Okay, I will call the meeting to order. It is 633 p.m. and we have one council member who is on her way and two council members who are appearing remotely. So I'll ask the remote council members to introduce themselves. Palin, it looks like you're good. Thank you. Donna Bate, District 1. Okay, thank you. I'll mention briefly meeting logistics. Anyone joining remotely, please change your name display for your first and last name so we have a record and can see who's here. Anyone who wishes to speak, start by stating your name and where you live. We ask everyone to keep your comments to three minutes, and if you're speaking about a specific agenda item, please keep your comments germane to that item. Anyone who wishes to speak must be called on by the mayor, and you can make a statement or ask a question, but it's not an opportunity for a lot of back and forth conversation between members of the public and the council. First item is to approve the agenda. We've reviewed the agenda. There are some questions about item six, appointments to the housing committee, so we're going to table that for future meeting. With that off the agenda and also under the consent agenda, one of the items for the street closure, the kick-line event in May. We're also taking that off for now for more clarification on what's going on and how we're going to deal with that. With that, does anyone have any other proposed changes to the agenda? The clerk mentioned that the minutes are posted on the city's webpage, but they're not in the packet, so we will be taking that off the agenda for tonight too. With that, I'll deem the agenda approved, and we are now ready for general business and appearances. This is an opportunity for any member of the public to address the council on any topic that is not on tonight's agenda. Again, we ask you to keep your comments to three minutes, and Councillor Bate will assist us with the timekeeping with the yellow card being one minute left, and the red card being time is up, and we'll start by seeing if there's anyone in the room who would like to be heard. Tom. Sorry, it's Tom Moore from Prospect Street. It's not a big topic, but it's something that I need to know because of my work. Is the stump dump still closed, and what's going on with this permit that the State of Vermont is saying that it's closed? There's a second part to it. What I heard that the state said that the stump dump was closed because approaching wetlands, and you don't have the right permits and everything, but prior to them sending you that, is that true before I go anything? It's going to ask. Yeah. What's the second part of your question? Well, if that's true, just prior before them sending you this saying that you've got to close it because you're not permitted. The state was up there dumping truckloads and truckloads and truckloads of material there, and then they come around and tell you you can't use it, and they did. They were just dumping dirt there from culverts up on Route 12 headed towards Wrightsville Dam, and that's just not right. They go and put all this material there, and then they close it, and I can't use it, and I can't serve my people, my customers here in Montpelier because they closed it, but boy, they put a bunch of dirt in there, and what I would like is maybe you people, write a letter and say, you hauled that out. It was not permitted. This is, and it's not funny. I wanted to say this, many councils meetings before, but I just haven't been here, but it's just awful. They fill it and then tell us that we can't use it. Is that true? All right. Thanks, Tom. Thank you. Thank you. Gret Modic of the Public Works Director, I was not aware of that disposal by the state. We'll look into that, but there are two permit issues associated with this dump dump. The first is wetlands encroachment. It was an unmapped wetland. The state came up and delineated it with their own staff and determined it with a class 2 wetland. The film, we historically have pushed off the edge of the top of the facility, and that material is now into this new designated wetland. That's the first part. The second part is they notified us that certain activities up there, such as disposing of catch-base and clean-out material, and street sweeping material, that changes the stump dump from a yard waste disposal site to an actual site that has to be permitted categorically. As a number of items related to that permit, one of the things is the grading. The banks where we've been pushing off are too steep. They all have to be pulled back, which is really going to narrow the usable space at the facility. Then you need a management plan of where the material is going, how you're going to process it, how we're going to regulate it, potentially would need someone staffing the site full-time to make sure that improper materials are not dumped there. There has been some issues with painted lumber, things like that being disposed of improperly up there, because we don't have staff up there currently. We never have. There has been some materials such as that. In either case, whether we haven't figured out if we're going to try to reopen it or close it permanently, that's still unknown at this point. Either way, we're going to have to develop a grading plan. In either case, we have to pull all those slopes back and get everything away from the wetlands, and we need engineering support to do that. That is in the CIP budget, we have $50,000 in there to hire an engineer to prepare a grading plan, and then based on that, we'll decide if we do the full facility management plan and maintain operations up there, but at this point, we don't know. There's no timeline at this point. I don't have a definitive, we have to wait till July until the budget's approved or in order to hire the engineer. The earliest we would start out the process is this on July of this year. Okay, thanks. Tom, do you? Whatever. Well, make it very, very brief. But part of our recycle law and trash laws is the state also is telling every city or community that they have to have a site for yard waste and everything. So what are we going to do now? That's part of, you can check with Central Vermont Solid Waste on that, because you're not supposed to take yard waste to the dump. They don't want it up in Coventry because it will fill the real landfill up faster, and that's part of the requirements that every city have yard waste disposal. I don't know what we're going to do with it, but that's quick. Thanks, Tom. Thanks, Kurt. Steve? You could potentially pull the gazebo, the Gert and Park shed back out of the dump, if it's still there, and make it useful in town. I again want to remind you that we need to have a packet here that can be looked at. It's hard to talk before the meeting about what might need to be pulled off the consent agenda if the supporting materials aren't here. It's just absurd that I should have to ask this many times for there to be a packet in the room with the meeting. Similarly, a shower. I don't know how we gave a certificate of occupancy to the shelter at the Elks Club if there's not a shower there. You can't permit a house or any other living situation without a bath or a shower. So how did we basically skirt the rules here? It's really a denial of dignity to the folks that are staying there to not have a shower. And to bring it up month after month and no action, no plan is really a pathetic, you know? Are you going to talk about Elks Club in the budget discussion? Is this a public hearing? I don't see a public hearing warned on this. There's not a public hearing. So are you going to be talking about Elks Club in the budget discussion? I'll save comments about that. You don't know? I don't expect to, but we don't. It's not in the budget. We'll probably come up with that next time. Yeah. Well, I guess the reason I'm trying to ask you to start thinking about that as revenue, if DCF is going to fund a shelter in Vermont and I'd encourage you to look at that article about Austin, we could for a couple of years get funding and use that, turn that Elks Club into revenue positive instead of revenue negative by dealing with some of this housing emergency in the place where we had proposed to put FEMA trailers using existing water and sewer. So I would like to have that discussion. I just don't know where the right place, time and place for it is. If it could be revenue, that's worth looking at. Thank you. Is there anybody else in the room would like to address the council? Okay. And is there anyone online? I'm not seeing any hands raised. I know Evelyn is also checking. Okay. We can move to the consent agenda. Is there a motion to approve the consent agenda with the exception of those two items that were taken out? So moved. Is there a second? Second. Okay. Any discussion? All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. Great. Thank you. Next we have item seven. Mr. Mayor, if I may just quickly just a response to the prior comments just for point of clarity, the certificate of occupancy for the shelter at the Elks Club was issued by the State Department of Fire Safety, not by the city. Thanks. All right. Next up we have the use of the FEMA lease funds.  Yeah. Okay. So speaking of country club road, the city had entered into a lease with FEMA to put in temporary housing. It was a two-year lease total was a little over a million dollars. The million dollars was developed because that was going to be the cost of upgrading the water line from route two to up there. So for the future housing project, as we know, the state decided not to go ahead with the temporary housing or the state, excuse me, not the state FEMA, decided not to go ahead with the temporary housing. So they canceled the lease. The lease had a one-year guarantee. So they paid the one-year lease. So we have received the 513,000. As I said, the million had been sort of allocated to go to the water line on that site. 500,000 is not enough to complete that full water line. So it leaves us with the question of, you know, how do we want to allocate the funds?  They're all have some merit. And we've heard from some folks with some other ideas. I recommended the use for the country club road apart because housing has been our highest priority and it is a project to develop more housing. And because we the reason we entered into that lease in the first place was because we thought we would be able to get infrastructure improvements, including roads, sewer and other things, as well as the funds for this water line. So it seemed consistent with the purposes from the city's end of that lease. But it is unrestricted funds. It is up to the council how you want to allocate it. And so with that, thanks, Bill. Now, a couple of questions I will receive all the members of the council received an email raising a question about whether there any there's any legal restrictions on the on the funds. Do you have an answer response to that? Well, I haven't. I haven't run it through an attorney, but I can't see why there would be there. It was a lease for land use and it called for one year minimum payment. They paid it because the FEMA was the the tenant. Doesn't mean that these aren't, you know, they weren't buying housing or emergency. They were buying they were renting land to put housing on. We would simply the landlord, so to speak. So there's no legal restrictions to it. I mean, my recommendation was trying to be as consistent with the use and the deal that we had made with them as possible. But it's really money to the city that can be used. How the city council sees fit. Yeah, I was thinking about that this afternoon. Was it was that was the lessee actually going to be FEMA or GSA? I believe it was actually GSA, right? The General Services Administration, who leased that on behalf of FEMA. So they they just were using federal government money to lease property owned by the city. All right. Here, let's copy that memo, the email so that we can read before public comments. Online. Most people here have seen it. They've been commenting about it for days, Steve. I'm going to go start with members of the council to see if people have thoughts about. About the use of the of these funds. Lauren process question before getting into. So unless we're making a decision that would put this into the FY 25 budget, like we could not make a decision tonight and assume, like for example, if we wanted to use it for some combination of resilience projects and country club road, we could kind of sit on it as long as we're not making the decision to put it into the budget for next year to cut down. Okay, thanks. Yeah, and I did see an email from one resident saying. Why rush? Why don't we take this up a little later? I don't know if there are people on the council who also think that what we should be doing is is. Pushing this decision off, but but that is a possibility. Lauren. Yeah, I guess in part I asked because I know, you know, some of the. Ideas I've heard. I know that there's, for example, conversations having at the legislature right now related to, you know, are we hope? Are we helping residents with substantial damage to their homes? I think the legislature will do that, but we'll know soon if they're putting that in the budget adjustment act. For example, so like just making a decision like that to set aside the money. I think we absolutely need to be continuing to advocate for those residents in that position. I think the state should be paying for it. And if we don't allocate this money, but set it aside for a potential variety of purposes and don't put it into the FY 25 budget. To me, that gives us flexibility to address some of these kind of pressing timely needs in a way that. Seems good to me that we can be responsive to what doesn't doesn't happen kind of up the road at the state house. Yeah, just to follow up on that too for the council's benefit and for the public's benefit. I justified each of the last 2 days. About that and strongly advocated that the state. But pay for this and Mike Miller was advocating today to a different committee for specifically the budget adjustment of. I think it was 10 million specifically for Barry and my failure right for those homes. So, yeah, absolutely. We are pushing as hard as we can to get the funding for the folks that needed several of them or here. And we absolutely want to support them. Donna, thank you. I would like, I would agree that we can put it aside, but I do feel more committed to keep it for housing. And our rec department, we've done a lot of engagement over the last 5, 6 years and consistently housing and additional recreational facilities. And we did a massive one with consultants involved very, very recently. And so I feel like we've heard from the majority. And that unfortunately we may have another flood. I don't think the city can keep can afford to do it. I think the state has to take that on. And, and so I would agree to hold it. I would prefer to hold it for the capital country club project. Next time any other thoughts on the council tonight. So, well, I wouldn't wouldn't mind, you know, tabling it for another meeting, but there might be. Residents who are here online because it was on the agenda and we probably ought to hear from them, even if we postpone it. I agree with that. Yeah, Kerry. Yeah, I also like the idea of not making a decision tonight and giving ourselves a little bit more time to think about this because I know that there, I've heard from a lot of people with their ideas and I think there's a lot more room for conversation. And we'll say that my general inclination is to think about what was what that money was originally intended for and to try to at least keep it as close to that as we can. So that could mean putting it aside for country club road development. It could mean putting in the capital fund. And then we maybe we end up using