call this meeting to order So thank you all for being here first thing is to review and approve the agenda I Think there are probably no needed changes except that there were two addendums added to the Consent agenda what they are posted online Any other changes to the agenda okay, so without objection will consider the agenda approved General business and appearances. This is an opportunity for any member of the public to address the council on Matter that is otherwise not on our agenda and if you would try to keep your comments to two minutes or less If you would say your name and where you're from and actually just while I'm saying all of this just one other note To to ourselves to since it came up last time. Let's try to not interrupt each other or people talking and I will in turn also try to hold people to two minutes. So there we go All right, welcome very well Good evening. I'm Zach Hughes Prospect Street neighborhood in Montpollier I rise this evening to give congrats or in order for the city of Montpollier along with the partners of Downstreet and GMT Green Mountain Transit in the opening of the transit center And the apartments that will add much-needed housing to the city as well as an easier transport For everyone who needs transportation in and out of city. I offer congratulations on a more serious topic I I continue to Follow the events Mark Johnson's death and I had a very hard day. We had a hard day today, but we're starting to Get these events more and I mean get these get more information out now And I think we're all acknowledging that As the information comes out Some of it may be shocking for us to see and view and urge that people take care of themselves as we get this Information and that we continue to come together and work toward Better solutions in this situation. I thank you very much. Thank you Anyone else? Hello, my name is Seth Collins. I live in Berlin Vermont and I'll try to keep this under two minutes I'm sorry if it's lengthy I Compressed it down as much as I could so I would like to request that Montpelier City Council Create the feminist neighborhood watch in in my opinion It would be composed of one representative from each district and in my opinion Each district would be divided up. I mean, I don't know how this would work I'm just guessing so I apologize if I make mistakes, but in my opinion each district would be Divided up into smaller areas monitored by an individual of that of that sub-district as Getting as a single person getting to know an entire district in my opinion would be overwhelming I would also like there to be gossip network Created to relay information to the neighborhood watch and to pool and cross-reference information. I Would also like for City Hall to a request from Circle and from the network against domestic and sexual violence To have weekly anti-predator activism trainings held in downtown Montpelier And there to be a direct line and protocol for reporting predators and suspected predators to the to the name Sorry, it sounds confusing But all I want is there to be a you know direct communication between The the town and I mean the city or the town and the new and the neighborhood watch And I would like for the gossip network to support the district representative and the sub guardians and getting to know the individuals in East in each district and smaller area And I would also suggest that there would be a there would be district-wide events at separate times for the for the whole district so that the district representative and the district sub guardians could thus get to know People in in in one area. Thank you. Thanks so much. Thanks. Thanks a lot. Thank you All right anyone else? Morgan Brown district three resident just very quickly. I want a second Zach's comments about the Downs Street housing project that Just got kicked off and it's great Thank you everyone it was hard work and it paid off and Now we're moving forward with What's available including the housing and and the transportation hub and that's great. It's good Thank you Anyone else? Steve Whitaker Having watched the video I Want to rise and protest that that was an unnecessary shooting. It's clear Well, technically we may have exonerated the police officers because there's a bright line that any firearm aimed at an officer Is creates a justifiable shooting? But this person was clearly distressed was not aiming at anything. He was brandishing a gun looking like he's Inviting to be shot suicide by cop He would have rather jumped into the river and he could have been allowed to but our officers Shouted him back down rather than let him jump into the river, which at worst case would have broken a leg We also had the beanbag option, but I believe that went off the record when Jack McCullough asked Bill Why do it wasn't used? It's like I could talk to you about that as if not to create a paper trail Okay, that's something that should have been created a paper trail But this was an absolutely unnecessary shooting from a guy who clearly doesn't know how to wheel the firearm and from a distance where he couldn't have hit the side of a bus and We took him out with two fragmentation rifle rounds so while I'm not questioning the the Judgment of exonerating the officer based on the rules we're living in with that we're better than that and we need to We may need to release that cop or do some real intensive training because even the chatter between them On the video. It's clear that they didn't perceive him as a threat like he couldn't hit them. What's he doing? He's waving that thing around, you know So there we didn't stop the car that drove five feet from him as if that person wasn't at risk So clearly we didn't have control of the situation, but we could have waited for reinforcement waited for mental health This was clearly Evidently a mental health issue with someone trying to either get shot Invite a bullet or jump into the river and we could have let him jump in the river or knocked him into the river with a beanbag So you're at about two minutes right now. Thank you. I'm glad you think that's important Anyone else Okay, and yeah Bill I just want to introduce Cameron Neeter Meyer our new assistant city manager She was would have been here last time had she not been ill Great, thank you. All right, so just one note That I guess I'll add before we move into the the rest of the meeting you know, we did have the press conference today about the Attorney General's CS Attorney General's findings on the the case today or the the case with Mark Johnson and I Just want people to know that we will be having further conversation about That topic at the next meeting we had planned on making it an agenda item after the Findings came out and so we'll be talking more about that at our our following meeting None the I mean we're you know on the one hand, you know glad that the officer was exonerated there But off obviously it's still a very sad situation. So just want to remain, you know sort of Conscious and sensitive to to that.  So Thank you all and on to our Yes, one thing to that for those that are interested There was a link on the police department on our police department website Which shows well our Facebook page shows the full press conference today so you can hear the comments by the state's attorney and then the police department website link has the releases from both the Attorney General and the state's attorney as well as the videos of mr. Whitaker Referred to you so all the info and the transcripts and other information. I believe the state's attorney is unsealed will be through the Court I want to say the district court. So all the related information is out there So in the end of the conversation people can read it and get and watch it and get as informed as they like Okay, thank you Onto the consent agenda Is there a motion? Oh actually Crystal. Did you want to say something about the consent agenda? So we're gonna we're gonna remove item B and vote on it separately. Okay Okay with the correction great Is there a motion regarding the consent agenda or anybody want to pull anything else move the consent agenda I'll second it and This just to clarify. This is a consent agenda without item B for the discussion On favor, please say aye. Aye opposed and Is there motion regarding B? With the amendments or do you want to explain it at all or Do you want to talk to your mic? Of the minutes from October 9th and section 19 289 There's just a little typo on there. That's being changed So I would make a motion that we accept the minutes as amended Second, this is the minutes of October 9th. Okay, great. All right. So there's been a motion and a second for the discussion All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed All right So we have a few appointments to make so the first is the Transportation Infrastructure Committee So looking at that there were two expiring seats and two vacant seats Excuse me, and we had two applications from folks seeking reappointment. I don't know if Celia or Ian are here if you are I'm guessing not Okay Is there a motion? Yeah, well, I will make a motion But I would like to know that they both have been very active and attentive to their position on that committee Wonderful, and I would make a motion that we appoint Ian Anderson and Cecilia How you say your last name, I don't know I think she passed a recall, but I'm not positive Cecilia recall spelled correctly on the attachment. You want the spelling? It's R-I-E-C-H-E-O as appointments to the Infrastructure Committee Second for the discussion All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed Okay, and All right, so to the homelessness task force We have a recent vacancy there and we had two folks Put their names in for that position and I know I see Morgan here Would you like to introduce yourself to the council or anybody who might not know me? My name's Morgan W. Brown, and I live in district three and I've lived in Montpellier, I believe 27 years option one year mid-summer of 96 to mid-summer of 97 when I lived in botten village up in the northeast kingdom Came back to my period and lived without permanent housing or as most people refer to it homeless for 12 years and Many of its different forms as you can tell it still touches close It was a painful time but I'm grateful to have been in the house for 10 years now and I'm seeking Appointment to the homelessness task force because I believe I have something to contribute along with those others already serving and I Only speak for myself but I Also believe I can speak to Certain experiences and I also have a Certain skill set and Abilities that I've learned over the years both on the street and off the street and I've done a lot of advocacy over the years including when I was living homeless And I believe that That can help benefit the work of the homelessness task force and All of you as well in the work that you do So I thank you for your consideration Thank you Any questions and I don't see you Rick here So is there a motion to go into executive session pursuant to one VSA section 313 a 3 I move we enter into an executive session to discuss the appointment of a public official Second that further discussion all in favor. Please say aye opposed Alright, well, we will be back shortly Okay There a motion to come out of the second session so moved. Is there a second second great? Okay all in favor. Please say aye Opposed all right, and do we have a motion? I move that the council appoint both Morgan Brown and Rick D'Angelo's to the homelessness task force second Hey, I'm not right now Is there any further discussion? If you would like to now would be okay. I have raised the issue of accountability of good Sam and When I first proposed the task force It was very clear that providers should not be serving on the task force because they will have the effect of Defending status quo and or steering some of these are very Not nothing personal against Rick, but I think it's more appropriate for him to be Dialoguing with the task force than to be on it Morgan on the other hand is a true demonstrated advocate But this is too important and good Sam has not been transparent and has not been cooperative even Acknowledging the deficiency that's your own pastor put in the paper. Okay, so it's inappropriate to put a service provider Trying to defend a status quo On on the task force, so I would recommend that you amend the motion to being Morgan only Thank you a further discussion Glenn I want to First speak just to the fact that we Would like to appoint two members despite having advertised for one Both Rick de Angelis and Morgan Brown have been attending Nearly all of the meeting so far we meet weekly Wednesdays from 11 30 to 1 and both have been Extremely helpful and cooperative We've also had trouble Fielding the full task force during that time Not everyone can always make it so It feels like it would be Good to have more people Who are available there In brief response personal response anyway to to mr. Whitaker's comments. I feel that Rick has been Rick de Angelis has been clear about his position on the board of good Sam And I think that good Sam as an organization has in fact been Extraordinarily cooperative with the city council And I don't see an adequate reason to prevent him from Serving as he is able to do on the task force. I second the motion if I haven't already Okay Jack I Also want to point out say that I've known both Morgan and Rick de Angelis for many years their both Devoted advocates who? Rick's been Housing advocate and involved in Working for housing in the city of Montpelier and the state for many many years Morgan has been an advocate for a Range of topics for for many years. I think they are both Valuable additions to to this task force and And so I think it They will both be very good and enhance the work of the task force Zack yes, I appreciate that Zack who's again prospectually neighborhood I Think that I had the same thoughts as mr. Whitaker first probably about When I first got where the Rick was going to be appointed only because it was the I saw Rick as a Dizzy Rick as a service in a service provider coming over Further good Sam. However In having been in the meetings to two sets of meetings with Rick. I didn't see anything That would indicate that he