crazy yep yep it is a little bit and with all right come on there we go okay the witching hour is here so or be witching all right so I would like to call the South Burlington City Council meeting of Monday August 1st 2022 to order and we'll start with the Pledge of Allegiance which I'll leave. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Does this need to be plugged in? Oh okay I just didn't. All right so the second item of business is instructions on exiting the building in case of emergency and review of the technology options by our city manager. Great thank you also gonna start recording this. This conference will now be recorded. So for those of you in the room there are two exits at the back of the room you can go left or right either side to get outside in case of an emergency. For those who are participating remotely thank you for joining us. We do not monitor the chat for content however if you would like to speak you are welcome to message me indicating that and I would then Councilor really will be happy to call on you. Thanks very much. Okay thank you. Item three agenda review are there any additions deletions or changes in order of the business? Seeing none we'll move on to questions and comments from the public not related to the agenda. Are there any? Seeing none we'll move on to the consent agenda. Includes four items the disbursements approval of minutes from one two three four five meetings that will pardon me. Oh I'm sorry excuse me I did. Announcements you must have something you want to share so you will go first. I apologize. I missed the pension advisory committee meeting last week because I was at work and we were having a problem so I couldn't attend and I apologize. I'll catch up with Andrew later. I did attend the BCA meeting on Thursday night. We had a good training on the new machines. It's the second training I've attended so I'm feeling comfortable with those machines now for the coming August 9th election so looking good. Thanks. Okay Matt. I also attended the BCA meeting with Helen and Tim and my first time working elections and I'm excited to volunteer on November 9th and I hope everyone votes. The other announcement and I guess I could make this at the end of the evening but I don't know if anyone will still be up or if they fast forward to the end. We've all noticed the if you've driven by Dorset Street in Wheeler Park you've noticed the fencing go up for the new long-awaited dog park. I met with some members of the committee for common areas of dogs about their concern while it looks beautiful and it does. It looks smaller than what they perhaps thought it would be. So the question is is if it is smaller because of a specific reason what is that reason? I guess that's a question that I would ask Jesse to forward to her team because they're interested in finding the answer and if it is smaller than the final plot approved by the Development Review Board does that in fact mean they have to submit a revised plot or is it a contractor error that can be easily fixed? This isn't cement in the ground. These are posts that are put in dirt but there is several people on the committee for common area dogs are concerned that it is not as large as intended and would ask me to get to the bottom of it and as usual when that happens I ask Jesse. So thank you for that. Okay great thank you. Megan? Yeah I can say that I enjoyed a week of vacation last week and I did want to pass along a question that I received with regard to the survey on the use of ARPA funds which is is there any state or federal funds since we're talking ARPA available to people who had to go back to school you know due to work adjustments needed due to COVID and I thought that was a worthy enough question that I wanted to raise it publicly instead of in an email I wanted to speak it out here in a microphone and I think it's a really valid question for people who lost their jobs or had to you know rethink how you know they were going to make a living they had to go back to school which is a very expensive endeavor here in this country and you know what kind of programs could we you know make available to them or at least you know point them to that would be a great question I think that many people in our community would be interested in knowing about. Okay great Tom thank you. The only thing to report is the airport director interviews we have a few lined up for the next week or two and those are happening tomorrow and we've had a few meetings related to that so I should have more to report on the next council meeting. Great good enough. I attended the Airport Commission meeting and at the end of the meeting I'll update you on on what I have to share with that. I also had an interesting meeting with Cam Louth I think that's how you pronounce his last name who is the executive director of Turning Point which is a recovery organization 5013C and they are looking for financial contributions you know yearly from communities so I met with him I have a lot of information the second is interesting the second largest user of Turning Point our residents of South Burlington no real surprise because if during COVID we offered the Holiday Inn or the Larkins offered the Holiday Inn and contracted with the state so there were a number of people in recovery living there and we have several other spots in the city where we provide housing so it's just I wasn't certain I couldn't remember frankly where we were with I believe I think I told them that we had agreed on the funding for the next year the $45,000 that we typically yeah award to different organizations but I know that different things come forward at the end of the year when we have a little bit of extra money or consideration of ARPA certainly the impact on the recovery community was large greatly impacted by COVID so I suspect that is a acceptable use so I told him I would raise the issue I'll do some work and I'm just raising it with you I made no commitment they're typically asking communities I think for about $5,000 and they receive now some from I think Williston Colchester and there's another community not Burlington so that's yes I should know the answer this but did we make a decision about how to spend the opioid settlement money so we have not and that is actually exactly where my mind was going we got our first installment of that payment this week how much was that again can you remind me 14,000 a year for how many years because that's the other thing they really are looking for consistent funding because they're totally they get $45,000 from the state well I also wonder to the opioid settlement you know the municipalities were getting I think it was like 15% distributed the rest was going to the state for more regional solutions I wonder if they're I mean I think that's really a solution for us but I wonder if they're also talking to the state I'll have to I'll let them know about that I totally forgotten about that but thank you Matt that was good memory these younger minds so I think that's all that I've done directly related to this oh and I was at the BCA meeting and I'm really kind of looking forward to using the new technology at that meeting we also agreed they have where the the town or city in the state who will be trying out a proven technology but we're the only one in the state and it's a like this sort of like a speed reader so you can we're planning on using it with the mail in right and you can just stack them up and put them in and they just read them really really fast and they yeah and they stop if there's a write-in so you can take that out and then it goes through and so Burlington didn't want to because they have a new city clerk and they said oh it's a little overwhelming already for it's a female I don't know her but so Donna asked the BCA and we agreed that we would try it if it you know something doesn't it doesn't work but it has worked in lots of other municipalities or states not municipalities in this state but in other states so it's proven technology and for those of you have worked can different elections it's it's a lot of work do you have something to add yeah you may be lucky because we did pre-processing last week those machines will not accept pencil even though the ballot says you can write in pencil oh really means may accept pencil we had to rewrite right over about 15% of of the ballots oh wow you may have to deal with that on election day with the walk-ins uh-huh yeah it absolutely will not read a pencil in oval oh and the nice part about this is we'll get we always get some mail-ins after Friday the Friday before so over the weekend on Monday and those we open at the polls and feed them in if people have ever seen us doing that that's what we're doing but this should cut down on that because if we don't get them processed beforehand we have to take them to election day the polls and open them and go through that whole process so that part I'm excited about seeing work and hopefully it will and I think the other piece that is I think really important for the public is that when you insert your ballot if you've overvoted or undervoted or made a errant mark somewhere it spits it back but it tells you what you did wrong it'll say overvote in the state senate and then you have as the voter you have the option to go and get a new ballot of course you have to get three ballots because you get all three but go back and and revote and submit that or you can you can just say you know I don't care about that race and just push what does it say cast yeah there's a little button and you push the cast button in the past you know one of us who work there has had to come over and sort of look and and point out well there's an overvote and it looks like it's here so that privacy with this new technology I think is more guaranteed so I just thought there was some really nice improvements that I hope help voters in South Burlington or and across the state because every community has these feel more comfortable or comfortable with the the results Tim yeah thanks so for the voters that are watching right now or in the audience if you are going to go vote on election day what you're going to see that's a little different than last year is you remember that the that the black box has a beige box sitting on top of it that you slide your ballot in so what's not changing the ballots are not changing it's the same type of ballot you can put it in front back upside down it doesn't matter what's changed is that the box that reads the ballot now is about the same size as the previous previous beige box but it's black right it's got an LCD screen that's fairly large on it that Helen referred to that will tell you what race you under overvoted or didn't you know type in correctly and then the the bin that it sits on is about twice as big as the previous bins so that it will hold more ballots and it's a little higher and the nice thing about is that the right in ballots now will be exactly collected in a new hopper that will not be you know badly mixed with the other ballots like the the old system a flipper would flip them one way but sometimes they've had stuck if there were too many ballots in there so we'd still have to go back to the whole stack and find all the right ends that's no longer a problem because this machine actually has two output slots one for a correct vote and one for a right in or if it and so it goes into a separate bin and and that's easily accessible and there that bin is isolated from the rest of the collection area so there are some real improvements and additionally poll workers will you know unless it's some phenomenal election turnout will not have to be emptying the bins so we won't have to be on our knees pulling out the drawer kind of swishing the the ballots around as people watch us wondering maybe what we're doing so it really is very secure and private another comment from Burlington thing it will not do is separate out the right ends that don't have an oval filled in still have to look for those oh alas yeah yeah we learned we go Sue has lived and learned yeah well thank you but anyway so that's what has kept me a little bit busy this week these past two weeks Jesse great thank you so first I want to thank Andrew for covering for me the week of the 18th well I missed your council meeting my apologies for that I was on a camping trip in Ontario with my family that had been scheduled for July 2020 that we finally got to do so it was lovely and thank you very much Andrew a bunch of updates for you tonight one you'll hear a little about this tonight but the climate action plan is out for public comment it's linked off of our website there's a survey that folks can complete and volunteers are also out at Sobu night out collecting input there will be a public input forum Wednesday evening here in this room at 7 o'clock if folks want to come and learn about it and provide input that way starting council knows this but for the public starting on August 15th there'll be a private contractor working in the city's right-of-way on Dorset Street right near Cytermill they're adding a left-hand only turn it is likely that that will go down to one lane at periods during that construction so folks should just be aware of that we'll try and keep traffic moving as quickly as possible it should take about one to two weeks for that to be wrapped up so excited about that my previous volunteer job on the DRB that was a condition for the construction of Cytermill to which was a formally called now it's called Edgewood it's not connected to the Cytermill development which Tim and I reside in and it was a condition because the some of the cars that the 142 homes that are being built will some will access Dorset Street this way and that way if people want to go left to go to Shelburne or right to go to Burlington or to Burlington there it's the ease of traffic so that's the reason it was put in there but the connection between and this is where Paul if he's in the audience can correct me later the connection between Edgewood the new property that's under develop the new development and Cytermill at Somerville doesn't happen until after my memory serves after the 50th permit is pulled so even though that right turn lane is being put in it won't see full utilization obviously until there's actually a connection between those two neighborhoods and I don't believe that happens until the 50th permit is pulled do they have to there's a telephone pole right there this is for the for the Cytermill right hand turn lane yeah and it's so so left hand turn lane and right hand turn lane right so three lanes coming out of Cytermill to Dorset Street one coming in and two going out so there's a telephone pole right there at the corner on the northern side or maybe they're gonna play with the I don't know we'll find out yeah I'm sure that there's yeah I'm sure they're not gonna people drive into the telephone pole speaking of which would you like him like to read oh he can tell me later excellent timing okay why did he drive into a pole no no no that was suggesting he would know the answer Paul can I ambush you with the question we're talking about the construction of the right hand turn lane on the Cytermill neighborhood onto Dorset Street oh I'm sorry Tom's back there and I believe from my prior volunteer experience that that was a condition that was at the headache people had to happen before the first permit was pulled but the actual condition that the two neighborhoods be connected at Somerville Lane not or Somerville Avenue not occur until after the 50th permit is pulled is that correct there are timeline triggers but I honestly don't remember them off the top of my head I'm more than happy to get that to you that's fine thank you okay so I do want to give you a couple of staffing updates like most industries we