I'm going to call the meeting to order. And so the first thing is to review and approve the agenda. And the only potential suggestion I have is to, we have an appointment to make to the advisory board for the community justice center and we also have an appointment to make around a parliamentarian. I kind of wonder if we should put those together maybe at the end of the meeting unless folks have objections. Is that okay? Yeah is anyone here for the cab meeting? I sort of am suspecting not but I could be wrong. Okay so we'll just move that to the the end as well. Alright so on any other suggestions about the agenda? Okay so with that we'll consider the agenda approved and so we're on to the consent, oh I'm sorry general business and appearances. This is an opportunity for any member of the public to make a comment to the council and particularly if it is not pertaining to anything on our agenda. And if you do have a comment that you would like to make that is about our agenda then you can make that comment adjacent to that item when we get there. And so as is true with all comments this evening if you would say your name where you live and try to keep your comments to about two minutes or less that would be great and also if you are joining us digitally just for our for my sake if you wouldn't mind changing your name to your first and last name so that we know how to record you properly and calling you properly. Alright I think that is it. Anyone wish to make a comment? Go ahead. It's hard to read with glasses and a fork and I'm warning you ahead of time there's more here in two minutes but yesterday I tried to pull up the agenda and it's pulling up a February 2020 agenda. I had the city clerk at higher five that it wasn't anything that I was doing wrong. There were two entries for a city council meeting on the calendar. It opens up a packet from 2020. It needs a recurring problem. I understand a plow hit a car last night may have you know towed the rear end of the car and left the scene and since we never did anything about the Green Mountain Transit folks hitting the homeless person in the crosswalk and leaving the scene I really wonder if we've got some kind of impunity going on here. The mask police.  I can do that later. Public records requests field ahead of the agency related to the Montpelier's decision to no longer be a public safety answering point. I brought that to your attention. Nothing's been done. City manager ignores appeals to the head of the agency and that cannot be allowed. If it does end up in litigation I will name each of the city councilors so that because you're complicit in it by not managing your manager or mismanager. The body cams there's a public records request related to the body cams because that's an immediate budget item. I specifically asked for the first net proposal and for the axon proposal chiefs play games with it. I know that there's an axon proposal because I've talked to axon about it you know and you just you let these people get so far out of accountability that you don't even know how to begin to reel it back in. I asked two counselors to try to put an agenda item on related to the public safety authority and and related issues. It didn't get added to the agenda but it is time critical because you've got a city manager. You got a rogue police chief assigned himself to run and defeat and around undermine seven years of work by the public safety authority and even resort to say oh well I'll do this and this and this and then CVPSA can be dissolved. I'm like what the hell is going on here and why is the city manager saying sounds good to me let's roll with it. That's a quote. So I'm quite outraged that y'all are not doing your due diligence on public safety issues like radios, governance, body cams, hit and run, leave in the scene etc etc. I apologize for the tone. I'm a little worked up about it. I hope I would ask you to have some discussion around these issues and not just pass them off as if they were going in the sinkhole. Thank you. Do you want to address anything or no no that's fine. I had no information on an applau hitting the scene where you get your information. First I've heard of it. Applau hitting a vehicle where when what's your source of information so you got a second hand. Did you get a second hand? Did you see it or did you get a second hand? I have a photo if you want to see it but you didn't see it happen. So you don't actually know if it was reported. You can try to you know shoot the messenger. You got caught off guard. You don't know that your city hit plow. The city's on the hook for paying.  It may well have happened. Call Officer Hohenza. Stephen, you can let him finish. Don't interrupt. Secondly, so we will follow up on that. Secondly, we have responded to your request. I gave you everything we had. I told you that. Which request? Please don't interrupt. In regard to the PSAP. I sent you I said this is all we have. I even told you I was surprised it was all we had. And I can provide copy stolen counsel if they don't believe. I am aware of the public workers request for the body cams. Chief Tommy is working on it. I don't know anything about an agenda item. We're happy to have an agenda item of the CVPSA. We're sure what you're talking about road. We're trying to get the project done that we can get done for the best interest of our city. We've communicated with CVPSA and their chair about how we plan to proceed. So thank you very much. Thank you. All right. So we're going to we're going to he asked me several questions. No, actually, I think he asked you one question and you answered it. And then he just lied to you. Well, so thank you, Stephen. All right. So we are anyone else in the public, either in person or digitally? All right, Vicki, Vicki Lane, go ahead. Um, oh, wait a minute. Whoops. What did I just do? We can hear you if that's okay. All right. Yeah, I think I just sort of minimized you guys. Anyway, I, I wonder if you could, if somebody there could get the public works director on the phone and find out about that, I find it really hard to conceive that it's that one of our city snow plows would have hit a car and not reported it. Now, if he hit it and didn't realize it, that's a whole different story. So that's just my comment. Okay. Nothing else? No, not at this time. I just, the tenor of that of the whole. It just bothers me to hear such accusations. So freely put about anyway, so that's just my feeling. Thank you. Anyone else either in person or with us digitally wish to make a comment? Okay. All right. So we are going to move on then. When somebody that has the power mute me, I think someone is on it. All right, so we are on to the consent agenda. Is there emotion move the consent agenda? Move the consent agenda. Okay, motion and a second further discussion. Okay, all in favor, please say aye and opposed. Okay, so and I am delighted to be welcoming our legislative delegation this evening. Thank you for joining us. And I see a number of you are here. So I think we should probably start with letting you all introduce yourselves to us. And then we'd love to have a conversation about the interests of the city at this point. So whoever would like to go first, I'll let you jump in. Go ahead, Anthony or Senator Plena. Okay. Hi, folks, I'm Anthony Plena. I serve in the Senate. I serve on the government operations committee and the agriculture committee. Pleased to be here. Thank you, Senator Cummings. Hi, I'm in Cummings. I'm familiar with your chamber. One of two former mayors in the legislature right now. I chair finance and I serve on health and welfare. And we are looking at a very busy year this year. And Senator Perchlich. Thank you for having us here today. I'm Andrew Perchlich in the Senate as well. I'm vice chair of transportation and also on education. And I don't see either representative Hooper or kids Miller at this point unless I'm wrong. Okay. So yeah, actually, for at this point, I want to turn it over to the folks who put together I guess our legislative agenda. So Lauren or Connor, would you be up for talking to us through this? Yeah, sure. I can kick it off here. And I want to really thank the senators for coming in. It's, I think it's the third time we've done this now. And it's really just great, you know, sort of have yourself receptive to our recommendations. And it really does feel like you have your thumb on the pulse of the city. Just coming to these meetings, you know, sitting through and hearing everything we're dealing with. So really, just want to start off appreciating the three of you for coming tonight. You know, I'm sure everybody's had a chance to look at the legislative agenda. And I think maybe it would be helpful if I know we all have sort of our different points of interest here, maybe we could chime in on some of those. But I serve as the city council liaison, the homelessness task force in town. And as you know, we've seen, I'm not sure if it's an increase, but definitely an increase in need, I think, in the services that the city's provided. And, you know, it feels like we're doing the best we can. We're sort of a $14 million budget. But as time goes on, and Ken Russell will talk about it when he gives us homelessness task force presentation. It feels like we're increasingly maybe taking on some of the roles that the state traditionally has done there. You know, certainly we have a social worker that we've embedded into the police department, along with Barry. We recently appropriated funds for a second peer outreach person. We've expanded the hours of the transit center to make sure people can be warm. You know, before they're able to go into the shelters. We put money for transportation and and $7,500 for hotel vouchers as well. So we're doing the best we can. But sometimes it still feels like we're underwater on some of these issues, we've got the ARPA funds set aside for $425 to explore maybe, you know, 24 seven restrooms, as well as sort of a hub where people can go get out of the cold and stay warm. So I think there is like, you know, if we when we did our strategic planning, there, there is a willingness to continue doing this. But I think we need more help. The big thing that comes to mind, and it's on the agenda is, you know, the public restroom, it's been a discussion for a while. We did meet with the BGS commissioner. And I think there is a feel in that, you know, in addition to the community, 24 seven restrooms really are necessary for the dignity of folks just to be able to take a shower, maybe a laundry unit in there, too, if there was a component of that. But we'd love to see something like that in the capital bill, maybe to share some of this expense. You know, the state does maintain restrooms off the highway, right? And we have thousands of visitors every year to the state house and looking at some of the state state attractions in Montpelier. So that's one thing we'd really love to partner on. So just want to put that on your radar and see if there was I don't know if there's any reactions to that or maybe we should move on to another issue. We can keep going. Lauren, like to talk about PFAS a bit, maybe. Sure, yes. And just echo the gratitude for having you here. It's really great to just keep in touch and be able to hear from you all what you're what you're hearing. And how we can partner on these priorities. So a couple that are kind of in my wheelhouse. So, you know, as you know, we've been really wrestling as the only community remaining in Vermont who's taking the PFAS contaminated leachate. So, you know, we're viewing it as high priority both to continue with upstream solutions like you all have of banning PFAS from additional products so we're not importing them into the state and continuing to look at solutions to protect our water and our environment and our people from these chemicals, you know, even looking at things like possible, you know, in the infrastructure bill, for example, there was funding for PFAS contamination in wastewater treatment facilities. So maybe there's some opportunity there that we could explore about, you know, better filtration at our own facility here in town. So some of that just want to kind of keep an eye on what opportunities you all might see in the legislature from the state funding that will come in either ARPA or the infrastructure bill. Another one kind of up my wheelhouse, you know, we put we've been, of course, advocating for strong action on climate change, mitigation and resilience, you know, working towards our city's net zero target that we set by 2030 for city operations and then 2050 for the city overall.   Thanks, Lauren, Lauren. Yeah, yes. I don't want to I don't want to take this off on a tangent or anything. But you mentioned that Montpelier is the last place to take the PFAS contaminants. Tell me, have that come about? Why is that? Why are we the lucky ones in that sense? Do you want to answer that? I can take a stab.  So at this point, the Coventry landfill and we get some from the closed more town landfill as well. But most other, they're either shipping it to New Hampshire, New York or Montpelier now. And so we've been working with the state, trying to look at how Cassella can, there's a permit process underway, where they're looking at pretreatment of the leachate before it would go to any facility. And so we're trying to kind of ensure that stays on track so that no community, including Montpelier in the future, once that gets up and running, is taking the PFAS contaminated leachate and just essentially dumping it into the river. But that's going to take, you know, a year and a half or so, we were told to get that up the pretreatment up and running. Could Montpelier theoretically say we're not taking it anymore? Yeah, we theoretically could, yes. And we've been wrestling with that. Yeah, sure. And there's, so there's an A&R program that allows some oversight of this pretreatment. And as far, and correct me if I'm wrong, Lauren, but my understanding is that A&R's involvement is that at least is tied to it going anywhere in Vermont. So in order to sort of have ourselves and A&R continue to be at the table there, that's something that we were interested in. But that could change. And we've sort of set a deadline for ourselves to check in to see like, are they making progress and is, you know, is this really happening or are people dragging their feet, etc. Yeah, please. Yeah, if I may, Senator. You know, the fact is whether Montpelier takes it or not, the leachate is still being generated because of trash that we all generate. And PFAS is in many, many substances. So Vermont still has a huge issue with this. It's got to be disposed of somewhere. And so I think the urging here is to provide the funding and the leadership to make sure that the proper, that A&R stays on top of this and that there's adequate resources to make sure that the state-of-the-art treatment can be developed so that we can all go forward. And obviously that we also ban the topic, the substance in any new products coming in.  