that for infrastructure at country club road. And that might give us a little bit more flexibility, but I think, you know, whatever we can do to try to be as consistent as possible with where it was going to go to begin with. Okay. Okay, I don't know if we need a motion to table or if we can just say we're, we're going to take comment from the public and then move to the next agenda item and plan on taking it up at another time, but I know there are people here to want to be heard and I see that the gentleman with the beard is the first person whose hand was raised so why don't you step on up. We've got time. I read the agenda. Excuse me, sir. Okay, I read the agenda and I'm kind of confused about the water line the infrastructure to the outside my understanding because I talked with the guys up there every day from FEMA is that FEMA deemed the infrastructure sufficient for the trailers. Instead of making a payment for the infrastructure. The deal was changed to pay rent of $42,000 a month. So we're talking different things here. Originally for the infrastructure infrastructure was deemed sufficient and then the contract changed to a monthly payment of $42,000. So good question and all of the above are correct. So I'll try to explain it. So FEMA believed that the water line was sufficient for their trailers. There was a conflict between that and fire statues for sprinklers and hydrants which required an upsized line and so the city had been asking them to because they were going to have hydrants. So they, they believe the water line was sufficient for their needs. We did not believe it was sufficient for their needs. So the compromise was they said we will pay you enough money in a lease so that you can upsize that water line. In the future, because we needed so we're going to be the benefits to the city besides providing emergency housing, which was of course critical was approved road access up into that area. There was going to be some improved water and sewer services to individual units and this upsized water line, which would help make rapidly advanced the ability to put in more affordable housing there because this would be come in. So the compromise was they would pay us via lease originally we weren't going to charge them please we just can have them do the infrastructure. So instead they paid us the money so that we could upsize the water line to its proper size. At our time so that's that's how we got there. Steve would agree again. If the water line is sufficient to support the FEMA trailers, it should be sufficient to support a small a cluster or two of tiny homes, which are portable and can be moved once our plan. But I would like to know is there money left in whatever we were spending where wherever the 167,000 that got spent so far on white and Burke and engineering and at what point. I know there's of two two points of view sell it or hold it and develop it or find a partner to develop it and we can't really do that. We haven't completed the essential due diligence on whether the intersection with the railroad. Across it is going to be allowed or whether a second egress is going to be required. So until those two major engineering questions are answered. We don't know whether to sell it or not. And we know we could develop it now and potentially get some revenue from the state to support some of the unhoused folks. But again at the pace you've all gotten a shower for the people who already live in there. I have little confidence in the current administration to get that job done. I would ask the council to consider having somebody other than the city manager put a plan together for how many Tiny homes or whatever could be accomplished with water and sewer. I mean showers and toilets in in trailers. So basically it's a temporary use for the land for a couple of years as was the FEMA trailers. It helps the state deal with in the city deal with a big emergency and Berlin and Barry and it could produce some revenue and we could postpone. We buy time by doing that approach while the engineering is done on the intersection and whether or not we need a second road. But if the second road is required that's a whole big another discussion. So I would ask you to consider that approach makes if there's not still money where the 167 came from use a little bit of this money to get that engineering started. Don't you wait till next year and that will then inform a discussion of whether or not we want to use it or sell it. Well I think that's a useful comment and we do have a plan. I'm not sure which meeting but we do have a plan to put the Country Club Road project up for further discussion at one of our meetings in February. I was going to say as soon as budgets done we're bringing the updated next steps as you know we do have a this is getting a little a feel from the funds except that the thought about using the funds for this project was exactly for those kind of consultant work. I'm not sure that you've raised an issue about the crossing that you're the only person that's raised it but but there are a lot of questions and and we we have a we have a sort of master work list that we're working through and our plan is to update the council and the number one thing would be to identify to start the process of identifying a private partner who would actually do the housing development and what that needs and work. So I think February we're February March I think we're trying to figure out when to do that. Because this is so as Council Member Hurl said this came up specifically last week during the budget there was a suggestion of could it be used as revenue to offset our current budget with the needs. And so we said we should put us on the agenda discuss its use so if the decision is not to use it for that what we actually use it for could be delayed until we have more information including whether the state funds. The houses and where we are with the project and what we want all sorts of things. Okay, is there anyone else in the room would like to be heard on this issue. All right, come on up. Fight it out over who's going first. Hi there Mary Mary's and Tara State Street. I just want to first say thank you so much for your service and all the work that you do for the city. I am one of the many community members whose homes flooded in July several of the other community members and friends of mine and neighbors are sitting here in front of you. My home flooded into the first floor it's been deemed substantially damaged. That was in the fall it is now January my home is still destroyed on the inside it's down to studs it's down to dirt and half of the kitchen. There is no heat there is no electricity it is unlivable. This has been a really long hard complex overwhelming journey. Most of us have full time jobs also and this process has also felt like a full time job. So we are needing some some hope and light at the end of the tunnel. So I am one of the many people who signed up through FEMA for one of the trailers at the Elks Club because I was displaced like many people and it was really hard to find housing and I was excited that that was maybe a possibility. So my name was on that list and then it became clear that it was going to take quite a long time to get the infrastructure in and for the trailers to be placed. So I ultimately found housing at the end of October it took three months to find housing. So you know my thoughts are we're in this place of being deemed substantially damaged we cannot rebuild as is and these are our homes and we have limited options. One of the options is lifting our homes and we need the funding for that. And so because this money has come from FEMA as a result of our destroyed homes the devastation that we've experienced it feels really important that this money be earmarked at least temporarily until there's potentially another funding source hopefully from the city. To be able to support us it came as a result of our loss our devastating loss and I think that it should be used to support us in becoming whole again. Thank you one thing I'm glad you were here because one thing that you know the city was in a strange position with regard to FEMA's cancellation of the housing because we weren't deciding who was going to be in the trailers we weren't finding out who was going to be in the trailer. And so I think that's one of the things that we're going to be able to do is we're going to be able to support us as a result of our devastating loss and I think that it should be used to support us in becoming whole again. And so I think that's one of the things that we're going to be able to do is we're going to be able to support us as a result of our loss of the housing because we weren't deciding who was going to be in the trailers. We weren't finding people what our sole role was to be the landlord for them is that when they put the trailers up there and so I I think when they said they're not doing it because the people all have alternate housing. And so it sounds like you have had been able to find alternate housing whether it's as good as where where you would have had up on the hill or not who knows but I'm glad you're in someplace that is habitable now and Is it safe to say that the other people who were in your position also were able to find some kind of all alternate housing. No. I was assigned to trailer trailers are gone. I waited for the trailer didn't do anything. I'm living. I'm still sleeping on a daybed for seven months. In my daughter's death. And I found it. I found an apartment but I have not received any funding for that apartment. Can they come up and speak at the mic please. Yeah, thanks. Thanks. I have a house on Elm Street. I don't live at that street but I had my name also on the list for the female trailers and again it was the same situation as Mary said well the winter's coming and I don't have heat and the trailers aren't coming anytime soon so I have a place to live but I have not received any of that funding from FEMA. So I've been paying for rent out of my pocket and mortgage and taxes for the past four months. So that is really putting me in a very tough situation. And again the basement flooded three weeks ago. And so here's the mold we're talking mold again in this house and I also agree that I want to say thank you that we need to be thinking about this. We need to be thinking about how we can use this money to be used supporting people that have been impacted. And what is our plan to decrease these potential floods in the future not just for our homes but the businesses. We should be thinking about how we can use this money. My street was again flooded today with six inches of water and it still has not been plowed on the sidewalks. We have a lot of water this year but maybe we should be looking at what else can be done and but also how are you going to help us with our homes. Maybe we'll get the money to lift it. Maybe we don't and what are we going to do when we need to do buyouts. How's the city going to be paying that 25% that the FEMA is not you know FEMA cover 75 the city is supposed to cover the 25% so there's also money there that's you know to help us maybe moving to higher ground. And if the housing our current houses don't work out if we have to live in those places again so I want to think of all those different points. Thank you. I'm Lisa Edson of a I live on State Street in between Mary and Ed. My place flooded to the bottom of the countertops while I stood there watched it all go under.  I mean I'm an Edson I'm one of the printer Edson's not pharmacy Edson's got to separate the two. I don't know why but it always is. This has been the most traumatic experience I've ever been through and it wasn't the flood. It's been what's happened since it's been the turmoil it's been the lack of answers. I have to school age kids. We are living in the home. This morning I dug out the snow bank so the water would drain from the street. We stayed because we had nowhere else to go the trailers you know several folks in the room know that I wasn't a fan of the trailers from the beginning. I wanted permanent solution something that that the money wasn't wasted but where it would go to a permanent solution. And for me I'm saying the same thing the other folks are we'd like to see the money go to something flood related. It was our tears and our loss that this money came from and it feels like it should really go back there. And just so that folks know I had full insurance like most of the other sitting in this room my insurance paid out at less than half the policy. It isn't that I didn't buy enough. I have homeowners. I have flood insurance. I did all the things you're supposed to do. And now I'm in a situation where to raise the house or to demolish it there isn't any money for that and so all of a sudden I'm in a situation where I came into it. My house had not seen water on the first floor since 1927. It was flooded in the flood six months before Irene in the basement and it was remediated really successfully. They brought all the utilities upstairs they were moved on to lifts on the first floor and it survived Irene with the water just getting pumped out of the basement. It was fine when I bought it after that I knew all of this and I knew it hadn't been hit since 1927 and I bought with confidence having weighed out the value of the home, the apartment and the ability to have my kids in this school system. If we get pushed out of this we lose everything. I can't afford to buy here anymore. I can't keep my kids here and to hear that this money is for infrastructure for something completely separate while we're experiencing this. And again I live in a house with no kitchen. We have a countertop that's made of plywood. We painted it turquoise though. It's so hunting camp countertop. We have a sink. We have a toaster oven. We have a grill and we have a we do have a full-size fridge that someone loaned us but we have studs. And the only reason we have floors is we put $40,000 into drying the house out and putting in only insulation in the exterior walls and the dry wall and we did that because we had nowhere else to go. There weren't apartments. FEMA didn't come through on anything. They offered me a trailer in Cambridge. How do I have my kids in Pompillia and take care of my parents in Groton if I'm living in Cambridge? So we're really hoping that this money will go towards something having to do with the flood resiliency because that's really where the money came from. Thank you. Thank you. And I think we've already heard from you. State Street. These are my neighbors. I lived in my house for 47 years. I think the climate has changed enough that it doesn't. The past dozen years have been bad. And I don't see it getting any better. So we kind of have to get out, elevate the mallers, get out. I raised my daughter there. The flood was on my 70th birthday. I worked for the state of Vermont for children, disadvantaged youth for 35 years, and I saved every penny I could to pay my house off. It was my retirement. It's gone. It is no more. Do you understand that? Lauren, it's been down. Donna was down. Hey, Donna, you there? It's in. Donna came into my living space and the water that came in was over the top of her head. I had 59 inches of water. No help. We had my son-in-law, my daughter, and I took all the wet out. It probably cost, I don't know, $20,000, but we had to do it. You know, we did it. And, you know, I'm trying to maneuver all these things and there's roadblock after roadblock. FEMA is great if you had two feet of water in your basement. Fabulous. SBA, I've been wrangling with them for five months. I have to go into debt to find a place to live. Oh, and I was a FEMA trailer. I think I already said that. I waited, waited, waited, waited some more. They call every week and say, do you still want a trailer? You want to go to Braintree? No, you can't get there from here. I had to explain that whole thing to a FEMA person in Euclid, Texas. I'm over the trauma from the flood. My trauma now is everything that has come after it. Denial, denial, denial. Different stories from different people. It's been a nightmare. I kind of lost my thoughts here, but this is what's happening. We can't wait any longer. We can't put this off until you guys decide, you know, oh, what's the best thing? You know, the governor wants all kinds of studies. Are you kidding me? You're going to push this out for another how many years? A buyout takes three to five years. Ask Josh.  