalties this is directly related to unpaid payroll taxes and specifically it appeared that the auto payroll tax button in quickbooks had been disabled um and so the our our good faith assumption is that people assumed my predecessors were people that came before my most recent predecessor assumed that it was all being flowed through um through quick books and being paid um automatically but that button had been disabled and so that's how we racked up that large bill um so at the time of realizing what that number was and you will see that on the balance sheet um you'll see a just around twenty five thousand dollar number that does not have um fees and penalties in there yet because we're still getting paperwork from the IRS since we filed all of our um back back paperwork um so i alerted my board of directors um and brought Elaine into the conversation just to say those are sort of our initial findings we are doing our best to make sure that we get all of the paperwork submitted all the unfiled quarters um and so that we can really assess what our actual um liability is on the books uh also in June I did identify that there was ten thousand dollars in misallocated grant funding uh that didn't go to an earmarked programmatic outcome um that was utilized for payroll expenses instead um as soon as I found that out I did alert the state I have a really solid relationship with the person who administered that grant from the past 10 years in my prior job and um and and we've had a really good working relationship so I just you know operated on the transparency state and it was specific to photography and videography that um were resources at the department of tourism really needs updated in their overall pool of assets um and so I've given them I gave them a backup plan for how I was going to get through photography um through this event season and then we can reassess how we're going to execute the final piece of that um earmarked program programmatic elements for that grant going forward after this event season to see if they're satisfied um with the amount of 10 whether they feel like they're getting ten thousand dollars worth of value from um hiring side photographers and Paul helped with some things and um so that's to be determined um so in July all the state and federal paperwork was submitted uh to the IRS for all the unfiled quarters um luckily enough we had a little bit of a credit with the state so it was really um just the the federal paperwork that needed to be um needed to be submitted and all cleaned up we established a chart of accounts which you also see on a profit and loss sheet that I had uh Elaine had sent out on Friday that has um all the different program areas and the bank statements were reconciled back to 2015 we are originally going to start with just the prior two years but as we started to peel back the layers we just figured we would go back as far as we had bank statement records um and just get the whole make the whole project um as tidy as possible so all of the data entry for every single item that had ever gone through the bank um had to be entered into QuickBooks uh back seven and a half years so that was ended up being 177 hours of um of work on this project just to get a uh just to be able to run the report that you all got on Friday like needed all of that just to be able to hit a balance sheet and a profit and loss statement so August brought the end of the forensic accounting work as I mentioned 177 hours and then I I turned my focus onto looking at the uncategorized revenue and expenses and trying to move those into programmatic areas there still sits a lot of two two thousand twenty three I was able to do because I was here for enough of it to understand it but there's still quite a bit of money uh that historically I just don't have information on to know uh why that money came in which program it was supposed to go to so as as much as I can say we can run reports for you now and tell you exactly what the bottom line is by year historical programmatic data is still a little sketchy um because we still got quite a bit of money in uncategorized revenue and expenses but I do have board members that have said you know as we move into some slower months here after foliage season um they'd be happy to sit down with me and say oh I recognize that name they wanted to support the farmers market or I recognize that name they wanted to support general fund operating so everything's reconciled it's just not all historically categorized yet but 2023 is in the middle of august cash flow for the organization became extremely tight um and it showed that operations uh would be ceasing by the beginning of september and so Elaine and I sat down and got creative and uh ultimately you all processed a request to provide funding that would be normally slated for late fall early winter for us to have at the end of august and that kept us afloat and gave us the ability of time to assess how we're going to continue to move forward into 2024 uh at that point in time a weekly fundraising team formed to develop a plan for raising grant funds increasing sponsorship and soliciting general fund donations and a fundraising strategy was implemented with a multi-tier approach uh initial access uh gave me a plan through q2 of 2024 which is why i alluded to in the beginning uh that i don't feel that i can present just yet but i have confidence that we've got some bones so before i move on and i apologize for all the ums and ahs i'm saying i'm exhausted i'm usually in bed by eight o'clock so i i'm doing my best to stay focused but i i am aware that i'm not being my best public speaker tonight so what questions can i answer for you at a high level on the financial status and then if we want to drill down in any level of detail you also have a profit and loss statement and a balance sheet and i brought copies here too if anybody wants to look at those on paper Melissa can i just say i don't as you alluded to i've been in conversations about this i don't have any questions so i do just want to say um i really appreciate you coming tonight and presenting on this i know