So someone's got to deal with this. Great, thank you. I'm just, yeah, go ahead, Conor. Keep pinging on a few issues here. I mean, a big one for us obviously, as you know, is state employees returning to work. And I think how much influence the legislature has over a decision like that. You might not be pulling the trigger on that, but anything you can do to influence it. You know, we still see the tumbleweeds rolling around town sometimes and, you know, between the lost revenue of parking and just the fact that people aren't buying sandwiches at lunchtime has such a real and immediate effect on the economy in town that we're still pulling back from and probably will continue to be for a while. In issue, Lauren mentioned that, but I think it's important to give feedback when a state initiative is going really well too. And my ride, I believe, has been a success in our community. Thanks, Senator Perchlich, for your leadership and transportation on that. Having sort of this city-run Uber, you hear the different stories about people, you know, whether it be disabilities or seniors whose world has been expanded by having this on-demand transit system. And we would really like to see that expanded even. I know AOT is looking to roll this out in other communities, but we don't really feel like we're at the point where we've done it right yet. So put more resources, have more drivers, more shifts, and expanding the service area, I think would make a big difference in a lot of people's lives there. And we're certainly one of the commit, I think we're putting 70k towards GMT hard budget again this year. So we're happy to do that. Great. So, you know, I want to give the opportunity to our senators to either, you know, tell us about what you think about these topics that we've just raised, or are there other big issues that we have not raised that you think are going to be moving this legislative session that we should be paying attention to? So, yeah, whenever you're ready. Senator Cummings, go ahead. Yeah, I'll start.  The bathroom was news to me, and I think that's great. It is difficult with young kids, and we could use a public restroom. If the governor puts together the capital budget, we can talk to the committee and see if we can get some money in there. Right now, we have a lot of one-time money. The problem is our base revenues at this point are not projected to increase any faster than our expenses, and I doubt that that's novel. My experience with the city of Montpelio says it is always tight, and so we're trying to do wise investments, but not make a commitment for ongoing, i.e., staffing kinds of things, because if we do that in the future, we're going to have to take it from another program. One I'm particularly concerned about, we have two programs that because of our revenue and expense thing have suffered for years, and the pandemic has brought out even greater need, is our mental health system and our long-term care, visiting nurse home health. We need to look at our Medicaid rates that we reimburse them with, because the pandemic has really brought that out. We don't control when workers are coming back. I was pulled again this week about whether or not, you know, how I feel about the legislature coming back. We're all watching those numbers. I think up until Omicron in the last couple weeks, I was certain we were going back, probably masked. I'm not so certain now, and I think state employees are in the same predicament. We're trying to get everything back to normal as quickly as possible, and at the same time protect the health of our employees and the people of Vermont, and I think you know how controversial masking is, never mind vaccine mandates or mandated testing. So we're working our way through that. We've got a couple, this is the second year of a biennium, and I have never seen so many heavy issues on our plate in a second year. We have the school waiting study that's going to impact, yes, no, and maybe, you know, different schools differently. We have the pension issue and the pension expenses, not payment for what we didn't put in in the past, but present payment expenses are in the Ed fund, and while this year we have a significant surplus because of the federal stimulus and the fact that people went out and bought a lot of stuff, but the cost last year, just for the undervaluation on the return and investment, went from $6 million to $36 million, and if teachers health care goes in, which the Senate has done, the House has still not made a final decision, that's another $6 million. Any increased payment from the state to the pension fund is of the teachers pension fund, not state employees, is going to be footed by the property tax, and I think city people have always been very aware of the burden of the property tax. We're going to be looking at that. We've got a couple proposals of going to an income tax, and we're going to be looking at that. I assume this year we're going to try, but again it's the second year and it's just the time we're going to have, but they're all issues we're going to have to deal with. We're putting as much money as we possibly can into affordable housing. We've got all kinds of federal money, but it takes time to permit and build housing, and that, you know, we're sitting here trying to make due in the middle while we're trying to build our way out, and hopefully we can. The thing that we're missing, we will be missing, is a great deal of ongoing state revenue to fund the services necessary for a lot of people to work their way out of homelessness, and that to me is critical. I think we know that many people have mental health and have addiction in, you know, issues, and if we're going to truly change the situation, we need to find the services that they need to help them not just get into temporary housing, but to get into permanent housing and lead, you know, a comfortable and productive life. So I think that's it. It's fairly overwhelming this year, the things that we've got to work on. Yeah, thank you, Senator. Well, I would, I would just, I could easily just ditto everything and just said, she laid out pretty well the challenges that we face. I would just mention two other things that should be on her list as well, but it's one that's going to take a lot of our energy, whether or not it changes anything or not, but it's going to affect all of us is the debate over reapportionment, redistricting. As you know, the, the, the board of reapportionment board came back calling for single-member districts for both the House and the Senate. So that'll be, that'll be a time sucked quite honestly in the legislature because there'll be a lot of internal debate about that, particularly in the House, maybe less so in the Senate. We'll see how that goes. But I think that that's going to, that's going to take a bunch of our time, whether we like it or not. We're also going to have to early in the session, decide how we're going to deal with COVID from the statewide point of view again. You know, in terms of town meeting day, town meeting exemptions from having to do in person meetings and whatnot, those things that we did last year will have to decide if we're going to do them again this year. That will happen pretty quick in terms of the beginning of the session. I think that, you know, one thing I want to mention is we've talked in the past with you folks about the importance of supporting local initiatives. I'm curious, I don't want to go off on a tangent either, but I'm curious where your take is on the non-citizen voting issue at this point. But what I wanted to say was that, you know, we continue to try to find ways to give more power to local communities from the government operations committee point of view. You know, the one time when we actually did it was giving the make, giving you the option of doing mask mandates or not. You know, so the one time we decided to give you local controls was a tricky issue that all of us know is very controversial. So it's just kind of interesting that we decided to use, put that one off on you folks as opposed to doing a statewide mandate for masks. I appreciate the fact that Montpelier has been doing it itself. Between the pensions and the reapportionment and the potential of talking about education funding as well, it's an ongoing discussion around moving away from property towards income that will, I don't think we'll resolve that this year, but I think we'll get the conversation going again. John, do you want to speak it all to the non-citizen voting? If not, that's fine. Yeah, I know it's an issue we've already kind of dealt with. It's in the courts. I don't want to, I don't want to distract us from talking about things that we need to really talk about, but I'm just curious. Fair enough. Let's, let's keep going for now, but if you want to get on that later, that's fine. Senator Perslick, anything you want to add? Yeah, I was going to bring up the waiting study as something that was not on your, on your agenda.  And I know you're not the school board, but the two different recommendations coming out of the task force, if you looked at the charts in the back, either way, either option would create a tax increase for property owners of Montpelier. So it's something to just be aware of. It would be phased in over five years. That was the recommendation, but it's going to impact all the citizens of the city. So it's something to at least have on your radar and be involved with it as much as you can in discussions with the school board, I think would be good. But I support the, when I looked through your agenda, there's nothing on there that I had questions about or wondered what you're thinking was or anything. I think it's great and I commend you for doing the work. I also looked at your strategic plan. I thought that was well done and was glad to see the city government doing that kind of planning. I thought that was commendable and happy to help where I can on the, on the bathrooms with the capital budget and working with BGS. Hopefully we can, you know, find a location that they could support. And this, if it's going to happen, this is probably the year to find some extra money to make it happen. So probably working with representative Hooper would be good to try to find a way to, to make that work. And just one other thing I'll just mention that I'd like to see the city do is my, I have a son that goes to college in New York and I have a daughter that goes to college in New York City and both of those cities passed fans on interconnecting natural gas. But for, you know, for Montpelier would be propane, but they, if you build a new building in either of those cities, you can't do gas stoves or hot water heaters. And I think that it would be interesting if Montpelier was to look at that and how the state could be supportive because I know there's going to be impact on low income folks possibly and it wouldn't be existing. It's only for new stuff. So it would be something that I'd be interested in seeing how the state could help a pilot sort of the way we did with the on-demand transit, which I agree with Connor's comments that it's not perfect yet. And if we could get some more money for that before we start rolling it out in other places, I'm going to work for that as well. But something else just not to put the task back on you when you guys are asking us to help, but that would be my comment. Senator Frischlich, I would love to connect with you about that last point and particularly with the energy committee. So anyway, let's be in touch about that. Great. Any other thoughts? Yeah, go ahead. Can I just follow up briefly to Senator Cummings. We were talking about the state employees and certainly the city government is not suggesting that we put anyone in harm's way and form a crime is coming up. Okay. Apparently so. So we don't want to obviously put state employees at risk and we have our own city employees. I think the concern here is prior to us hearing about on the crime, we were getting word that the state is looking at permanent changes where there would be less employees in Montpelier and other downtowns for that matter, that there would be more remote work, that they would be reducing their footprint. So obviously at times of high emergency, we're not suggesting that we do anything. But I think in terms of longer term structural, I think, you know, for lots of reasons, it's great to have our employees where people can find and get to them. Great. Any other thoughts or comments? Okay. Lauren, yeah, go ahead. Just one thought on the idea that Senator Perch like brought forward, definitely also look forward to exploring it with you. I know there have been some conversations with BHCB and others about the affordable housing investments that we're making and are we building those and are there kind of co-investments we could make that are ensuring that we're not building things now that are then going to need to be retrofitted to meet our own state climate commitments in a few years? So, you know, can we get those so they're efficient and affordable and, you know, healthier like we know that, you know, good weatherization and good clean heating sources and stuff can do. So I know that conversation is happening some, but it'll be great if you could kind of keep in ears out for that as well and look for opportunities to make those investments really good for both the people who'd be living in them and, you know, meeting our state obligations on clean energy. Any other comments from our senators? Okay. All right. Well, thank you so much for joining us again. We really appreciate your time and willingness to hear us and gosh, hope you have an excellent upcoming session. I hope it all goes well. Okay. Yeah. Thanks a lot. Thank you. Thanks a lot. Contact us any time. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Yes, you also. Okay. I hope the senators would see that we can be a resource for you when you see Bill coming up. I hope we have the exchange in both directions. Thank you. Thank you very much. Fair enough. All right. Yes, go ahead. Yeah. Quickly, before we go on to the next item, I just want to report that at 345 a.m., a grader did hit a car, was promptly reported to the police department. Owner of the car was found. Insurance information was exchanged and the police report was necessary. Okay. Thank you. All right. So, okay, we are, we are, for now, skipping the appointment to the community advisory board and, all right, so we're on to discussing an amendment or some amendments to our mask mandate. And for this, I know some of it is coming from staff. Do you want to explain it? I mean, we, I can jump in too. Sure. Go ahead. So, when we did the mask mandate at the last meeting, we actually adopted two things. One was the policy for city employees and the other was the general mask mandate and both important. And I want to be clear, this isn't our proposed suggestion here isn't necessarily just for city employees. I think we talked about, and we may want to find the right language even tonight, but the idea that someone's alone or whatever, if you look at our mandate at the most strict reading of it, a person that owns the business could have an office in the back of the building or upstairs and be sitting alone in their office, not with the public, not with other employees, and technically would still be mandated to wear that. And in the policy we adopted for city employees was that if you're alone and working in your office or if you're isolated from the building, you'll have to wear a mask. Obviously, when you interact with the public, you do what you do with other employees within certain distances. And we took the mandate, the citywide mandate, just said, must wear indoors all the time. And I don't think that was people's intent necessarily. And so we're just suggesting that we tweak that language somehow. We took a stab. Now, Cameron took a look at other mandates in the state. We just tried to use the language they were using, but we're, we don't have any pride of authorship there. If there's something else that people want to use, that's fine. But we do feel for, for lots of people that that would be an appropriate remedy to change things. And if I can also call it out, one of the other things that has at least been suggested is the possibility of adding some kind of enforcement. And you all are not necessarily recommending that at this point. You know, we have, you know, the good and the bad of this, this legislation is that we have to look at this again in 45 days to redo it. And then at 30 day increments after that. So we'll have, I think our recommendation is to let first 45 days run and evaluate it at that time and see how it's going, decide what we want to do. We do have the section that people will be noticed and we have sent out notices to confirm non-compliance and ask them to step it up. So we'll see how that goes. Um, questions. And then so we'll do questions and we'll hear from the public and then we'll go back to our discussion. But questions at this point. Yes. I think I agree with the approach of maybe waiting for 45 days to, you know, come out with different penalties, but could you give us an idea of how many complaints we receive? I don't have an exact number, but they've mostly been compensated around a couple of businesses. It's a much smaller number. Thanks. Neither questions at this point. All right. So I do want to go to the public first and we'll start with anybody in person. That's Steve Whitaker. I wonder if folks, counselors are even aware that of the tactics of like fear and intimidation, we're going to send you a certified letter and we're going to threaten you as if you're supposed to be a business owner is supposed to be a deputized police. If the business owners are required to wear masks and their employees, they're not required to enforce it upon their customers. They can put the mask on the door. That's what the letter says, but I mean the sign on the door and let people know.  