are experiencing some pretty significant staffing challenges at the moment so I think Andrews shared this quickly last week we are actively hiring for library staff but given that we are down staff right now so this week the library has to close at five o'clock not the usual seven o'clock that will only be in place this week and then we will be up to full service next week and we do have some good new library staff coming on I also want to share that we recently promoted Dave Wheeler to our new deputy director of water resources position which is very fun and exciting and adds our second deputy hire in the last couple of weeks to Tom's team the and it's great to promote from within the challenge with that is that it creates a new vacancy for us so we still do have three significant vacancies within the capital projects and management team at public works that we're trying to build up with under Tom's leadership so if anyone is interested in stormwater positions this would be a great time to apply to the city of South Burlington we are also doing second interviews for our zoning administrator position this week we have experienced the same thing that we are hearing our employment neighbors talk about about having a lot of frustration pulling in candidates from out of state in the last six months we've had actually in last four months we've had two really qualified senior level finalists for positions where they've been offered the positions and have either accepted and reneged or not accepted the position solely for lack of ability to find housing in our region which is a real challenge but in better news today we did swear in two new police officers who will go to the academy on August 22nd just amazing they will join our three new officers who just graduated from the academy on July 15th so we are coming out of that hole and we're excited to welcome them today Chief Locke will be here later also announced the promotion of Lieutenant John Christman to the position of captain which completes a captain transition we've been going through since last December when Captain Mike Gensler thank you retired so welcome Brad Dottilio and now Captain Christman to serve with Captain Corbin in other additional fun news we had our first not so fun memorial service but also wedding in the library last week which is great a new way with that that space is being used on the balcony or something or did you appreciate no I did not and then two other quick things I did have the opportunity to meet with the interim superintendent last week and trying to continue that partnership between our teams she is very excited about continuing our monthly meetings we talked about impact fees some other permitting questions as well as things starting to think about how we convene a joint working group to think about capital projects planning jointly over the years to come and then finally just a reminder we have our committee annual orientation on Thursday night here in this room Colin and I will be talking about super fun things like structures of boards and committees the policies and strategies conflict of interest open meeting law we are recording it for folks who can't join us but do encourage anyone who serves on a border committee to come and join us or participate remotely or listen to the recording we will try our best to get people out of here by seven o'clock so they can go to the sobu night out and fireworks thank you great thank you all right now back to where I was before the consent agenda and we have four items the disbursements and then minutes from one two three four five meetings so we will be up to date I believe mm-hmm approve the the municipal policies grant agreement resolution and authorize the city manager to sign the grant agreement for the Vermont community development program for summit properties and finally award of the FY 23 dorset street phase 3 paving contract to pike industries I'll move to approve the consent agenda is there a second second is there any discussion yes so one question for Andrew in the financial warrants there's a $5,000 charge for gallivian ballistics asset forfeiture I have no idea what that means but maybe get back to me later just curious it was yeah sure so this is obviously through our police department a number of funds that we bring in through asset forfeiture over a period whether it's cash during a drug bust or otherwise oh all of that we deposit all that we don't have to return back to the feds we deposit into a special fund that's later spent I guess through the conditions in the special fund but I can get you additional details on what these were actually purchased for this time okay it may very well have just been our disbursement back to the feds and that's that that's what you're saying okay so thank you the other question was the the chosen contractor for the dorset street paving is considerably higher is that is the problem the cost of oil and to make the asphalt is that the big difference right now compared to what we estimated to be that's that's certainly a big contributing factor to it it's also you know labor costs and other things we're seeing industry-wide I don't know Tom if there's anything additional that should be added to adding to that yeah and and I would just say this is as Tom memos points out this is kind of eating up our entire FY 23 paving budget just with this cost which is a you know it's 33 percent above what we originally forecasted and Tom does mention that we'll still have a little money money back because we did end up getting the state grant 200,000 but we also you know at the next council meeting we'll be talking about surplus spending and and there has been a request to include some additional paving costs to make sure we're meeting whatever our spring paving needs are when that time comes when we come out of the winter so I think it's of I think of interest to the public to know that it's going it's from Market Street to Aspen Drive Garden Street Street to Aspen Drive thank you which is not very far and it's just over 800,000 dollars I mean so people can understand how expensive it is when they say how come the city roads aren't perfectly smooth you know like a pool table you just have to look at how much a cost what is that three four blocks yeah yeah yeah per mile and you know that it's it's such a need in that section too and you know as we always have the conversation what does it make more sense to push pause on this and rebid it at a later date but then we're just playing the you know is cost of living actually gonna decrease or are these costs actually going to decrease and our thought was the it's such a an important paving need at this point let's get the project going yeah it is okay so are we ready for the vote okay all in favor of the consent agenda as presented signified by saying aye aye aye you post okay pass this five oh thank you item seven is recommendation from the climate action plan task force to adopt an ordinance regulating fuels for heating and hot water in new construction and Andrew Chelnick a climate action plan task force member will present that I'm assuming you're gonna give him control do you want me to of the deck you can control just I can tell you went to okay thank you so I'm Andrew Chelnick vice chair of the climate action task force and thank you all for your time this evening with the tremendous support of Paul Connor and Melanie needle and and John of the CCRPC the task force has been hard at work developing a climate action plan that you all test us with and we anticipate delivering that plan in September but during the course of our work we discussed one item that we all felt was so compelling that we wanted to come to you in advance of delivery of the final plan for you to consider it and for us to hopefully move it as as really as quickly as we can and although I'm presenting this deck tonight the the presentation is really the result of great input and work from the entire task force I want to give everybody credit not to leave you a complete suspense but before we get to the actual item I think it's important to just review some of the foundation for the work of the task force so we can flip to slide to the adverse impacts of climate change are already being felt in Vermont and projections are for the impacts to become more extreme we've put up on the slide just a few of the things that Vermont is feeling and a few of the things which scientists project we will feel over the next few decades so temperatures have warmed winters are shorter spring comes earlier rainfalls heavier what does that all mean it means the lake is becoming more polluted it means the maple season is shorter maple industry is struggling and will struggle more ski season is shorter we're experiencing more insects more invasive plants more disease projections are that 70 bird species will disappear from Vermont in the next couple of decades so that's all that's all pretty scary we flip the page but that's that's probably not the the scariest part of it perhaps more important than the local impacts of the impacts to the global community and honestly the impacts are so the projected impacts are so numbing one could be forgiven for thinking they come from a dystopian novel rather than scientific reports the IPCC which is the intergovernmental panel on climate change is a scientific organization comprised of a hundred ninety hundred ninety five member states including the United States and the latest report was delivered in February of this year and warns that without immediate concerted concerted action our car race will disappear coastal cities will flood drought will deplete the bread baskets that feed the world and ecosystems will fail the co-chair said something that just sent a chill through my spine if you if you really read the words and and and what what he said he said climate change is a threat to human well-being and planetary health further delay in concerted anticipatory global action and adaptation mitigation will miss a brief and rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a livable and sustainable future for all on this page I just have a little chart which which strikes me every time I look at it which shows how unprecedented the temperature change has been in recorded history you can kind of see over the past 10,000 years it kind of goes up it goes down as planets move and the Sun moves but in the last hundred years you know temperatures have spiked in a in a very dramatic form and that's that's the fingerprint of climate change right there human human-caused human human induced climate change exactly right yes so to the credit if we could flip the page to the credit of of this great city the council has made some very strong commitments to address the climate crisis starting in 14 with the energy efficiency resolution in 17 with the agreement to join the the Paris Climate Accord and much more recently in July 2001 with the formation of the task force of which I'm a member and the goal of reducing our carbon footprint in accordance with the latest science so we flip the page as I mentioned CCRPC and Mellon and Anne have been doing really amazing work and I don't want to steal their thunder because you'll see the full report in September but they've been able to baseline how much carbon the city is emitting how much we did emit how much we'd have to emit to meet our goals and then translate that all into really concrete steps that we'd have to take to meet our goals and it's it's it's daunting and and pretty and very challenging so they've concluded that by 2030 we'll have to electrify 360 homes each year weatherize 600 homes each year electrify 8% about commercial space each year ensure that all new development is really dense 12 and a half units per acre and have all new construct should be carbon-free and these these are the things we need just to hit our targets and and we need to do them right now and again not to steal the thunder but part of reason why these these targets are really hard to digest is that our carbon emissions have not really gone down from 2005 as we hope they would and we've got just a few short years now to do what we should have been doing in a couple decades and but you'll see all the detail of that more in September if we can flip to the next page then they said the targets are daunting they illustrate kind of the immense and rapid scale of the things South Burlington would need to do to to meet our goals as I mentioned there was one thing that we all talked about which seemed really compelling because it's an action that this city has the power to take it's a meaningful action as we did the research it seems to be a practical doesn't seem very costly the technology is there and lots of folks are doing it and that is to build new construction effectively carbon-free it's not exactly carbon-free I'll get into the details of that but effectively carbon-free if we don't do that if new construct is not carbon- free the emissions from new construction over the next period of years would be about 5,000 megatons of CO2 equivalent which equates to about six and a half percent of the total emissions that we project to have in 2030 so we'd have to find other ways of doing that and it's really really hard to reduce emissions as we found and that would you know if we couldn't do this and we had to do something else that would make the already really daunting goals just that much more possible so again we're here in advance of the full plan to ask you to take a step with respect to new construction now exactly what is that step we're very fortunate that our neighboring city of Burlington has done something exactly as we were hope as we're hoping South Burlington would do and and we're extremely fortunate I hope that Jack Hansen is on the zoom call I can't see but he's there wonderful so so Jack is Burlington City Councilor who was a driving force behind an ordinance of the type that we're going to ask you all to consider for adoption here and if if with your permission if I can turn over to Jack to maybe speak to this slide and speak to the processes and his experience if we could flip the next slide with respect to the ordinance that Burlington adopted is Jack great thank you Andrew and thank you all for giving us this opportunity to speak can everyone hear me okay yes very well okay great so yeah my name is Jack Hansen I'm the East District City Councilor in Burlington I started on Council in April of 2019 and I've served on the Transportation Energy and Utilities Committee as well as the Ordinance Committee and really been working on really been focused on climate policies and this was definitely a big one that myself and a number of other counselors and then the mayor's administration focused on and I think Andrew did a good job of framing it of you know we're in this daunting position all of us really not just policymakers but everyone here tonight and everyone living on earth today has this daunting task ahead of us of within a matter of just a few years we have to rapidly move away from fossil fuels and and decarbonize and I think local governments are in a position to play a really important role and it's it's really imperative that we all take that opportunity and step up in terms of this policy I think you know as Andrew said heating buildings is is one of the largest contributors and in Vermont it's the second largest after transportation and really every new building that we add if we're adding new buildings with fossil fuel heating that's just one more building that we're gonna have to figure out how to decarbonize so we're really making our jobs harder and it's really a bad investment to continue to build new construction that relies on fossil fuels to continue to invest in heating systems that are meant to to last for decades so it's really a poor