So if you could wrap it up, that'd be good. Thank you. Ten seconds, literally. I think this shed some light on the emergency of the flood displaced, but it also should shed some light on how long you've neglected the unhoused. Anyone else here in the room would like to be heard on this topic. Okay. Is there anyone online who wants to address this top? Oh, here we go. Alice Silverman. You know, moment you'll be able to unmute yourself and you should be able to do it now. Thank you. Thank you for allowing us to come in remotely and I'm here to speak in favor of attention to allocation of the funds to those people who have suffered the most. My home was not affected, but as a Montpelier resident, I feel deeply for my fellow citizens who are really struggling with trying to get by. So I would like to see that money prioritized at least in a short run for some of it to assist those folks. And that's that's my comment. Thank you. Thank you. June Vascom. Bear with me. I was going to make myself visible. Can you hear me? You can hear you. Can't see you yet. Yeah, I'm working on it. Vanished. Sorry, I'm going to, in the interest of time, I'll just speak. My name is June Vascom and I just lost what I was going to say. Bear with me. I am really doing too many things at once. My name is June Vascom and I live on Sabin Street. There's much of what was said today that I've just really not been familiar with and what state funding might be available. And due to some things that have been preoccupying me, my time, I'm not intimately involved with all the complex issues regarding the Country Club property. However, I feel like it's unconscionable to use FEMA dollars for anything other than what the original intent for the, for the flooding. To provide infrastructure for temporary housing for our modular neighbors affected by the flood who still and no longer have safe, secure and livable homes. People here today can speak to that better than I can. I don't wish to speak on their behalf, but it's been devastating for them. I've heard comments in the city about how citizens have voted to develop the Elks Club property, you know, for much needed housing and that is true. And, but that, that vote must be honored. I know it's more complex than that, but my response to the city's, is it the city circumstances have radically changed and so much our priorities. The bottom line is the cities and dire financial straits and we can't continue to plan for and fund non-critical projects. Not saying housing is not a critical project, but I guess at this stage it's rather complicated. There's very, very many different moving parts, but I don't feel the city can ignore the fact that many of its citizens are an untenable, unsafe living conditions or have been forced out of their devastating. homes. So I asked the city to reconsider the decision to use human money to pay for infrastructure for housing. This is years away when there's an immediate need and an urgent need for our friends and neighbors who are still suffering from some of the greatest losses from the flood. So I'll leave it that and thank you for your time and for hearing me out. Thank you. Is there anyone else online who would like to be heard? I'm not seeing any hands, but it sometimes takes a little bit so I'll pause to make sure you have a chance to consider. And again, anyone in the room who hasn't, we very much do. And those are all public record and if we often people will send an email to me and the other members of the council, you know, by by name and what, but it may not go to the city clerk of the city manager and so I when I get those I try to make sure that they're all in the room. I try to forward it to the city manager so that all that can be collected and so it can all be public record and be available for for the public to to view. Council members, where are we still still where we were before not ready to make a decision tonight. I think I would but we don't have a motion pending so there's not really anything to table. So, so thank you all for coming that we will take this up at a future meeting I'm not certain exactly when, but again, everything that's been said tonight everything that's been said and emails is is in our consciousness and anyone who wants to be heard will have a chance to be heard at the future meeting whenever we take it up again and I just had a quick question actually for the folks that spoke do you have to try to think about if we, you know, if we were to do that, what do you have cost estimates like we have we have a finite sum of money how would that like what what do you all need right now but if you could send it just so we would be able to weigh that against I think, you know, it's sort of, would this help one person with this help to people with this, you know what, how far does this go and what would we do and then, obviously, you know, I'd have to talk with how many houses homes were in the substantially damaged category I think that's is a day thing. Right, right. I believe that's correct so we just need to figure is that the universe we're talking about or so those kind of things if they want to go but and I will just say I don't want to say this just to make you feel good but we are pushing really hard with the state to try to get them to pay for it like I said we've had three visits in two days. Urging them and our reps introduced the bill and there is like I said there is a budget adjustment act so that wasn't even for 10 millions for Barry a mob here for the specific purpose so. And what we're really pushing for is to get that issue for people who don't spend their lives in the State House the way some of us do the budget adjustment act means we wouldn't have to wait until July when the new next fiscal year's budget comes it means that the money would be issued in the current fiscal year and it would be there and so we're really pushing for that because we know. The need is now. So thank you. All right, next up. Continuation of the discussion of our budget and I believe we have our finance director here. Just about everybody here. Yeah. Well actually, before you come up Sarah I know that we had thanks for coming. We had police fire and public works heads come last week, and we have not heard from Parks or recreation and I'd like to give them a chance to to come up and be heard so. Who wants to come first. Alec do you want to come on up first.  I believe that got tabled. So the question I just got a question about we take a housing committee opponents table because there was a question about we didn't have the memo from the housing committee. Right. So we took that off tonight's agenda. Yeah. All right. I'm Alec Ellsworth the parks director. I'll take half of Arnie's budget for going first. See when rocks paper scissors me. I think a lot of what I want to say is in the budget video which I'm not sure if folks had a chance to watch but I'll just sort of hit the highlights here or for you all and for anyone watching who might not have watched that video. But we sort of managed to budgets were parks and trees. And so we are I got the exact numbers from the finance department 2.725 parks and 1.15 trees. I'm not sure how those numbers came to be but that's what it is in the budget. We're $375,000 just for a sense of scale where $375,000 general fund transfer to parks. About 77% of that is personnel. So just like you've been hearing from other departments were very personal heavy. The tree budget is $107,000 and that's 88% personnel. So it's a big, big gap this year. You know, we're trying to cut a million and a half dollars or so when our budget Congress and that means our department 3 times and you're not not quite getting to what you need to get to for to meet our target of inflation. So, yeah, it's a tough year and trying to trying to do what we can to help with that budget. You know, like you've heard from other departments, I mean, we're talking about firefighters, police officers, really important stuff to the city. And, you know, likewise we we have very significant cuts to the parks and trees budget. With, you know, basically, since we're so personal heavy there's there's not really anything at this point after multiple years of tight budgets in our operations to cut. So, what we have in there is basically all of our summer staff and our two AmeriCorps members so that amounts to about $65,000. And that's about 12, 12, the two different AmeriCorps members are different prices, but let's say $12,000 per AmeriCorps member, and then about $30,000 in summer staff mostly goes to our youth conservation core. We also the parks commission sort of similar to how other committee budgets work at the parks commission has a $5,000 sort of working budget that's parked in our budget so that is out of there. And then we also have some money on the revenue side that has come up that we are going to raise through grant money that we have, you know, yeah, so so an extra $10,000 per year in grant money. So that, you know, that's basically everything that our department could put on the table before we start getting to live bodies, you know, full time people who are staff members. We have four people or almost four if you add up those numbers. And we're so we're about one, we're about 2.6 parks and about 1.3 trees. And the three kind of big areas of impact for us are projects and then programs and then kind of the fundraising and development we do so the first impact is in is in projects. So we're, you know, for example, like the parks commission has management plan for, you know, all the various parks not all of them but they're working through them so that the Hubbard and North Branch Park management plan has a, you know, 70 items that they would like to see accomplished over the 10 year lifespan of that management plan and so that's the type of project we're going to, you know, slow down or not do.  A lot of projects are going to be not done that you had planned. And a lot of those projects didn't get done last summer because your labor was downtown. Yeah, yeah, I mean, we had all that labor last summer but it was all doing flood relief and not just our AmeriCorps and NYCC but, you know, all of our staff as well. So yeah, you know, scaling back on on projects and we were the parks and trees department is like, probably like other departments, you know, if you gave us 100 employees like if you said every city employee is dedicated to parks like I could keep all of those people busy.  We don't, we don't have that money, much resources but you know in my ideal world we would sort of have like a maintenance crew and a projects crew that was sort of developing projects for the parks to make our system better and a tree crew. We'd have sort of three separate crews, but we know we have one crew and so we sort of have a, I think it's a, it's a good balance where it is, you know, I think it's very affordable for the taxpayers. But yeah, we're going to scale back on that sort of project side of things and just focus on the maintenance which, you know, I think people want well maintained parks and they deserve that if we're going to have these parks they should be well maintained. So the second impact is in programs obviously we lose funding for NYCC. That doesn't mean the program, you know, dies necessarily that's just the city portion of it. So for example, like last summer, the last two summers that program has cost about $100,000, but we and we fundraise like about 70 of it, or sometimes more. But the city portion is important because it's a match. It's also flexible, you know, you get to do what you deem is the most important instead of what your funder deems is the most important. And so that's, that's been really helpful to have that funding. We also have a feast farm project that is entirely grant funded. That is a partnership with the senior activity center growing food for their meals on wheels program and the food pantry. So, losing staff just means, you know, having fewer people to support that kind of program. Similar, you know, events like Enchanted Forest, Ice on Fire, Park of Belusa, these things. It's hard. I think probably we all feel this way like it's hard to come up here and say, oh, X, Y and Z is not going to happen because every department has such great staff and they're just going to kill themselves to make it happen. You know, but that sort of over time just has an effect. So I don't think I can legitimately like come up here and say, oh, there's going to be no impact. You know, it's going to be significant impact, especially looking out over time. So we wouldn't not do Enchanted Forest. For example, like, I know people love that event. Like we tried to not do it one year, like five or six years ago. And it was just sort of like a general revolt. So we did it. And then the last piece is the fundraising and development piece. This more has to do with my time. So I think this is really directly related to the two AmeriCorps members. So those folks are like to their full time for 11 months. And they, they're not like a regular staff member all the time because they turn over every year. You know, it takes a long time to train somebody. But sometimes people stay for two years. And so, you know, you have the same person for two years.  And we have two of them. So instead of four, you know, I almost think of like we have six people and that allows us to do kind of two things at once. Like for example, any tree job that we do takes three people, ideally four people because you know, you're directing traffic, you're dealing, you need a ground person, somebody in the tree, people operating different pieces of equipment. And so if we have six people, we can have a tree crew. We can have somebody doing basic maintenance stuff. I can be doing department head stuff. And if we have four people, it's like, okay, if we have a tree job, everybody's on that job, including me. So it's going to be a big change going down to four. And the last few years, you know, because of the way we're set up, we've been quite successful at getting external money for all these various programs and projects that we do. Including, I think, you know, one of our big initiatives has been trying to push economic development through outdoor recreation and I know some of you have seen my spiel on that. So having less time, less staff just means, yeah, having less time for me to do that kind of thing. So I'm not, you know, that's, that's kind of it in a nutshell, I would say like I'm not up here to convince you not to do these things, you know, like, this was, this is our budget that we put forward. And I feel like I have to stand behind it. Just like every person, you know, that you've heard from we don't, we don't necessarily like the budget but it is, that's what it is. And those are the impacts and yeah, I'm here to answer questions or just go back. Thanks, Alex. Yeah. Anyone have any questions. Starting up here at the front. Lauren, did you raise your hand? Okay.  