They're really a bluff. The business owners have no obligation to cite or reprimand or kick people out of their business for not wearing a mask. They can point to the sign. They can say that this is a city ordinance, but that's it. So for us to be wasting money on certified letters, you know, and in creating fear and intimidation, insinuation, coercion is just out of hand. I warned you about it last time and it's more mismanagement, you know, by the city. Thank you. Go ahead. Can you guys hear me? Yes, I'm a little short. My name is Carrie Kelly. I'm one of your homeless population currently living over there in the shelter. I just want to make you guys aware of a couple of things that are of issue at this point. Another way right now is denying services of any kind to me and to others that are not issuing them a COVID vaccination card, a full vaccination, which I did not know was legal. And as per listed here actually by the CDC, it says do not require a negative COVID-19 viral test or proof of vaccination for entry to any homeless services site of any kind. Unless it's posted somewhere, do you have such a local or state ordinance or anything like that, that I should be denied repeated services of food, clothing, or telephone? Okay. And then threat of law enforcement being called on me if I want to use a phone to get housing? Nothing about that. Nothing that we have. Again, I don't know if the state does. State health department. I've not heard of anything. Okay. I just wanted to make you aware of that. And then just a couple of issues with the current shelter. Are you aware that women are being housed with men? And then I am forced to sleep next to men. I've been asked to undress in front of men, that I've had comments about my vagina by men. I've been threatened to be assaulted by men for spraying Lysol because I am at high risk and disabled. I have a respiratory issue. I can prove it through my disability as well. And when I spray Lysol, I'm like being physically threatened for a week now. People are coughing continually all night long. There's drug use in the facility. I've even had to go to the point where I literally just had like a little memory recorder. I can play at some point how physical it almost did get. I was almost actually hit by a man because I sprayed Lysol on my bunk to protect myself. I don't need to die of COVID.  I've had my inhaler stolen by an employee over at the shelter as well.  I'm also still having bad respiratory symptoms. I'm sorry. I don't mean to bring anyone down. And also there's an issue with the ventilation in there as well. I don't know if it's just an education issue. But the filter is not working. The smell in there is ungodly. Had the filter been working and I've also worked in healthcare for 30 plus years, I kind of know how filter works. There would be no smell in that room. There is also no open ventilation. They have sealed all the windows now. That is also an issue. I'm concerned because the same people that are sleeping in that room are all sharing needles and drugs out in the public going into your restrooms, sharing your shopping facilities with you touching the same items that you are. They're not washing. They're not caring for themselves. They're going to your bus station. We also have an issue with bathing. There's not enough facilities there to bathe. There is no shower. But if there are too many people there, sometimes you have to be in there to bathe when you are outside. It takes a little longer than five minutes to wash up. I may work a little harder at cleanliness than others, but it's not an excuse. And also our beddings are not being washed. I wash my own. We were treated poorly at the laundromat. Told that people hate the homeless and don't want to be near us in the laundromat. So it may be deterring some of the people I'm staying with that are in crisis from drug abuse and other issues from washing and caring for themselves. But also another way is denying our entry into their facility, which would be the only shower that we have at this point in time. So being that Amikran has emerged, I do not want to see the entire community sick.  We are continually out from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. From 8 to 10, we have nowhere to go. We wander around.  We also have a lack of warming stations from 5.30 to 8 p.m. I am, for some reason, trespassed from the bus station. The police will pull me out of there. I can't even stand in there to stay warm. And that is the only other option that we have. I'm not allowed to get on a bus. This has been illegal. I've been going through this since but June had a lawyer. But they continually take me off, whether I literally have to take my tablet out and record them for my safety so I don't get injured. But I should have some place warm to go. I was illegally locked out, deadbolted out of my hotel room at the Pierre & Barry. The only reason why I'm alive is because my friend happened to be there. I had a BLM sign on my door which was not favorable to police because I find it insane that anyone is killing people because of the color of their skin or anything else. And if I'm somewhat of an activist that is my prerogative and I don't deserve to die of exposure. This is now time three where the police have trespassed me in such a way that I've lost my housing. The first time when they trespassed me from the transportation I was staying at the Good Sam which made me lose my housing and I lived on your streets for over a month when they would not let me use a phone, make any calls, or even find a social worker who found me by accident and got me housing. So here I am just to let you know. I'm being denied entry into the Econolodge which has hundreds of rooms along with the other people I'm being housed with. So I just wanted to ask you if you could look and see why none of us can fit into a hundred plus room motel. The same amount of people that have always been here were here before and I would have frozen in Barrie had my friend not brought me to a rest stop to keep warm and I cannot stay with my friend because she has public housing and she will lose her housing. So I'm in this limbo. So if anyone could help and I'm not the only high-risk person in the shelter I'm not going to give names. We don't all love each other and it's hard to do it when you have that many people in a room and we all are desperate to have some control over our lives and we will fight and people do get violent. Some are more violent than others. I'm not but I do not want to be injured but I don't want to see other people in crisis and I certainly do not want anybody else to phrase outside and the only option I see at this point to be honest and this big messy stack of papers I carry around is that we should just be housed separately so we can remove ourselves from this level of crisis all of us independently and let us return back to our normal state of sanity. Let us be safe. Let us be warm. Let us get better. Let us be better and then we can be a better part of your community and also I'd like you all to be safe from Omicron. I'm just having a bad asthma. It's okay. So anyway I just my full long statement. That's okay. So I have a few thoughts. So thank you. Shelly. Sure. Yes. You can go ahead. Thank you. So one thing. So right now we are taking comments about our mask mandate but your comment is I let you carry on even though it was not about the mask mandate because I think you missed the general business and appearances which is at the beginning and so that's fine. So it's okay. So anyway so I figured that that would be all right to let you continue on and then also I just want to point out we are going to be talking more about homelessness actually at the next item. So anyway I will take your comments also as pertinent to that topic as well. Is that okay? Okay. Great. Thank you. But I do want to return to talking specifically about the mask mandate and for that anyone else in person about the mask mandate particularly? Okay. All right. But I do see your hand Vicki Lane. Go ahead. I'm not. I just didn't. It's not about the mask mandate. I just let you know. I can't hear especially Bill. Okay. Good to know. Thank you. Okay. That's fine. No worries. Any other comments from folks online about this? Okay. All right. So back to the council. What are your thoughts on a potential amendment? Go ahead, Jack. I think this is a good idea. I think that one of as I reviewed this one of the thoughts I have is that alone in a public building might be interpreted to simply mean you're the only person in the building. Whereas I think we also want to let people know that if you're in a public building but you're in your own office that alone in your own office that should also be covered by this exemption. Do you have any thoughts as to how we can make that clearer? You know, I started writing something and I just looked on my computer and it's not there. But something like any person who is in a alone in a public building or alone in a room in a public building. Okay. Alone in a public building or alone in a room in a public building. Okay. Other thoughts from council? Jay and then Don. Sorry, just real quick, Jack. I had the exact same thought when I read that. And what I don't want to do is get to in the weeds of how we're defining alone. If we look at the science and say what's an appropriate amount of space? Is it in a room? It's hard to define the space because I can think about what would be alone in the town of Clark's office versus like the example Bill gave is like what's, you know, a back room or upstairs room in a local business. I think like having appropriate separation from the public makes sense. So while it is somewhat vague, I'm okay with the language as amended so that there's appropriate, you know, I think reasonable interpretation because I worry about getting, you know, to try to define it all because it's really not, it's inconsistent spaces that we're trying to define. So anyways, that's just my two cents. Thank you. Yeah. Donna. Well, my concern comes from hearing the latest on DPR driving over to council meeting was that our masks are not going to be good enough for this current variance and that even with the double mask and one being surgical is Chansey, they're actually promoting a different kind of mask. So if I'm alone in a room and my mask is off, but you come in a little bit later, I can put it on, but that's not going to get rid of what's already in that room. So I can accept the language, but I think we may find we need further tweaking eventually. Any other thoughts? So is there a motion? If everyone is satisfied with the language the way it is and just, I'm not going to make that, make a motion to amend it. I don't know how other people feel about the I'm happy with both the original and in your addition to that amendment. I think it does make it clearer. I need to amend it as I, as I stated earlier, I think the clerk was probably taking it down. You got it okay? I have assuming I'm legible here. A person who is alone in a public building or alone in a room in a public building is not required to wear a facial covering as long as they remain alone. Okay. All right. Any further discussion? Okay. All in favor please say aye. Okay. And opposed. Okay. And I do just want to recognize that we have Representative Mary Hooper here with us. And just want to come back to talking about legislative stuff really quickly. If you want to Representative Hooper, if you, we got to hear from folks as to what they thought the big issues were for this upcoming legislative session. And would you like to add anything? Or because I know you probably could see our legislative agenda and what we prioritize. We put the highest priorities at the end. But if you would like to add anything, you are certainly welcome to. Well, thank you. And you're very kind to let me in at this moment. I, I deeply apologize for missing the earlier session. And I'll watch what, what you all talked about. I, I know what your agenda is. And we are largely in agreement. I'm really looking forward to dealing with issues and really making progress around issues having to do with housing, workforce development, childcare, climate. You know, these are huge and big and important. I think we have some really interesting opportunities. So I'm glad that we're in partnership on this. I look forward to working with you all to help advance this. Great. Any other questions or thoughts, particularly for Representative Hooper? Okay. Just say thanks for staying in touch with us. You always do. Yeah, I, we really appreciate that. And, and, and I, I'm going to listen for a bit. You know, the discussion about the mask mandate and certainly the homelessness issues around housing are, are huge for our community and our state. I, I look forward to really working with you all to, to make progress. So thank you. Great. Thank you. Super. All right. So, so we've voted on the mask mandate, right? Okay. Just recapping. Go ahead and check. I think what we did so far is vote on my proposal to amend. Oh, okay. So not, okay. I move that we amend the policy as proposed by the manager as amended. Okay. Motion and a second for the discussion. Okay. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. And opposed. All right. Okay. So now we are up to having a discussion about homelessness and we, so we had asked the homelessness task force to come to the council with sort of a report on sort of where we were at and what might the future look like, where, where are we going and also give us any just relevant updates, particularly, you know, as homelessness has been in the news recently. And so I do see, can Russell hear with us? And so I'm going to turn things over to you. Thank you and good evening. I'm glad to be here. Rick D'Angelo was going to beam in from the transit center, which is going to be a very exciting bit of, of, of energy, but unfortunately there was no wifi. So, but anyway, he sends his regards. But as most of you know, we did open the transit center on Monday evening. And boy, what a beautiful facility it is. What a lot of goodwill went into this project. And there's just a lot of thanks to be given gratitude for, for this project. Cameron Niedermeier worked really hard to push, bring the ball forward. And so thank you for that, that great work. GMT was very responsive. It's a lot of goodwill amongst every staff member I've talked to there. It's very positive about it. They're like, it's really nice to have some life in the building. Definitely underscored the mission of taking care of folks. And so that's just really nice. And what we plan to do is take good care of it while we're there. Folks in the community have asked me about, well, you know, what, you know, what if the people trash the place or this or that? Well, it's well staffed. Although sometimes staffing is a challenge, but we have the bases covered seven days a week. And we're very pleased for it. We're bringing warming food and warming coffee, bringing it over every day. And, and the hope is that it's, it'll be, continue to be a gathering place. A lot of the congregations have expressed interest in being a presence there. It's a fantastic response from the community. So I want to thank, thank council for its support of that and other efforts. Thank staff. Thank the staff who are staffing these things from both Good Samaritan Haven and another way. Thanks. Thanks to GMT and thanks to the community members for both their support and those impatient to always have more get done. We're all in that boat. It's a frustrating situation. I know you all had discussed some of the deaths that had been reported on. It's a population under siege. It's a population that is, is really challenged and, and, and a situation that's frustrating for, for a lot of folks. So that, that's, you know, one of the things we've accomplished. The other thing is the motel room and Rick D'Angelo's just reported to me earlier. They've been using that program, been able to get some people out of the cold who would otherwise be there. That's been fantastic. The shelter program is continuing and, you know, yet as the woman mentioned earlier, there are some challenges in there. And I know that it's, it's the same sort of their challenges in all of this work. And so there's, there's so much humanity in all of this and so many people turning to, to try to make a difference. The transportation money is, we're hoping that, that can be leveraged with other money coming from the state that good Sam is going after. I know capstone, capstone is also working with GMT and to both extend my ride and after our service for GMT. Like a lot of these things, this, this, these things will take more time. We really do need a taxi service in this town. I heard this like $5,000 insurance policy to do for livery work. So I'm going to just double check my notes here. The peer outreach expansion, that's been just a continuation of really great work. Don and Amelia are working really hard and are quite busy. We had, in another way, we have our own folks out there as well. And there are a lot of really good-hearted volunteers out there helping human to human. Let's see. And then, okay, so that the consultant money, there was $25,000 allocated and the $10,000, we did, we decided to align with a proposal that will ever lead to the pushing and continuum of care. And he's brought in some academics to study some of the root causes, causes of homelessness in the region to involve homeless themselves in gathering information on what's happening. Second is one that it's ended up, in the task force, been a little bit of the bucket where all the unsolved problems come to, to, to dwell. And there's been a little bit of tension between should we just build a couple more Gertin parks? And I know that could cause some people to shudder. And I can appreciate that and I can appreciate there's been some angst around the conditions there. From my perspective, it's, it's, it's just having that situation at the front of town helps remind us all that there's work to be done. You know, I, I kind of threw out this idea, well, there might not be money for a recreation area there, but how about a social justice park? Or how about, you know, you know, Montpelier leading the way and tackling its hardest problems right up front. But anyway, that, that's an idea. But there, there's, so there's some tension in, around this funding money between let's find something to do right now and let's versus let's do like a planning study. So we're, we're well positioned to spend greater amounts of money such as the ARPA money you all have identified. And, you know, and I think that, that tension between slow versus fast is one we're trying to optimize all the time, like how do we operationalize what, what we implement. And, you know, we have operational capacity issues with the organizations that are currently involved. It takes time to ramp up greater capacity. So, but again, there are a lot of good people turning out a lot of people questioning our approaches and say, try this, try this. And we will really welcome the collective wisdom here and your, your fantastic support of these efforts as well as acknowledgement of the gaps and of the underlying human suffering. So that's, that's my, that's it. All right. Allow me to start with council. Any council thoughts or questions? Yeah, go ahead, Connor. Jennifer and I serve on the homelessness task force for the council. And just really impressed with the group of people who come together there.   I just came from the transit center.  He was staffing it himself.  And there were about six folks there who, you wonder, like, if it wasn't open, where would they be otherwise? And it's a tremendous service. And, you know, I definitely understand what Ken is saying about the tension between trying to do as much as you can now because, you know, the problem is there. And people are hurting versus the resources for the long term. It's like the right now solutions versus the right solutions. And there's a lot of people putting their heads together. I met with Peter Kellman and Carolyn, who you see on screen today there. So you do have different folks exploring different options. They were looking at sort of a pallet structure that may in the interim, you know, help to provide dignity and, you know, a shower with people much like we were talking about with the trailer at one point. Do you remember that? Unfortunately, the trailer didn't hold up to below zero temperatures. So not a great fit in Vermont. But there might be some other options. And, you know, Peter and Carolyn have identified possible community partners on this, too. So it's something that takes seriously. I think we're meeting with Ken on that in the next couple of weeks to hopefully see if there's something there. But I just want to, like, again, hands off the Ken, just one of the most selfless people I know here. And it's exhausting work. And it's more than just a gig in another way. It's more than just a volunteer, opportunity, real passion comes in.  You know, locker is definitely still in need. You know, laundry facilities. But hopefully, we can get a really tight consultant report together and come up with a solution that's going to really help people for years and years to come as well. So just thanks for everybody doing this work. Yeah, Jennifer. Go ahead. Hi, yes. I agree with everything that both Connor and Ken have said. I also think that it's really important to acknowledge the people that are on the ground, the social workers, the housing coordinators, all the people at Capstone, Downstreet, at Circle, all the agencies that are working with our community members that are houseless right now. And we are tired because there are so few resources left. And hotels are at capacity and staffing is at capacity. And there's just not enough for Washington County, for Chittenden County.  We just need more infrastructure. We need more people. And as a social worker, it hurts to know that, you know, my hands are tied, that there is nowhere for me to send some of the families that I work with. So I truly appreciate my colleagues out there that are, you know, feeling the same way I am, especially around this time of year, delivering packages, toys to children in hotels is really not a fun thing to do.  And so I want community members that are houseless that are here, I want you to know that there's a lot of people that are fighting for you and trying to do what they can with what they've got. And I am on this city council to try to make things move forward at a higher level than my job. So I appreciate your presence here tonight and I appreciate my colleagues and all the council and Madam Mayor for all the work that we're trying to get done. Thank you. Thank you. I also want to just agree. I'm so grateful for this report, Ken. And please extend our gratitude to everybody involved, the homelessness task force. I have particular thanks that I want to address regarding the report that you all provided with us. But I'm going to hold off for a second because I want to check in with the public and see if there are comments. We'll start with folks in person. Go ahead. Steve would occur again. Trying I think is the opposite operative word there. Trying two and a half years now. And we still don't have lockers. We still don't have laundry. We still don't have unlocked phone charging.  But I brought to your attention the problem of Kerry where so we allow Green Mountain Transit to violate their lease by not opening their bathrooms on the strict terms according to the lease. Now we're allowing another way. We're giving money to another way so they can violate their agreement with Christ Church, which is that all the residents at Christ Church get to use the warming space. She can't get to use the warming space because we negotiated the agreement and ignored it even after it was brought to your attention. So did everybody follow that? Did anybody not understand what I just said? No, nobody had. So it was September. I got the as built drawings. The city owns the transit center. I got the as built drawings from public works. I said, here's a bathroom. There's a five inch sewer line running directly under the bathroom that has enough space to put a shower in. This was brought to the Homelessness Task Force. This was brought to public works. Nobody did a damn thing about it. And now here we are December going into January and people still don't have a place to shower, you know? And it's just a cluster screw of mismanagement that is just outrageous. You know, we want to talk about pat ourselves on the back for peer outreach. We're still leaving people out in the cold. People are sleeping in frozen temperatures right here on 16 May, you know? And we don't even bother to make public works, say on the ice.  It's just atrocious. It's really atrocious.  The consultant, they're talking about spending $25,000 to talk about, you know, root causes of homeless. We know that people get evicted.  People have drug problems, whatever. That's not the issue. The issue is our callous disregard for two and a half years later, still leaving people out in the cold. Let them eat planning studies. Let them eat thanks. We noticed in this week's press that Burlington, probably due to Dan being one of the more responsive and responsible people on this council, took the idea of the soft shelters. So it's going to take them five years to build interim housing, you know, or permanent housing for folks in Burlington. But they're going to implement soft shelters, you know, immediately. Soft shelters is the only way we can put people indoors who do not fit in a horrendous situation you heard described earlier. I don't think it's safe during a pandemic to pack people in a room without adequate ventilation.  Pills more Gertin parks. That's an example of our task force leader, you know, as if Gertin Park is a dignified shelter for people.  Thank you. Yes, go ahead, Jennifer. Mr. Whitaker, I would ask you to spend some time with me and get to know me and know my history. I have been homeless. Thank you. Thank you. I think it would be important for you to know everybody's history before you accuse them of not understanding. Thank you, Jennifer. Anyone else? Yes, go ahead. Hi, Carrie Kelly. I would say I think it's a great idea and I was hoping for a long time that it would be made in some type of warming shelter, but that will not be an option for me. Your police will continually drag me out. So I will eventually be victim number three of exposure. So I will have nowhere to go. But I am not homeless because of drug addiction or anything that I did. Mine is domestic violence. I've been fleeing for my life for three years from someone. I have a refrain from abuse order that police refuse to uphold. His uncle is in law enforcement and manages to sort of speak to local law enforcement to get him out of issue.  So he's not that elusive. He's nearby. I've had my SSDI taken by him and everything else. So I am penniless. I can't go out and just pay somewhere to live or I would. I am not able to use another way's resources to receive mail to get a birth certificate or my SS Social Security card so I can get a job and get housed working at a resort because they refuse me services, which seems odd. Having worked briefly on the very task force with Erica who is employed there, who ghosted me after I got a very nice sizeable grant in October for phones, I feel upset that I lost three people that I may have personally had contact with at one point because they probably had no phone to call. The great thing about Q-Lig is they did increase their data but then they started charging for phones. So a lot of people didn't know. But I don't fault anybody for not knowing what it's like to be homeless. No one should be. It's a difficult process. It'll be more of us. I'm part of Mosaic. Mosaic has a small facility. I would like to urge you to look into putting a domestic violence shelter in Montpelier if you could. You do have several buildings. I'm not sure if the recreation center was ever bought. That's a possibility and I think there's a couple other empty buildings but any little bit helps us. There's a lot of other domestic violence survivors out there. We are fleeing what we're not as equipped as some to live on the streets and around others. We get taken advantage of if things happen. But I have a suggestion actually for the showers.  If you guys would have put in just like $40 maybe it's kind of silly. It might be a little messy but if I brainstorm I might be able to come up with something. Camping showers are about $40. They can be hooked to faucets and whatnot. If we sort of put a tub or something something large maybe. I'll think about it but we could probably even hook that up at my shelter. Another way of course only has I believe one shower that I've used in the past when I was allowed entry. Even if the bus station would be so kind too as to donate well that not for me but like a shower one of the restrooms male or female whatever it doesn't really matter just so you have running water through it. That could work. People do it camping all the time. It's not the greatest but I'll tell you what a shower is great you know wipes aren't the best. It's hard to wash your hair. If you would consider a female shelter at this point due to the situation I know there's lack of funds like I know there was an issue with Bethany due to funding and services but I think a lot could be taken care of in a few days just by getting that social worker. I think her name is Susan LaMere and she works in between Barrie and Montpelier. She'd be happy to sit with anyone. She found me on the street and helped me. It got me out because police refused to assist me in any way and I wasn't getting any help from another way. There are other people like me that don't get services. I'm not the only one. It's just I'm not a bad person. I'm not a drug addict. I don't drink. I don't do anything but I do speak my mind. I'm considered an activist and I'm not going to stop but I very in favor of police reform as your local law enforcement knows and I also had a couple small questions. If it would be possible to get some of those services at the shelter maybe slight assessments of needs. Drug addiction is a mental illness but maybe you can parlay some of that together. You can seek housing through those groups. You can seek housing through treatment. If people aren't willing to for treatment then you can go through mental health because there will be psychological ramifications brain damage what not. So that would be another option to sort of push us out into some other programs so it's not so costly period. My other thought was let me say the other was the planning for illness. I just wanted to know what the plan was. My big issue at one point I couldn't get any transportation to even get tested. Will there be rapid results tests available at the shelter just in case we do need them to have them on premises so we don't have to travel on the buses or anything like that and when you're sick it's kind of hard and then afterwards would there be a respite because CDC recommends about 20 days of respite after being treated in a hospital or some type of quarantine area or if you have any facilities where people could like a bottom floor of a motel or something to keep the sick just so it doesn't spread an alarming rate. I heard of Elysium. I don't know where that is. I know it's a respite nearby. I don't know if that's a possibility and I think that's all. I saw several taxi companies but I know in Burlington Green Cab had a cooperative with the hospitals to give people's rides home which was an issue at CVMC and Beary for people getting home so that might be something you look into how they structured it. They worked it somehow or you could couple it with Medicaid possibly. I don't know. Medicaid does a lot of rides. Medicaid needs a little help as well but that's not your job for that.  