investment in this this policy can correct that and can ensure that new construction is relying very little or not at all on fossil fuels that way we can focus our collective energy on moving existing buildings away from fossil fuels which is already a daunting task for all of us so that would be my plea is let's not make our jobs harder let's let's make sure that new buildings are as close to fossil free as possible and fortunately the technology has really really come a long way and I learned about that as we worked on this policy so in 2019 is when we started looking at this on the Burlington City Council Berkeley California and number of other cities in California and Massachusetts had recently passed policies along these lines and so we started looking into it it took us much longer really than it it should have but we did eventually pass this last summer and it went into final effect in September and the idea is that the primary heating system needs to be renewable and we gave options to developers of how they could meet that really any type of renewable fuel can be used to meet it in Burlington's ordinance and it's a pretty you know I've been on the ordinance committee a few years this is one of the shortest ordinances we've ever passed it's about a page really the actual text of it's page and a half and the link is there you can read it it's pretty straightforward and you know one of the things I think that was elegant about it is that if the developer can prove that this is truly going to be more costly over a 25-year period they have the ability to get an exemption and so we really saw very little pushback to this policy at all from developers or any or otherwise and it was pretty smooth process to get this passed and you know because it passed it went into full effect in September we haven't seen any buildings go all the way through the process but from what I understand talking to the director of permitting inspections is that thus far no one has no developer has tried to go for the cost exemption thus far everyone is on track to comply so far so the policies working smoothly it you know it hasn't been a long time but it is working smoothly and yeah I mean I think Andrew will talk about the committee's recommendations to the council but I think it could go stronger you know that that would be my only regret is that we didn't get this done sooner and that we didn't go even stronger with it so I hope that you all can can learn from what we've done and what dozens of other communities have done to create a strong policy and try to get it passed quickly so that we can avoid digging you know an even deeper hole in terms of the number of buildings that we collectively have to decarbonize so I think I will leave it there for now but I'll stay on the call if anyone has any questions or wants to talk further and I'm also available after tonight if anyone wants to talk further about this well counselor Emery has a question yeah I'm really glad that you came on thank you very much counselor Hansen for doing so I did read the seven days top story about Vermont gas and the use of renewable gas I can't remember the exact how and I've actually been one of the I guess few households that have been investing in that renewable gas so coming from farms or landfills but that it would not necessarily be what we're using here in Vermont according to that article if I am being accurate and in summarizing one of the conclusions that was drawn in that article does this ordinance apply to that a program where Vermont gas is investing in programs in other states but not necessarily delivering that renewable gas source to Vermont consumers or would it require the actual renewable gas from landfills and farms to be delivered to the Vermont household in order to apply yeah yeah no that's a great question and that's a great point to raise because the Burlington ordinance does allow that renew signing onto a contract for renewable natural gas for at least 20 years I believe is one way for the building to meet this requirement under the Burlington ordinance and so they could do that through Vermont gas but it is really important to note that as you said that building still going to be receiving the same the same gas that any other building next to it would be receiving it's more of a financial mechanism where their bill is or what they're paying Vermont gas yeah their bill essentially is supporting these renewable natural gas systems in Vermont and and elsewhere that are generating renewable natural gas and pushing that into the mix so it's so I think you all should think about if you want to include that I don't necessarily as I said I think you could go even stronger than than we went and that's something to examine is is do you want to consider that as a renewable fuel we did do that under our ordinance but that doesn't mean that that you all have to does that answer your question or did you want to say thank you so I can address that too I guess we certainly could consider strengthening the ordinance the moment perspective would be that there's a lot of benefit of consistency so that builders developers have a standard to meet rather than different ones certainly in neighboring towns in terms of renewal natural gas what happens is you pay for them to ship molecules of methane that happen to be generated renewably rather than dug from the ground you can't trace where those molecules go right they don't go to the actual building they paid for it but they are in the system and the system becomes you know that much cleaner so personally and obviously this subject discussion and you all can we can be part of that conversation it seems to me to make sense that if there's a program like that which captures methane from a landfill to to encourage it and also for consistency thank you yeah but I could just say one more I mean I think it's it's a policy trade off of yeah like having that debate about what this means and what Vermont gas is renewable natural gas program means and how you all view that as a body and but I think one benefit definitely in addition to the consistency one benefit is the flexibility where you're gonna have potentially it's one more way that a building could comply with this ordinance and could create flexibility depending on the type of building like if it's manufacturing or some heavy heavy energy user this might be a much easier way for them to comply versus trying to go electric or geothermal but maybe to jump to the end though I anticipate I think we can all anticipate for the vast majority of buildings the economic thing to do will just be to electrify the ruble natural gas is pretty expensive and it has to be a very narrow use case to justify using that as the primary renewable heating system I have a question I I read somewhere I had did not go to the link and look at the actual Burlington ordinance but my understanding is that only 85 percent of the heating needs primary primary needs can be met and I guess my second so is that correct and my second question is do you require another source of fuel like gas going to a home or business to either for safety if you know the something fails or it's colder than the heat pumps can handle or to make up that 15 percent yeah that's happy to yeah that's a great question and yeah we took a little bit of a different route than some other communities it seems like every every community that's done this has done it a little bit differently some places have totally banned natural gas hookup so the building couldn't even be connected to the natural gas system and couldn't even take any gas ours was a little different is that yeah we required the primary heating system to be renewable so the majority of the building's thermal load would have to be renewable but for backup situations or for some of the smaller uses like cooking or hot water they would have more flexibility to where they could still use a fossil fuel system but they're primary you know 85 percent of their needs have to be met renewably and that really I think is part of what allowed like I said you all could go stronger than that I think the benefit to that was there was more consensus around the policy and there was less pushback against the policy we do your second question of do we require no we definitely don't require them to do that they can some you know buildings can be completely electric depending on what their thermal needs are and how tightly insulated and how large the buildings are they can totally meet they can meet their entire needs with electricity or geothermal systems and wouldn't need to hook up to the gas system at all or wouldn't need to have a backup you know boiler of any sort so it again we went first we went for an ordinance that gave a little more flexibility for developers Jack and I think you mentioned to me then fact cabing rise and some other developers are just going all electric that they didn't think there was a need for a backup yeah you know it's interesting so it's interesting even before we passed this ordinance there was some major developments in Burlington that were that were going this route some with backup some without but the thing is is a lot of alipers and that's really where the industry is going I really believe that especially now with natural gas prices are even higher so there's even more of a economic incentive I think that's where it's going but only some developers are making that choice and others aren't and so I think this this is very important to to implement and pass but yeah we have some prominent buildings in Burlington like Hula the Community Sailing Center Champlain College a couple of elementary schools a couple of the redstone housing projects that that use primarily electricity or geothermal to meet their needs okay thank you any other question okay well I appreciate you taking the oh I'm sorry well I know you're not done I was talking about Jack said Sandy yes please and I think Jack Jack will be here okay yeah will you turn on the mic make sure the light is okay right Sandy Dooley East Terrace South Burlington I was wondering to what degree the fact that Burlington has a city-owned electric utility as opposed to like Green Mountain Power but I guess that's the old-fashioned name for it has facilitated this something I'm my impression is they're very progressive but a lot of our utilities are progressive but I'm just wondering if that has played a role in making this easier for developers yeah so yes it has been helpful to have our electric utility be a department of the city and we've been able to direct the utility to help us craft this policy and implement it and support developers so that is a resource we have I think you all can benefit from a lot of the work that Burlington Electric Department has done on this because you all the information that they did for us you all have access to as well and and the general manager of Burlington Electric want he was hoping to join but he couldn't tonight but he's a he told me to let you all know that he's more than happy to speak to anyone who wants to learn more about it so you do have that resource but yeah you also have you have Green Mountain Power as a resource efficiency Vermont and even even Vermont gas some who are all involved in incentivizing customers to to make the switch and incentivizing new construction to be renewable so you do have resources at your disposal and I think when it comes to the enforcement side that can be really useful because for these incentives that the that the utilities offer they obviously are tracking you know compliance as they give that that money away and so you can use their granting of the incentives as a mechanism to know that in fact these buildings are complying and hopefully we'll soon have federal incentives to potentially does that answer your question or who's there anything yes she's nodding yes thank you great are there other questions for Jack at this moment okay why don't you continue thanks Helen so Jack already alluded to this but on the next page in addition to Burlington we wouldn't be alone this effort has been pioneered now by 77 last count cities towns and now a state across the country including New York City the state of Washington I hadn't seen Massachusetts maybe that's new Jack Jack mentioned that bold or Denver I just saw a great article about about Maine also in Canada Montreal, Quebec so this is becoming a trend to have basically natural gas bands which is which is more than the ordinance that we're recommending tonight but perhaps in practice if the buildings are all electric it's the it becomes the same thing so on page 9 the recommendation is that South Burlington adopt as soon as possible and ordinance requiring that all new buildings have a carbon-free primary heating system consistent with Burlington's ordinance we're recommending that this become effective for permits issued honorific to Jan 1 2023 construction permits and we're recommending to include a waiver similar to the one that Jack mentioned if the applicant can prove that the system is more expensive than a than a fossil fuel system I will note that's a the exemption it has a is well crafted and includes a hundred dollar per ton cost for the greenhouse gases that would be emitted and I would recommend we follow the same format we also considered as Jack alluded to whether the ordinance should be strengthened from what Burlington did and we we think it actually could be relatively painlessly extended to hot water to either require heat pump hot water and that would include on demand solar and provide exemption for hardship if there's a hotel or something that systems you just can't service the needs or perhaps as a building the particular structure can't support it you can't vent to the outside sufficiently have some reasonable exemption but in general the technology for hot water heat pumps on demand seems reasonably well developed and it would seem pretty compelling to us to include that in the ordinance we can flip to the last page of the main presentation then we've put a lot into the appendix and I'm happy to go through that in as much detail as you all would like we have a lot of research on on the cost to construct and operate including some national associations are my that have done the research including a consultant for Burlington Electric that has done research and all the studies seem to conclude that it's about a push to construct maybe a little more sometimes for electric a little more fossil fuel but about a push and mostly a push to operate the Burlington Electric study did show in a particular use case for multifamily multimeter that it was 50% more expensive to operate an electric building than a natural gas building that's when natural gas was a lot cheaper than it is now they modeled it at 80 cents a term now I think it's a buck 20 a term I suspect that study would would come out differently if it was done today but of course it's pretty close right it's pretty close and obviously we can't project exactly where fossil fuel prices are gonna go or electric prices are gonna go but it's kind of close enough that we think it's it's compelling at this point to to really move to a system that doesn't have fossil fuels for for buildings so we did reach out with Paul Paul counter reached out to the city attorney who well Andrew thank you no I'm sorry thank you so not to not to speak for the attorney but understand that the city has the authority to adopt the ordinance so that's that's great we did spend some time some active discussion talking about you know should we do it now or should we wait until there's an inspection or a compliant system that could be put in place and Jesse I certainly respect your your view on it and read your memo and acknowledge the concerns that you express I think the majority of the