I'm sorry, my iPad is not letting me get to my raise hand icon to push. I apologize. Alex, can you tell me if you could have one AmeriCorps or half of the youth corps, would that be helpful or one or the other? Yes, yeah, that would be useful. Anything would be useful. But of those, like what would be your number one to have one AmeriCorps or half of the youth corps? Yeah, so if I was to phase those back in, I would phase an AmeriCorps member and then another AmeriCorps member and then the funding for the youth conservation corps. And the reason that it's hard, you know, it's hard to run a big summer program like that without staff to support it. Running the NYCC program, you know, like what happened this summer, we are two AmeriCorps members like we're in leadership positions, you know, they were essentially staff members. And so not having them means that we probably couldn't run the NYCC program to the degree that we run it. We, we could do something but there are certain tasks that we have to do that are not like that don't lend themselves to having that kind of like big youth group. And so we, you know, we inevitably have to sort of split ourselves up and, and if we have fewer people to run the program or to do those tasks, we have few people to run the program. So I would do the AmeriCorps members first and then the youth conservation corps in short. Thank you. Thanks. Anybody else. Okay, thanks, Alex. Thank you. Okay, Arnie, come on up or come on down. Hi everyone. I'm Arnie McMullen. I'm the director of recreation and senior services. Arnie, you may need to pull the microphone a little closer to you. That better. I think so. All right. I'm, all right. Again, I'm the, I'm Arnie McMullen, the director of recreation and senior services. So I will go over the highlights. And not so highlights of this year's budget. We, as Alex stated, we definitely have many, many changes or adjustments that had to be made because we all. We all know the city's in a tough situation and we, you know, are doing what we can to help make that a little easier. So the recreation department has. Myself and for full time people to maintenance people director of programs and pool supervisor and currently a vacant position, which is our admin person. That's been frozen due to the tough budget times. So that position is currently frozen. But we also have a. Part of our areas that are larger is our seasonal staff. So we typically have upwards of 10 day camp staff. We have 15 and 20 pool staff and typically for seasonal maintenance staff that not all of them work 40 hours, but they make up whatever we have in the budget that we can, we can spend. Just reiterating a little bit the mission of the Montpelier recreation department is to provide a variety of quality programs, community events, recreational service in a safe and affordable manner and to effectively develop recreational facilities for all residents of the Montpelier community. And, you know, one of the hard, hard things for what we have is we have a lot of agent facilities, you know, with our, our pool was built in 1939. The docs, I think we're there at the same time. You know, the stadium is agent and, you know, just in general, of course, the wreck building everybody's seen on Berry Street. And for those of you who are on the original facilities committee, I don't know if Tim, you were on that many years ago and we're looking at that building. You know, there was challenges back then on the thoughts of a new facility. Some of our proposed cuts is we reduced our salary lines. Our afterschool childcare program has been eliminated at this time. Reductions in our overall budget just again trying to help with the, you know, the overall city budget challenge. The afterschool childcare. How many kids are affected? We had upwards of 10 kids on a given week. Sometimes a couple more during vacation breaks. But part of the challenge with that and which made it a little bit easier to reduce that at this time was we were planning on moving up to the Country Club Road site to have the program up there. And then we had that issue this summer. And then we couldn't get the building prepped and ready in time for the school season. So we kind of lost an opportunity to do with that. And we said this will be a good year to try to work our way back towards that. But there was a huge value with that program. And the thing that's nice is we were also a licensed program like our summer day camp is also licensed. So you're eligible for childcare subsidy and also quite a few grants that are out there that you can you can get for childcare. And another continue challenge of hiring seasonal staff. That's another challenge that we've had the last few years. Years ago, I was telling somebody that when we did our day camp bad for summer staff, I'd have 60 people apply for summer camp jobs and another 60 for the pool. But it seems like it's getting more and more challenging with the youth of applying for some of these positions. So those are areas we continue to work on and to try to recruit kids to come out. So again, along with our challenges, you know, with staff reductions, budget limitations and meeting indoor recreational needs. Right now we pretty much only have the recreation center and we are trying to work on developing the use up at the country club road site. We got some work to do up there, but funds are really tight to even prep that space. And then for those of you who might have noticed the dog river fields, we had them pretty recovered, but going into the fall and we got hit with another flood. So, but I was telling somebody that's why they're athletic fields because you can't build on them. So we'll drag them out and add some more grass seed, hopefully. So opportunities going forward as, you know, planning, planning to talk about more about the future of the country club road site development to see if there's an interest and people wanting to see a future community center up there, working to develop more programs and special events. And, and this was also part of the community engagement for the future of country club road. So, so those are some of our challenges, recreations always, always tough. Everybody wants, you know, everything. And we try to do as much as we can.  It's about 70% of our budget. One thing you mentioned, you mentioned the issues with the, with the infrastructure like the pool, the stadium, and so forth when, when work has to be done on on those facilities who does it a lot. Years ago I had two maintenance guys who were one was with us for 32 years was super knowledgeable and had a lot of technical skills so he actually did a lot of the fixes. And then his, his assistant also had a lot of carpentry skills so we're able to do a lot. And now we're still working on that I sometimes will go down with the guys if they're uncomfortable with some of the projects we're trying to do and then I'll help them through the project to make sure that nobody gets hurt or something, you know, goes the wrong way. Because I can't tell him I don't know how to do it so I got to show up. A young crew, you know, one of the folks that is our maintenance staff came over from DPW, who also helps with plowing again this winter. So he helps the city with that so we're kind of sharing a little bit. But we try to do as much as we can in house so if we're painting the pool will will our staff will do that versus contracting it out because contracting obviously costs a bit more money. Okay, thanks. Anything else up here. So thanks, Arnie. I don't know much about the childcare program. Fortunately, my kids are grown. If it is it a free program and if it were restored where would it where and how would it take place. My hope would be is that if we could get it restored. Down the road would be to host it up at country club road. There's a lot of outdoor opportunities up there for for kids to explore and play and. But you also have a great indoor space in part of the center. And if you can and if you get the following, you know, with after school childcare it's it's quite an opportunity not just for the families because we actually were probably on the lower end of childcare costs. You know, in the city. Some of the other programs charge quite a bit more than we do. But we tried to, you know, my goal has always been. It's not necessarily the folks that have the money who can pay a higher cost program where the folks who can afford a program because that's where the subsidy comes in. But it's the people that fall right on the bubble who are like $5 over their income and can't afford a program. So we want to make sure we keep that affordable for people. Lauren. Thanks, just just on that as maybe the only counselor who still isn't elementary school aged kid who's in after school care and it's been so I mean, he fortunately has a spot but it's been like a lottery and so hard do you do know the state of kind of availability right now and what kind of gap this might create for the community, or has it has the kind of capacity of it increased in recent years I know it's really tough for a couple years and then it seems like it got a little bit better but just, I think more people are starting to bounce back towards childcare again. When we actually got this program started it was pretty pretty much right around COVID that we got this started and we were renting a space next door to the senior center and which we had gotten a grant for to help with the rent cost. And numbers were a little tight struggling for numbers, because a lot of kids when we, when our staff would pick up kids over at the elementary school. Parents were taking their kids home. There's a lot of kids that were just going home instead of going to the childcare programs. And I think also part of the challenge to is, as we're recovering after COVID, people are starting to come back to programs again like our, our day camp during COVID had 25 kids the next summer we're back up to 50 kids a day a little give or take a little more. And then last year we're up to over around 75. So people are starting to come back and our capacity at summer camp is where we're licensed for 120 kids a day. And we had those numbers back in 2019 and 2018 we're actually turning kids away because there was not much demand for it. But I'm hoping to see that come back in the near future, because it is a it's a huge value to folks that are looking for affordable childcare. Yeah, yeah, thanks for that. I mean, I, it's again one of these line items that I'm just really sad to see go for the year and just know that these are people who are, you know, the parents that are taking advantage of it. It's really hard to right now be sitting here at city council and take the time to weigh in. So we're probably not hearing from them as much as some other folks about the issues. But yeah, just being in it right now, like it is tough to find spots it's tough to find affordable options and all that so I hope we can get back to it. Thank you. All right, anybody else have any questions. Okay, thanks. Awesome. You want me to do the senior center one now too. Yeah, please do. All right. So, something else that we've got all had a lot of communications about so yeah. Okay. So, I'm also overseeing the senior center. We did recently we've are in the process of hiring a person for the program and membership director to start on February 5. So I'm very excited about that. In the senior center we also have the communications and development coordinator and an administrative assistant, and we have a couple people one person in feast and our kitchen manager. Two of those positions the feast and kitchen manager I believe are 30 hours a week. They're not 40 hour week positions at this time. But just to share in case the mission of the Montpellier senior activity centers to enhance the quality of life for older adults in the Montpellier area through opportunities that develop physical, mental, cultural, social and economic well being at a welcoming, flexible environment. So, the MSAC has served the central Vermont community. This was one I just learned recently. So I was very excited for 54 years. You know, so they've been around a round a long time and it gives a lot of seniors, especially now that we're, or I should say older adults that are have been homebound somewhat because of COVID and other things to try to get them to come in to the senior center and and actually get to visit with friends and we're in the process of trying to bring back congregate meals, which has been a little challenging right now they have to a month and we're trying to get back to pre COVID, which will take a little more time but you know so they are back hopefully the twice a week. So those are opportunities that the that folks, you know, get to have lunch and stuff with their friends, and it really is a nice, nice thing last week we had a situation where we had to sub in for the congregate meal plan because somebody was out sick. So, Norma said, Arnie, can I have the credit card and got a couple meals for this for the congregate meal so we made sure it happened because about 34 people showed up because there was no way to cancel it. And you know so it would have been a huge disappointment for folks, and you can really see the value when they're when they're all sitting together and having lunch and really appreciate the opportunity. Some of our services and constraints. The nice part is the senior center is going to be back to fully restored staffing. So, you know, resume congregate meals, continuing to provide online and in person classes. One of the thing that's made parking a little bit easier at the senior center because that used to be the biggest complaint was that there's a lot of online classes now. So the parking is as much of a challenge as it had been in the past and fundraising and impacts on programming and services because they do, they do a lot of fundraising with the senior center. Some of the some of the challenges that I think we're going to be seeing is meeting future needs with growing populations grow growing older populations. There's, I believe right now 40% of Montpelier is 60 and over, if I'm not mistaken. We're going to have a future space with the idea of possibly expansion and challenges for in house programs. So if every one of the programs wanted to come back because right now I think we're right around. 45 of the 50 something programs that were offered are running. So if they all came back in house it would be a pretty good challenge to fit everybody in. So we're learning from the responses from the MSAC program survey. I'm sure folks here have learned a little bit about those responses to membership to work to increase to pre pandemic levels as prior to prior to the pandemic we're over 1000 folks and membership for the senior center and this year we're around like 750 something. So hoping to bring that back. Okay. Thanks, Arnie. Do we have questions. Yeah, Donna. Thank you. Arnie, when you mentioned a man, a membership director is that person also responsible for their programs. Correct. That is the probe. The position is program and membership director. Okay, I just didn't hear that. Okay. And, and the kitchen. It's not a contract with it like a company is just individual staff that are doing the meals. Correct. And another thing about the communications. At one point when we first did the community service over arching umbrella, we were going to do a communication person that worked with not only the senior center but promoting the recreation and the parks. Is this particular communication just for seniors. No, he actually is shared with the other two departments. So that's the media public announcements working with donors. Yep, getting out information for programming and stuff is his biggest, his biggest area of focus is the senior center but he has some focus with parks and also recreation. Okay, thank you. Anybody else up here. Thanks, Arnie. Thank you. Thank you everybody. Oh, Sarah, you anticipated where I was going. Right. Thanks. Why don't you introduce yourself. Sarah LaCroix, the finance director. And you might as well put the worksheet, or the work form up to share. So folks, we, we spent several hours on this last week and, and we're here again. And I'm just going to throw out an idea to see what we've all got a lot of information people said submitted questions to the. The administration. I'm just just for the purposes of getting things started. I'm going to throw out an idea and see. What the. What the reaction on the council is, but I'll wait till Sarah has her. Her thing running. All right, there we are. Okay. And this shows the. The current proposal from the. From the administration with the. The total tax rate increase we're now at 3.79% right. Correct. And. I'm going to throw out. A bunch of suggestions and ask you to just punch them in as a, as I go. And this is based at part on conversations we've had with people part. On the. What we've heard tonight and what we've heard from the city manager. And so if we take this and add. Back a firefighter position. That's 88,000, right? Correct. And. Add. $25,000 to parks for the two. AmeriCorps positions. 