I'm just concerned because if we don't have transport to do these things people are going to spread and that's all I was sort of thinking of. Thank you. Great. Thank you. Yes go ahead. Just from Ms. Kelly and Mr. Whitaker and anybody else who might be paying attention tonight the city does have showers available at our recreation center. They are available. We can't advertise it because it's not ADA accessible so it can't be considered a public place but they are available for people to use if they wish and they can contact Cameron if they have any questions. Those have been available really since summer so the city has made those showers available and we certainly hope people will use them. Thank you. Excuse me. Sorry. Yep. Okay. Great. Thank you. All right. Any other comments from the public particularly? Oh yes. Go ahead. Yes. Yes. I didn't get too prepared on this tonight. But before I speak I just want to say that many times I can't hear what people are saying. I do have hearing difficulty but also with the mask I think everyone needs to really speak up more because it's such a difference when you don't have the mask and you can look at lead lips kind of a little bit you know it helps out so I'm hoping you can hear me and I don't think they can hear you in the back. Can you hear me now? Oh see I've got it now. So I just hope everyone also will be mindful of that because many times I can't hear many of the members on the council and I really want to hear them and I need a hearing aid but you know people are in different stages of that and it takes time to get one so just the mask thing really makes a difference. I just will be general comments. I am very much for bathrooms and lockers and I wish that could be seen more as a real welcoming center for Montpelier. Montpelier's state capital but we don't have I think it really needs to be like comprehensive for everyone you know to have a welcoming center that has nice bathrooms and lockers. I am for the palette initiative that's been talked about. I don't think you know building big housing units it's great and everything but not everyone can live in that style of housing and I really think we need to go with the options of tiny homes and temporary shelters too for the kind of shelters that can be put up and taken down because we are in climate change. We will see natural disasters. I mean can you imagine if Vermont was like Kentucky is right now? I mean can you imagine? I mean that's just horrific so we really need to be more prepared on emergency shelter and I think the palette company covers both. So the bathrooms, the palettes, I thought this person that just spoke had some really great things to say and some good ideas. I wasn't for the planning study completely the part about paying people to say why are people homeless? I think that's already been said a lot. You have a lot of committees throughout the state. I would have rather seen that money go to pay each person that's homeless and divide up to $10,000. I don't have too much else except I think it's called the Gerton Park structure. I really will look forward to I hope getting better some signage there. I don't know if there's any signage but I'm very anti-littering and I just think that people need to be made more aware that there are the trash cans and the recycling right out front. So that's great and I know Steve said it might be a bad idea to have more shelters like that but actually I think that'd be good to have a few of those because people need to gather. People need to be social. I see a lot of people hanging out there and not just staying overnight there but people need a place they can get under and out of the weather and talk and a lot of people can't afford to go in a store and buy something or a cafe and we need that. We need that even in the winter. Some places people can have a roof over their head, several small places or a few big places in different areas where people could gather and talk. Another thing I want to mention is frequently when homeless people talk about homelessness they frequently mention drug addiction you know all kinds of things like that and a lot of times it's simply as I think a lot of people here know is but I'm going to say it is the the expense of rentals is just insane and I think really we should come down to looking at some regulation on that at times and many times people lose their housing for so many other reasons and we need to be mindful that it's not just substance abuse or criminal history or something and take that into account because that is I lost my housing, I don't drink, I don't smoke, I don't have pets. It's a pretty rough story that I won't go into but the lease ended basically I made a I asked for a reasonable request on something and they ended my lease so well it was up for renewal and I'd already gotten the paperwork to renew but then when I asked I thought well if I'm going to live here I'm going to ask for this reasonable request and after they got my request the next day they ended my lease my they didn't renew they said we're not renewing and you know I don't know if a lot of people know that you might have a lease and it can end you know it doesn't have to be renewed there's I think it's called no cause and so you're not always protected because you have a lease and you think it's going to renew it doesn't always and they don't have to have a reason I think this situation with rentals really needs to be addressed many people lose their housing for many other reasons and this has really gotten to be a really poor a really poor way to live you know when we have so much that's you know possible thank you thank you Mary oh Mary would you just come up and say your name for us again just for the for the record if you would say your name again yes Mary Messier now residing in Montpelier great thank you yep all right and I know we have a couple folks digitally who would like to say something so we'll first go to Deborah Glotman go ahead hi there um I uh I run a program called the Mitzvah Fund um we provide uh veterinary um both dentistry and surgery and um multiple different things for homeless people along with uh veterans and low-income seniors um I work closely with Bill with Will Everly um Don on the task on the task force as well um I just wanted the council members and um the public to know that we exist uh we will have a mobile unit um hopefully in the middle of February um and then we will be a lot more visible um if we can find a place to park it in Montpelier um but I just wanted everybody to know that um we have resources for uh folks that have especially homeless folks that have animals that um need uh care and often people will stay outdoors versus give up their animal so um we you know we want to help everybody that we can so I just want you guys to know that we're out there and we do currently um help social services along with Montpelier police department when they arrest someone and there's a dog in the car they call me and the dog comes and stays until a family member can retrieve the animal um so we're we're on on the um we're not that visible yet but uh we we are here and we want you guys to know about us great thank you um and if I could make one comment about that just in terms of like finding a parking spot in Montpelier I guess I would just encourage you to work together with the city staff uh to to arrange that and um and thank you for for doing that that could work all right uh Vicki Lane go ahead okay um I just wanted to come I somehow my computer did things so I didn't catch what Deborah Glopman was saying but um I just wanted to go back to what Mary was saying pertaining to the rents um I cannot comprehend how anyone can afford to rent these days because I see the rents that are advertised and I would all I would immediately be knocked out of because I don't make that much money to even afford a rent if I didn't have my house in so many as many years as I do I'd be out on the street because I just don't have that much monthly income to afford any kind of a rental so I would encourage if there's any way to put some kind of uh regulations or whatever on on runaway rental fees it just seems ridiculous to pay the things I see people having to pay I don't know how they can afford it that's just my comment yeah thank you anyone else with this digitally wish to make a comment yep go ahead Peter Kelman oh we can't hear you are still muted there you go okay sorry Peter Kelman from Montpelier Connor mentioned that Carolyn Ridpath and I have been working on ideas very concrete ideas that the council might be able to act on more quickly uh and I'd just like to share some of those thoughts with you today this winter there'll be somewhere between 40 and 60 chronically unhoused people living outside in Montpelier once again and these unhoused people have no permanent shelter where they can safely leave their belongings when they need to leave their makeshift outdoor shelters to run errands to go to appointments to socialize with others to use a toilet and sink to go to the laundromat to hang out somewhere that is warm and dry in short to carry out all the activities that most of us can do in our own homes or by driving our own cars these unhoused people deserve dignified autonomous shelter that protects them and their personal belongings from the elements they need and deserve to be able to privately take warm showers and use sanitary toilet facilities and many of these unhoused individuals will continue to sleep outdoors in temporary shelters this winter because they don't qualify currently for existing state shelter programs or not allowed in group shelters or for behavioral reasons or have emotional difficulty being housed in congregate settings like cold weather overflow shelters our idea of something that can be done quickly uh is to establish a downtown hub uh where which has been previously uh thought about doing uh in the city parking lot behind st augustines church this downtown hub would have three components all uh um all of which well can be gotten from the palette company or other companies one is a bathroom unit consisting of at least two private temperature controlled enclosures each containing a toilet a sink and a shower and that works um in 20 degree below zero weather a temperature controlled daytime community shelter space to be available for use by unhoused people especially during inclement weather and periods of low and high temperatures can work in the summer to get to get out of the extreme heat a mini split heat exchange unit for heating and cooling the community shelter space and very importantly sizable storage lockers to be maintained inside community shelter space so unhoused people can securely store their personal belongings when they need to be out and about um now uh just to point out what some of the strengths of this would be the focus of this hub although not limited to chronically unhoused people that is the main focus here because these are the folks who are falling between the cracks of the various state programs addressing the plight of unhoused people in our community and region so a community shelter space with bathrooms uh showers private lockers are important to allow chronically unhoused people to have dignity mobility and safety they would be able to move from showers to a warm space where they could also safely store their personal belongings and private lockers and then be able to run the errands and go to other safe and warm daytime areas like the library city hall another way and the transit center by locating something like this in the city parking lot behind son augustians the unhoused people uh users would be near city services including police fire and ambulance and the community justice center they would be near grocery and other shopping near the laundromat the library another way uh uh uh washington county mental health services space and barry street other downtown locations as well as public transportation to get them to appointments in barry in berlin and this hub could uh would be a well-maintained daytime destination downtown for unhosed folks who spend the night outside thereby providing an alternative to sitting on cold sidewalks in front of stores where in the draughty gwerton park structure currently located on main street between the drawing board and the multi-use path which would please store owners i believe and permit the gwerton park structure to be available for use by a wider range of community members as it was originally intended for now we've heard from many people who we've talked to the concerns about staffing but we believe that this hub could be staffed during hours of operation by paid former and currently unhoused unhoused people and community volunteers all of whom could be trained and supervised by community service professionals like the city police social worker and outreach workers from another way good sam and washington county mental health services some or all of these professionals could use the hub as a part of their base of operations enabling them to check in on a regular basis and if incidents that were beyond the skills of staff we're doing the staffing were to occur both the police and the emt's would be close by it could be called called um i just want to close by saying that these uh if you were to do look into pallets these are temporary structures so that when more permanent arrangements can be made such as uh having a hub um at the twin city motels these can be taken down if it's decided that we don't want them downtown otherwise you know temporary but they can last up to 10 years we really uh carol do you want to uh chip in on on this about empathy and empowerment peter if uh if carolin ridpath would like to weigh in i'm going to let her raise her hand there's other people who would like to who've had their hand raised okay then i'll just wrap up and say this that winter is upon us and once again the living conditions of many chronically unasked people in our community are appalling and morally unacceptable for a community like ours where so many of us can take for granted the comforts and privileges that we enjoy that are currently unavailable to numbers of our fellow citizens and to continue to