task force thinks strong on balance we shouldn't wait and what why is that we think that there's you can put in place a very robust self-certification system so for instance an applicant can certify to DRB that they intend to follow the ordinance they could submit you know documentation showing the rebates that they got from Efficiency Vermont or whatever other proof the DRB may require and then similar to the stretch code when the building's done they can self-certify that they have in fact on it which is required now into the stretch code and that could be checked if we get the piece of paper or not if that system's in place it seemed to most of us it's very very likely that in a public forum if someone says they're gonna do something that that they don't do it and if there are a few people that don't do it you know this isn't like the electoral code electoral code where maybe a house cash is on fire right and you have real consequences all it means is that we haven't achieved every possible thing we can achieve but we've achieved a hell of a lot by the people that have done what they said they're going to do and we think that's really really really important at the same time yeah we should put in place an inspection and compliance system for all ordinances including the stretch code which you know is actually much harder to figure out like is the installation behind the wall proper this one's pretty easy did you put a guess for us it or not right it's actually not that hard in most cases to see whether they've done what they're supposed to do whereas the stretch code is probably a lot harder to figure out and you know we we think it would be great to have inspection or compliance system more generally so that that really is the conclusion the main presentation one of the things I wanted to say is that Burlington also adopted a charter change and some people confuse this ordinance with the charter change the charter changes as I understand it relates to existing construction new construction that we're talking about tonight does not require a charter change it's you can just do this tomorrow I anticipate the task force will come back in September and want to talk to you about a charter change for existing construction but that's a kind of a different topic and I just wanted to set that out there so that we avoid confusion so with that again I'm happy there's there's a lots of information in the appendix to find some of the terms what what is the heat pump and these studies and what do they mean and how do you electrify and all that and I'm happy to go through that or I'm happy to just leave it for your reading and as as as you'd like to do and I know Jack's still on the line if there are other questions about you know the rest of the presentation so I'll stop right there okay thank you that was excellent questions by counselors yeah Tim yes you have a question I have a lot of questions okay but I don't want to take a lot of time I'll just throw a few things out there okay I have some observations first right and I just want to say that I think we are lucky to be on the GMP grid compared to BED I think BED is a great organization right but just to be clear BED has combustion as a source for almost 40% of their electricity because of the McNeil all right I'm not making a judgment I'm just saying you want to eliminate combustion as a source of electricity for for basically you know any heating or you know that goes so astute when you compare with GMP right it's half hydro basically and half Seabrook New Hampshire nuclear power right which are essentially carbon free it's very astute that's why we called ours carbon-free rather than renewable and you're exactly right I should have emphasized this the GMP grid right now is 100% carbon-free well it's close it's well they say it's 100% if you go on the website depending upon if there's a extra demand yeah and so if you have all electric you're you're carbon-free they buy credits but you know they with the credits that they buy they say the 100% carbon-free which is great so my I support this concept that just there are a lot of things the questions that we have to answer and and steps that we have to take to get to the point like in my mind you know switching to electric you know for split systems right for all electric heating and cooling is great but I got to have two other things at the same time like for new construction I have to have you know an energy building code that exceeds the stretch energy code because I want a near is a near net zero construction envelope for this house that you're going to heat and cool with only electricity and I have to have a sole requirement right because what's the point of building something if you don't have some panels that are going to help out with your renewable resource I love the way you're thinking Tim so um I think that the studies that Burrinton Electric did and RMI had a building envelope that was probably actually not even as good as what our residential energy stretch code requires today I I believe that if you satisfy the stretch code you're well on your way you're in really good spot to having all electric heating in terms of solar yeah let's do it let's require a solar we have two properties that summit is proposed that refuse to put any solar on the roof even though I'm all I'm all for that you know I think I think these are honestly potentially independent we can have an all electric home and also work on a solar ordinance I that would be great but the electricity already is all carbon-free and solar would also be great to add to the robustness of the grid but I don't think is a should be condition to implementing this ordinance mm-hmm all right so but I want that high on our priority list of the changes that we're going to make down the road I think this whole process is iterative I don't I don't know I'm just and these are these are the things that that rank on me right is the fact that you know we we don't have super efficient envelopes that we want to propose to heat and cool only electricity and we have free solar power hitting the ground around this entity right which those those three things bother and geothermal and when you think about a huge housing development you could easily make a centralized geothermal system geothermal gets kind of expensive so the other question is are agreeing with you adamantly or is this new construction is it going to be using ductwork for for for hot and cool air or is it going to be like a split mini splits hmm I mean my understanding technologies that you know mini splits are are in vogue and most constructs of the mini splits Mitsubishi has a cold climate ducted heat pump which goes down to minus 21 which also seems pretty good for that use case the last point I want to make is that those residential energy specifications are all self-reported by the developers themselves the way the builders right and we really need an entity that's independent to make that confirmation that it was built the way it was supposed to be and meets the code so I mean I don't want to worry with my story right you know but I know that there is construction going on here that's like it's close but you know when I attended that you know seminar BED like five years ago I heard developers scream about the cost of having two blower door tests done because they didn't think they could find it but it do the blower door tests right now maybe that's changed I hope but we need those tests done on every building that's made not multiple residential units but every residential unit you know to ensure that it meets the spec so the only way to do that is to start planning on to get the people and the process to to do that certification I'm on board with you I'm done thank you thank you other comments or questions Matt just a comment great presentation thank you Andrew the reason why mini splits are so popular and and I know the men and women that installed them is because we're pride predominantly hydronically heated boilers in the basement copper pipes to the house moving water through baseboard radiation that's the case in most of New England northern New England and in old housing stock in northern New York as well that's why we're seeing the mini splits we don't have a lot of homes in Vermont and New Hampshire in Maine that have central ducted systems with furnaces less efficient boilers are better but you don't have the central air that's changing right new construction they want central air they don't want a window rattler and the mini splits you could say there's some aesthetic not appeal to have them so however there are hybrid systems that look just like a condenser that you'd have outside your house on a pad that provide cold air in the summer and warm air in the winter hybrid models that work well with a furnace that can burn natural gas propane oil wood that can provide that heat during the coldest month of January when the grid is peaking we're relying on coal to power our electric grid from Iceland to England so there's a lot of different ways that you can go there's a lot of different options I appreciate the need for consistency enter that was a really important message that you delivered between the two municipalities and perhaps that's a message we can spread throughout Vermont because counselor Barrett's point regarding enforcement at the same time that we're talking about putting in specialized codes for building in South Burlington they're also talking about updating the commercial building energy standard and the residential building energy standard in the state of Vermont so when the commercial building energy standard CBs are actively enforced by the Department of Public Service here in Vermont the RBS are not I have a sticker on my boiler that says it met the stretch code under because I wouldn't live in active 50 development that I absolutely agree with him it's something that needs to be fixed and I think it needs to be fixed quite frankly statewide so I hope that there's some discussions with your committee and relevant parties in Montpelier to figure out how to resolve that thanks other comments or questions yeah I would just just say with regard to geothermal that you know we do have cloudy days here so geothermal is a more steady supply especially for the heating of homes and the cooling of homes and I don't know the fine points of the financing I am also on board for an inspections officer I think it's the time has come that we just have to take take that bite out of the apple with regard to electrifying have you thought about other appliances besides the water heaters well people seem to like to guess those it would be interesting to see what happens if a developer is required to use electric for heating electric for hot water whether they'd run the cost of piping for a stove I imagine they wouldn't in induction stoves work great should we take the step of requiring that we could it's up to you I don't in my mind think it's necessary I think this gets us where we need to be practically without forcing that discussion okay thank Tom I just want to say I'm very comfortable with going down the path this Burlington and great presentation for all the reasons that you made and I also feel very comfortable that self-certification process that you articulated the question I'm going to have for staff which picks up on the men the memo in our packet is how much can we separate the enforcement conversation from moving forward with the Burlington model with the self certification process to at least allow maybe for a different timeline on the enforcement discussion if there is a way to separate those two because I know that has budgetary implications and that would maybe look out until the budget passed in March for the next coming year so that's a question I have and then the hot water heaters I'd love to hear more and since I understand from your presentation and maybe I didn't hear it correctly that wasn't part of the Burlington ordinance so I would just want to make sure hope that we can hear from some experts to just ensure that we're moving down the right path there and I'm sure that would happen but with an aggressive timeline of January 1st I just don't want that to fall through the way you decide. Thank you for those comments Tom. That is in the federal bill the heat pump water. Okay any other questions? Okay if not Jesse would like to make a few comments and then we have a few people online and potentially in the audience who will make brief comments. Andrew I'm going to stop sharing this but if you want me to pull it back up at some point just let me know it's just easier on my screen. So very quickly and to councillor Chinden's points and some of the others yeah I did provide a quick memo to the council I want to be really clear because I feel like there is a culture in this community of a perception that the administration is not supporting some of the advocates interests and is using bureaucratic process to slow down efforts and I know Andrew that's not your perspective but I just want to be very clear that that is not my perspective that is not my intent with the memo I provided having said that I do think South Burlington has a history of adopting ordinances that we have no enforcement or education capacity to implement you certainly self certification is a tool you can use and the council can direct us to go in that direction and we will happily implement it is perpetuating a problem within our existing ordinances around other things right now we see that as other councillors have mentioned with a stretch code we see that with inclusionary zoning that's not even to mention anything we might do in the future around short-term rentals or rental registries and that's currently in our in our land development regulations the bed and breakfasts that we're not enforcing exactly so my comment was you know I'm ultimately the one accountable for implementing the ordinances you present and I would suggest that a good governance model requires us to both think through not only budgetarily what that would require to bring those resources to bear but also from a staffing perspective and that does have a long timeline so certainly you can adopt an ordinance that has no enforcement you can adopt an ordinance that is self-certification only as your professional manager I recommend doing that in line with bringing the resources to bear for us to do good governance effective enforcement and education and with that and I will finally final comment and Jack thanks again for being here in this particular case Burlington and South Burlington are very different we have no director of permitting inspection we have no BED for education there is a lot of human infrastructure in Burlington that exists to move this kind of ordinance forward that we just don't have here I'll leave it at that and the good news is we only have half the people to educate so that makes it a little easier and I just to follow up Jesse so am I hearing you say that you wouldn't if the council decides to as a first step go forward with the ordinance with a self-certification but also ask the administration in terms of the budgeting to develop a more robust staffing to determine whether rules are followed that that would be acceptable or are you saying they really need to be in lockstep I mean I'm kind of with Tom I personally would be willing to sort of do it a two-step here get it going and then develop the methodology and the personnel to really enforce it we'll always advocate for the good governance for the enforcement education to be tied to the ordinance having said that it is also my job to implement the ordinance and the policy that you all set so if your policy direction is implemented ordinance with self-certification enforcement we will absolutely go and craft that for you if your