this isn't the report that you were hoping to give the council when you came on board with downtime on new ski and i just really want you know everybody on council and everybody um in the public to know just the the huge amount of work that you put into doing all of this back work that was necessary um you know for the organization and for the questions that we asked you before in april while still you know putting on pink wig and doing blingo and making sure that all of the events are still running and you know bringing energy to all of those events when i think a lot of people could have just succumbed to the the difficult situation that you're looking at financially so thank you for maintaining great programs through downtime on new ski and for giving us a very candid look at what's going on financially thank you for acknowledging that i appreciate it thanks i want to add to that too historically i think we only staffed downtown when you ski like three four years ago and so even before that it's just a been a group of volunteers running it so um i think that's important context when you think about historically maybe not having the tightest procedures in place yeah i think and let me know if i'm quoting you wrong it was the time in the organizational structure to bring someone like me in so it i don't mean any of this to be negative for any of the volunteers or people that came before me i think it was it's just time in the growth of the organization to get this these structures in place and then just be able to build on them so it we couldn't run i couldn't run away from it right it just it needed it needed to be done in order for me to do the job that i actually took and i apologize if i interrupted you no you didn't well said um so thank you as well for the transparency i do see councilor oakleaf has her hand raised yeah sorry um my internet's not awesome so apologies for not having my video on i i want to also kind of reiterate what Thomas has already said and just um thank you so much for all of the work that you've gone um that you've done and um rolling up your sleeves and digging in i i also wanted um to resolve all the issues and to look back um and on earth you know all these issues work so hard to resolve them i really appreciate the transparency i think that's um you know that really speaks to to the confidence that that you're bringing to the role your skills as well as it's just the confidence um the increased confidence that i personally have um for the leadership that you're bringing to this role so i'm i uh i i want to extend my emphatic thanks for doing this hard work um and i i feel like i have more confidence also in how city taxpayer money is being utilized um with with this degree of transparency as well so i um just want to reiterate that and say thank you for getting um to this point um and being able to put us on uh some you know downtown monoske on more stable footing uh for the years to head thank you so much i really appreciate that feeling the love all around the room no hard questions come on well so we got to make this fun for those of us who are not familiar with financial statements in depth at all my that's me i'm speaking of um if i'm reading this right i'm seeing like total revenue around 70 000 expense around 81 so operating in that deficit of like 2,500 currently right now yes so what you're looking at is as of january of excuse me august 31st and so operating a non-profit at a deficit of about 2,500 right now going into year end giving is not a bad place to be in because we are going to see donations from the community that are going to bring us back up into the positive there's also going to be income from there's going to be some income from donors that i have met with and have given this level of transparency to and basically said we need your help in a one-time manner to get us over the hump i've gotten three verbal commitments uh for that as well so i'm i'm not concerned about that being a negative bottom line at the end of august it'll be positive won't be hugely positive and we might not pay our tax liability off until next year but the bottom line on the profit and loss should not look as negative your balance sheet still going to hold that 25 000 liability though as a nice reminder to us consistently um and so i'm guessing though based on what you said earlier like you i shouldn't be looking at this is like a sort of projection of a budget that you're operating on okay no not at all in fact i only started to build the bones of what a budget is really going to look like next year after pride and all the expenses that were paid because i really wanted to take each one of the programs and each one of the events and say okay how many how many businesses were impacted how many performers were we able to support and how much money did we lose uh and how much money were we able to um squirrel away for you know administrative covering of cost which was actually only one event this year and so all the following slides which i don't necessarily need to go through in detail that breaks down all of the all of the programs and can tell you sort of we do the farmers market when you see when days juneteenth french heritage day we started blingo uh pride halloween and the holiday pop-up sale and then i just made a slide for each one to kind of overview of what it is and basically how we operated in 2023 and where we ended with each one programmatically so i am only a week old in knowing this information so you were definitely not looking at a plan for next year or where things are going to be you're seeing a snapshot of where we're sitting right here today and a large reason why you have a negative bottom line is a hundred and seventy seven hours of forensic accounting it's not cheap that that was about six or seven thousand dollars in and of itself um i don't think this slide show is in the tonight's agenda could we have an editor like i just sent it at four thirty today so yes i only sent the financial reports ahead of time i didn't know we were going to put it up i thought i was going to use it as talking points but yes you