talk endlessly about this matter to haggle over details to cite real but solvable obstacles to kick the can down the road once again is really unacceptable the time to act on this is long fast due and i would implore the city council to begin such actions as soon as possible thank you thank you peter all right didi brush go ahead but you are also still muted so you cannot hear you yet you still okay oh there you go there you go sorry about that it's okay i have a terrible cold so i'm very husky excuse me um first of all i'd like to say that what i'm hearing from peter makes such amazing sense and i would like to endorse that plan and ask the city council to move as quickly as possible to offer this kind of resource to the those in our community who need safe and warm housing the other thing i'd like to say is that i too agree i guess it's already happened but to me to hire a consultant to tell us the roots of homelessness seems to have been perhaps um uh at an expense we did not need to incur we there are many many many studies about this we probably already know what they are we don't need to rehash that we need to address those things that are at the root of that phenomenon for the people in Montpelier and Washington County and that probably means housing food security jobs and safety and i very much would like to think that we are focused on that and not more studies more reports or more consultants thank you thank you all right uh debora glottman i'm going to skip over you for now since you've already uh spoken once um so i'm going to go to uh carolin and i assume it's carolin ridpath is that correct that's correct okay go ahead well i want to support what the first woman said and what peter said that um living outside is undignified i mean it's dangerous it's it's it's a terrible way to live and anything we can do to dignify allow those people to achieve dignity i think it's very important and i think by doing the bathroom uh warming shelter locker arrangement gives them that chance that they can come in shower um put their stuff in a locker and basically prepare for the day and as peter pointed out they can go out uh the first woman who spoke talked about the problems and even getting a shower now if you go over at the rec center they don't have towels just it seems minor but that's an important piece of taking a shower because people outside don't want to carry around a wet towel so that that's just one of the minor impediments there um but anyway i think that um providing that warmth that support uh essentially enhances what's already available i think that the council and the homelessness task force have done an excellent job of fixing the pieces that we don't normally think about like providing meals or snacks for people who are in the overnight shelter or um the uh transit center is a major plus in that um constellation of support the outreach workers and so forth so i think that uh what we're suggesting takes it one step further um and and moves people toward a better way of living even though it's still not good i think that's all i've got to contribute at this point thank you um and so just so you know uh debba we usually don't let people go twice but if you have something short that is okay um yeah this doesn't have anything to do with what i spoke about earlier um my question is has there ever and this is just for maybe others education has anyone ever thought about going to some of these um landowners or you know store owners or um like for example um the funeral home is empty um they utilize you know where the jacob's make their money there is in the parking spaces um would it benefit the city if um you know they the city takes over having to do any of the rehab that comes from the funeral home and potentially make that into a warming center or better yet a shelter within our own capital city which it just it floors me that there is we are the capital city and we don't have a good option a permanent option for our homeless that's just a question and if anybody has that answer that would be great thank you um i'm not sure about the answer to that but if someone does we oh what's that yeah yeah it's a it is a good idea all right um any other comments either in person or digitally it's short any of the problems you're hearing about tonight that are still recurring have to do with the council having only beginning now to get their head around this issue or commit to resolving it but we have offshored our uh public accountability by giving grants to another way in Good Sam etc we don't see the paper trail of who's falling through the cracks it's not subject to public records law so that's why i've insisted that if you want this stuff to work and to follow through and find out what's not working you need to build some accountability transparency provisions into those uh grants to nonprofits thank you all right um if it's short probably should not have opened the door here but go ahead a bunch of grants listed that may groups may not be aware of there's a lot so you'd have to go through and see which one would work best for you i don't know if they're all new or whatnot but this was just as of like two days ago and also i just wanted to thank the community themselves even the jacket i have on my back right now because another way refused me resources i had no gloves no hat no nothing because i was just locked out of my room i would have froze to death so i wanted to thank the community at the time i had no money no nothing that they gave me that and they kind of saved me from the exposure but in the meantime i also wanted to suggest if it would be possible for the library to maybe open the basement or one of the rooms that they don't have um in use all the time i know it is considered free the first couple hours and then like five dollars each additional but for some reason they don't want to rent that to me even if i have the money um but being homeless is very tiring so sometimes you just want to like kind of lounge out a little bit because it's like a constant thing it's not that we're lazy it's just like a constant struggle like pushing my stuff carrying my bags so that it's not like stolen and i'm i don't have clothing to wear that's just a thought thank you thank you all right anyone else okay all right so coming back to council um just further thoughts i'm happy to jump in here too i want to come back to the update memo that the homelessness task force provided with us and so ken i just want to point out i was very interested in the proposed long-term solutions appreciated the the variety of things that were there and the the collaborations um that that embodied with the washington county continuum of continuum of care that it seems like that is going to be a really valuable partnership moving forward and so thank you for that i'm looking forward to hearing more you know particularly about you know both the the short term and the long term solutions so yeah i just wanted to pass that on thank you yeah other thoughts uh i'm gonna go donna then connor uh i was wondering ken and thank you for the report if there's any timelines um you talk about just currently trying to finalize the questions so i'm just interested in what kind of timelines you're using yeah well soon on on the grant i mean i think within certainly within the next two meetings we we should have something hopefully we'll meet january 5th um or is it the fourth uh the first month the month um and we'll definitely come back there i mean the the hub concept is something that's in there as well um and we um had been hoping to continue the conversation about how the pallet homes could work um we had raised some questions some logistical questions that i think would be really helpful in terms of putting together an actionable plan um with with whatever however we build something um i just would like to say it would be the siting is always an issue and so one huge help the city could provide would be help with space um you know i know parent people are always talking about the rec building or or the the the park between Shaw's and the drawing board people mentioned the funeral parlor we have had outreach to different landowners um but you know you know bricks the bricks and mortar part is often not the hard part um i think proper staffing i think volunteers is great but frankly like for liability reasons for a lot of other reasons accountability reasons you need somebody on payroll um i mean we just you know we had a cleaner who could show up to the transit center to clean up after the first and second night to make sure that that nice facility is well taken care of um sorry don i just kind of no all good information go ahead yeah um but and again it's it's brutal it's brutal that it's winter right now and there are people outside so right now the immediate timeline is is oh it is an abyss and it's horrible for the folks who are out there uh well and i i wasn't trying to put you on the spot for all the activities just i meant to focus and i wasn't clear on the study yeah the two components of the study if there's actually a task plan and it's sort of general timelines with them they've been assigned you know i should know this about what will his spearheaded i know they're actively working on that um i if you don't have it maybe you could obtain it and pass it on to us oh you are you did you did ken sorry i think i remember it's just a matter of months like it's like three to six something like that um and then you know i understand that the big pool of money you all have is like eight months out or something like that so um it would be helpful to have this you know how the planning study moved quickly um and hopefully you know within the next i would say the we'll talk about it on the fourth or the fifth and hopefully have some real cohesion on that and then try to get something to you by mid january thank you thank you connor well i'll be a bit repetitive because i just hope that i'm an answer in some of that but uh i think it's important it was brought up uh to study a couple times by folks in public comment it's part of the note just a portion of that goes to the continuum of care i i think like as we're looking at this like it's an issue that doesn't recognize geography kind of like you know p-fast um we're really glad to see the berry city council um the point they homeless this task force as well so we're hoping to you know chip in and you know look at some of the demographic information countywide uh but just want to clarify the majority of the funding in that would go towards you know answering some of the questions we had when we had the budget there you know what does it look like exactly how much it's going to cost who could staff it where is it going to be um because right now you know i think we agree it should be four walls probably it should be warm it should have a restaurant facility uh but there's a a bunch of different ways you could take that so i'll hope that nail that down soon so like ken said when that aqua money comes we can hit the ground run and there's no delay on that well i'll tell you one of my biggest questions i thought was going to be answered was very practical is it a big space that we take and renovate it put lots of people in one place or do we do something like the pallets that make a temporary transitional not necessarily temporary but a transitional place and so to me that's what i'm really looking for what's our best way to meet these people's needs that we know of we've got to iron that out really soon other thoughts questions comments yeah lauren go ahead um one i don't know if this is a a question just having our wonderful representative mary hooper here not to put her on the spot but i'm just curious like listening to this and maybe it's just planning some seeds for you but you know what opportunities you know we started off with your colleagues connor was kind of framing up the issues that we're wrestling with and how you know we're doing a lot of work we're trying to make progress obviously this is a big statewide issue and with budget implications well beyond what a city can do so i don't know um either from you know programs or things that you're hearing um you know the peer support outreach workers like are there are there opportunities for the state to help invest in some of these initiatives so that we could do more sooner and support more people in our community and i don't know if you have any any thoughts i i need to put you on the spot but you know hopefully it could just be an ongoing conversation too of how how we partner in this work because obviously you know we we are partnering and we're trying some i think you know interesting things and we'd love to expand it and if there's ways to you know just be in good touch with you about how the state might help support that as well i would love that good so if i may thank you and this is something that i've thought about um i i this is absolutely a statewide issue and to be perfectly honest i am concerned that the solutions are being offloaded to communities rather than being addressed from a statewide stand standpoint um and so i'm always going to be pressing the department children and families and the department of mental health and dale to be fully funding their programs which are providing these services and building the opportunities and i i i think the partnership with communities is appropriate but i don't think it's appropriate for um communities to be forced into taking the lead on this when it truly is a statewide issue and i'm i'm worried that we not see kind of a continual kind of offloading of responsibility for this mary good yeah yeah if i could ask you a question about that who does our legislative delegation go to within the state house to try to get that change to help encourage the state to take that on and take that responsibility and be the leader in the housing issue and services around people that are unhoused yeah so there are two committees in the house that have primary responsibility for this the first is called house general and military affairs and i think it has housing in their title too and they they are carefully and deeply looking at and have been the architect of a lot of the housing proposals so it's it's house general that's responsible for the housing side and in terms of the um service side it's um it's it's house human services that is responsible for that it's it although healthcare comes into it and then frankly it all comes together in in my committee the house appropriations committee because you know we have to figure out what the right programs are but at the end of the day this is just it's a matter of money and and workforce as you all know um the the community-based partners who are trying to provide these services are just overwhelmed with demand and really struggling to bring in the resources you know the human yeah finding people to do really hard work so you but so i answered your question in terms of who should be doing this but frankly i would also be asking the executive branch what they're going to be doing for this so in the budget adjustment which my committee has already received we did not see um a substantial response to the ongoing problem and i i had been hoping that we would we may get something the first week of january i know they're bringing us more but um i so ask the executive to ask the governor's office to how they're gonna partner and make sure that the resources are where they need today i think connor has a follow-up unless you just the follow-up of that i i think municipals depend maybe too much on the vermont league of cities and towns and i feel like we should really start a serious campaign that yes the vermont league can lead the way but that we need to muster municipals and their residents to really make it clear to our legislators and our