direction is look at a budgetary recommendation for FY 24 we will craft that for you okay all right thank you we have a couple questions from why don't we take the people in the audience so who wants to make a brief comment okay why don't you come up please yes please it's how the folks online can hear you thank you and you may pull your mask down so it's easier I'm betz Igmond a resident of South Burlington and I hate extemporaneous speaking so I'm a physician over at the medical center and I just heard some discussion about the bureaucratic hurdles that might come into play in trying to implement an ordinance like this so I'd like to just bring us back to why we're talking about this the not only is the IPCC calling this in emergency the World Health Organization the Lancet Commission on climate change has they've both referred to this as the biggest human health crisis we're facing in the 21st century so I just want to I just want to bring us back to the foundational argument for doing this as quickly as we possibly can if there are bureaucratic hurdles others numerous other cities a multitude of other cities small and large across the country have overcome those hurdles and have brought this to you know into into policy so I just I just want to come up here as an immensely concerned citizen that for decades humanity has been dragging its feet on this problem we have no more time to drag our feet it's that simple it has to get done and has to get done now there are people in the West on the West Coast in the the Pacific Northwest who are either baking in the heat there are people in Kentucky who are drowning in floods literally drowning in floods there are there's a multi-year drought in Somalia caused by fossil fuel emissions from from developed nations like ours we are the number one emitters China makes more emissions now but per capita we remain the top emitters so I know that everyone in this room already knows these arguments but but when we start to talk about how are we going to do this what are we going to do we got it we got us put on the brakes a little bit here I just want to come up here and just implore you to do this we do not have time to put our foot on the brakes anymore that time was 40 years ago when we had to take our foot off the brakes and here we are in 2022 and we're still talking about whoa whoa whoa we got slowed down a little bit and not and not do this too quickly so I'm sorry to come up here with so much passion and you know I don't know what the word for it is some might call it hyperbole but it's not hyperbole this is this is a recognized crisis it needs to be dealt with we need we are the ones who need to deal with it and we need to do it now thank you thank you Beth I just you know has put so much of their effort into this yes sir I just want to perhaps correct some of your phrasey allergy I understand you see this the comments from the city manager as saying there are costs and potentially a real need for and I think that council agrees for any number of issues that it is really important to have this a structure that ensures that rules are followed and I think that's good government and and I I think Jesse would be remiss to say I'll go ahead and do whatever you want and we won't worry about enforcing anything I think what she's saying is that we can discuss how you make this really happen effectively how you put in place and and I don't see it as a hurdle but we certainly need the capacity in planning and zoning to support the developers when they come in and say so what does this mean how do I do this what are the recommendations at least in the beginning I mean I'm sure they don't do that about plumbing now because they know the low-flow toilets work and everyone uses them but originally they probably needed some assistance so I I think the council it sounds like is very interested in pursuing this now or sooner we'll see when we vote on it but but also I think the council is also really interested and I think appropriately so in understanding how we can make this a process that really works for all and it is followed and that to me is ideal not just about the heating system but there's a whole host of other parts like the the stretch codes and and all sorts of other parts of city government where we don't have an infrastructure to really assure the public that we're doing what we say we're doing I I couldn't agree with you more I just hate to see us and I don't want to dominate here but I hate to see this city like so many other cities fall into the trap of delaying because of those you know delaying unnecessarily because for summary for whatever reason whomever's interest are challenged and made more complicated because of those bureaucratic hurdles well thank you I'm sorry I just have to interject sure what you said was absolutely appropriate and for those of you who are here at 630 we heard about the troubles in replacing our one code enforcement officer Delilah Hall who left for another job good for her she was a wonderful staffer and our inability to find someone to take her position because the lack of affordable housing in our community Paul Connor Marlekeen are holding it together and they're doing an amazing job but when you talk about bureaucratic hurdles if that's going to be a theme tonight let me just say that we are understaffed for existing code in my opinion and the way staff has been able to keep it together in the second largest city with a skeleton staff is remarkable so it's not a bureaucracy problem there are not the people to do the work that we need done now and you're asking us to put on more okay that's a fair ask but we have to consider how you enforce that and staff that okay thank you Michael oh I'm sorry yeah Michael and then the other gentlemen thank you all your stuff going there yeah all these things fall off you need a lot of assistance when you get around to my neck of the woods I'd like to comment on something that Tim said about solar panels and just mentioned to him that the planning commission will revisit that issue and it's my hope that the commission will make solar panels a requirement and the orientation of buildings for maximum solar gain a requirement where possible and also counselor Coda mentioned the problems we have that most of our systems are heating systems are hydronic and it's quite difficult to find a replacement for gas fired boilers for that kind of thing but I should tell you that there are heat pumps in development and I believe they'll be on the market within the next six to 12 months and it's my understanding that essentially they're two in series one does the first lift and the other does the second lift because the temperature requirements for hydronic heating systems are quite high Jesse did a great job of outlining the difficulties of enforcement for an ordinance like this and that is her job and she's done it very well and the hurdles she's outlined are significant and they would certainly get in a way of a rapid implementation of an ordinance like this but it's for at the risk of repeating what others have said I think that developers could be required to self-certify to the city that the proposed building projects that their proposed building projects would would comply with the ordinance that post-construction developers re-certify or pre or self-certify that to the city that the buildings do comply and that buildings constructed after the adoption of this ordinance be subject to post-construction inspection and ordered by the city's inspection and compliance staff when when we have them that may take time but at least I believe most developers would comply because they have the same concerns as us about the climate and I think Andrew and Jack have pointed out that it isn't isn't more expensive to construct all electric versus gas fired the stretch code goes a long way to help us in that regard the other thing I wanted to say is you know the IPCC reported is kind of out there it's many people don't see how it affects us and I think it would be good to bring the climate crisis to to a more local environment if you like or view the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration runs a national integrated drought monitoring system and their current monitoring for Vermont for the month of June they say 95% of the month is abnormal abnormally dry which means crop growth is stunted and a few and lawns brown and gardens wilt and you know it those of you who have gardens and vegetable gardens and 36% of Vermont is in moderate drought conditions and which in results in increased irrigation use of water and a few other things the more interesting thing that I found is that a hundred and fifty two thousand three hundred and eleven this is from Noah people in Vermont are affected by drought that's almost 25% of the total population of a want are affected by drought that's local and finally Chittenden County had the driest June on record for the last 128 years think about it the crisis is here we're here tonight because we all believe we must act now thank you I excuse the passion with which I approach the subject but it's very important to me yep thank you yes and after this gentleman is there anyone else in the audience okay then I'll go online John Mosquitelli 338 golf course I just wanted to speak in support of the proposal actually I would love to see us go further I'd love to see his band new natural gas hookups excuse me if I missed this point earlier one thing I don't know that was discussed is natural gas is methane one of the biggest problems is not just we burn it and we release CO2 which is a problem with anything we burn but methane is 25 per 25 times more potent a greenhouse gas and as somebody who did 20 years as a chemical engineer and oil refining in the production storage distribution transportation of compressed gases there's a lot of losses so anything that we can do to try and chip away at the need for natural gas once we get past putting it into new buildings then we need to tackle getting it out of existing buildings and we have a 20 year old house and we're looking at ways to do that and it's not inexpensive so let's not put future homeowners in the position of having to do that as fossil fuel prices are inevitably going to shoot up we're moving in that direction we have to move in that direction we are going to commit suicide as a species if we don't move in that direction eventually we'll figure that out and fossil fuel prices necessarily are going to go up as part of what we're seeing now with gasoline is refiners don't want to invest in the plants they have because they know they're not going to get 30 or 40 year return so they're running on the equipment that they have it's more expensive it's more prone to break and that's one of the reasons why supplies are low it's really pretty standard economic stuff so we real this this is really low hanging fruit I love some of the stuff you were suggesting with solar panels and things like that energy efficiency we need to be moving in that direction because we have to as somebody else mentioned it seems like such a huge problem that we can't get our arms around and it is but there are things we can do locally and we have to do the things we can do locally because we can't wait the feds are not going to come in and bail us out even the package they're talking about now is nibbling at the edges because our federal government is dysfunctional so we really need to do what we can do to try and minimize the crisis so thank you thank you okay we'll go to Laurie Smith online good evening can you guys hear me we can well I want to start by saying thank you to the commission or the council excuse me and also thank you to the climate action task force for great work I live in a decarbonized house that's been decarbonized for over five years we have no fossil fuels used in this house I never thought I would say this in my life but we love our induction stove I like it better than the gas stove that I cooked on for 30 years the technology is totally different and all decarbonized house is easily obtainable we need to act like our life like all of our lives depend on it because they do and maybe I'm old enough that my life doesn't depend on it but our kids and grandkids they sure do so I just want to thank you guys for taking this so seriously and say please act as a builder self-certification works it's not a hundred percent but if you start with self-certification and say we're going to go to inspection as soon as we can you get this ball rolling and as everybody else has said we can't wait so I'll keep it short thank you very much thank you now we'll go to Steven I don't have a last name just a first name uh Ray Gonda oh Steve oh is that your code names or something right well somebody you go by Steve or uh Ray all right that's good to know we set up Steve helped me set the system over here uh huh okay put his name in there and I didn't know it we see your water heater Ray we know what you're burning I am in the basement you're burning water heater's right back there um I want to thank you for this opportunity and for taking the time to take a look at this problem I've spent all of my lifetime almost all of my lifetime as a resident of Vermont that's the last 40 some years in environmental issues of all kinds and on many issues I've spent hours a day months at a time even almost lost my job at IBM over it which didn't change my behavior and I just have to simply say that what we're dealing with right here and right now is without question by far the most important thing that I've ever confronted in all the issues I've worked on this is planetary this is national this is statewide it's local it is everywhere and we all have to do something to help mitigate climate change and global warming so I want to thank you for doing what you're doing tonight now I'm going to get into a little bit of detail on the plan which I think is excellent and I apologize for or my two posts one of which have a lot of spelling errors but my vision isn't the greatest um I'm going to just go down through the sections of the plan buildings and thermal uh they're high the high input actions there for a 2030 target I think they're absolutely needed I don't think there's any question anybody's mind who has been working on these issues or following these issues that these kinds of things are just absolutely needed um and of particular importance is prohibition of fossil fuel in new buildings even in existing buildings as that several have said we need to go back at some point and help those folks either through incentives or whatever to upgrade to non-fossil fuel systems going to transportation and land use Ray let me let me interrupt the comments that we're interested in hearing tonight is really focused on this ordinance we are not this is not a public hearing on the proposed changes that's Wednesday night so if you um would limit your um thoughts about the ordinance that was that is being proposed that would be helpful and then we'd love to hear from you on Wednesday on the on the whole so I'll have another chance you will yep okay that's great that's great um actually I read the plan but I didn't read the ordinance I'm not sure exactly what the ordinance is so so I'm walking with a win here I think you'd support it just knowing you all right so you would support it right when you say Wednesday you mean it's coming Wednesday yes in two days okay okay the plan after reserve of the time thank you very much and the plan will also come to the full council in the future right and we'll probably have a public hearing too so come back again as Ray or Steve or okay I promise thank you bye now okay rosen greco's next okay you can call me Steve if you want so thank you for the opportunity I'm not going to repeat what was said but except to say that