would He was I I think we walk a fine line because Another member that task force could be seen as a service provider I'm also a service provider, but I've always identified myself. There's a citizen So there is this thing and and that's I was originally going to ask what the intent was tonight But I'm not going to do that instead of let the process flow out And I can guarantee you if Rick did cross over threshold I'm sure Glenn and myself would come back here and say that's not what we want to see in here I think very confident in that and I have also known Rick for years and Rick is also on other boards I'm not just good Samaritan. So I just want to mention that. Thank you. Thank you Any further discussion? Okay Lawrence Tyler Abel did on there as well as An advocate for persons with special needs I would like to say, you know, I'm glad that you guys are going to appoint Morgan Morgan is an extremely hard-working advocate and as far as Rick and Angeles, um, I know Rick through good Sam a long time ago my wife and I were displaced back in 2015-2016 and If it wasn't for good Sam, I don't know where we would be Good Sam is an extremely hard-working organization and I mean, I know there needs to be more work done But that's what I have to say. I mean without good Sam, you know You know, we wouldn't Be housed that's all I have to say about that. Thank you I want to question the process in that you Warned that you it was one appointment and you have not You're you're changing to making two appointments without having given the other people an opportunity to know that there was going to be more Than one appointment, especially the people who were rejected on the first round Thank You Stephen All right, so any further discussion? Okay, all in favor, please say aye opposed. Okay. Thank you all and Thank you Morgan and to Rick if you're listening for your willingness to serve it's great All right, so On to the public art commission Applications, so there were two seats available there and we had one Applicant and Ward Joyce is their motion. Yeah, I'd like to move that we appoint Ward Joyce to the public art commission second Further discussion on favor, please say aye Okay, thanks Ward for serving also Okay catching up to where we are All right, we are up. Oh, yes, go ahead before we move on to the next item I meant to mention this in the consent agenda and just missed it But since our DPW staff, so I just want to acknowledge that one of the things you approved in the consent agenda was our loan resolution for Our loan with the USDA RD and that includes a grant for 2.6 million dollars Reducing the cost of our plant as well as a very favorable loan term So it just makes a huge difference in the affordability of this project as you can recall We spent a number of years assessing the risk and the costs and if it weren't for Kurt Modica Who's in the room and I want to make sure to recognize him as well as I'm still here Todd Provencher and others This wouldn't have happened and this is a really this really Changes the whole economics of this project, which was already, you know, I think a good thing for us to do So even though it's not a discussion item. I think it's important to call that out Thank you It is really a big deal Awesome. All right, so we are up to an update on five home farm away and the two rivers partnership Good evening Jamie Duggan and here to give you a short status update In the few months since I was here last We have had some progress I'm now in contact I've been in contact finally with the Attorney General's office. They got back to me. I have a primary Contact there now and I've had a few discussions with them. I'm Inching ever closer to signing a letter of engagement with legal counsel and hope to have that by the end of this week Which will be a big step forward it was a Long process There were a number of folks who did not have any time and a few who declined due to pre-existing conflicts of interest But nevertheless got through that We've Had a there was I guess I guess recall somewhat of an unfortunate setback with the passing of Paul Brune from the Preservation Trust of Vermont, but Reengaging with them to ensure that some financial support for legal assistance that was offered earlier is still in play and I believe that it is but waiting to get a confirmation on that and Couple of volunteers have started and we'll continue over the next few weekends to do some just general clearing outside of the house just to make it a little more Appealing aesthetically for before the winner sets in So that's where things are at the moment I do hope to return as we had said in three months with a more substantial report Updating you where we are it doesn't perhaps seem like a lot But I feel like we've made a great amount of progress in the last few months So I don't know if you have any questions, but Any questions Don well, I'm encouraged that people are answering their phones for you. I am That's an improvement. We recognize the small steps, but it's good. It's very important What is the biggest thing that you need in the process at this point? I? think still the Ownership issue. Yeah, okay is what we're focusing on Diligently and I I truly believe Once Legal counsel has a chance to do some analysis on the existing Documents and situation that'll provide a much more clear path forward as far as how that will be structured And and what our next steps are so well, I guess my question is about you mentioned your you all are inching closer to sending a letter of engagement With some legal counsel is that I mean is is that For a lack of funding or is it for like just finding the right person or I I feel that we've Got a great partner now, and so it's just allowing the process to To run its course, okay? Fair enough. I'm patiently waiting great. Okay Wonderful. Thank you Jack Thank you for the report keep keep on moving forward. I a request I have is that It doesn't have to be very long, but when you do a report like this if you could even get us a one-pager So that the one page whatever the reports you're doing will also be able to be put on the city web page so members of the public can also Stay appraised of what's happening. Yeah, I I will definitely do that. Thanks. Thank you Any other questions? Thanks for your time and continuing support. Yes. Well likewise Okay All right, so we have a series of updates at this point starting with the winter operations and parking ban and then into CSO financials and then some other Waste water resource recovery facility and then the water and sewer infrastructure, so Yeah, welcome up the winter operations and parking ban Thank you for inviting us here to talk tonight about winter operations. My name is Donna Barlow Casey I am the public works director here in Montpelier and I'm joined by Zach Blodgett our new project manager In the restructuring for the public works department And tonight we will present an Overview to you that really is consistent with the title winter is coming and We have a lot of decisions that we hope we can make Collectively tonight and have a good discussion. We know that We won't be able to tackle everything that We would like to but we're going to give you as much information as we can so that we can have an ongoing dialogue That just begins tonight And so for the sake of everybody our snow heroes Our snow heroes come out of our streets department and other departments In the city every winter and they handle an amazing amount of challenges on our behalf and I don't expect that this This upcoming season will be any different so tonight I Zack and I will review with you the cost of winter operations And I think that anybody who's been through a winter here in Montpelier, which is pretty much everybody in the room Knows that the cost doesn't just financial The cost is there For impacts to staff morale over long shifts Significant overtime Challenges with parked cars that are in spaces and places that they might not need to be There are a Variety of other challenges that have grown over the past decade Every mile that we add to a street or portion of a mile every bike path Every walking path that we have in town has to be cared for in the winter There are other communities that choose to let some of their paths go for winter skiing cross-country skiing or just fall aside as a Lane for transportation pedestrian transportation We have not made any of those decisions in our community We also have We have expectations by residents and businesses We would like to arrive at a place where we are consistent the council's consistent Lea messaging what's possible and so we're going to give you a lot of information Tonight to consider and then we can reflect on that Later in the presentation. We'll talk about how we have some plans for connecting with our constituents and residents and visitors to Create reasonable expectation of what's possible and the other Topic I want to cover today a bit is that Staffing in the street department and down from what it was 10 years ago But we're doing many more miles many more hours with many more challenges and as climate shifts occur freezing rain Ice accumulation They all have impacts on our ability to manage the winter So we have prepared a presentation Zach's going to run you through the majority of it He's going to be our narrator. I will jump in occasionally and add some comments and By the time we get to the end of the presentation We're hopeful that We'll have a constructive conversation and and make some decisions tonight that we can implement So first of all, I'd just like to thank Our our crews for all the hard work that they did last year And in developing this presentation Eric lad who is our equipment supervisor who's not here tonight? He really spent I would say over a week or two weeks Compiling all the data that is used in this presentation going back all the way to 1985 with some historical knowledge about Crews and how many employees we had back in before I was alive, so Anyways, as you guys know it was not Last last winner was very challenging for not only DPW but for other departments within the city The fire department police department even Bill's office the city manager's office all experienced a very rough winter in terms of customer complaints It went from even in Montpelier the fire department was helping us with shovel out hydrants because we couldn't get to them Police was struggling with removing cars within the winter parking ban So there was a lot of different struggles and that's why we're here is to discuss What happened last year and how can we improve on it moving forward? So With that being said Sure With that being said Throughout this presentation. We are going to go over the following and touch upon each of these things the equipment and maintenance operations that we currently have how they've changed historically from overtime the salt purchasing and usage and how How the operational changes that have occurred throughout time and how the climate has impacted them we will take a look at personnel over time and labor costs In addition, we will look at how expectations have changed For our operation side of it. We are now doing a lot more maintenance then we once were and that expectation to continue to maintain those is It's become It's become a challenge for DPW as we expand our networks out In addition The winter operations lead into summer summertime impacts Our guys spend a lot of time during the winter and they have to always be on call with available status So as a result it carries forward into the summer. They want to take time off. They want to go on vacations They want to see their family So there's a trickle effect that doesn't just last throughout the winter. It actually lingers into the summer And we also want to discuss the desired level of service. So as we expand our networks and change things in the future What is this level of service that we want to provide to all of our to our community? in addition, we want to touch upon how we can improve on communications and What we believe are the next steps. I guess I would just also add just a Please be conscious of the time. Yes. Okay, Karen We'll go faster than we have been So As you guys all know this the trend of winter has been more extremes more Micro microburst so we've been experiencing some more difficult situations and what that leads to is this Question about safe roads at safe speeds versus bare roads The state of Vermont and Montpelier has a safe roads as safe speeds policy But at certain times With the amount of calls that we receive and the complaints that were that we're getting it seems like we're trying to move towards a more of a bare roads Policy so that's some of the discussion that we would like to have and I think I'll just throw in here that Achieving bare roads is is probably not possible. That sounds good, but it is way too intensive And costly safe roads at safe speeds sounds in comparison to be somewhat So safe roads at safe speeds sounds like a A lesser Condition, but it's not safe roads at safe speeds represent what we are able to do at a maximum level to keep on our Travelers safe And bare roads are just not a viable option There's hardly any community In that experience is significant snowfall that has a bare roads policy So we're hoping that the council Can help us message this to Constituents we know that you get calls over the winter months and we really want to emphasize that what we're doing on an ongoing Basis complies with very safe roads as long as people choose to travel at safe speeds. Thank you So here's an overview of our equipment. We have 16 pieces of equipment for plowing salting sanding that are in our fleet that is one pickup five 550s two larger plow trucks with the with the sander and a plow For plow trucks with a spreader and a wing three trackless Sidewalk plows with that also have a snowblower plow and spreader and then a mini loader with a plow snowblower and spreader as well And then for snow removal equipment, we have six pieces of equipment one greater Three bucket loaders and then the two large loader mounted snowblowers So as you can see we have for we have 16 total pieces of equipment We have 13 routes so anytime we have a snowstorm. We have to deploy 13 of these pieces of equipment We have 10 streets