can have it after fact and then is there something i should we should be taking away on the assets and liabilities sheet uh i don't think i see the zero yeah yes and we could we could definitely talk offline about that a little bit more but yes it's basically your your biggest um your biggest takeaway that i think you want to pay attention to is that you've got that uh under payroll liabilities that twenty five thousand five sixty eight and then the um the line underneath of that is the overpaid to the state other other than that you've got some you know you've got our what's in our bank account up at the top uh and then some reimbursements around ebt and nofah and crop cash and those kinds of things but really the biggest core thing on that is just for you to see that that tax liability is sitting on there and we want to make sure that we work to knock that down okay and hopefully the profit and loss or it's referred to here as a statement of activity that's going to show you your uh your programs and you can actually see who gave you sponsor how much sponsorship you had for juneteenth and how much sponsorship you had for pride and then see some of the expenses so one of the questions during a pride planning meeting somebody asked i believe it was somebody in this room how much do we spend on music for pride last year and i said i have no idea but next year we will know the answer to that because we're gonna have these categories now to be able to put event entertainment underneath each thing and know whether what our restrooms cost and what our sound costs and all of those things so i think we're in a good place of analyzing what's happened in 23 uh and figuring out how to tweak and adjust and know exactly what we need to fundraise for for each one of these events as well that seemed a little haphazard to me this year somebody that had an interest in juneteenth gave us a check for a thousand dollars well did we need that there or did we need it for pride now we know where we actually what we need and what to ask for that's excellent thank you uh brand it your hands up again i think yes thank you um on a statement of activity is there a line item for halloween i know a bulk of that is volunteer but it's it is very labor intensive um so it it almost might at some point it may also be beneficial to capture to the extent feasible and whether or not it makes sense i guess it's capturing resource hours labor for hours uh for each for each of the events um again it can help with just identifying like how many of your hours are are spent on halloween because when you look at cost it may not show up in these light items but in terms of resource like that may be one of your most resource intensive events of the year so we're definitely on the same page with that a hundred percent one of the things that i've paid a lot of attention to and i will answer your halloween question specifically but craig mitchell donates a tremendous amount of time in in booking the entertainment our board members and our council members donate a tremendous amount of time to our events but craig is a unique entity in the sense that if he goes away that is a service we need to pay for in order for our events to get off the ground right so i have put the bug in the board's ear that we really need to be tracking that in in kind time so that we really can assign a value to that and understand it actually doesn't cost five dollars to put on pride it costs ten dollars because craig gives five dollars of donated time we really need to assess that and so i have started a started a side spreadsheet based on best estimates of what i've seen in 23 to try and capture that and i did talk to ray about understanding how many volunteers we need how many hours for halloween and those things so circling back to your specific question about halloween it is not on the statement of activity yet there is a chart there is a category for halloween but there have been no direct expenses that have been assigned to halloween as of yet so that's why you don't see it on the statement of activity uh once you see a reconciled through the end of october you will definitely see halloween expenses but in 24 i want to be able to start to capture that real staff time and i can use uh the anecdotal information that i've collected over this year and be more intentional for halloween knowing that that's a plan going forward to really understand what is the true value of executing these because you can look at these numbers but my salary just falls under general funds um payroll it's not allocated into any particular program so i could be sleeping under my desk and you know and these reports would look the same way but if you actually really wanted to see how much effort it took to put on pride versus juneteenth i think that's uh that's a discussion to be had about how i track my hours by program hopefully that wasn't too long-winded of a response and did i give you what you were asking for it was excellent thank you um yeah i i mean be it for your own record keeping or something that you know is is a you're able to share with the board um i i think something i love it would just be better would be helpful long term to have and refer back to so i don't necessarily need know that it needs to come back to council but again in thinking like you know how the halloween event is i'm sure there are other events that are very resource intensive and i just think that that one especially because of how many volunteers are being coordinated um that that is very labor intensive so that that was just something that came to mind um one other thing unrelated um that is come up but that's very important to our community um is tree lighting so i would like to put a pin in um planning for tree lighting um for this coming year so that's more intentional and potentially has some specific um donor requests both in kind as well as financial um for that um to do something like that it doesn't necessarily have to be an event um around it but it it was something that um i know uh tom has worked on um with others to to kind of pull off last minute um this