executive branch this is huge it's got to be done in this time connor go ahead mary i want to thank you you've been so great offering to go to any meetings with the administration or other legislative committees that have jurisdiction over this the one thing we are hidden with the senators just earlier there was we have met with bgs and we feel like we have a fundamental disagreement with them in terms of the public restrooms there we feel there's such a need in town because this could be providing services for washing facilities showers and other services that give people really the dignity that they need around the clock here it's sort of a bricks and mortar expense and it's something we'd love to be able to share that responsibility with the state there so for the extent we could maybe get a conversation going on the capital bill around some of the uh some of the expenses with that that would be fantastic thank you connor i know that you had raised that earlier and i and so i appreciate that follow-up and and let's talk more about that conversation thank you thanks mary i think bill has something to yeah mary just to follow up on your comment about the state's role and municipalities role and what we're seeing and and i know you and i've talked about this is this is falling to the local governments because the resources aren't there you heard councilmember morton refer to that earlier with our social worker hat on and there's just no place else to go so people in our community come here saying what are you going to do because nobody else is doing it and i i take that one step further it really falls disproportionately again on those communities with sort of established downtowns and services it's not every town and city uh and i think that that may create some problem in your legislature because many of your fellow reps aren't dealing with this or their communities aren't dealing with this but like lots of downtown issues that we've talked you and i have talked about forever uh this is one where you know the burlington's the mobiliars the berries the rattle bows you know the places with buses the places with services the places with health care um are the places that people are coming for those services and are demanding it and it falls disproportionately on our residents taxpayers businesses and the state really does need to to step up and fund some of these things you know as you i think you've seen a lot of willingness from people uh volunteers professionals and elected officials to do our part but right now we're we're in a world that we're not you know that's all new to us and we we don't have the expertise and we're trying to find our way and so we would look to the state to really um rebalance the scales yeah i i i understand that as you said bill that you know we had had this ongoing conversation and um sadly it it it seems to me and i've i've watched this over the past four years in the appropriations committee the state is trying to shed costs and the way they're shedding it is by pushing them down on on the municipalities and um you're right and this is the reason the league isn't as large of a voice is because they're representing all of the towns and it's not you know this is not an you know this is not an issue for Sutton or Derby the way it is in the built-up areas i get it and we need to keep working on it and and let me just add and you know and there's kind of a view that there is a ton of money floating around that can be used to solve these problems i mean we've heard of really rather phenomenal revenue forecasts and and and we're in deep competition over a lot of issues a lot of people are looking for funding for a variety of issues you know so please keep advocating folks well thank you and anyone else obviously want to share okay thank you and thank you for for sticking around through this issue representative Hooper that's it's excellent and i also am encouraged to hear uh ken that we uh maybe hearing again from you soon with some updates and and suggestions so we look forward to that any other thoughts your team okay thank you everybody and we'll you know it's certainly still on our radar let's uh hope that we can come up with some um actionable things soon all right thank you all right so we're uh actually it is 840 um and so we're gonna take a 10 minute break it's 841 so we'll be back at 851 uh to jump in with uh talking about the ballot procedure um when when we return a ballot procedure and so for this i'm turning it over to john odum our city clerk go ahead well i'll be quick there isn't a lot to report the uh just the rocksbury select board you know decided to not decide um they know that there's a um uh they they pushed it to their january 10th meeting because they know there's a big the first bill the legislature's gonna work on is this election thing and they want to you know they want to know what's gonna happen um you know i i don't want to give any opinions on what anybody should or shouldn't do um so we'll just have to see how it goes it certainly cuts things close for me which is unfortunate but it is what it is and um i would say for what the implication of that is for you all is potentially nothing deciding on what you want to do i mean if you want to go ahead and authorize a you know a mail an election for the city regardless you know that would create four elections four ballots one of them gets mailed out and we would certainly put a bright colored piece of paper and they're saying if you need an absentee you will for many of these others contact us it would create a tremendous potentially a huge amount absentee requests for us that would be very difficult to manage but crystal and i did some brainstorming today so whatever you all decide will make it work okay um but so yeah so i mean if you all want to do that if you all want to go ahead and authorize the uh school given their blood your blessing i don't see why you shouldn't at this point um no point in holding off but um so either or i have some recommended um language for motions that pull some phrases out of the statute so and they're in our uh the two phrases um on the uh the the two things that are in the recommended action of the cover sheet uh no i didn't phrase them that way i can i've been sitting here phrasing things excuse me john you've got to force fetus you've got to give us a time well i mean i'll just i can read them real briefly the first one if you all decide to give the school that your blessing um i would use language pursuant to 17 vsa section 2680 montpelio city council grants its approval for the montpelio rocksbury school district to mail its annual meeting ballot to all active registered voters in the district and i added on should the school board so choose and should the rocksbury select board grant its approval just so i'll make that motion and the alternative one was and then the other one would be for you all pursuant to 17 vsa section 2680 authorize the city clerk to mail an annual city meeting ballot to all active registered voters in the city so that would be for the city election if you chose to do that the other one before authorizing giving the school your blessing should they choose so we could do both so we need to is that it like both motion they're not mutually exclusive no i i suggest breaking them up into two oh you mean two separate motion two separate motions oh okay but okay but doing both of them potentially okay sorry so uh don did you want to make them quick because i didn't want to have to try to reword it but my intention would be that we would be authorizing the montelio rocksbury school district to conduct a mail-in election and to send all the ballot to send ballots to all the active voters is that you want to my motion with the with the lovely language you had oh okay so that's you have moved that okay is there a second okay there's a second over there discussion about this particular one um jay and then jack or jack and then jay don't go ahead i don't think it matters so i just wanted to sort of come back to the earlier um presentation john john disappointed i don't see any unicorns um but but uh of more consequence is um there's a lot of variables here right so if if the school district could decide not to do it um we rocks you know rocksbury may decide not to do it and be able to um so they may decide not to mail it out and from your previous presentation there's other scenarios where there may be some in-person ballots right um the way it's that's two possible ways really it's gonna shake out yeah there are think think of it as there are four elections in play right um city school cdpsa and the career center right that's right um all four of those if you all mail have to do a mail-in election then anybody else who does a mail-in election can piggyback and that's covered and the great thing for me in that sense is if the school piggybacks with us the school has to pay for it so that's nice i like that but um because the thing that they're gonna end up having to pay for all this themselves one way or the other when it gets down to it so scenario one there is a city ballot with a school ballot and both of those ballots are still available at the polling place but at the polling place is going to be the only place you can find cdpsa or career center unless you specifically call and ask for an absentee ballot of one or both to be sent to you so then the other scenario would be that it's just the city and then those other three ballots including the city's ballot are available at the polling place again should somebody choose you know to call and have one or all of them sent to them as an absentee ballot so we're going to be tracking these as four different elections and tracking absentee requests as four separate elections or three depending on how it goes um it's going to be a little odd but um the biggest the the biggest potential challenge for my office is going to be if the school does not get on there because i suspect cvpsa career center a lot of people aren't going to be too concerned about asking for those ballots i mean i'm not trying to you know qualify the you know make any cast any aspersions on the quality of those ballots i just think they won't but a lot of people are gonna say see that note and say i don't have the school ballot i want the school ballot and so we'll get a lot of requests for absentee ballots more than we otherwise would have gotten um so that's that's the crush i'm worried about although that's the crush i think we've already found some workarounds to be able to manage just the two of us because it's just the two of us unfortunately do the elections and so i bring that up because my concern is that you know if we commit my concern is that we if if one of the the scenario plays out where we we're mailing our ballot and others you know require a request or coming to um the it's coming to the building to vote that we're sort of undermining that turnout and um i think feel like that you know a lot of folks will approach a lot of these things some particularly some of the smaller issues passively that will just assume that they what they got in the mail is what they need to decide or what you know if they come then they'll get them all which is like you said which is great but i just worry that where um it's disenfranchising folks who may not be understanding the decisions that they need to make and i know there's a ton of variables and how it all plays out i mean we'll make it as plain as we can yeah on the other hand i know we're also going to get they'll be pushed back from folks concerned about covid if this the mail and ding doesn't happen again so i'm i mean y'all know i'm in favor of it ideologically i think in this case i'm kind of agnostic about the implementation um i mean it is going to happen for the august primary in the november general so it may become an issue where people start to really have that expectation and they get confused and they don't get about it in the mail but i don't know that we're there jack i'm like you i think that uh what we should be doing to make the uh make it easier for everybody we do anything we can to make it easier for people to vote and to get the maximum voter turnout possible um but what makes me concerned is that uh doing some kind of hybrid is going to make things much more confusing for people and uh and i think that's a a bad thing and so i'm not really sure what i think you should do um i think you said last time that you don't expect the barry city council to authorize mail-in voting for the uh for the two entities for which they're a player right yeah that's correct and it's that's been made pretty clear and roxbury i imagine what they're waiting for is see if the state's going to pay for it right and if the state's going to pay for it they'll say fine and who knows otherwise would it uh would it make a difference in your planning for the work if we decided well let's do what roxbury's doing and wait to see what the legislature does um or should you or should you have guidance from us right right now to make it make it better let's see they're meeting on the 10th y'all are meeting on the 12th that's less than two weeks before the filing deadline i mean i can make that work without sweating too much i don't have a lot of margin for error but i have a little so if you all wanted to wait for that decision then that's uh yeah that's cool um i don't know if you'd want to go ahead and grant the school your blessing or just wait i don't know if it's uh go ahead don't that was my point this motion doesn't do away with them not doing it this is this first motion is just dealing with the school district vote it's the next vote the general vote for the city that's the one that affects center of public safety authority and the other one i thought you phrased yours all as one motion for both no no there's two motions yeah i have one motion they should really happen separately i agree but i thought i thought you would written it phrased it as one for both the school and the okay and and my other question to john procedure wise if we make any of these motions and the legislatures lay out a different format in their first week in january then it's a it's no longer in effect if they decide to say this is how you're going to do your election at town meeting and that overrules anything we decide here um yeah i mean it at worst it becomes redundant because what a lot of folks would like to do is just do the same thing they did last year again now the question it would be does the secretary of state have enough covid money left to do it uh for conflicting things about that honestly i suspect they probably do um so that that becomes a question they're either going to tell us to do it or they're not and they're either going to pay for it or not but i think in any case if we approve it the worst that happens is that the approval is becomes a redundancy so thinking about even just the schools um and thinking about your argument jack of you know does it create confusion if the schools send one out do you feel like that still is sufficient confusion like the potential for confusion or um yeah i don't know probably not because i think the school and the city are what is important to people and i think that the other two elections don't get a lot of public attention and people are likely not to even think about it fair enough so any further discussion on this particular about the schools mailing out ballots yes go ahead loren yeah i mean just to me the motion focus on the schools i mean if they want to do it i think us signaling the rock ferry that we're going to give that approval now instead of waiting makes sense to me so that they know that we think this is a good idea and that you know in our i mean for me speaking for me my ideal is that we are doing it proactively for as many of the um