I agree with what every single speaker has said so far um I want to make two points a first has to do with the enforcement of the ordinance and I totally support the ordinance and I wish you could go further and be more bolder and and do more but you do what you can um about the enforcement we have as Jesse pointed out and as all of us who live here know this we we don't enforce all most of our ordinances it hasn't stopped us from from continuing them and when we don't stop the licensing of dogs and cats because we can't enforce it you know we don't take down stop signs because people drive through them or red lights most people obey the laws it's obviously a few that do not but we should not be we should not stop this kind of action because we don't have enforcement of all of the ordinance to to to put the brakes on until we get enforcement this is not the one we have momentum your climate action task force has done terrific work I think about metaphors all the time and the metaphor comes to my mind right now is you know don't stop the parade to bend over and pick up a penny you know or the old one I I say a lot but really impacts this one is you know don't rearrange the deck chairs as the Titanic is going down you know we are in a code red situation dramatic action is needed at the local level you have the power to do that you have a task force that did their homework did the research provided you with a way to do it they all their municipalities have done it please please do it and do it with all do haste act as if your life is at stake as someone else said because it is and the second point is I think Jack had mentioned that in Burlington they've been working on this for a while it took a while to to come to fruition I want to remind you all that in in my recollection that we started talking about this I think it was in 2013 2014 I was not on the energy committee but I would attend their meetings and go with them to the planning commission when they were trying to get an LDR put in place and that was you know initially to require renewable energy sources and then the infrastructure for renewable enemy sources and then orient a orient orienting the rooftop for solar none of which passed by the way but this has been talked about and advocated for for many years so it's not like this is the first time we're considering this although I hope it is the last time I hope you take action thank you so much for all of your time and for your passion and please pass the ordinance thank you and we also have Noah Hyman who would like to speak hello thank you um this won't take long I just wanted to thank the council for all the work and for helping this to to happen I hope you support it and I want to thank the the task force for all of their hard work and I think you guys did a great job and I hope this passes it's all thank you great thank you if there's no other people um can I ask one question you certainly may with regard to enforcement since we have our new fire chief and we have our city attorney here there was something with regard to Vermont statute we needed to make a change in order to have our inspections more geared towards this kind of ordinance we heard the issue of you know find the difficulty of finding um you know a possible uh candidate for for this position I just like us to kind of have an idea what would we need to do in order to have uh you know our inspections officer uh be compliant with the Vermont statute that would allow us to do these kinds of inspections um and how difficult would it be to retool our our inspections team and within the fire department well I I don't know as we need to have that conversation tonight and and the chief isn't probably prepared to come in on that I think if we direct um Jesse to develop the ordinance and then also um as a parallel path um give us the the budgetary issues whatever issues there are in terms of enforcement and come back with a plan she will have um chatted with the fire chief and and I think all those questions will get um answered and if they don't we can ask them then but I think it's a little premature now to go off on that tangent I don't mean to cut you off no no but we received the memo so that they probably had some thought about it um you know discussions about it but if it's too big of an ask I can certainly wait that's not an issue well I I think we should I think yeah we need to figure out what we're going to ask them to do so do you have any closing comments yeah one one closing comment thanks Helen really appreciate this great discussion again thank you so much for your time um someone mentioned to me the other day something called the first follower principle which was new to me I don't know if folks the first follower first follower principle so I guess in Twitter I would have thought the first adopter is really important and it's the person that kind of starts a snowball but that's not the science the science is the first person that follows the first adopter and the metaphor is someone starts dancing by themselves and it's only till the second person joins that a crowd and why is that important it's important because we all know this is a crisis we all know we have to do something if it's just south brarrington or just brarrington of course we can't solve it the only way it can be solved is if people start following the first follower right snowballs and so it's so important for us to be the first follower to start that that snowball to to to make this something that could be really really meaningful and so I urge you to make it really meaningful well thank you so all right so I think the conversation for the council is um what exactly do we wish to task um jesse to do and I guess from my perspective I would want her to um work with her team to develop an ordinance I would suggest that we um follow what brarrington is done so I could be convinced to add water pumps or water heaters but if we want to start and get something that has perhaps less pushback um I think what brarrington did was a really good thing to follow or to adopt so that's where I would hope that we would um give her guidance is that um is everyone amenable with that to come back and see an ordinance for south brarrington that um addresses those issues we can always change and add things but that would be a starting point and I'm on board to go with what they're recommending which is with the water heaters I personally I would be too but we'll see what they come up with and I'm interested in hearing back from jesse about what different options for compliance and what that would be my second thought that would be there's one thing let's get the ordinance um structured and we can review that and then secondarily I think I hear from the council that um you would like to understand the costs and the parameters and the structure of a way to um enforce both this ordinance as well as potentially some other ordinances right and and is that right a little a little broader than just the um given our priorities conversation later on I really would like to hear from our city attorney and and our fire chief because I think it is a question that we're going to be seeing in just an hour and a half and I don't know how late they're going to be here and I do think it's helpful for us to know you know whether that um what is it a bike rack where we had three counselors vote on those things whether or not this is you know not necessarily low-hanging fruit but at least within our grasp right um and I don't know if it's too big of an ask could they say it themselves or if it's something that they could speak to I think it would be helpful with regard to my approach to that that item on our agenda if I may yes I'm not opposed to that either I love extra meetings so if you want to maybe have an extra meeting between now and the next time we meet to bring them back to have those discussions I'm just mindful of the agenda and we're already a half an hour late so um I'm definitely supportive of expanding this conversation um I would just say maybe we should be respectful of other speakers and schedule an extra meeting I actually think it makes sense to have some um prepared thinking and an outline in a plan before we start getting sort of single shot answers to whatever questions we might have okay so do you like the second direction too too is everyone yep I got thumbs up for everyone good so do you need any more direction no is that clear enough that's great thank you okay thank you very much that was it was a great conversation and presentation Andrew um moving on to eight and I apologize for running late but these are big issues aren't thank you everyone take care and thank you so much jack um well all of a sudden I just got a cool blast that's why I brought a jacket because I keep okay okay you can turn it down or up I guess and it's geothermal it's all cheap okay all right so item eight is a presentation from the chin and solid waste district on the materials recovery facility better known as the mirf bond vote that's going to be on the november ballot and sarah reeves and she is here why is she here oh I watched it it was good there we go that's better so thank you again my name is sarah reeves I'm the executive director for the chin and solid waste district and I'm here with your um venerable representative for many years Paul Stabler and we would like to talk with you about a bond initiative that we have planned for this november for the general election um we are seeking to build a new materials recovery facility and we want to talk to you more about that in some detail as I promised I would back in the budget this session I would come back and give you more details so next please can you lean in a little closer you have a really beautiful voice okay thank you for that feedback I will certainly um protect a little more and lean a little closer thank you so this is just a little bit about who CSWD is who and what we do um and as most of you I think are very familiar we are a municipal district um so we are similar to a water district um or a other regional district and we are charged with managing solid waste generated in shending county in a environmentally friendly economical and efficient way so what we're trying to do is to replace our inefficient not so economical 30-year-old materials recovery facility and that is where all of the blue bin material that is um recycled by shending county residents and businesses goes to be sorted and processed and let's skip over this one jessie interest of time I watched it though it was very good oh good good thank you it is only about two minutes but in the um interest of time um so these are again a list of some of the things that we do some of the services that we provide and we provide these services at no cost to any of our member towns or cities we don't send you a bill and it is similarly not our intention to send you a bill for this mirf so what is a mirf it rhymes with surf or if you're old like me smurf it is a building where the blue bin materials go and then we sort them into different commodities that are then sold on the open market so plastic water bottles laundry jugs milk bottles cardboard paper etc so we process things that are both 2d so flat and 3d which have some shape to them we do process in a single stream which means you don't have to separate your paper from your bottles and cans next please so I think I've talked with you all about our current limitations um the facility was built back in 1993 and it was sized for about 25 000 tons of material we are now processing closer to 47 000 tons of material um and the types of material have changed dramatically over the years as you can imagine the types of packaging has changed in the past 30 years and we are unable to grow at the current footprint we simply can't go up or out in any direction so we are hamstrung it's about a 34 000 square foot building and you'll see in a moment where that building fits in our proposed new building thanks please and again we are stuck in the 20th century we are one of the the few remaining mirfs in the country who are managing this type of material that are still hand sorting containers we need to bring some technology into into our facility and we simply cannot do that in the existing mirf again there's no room to grow no room to expand and you'll see some photos of what we hope to do the images you're seeing now are at the current facility so on the the photo with the the tip floor where the materials go in from the hollers in the upper right hand side of that photo that is material that's being pushed into an area for sorting the middle part is material as it's spilling back out onto that tip floor that has been sorted again inefficient and this is an example of a photo of some of the the bales the materials that are sorted for market and this is what you don't want to do we have no none of space in the building so we have to sort sorry store some of our materials outdoors we can't do that with paper obviously for known reasons and plastics really shouldn't be stored outdoors either so the new facility will have all of the storage inside which will again preserve the the value of each of those belt build materials and this is the very rough conceptual design we are intending to build this facility on property owned by CSWD in Williston and it's not showing on that slide but the middle part of the the yellowish building thank you over to the the right there the the the guts of that is where the new the old building would fit in the new building so essentially we're looking to almost double the square footage and that will allow us to have additional room for again storing all of those bales indoors we would never have to store anything outside and we'd have plenty of room for the material coming inbound to where if there's an issue or a problem we have more space and more ability to store materials coming in the door right now we only have enough space to store for about a day and a half of material before we start to spill outside and that's a problem in the event that one of our any of our equipment goes down particularly the baler which makes those nice big cubes that goes down the entire place shuts down so this would allow us much more flexibility to accept many more materials so this is again you know talking a little bit about the vision of of the new mirf and we want to make sure that there continues to be a municipal option the other mirf in the state is owned by Kasella so we currently have a private and a public facility we want to make sure that there continues to be a public facility we don't have a profit motive so we are able to really take a look at the fees that we charge and make sure that we are only charging what is needed for CSWD to cover the costs of processing and cover our operational and our capital needs so that means that we can basically float a moderated fee for much longer than a private facility could because they have to respond to the markets up and down we can also take chances on materials that may not be have that extra profit in line we can try to sort different things so we want to make sure that going forward for the next 30 years there continues to be a public public facility in Vermont but we need technology and we don't have that so this is a photo of a a much more modern facility 21st century and you can see that and if anyone has been to our current current mirf current facility you know the limitations that we have we need space to to lengthen out those those runs of material flowing through the facility so that we can properly sort everything and that we can put in some technology that you'll see here next slide please Jesse and this is what we're talking about so adding long long conveyor belts adding sorting stations that where the employees will not be