people that are devoted at any time to fill that equipment So at any given time we're calling on other water sewer people mechanics people within other departments To make sure that we can fill the routes that we have for all of our pieces of equipment This next slide. I don't think we have to spend a lot of time on it It's meant to demonstrate that over the years we make a great effort to upgrade our Equipment to be appropriate Cutting edge in some instances and that we continue to do that and it creates Opportunities for us to do things like changing how we plow sidewalks Originally, we're pushing snow and only pushing snow now. We are able to clear the sidewalk lay down salt and sand all in one travel through which saves time and and creates efficiencies and We're constantly We're constantly upgrading our ability to increase efficiencies through the purchase of new equipment so the original bombardier Plow is the top is the top picture right there where it could only just push the snow and back in 1995 96 era We were only really predominantly clearing the downtown district We weren't going up in the top of North Hill Street Town Hill It was just per our focus was really in the downtown in 2005 We bought our first trackless unit which allowed us to be able to Salt and sand and have more versatile operations throughout and then we started expanding and Now we pretty much everything that we have for sidewalk. We are asked to clear salt sand and treat So that's where we're at today so as you can see Over over the last few years in particular We've added a lot. We've added sidewalks and roads and in addition. We have future sidewalks that We will be adding So every time that we add a length of sidewalk We just kind of the natural tendency is that oh DPW can absorb it It's something that we're already doing but we really haven't stopped and thought about what how much time does that actually Take how much time does what adding one mile of sidewalk take our crews to do? So I'll just give you a quick rundown. We have 20 around 27 miles of sidewalk We have three sidewalk plows that are responsible for clearing their entire the entire city So that means each plow is responsible for approximately nine miles And that route takes them generally four to five hours to complete So that's about two miles an hour. So if you think of it for every mile we add It's a it's a significant Cost to DPW. I mean either we're losing level of service if we add a mile We either have to have a diminished level of service that we're providing to The public or we need to add an additional person or You know a 0.15 FDE for every mile is what we've estimated Is what it takes For us to be able to maintain the current level of service that we already provide today The newest piece of equipment you can see is the bottom picture there It is a mini loader. It is much more versatile. It in addition to Being a great winter operations piece of equipment. It also serves a purpose year-round So we use it throughout all the summer months, whereas previously Some of the other pieces of equipment we only could really use for winter operations So here is a graph trend from 1992 to today of our salt usage So as I already told you in 95 we were our focus was in the downtown area and prior to 1995 we Were actually salting and by hand So these what you see here is Tons that we were doing when we were only focused within the downtown area and then over time we've expanded We you can see that we've ramped up a lot more Salt was purchased over the years and then it kind of leveled off We've become way more efficient, but while becoming more efficient We've really expanded on our the network and we that every ton of salt goes a lot further than it did even I would say five years ago in 2014 we started using this We started using magic minus which helps lower the temperature, which is it's been great for us And it's a it's a great tool for us to use But as you can see, I mean we need to we generally use over 2,500 tons of salt per year and at this point we have pretty much reached our Effectiveness that I don't think that we can unless it's a really lean winter that we can actually reduce that number By much because it's all mechanically controlled now All right, so here's a graph and there's kind of a lot of information here over the last nine years Almost a decade. We've been recording data at our water resource recovery facility and it takes Snowfall accumulations precipitation and temperature. So as you can see in the last almost 10 years Last year was them the heaviest the worst Snow year that we've had of almost a hundred inches. We also have reports for this area of up to 120 inches the water plant or the water resource recovery facility generally tends to have a Lower snowfall amount because it's down at the bottom of by the one new ski whereas up in Townhill in the upper areas. You can see a greater snowfall total in addition It was the lowest average temperature for that winter for those winter months and the highest precipitation So what that means is it was very taxing on our department. It took a lot of effort to keep up with the the winter weather In addition, you can also see the on the red line that that is our salt usage So at 3,100 tons that was what we used last year and in comparison to other years that weren't as severe we use You can it just shows that we're becoming more efficient at what we're doing as things are Getting harder for us to do Here's another graph that shows our salt usage versus overtime So back in 1992 we were spending a lot of hours to put down roughly the same amount of salt But it wasn't going it wasn't being spread out nearly as far now. We are becoming more efficient at Spreading that same salt and it's being used in a lot and much wider area much more Roads and sidewalks are being treated So here is a graph of where we where we were with employees down at the garage in 1985 we had around 35 employees down at the the public works garage and now we're down to 24 and a half that half as a shared employee that we share with the Cemetery Division And as you could so the green bar here shows you all the employees at the garage where the Orange bar next to it shows you the employees that were involved in plowing or winter operations so last year it took almost everyone that we had at the garage in order to Perform winter operations and what that what that translated to is there were some events that I'm sure you all remember When we had water leaks that we were you know, we weren't really ready We didn't have people available because they were they had been out all night with helping out with winter operations You can see in some of the other years where the green bar is significantly larger than the orange bar or the trend line that it those employees were typically our water sewer guys that were ready for any of those events Excuse me before we go on and I realize we're running late here We have a lot of information to share with you so we're going to try and just move this forward a little faster We are currently down technically down to of our employees for the coming winter and We have not added even though you've heard for the first half of this presentation how much Miles have been added and how many efficiencies we've tried to create We have two people on light duty and so that will dramatically impact our ability to Keep overtime under control We have come to the conclusion that a reasonable humane average for our staff of between 200 and 250 overtime hours per person per winter season is a reasonable expectation Last year we had people with four over 400 hours of just overtime and that is what causes us to Have impacts that go past the winter season because when you have that much overtime you come off the season exhausted you have lots of opportunity to Want to be doing things with your family because you haven't seen them all winter long and We really need to begin this here to think about that and pull that average back And I'm sure it won't happen unless we have an Usually mild winter So this is just a long-term Desire on our part to really rain this in do you consider that to be 16 weeks for for the length of the season so So they actually what we looked at was from mid-November to April and that when we looked when we pulled out our work orders We basically took from the first day that we had any snow winter operation event That occurred to the very end when the last winter operation event so it was it was Somewhere in approximately five months worth more more like 20 weeks. Okay, so yep. Thanks So here's a chart of each of our our winter overtime our employees with the amount of hours that they spent in overtime so at The target range that we have within the budget is around on average Between it's around 175 hours per employee as you can see There's the dotted there's the dotted line here Right here. Everyone to the right. Is it within the streets division and they were all above 200 hours at 200 hours We have Realized that people stop picking up the phone. There's they they just don't want to do it anymore They've hit they like the money they like in they like providing for the family but at a certain point they just get tired and So we want to make sure that we're not overworking our guys We you know if the joke last year was that we were borderline a mutiny for from our guys Because they were they just didn't they'd had enough So if we actually take all of these that are above this target range That's 840 hours, which is the if we took just a regular days available to work within that that five months span It's exactly one employee Just in a reduction in overtime hours to meet the target level That we look for for our guys and in addition We've also talked with some other communities and they have verified that around 200 hours Everyone is starting to to go the other way On the left side, this is everyone else that had to participate in winter operations and the hours that they Also helped out So with that being said This is what it cost us last year in labor alone. We're not talking materials Or some of our other expenses Just salting sanding plowing and snow removal Was a two hundred thousand dollar operation a hundred and four of it was in overtime costs alone Here is the department as a whole Everything that we did from for work orders between November and April translated to about three hundred thousand dollars worth of work and as you can see there was about around 13,000 hours and Only four thousand of those hours were dedicated to something other than winter operations So everything with the orange the purple and the pink are all winter ops And then the these two pieces over here are water leaks and things that are we're not related to winter operations So where does that leave us in the summer? It leaves us with a lot of time that people want to go and go on vacation And what it equates to is about four people on average that can be gone any given day Throughout the summer Can I see a question about that? Yeah, just the way the hours work out It's still a one full-time position or like a full-time position might have a majority of the hours being spent and I guess together with overtime in the winter that leaves people with more time to take off in the summer or So because they're on available status. They're not really We they're not Like I say they're not allowed to take that vacation during the winter But they generally don't take time in the winter So it's all accumulated and then they all want to leave once the weather turns nice So they they have some built-in vacation time Vacation sick. There's a whole list of different times that they get Comp is one of them So a lot of people take choose to take comp and then take it off at a different time of the year okay The the standard work week is 37 and a half So the comp time is the is the difference between 37 and a half and 40 So standard work week for us is I think 40 and the Comp is a little tricky because not everyone takes comp some of them choose to take it as over as overtime So it's not under the law. We have to either pay them or provide comp at time in a half And so they can choose Which way they take it so some some take the leave some take the cash Thank you Bill So where does that leave us? What are the next steps for DPW? Our have we reached our peak effectiveness? We really believe that we have we're pretty much at that level In terms of fleet management the roots that our guys are doing We don't Right now. We just don't see where we can become more effective Are we providing we wanted to find the level of service that we want to provide So our our expectations is the community's expectations reasonable for the work that we need to do Establishing a target range for acceptable overtime as we told you we'd like to see everyone beneath that 200 mark ideally between 150 and 175 hours We would like to consider the impacts of the increased maintenance the miles that we have added with new streets pass All these different things that we've added the transit center How does that translate into public work? maintenance responsibilities some of the other things that We have looked at for this year are adjusting the towing allowing the the service companies to Store vehicles right now. We're looking up at the rec field As a possible area so that we may be able to get a few more tow companies on board this year and in addition to Modifications of the current parking ban and the night parking practices So if DPW had its way, we would tell you that our most effective The operational procedure would be to go back to the old band and to have everyone off the street That's just the reality. We know that that may not be feasible. It may not be feasible here But what we're asking to consider is what are some other options? Can we move to a alternate side of the street parking? So a lot of places have even calendar day even side of the street odd calendar day odd side of the street It's fairly clear. It's easy to message But that what that does is it allows us to get the snow out of the area when the people are not there Rather than having we spend a lot of time going back Trying to get around one specific car or having to put out no parking signs so there's there's some modifications that