40,000 for my ride. And. Donna or Lauren had suggested. A fund and I'll just say 25,000 for now for. All the boards and committees to draw from. If there are projects that they see. As being valuable and we can just talk about how, how that would be designed. My questions are 1. Where does that put us and 2. How do people on the council feel about the, about doing that? And, and then calling it good, no more additions beyond that. So that would add 178,000 dollars to the budget. That's 1.34 cents on the tax rate. That would make the budget tax increase to 5.34%. The average homeowner would see. The average homeowner at about 370,000 on a home value would see a $170 tax increase. Yes, Carrie. I just want to make sure you understand about this. This worksheet works. So you said the overall. Increase would be 5. Something percent. 5.34. And where is that? Okay. I just, I have a copy of this up here. Right down here. Okay. All right. So I'm just not understanding how this worksheet works. So the 4.74% where it says percent increase. Yep. So that, what does that mean? That's a percent increase in tax revenue. They don't equate to the same, which is why I put the column on the bottom right to show what the base tax rate increase would be. And then what the options would do to the base tax. Okay. Thank you. Sorry. And then, yeah, that's great. Just one more question, Jack. I'm sorry. I didn't quite, I missed the first $25,000 figure. What was that for? The two AmeriCorps positions. Oh, no, but that would only be one AmeriCorps position. It's two. Oh, I thought it was like. In here at 50. Okay. That was Alex's testimony and that's. Yeah, it's 12 each. Would be two. That is correct. Yeah, keep going. Okay. Sorry. Then I have a question about the parks budget. So the FY 24 budget for AmeriCorps. And summer wages, it says it's 54,000. So is that other people besides AmeriCorps? Okay. Okay. Okay. I see. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Great answer for those that didn't hear it. Is that that was also the youth conservation core as well as the AmeriCorps. All right. That's you, Carrie. You're, you're not. You haven't exhausted your opportunity to speak. So if you have any thoughts or. No, I'm going to digest this. Next. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Donna. I don't. Can do me to say I don't agree with all of this, or can I tell you what points I don't agree with? You should tell me anything you agree or disagree with. Okay. Well, maybe it's more simple. I agree obviously with a 40,000 for my bride. And the 25,000 for the parks. But not the other two. Okay. Okay. So I'm, I'm also. I like the 40,000 for my ride. And I like the 88,000 for a firefighter. If I were going to add more beyond that, I would be more inclined to add more back for a DPW position. So the 88,000 for DPW and not the committees and not the AmeriCorps. Which would be a higher increase than, than what you've proposed here. I realize that would take it to a 5.68%. It might be too much, but. Okay. Donna. Oh, I already spoke. Sorry. Oh, you just hadn't put your hand down. Okay. And you want to, Tim, do you have a thought at this point? Well, well good. Still struggling with this process, Jack. I think it. So we're looking at this bubble with this general fund thing and we're looking at 5.34%. We know this week from an email from Bill with an inquiry from the school district, they're looking at a 19.19% increase on the school side. So when we talk about the impact of taxpayers for this. It's not whatever the number Sarah said, that's just the number for the city piece if it's this. And I think to be honest with taxpayers, we have to look at the whole package. We're all part of the community. I mean, it's going to be just huge. So all we're talking about is additions and no reductions here. And I just can't do it. I think we've really got to look at some other way to adjust because we also aren't talking about we need a new fire truck. At least one. An ambulance that needs refurbishing or replacing. We've been told about we know the issue with water lines and we've got apparently $13 million plus or minus in today's dollars. We're critical lines that need to be replaced in the next 10 years. You know, we've got the tax assessment issue that we're going through. So we still get impacts coming in on that. You're starting to talk about abatements. And we've got the elephant in the room with the national life issue. Any of those go wrong. 5.35 is going to go up like a rocket. So the floor is open for proposals for cuts. That's the question is where to start because we've sought some help administratively last time and there's wasn't any in terms of we've got this large increase in overtime. You know, across the departments. And I'm just not, I don't manage city departments. I'm not in this and I'm not feeling. Able of coming up with all these places where this is happening. You know, like talking about the water plant, for example, just asking Bill some questions the other day and understand we have four employees there. Apparently, right. So basically what happens is to run the plant, we have three employees on a sense like a regular five day a week schedule. Same hours. But we need services seven days a week. So somebody has to go every weekend to do testing and respond to alarms and all the things that happen. What it happens is the three people are there just alternate weekends apparently and get overtime. But it's, you know, if we have all our departments working with different versions of this. I think we've got to go back and find some way to look at this overtime and find a way to restructure and that's what I haven't seen any, any help with it. I'm getting frustrated because it would seem like you could hire somebody. One of your three people maybe Wednesday through Sunday, or, you know, a different schedule and find a way to deal with it other than just having overtime all the time. And I'm not sure what the options are in different departments for how to, how to look at these things, but it must happen. So do you want me to start just slashing and throwing things out. I mean, it doesn't feel right. I think you raised a question that we can ask Kurt about. Yeah.  We'll see. Oh, there we go. Monica public works director. Yes, we do have three at the water plant. So, one is these, these sort of arrangements are baked into union contracts. So it's not. We can't necessarily change those without sort of going back and renegotiating the terms of those contracts. So I think that would be difficult to do. But secondly, it's really hard to find operators. It's a, there's a very limited field of applicants. And having requirements to work regular every weekend, I think, would further constrain our ability to hire. Not to say that's impossible and we could potentially try it, but I think they're, they're definitely be hiring difficulties. You know, proposing that sort of structure. But I don't think that's, you know, without going through the whole union process and negotiating those changes. I don't think that's a change we can make now. And Kurt with, with the idea of having essentially seven day week coverage, but not having everyone not having full five, five days a week at the same time. So, is the work there for them all to be done? So, so if someone is working, if someone, two of someone's work days are during the weekend. Would they still be doing all the same work that they would be doing on a Monday through Friday basis? Like Tim mentioned, the weekend work is primarily the required testing by the state. You have to check certain parameters every, every day, seven days a week, 365. There are certain activities that require two people to be on site for safety purposes, you know, working around chemicals and things like that. So, I mean, I guess the answer is we could, there's still functions that can be done maintenance operations that can be done with one person. We definitely would need, we need times when there would be two people for safety purposes. And actually the schedule at the water plant. There are two staff members on 10 hour days and one on five eights. And then the two that are on 10s alternate so that one of them's off on a Monday and what the other ones off on the Friday and they switch to try to kind of maximize basically always trying to have two people there. Another issue I should probably mention is, is just a time off. So there's the three employees at the water plant particular have been there a really long time all about 20 years they're all nearing retirement. And they have accrued a lot of time. And so very frequently we one or sometimes two are taking time off. So, you know, there might be a challenge there and managing that two person coverage for the safety because of the time accrual that they've gotten over the years. How do you manage that are there are there people who are available to be subs for instance like the someone from the from a different municipal water department available to come into sub or something like that. So, have you have you not had to do that. We haven't so there we have an agreement basically that they will always have at least one operator at the facility so that they schedule their vacations around around that so that we have someone there seven to 330 every day. We haven't drawn from the other divisions because it is sort of specialized work with a, you know, a licensure requirement and training associated with it. Yeah, that was a question I had. So, yeah, it's hard to find people and it's because of the licensing minutes. I'm just wondering if there's a way to sort of split a position. You know, somebody who who works three days at water and two days, you know, somewhere else in the system. Now so in the last the last union contract, we added in a cross training function within the pay scales. Really trying to encourage the wastewater plant operators to learn the water plant and the water plant operators to learn the wastewater plant so that we would have some coverage. And it's financially, there's financial incentives so they get paid more if they can do both plants. There hasn't been none of the operators have gotten the other license for the other plant yet. And there's one that has done out of the seven employees, and it's been about almost three years now. One of them has started cross training. Well, two of them have started cross training, but it's been there's been limited interest in it, despite the financial incentives to do that. So I don't know the reasons exactly why personal reasons for the staff members not pursuing that so much but we've we've tried and it hasn't been super successful to this point. How long have we had the three employees that we have at the water plant. They're all near 2020 years. Long time. Yeah. The wastewater plant operators are much younger with less, less time in. We'll stay there because I'm curious about the waste water plants. How does, how does that work same sort of deal. It's like 24 seven or, or, I mean, there's testing and there's equipment that's got to be maintained or observed monitored. 24 hours 24 hours a day or. Yeah, all both plants run continuously 24 days or 24 hours a day year round on that. For them, they are doing, there's four operators at the wastewater plant. They're all on 10 hour days and, and they're split so that. 40, 40 weeks. Right. 40 weeks, 10 hours a day. Yep. Sorry. And, and again, it's, it's split so that, you know, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, there's, they're all there. And then Fridays and Mondays there's less staff. So they do their, they plan their major maintenance around sort of the middle of the week. And then the lighter duties that can be done with one or two people are done. You know, Mondays and Fridays. But again, you have to test on weekends. So someone comes in and does the testing. There's also a lot of remote operations at the wastewater plant. So the their septic receiving we take external solids in, you know, septic tanks from residents residential homes that are not municipal systems. And, and there's functions they do remotely. We have in remote computer access that they go in. I get paid, you know, a minimum of 1 hour to remote in through the union contract again. You know, to check levels or adjust make adjustments as needed. What is the, what is the collection function? I, I don't know what, what that is. Right. So in the sewer budget, there's wastewater treatment, which is sort of one section of all everything to do with the plant. Salaries and equipment chemical costs. And then the collection is the pipes and the pump stations. So that's our staff that works out of the garage there. The water and sewer division. So the same group of people maintain the water lines as clean the sewers and do the pump stations. Yeah, collection is the pipes going to the wastewater plant. Yeah. And we know that the it's up the systems are both operating 24 seven, but we don't have people actively monitoring 24 hours a day. That's right. They're all they're on an all call on call rotation. So they all have pagers. The person that's on call for the individual plant carries the pager. And, you know, basically there's an alarm sends out. And they determine whether they can address that alarm remotely or need to actually drive into the facility to to address the issue. Okay. Donna. Oh, good. I wasn't sure you could see me. A current all your information is really appreciated. I have a technical question. I can't get my screen to show Sarah's spreadsheet and this group speaking. Is that because of her screen or am I not doing it correctly. Hard to say it could be you it could be because of the size of your screen. So, so on on the screen in the city hall, you don't have just page two. You also see the people who are joined remotely. I have the people who are joining remotely down at the bottom of the of my screen. Okay, I'll keep working on it. Thank you. Sorry. Yeah, well, we've got Kurt up there. When I was working with the wonderful tool that Sarah provided. I actually added instead of a firefighter a DPW person because Kurt bounded up at the end of the meeting last time and offered a $23,000 grant. I said, that's great. A guy who offers his grant to get an employee deserves it. I balanced it with. So that's a $65,000 ad by my math. And I balanced it with a $65,000 cut in in overtime somewhere. I don't. I have some ideas, but I think. I think the people who who spend the overtime on a number of the but I just think we need we need to try and manage it a little better and in exchange for DPW it's not a bad deal. All right. I was told that you're. You're still muted, but I think you're Evelyn's unmuting you or letting you unmute yourself. There you go. Okay. Thank you, Jack. Mr. Mayor. So I am not comfortable with all this