past winter and it would be nice to have some something more intentional leading into this winter so it is my understanding that the trees that the lights stayed in the trees so that it will not be as much of a labor intensive execution as it was last year but again i wasn't around i'm just hearing what tomas and laura and others have shared with me yeah as far as i understand the lights are still in the trees and if they're not we at least purchase the lights uh downtown wondersky ran a donation request to get the lights um i think that there have been the idea of having maybe like a tree lighting ceremony to celebrate winter that we weren't able to really make work out last year just because when we finally got the lights so um something for us to talk about next next board meeting maybe yeah that sounds great thank you for bringing that up i appreciate it sure any other questions or comments from council anyone on zoom care to speak participants i mean audience not a council staff okay well thank you so much for the update melissa great we do have one more piece of business and i don't know if a lane you want to give contacts or you would like me to let's start the next one well let's move on to item h on for discussion approval the letter of attestation for downtown wondersky state grant yeah so this grant is from um oh gosh forgot who it's from accd and agency of commerce and community development they think they renamed themselves this year but it's still accd to me oh is that why the name was different uh yeah so they in order for them to done how many ski to receive this grant from them they just need everybody to remember to know that that money cannot replace what ordinarily would go to them so we do have some budget allocated and some other fees that are allocated downtown wondersky as you all know so um this is just to attest that we all are aware of that you want to yeah this is it uh you're going to receive this grant hopefully for 25 grand and we can't pull that out of the money that we are to give you that is exactly it perfect in summary excellent any questions from council that's good to me okay do i have a motion to approve this letter of attestation for a downtown wondersky state grant so i'm moved second motion by John second by charlie all those in favor please say aye aye hi hi hi motion carries thank you all for your time yes get home get some rest okay sorry okay so we are on to our last item i for discussion approval the f y 25 budget planning schedule and procedure welcome angela hello nothing super new in the proposed plan this year in terms of schedule um we are planning to present to council in much the same way we have done in previous years by our um departmental groupings providing you the budget book in advance including the capital plan copies of the budget both in summary and detail um the power points the leverage funds report um your first meeting where you will be meeting on budget items is going to be actually your next meeting on october 2nd where you outline budget goals for the staff to consider when developing our f y 25 budget and then starting in december um staff will begin presenting the budget that we have compiled for the fiscal year 2025 through every meeting through the end of january we look forward to seeing lots and lots of you thank you for the overview angela and as a reminder i've been soliciting from members of council what information would be useful to you as we do that goal-setting conversation and so that will also be made available at our next meeting to sort of set the table for that discussion as much as i can pull together yeah whatever angela can reasonably acquire i i am mid audit preparation as well the audit items are due to the auditors on september 28th all right if you long you can get back to work just kidding you go home after this are there any questions from council on the proposed schedule or info i don't know if you had a chance to talk with staff about my question about if there would be the possibility to put in a meeting where we can discuss all of the presentations that we've received before we have that budget approval vote and set warning meeting i felt that last year there was a lot of discussion that we still wanted to have and i i don't want to say it was rushed because i just think we stayed very late but i think that we could have benefited with some extra time so right now january 16th is scheduled to have an overall budget component for discussion the only other thing being presented that night is the cip and that was at john rashers request because he feels like he's rushing through the cip every year and not being able to cover fully the operations of his enterprise funds the only other alternative because we are required to set the warning by i believe january 25th is the absolute last date so january 22nd is your last scheduled meeting where you can set that you would need to have some sort of special meeting if you wanted to have an additional um discussion i don't know how the rest of my fellow counselors feel i would because then if we're going to be getting additional information on cip on the 16th i just feel like it would be good to have a discussion where we have all of the information from all of the departments and we're not weighing on information that we've just received before we have ultimately will be a final discussion i would be open to having a meeting added i don't know what everybody else feels about that so just as a reminder for council um that you have a meeting on the second which is of course the first week of january on the 8th which is the second week just standing now obviously here meeting that angela referred to on the 16th so and then if angela is right then we're you have to warn shortly thereafter to be in time by charters so oh on the 22nd you have the warning meeting and then you have yeah i think it's just a few days after that that you absolutely have to so if you wanted to add a meeting we can certainly um explore that it's really about your calendars and i dare say angela's calendar um so it would have to fall and you know you'd have