We think could be made to the the ban that currently stands That would improve Not just DPW operations, but also help out with the amount of cars that are towed that PD has for car stowed in addition to the Sorry in addition to those items on our wish lists I think that We would like to have an additional employee we're not Sure that that's possible for this year But that is definitely something that would help us you've seen it We can't diminish The amount of overtime without some additional help and we're already Accessing all the additional help we have through all the other apart departments We do want to increase public communications. We've just launched In public works over the last couple of weeks our own DPW Facebook page we were getting very positive responses To the information we're trying to develop new ways of communicating what's happening and encourage people to Like that and follow us there Consistent communication between departments with the public consistent communication By the count all council members That's very helpful if we use the same language and same terminology and we're on the same page as you in the decisions that you're making on our our behalf and I think that The expectation of level of service is a big issue for us to resolve just because That underpins all the communication that we'll be having from the first snow going forward and As of today this afternoon the forecast from the group that we rely on for winter Forecasts has the first snow event beginning on November 7th and Continuing through the 8th the 9th the 10th and the 11th and so while they expect just dustings in those days that is Far sooner than we would like to have it happen So um, that's yeah, I just want to I just want to point out that there are a few areas in specific that we Routinely get a lot of complaints on and I'm sure you guys are all familiar with those areas and I'm just gonna run through them really quickly Liberty Berry Street Hubbard and Loomis all areas where we have parking on both sides of the street fairly narrow to begin with they really They're very difficult for not only DPW, but even emergency services to navigate through those areas So we're just we're unsure how we're gonna tackle that this year If nothing changes because it still presents a problem for us to do our operational duties in those areas Have you driven around? I'm intrigued by this ultimate side of the street Idea have you have you driven around at night to take an inventory of how many cars are Parked out on these streets on both sides and I actually recently did it about a week ago And it was because they were paving stone cutters away that night So I took a drive around and all of the streets that I just mentioned had cars parked on them in addition to those streets They were a few cars on Main Street a few cars up by the college and Predominantly those they were fairly focused around the rental properties Areas where there's a lot of housing apartment housing units So is there a place to put the cars if you say you can only park on one side of the street Well, I can tell you that anytime that we call a winter parking ban for when when actually snow is forecasted Those the amount of cars that we're towing on those events is very few of most nights maybe one to two It's when we have a need to do winter snow removal or that it's not intuitive that the snow is coming That we end up towing 20 30 cars on any given night So it's it's not when it's forecasted and everyone knows that we have this You know this winter weather event coming because people are fine are getting the message and getting in parking someplace else Which is why we're we've wondered if they can do it on that day Can they do it every other day of the the year can they do it? more frequently We thought about a parking garage in town Is there any further questions Lauren actually can we get the lights back on thank you very much No worries. They're not not right now though It's right on top of it The Given the way you described a snow event for example, and there's all the equipment and you need to fill all the equipment so Seeing the stats and the the need for staffing like how much does one extra body fill that need versus More people on call or you know like does how much does does hiring one FTE? For example close that gap of the overtime issues And then your assessment So I think that we could take a chunk of that over time We're not you're not going to be able to eliminate all that over time because frankly we also can't Choose when the weather event is going to occur I think What that extra FTE would allow us to do is to provide a more reasonable level for our crews on Throughout the winter. We're also looking at I mean we've been actively talking to other departments about you know possibly helping if we're in a pinch or what what that may be We were looking at night different shift differentials But it becomes a lot more complex when you have when you need 13 pieces of equipment in order to Do the route? It's hard to only do half a route and not all of it I can get into the details, but not all of our equipment has four-wheel drive So each route is designed that a small truck in a big truck will tag team that route The small truck goes out ahead of the big truck So that they can make sure that they can get up the hills So a lot of times you see them going up the middle of the road and then the big truck will actually come through the lane and clear the lanes So it's a little hard to give you a very specific Answer on that if you would like we can try to give you a little bit more of a exact number Any other questions It's a turnover rate in DPW compared to some of the other departments there I know we're down like two FT's here But I mean I saw Tom McCartle stand it in like a foot of water or bargain orders like a general with everybody bleary-eyed around them Not a job. I'd want to go to every day, you know So I would think it one FT's probably like cost-neutral anyways But I just wonder about the human level of some of this stuff like I hate treating our employees like that And I I can't imagine the winter is going to get any better Yeah, you might not have We have It's it's my understanding Just being here a short time that We have an unbelievably loyal Group of people that doesn't mean they're satisfied. They're happy or they are Functional after a winter And and so that impacts all of our other operations. So I think that an additional employee I'm alleviate some of that allows us to get back to a better standard And that will flow forward into better summer operations because if you're not spending 400 hours even 350 hours of overtime here You're a little more resilient and able to take on work. So yeah, I don't think we've really Well, so in my experience the turn I Last off the top of my head over the last five years I can only name one employee that is willingly chosen to leave everyone else has been a retiree, right that they've Worked 20 30 years within the department Not everyone stays if they started in water sewer Not everyone wants to stay with water sewer You see some of them going to streets finding a different home within the city but I would say In general that I haven't really experienced the high turnover rate even within our crews So you you mentioned about having alternating Sides of the street. Are you going to be asking us to make a specific decision tonight? Are you going to come back and give us a specific proposal? Is that something that you all would be? would like to consider and possibly even implementing this year as a pilot or We were trying to gauge your your feeling on even implementing something like that Well, I mean I personally think something has to give that I mean I remember hearing Tom talk about the fact that the cleanup works takes so much longer and Once people have gotten used to this I'm going to call service on demand of the snow They're not so willing to not be on the street when you need to clean it up And that just takes a lot of human power to notify and post and so I'd rather see something straightforward And that way we make it more of a compromise that helps the crew and still helps our parkers I kind of want to come back to what Donna was saying, but the question I had before that was Just clarifying you said a couple of times that we were focusing on the center parts of the city and until 95 That's I wasn't around then but that's my understanding. Yeah, and after 95 they started to right So the clarifying part is and is that just for sight thousands the council said we want all sidewalks done, okay? So what was what was unclear to me was all of the roads were getting plowed throughout town correct when you were saying We were focusing on the center town. It was just the sidewalks. Yes, okay? understood and The other Perhaps less less useful question, but but I'm curious to know whether there has been a significant or or noted increase or change in in Pedestrian activity over the winter are people doing more walking than they used to Given the and you know, perhaps that could help Ease the pressure on the roads if more people are walking fewer of them are driving I don't know. We don't typically do head counts especially during the winter Yeah, if I can jump in I think the I mean that was part of the council goal was to make us more pedestrian friendly And I think one thing that's important understand is that? Sidewalks don't melt the same way that roads do they don't have the rubber friction. So even if they're high high Pedestrian, they're not going to sort of wear off in the same way So we've often got complaints. You don't clear the sidewalks to the same extent that you clear the roads Well, in fact, we actually we are they're just not Sort of melting the same way I Think it's probably anecdotal. We don't have data But with the sidewalks clear more people are using them. I don't know if that's changing vehicle use or not It's particularly in the cold and nasty weather And back to the kind of conversation about Whether we are going to change anything tonight in terms of the policy or not I'm I would be willing to go along with a policy change now it does seem like we're hard up against The winter and and it feels to me like it it is I think a lot of it does feel like it's a communication problem that that residents are To some extent used to what we've been doing for the last couple of years and if we change it right now many of them will be Potentially blindsided. Yeah, so I wanted to jump in again You know, we've had this conversation and while I certainly appreciate and support the work of our DPW I would not recommend that we Make a change despite knowing how much they want to and and public works and excuse me in police and fire Would like us to as well. I feel like, you know, our band starts in another Two weeks and we haven't had adequate time to notify people as you say people have gotten used to the current system You know, we raised this issue in spring With the specter that maybe we would not have a Toe operator in which case I think then it would have been clear We can't tell the cars then they've got to be we've got to do a full on winter band We don't have any real choice I think I'd recommend that we at least start as planned and if we have Comes crisis then we can maybe try to change it, but I think it's it's difficult We've already started publishing information about the winter band and on the bridge had a piece about it As you say people have come to expect that If we're gonna seriously consider a change in policy, we ought to be thinking about it evaluating this winter and Publicizing it as much in advance as possible because even having done this for a few years now people Don't understand it.  It was so much straightforward But I feel if we do something and do it for two months, say January We make a change and that we notify people so you can still give them some lead time It may not happen November 15th, but I feel like we can fish in these core streets that are such a problem It's it's just not a good use of personnel power whether it's DPW the city clerk I mean, we all get the complaints and we put it out there and we communicate. I think we can do it Interesting thought, you know possibly of starting something new in January Don and I had considered that Just because we knew that But you know before Thanksgiving trying to implement something, you know, this at this time of the year is probably You're not gonna have a lot of success But if you had a target of say, you know new year January 1st The city's gonna be trying this for this the second half of the winter season That's something that we would be for Jack would that require an ordinance change or do we have a public safety? we have authority to Issue an order for that. I was assume it would be an ordinance change which of course creates lead time Probably want to take a closer look at that we can but there is the current, you know Gives the manager the authority to call the bans So I suppose that you know, we could assume that it implies that we would have a ban on one side Or the other or total ban, but we'd want to look at that and I think I'd like to be exploring that Just wondering is there data on I mean I could see how an alternating side Do you could also have people violating that and you end up towing? I mean, I don't know what data or success or examples from elsewhere I mean, maybe there's like a year lag or like learning curve, but Did I mean have has the experience you've seen elsewhere that is Inspiring you to put this forward of like people follow it great And there's perfect compliance unlike the ban or are we gonna still be dealing with the same issue? Anyway, and then people are dealing with moving their cars all the time. So there's it's kind of a two-pronged Kind of approach because it's the alternating sides would not just be useful for winter operations It's something that could be used for street sweeping We I don't know how many times we've got complaints about this area has debris or not is unable to be cleared So it's it's another way most other communities that have implemented the alternating alternating sides Also use it they use it year-round. It's not just a seasonal ban I don't know and I could maybe find out based