additions because when we start our budget process we discuss that it will be a tough year and we will be talking about cuts. So we should be very careful and conservative with our budget. Now we are going back and adding more than we ask from city because we ask them, can you show us cuts, right? How can you reduce the burden on residents? Now we are adding more. So. I don't know what to do about this thing if I need to add something I love to see bridge support there. But I don't want to do this without finding another financial resource to support that 9600. So that's my personal opinion. I'm not comfortable with additional items. We just put it there and make the tax increase higher. Thank you. Okay. Thanks. Yeah, Carrie. I had another question for Kurt. He's still here. Another question for Kurt, just to follow up to what Sal had just said about a grant possibility and that would, is it realistic that we could add a DPW position back in for only 65,000 instead of 88,000? Or is that, I mean, yeah, could we count on that? Tell me about that. Right. So that grant is related to the municipal roads general permit and there's funding to support compliance with that through what's called municipal aid grant and aid program. And basically every single year we've applied, we've gotten the money and what you do is offset the work. You're in kind match. And you can basically do the work in house and then get paid, your staff gets paid to do that improvement. So it's things like ditching or stabilizing stormwater outfalls. Basically in areas as long as it's connected to a discharge point within the river. And we've budgeted for 50%. You know, half of the grant total amount that we're eligible for. And that's already in the budget. And, you know, my comment was that we could, I would feel comfortable sort of committing if we had our full staff to doing that full in-house work. I mean, we'll try regardless. It's just, I'm not sure exactly what the staffing impacts are going to be. But, you know, one alternative and I know this is a really difficult budget year. And I'm a little reluctant to say it, but if we do, if the council does decide to not fund that public works position. And I think that's what we're going to be doing. And I think that's what we're going to be doing. And I think the mayoral had suggested at one of the meetings to hold it vacant per year and sort of see where we land with things. And, you know, I could get behind that. That's much better to me than deciding that we're going to cut this position permanently. I don't see this as a question of cutting any position permanently. I don't think there's anything magic about saying department X gets 16 department Y gets 11 department. It's just that, what are we, who are we hiring? How many people are we hiring for the money that we have in a given year? But I would, the city manager sent all the members of the council a memo that was very useful. It said that we can't think of this as saying, well, we get through this one year and we're going to be able to spring back to what we have thought of as normal operations because I don't think that the funding is going to be there in one year to go back to everything we were spending before. But that doesn't mean we aren't holding the idea that we would, that all the department heads think they should. Even if you can manage the work we're asking you to do with the cuts that are in the proposed budget, I don't. All the department heads think that they would provide better service and more services. If you had those additional positions. I feel like you're not looking at the whole. I mean, why are you still, how are we going to pay for the other equipment we need to buy? It's almost like we're making a decision. That we know isn't a complete decision in this budget process and I don't, I think that's a disservice to our community. You know, just kind of my list of looking through and we know there's places that we're bleeding money. And seem to just accept that and not even try to put a bandaid on it. And as I mentioned last time, even district heat is we've got to find a way to tighten this baby up if we're losing $200,000 a year. I mean, based on the numbers we've got on the table tonight, that one item is more than all the items you're talking about for dishes. I haven't seen a breakout in the parking fund, but is that holding its own bill or is that business. The funding fund ended up head last year. This year, you know, it's a little unknown. We are short some revenue related to the flooding, but we're monitoring it. And to make sure we come out. Thanks. I'm seeing a lot of people parked on the streets now it's hard. It's hard to find a parking space again, which. Which is a good thing because most of those people are putting money in their meters. So it comes down to either adjusting the services we're offering or also looking at some of our infrastructure overhead. You know, and back to the country club, you know, I think I've envisioned that and we haven't all had the discussion and agreed so it's just my thoughts at the moment but assuming that we would, even if we sold it, we would sell the local pieces. Due to developer to get them to create kind of housing we're hoping for our community to get it to the point though where that's going to have to happen is going to require an engineering investment that for whatever reason in this process we have chosen not to make. And I'm baffled at that but so at this point now we're at a place where we've got this piece of land we haven't done our basic homework yet.  I think we're going to have to keep pouring money into it to get it to a place, maybe down the road where it will produce what we want it to, which in good times you can play that game. But looking at these numbers they're just so daunting. I'm not seeing seeing enough daylight at the end of the tunnel to go through that. The question is, we have 3 million in it, plus the money we have in it to carry it ever since an investment we've made so far. Can we sell it for that? I'm not sure. But I think that's something we have to look at, because it's going to keep costing us even more money. It's not going to generate revenue. Or certainly enough to carry that investment. And then the other pieces direct department on very street that's another one we're looking at spending a large amount of capital in and community investment. But again, there may be a time when you sit back and say, it's just not in our short term or medium term plan, and what it's going to cost to carry it or have it be a non producing piece that's more of a liability. Maybe we've got to look at selling that also. So with these you also have in addition to hopefully some capital coming back and you'd also have reduced costs for whatever we're paying to maintain and carry these properties. So if you need a suggestion for a cat, those would be two and I think a third would be I'm still trying to sort out this and understand the VC three contract for technology. It looks like it's gone up substantially since it was initially done. It's a five year contract. And maybe it's perfectly wonderful. I don't know, but it's certainly it's enough money that it should be looked at and because of the increases we've seen with them. They need to know we're considering this because it seems like it's up for renewal in 25. Is there someone who can talk about that? Either Kelly or Sarah can talk about it. I can speak to VC three a bit. Including saying what it is because there are people watching the meeting probably who don't know. So they're the company we contract with for our IT services and our hardware services. We don't have any internal IT staff. And all of our IT infrastructure is very old. And so they help maintain that right now. You know, we'd like to move and improve that. But right now we're at a bandaid fixed point based on what we are able to pay for these services. They handle the day to day IT their tech support. They also manage the servers, all of our equipment. In addition to laptops that other pieces of equipment that we operate city functions on. They are aware of the situation we are currently in with this budget. In my discussions with them, I was able to get them to lock in at. 25,000 a month. And I know that that seems like a lot, but our bills are running. Higher than that around 30,000 a month in order to provide the services for all of the city staff and our equipment. And that's just to maintain. And it would cost significantly more for us to have internal IT staff as well as. The upgrading servers and this way we're migrating to the cloud. Which gives us more bandwidth and keeps us in a better position next time we flood. To be able to continue to operate the city. Yeah. You know, we've looked at this as scarce that we, we had, we had this done internally and we contracted it out thinking it was, and I think we still agree that it was the way to go. And, and that, that was a change, but you know, they handle everything even from, you know, when we get public records requests, sometimes that are voluminous, we have to, we have to get big sorts. And those kinds of things. So they are really the person we call. I mean, some of the stuff we can figure out. I don't know, but if there's anything goes on and includes the cost of the actual equipment. So that's, it's their technical services and equipment itself. Thanks. Does that answer your questions or do we look at. When we have it have it up for contract, do we look at the alternative contractors as a possibility? Yeah, I mean, when our contract comes up, we would put out an RFP to solicit other bids to see what was competitive and where we would be best to served. So that is that would be what would happen. Thanks. So, is this. Uh, technology on the technology tab. Of the budget, the technology professional services is that VC 3 or is that that's VC 3 and it's at 325. You just said 300. Is it. Is it 325 or 300. Um, what it's in there is correct. So in, in addition to the services, they provide based at the 25 per month, there are other costs for licenses like Adobe. That are run through that account. So it is, it is VC 3 and then the other recurring licenses that we need to perform our functions. Okay. I think I want to add to this and I know Tim and I talked about this a little bit, but. You know, we think most of us. Think of our it and we think about our office laptop that I, you know, at some point, I hope council can take a look at the water plan and the sewer plan and police department. And there's some very advanced it that's being run. It's not just. You know, our email and those kind of things. So there's data systems is Kurt said, you know, we have systems that. Call people out remotely when there's a problem with people monitoring the systems monitoring the levels of chemicals and, you know, the basic health we have tracking all of our. You know, criminal records and records interaction records fire. So. We have advanced it needs they're not just. Off a general office use that some of us sitting around this table might be more familiar. Yeah, so how difficult is it just to switch an IT provider? It's not, it's not particularly pleasant. I imagine. I don't know the answer to that my guess would be that no, it would not be particularly pleasant. But you know, if. Depending on the level of services and the price point that would be what we would do because it would be what was in the best interest of taxpayers. So you negotiated them down to 300. What, what did they want? So the bills run around so that would be what they would have come in at. But, you know, I explained to them the budget position we were in. And so I am doing everything I can to reduce the services in addition to the 25,000, but it's difficult to make a dent given our needs. Nice work on that. Nice to get him to go. Yeah, you know, when I explained that we would be cutting positions and people, it was our rep was really great about explaining that to management. And in addition to for this budget, I actually got them to lock in that 25,000 in the current fiscal year from this point forward. So I'm hoping we can save some money there too. So you see our bills were running 30. It's not a flat contract. They, they, it's sort of an itemized bill for. Yeah, different numbers of users and different levels of programs. So it's not, it's not like a standard flat fee. There are significant number of lines that go into the bill. Yeah, so, so is there are there expenses that that recur that. That can be altered in some way or modified or fixed or is it just things are breaking down and. They're holding it together. Yes, a lot of it is that there are things we can reduce internally. We're working to clean up server space to consolidate servers and as the more we can move and consolidate our different line items that can come off of the bill. So that's something I'm working with them to do. Was any of this affected by the flood. No, no, and they, I mean, they gave a lot of time to us that they did not bill us to get us back up and running from the flood and they were a really great partner with that. Thanks. So, and you might have answered this. In some of the emails and I didn't catch it does. Does our telecom run off this also or they is that part of this. Like the phone service. No, Kelly saying no, okay. Okay. Um, it is 832. So it's time for our 10 minute break. We'll be back in at approximately 842. We've been through a round of questions and discussions from council members. I want to open it up for questions or comments from the public. Obviously we're not done with any of this yet. Yes. Just, there were some comments and questions and issues raised that I kind of are taking notes and wanted to just give a couple of answers and also some clarification on some things. Um, first of all, I know the council knows this, but just for the general public to understand, we did meet as a team out the end of the last meeting and I think we all agree, you know, our leadership team and we, we, you know, that's where we caution the council that this, as many people know, we've got future costs coming. We're going to probably have to add our capital and equipment budget next year as well. And, you know, so we have these issues we need to deal with. So we're not necessarily in a position where suddenly our revenues are going to come back and everything's going to be great. We have to, this is a longer term solution. That said, it was the pretty much unanimous consensus of the team. And again, obviously you are the council, you can do what you want, but that if there was going to be an add back, we strongly recommend that it be the firefighter position. And the reason for that is we believe that the police has been functioning at 16 for some period of time. And they've shown they can do it, they can function better at 17, but they're functioning at 16. DPW has been functioning down to, this would put one of them back. It's possible we could do some other reallocations, we believe, but we believe we can get the basic functions of the job done with DPW. With fire, they are at 17 and it would be disruptive. And to at least the way they are set up now, I think our thought was that should be filled. We will be having a new chief at some point, let them see and work with the staff and figure where they can come up and deal with that. So just to be clear, that was where the staff was at and we did also call out the park's need. A couple of other things. One, there was a little talk about cross-training at DPW. I just want to say that some of these conversations have been held many, many times over many years in this room and everybody starts where they start. But DPW at one point had completely separate crews for sewer, water and roads. Then eventually the sewer and water got merged into just one group of both. And then the street department got shrunk and if you look over history, their department was shrunk by like 10, 15 people over the years. And so now they do work, the water and sewer people plow with the streets. So there is a lot of cross-training. The specialized licensed positions are a little different, but they're not the bulk of people. So I just want people, we are talking about some good questions here, but I want people to understand that we have folks that do multiple things. Our fire department is fire and ambulance, our police, we are doing a lot of things that are consolidations of services. You know, you heard Arnie speaking today as rec and seniors. That was a change we just made this year to try to be more efficient in certain areas. The other thing was overtime.  