hand sorting anything the machines will do all of that they will become quality control experts so the thought behind a lot of this is that we would not be actually losing any spots for any employees that they would just shift into a much less burdensome job and in much better working conditions lighter brighter area and more spread out next please so this will also allow us to expand for the in the future so this facility will allow us to add up to 40 percent more capacity so again as packaging changes as population grows and more potentially more material is generated we'll have the flexibility to be able to accept much more material as we go forward and we're looking at this as a 30 to 40 year infrastructure build so this is really for the next several generations of remodels thanks please as we talked about again keeping you more materials out of the landfill we just have that one so it's really imperative that we keep as much material out as we can we want to make sure that we're also getting materials to back into the system and closing that loop and continue to support the industry and it you were talking about energy efficiency and and you know recycling really does help for modest to reduce that carbon footprint right so it's 60 plus ish miles up to to Coventry it's you know right down the street here we want to keep the processing of people's waste as close to the source of generation as possible so that we don't again exacerbate that that carbon footprint and you know this will allow us to again process up to about 70 000 tons just on one shift a year of recycling bless you and that 70 000 is the equivalent of taking 52 over 52 000 cars off the road so it really does have an impact of the more that you can put into that blueprint and that can be sorted properly so if we talked a little bit about improved working conditions and again we will not be losing any jobs with this new facility in fact they will just be coming better jobs there will be more highly skilled jobs versus just sorting positions so I think that's a bonus as well and then just creating that lighter brighter area better ventilated facility which is critically important as we go forward next and there's again the the contrast between what is and what we want it to be so what is is you know shoulder to shoulder hand sorting of containers very inefficient many of the containers have to come back again and be sorted twice because there's simply not enough room that is the extent of the belt there's not enough room for the the sorters to physically grab everything and on the photo on the right you're seeing the long run of conveyors that will allow us to to have plenty of time for the machines to do their job and then for people to be quality control experts and this is kind of the key part I think for the council to to know and for citizens to know is that we do not intend to send a bill to the the citizen towns for the for the cost of the morph do we need to that's okay no it's okay no problem I want to make sure we didn't need to skedaddle a lot if we had to so you know we intend to pay for the about the operational capital and the debt service through the fees that we charge both the tipping fee and then the revenue that we receive from the sale of recycling and just talking a little bit about the sources of funds where we intend to to get the money to pay for the project which is looking to be about 26 million dollars so a significant investment in Vermont and in Chittenden County most of that will be through bonding so we are working with the bond bank and intend to bond for about 16 million dollars we also have the opportunity for a zero interest municipal loan from closed loop partners in the amount of six million we will receive a grant from the recycling partnership for about 500 thousand we do have cash on hand and capital reserves to put another three and a half million in of our own money but I'm hopeful that the EPA's infrastructure grant program will help to offset some of that cash on hand that's needed so hopefully CSWD's contribution will be something less than the 3.5 million but we are prepared to have that amount put in from capital reserves so what we're asking is for a yes vote and we will be doing a very significant get out the vote campaign we've started to talk about it on our social media and we've sent down some postcards to eligible voters already and then we will over the next couple of months really be asking for that vote and it's a little bit of a trickier situation this year we are going to have to instruct folks on how to request our ballot because it will not be mailed out with the general unfortunately we talked to the secretary of state's office and they are not allowed to mail our special election ballot out to voters just the general and we were not able to piggyback I know it's very disheartening but we've had we talked to to folks and to the secretary and they said unfortunately the law does not allow it however we're going to working with local clerks to make sure that anyone who wants a ballot obviously has access to that and instructing folks how to access them by voter page so there'll be a much heavier voter education campaign than I think we had maybe anticipated so we would also look to our member towns to kind of help us make sure that people who want that ballot have access to it certainly if they voted in in person they'll be handed the ballot just you know like normal but it's mainly for those who've requested an absentee or who are just going to be mailed the general election ballot and think they have everything they need so we want to make sure that people are aware of ours and know how to get it. So I'm sure you're getting good advice but I would just go back to the secretary of state again because we're doing the CUD question on the general election ballot we just had to meet a certain deadline and I'm pretty 99% sure we voted on other bonds for regional entities on the general election ballot so I don't take no for an answer. I agree with Tom. I will bring I will talk to Jim again and and I talked directly with him so he was fairly certain that it was not something that he could do but I will happily bring back a further recommendation for more conversations from the city of South Burlington because I agree it would seem that that would not be conducive to making sure that everyone has the opportunity to vote on this if they want to so we've we've gone back and forth several times but I will happily say well and remind him it was senator Chittenden who suggested that you push a little bit talk to some other senators. Find him that he was one of the team movers and shakers in the beginnings of Chittenden Solid Waste. He was he was a commissioner for a long time on our board. Why wouldn't this bond issue be on every ballot for every town in Chittenden County? The way that the law was was amended it allowed the the local local elections so the cities and towns can have their ballots mailed out by the secretary of state and the school districts can petition the city or town to have their ballots mailed at a specific times at town meeting day or or if they needed to at general election it left out every other regional entity and so yeah and and I hope I hope it was just an oops this doesn't we don't often have a bond we've only had one other bond request so it's not necessarily that it's top of mind I think for something like this but it is certainly a miss so I would I would both gladly bring back this recommendation and I anticipate other member towns will also say can you ask that again but our initial information from the secretary of state directly from him was that they're not able to help but I'm willing to give another try that is something we should put on our legislative priorities because it's any it sounds like it's any union municipal district yes would experience the same thing yes we have several of right right I just want to add to Sarah's presentation just she doesn't talk about it but staff this is well this is Paul Stabler our representative I'm sorry I didn't introduce you when you walked in I should have introduced myself I just wanted to mention that she doesn't talk about the great work and detail work that staff did to research all the various options for the different types of of a system to to to implement a new merge and I think they struck the right balance they could have spent a lot more but you know it was kind of a you know the the the return just probably wasn't worth it so I think they've got the right balance with the right amount of people that she as she mentioned will be more in quality control on the line but with the good amount of automation so staff did a great job they visited the various types of facilities and various manufacturers and you know real world merge sites that are actually operating so staff did a great job in that and I'm very confident that this is the right design well your current staffing be appropriate enough for this facility or it will and ironically we are the facility is dramatically understaffed so we will be able to carry over the amount that we have now and be adequately staffed so so yes we will not be again we'll be able to we won't have to lay anyone off actually I mean there could sell a couple employees right now but they won't have to lay anyone off and there will be some higher skilled jobs available as well okay do we need a oh I'm sorry I have a comment and two questions so if this is going to be the supermerf is it going to be called the smurf we can certainly add but don't all right next question is what happens to the old castella site after you turn on the new one so it's the the current mirf is actually our facility they they operate it on our behalf but your land in your facility correct correct I didn't know that what will become of that so that is a very good question and that's for our board to really debate there are several options we could certainly retain retain it as an asset and use it maybe as a special recycling facility for kind of like bulky goods mattresses furniture things like that or hard to recycle things like film we could sell it as an asset is you know located in a great location in the industrial park we could you know lease it out to others who may want to do some of this other kind of work so we have a couple of options and we have some time to figure that out and see what that leads us but uh yeah you know again we hate to hate to kind of give up an asset that we then five years later say oh if we only had that we could not be recycling we will be taking some of the equipment not a lot but some of the equipment from the old facility to the new because we had invested in it recently and it's working correct so we'll be taking one of our baler and our glass cleanup equipment to the new facility and then we will be most likely selling the remainder um whether first grab last question the most important question is will you have the capacity at the new plant to uh for us to get rid of the bottle bill that's a great question and um the simple answer would be yes because we would be able to handle significantly more material um so and if we needed to do that on two shifts we would have that capacity so you don't have it now right no yeah yeah so this is an important point we already have mandatory recycling across the whole state we have a centralized you know system that collects all recyclables and then and then distributes it back out or puts it in the way and whatever they have to do with it right i have to take my bottles and cans to some other place and go through a whole separate redemption process that has another whole set of transportation that has to take it somewhere and it's not efficient it's the it's the i mean there was a time in 1970 when it was the right thing to do because there wasn't any mandatory recycling now we have this waste district that takes care of this now we have to start thinking about is there a more efficient way to deal with our beverage containers other than the five cent deposit right if we and if we need to apply a tax to those beverages in order to fund things that help the homeless or whatever it is right if there are social causes that we need to we can deal with that but i'm really tired of having to take and redeem my my bottles and cans you know for a nick of leech it's i don't have to do that but it's you know there's a there's a value there right but i think it's i think it's obsolete i think it's it's past its prime and it's time to like give them all the materials because every aluminum can they sell they get a lot of money for right we do it i mean again it helps to support that public system right so every penny that we take goes right back into the district and right back into the mirf or the drop off centers or any of our other programs is there a good market for glass no man no that's a difficult one to deal with but we've done a staff has done a great job you know the five cent on aluminum cans okay i wish there was your answer no there's it was no ma'am there is not okay yeah we do i mean we have we actually do much more than many other mirfs do for glass and what we're working on is and actually working with v-trans and an r and uvm on really perfecting our glass product down to an even better product which would be sand borrow so right now we produce a glass aggregate process glass aggregate and we want to get it to where it can be used as a sand replacement and we are very very very close and the great thing about this new building is that that will allow us to keep all of our processes indoors right now the glass processes have indoors have outdoors put it all inside and then we'd be able to actually get this this glass down to that sand borrow process and and then again talk about transportation savings right now we need to ship half of our glass half of the year down to at this point massachusetts but it will have to go farther than that um casel is sending theirs down to the carolinas to be processed we want to keep that right here in chitney county so this facility will allow us to to do that which is very exciting and that's a cost savings yeah okay well thank you very much this was very informative thank you very much we're getting on the ballot thank you i will have a conversation get in touch with senator chitney and if you have problems i have his number thank you all right um item nine approve the allocation of the f y 22 surplus funds to support increased paramedic training and service our new fire chief and steve lock i'm sorry that everyone hold out if we'd been on time they would hear this public comment would still be going on in my former job it's okay sorry right thank you for taking up this uh well say it's well it's a rather small amount of money and we're requesting it is very timely and very important to the staff so um we run out as a paramedic level ambulance service and so paramedics offer the highest level of pre-hospital care we currently have seven paramedics on staff seven have the 29 positions and operations are certified as paramedics we've had a some attrition through people have left the profession and so we're down to a point now where um you know we have three on two shifts and two on the last shift but ultimately it's about investing in our staff and that's what this really is about is that transition from being a regular EMT who can do some things to uh to a paramedic level education is really important to our staff and important to our community and it's difficult to recruit paramedics and paramedics can write their own ticket and we really haven't invested in our own members since since 2010 when we trained the first group of paramedics here and what is important in the union presidents in the back of the room is the collaborative the collaborative approach