on a few communities how successful they were With year one and year two, but I don't know that information We could come back at the next meeting with that information I'm sure we can make some phone calls Even if at the next meeting Even if you're able to just send an update or an email, that would be useful It would picture maybe not necessarily having a meet like having it on the agenda unless you are also making a proposal Do you know what I mean like? Let's put on the agenda when you're ready to come back like a here's what we recommend There's gonna be a change. Does that sound all right? Okay. Yes. Super Any other questions from council? I'll just thank you for all this information and thanks Eric was it who gathered it. Yeah, Eric great great all the charts It's very nice, and I think there were some comms or questions from the public. So yeah, go ahead, right? Hi Lawrence Oliver again, um, you know myself being an advocate I have one Thank you chunk. I Think there needs to be especially for my wife Challenges as well as myself There's still a you know in terms of the winter stuff. There's still a lot of cracks in the street that needs to be fixed One of the there's a lot one big huge boo boo as you like to as I like to call it is the Ramp by city center and when it snows That ramp, you know a lot of wheelchairs use it including my wife I don't know if the department of public works can work on fixing The cracks by the ramp Before because there's cracks cracks by the ramp as well as in the on the sidewalks and Also, I was wondering if your equipment Your snow removal equipment can if we can have if you know, especially with the population of Washington County being special needs also I'm wondering if there can be a couple of extra days added to or Something else that can be done to like really Remove I mean not just pile the snow hole, but like really remove it Especially when there's obstructions from snow ice, etc Thank you. Thank you. Any other comments or unless you wanted to address Or you don't have you don't have to you can also follow up later Okay Yes Steve Whitaker I'm concerned about the Recurring Shimming or the drainage we've got a lot of standing water. I've been talking to our public work director that I think we're We're almost in a slow-moving emergency here, it's coming on winter We haven't dealt with problems of standing water in the crosswalks that I raised here attention two years ago and they require some shimming of The asphalt to get the water to get into the drains and if we don't do that before winter You're gonna have yet another thing to add on to this overworked crew So I sense that you need to take some action. I have a couple of ideas that I think not waiting till January but Engaging more with the public I've offered to try to get this presentation Done in video where it could be played more useful to the citizens But you also might want to consider some like neighborhood zones of cooperation where people will remind each other to get their cars out of the way On towing because the more they cooperate with Vehicle removal and the maintenance the better off the whole neighborhood is going to be but imposing that just from the The traffic czar's Authority is not going to be as effective So I would ask you to put a priority on The crosswalk and drainage issue before winter hits. I don't know how to do that with FTE's I'll also point out that this winter burnout is Coming it coming out of the summer catch up We got a decade of neglected maintenance on our sidewalks and in our potholes, etc and it's going to take a long time to dig out from that but When you burn out folks in the winter, they're not likely to be looking for more work to do in the summer Your two-minute clock In the prior session when you only had three people speaking it I've mentioned It's it's not consistent with the guidance from the league of cities and towns and open meeting law to watch your two-minute clock So closely. Thank you, Stephen We're going to keep with a two-minute clock Okay. Yes Question for the manager. I know that we've heard about this crosswalk and drainage issue before and I seem to recall that there's at least with some of the drainage issues there's a bit of a dispute between Who did the contractor that did some work on state highways? Is that right? Correct. I'll toss this to see if DPW knows about this. I do know that a number of the Issues that were brought were I also raised to the the state contractor and that they Tried to take care of some of them whether they were successful and the work that they did Obviously that there's probably some crosswalks that they attempted to do something and They didn't have the right approach or they were unsuccessful in resolving that I know that there are some that I don't think that they got to that were on Steven's list But I know that there were also some that were they at least made an attempt to resolve the issue Okay Okay, great. So thank you We are going to adjust our schedule here a little bit because I know there's some folks here for some items that are not listed until a little later, so we're going to Skip over a couple of the following items the combined sewer overflow as well as the water resource recovery facility Not cancelled just just oh, I'm sorry. We're just reached. Thank you. We're shuffling reshuffling the point is we're going to jump to the responsible employer ordinance first public hearing and then we're going to go from there directly into the Murray Hill water connection agreement So To that end My hope is that the responsible employer ordinance first public hearing will be relatively short This is something that we've discussed Previous meetings, so I'm going to officially open the public hearing on this topic. I'm not sure that since we've discussed it Multiple meetings prior. I don't know that there's anything we need to say something that's changed Connor from the last Any comments from council at this point Glenn might have had something that I missed last time just Some language I Do remember there was Let me find it Because I did see that it I Suggested a change and the change is not reflected in this copy Can I interrupt you please? We did get this vetted by our lawyer we did and He they didn't make any other Further changes to it Yeah, I found What I brought up last time in section the new section 6-4 To me it feels like there's a redundant Reference to the Vermont prevailing wage law Right in the middle of there Which shall effectively incorporate the rates out of the Vermont prevailing wage law applicable to the regional rates for the Montpelier area as calculated in accordance with Vermont's prevailing wage law including the appropriate to me It feels like we could take out one of those Clauses including the Vermont prevailing wage law. So for example Which shall effectively incorporate the rates Let's see which shall infectively incorporate skip to the regional rates for the Montpelier area as calculated in accordance with Vermont's prevailing wage law including the appropriate apprentice classification Did you get that? Can you say it one more time? Yes, so I'll read the entirety of section 6-4 as I propose it the bidder or proposer and Subcontractors under the bidder or proposer must comply with the obligations established by the city for payment of a responsible wage Which shall effectively incorporate the regional rates for the Montpelier area? as calculated in accordance with Vermont's prevailing wage law and then it's As it goes including the appropriate apprentice class classification, etc I'm sorry. I didn't have a chance to talk to you about this earlier. We're talking about construction contractors here and I'm curious about other types of contracts that The city has where that might include might have employees and whether They should also be Covered somehow. I remember a couple of years. We've had discussion where we've been approving the the contract for For the food service at the senior center and there are probably other other things like that where the city is Contracting for services whether than rather than providing it directly and I wonder if we know How many Jobs like that there are and what we should do about it. Do I think the key thing here is the financial threshold? $200,000 so above so very most of those service contracts or don't fall under above that So we could look at all contracts that are about that But the construction industry already has the mechanism to do this or some of the others may not So it was really I think I think not to take Connor's thunder But I think it's intended for major construction projects not all of every piece of work we do We actually scaled it down even more with the latest draft To make certain it was workers on the construction site Rather than office workers who would have been in the same company just given the nature of the job Is it I mean I know sort of when we started this conversation. We were wondering how many Projects would have been affected by this, but we I'm assuming we still don't know that Which makes me wonder if it's sort of a if it's a reasonable question Or to too difficult question I don't think it's too difficult a question we and we can get that for second reading If we haven't got it already, I think the key issue is that I Think what convinced us was that the state's already following this Yeah, and that the You know, we don't have a lot of contracts above $200,000 we can get the number But in talking with those contractors, they're pretty much following this And just to be fair, I mean part of my Reason in asking is just to know what the impact would be for us But I also understand to that even if the number is zero That it's still sets a good precedent and it's still worth doing So but it nonetheless, I think that would be an important thing for us to know Okay, and you don't well I still hope that we move forward to go beyond construction more. Yes. Thank you. Yes I agree other comments. Yeah one Yeah, I would just echo that as well I mean, I view this as a great first step and a great thing to put in place and let's not hold it up to let The maybe perfect be the enemy of the good so great but definitely want to keep this on the You know looking at how we could broaden this and Looking forward to that. Thanks All right, any comments from the public All right Okay, so I think what we would need to do is well, I'm gonna officially close the public hearing then and is their motion regarding Setting the date for second reading. I Move to schedule this for second reading at our next meeting on November 13th with the with Glen's amendments. Yes, okay with Glen's amendments. Great. Just to clarify All right any further discussion Okay, all in favor, please say aye. I opposed Thank you. Thank you. I Just want to thank everybody. I know we've had four different meetings on this so far So sticking through it. It's complicated stuff. I've learned a lot myself and just want to appreciate everybody's time and attention Fair enough Thank you I'm here on behalf Murray Hill Homeowners Association. I'm the president. My name is Eric Bigelstone Some of you are aware of this proposal in a more depth Than others we've had our council members at various meetings over the past year or so This is a discussion that we've had amongst our board for well over probably two years now And real quickly just to get you up to speed what got us to where we are today 35 year roughly 35 years ago when Murray Hill was built by the Seneca calls they decided to build their own water supply through wells That they have managed ever since Ken Seneca. It's been the the systems water operator and A few years ago he expressed interest in wanting to retire from that duty which left us as a board with a few decisions whether we Decide to hire another operator through another company Or we start to possibly look into connecting to the municipal water system As that was not an option many many years ago, but it is an option now. So that's where we are today It was accelerated last summer 2018 When our wells underperformed for the first time, I wouldn't say underperformed but showed some signs of stress We had to accelerate some maintenance on them, which they bounced back up But we do feel with Ken retiring And having to look elsewhere for those services, which would definitely cost significant amount of money We felt that it's the best interest of Murray Hill to explore this option of connecting to the city Where we've done, you know all the research and we have all the engineers and you have all the data I'd like to also add that The city has been nothing but fantastic in all this the communication the professionalism With Kurt and everybody on his staff as well as Jim So that's where we are today quick introduction. My name is Jim Trenge I'm a Murray Hill resident and a board member of the Murray Hill homeowners Association and the chair of the ad hoc Water system committee and I just want to echo Eric's comments Tom McCartle and Kurt Mottica extremely helpful as we explored this process as well as Jack and Connor and their engagement through the process to help understand really what our needs are so The other the other group that I want to give a lot of credit to is the drinking water state revolving loan fund which allowed us to pay for this engineering study was It was expensive for a homeowners association to do that so access to those funds was very helpful and that's what really got us here today, so Appreciate all the hard work that people have put into this and I think we're We're close to a big milestone Kurt Mottica deputy director of public works As Eric and Jim mentioned we've been working closely on this project for quite some time I think our first discussions are September of 2018 We were had the opportunity to help develop the RFP for the engineering and and review those proposals and then you know for fine-tune the preliminary engineering report at at the end Also, our staff has been up to look at the water system. It's been very well maintained Very few leaks up there We would be as part of this agreement taking over Responsibility of the infrastructure it does include one pump station Currently our water treatment plant staff operate pump station. So that would be Part of their