as many of the elections as we can i mean just being what's coming with this new variant i mean it's going to be even worse than last year potentially so i think we should be getting ready for that um so i think that to me seems like worthwhile i still yeah i guess like if it's flexibility to see what they do and then decide how the city would want to i would feel differently i think if the school is going to be in person um then i think keeping it all together might make sense so i think maybe we want to have that conversation later um but i think moving forward to the schools now my gut tells me that there's a 50 50 chance that they will not have passed their legislation by the by the 12th um having said that probably at that point if they haven't passed it yet we're going to know what it looks like okay any further comments about this particular item okay there's been a motion and a second um all in favor please say aye and opposed okay so um sounds like folks maybe want to hold off on the the second part is that sort of what i'm hearing unless somebody wants to make a motion i mean i'm open to that too okay uh so we'll revisit that one hopefully that's at least partially helpful oh no it's great i totally we have some clarity i totally get what you're doing and why yeah uh don't yeah go ahead well you know john sometimes the mayor has us do this straw vote would you like to know what our straw vote would be about mailing the cities oh certainly curious okay so i would put a thumbs up i think it's important the voters get it sure i mean do folks be like they have a sense of what their straw vote would be yeah okay we've been undecided that's okay or no i think the city and the schools should do the same thing and ideally it should be mail but if the schools aren't not doing mail then maybe we shouldn't do this okay um i saw a thumbs up from connor any thoughts on that j same okay thoughts from you jennifer same same okay yeah yeah cool um lauren agrees okay yeah yeah so well now now you know so to be continued on that one um yes go ahead steve winnaker again i want to comment on the impact of this election on the public safety authority the which the thing you don't have time to dive into tonight or it's not on the agenda yet is going to get closer and closer to the ballot deadline and a number of folks one of the cvpsa board members just quit and discussed others are about to quit and discussed folks feel like the chair is trying to run it into the ground the initiatives by the city managers uh are without having the benefit of the approval of this council i think it's good i guess how this relates to the election this council's going to have to make a very clear statement to the public about whether you're going to squander and flush their investments in a regional public safety authority uh in this election because if this election gets meager turnout or even attention or even people fold spindle or mutilate their separate ballot for cvpsa it's good they're going to have you will have squandered all the work years and years of work i'm reading the minutes from 10 years ago uh efforts to get this thing created and since 14 it was created and i know mayor watson you were very active in in trying to see this succeed in 2017 and 18 so i just suggest that if you're gonna have a unusual ballot arrangement that the city make a very clear statement of informing the public about what's at stake here because just to let chiefs uh run run their own way and uh continue the oh continue the montpelier monopoly on dispatch with a strawman partner of public mutual aid system mutual aid system totally ignores public records requests and appeals and dan was not going to allow the city this city to re-enter that contract as soon as dan was gone your city manager put it on the consent agenda to approve that contract so we're in bed with us or we're in a contract with a strawman entity who now is being tried to serve up the whole ownership of a new radio system no transparent governance no planning nothing just hand it to the vendors and pretend like uh it's good for the people so i'm asking you to do your homework put it on the agenda have a meeting and make sure the public is well educated on this topic before you squander all their investments made so far thank you um i just want you to know too that uh the city manager has my full support all right having said that um we're gonna move on uh all right so um we i think that's that's it for this item right okay so um we are on to the budget review for fyi 23 um kelly do you want say anything i see you're like eager to come up if you want to you may um but uh well i think yes go ahead there were a few questions and things left over from last week so i think kelly we're just gonna oh yeah great the responses to those and then leave it great go forward so everyone um i'm happy to provide um just the updated budget option worksheet if you want to go through that again um and just kind of take notes accordingly but i also wanted to just speak to a couple of items that we talked about last time um that we looked into for you or we have some response for so i'll just kind of go down the list um there are no particular order um so just in their large and small so um bear with me um so the first thing on the list is i just wanted to note on page 12 of the budget book online we've updated the um housing task force to be the housing trust fund just wanted to note that we did that um and if you'd like a new printed version of your book because the print we've been hearing it all the way around is pretty small i can do that just let me know um then the next thing is we added a thousand dollars in um for the uss melt clear it was not our intent to leave that out um so that was duly noted and we've added it in that's a net neutral change um the next thing on my list is the charging station um we just wanted to clarify intent with that um our understanding based on the conversation was that we would look for grant funding and if possible would fund the charging station um we did not identify how that would happen as of yet and so it's still sort of an open item um but i wanted to kind of highlight that so that we can talk it through a little bit more and let us know what you'd like to do with that um the next piece is we added the thirty thousand dollars for down street um recovery residents in berry um to the arpa two list um for your recommendation and just took a little bit of money away from the infrastructure um portion of that for the water sewer um we also looked into the fifteen thousand dollars for lobbying efforts and f y twenty two because um revenues have performed better than we had anticipated there is some money there that we could harvest off to the side to be able to cover that this year so if you want to do that we can in twenty two and then it's on your list of options for twenty three and so we would just need to make sure that that remains should that be what you'd like to do um so that's good to go um the next um couple of items are related to the capital projects on the boneless there are a few questions related to the um street conversion the lighting and also berry and main um the question related to the streetlight conversion that's two hundred and fifty thousand dollars um and when the payback would be on that so we looked at the analysis that was previously done and sixteen and if we move forward we'll bet this even further just to make sure that the numbers are good i think they might actually be even more favorable at this point but that being said right now based on the initial projections it would be a ten point nine year payback and that would include an efficiency vermont incentive so um should we move forward we'll get those numbers into focus and just make sure that we report that back out once we have it and then the other item in question for um sort of the capital projects was the berry and main intersection project just sort of noting what that entails um so it's five hundred and fifty thousand dollars and it includes three kind of parts um and the explanation that we got from public works um the first part is it's for the new traffic signal at the intersection upgrades the software um for the existing traffic signals at main state and main in berlin and then the third piece which i think is important to note is that um they would be more responsive and coordinating with one another for traffic flow and congestion um so just wanted to highlight all of those items for that particular project um and that's the end of my list so that's what we have been kind of working on for you and i'll um pull up the budget options worksheet and then i didn't know if you had other questions um for us or you know how you wanted to get started am i loud enough here sometimes i'm a loud fast talker which is maybe not a good combination could i add a little bit to the main yes the main and state berry and main street traffic lights are more wonderful than we alluded to they're not just an upgrade but they put them in sync with the other lights so if one light gets all jammed up it reflects it to other places so instead of being independent it's really very responsive to traffic needs and i'm looking forward to hoping it really works as it's supposed to work it'd be a good addition yeah i agree all right um so in terms of um conversations anything um that we want to talk about on the list that um kelly just mentioned um i i would like to talk about the uh charging station um my understanding had not been that it was grant dependent but that we would build it in and then should a grant be available that they would replace it at least that was my understanding um i open to hearing other thoughts yeah that's your understanding as well dana okay and more inching ahead any other thoughts on this okay um and i guess i would say just in part i would rather be able to say with some certainty that we're going to move forward with that seek grants probably there are some available for this um but uh you know should we either not find one or not get one um that we hopefully would still be able to to move forward thank you for that clarification i guess my question then would be which funding source did you i think one of maybe we were going to see if it was arpa eligible maybe that's what was our homework okay i do i do not think it is arpa eligible just based on the eligibility um we do plan to um review our arpa list with the vlct and take advantage of those resources and so we'll certainly ask um but that i don't just based on what the guidance is right now that would come from so then our choices would be either add it to the budget and raise the budget put it in the capital plan and replace something else or put it in that the capital reserve money and replace something else thoughts go ahead yes what can we replace um so any other um thoughts or opinions about um where that should come from i guess i would also just say um see if there is if something that could be um replaced potentially i mean there is i guess my if i if i had to choose i mean i trust you all but um if i had to choose my gut would be um somewhere in the capital improvements um uh plan which to be fair i mean that like how much wiggle room is there in that you know not necessarily any more than anywhere else but um just because it that seems like um where it would logically fit um yeah yeah um no to be fair uh yeah um we can see how it um how the rest of this this budget shakes out it's enough to come um just trying to think about the best way to show what's in that plan that's fine we can we can um i'd agree that that's the smarter approach as opposed to adding it on yeah hoping that we could make back up with grant funding so i do think that that's the right way yeah um yes i can certainly pull up the list let's see okay so why don't we have a continued conversation and come back to that okay um loren had a thought go ahead yeah no just just briefly i mean i think it seemed like the vehicle purchase was really tied to like being able to move forward with trying out some of these electric vehicles like we need that charging capacity i i know i had brought up grant funding um with the federal infrastructure bill i know that there's a good amount of money coming but like that guidance isn't even out yet you know that who knows when that money will actually be available how it will flow and certainly doesn't seem clear yet how a community like ours will necessarily take advantage i think there's good opportunity but i would not want to like wait for that um to because then it seems like it's holding up then all the progress on the fleet i have a couple thoughts okay okay okay okay great um anything else um Julie oh sorry go ahead donna i was gonna say anything else particularly from the list that um kelly just went through um there's nothing else on my radar of things that you said that you know felt like they needed to be further addressed at least from my perspective um other further thoughts comments generally uh yes conard go ahead you know i left 15k uh somewhere around city hall here or so just like that really appreciate everybody looking really closely see where we could find that for this year that's very much and thanks bill for bringing that up last time wouldn't help us too much in july uh yes donna go ahead actually you added the 14100 for the german public safety authority twice so the spreadsheet the way that it calculates the upper portions don't actually get into the tax rate and what that they're captured in this bottom section okay so you need to repeat that one yes okay and i wanted to call it out above just so that then there was the comparison side by side um so yes okay unfortunately it's a um i'll work on the sheet but i just didn't like when you said it was a formula problem i thought maybe the line wasn't included above so yeah i know i know what you're saying thank you you're welcome you know one one i'm sorry i do need to interrupt um one thing that i think might have been confusing for folks um is the difference between these two numbers um would you mind just explaining like why why does it say both six point eight and nine point seven sure yeah so the nine point seven is a total bottom line number and so that's with all um sources that's all costs that that is the bottom line however if you look at it from a property tax perspective they're two different figures and so when you think about what will impact voters um and their pocketbooks it's really this six point eight percent numbers that's based on the property taxes and what we would need to levy great thank you you're welcome um other comments about the current version of the budget oh yeah jane go ahead i just wanted to add one thought you know looking looking at the other editions piece and i know um curious where jack's thinking is because because we were kind of of the same mind last time um and like i said i said i fully support the the concept of an energy coordinator um but as we're seeing it as an add-on to the existing budget it feels somewhat arbitrary to say a hundred thousand dollars um without kind of trying to hone in with a little more detail on what exactly that position would do what what that role would be who would the ideal candidate would be or and like not even getting ahead of that but more like what what's the um what what's the the benefit realized by the city to um to have somebody in that position now conceptually i totally get it 100 percent i mean but trying to like it just feels like if if we're going to approach this then having a little more of a of giving having given some more thought to like what the outcomes we want from that role to be what those outcomes would be and then sort of be a little more specific in terms of what that would cost the city this would be an appropriate sa