And I just want to respond to some of the questions and you've heard me say this before, but part of it was we were spending it anyway now. We're just budgeting for it correctly. And we have had wage increases because of staff shortages. So that has increased it. But the other question, and I think this is to Tim's point, and we had this conversation the other day, so I don't feel like I'm, I hope I'm not blindsided to you. But when this, because I want to make sure we are being helpful to you and when we were, when you were asking questions about reducing overtime and what can and can't be done, I think the answers you were getting were that it can't be done if you expect the same level of service that you're getting.  It's not a good practice to have one at night. You know, that's not a good idea. You know, our fire responses, the ambulance responses are based on having adequate people to respond and also to handle a second call if it should come in. You know, if we could make a decision says we're only going to handle one call at a time and everything else is, is mutual aid. Well, then we have, you know, that's delayed service. That's a change that's, you know, but so when you're hearing people say this is how it works with overtime. It's how it works for us to deliver the services that we deliver the way, you know, in a way that we're doing it, that people get what they're going to do. So if, and, and it is part of the structure, people when you have 24 hour departments, people need to be there. Somebody's gone, someone else has to come in. And that's just that is the way it is. It's not, you know, in the office somebody's out that day, we're just out that day.   Fire, police, they, they have to cover that shift or at least the overnight portions of it. And, you know, DPW and the snow comes, we don't say, hey, wait till seven o'clock, we'll start plowing. We know we could cut over time. But I don't think people would go for that. We're trying to be helpful. We understand that is a big number. We're looking at it as well. It, you know, we did knock it down in our budget process as well. And we are working with our teams to try to figure out how to make that work. So when we talk about cutting a sum of money, we could do that. But I think we would have to be with eyes wide open. That could also mean people won't get what they're getting now. And you would probably want to know that before we made any final decisions where that came from. And we'd be interested in knowing where, where that would be that you were interested in that. So, covered IT. Oh, one other question that was raised about engineering for the country club road process. And those costs. And I think, you know, as I told you when I presented the budget that this is the same thing. We did take the 250,000 that was in the budget last year out of the budget. Some of the councils adopted the actionable master plan. And so that is what's going on. And the plan was to use some of the least proceeds for the engineering and the TIF preparation of those kind of work that we need. So if we're going to do something different with that money, just understand that is leaving us that that is a resource that that's where that was coming from. And I think if you go back to the presentation, you'll remember that I said that. So that's it. That's those are sort of my cleanup stuff. I'm happy to use them more when we're done. Thanks, Bill. So, yeah, now I want to open the floor to members of the public to ask questions or or make some comments keeping in mind the three minute time limit and Steve looks like you're up. I don't know if I can do it in three minutes, but you haven't asked anybody else to do. I want to correct what Fraser just said the council adopted. No, the council is me. Yeah. Mr Fraser just accepted its first amendment. I can call whatever I want. The council adopted did not adopt. They accepted the actionable master plan and they even proposed to rename it because it is not what we've agreed to pursue. So that's the type of manipulation that I'm really sick and tired of the council did not adopt the actionable master plan. I go back and read the recordings if you need to.  We're going to keep that open. There was some talk of restructuring or keep using keeping that plate that position vacant as chief gallons or tires. Is that the position that you're now replacing or backfilling by adding the firefighter or is that a lower cost position? I'm confused about that. I'm concerned about the proposed 300 to 360,000 IT. How much documentation is going on so that we would be prepared to go out to bid for another vendor in the future at the end of this contract? Because if we're not, I know that there's free service funded service from the computer information security administration, especially regarding to security of water plants. A lot of water plants are vulnerable and they've provided some free service. But if we're not documenting every system, every piece of equipment, the frequency of maintenance, you know, the frequency of password changes to factor authentication. We are setting ourselves up to be hostage to that vendor forever or indefinitely. So we need to be insisting upon and checking that documentation to make sure we're getting it. Same with your city manager. He needs to be documenting everything he's got in his head so that we can start hiring a new city manager, start a search for and have a base of files to acquaint and qualify a new city manager. So we're making the decisions of what uses are going to go on presently at the Elks Club. I hear the childcare is assuming it's in there. Or what's Parks Department's obligation for mowing those lawns? I mean, it seems like the decisions are being made without the council weighing their effects or consciously agreeing to. And I think that's improper. This chamber needs work with its AV. We need potentially automatic microphone gating so that we can dim the unused mics and open, promptly open the mic where people speaking. We're missing a lot of the first sentences that people are talking because it's not getting into the PA. How much is left from the 50,000 we budgeted for a website upgrades?  And it's impossible to use and for the city manager to say it's on the web. It's on the internet. It's just absurd. That website needs to be top top to bottom. Thank you, Mr. Whitaker, your three minutes are up. Come on up. Hi, my name is Dee Dee Brush. I live in Montpelier. I have a couple of questions about two staff positions, which I'm not very clear about what their scope is and how important they are, particularly given this budget year. One being the communications director, which I would think might be able to be covered by the city manager's office, which has, I believe, three employees. I hope I have that right. And the other one is a sustainability director, which I understand that in this time of climate change is very important. But I also understand that it may not be the time for us to be investing whatever that salary is. And I don't have the numbers. So I'm speaking a little bit off the top of my head, which I hope you'll excuse. But I think that to Councilman Heaney's point, I just don't understand whether there's been a very thorough look at the city administration and its costs. I think it's very big, and I think we are all going to be hit with an extraordinary tax increase. And I don't know if there's been a rigid enough examination, and I hope it will be. It's sort of a question. I'm not sure if there's a response from any of you on either of those. Yeah, we can provide a response. The communications coordinator is a new position that was added a couple of years ago when communications public engagement was identified as a key priority by the council. All of our surveying that we've been doing, all of the emergency information that was put out, all of our regular communications with the public, a lot of our internal communications is all handled through that. So that's been a very good position to have. It is new. The sustainability and it's actually sustainability and facilities. And that was added by the city council in the budget a couple of years ago. And their general focus is on dealing with sustainability issues, putting in doing energy assessment at work and getting those kind of things as well as managing our facilities. And that is something we have been drastically lacking over the years and has been able to take care of a lot of issues and certainly in the flood. And those positions were essential during flood to be able to communicate with the public and to deal with all of our building damage. You know, I think just more recently we were talking about 58 Berry Street and this individual had negotiated or had worked with on about a million and a half dollar grant to take care of all the energy and issues in that building. That is something that he had worked with directly through efficiency Vermont. That's what those people do. You know, I would say this about any position that we have in city government in any department at any time. Everybody is busy and everybody is doing something. And you know, if you remove people, we will do less of whatever it is they're doing. Somebody else will pick it up and they will do something else not as well. Not saying you can't do it. But it was more of a general statement. It was really just DDT. But a lot of times people just talk about numbers of people but everyone is doing something. I'd be happy we could explain what every single person in this building does. You know, we're keeping track of assessing records. We're keeping track of 30 some odd million dollars to find money that comes in and out. We're keeping track of tax bills. You know, the clerk could explain all the vital records and things that are going on there. It's, you know, nobody's doing nothing. Am I allowed to say anything further? Of course. I don't know what the rules are. I'm sure that everybody is very busy. That's not what I was implying. I'm just looking to see if there's a way of reexamining particularly the communications. Not because I don't think that person is doing a good job, but is there another way of absorbing that work? And this is the other position I have to admit that I did not understand it also had to do with facilities. So I apologize if I understated that. I think I just want I'm not sure I've heard that there's a thorough examination of ways to get this much of the same work done with the staff that you had prior to new positions. So that's the point I want to make. Well, I can answer that and other people may have different answers. My answer is there is not the same, not a way to get all the same work that we're doing now with fewer people and we're employing now. It costs a lot of money to run the city government and I think people expect a lot from their city government. And they get it. I think people in Montpilier get good service from the city government, but we're not going to, we can't kid ourselves and say, well, okay, we'll cut a couple of positions and just tell other people to work harder and pick up everything that those jobs weren't weren't doing. So I got other people may have different views of it, but thanks for coming in. Sure. Thank you. If there are any other comments, or I'll sit down.  Hi, Dan Jones, Northfield Street. I was particularly disappointed when a small line item was not included in the budget from the energy committee. We'd asked for $10,000 to do a quick consulting study on what could be done toward moving a or creating a district heat utility.  I believe there are ways of organizing it and, you know, so we had proposed this idea of at least exploring the idea of a district heat utility, which we are legally allowed to do and see if there are ways of building the system out in a way that actually could serve the city as opposed to being a net loss because of the way it's constructed and managed. Because it's another thing put on the poor public works department, which has more than enough to do by itself already. So I would like to urge that that be put back in the budget and that we, you know, have a way of beginning to take a hard look at what are alternatives on that area. And the other area. Dan, before you move off this, could you explain a little more what this would look like and how it would work? What the utility would look like? Sure. The idea is a way of organizing. There is a whole technical process where the heat is taken off at the district heat plant, put into the ground as a hot water system to be delivered here at City Hall, the fire department. And theoretically it was designed to be able to serve a large number of the buildings in downtown so that you would buy the heat from the hot water from that system as opposed to having your own boiler in the basement.  We're not trying to generate electricity, it's just taking heat and putting it in. So the idea was that it could be something that would, a system that could serve a large number, a much larger number of people in town, a number of businesses downtown. When the original contract with the state was created, there was provision built in for if there was more demand for the city, there was a way of expanding it. So people said the state is saying we can't do it. No, that's not true. The state is contractually obligated to do something. But we don't have a management system. We don't have a marketing system.  When I was with the Unitarian Church for a while, we wanted to see if we could connect the church up to the district heat system. And Kurt said, well, it was going to take $200,000 just to get the pipe in the door because that was a construction cost. And it was like, okay, well, that's not going to happen. And then I started thinking, so well, it's the kind of thing that if there was a way of amortizing it, like on a bond issue over a 20-year period. Well, that kind of a cost then could be made reasonable and that's what a utility can do. It could set up its own bonding authority if that's how it was created. It could begin to then extend the system, create the system with financing that would go on the rate base for the utility as opposed to under the city. It would also be a way of getting the city out of that $200,000 a year demand for the district heat service overhead. Because we would be spreading it out to a larger number of users. It needs to be marketed and supported right now. There's no way of actually, you know, like the earliest user was Steve Everett down on State Street there who was constantly saying, well, nobody's actually being able to help adjust this. How am I measuring this? What am I doing? And there has been a situation where that began to put off an awful lot of people like, well, I don't want to get involved with that. You know, it's too much of a hassle. So we believe that at a relatively small number of, a small amount of money, which is what that $10,000 was for, that consulting help in terms of what would be required for the legality, the engineering, et cetera, could be created. And we believe that might provide enough ammunition to go to the EIC and ask them because it is a alternate energy source to be able to provide the money for doing the larger study on engineering, et cetera, that would be required to make that happen. So that was where the purpose of that proposal was to the council, and we were very disappointed to see it taken out. Okay, thanks. I cut you off from the other point that you wanted to make, and I know you're beyond three minutes, but I kept you talking. The other thing is, and this is a longer term thing, which I would like to suggest to the council that the, I think there has to be some work done on terms of taking your goals, your strategic plan goals, and turning them into more concrete and measurable outcomes within the management of the budget so that you're reported to about not just the budget, well, we're doing this and we're doing that, but what is our long-term plan? We've got a lot of people in the city that every time we have a heavy rainstorm right now are saying, is this it? Are we going to do it again? Okay.  