responsibility and our distribution staff would take over you know flushing of the hydrants and any leaks that do develop Like but like I said has been well maintained by Ken over the years and I do think this is a very good Opportunity for both the city and for Murray Hill. It's I think everybody wins by making this connection There's a revenue stream for the city of approximately forty six thousand dollars a year and For Murray Hill, it's a very modest increase in what they currently pay for rates as well as like having You know the reliability of a full city staff to respond to any emergencies All the costs are what the city's responsibility is for this agreement is we through the preliminary engineering report the best options to extend the Water main along North College and that provides some fire protection. It's the only option that provides some fire protection from Murray Hill Which hopefully will you know reduce their insurance rates a little bit So the the city and so my goal was to not have to do a bond vote in order to make this connection happen So we'd be looking at extending the North College line to the end of the street and Securing the easement cross-country to connect to the Murray Hill system all that work would be done in-house by public work staff The work from the intersection of Town Street to the end of North College would be done by public work staff From there would be Murray Hill's contractor to connect to their water system So the investment for the city is relatively small. I think it's you know I was thinking in material costs, you know somewhere between Somewhere around 20 20,000 dollars or so So like I said, I think this is a win for everybody What we're asking for tonight is the council to authorize the city manager to approve the agreement that was submitted in the council packets, which really details the responsibility of the city and Murray Hill and There'll be a separate we'd come back to the council at a later date to actually take acceptance of the water system once we've verified that all of the The work identified in the agreement is complete Any questions? Well, I'm so I have a question So there's a pump house on that you all that Murray Hill has currently is that correct? And I noticed one of the Provisions in the agreement has you all updating that are being it up to code. I assume that Once it's up to code that the city would take over like this is sort of what you were just saying right that The city would end up take over running that pump station. Is that more or less correct? Yep, that's correct after we've after that so right now all of our water pump stations are connected to our computer monitoring systems Well, that's part of the upgrades that need to be done but radio communications so we can sort of monitor that Station remotely But yes, so ultimately that would become a part of the city's infrastructure any other questions So It was funny that we you know We were planned to have this presentation happen right after presentation on the water and sewer finances which caused a lot of deep breathing on my part so I In the case having Having this This you know prospect I think makes a lot of sense for us And hopefully for you all as well Or it sounds like it does make make sense for you as well So I'm inclined to be in favorite of it I think there are some questions that are related to the water system that I'll say for that in conversation But but as for this proposal I Think it's great other thoughts Yes, I was just gonna make a motion. Oh go for it now Yeah, no so I moved to approve the water system construction dedication and water supply agreement And designate the city manager as the duly authorized agent to execute documents on behalf of the city of Montpelier a second Further discussion Okay, I'll unfairly say aye. Hi. I oppose Great. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah, thank you Okay, so we're gonna jump back in the agenda. It's about 8 30 Do you how are you all doing do you want another break? Are you feeling okay? I'm feeling good. Okay, great. So we're gonna jump back to the combined sewer water overflow of financials and We'll go as far as we can but I'm feeling we're gonna end up Canceling item 15 the chapter 8 public hearing I wonder if you want to go to the water system financials first before CSO there is a power plant for the CSO financials That's a little bit longer. I think the water sewer financials. We can go through a bit faster. That's fine with me Okay So, okay, so we're gonna go to the use of the water sewer and Financials then right, okay Do you need any time to you know connect to the projector or anything? I Mean, I do have a couple slides. I don't think I necessarily have to do a PowerPoint for this unless you really want one Well, it's I mean, I know we all have the slides available So what I mean, we've got it if you need to refer to anything so okay This is number item 11. No. Yes. Oh, no Okay So many changes I'm 12 Okay, so So the the guiding document for utility replacements is the water sewer master plan that was developed in 2016 it really outlines all the funding and the goals for the length of pipe that we replace each year and That is to achieve a steady-state condition where essentially every pipe in the entire city is replaced over a hundred-year period and You know one thing I wanted to do tonight is to you know sort of show where we're at on that plan are we meeting our targets and On the on the handout I provided to you I didn't omit one water project and we were just slightly under our goal of 1,100 feet for the last three years It's a coming street there the state is Rebuilding the bridge and coming street and there is a water line about 135 feet associated with that So when you add that in we actually are just above our target 1,100 feet. So that's good news. We are we're hitting what we set out to hit For water line replacement I could say we could save all the questions to the end. That's okay. Not good Okay, I recall from presentations from Tom McCartle that the Lines that are largely breaking right now are not the oldest ones They are the ones that were installed in the 70s or so something like that When we go to replace Just so many miles so many feet per year were our is there any way that we are targeting the Piping that is prone to break or are we just saying anything on this street ready go? No, it's absolutely worst first condition So it's actually the so that yes, you're correct a lot of the pipes that were put in the 90s were constructed of ductile iron and At the time of the installation it wasn't known how susceptible they were to gross of soils So those are a lot of the pipes that are failing now are ductile iron That's are just 30 years old So if I can follow up on that so I also recall that you know some of the piping that was like a hundred years old Is still somehow fine or is that? Right, so the hundred-year-old pipes for cast iron material and they're almost an inch thick So they just very robust piping And yeah, those do not are not failing at the rate that we're seeing of the newer ductile iron pipe. I realized this is maybe a ridiculous question, but the The piping that we're putting in now when we replace it right where it's we're replacing ductile iron with PVC Is it right? We were using PVC for the first few years of replacement. We just recently Moved changed our water pipe standard to an HDPE. It's a high-density polyethylene. It's also plastic but it also has We believe it's gonna have a longer design life and it's also a little bit elastic so I can kind of Absorb some pressure shock shocks from the system So this is the ridiculous part of my question It's Unreasonable right to think that we could ever like be installing something that's gonna have a hundred-year life span Right like no, we do believe that the HDB HDPE will match the cast iron life. Okay? Just to put in here if we're going for a steady state and replacing all of our piping Once entirely over a hundred-year period. Do I understand that correctly? That's correct. Yeah, then then we should assume that some of our pipe is gonna be a hundred years old by the time It gets replaced right which it already is right, so I think I think we have to to hope that HDPE at least some of it will last something like a hundred years if we if we want to like if we're going for like no breakages That's what we would want, but there's there's no way that we can there's somehow I I Worry about plastics. I'm just gonna say it. I worry about plastics in general and their interaction with Unexpected chemicals that we may ever have flowing through our pipes or being mixed in with our soils And the cast iron for some reason I'm like, oh, yeah, that's stable. That's fine But there's no way we're going back to cast iron pipes. They don't make it anymore It's just expensive. Okay. Thank you for indulging me in my ridiculous Questions. No, they don't make cast iron pipe anymore. The only metal pipe is really ductile Why I don't I think it's Production cost is so thick, you know, the cost of it So nobody just nobody makes it Okay, Lauren you have a question Yeah, you might have just answered it So just trying to get a sense of the alternatives also being concerned with Plastic as the substance knowing we're learning more and more about the chemicals and I mean, I think HDPE is like one of the better plastics in terms of toxicity, but certainly better than PVC, but just like what were our options and something that maybe I Presume, it's the cheapest with the best performance kind of characteristics Just curious what the options were so really there's there's three water pipe options in the market. It's ductile iron PVC or HDPE The advantages of HDPE is it's actually fused pipe So it's actually melted together as opposed to the other two styles of pipe are a gasket and spigot and There's actually an allowable leakage for all of those Gasketed connections, so you're always going to have lost water with that type of pipe So that's another advantage of the HDPE there is zero leakage because there is no joint there the other benefits are like I mentioned it is expandable a little bit and It's flexible so you don't need as much concrete at sharp corners to keep the pipe in place We do We do soil testing before we install the pipe to make sure there's not going to be any issues with these backfill material around it And it is from our research The only pipe that we think is going to get a hundred year design life the PVC I think most of the estimates are around 70 years Ductile we're getting 30 so they want to do that you can you can do a plastic rat ductile iron, and they also have a Galvanized ductile iron option Those are both fairly expensive HDPE is also an expensive pipe It is that it does cost a little bit more, but for the benefits that I just mentioned we think that it's worth the investment What are the I've heard that? Some folks being perturbed about and that's probably the wrong phrase Frustrated maybe about There was some incident where there was new pipe being installed and maybe it was for the fusing process They ended up with some kind of Outgassing in their house, and they had to not not be in their house was that because of the fusing process That was um sewer lining Which is also part of the steady state something I wanted to talk to you folks tonight about as well I know I know we're just like But that's but that's a different process Reconvides a it's a epoxy lining inside an existing sewer pipe as opposed to installing a new plastic water main. Okay Okay, thank you Thank you for letting me detour and ask some questions Please carry on okay So like I said, we're on target for our water system replacement schedule Sewer is actually a little bit behind and there's a few reasons for that One is we were a little bit unsure of the finances of the wastewater plant. So a little bit cautious on How much money we spent? Things are looking better now on that front. So that's good news and the other part of it is We are we we had a fairly extensive lining contract we're just talking about this epoxy lining inside sewers It's a very cost-effective way to replace to rehabilitate sewers. It's not a replacement Obviously the downsides that we learned from the project is one that it does have an odor it's a It's styrene is the material it's off-gas It smells like Bondo for those who've done mechanic work or body work on your car So there are alternatives that we're looking into so we had a fairly extensive contract And when we had that issue with the with the odors and and the reason those residents had odors in their houses because they don't have traps on their sewer service from the from their house which in itself is is concerning and so we certainly recommend Recommended to them that they have that corrected But if it was constructed with a trap on I don't think we would have experienced this that sort of issue But regardless we're looking at other alternatives. They do have an alternate material to styrene which is I Can't remember the chemical name off the top of my head, but we're looking at that as a potential alternative so when and the second part or issue with lining is You have to have a very uniform pipe and a lot of our pipes will go from six inch to four inch to eight and all sorts of things and The liner has to it has to have a uniform pipe to to expand into so it's steam cured It's a epoxy that goes sort of inside out inside the pipe and then they Force steam in and adhere it to the walls of the sewer pipe Like I said, you can get a lot of production. It's it's not disruptive to You know the road you don't have to dig anything up But we've got to work through this This off-cast concern and like I said, there are alternatives to the styrene So I think once we once we are able to fine-tune how we bid and how we Pre-inspect Our sewer lines. We're really going to be able to make some great progress on on our sewer replacement And every time we so that the sewer mains are clay tile pipes those pipes have no gaskets in them so they act as a street under drain essentially so You know water can if the groundwater comes up over those pipes They go right into the sewer and then that contributes to our CSO issue So we're sort of doing two things at once when we