we've been able to take to this so our members and rightfully so are compensated on their days off when they attend class over time and what disagreement we have struck with them is that they're going to go to class with for no compensation on their days off now this is a this is a 12 to 18 month a really 18 to 20 more 24 months to get through it but it's about a 12 month one day a week you go to class and so while they work every third day the day the days that they're in the days that they're working we're going to release them from duty for the eight hours of class they will return to work the remainder of their shift but on the days that they're off they're doing this for no compensation because they understand and really want and really believe in the higher level education and the service they provide to their community so we're going to capitalize on a couple things here the cost of the program is about twenty five thousand dollars for student for tuition and books there's another about sixty five hundred dollars in overtime to backfill those positions each one of them when they're off but the state is providing currently about a twenty one thousand dollar grant per student as part of using some of the the monies that have come into the state to for for certain professions this kind of like they're giving nurse for nursing students they're giving some tuition dollars well they're giving uh twenty one thousand per student for to attend paramedic education unfortunately currently if you already have a bachelor's degree they're not allowing you to have that money so two of our members qualify for it the third does not um it's quite possible the rules change on that tomorrow and which will allow all three of our members to receive that those tuition dollars and if that's the case uh we will not need the twelve thousand we're asking tonight we really see the twelve thousand as a worst-case scenario but ultimately this is uh this is a real request uh that we bring forth to you as an investment in our staff who work really hard every day and if i've learned anything in my three weeks here that they are doing a lot of work um and working a lot of hours and as i've i've recently told the manager um you know through through for a variety of reasons we're in a staffing crisis right now uh to the point that uh you know certainly my 30 years in the career i've never seen anything like this so this is this request will go a long ways to support the men and women who give a lot to this community and work really hard to provide a super high level service i'll take any questions does your oh i'm sorry go ahead could i just add a sentence to the chief's commentary so i would recommend even if that grant comes through if the council is supportive of using 12 000 of this fy 22 surplus funding we still allocate that to the paramedic fund as you know we put aside ten thousand dollars a year for paramedic training this proposal innate envisions us drawing all of that down for these three years so replenishing that so we can get back on a rolling cycle of education would be best for a long term planning not just solving this immediate opportunity right now okay well you answered my question very good thought but i don't remember if we had a fund do you need a motion only ten thousand dollars a year it's ten thousand that we're currently allocating so we have the fy 22 21 22 and 23 that is in this proposal we have spent that for the last three years so that's the paramedic fund drawdown okay but this is your crisis going to be over when my crisis is a different crisis that i'm sure we'll be we'll be talking about in uh in in december uh you know just just just to highlight and uh take the opportunity while i'm sitting in front of you i never miss an opportunity to let go by so we have 29 positions and operations currently we are operating with uh 24 of them filled um and then with uh with f because fml a and vacancies but we start the day but then with leave time uh we're our average overtime per day is 60 hours so we are one of probably two departments that have minimum staffing i would only assume the police department has as well so we ensure that we have eight firefighters working every day and in order to maintain that eight firefighters we have 60 hours of overtime per day to maintain that we mandatory someone to work every day so we tell somebody you can't go home you're working today that has in that and we knew this was going to be a tough few months this has been somewhat forecasted we had some babies and some injury leave that you know that's part of that's part of this occupation um it is it is a grind right now that the staff are in um and then you turn that on to you know 15 average of 15 calls per day um is a heavy call volume on a limited staff and um and i'll we'll we will certainly there they go again um and what you will you will see is we receive aid in our community over three times a day because we can't handle our own call volume thank captain captain thank you for being here yes thank you what what is yeah um what's an ideal number of paramedics so so send a kind of uh kind of separate topic so certified paramedics for me that's seven to ten range that ten range is a nice sweet spot because you don't want to have an oversaturation because some at some point it's about maintaining your skills so of having the hot i'm a empty basic there's certain medications there's certain things i can do there's an advanced EMT level which everybody in our organization except for myself and the fire marshal at your it's contractually required they can do more things and then our paramedics they can do a lot of things so the the the sweet spot is probably to have about a third of our staff as a paramedics that way we always have paramedic coverage uh so there's a difference between a paramedic and then really what we're talking also is about enough staff to handle the call volume and that's a combination of just total people okay but this these dollars though are what fund the paramedics and so um when we give you this money and these three people get the training how many paramedics will we have on the fourth well i'm gonna give i'm gonna today plus three would be ten okay but it's 24 months before we see these three people practice in 24 months i will lose some paramedics sure and i hope i hire some paramedics well i i guess my point is is ten thousand dollars um a year enough and this is a budget issue for the future but if it costs 25 000 then 10 i mean it takes you three years to save up my recommendation my recommendation will and it has been in the draft draft documents that i've wrote that we prepare to send one person a year that way we end up with a pipeline just to just hopefully we'll tackle our attrition okay thank you did you have a question are these grant funds available every year last couple years there have been last two years that there have been grant funds available which obviously are all just like your ARPA money you know this one time these one time monies that the state is using for a variety of reasons um in my former 14 years of doing this as an administrator we've never had grant monies like this available good to know thank you okay other tom did you have a question or i'm ready to move to support this uh if i could get a second and then i'd like discussion second uh so in the discussion i'll never miss an opportunity i'm sorry they had to leave i just want you the new chief to know that on march 21st 2020 we had scheduled a firefighters appreciation banquet we have uh i still have the envelopes we've got the vases they're still in my closet so when you're back to full staff and the guys are ready to do it i would love to get that conversation going again because i think that's an important event to make sure all the uh the firefighters and the mt staff know how much the community appreciates them very well thank you questions oh okay are you ready then we have a motion on the table okay all in favor of allocating 12,062 dollars from the f y 22 surplus into the paramedic fund i signify by saying i hi you post okay great thank you sorry you had to wait so long but i guess it was worth it oh all right okay so we get to turn the page over here um item 10 receive a recommendation from the natural resources and conservation committee on an ashtray ashtray treatment program and possible action so um jean seb is he on the i think presenting i think it's larry cupferman oh larry are you presenting this then hi i'm uh i am here i'm having trouble getting my screen to up there is way down there okay great thank you there we go oops camera oh now we can see you oops there we go okay hi okay oh welcome oh thank you um the um the call to present this to you uh came a little short notice and i'm not sure other members of the committee uh got the message from andrew in time to be be available tonight um i do want to just say that our our resolution or our memo to the council is definitely advisory um we're we're very happy to work with current staff the arborist um and others about this idea um and i really appreciated the information that tom presented uh as a follow-up to the council with regard to the tree inventory that exists in the city um i i think that in fact um and i and i i guess i can't really speak for the rest of the committee but the diversification of tree uh selection per neighborhood i think is really important and i think that there are this particular issue of saving ash trees really has um a focus on a number of neighborhoods whose only tree is the ash tree um so beyond saving or trying to save a number of ash trees those neighborhoods and i think it is definitely in the in the um arborist plan to diversify once trees are taken down and to replant with other species of tree so that you're not faced with a total total destruction of your tree canopy with that said i think that our our idea was and i you know we're just we're very very eager and willing to work with um staff with regard to uh any kind of planning that goes along with preserving and and um increasing the tree canopy in the city i wish i was a little more prepared to present what we had and i'm i'm afraid i'm i was the least um um involved in this idea in our committee but i had the time to appear tonight and i just never heard that from anybody else on the committee with regard to um their ability to attend so i hope that helps is that does that provide you with enough information about um well i that's fine i mean the the memo that you sent provided us the information right and i think i think it does i think that the response from tom the picture was really to look into it further i think he questioned our quote the quote that the person the tree um expert provided us and i don't i think it's it's a estimate that he that they did not have beforehand and perhaps um in the course of further discussion the cost of providing uh tree treatment has come down like i honestly can't tell you whether that's happening or not but i think that the offered some sense of caution about making sure that it would be a two or three-year program at a certain cost uh and i and i think that we're also talking about having some sort of process to select the ash trees that could be uh treated to protect uh and with some some neighborhood involvement with uh with regard to those neighborhoods that have um primarily ash trees as their street tree okay thank you well tom is here so i think we'll hear from him next yeah okay thank you so stay on because you might have some questions for him too yeah thank you i will good evening everybody good evening yeah so your comments you send us a pretty significant memo sounds like the natural resources and conservation committee would like to work with you what is your kind of bottom line on this yeah so i'm aware that this isn't council's first discussion about the ash trees i think maybe third i was trying to go through the agendas earlier um so i don't know where council is at with this i think as justin said previously our prior director of public work for willing to work at the direction of council and so if this is something that you'd like to investigate i just wanted to get some initial thoughts out there after speaking with the city arborist and our deputy director of operations and sort of where this might go we do have some logistical type concerns um i think my comment at the ends i want to square this in my prior role with the city um we would have discussions a lot of time people would call about herbicides pesticide use in the city and so when we say treatment we're talking about the injection of a pesticide into the ash trees to prevent the bore of the larvae right we kill them um so i just want to make sure we're understanding what treatment means in this case as we move forward there and then if that's council's wish uh again get back to some logistics here how we're selecting trees because it's like the memo said we've got about got about 7200 city street trees mapped right now um and this represents about nine percent of the total so we're managing all those trees not just this nine percent and i'd be concerned that this nine percent would take up a lot more of our budget and time so okay so there's 594 ash trees in this city that was those statistics were interesting interesting um so oh sorry yeah go ahead so i think just uh just had a couple sentences to what tom was saying you know i yes this has been talked about the council a lot the past guidance we got from you all was to continue the plan as presented and to focus f y 23 solely on replanting so that's what we're currently operating under now um and bidding out that contract for f y 23 we can do something different but we're going to keep going on that path unless you direct us to do something else and that's what tom was trying to outline yeah and also yeah replanting that's correct we've got 25 trees that were removed that we'd like to certainly replant this year and maybe do some additional inter planting so planting between ash trees but beyond that it could be a budget discussion for the upcoming fiscal year what we do okay Megan yeah the question i had for tom was and thank you larry for coming tonight was how um do you respond to the recommendation that larry conveyed to us that i think it's for biodiversity that you're seeking to uh really go into neighborhoods where the street trees are predominantly of one type ash trees and and and really prioritizing those trees uh for replacement whereas neighborhoods where there is already a diversity of canopy that those would be the treated trees you and your memo had talked about tree size the diameter size being the determinant factor how how do you respond to their recommendation um sure so we'd certainly be focused on those areas and dorset farms is the big one in my mind as i sort of looked at that data where we have quite a few ash trees so we'd want to focus there get a lot of different species in maybe do some inter planting i'm in that area i couldn't tell you exactly what species um i did leave that to the arborist to make that decision uh our discussion went i think it was in response to one of the points raised in their memo is well what's worth treating and we thought perhaps if council were to go down a road of of the treatment um that we would recommend the larger trees be the ones we'd focus on for that rather than the smaller ones because they're already grown they have a large canopy um but again that would be a lot more tracking and logistics here for our city arborist what do you do if that happened to be let's just take dorset farms as as just a hypothetical if it happened to be dorset farms where you're already going to be doing some planting would you do both the treating and the planting at the same time then i think that w