You can see the palpable fear, you know, like, I can't do this, I can't, you know. So what we've got is a situation where, you know, people don't feel like they're being protected by the city. And I think we have to start looking at, you know, the issue of what are we really doing with emergency preparedness, how are people engaged with that? I think we have to start looking at it in a lot of the areas so that we say, you're spending this money because, well, we're giving you services. Don't you see the services? Well, okay, what are the services? How are we going forward with them? Because you say, we're going to do this. How are we going forward with them? Because you say, we're going to have to cut back on services if we, you know, you're not going to get as much and say, well, can you give us an actual concrete look at what's being provided, what isn't, and, you know, how do we measure it on a monthly basis so that you're not handed a budget at the end of December and say, here, come up with, are you going to pass this next week or not? Okay. I mean, that's a very thin way of doing your planning. Okay, my three minutes are up. That's your time. Thanks, Dan. Did you have a question? I did want to ask a question if I could. I haven't got a question. I was, Alana and I were talking about the clean energy bill.  I mean, if it did, the district can become a pretty valuable asset. Under the state, look, they don't plan, which is dirty and badly run and Burlington qualifies. You know. Okay. Thanks. Good, thanks. Thanks, Al. All right. I don't see anybody else. George, are you looking to be recognized? Okay. We'll take comments or questions from people online. I don't see any hand raised answers right now, but I will take some time. All right. Where do we send now, folks? Carrie. So I really appreciate all of this discussion and the public input and it's a lot to weigh. I really appreciate the work of the city staff at going through all of this budget to begin with. And I'm, and I'm finding myself becoming more, more conservative about how much money we spend as this conversation goes on. And, and at the same time, I am remembering the, the strong message that we got from the budget survey results, the strong message that I hear all the time from people, all the time from the budget survey results to support the, kind of some of the core functions like public works and public safety. So it, and as I'm playing with this great spreadsheet, I'm wondering about just increasing the, the firefight, the fire department budget back to get that one position back and leave everything else the way that it is. And that would be, a 4.56% increase. So I, I would, I guess, I guess that's, that's the one that I'm going to throw out right now. Most conservative one that I can come up with. 4.6, did you say? 4.5. 4.6. Moving closer to your direction, Tim, I'm not all the way at Lauren. Can I just ask you a question? Did we ever get clarity? Like what happens to transportation for people if we don't fund my ride? I mean, the data that we got that, you know, the, all the people that are using the service to get around, like what happens to people? Like I just feel like this is a vital service the same way public works and public safety, like being able to get people places. So is there a way to go after state money for this? I heard today that Senator Perchlich is now acting chair of the transportation committee. Can we, you know, like is it, are there options or is it from me that we're taking transportation away from our community members, which I just want to be really clear about that if that's the decision that we make. We asked, I asked GMT that directly and they couldn't give me, they didn't, couldn't make a commitment one way or the other. I think they would like to continue the service. They are seeking the state. You know, it is a VTrans program. We, it was a pilot. We contributed to the pilot. In theory, it should be taken over by VTrans. You know, we could, we could check with Senator Perchlich and see how that goes. And I think that was part of our thinking was, you know, I mean, I'm sure they'll take our money for as long as we're willing to do it. But, you know, I mean, there were many good ideas. You know, Dan Jones just presented a really good idea that we're in the budget and that is gone because we were trying to, you know, reduce. So again, it's a, it's a service that people need. And I, you know, I guess if I were them, I wouldn't say, oh yeah, we'll totally do it if you cut it. I mean, right? Because then why would we keep it if they're, if they're going to do it? But so, yeah, we do not have an answer for sure. Then they get it. They understand that we've cut it and they're looking at it and they're working with their budget and with their board and with their, you know, they get, GMT gets funded through state, through VTrans. Yes. As you may know, I was heavily involved with creating my ride. So the state puts in something in the neighborhood of 700,000 to the system. The 40,000 was originally what was being used for the so-called circulator prior to my ride. My ride was an attempt to try and make something a little more responsive to a larger number of neighborhoods rather than the fixed route circulator. So that was where it came. The state as, you know, only works through contractors like GMT in order to provide the service. So it's, it's a funding vehicle and it's a policy thing. It was a policy trial. Actually, there were five towns who wanted to do on-demand microtransit based on the Montpellier experience. So we actually set the groundwork there, but it will become harder because of the state budget to maintain the service without the continuation support of the city. Thanks. Donna. Thank you, Dan. I was going to say the same thing. The city is paying about a third of a cost. And those people will go without a ride. They'll have no access to the roadway that we put millions in. So it really was back to them social justice. Public transit. The city put so many money on any of the routes that we have. And my ride was a combination of hospital, it carries Medicare, writers, council on aging writers. I mean, it's just trying to maximize who's on the vehicle as well as who's paying for it. It's just like we're getting more rides to get around. So it really is a vitality issue. But if we take it away. Jamie from GMT is going to try to try to be here tonight. I don't have a screen. I'm hoping that if she's connected, she'll raise her hand. She did ride us with wonderful data sheet with great charts. It was huge. And so I would really, really want to keep this, but you know, I'm also not a favorite, but I'm going to get against the conditions right now. Probably the only thing I'd advocate for is my ride. Otherwise, I would say we're going to have 3.79. That happening in the city. Can you tell us what my ride would add by itself? The 40 40,000. I can't see that Donna. Okay. That's 4.14. Correct. Thank you. If we initially started with a goal of 3.2 and kind of looking at the variables we still have out here. They could take 4.14. A lot, a lot higher. If we want to get back to a base of say, stop at a 2.2 or two, how much would we have to reduce? I'm sorry to share with me. So to get back to run a 2% increase, we'd have to cut about 200,000. And we've been pretty clear that we don't want to cut that from primary services. We defined at the beginning of the process. So please fire public works. So the question is where else in this package can we remove $200,000 and be able to live with whatever cuts and services result? Yes. Like your income, Steve, is there support on the council to be looking in that direction? Because if there isn't, I don't want to spend a lot of time on it. I'm sorry, Jack. My computer broke out. What did you not want to spend more time on? Well, what I said was I'm interested in knowing if there is support on the council for making cuts in the range of $200,000 to get down to about a 2% tax increase. Because if there's not support on that, I'm not interested in spending a lot of time talking about that. Palin, I know that your hand is up, so why don't you start in? Thank you. So why not we have an alternative look? So I think on Councilor Haney made a good point. We can just see the option. Can we or we don't have any time to do that? Well, the question really is where does the money come from? What services would we give up to get to that $200,000 cut? Because we talk about emissions. I think we can talk about other reductions, too, because it's a brainstorming process. So both ends can see what's happening. And I know all the solutions are very important. But because of the time being difficult, that's why we need to do the difficult cut. So on the end, we need to find other places to cut. So we will keep these not very high rates of tax. If we want to check, can we actually reduce the tax increase to lower than $6.7? Yeah, let's see our options. That's my contribution. Okay, thank you. Sal, I think you were starting to raise your hand.  I mean, it's more than an exercise. I know it takes some work. But I mean, I went through the budget several times. It's the first time I had to learn where everything was and how it all worked. And I mean, I found some places that I understand would reduce services. I don't know how the services would be reduced. Maybe people can tell you. I'm talking about like an over-time management. So I'd like to know what cuts like that, what the consequences of cuts like that might be. And thinking about like the capital fund, we cut a million and a half this year. We're not going to make it up next year. You know, it's going to be catching up with that. It's going to take a while. And it's going to take a longer while, depending on how we budget in this year and the coming year. So it seems to me it's worth looking at. Now, whether we get to 200 or not, I don't know. Donna. Okay, I just put my hand up. I thought you were going around the table. Thank you. I feel like we work really hard to get to 3279. And I'm not going to cut more. I feel like we need to look at our city needs. I was around when we reduced it in 2020, 2021, 2022. Ten to forget those three years. We counted after early 2020 because we saw it right in the wall with the pandemic early on. And started cutting, cutting, cutting, cutting. 2023 was the first time we didn't cut. So here we are. I just don't feel like we have a lot of extra. I don't see it in how people get services. We have a good capital plan that is moving along. And that's assessed every year. So I think we're going to get to 3279 right now. So I would rather not spend more time on it. Thanks. Lauren or Kerry, do you have any thoughts? Yes. I also would not support going below the 3.79. I think that a tremendous amount of work has gone into this and a lot of cuts have happened already. And a lot of services are already going to be, are already being reduced beyond 3279. Are already being reduced beyond where I'm really comfortable. So I don't want to try to find more to go below that. Okay. Thanks. Lauren. Yeah. I'm more in line with Kerry and Donna. I mean, certainly I think if somebody comes with a specific proposal to look at like, great, let's discuss it. I think, I mean, I'm comfortable where we are. I agree all the work and, you know, the conversations that I know the city staff had who are closest to the work and the needs and did the really hard work of where can we cut department by department by department.  Like how are we looking at the country club road project like cutting back so that we have no way to actually move that forward. So we're just sitting on what is a liability now, but then we have no funding to move it forward into an asset for the city seems short sighted or the district heat plant. Like we need to, you know, we, we can't, we don't have 10,000 to invest in a study to look at how we move that forward. So it can become an asset instead of a liability. So I just feel like there can be a lot of penny wise pound foolishness if we keep looking for just more and more. So I'm certainly open and like, if there's some great cut that someone can find that can help us, like would love to see it. I haven't heard it yet, but I'm certainly open to like looking at specific prosels. I'm not looking for them. I'm comfortable where we are. Thank you, Lauren. I think you defined the issue of the country club for me. Precisely. We don't have the money to put into getting into the next steps. Um, if you're going to go with this 3.79% proposal, I'd like you to at least entertain, um, making part of it, selling the country club forthwith. And that's a concrete proposal. There we are. That's, that is a concrete proposal. I, I think it, my view is that it's terribly short sighted. But, uh, It's all in our opinion, Jack. It is. Absolutely. Um, you know, we, we entered into the purchase, uh, with the, uh, with the support of the voters because we, you know, in my judgment and the judgment of the rest of the council, it was going to be an investment in the future. We waited for our, our plan, housing development plan for many years has been a let's wait and see if some of the people who own large parcels of land do something to build housing on that land. And that has not resulted in housing development and the housing crisis is, uh, is worse than it was then. And, uh, what we have heard is that the way to get housing development is for the city to control the, the real estate. And, uh, and that's where we are. And if we hadn't had the pandemic and we hadn't had the flood, we still wouldn't be in a position where we're seeing revenue from, uh, from that real estate because we are still not at the point of, uh, being ready to build, build housing on it. But we're a lot farther ahead than we were two years ago. And, uh, and what I said when I was speaking about the country club road, when I was, uh, when I was sitting over there was that in future years, people would curse us if they knew that we had the opportunity to buy that land and, uh, and work to develop a housing on it and, and we let that opportunity slip through our fingers. And that's still how I feel about it. I don't know if anyone else has any thoughts about that. I guess only just to give you a little reply. I think the, um, I think your plans were unrealistic. I know when I started on the council and the consultant was involved and they talked about turning this around and getting a project going in two years. I think the timeline that was anticipated was, uh, in any economy, not realistic. And I don't think we as a city knew what we were getting into with this project. Um, it's going to be very capital intensive to get into a place where you can create housing. And, um, we haven't done the engineering yet. We haven't done t