are sealing these pipes up we're helping reduce our CSOs as well as preserving the asset I have another question about that Clay tile pipe is used in sewer systems. Correct, but it's not an appropriate material for water No, it's not a pressure pipe so it wouldn't hold up to that got you Okay Okay, thank you. That's helpful So like I said, that's sort of how our plan to catch up on on sewer has really refined this this lining technique It's cost-effective as well as minimal minimally disruptive Couple other things to sort of Show that we're doing maybe a little bit better than just the hard numbers show we really look at asset divestment which is We looked at streets that have two water mains and we replaced them with one so Not only are you putting you know a new thousand feet of pipe in but you're taking away a thousand So it actually gets us to steady state even that much quicker and that pipe that second pipe doesn't have to replaced So it's a it's an added benefit or added accelerated schedule so there's a couple streets that's happened Norfield Street had two two sewer mains and Clarendon and that we're doing this year had Two sewer mains and two water mains and so we're replacing those with was just one A couple other planning documents that we've done. We've just completed The roof drain study was through a lake Champlain basing program grant Sort of looking at what roof drains are tied and that's more related to the CSO But it is sort of fall under the sewer fund and then the the long-term control plan, which is also It's very specific to CSO's But we were able to get that 50% funded 50% of our staff time reimbursed for that work and of course, we've got the plan upgrade so that's Taking some fair amount of effort from the public work staff and now this Murray Hill Connection Agreement that y'all just approved You know that is gonna offer allow us to have some additional funding to hopefully accelerate water replacements a little bit important any questions I've heard from people who've who've had to do construction or plumbing work that There are places out there in the city where we don't actually know Where the mains or the branches of the houses are? Is that right So for we have a Very good Record system of water services and those also can be traced. We have equipment that can Actually put a current through the water line and follow it out to the main Sewer is quite different. We have Essentially no record on sewer services. A lot of the old ones run right with the water in the same trench the older houses And I think part of that is the ownership of sewer services is private all the way to the connection of the main Biordinates as opposed to the water that the city owns it up to the right-of-way line So there's a difference there. It is true We don't have great records on sewer services unless it's on the last, you know, 20 years One record keeping has been much improved But the water the pressure line we can we can locate it if we don't have the record But we have record on almost all of them. Okay. Thanks This is a little bit of a personal story, but we found one of your sewer tops When we were digging in our garden with all this plant moving at my condo building Yeah, and you didn't know it existed and it's been buried for 30 years under dirt Yeah, so now you know that one. Yeah, your contractor came and told me Unfortunately, now you want to keep it open so now we can't put our bush back I wish we hadn't told you But you took the lid off and looked at it. Oh, it's working fine Lauren Just curious knowing that this plan is very forward-looking at the next hundred years And knowing that with climate change and you know So what might have been the given a few years ago of conditions we know is changing and accelerating like how much? kind of climate resilience or Considerations of the impacts on this and maybe it's also or as pertinent and some of the other Infrastructure conversations we're about to have but just curious how much that's part of the kind of planning and forward-looking and projecting of What you all are doing or is that part of conversations moving forward? Well, I think our our pipe choice is probably going to be You know very resilient for climate change as far as water systems You know, I think When we developed the master plan it was it was really, you know developed fairly simply through This is the cost for replacement and then you know most the time you can only get a hundred years out of the pipe So I don't think You know, we didn't necessarily take that into account climate change into account when we developed the master plan but as we Select materials for the actual piping replacements, you know I think that does come into play for the resiliency of HDP so Laura and I that your phrase there is very optimistic. It's a forward-looking plan. I See this as like we are not funding things at the appropriate levels Currently and we've planned to take 50 years to get to the point where we are funding them at appropriate levels Is that I think that's kind of a fair like to get to steady state? Like we're we're not funding them at the levels. They should be Presently is that a fair statement? Well, I mean I If you wanted to increase water rates, we would replace more water mains absolutely As far as like as far as leaks You know just to sort of give you we've had a fair amount of leaks this year, but looking at our operating budget It's essentially on target. We're not really We're a little bit over in distribution the plants water plants a little bit under so Actually, if you look at the overall fund, we're slightly under You know percentage of time versus percentage of budget used It is hard on our crews more so on the winter To deal with these water leaks it you know, I think it would be nice to To take care of all the problematic water mains up front the problem is the You know the ductile iron that's failing It's appropriately sized as opposed to the older pipes that are not failing as much Those are undersized for fire flows. So we have competing Requirements we've got these new pipes that are They're failing that are the right size. So, um, I just want also wanted to point out You know the we did we did have as you all are aware Nelson Street washed out twice in the last six months one of the one of those times Was in the winter and it was you know pretty catastrophic event causing icing downtown Again, just a month ago happened. So We did Hire a contractor sort of as an emergency repair project to do that section of water mean It was ductile iron put in in the 70s probably some of the very first ductile iron I think that went in the city Where they originally looked to connect The pipe actually you could peel the outer layer of it off. So it was really bad They went down another eight feet and the pipe was solid. So That those washouts and complete repaving of Nelson. That's like $20,000 so there's there can be cases of significant damage, but the water fund pays for that damage that does not come out of the general fund just wanted to make that distinction and We haven't paved the paving bill yet but We are like I said still within our budget for operating so Will you be replacing that again? With the HDPE So the HDPE we didn't we use PVC on that particular installation and the reason is because the HDPE is It's elastic you have to put Restraints to keep it from sort of shrinking and growing and being 130 feet of replacement pipe And that was the last remaining section of Ridge Street that we had to replace The cost and the time associated with those restraints It wasn't cost-effective. So in certain cases we do Make exceptions and use PVC as opposed to HDPE So looking at the the graph that you have sideways the Debt service over time so You might want to be aware of that When you put something sideways in your presentation, that's how we see it So I had understood that the water system had some significant bonds that were being paid down and That we were going to be crossing some kind of you know some nice milestone threshold In the upcoming years, you know 2021 or two or so In which we were going to pay off of the substantial bond And so just looking at this debt service. It's a little hard to tell because There's the additional contracted Water services that sort of jumps up in 2023, but is that a correct? Understanding that we and and if so is Does that paying down of some significant bond show up in this graph? Yeah, so the I think probably the major bond you're referring to is the water plant that is Complete in fiscal year 25 okay We have taken on a few bonds and just recent years. We've done Norfield Street as well as The Clarendon Avenue and a couple other streets that were lumped in with that one So, you know as that comes off we've been adding debt back on so It is out in the out years I think and you know like they like you said that graph does illustrate it FY 39 jumps up a bit So I mean without and like as like I mentioned this this master plan is developed with a You know a moderate proposed rate increase for right bears of three and a half percent annually Which is you know two and a half of that is inflation with one percent increase Yeah, the financing is a limiting factor for how fast we can replace pipes But I am you know the idea behind this was to make it palatable to the water rate users I'm not opposed to To looking at this and possibly accelerating it if the council wants to do that. We're all for it, but You know, I just we just have to you know think about the impacts to the the water rate payers as you're aware. Yeah So when we pay off that bond in 2025 Theoretically that would free up some capacity or some some funding really to put either potentially be more proactive about replacing lines or To deal with the unexpected breaks I mean one just assumption right is that with climate change. We're gonna see more breaks over time just in terms of like the freeze-thaw cycles and be more extreme and and that that sort of thing so I I guess my sense of wanting to push on this is is it really just in anticipation of the potential for more Basically breaks happening and like how I know that's like impossible to to really predict like where is it gonna break? And so, you know, it's you're sort of playing wack-a-mole a little bit And you know, you're gonna we're gonna intentionally replace, you know, this one street over here, but that's not the one that that breaks But anyway, I'm not is there any I Guess my question is is there any Way to If if we're gonna replace lines faster than the projected rate Is would that end up saving us money or is it really not worth it because there's so many miles and it's so unpredictable Well part of the problem is that water main replacement extremely expensive. So an FY 23 we're looking at doing East State Street Lots of buildings Busy Street, you know, it's gonna be well over a million dollars just for the water portion of that project so one thing that we are starting to look at is Trenchless rehabilitation of lines and that's probably a good alternative for ductile iron pipe That has failed early because for a system like that you really want the pipe to be the correct size Does that mean trenchless? So it'd be similar to a different material chemical than the sewer lining But a similar technique where you don't dig anything up You put a liner on the inside of the pipe Through a hydrant or something like that I've never I don't have any personal experience with it But it's something we're looking at that could be a more cost-effective alternative to accelerate pipe replacements Other questions I Know I'm sure you thought this was gonna be a short one, and I'm sorry that made it longer I think those are all of my questions at this point But just you know in thinking about like how do we prepare? Is there anything that we should be doing differently in order to prepare for the possibility of more? Breaks Well, so those big picture ideas there's a couple a couple of thoughts we've had You know one is the city mum player has really really high pressures And that's part of the reason we have so many leaks and and the reason why they're so destructive when they do leak because You have 200 pounds of pressure blasting out roads So city of berry for example has a high and a low pressure system We need a high pressure line to get to our tanks that will serve Murray Hill in other areas But we don't need all the downtown to be at 200 pounds of pressure So you know one thought is and this you know, this would be Potentially tens of millions of dollars. I don't know But we could You would need a dual pipe system, you know through the downtown to get to the tanks to the hills a Complete redesign of the system to drop all the pressures in the downtown to a reasonable level.  