to be fitting a second meeting into a week that you were and i'm fine with that i'm one person so i'm not just clarifying that for the rest of just to to align on what is presented here we have this final meeting on the 16th with the cip so that's new information and then a chance to have a an overall discussion not make the decision we come back the next week and then we have that overall discussion and that's this but the the paperwork is drafted already then the final warning approval vote and setting the warning we have done those on the fly before um it's not ideal and typically we would like a small recess to make sure that we proof it correctly um but we we have done those day of in the past and i will say last year we also had the budget discussion meeting and then morning setting the subsequent meeting and you're saying that felt tight already i feel like we went into voting and there were folks myself included who would like some more conversation but it seems like we didn't have time let me ask bill if that's about process because i think last year i tried really hard to have us focus in each of these meetings on the content at hand and not get into the bigger picture discussion maybe that's the wrong approach i i can appreciate that approach because i think you know we're talking about hearing a lot of information in that moment and you kind of want to sit with it for a little longer before you discuss on it and also you know the information that you hear about community services you might have a different opinion once you hear about public safety so i don't think that was a wrong approach but i definitely that did play into what i feel like at the end we didn't have as much talking time as we needed um i do wonder if it's viable on the 22nd meeting to really tightly control that agenda so it's like basically just the budget conversation and have space to do a recess and then do the warning and vote on the fly in the language how are actually before we start problems how do other members of council feel about what um thomas is proposing or suggesting brian i see your hand i can let the other counselors go first aurora charlie do you have feelings about the dates on the calendar and what they are for i don't know that i fully understand the context from which thomas said oh right because you were i do like viewing things from an interdisciplinary perspective and i think that each part of the city creates like you know the whole organism and if that is what his goal is i'm with it i think that it makes sense um but excuse my ignorance that's all lost that's very fair yeah i'm of two minds and that if i if we have another meeting that month uh i don't i don't really want to do that but i also do appreciate because i i i did feel i think similarly to council runner that we could have used some additional time to discuss um so i i kind of like the idea of maybe setting some more time aside either the 22nd or maybe the 16th too so the 16th might be an easier one to control almost just have those two items um yeah about the cip and that budget discussion and there was like nothing else on the agenda yep i can't promise that but we could try really hard to make it like nothing else substantial right um like not an ordinance update or the sidewalk thing you know which we did do last year yeah i that's actually that's a good point because i feel like last year we did have some substantial content in these agendas and years past maybe we we haven't as much well in years past i don't think council was asked to make all these hard all the hard decisions we asked you that's true it was more straightforward this is the proposal it all made sense it was two percent tax rate increase which is under inflation just to be clear to the public council will work and yeah so it is we're asking you to do more work i'm asking you to do more work to be fair brady you want to share your thoughts yeah thomas do you remember january you know i do i am enjoy all of you so i just you know i i mean i threshold for meetings but january's a marathon and that was i i am i can empathize with aurora where i it just oh man the end of that month i needed a vacation and we actually that is kind of why i think we need more time because it did feel like a marathon and like we were taking on so much information and i don't know what's going to propose this year last year seemed like there were just a lot of things that yeah didn't feel settled part of it voted part of it is what you know elaine just said of like there was a lot that we were considering like with covid relief dollars with the um with the oh my gosh what's the acronym uh kola race kola no kola yes kola with with those rates i know all of the acronyms all of the things um so i i feel like uh if anything i if thomas if you want to hang out on a saturday to talk about it i'd be game after work i'm not sure i can do any more than what we're already signed up for fair enough what if um elaine and i do some thinking about like forward looking on the agenda planner if it feels like it's feasible to keep the meetings very focused yeah so we have a lot of space maybe that could work if that isn't seeming viable we could consider adding an extra touch point yeah because i must say that i lean away from adding a meeting in january as well um i also think i i don't think it's going to be as big this year because we don't have tiff arpa s or all these decision points um but i don't know that for sure right so let's revisit this um but i think for now we could approve like what what staff is proposing here and these deadlines that they're saying for for content that sounds good okay could i have a motion to approve the fiscal year 2025 budget planning second second motion by thomas second by charlie all those in favor please say i hi hi brin i heard an i right yes hi motion carries thank you very much and a lot that brings us to the end of this evening's agenda do i have a motion to adjourn so moved so moved motion by charlie second by brin all those in favor please say hi hi hi i motion carries and meeting adjourned thank you everyone night