There's little spikes in the system Those spikes can bounce from one end to the other and that's what results in these breaks if we could Relieve those spikes with some pressure relief valves and different areas strategically. We might be able to reduce the number of leaks It's not a cure all but it Give us some time make sense to me. I wonder how expensive that is That's affordable. I don't mean I think I would want I would probably need to hire some engineering work out on that and You know, I would guess in the fifty to a hundred thousand dollar range To get it all done Cool. Thank you. I know I've a lot of questions there, but Any other questions any questions from the public Lauren Just just one of the things that you said you are sometimes using PVC piping. I was just on the hippie website National Institutes of Health where they're talking about the Chemicals that are part of PVC that they add to make it more flexible that late Staxon's BPA and you know, those are linked to Cancers infertility The changes of your hormones and extremely low levels of these chemicals can impact public health So just hope that the department is looking at potential public health implications and if we're looking at things like epoxy linings or new things that just the You know knowing both we don't want to be harming the health of our people or you know We realize oh, we put this up in and then in 15 years We want to tear it all out because we feel like it's a public health risk So just trying to think long term of what we're putting in Any other anyone else Okay Thank you so much. We're actually gonna take a Quick detour in our agenda. I know we've had Had chapter eight Animals first public hearing at the end, but we're actually gonna move it to right now For your sake All right chapter eight. So this is the I'm gonna officially open the public hearing Do it really well at that today Chapter eight animals and foul So I think we have some better language this time around any comments Create any comments from council Okay super I agree All right, I'm gonna officially close the public hearing and I think we need a motion to set the Yeah, you know I mean set the reading for the next meeting Move to set the second public hearing on this chapter eight amendment for next our next meeting a second Further discussion all in favor, please say aye. I oppose Great. Thank you Thank you for being here. Thanks for coming down for that Yeah Okay, all right All right, so now we're gonna jump back into well, okay, it's it's nine o'clock We have yet to cover CSOs the water resource recovery facility and those two things I'm gonna guess that I don't know if we can do both. Do you think we can do both in that time? Just the way that conversation has been going. I feel like we probably can only do one. I don't know. What's your Yeah Are we keeping you both here one for each of those? Okay, let's do CSOs then, okay, you don't have to read every slide you can give us the Overview points assuming we've read your slides Okay, so I'm gonna talk a little bit about CSO financials Sum everyone knows what a CSO is There's a couple new council members. Let's give you a just a quick background Combined sewer overflows the city's sewer and storm systems were all built with one pipe originally And 62 they had the interceptor project came through took the Took all those pipes and brought them to the plant, but when that was done These structures 20 I think 23 of them around the city were built So that when the rains came and went into the combined system The those pipes became overloaded and a certain percentage of the water and those pipes go straight to the river Since that time. We've gotten down to six structures. So this this financial plan is Modeled after really this whole presentation is from what's called a long-term control plan Which was a state mandated through our wastewater permit Basically a financing plan to eliminate CSOs that's Like I said part of our sewer discharge permit through what's called a 1272 order So so these These financials also are tied to the sewer master plan That is the that is the funding source for CSO elimination work is through the sewer fund Now this first slide illustrates the locations of the remaining CSOs Two of them are siphon lines, which are used to carry the combined flows across the river One across the north branch and one across the venuski those are That's part of our bottleneck really is that those have a finite capacity And we do have some some ideas on how to increase the capacities on those So I was a little confused by this image only because I was not totally clear on What the blue dots versus the red dots meant So the blue dots are the siphons Where they're coming across and all the red dots are the the CSO overflows And what are the yellow stars? Oh, the yellow or is there something the yellow dots are all of our sewer structures within the city So that's our entire sewer network Do you mean like those are like manholes manholes? Yeah, yeah, those are like access points Forgive my ignorance. Can you describe? I mean, I think I understand a combined sewer water overflow point. I feel like I understand what that means the siphon What is happening there? so Siphon is Explain it well, but there's a structure on one side of the river That's just a little bit higher than the outlet on the other side of the river and once that has a full column of water Essentially as opposed to pumping it pulls the water under the river and then back up to the other side because of the Elevation difference, okay, okay So it's an alternative to a pump station. So you don't have power use to which is That that portion then after the siphon it depends on I'm sorry the height of the river then does that matter or it's going it's going under the river, right? It goes under the river. So it's The the velocity is dictated by the size of the pipe and the difference in elevations from one the high side of the River to the lower side of the river okay across them Okay That is helpful. Thank you So when it gets across the river, where does it go and then it goes back into a gravity collection system and eventually down to the plant All right, so So this map here shows you in 2018 all of the overflow events that we had at each of the individual structures So That is just a general overview of what occurred last year if I go to the next slide here This is through our long-term control plan we had to come up with an approach of how we were going to eliminate our CSOs and This is generally what we found as the best way for Montpelier to eliminate CSOs and And all so our first step is to adjust weirs in the siphons where applicable By adjusting the elevation of the weir you can you gain more capacity more basically Head at the more the higher the elevation the more Flow can actually increase velocity that goes through the pipe So then you have a bigger capacity So we've already gone through a series of changes back in 2016 was the first set of them So we've adjusted we've done some incremental changes because if you go too High you can have some problems with the connecting services. So if you Bring an elevation above where the sewer service connects it will backflow potentially into a house or business So we've done incremental changes there So that we can make sure that we don't cause any other problems by just adjusting it too high In addition, we are currently looking at installing flow monitors and rain gauges that will give us more precise data In each of the locations for each CSO The our most recent CSO event that we had we only had it was At the plant which is our where current rain gauges we had point three inches of rain but when we looked at the The weather station up at the airport there was for the same day like one point six inches So we do experience some localized showers So we need to make sure that we can have the right instruments in order to Provide accurate data about how to best eliminate these So that's something that we're moving forward through this year. Hopefully we there's a round of funding That we're trying to take advantage of currently In addition, we're performing smoke testing which is we put we issue smoke into the system where we can look and find Possible cross connections So we did that on we do we did that on Clarendon and we've done that in That neighborhood We did that also in deerfield greenfield to confirm that there were No connection like roof drain connections into the sewer system that we were missing prior to paving the street In addition, we want to preserve pipe assets Kurt was just talking about this through the contract of you know the esteem curing of the sewer lines that we did that trial project earlier this year and It was successful in terms of rehabilitating the line but we also had a lot of other problems that were that we didn't really That we were unexpected when we first bit out the the project in addition to preserving pipe assets really our approach is to Take what we currently have and improve it rather than I mean we could add More pump stations or come up with some really creative engineering designs, but that doesn't preserve We still have that asset so we have a 36 inch trunk line that goes from Bailey have all the way down to the plant and that trunk line needs to be Preserved it needs to be kept in good condition. So while there are some other options that could maybe Impact the CSO's It doesn't take into account the asset So our approach is kind of a dual approach and prove the asset and the capacity at which the the wastewater moves through it so our trunk line is Generally around seven million gallons, you know our goal through lining is to get it around nine to ten million gallons So we have this approach of preserving what we have first And then if if we can't eliminate them in entirety then looking at some other options like flow reduction in treatment If they cannot if it if overflows cannot be completely eliminated in addition We also have the roof trains through the report that Kurt was talking about That in areas where we can hopefully disconnect and eliminate those contributing volumes Just follow up on the on the asset replacement. So The existing pipes of main pipes that carry this over to the plant are constructed to have a concrete So by putting in epoxy lining you make that pipe much smoother and therefore you can carry more flows So the plant really isn't restricted in capacity. Well, it has a 12 million gallon per day Capacity we never we never can get enough flow to the plant So if we can if we can at the same time like Zach was saying Extend the life of the sewer and increase the capacity. That's that's the best way to go about this Because the plant can handle those those flows if we can just get it there. So that's sort of how we're looking at So back to when you were talking about flow reduction or treatment Is that if because there's some engineering challenge with the CSO's or is that a budget if we don't Have the money to do it what why would we do that instead of Eliminating them or is that like an interim until we get to them? Can you just explain that a little more? Yes, one of the options? Through the the state CSO rule is to actually treat the wastewater that overflows to the river And so it would be you could treat it so but it requires screening It's defined as screening and disinfection at the point of discharge So we would have six overflows that we potentially have to have you know either chlorination and detention time or ultraviolet Disinfection as well as some sort of screening unit. So it's listed last because we don't really want to go that route very expensive difficult to achieve and And really not the best solution in our opinion. So it is listed on here as an alternative But it's not something that we're Planning to proceed with or move forward with Do you anticipate at this point that any of the CSO points will fall into that category of like that you that we cannot eliminate them at this time Having written the long-term control plan or at least the draft document. We don't think that There might be that hundred-year storm that we couldn't quite capture But we have a most of our issues our capacity based and if we can get if we can improve it by say a 140% so if it was six if we can get it to 9 million gallons That captures everything that we've had this year everything we had last year everything. We've had you know the previous year So it's not necessarily a matter of I mean I think I've combined sir water overflows points is like, you know sort of being at least having Some kind of part of it that's open right that like if it overflows it just goes out into the world So this would be not necessarily just closing off. It's not just a matter of like cutting off that Opening so to speak but rather like just increasing the size of the piping So eventually we would have so these are There's like a little wall next to the sewer main and when the water level comes up in the sewer main It goes over that wall to the river. So ultimately the goal is to block those those openings up But if we do that before we reduce the flows in the pipe then that goes into people's houses And so that's like a higher health risk. So that's the only other place. It couldn't exit or out in the street Okay, so so just to be clear if we were able to get rid of all the CSOs and we had a major Event then sewer water could back up into people's homes. Well, that's all Well One caveat on that If we closed all the CSOs So that's possible. So, you know item two on the list is install flow monitor So there's grant funding. We're gonna try to get those in hopefully in the spring They're hopefully gonna get funding for it this year before the end of the calendar year But that will tell us how much water is going over and we can predict the higher storms to tell us, you know, cool All right, thank you. We're good That's anticipating, you know when I get the next email that's like, why did you fix these CSOs me? Well? You know close the ball right now Here's what can happen right sorry So I don't we don't really need to touch on this slide all too much because we you guys just talked about it Went over it and your other water sewer discussion. So we can skip over this one So I'm actually gonna jump ahead to the next slide This is just a graph of the funding that we anticipate in order to resolve each of the CSOs Within some gear category years and the amount of money that is associated with each of those years so here for each of the CSOs we've listed a range of options through our long-term control plan and It's kind of spelled out here I can give you a minute to look at it if you want and ask some questions Each CSO is different and some of them they're in order to so For instance CSO number 23, which is the sewer the last one the sewer siphon That is over by Bailey Avenue We may need to do some other things in order to fully eliminate them So there's some phases and increments that need to happen Like such as you know cleaning and sublining the the trunk line that goes from Bailey Ave to the plant So by increasing that the flow from that point to the plant then you can then increase the next step down the line so There's not a very there's not a set order of these projects, but there's a general idea of How we can approach these and and the money that's going to take To Achieve each of these projects I will say that one of one of the biggest projects that we have right now on the docket after the installation of these monitors is that there is a it's a there's a sag line and on State Street, so over past Taylor Street the sewer main Takes a dip and goes down and comes back up and that's really restricting our flows that are able to get to the plant We don't know yet when we eliminate that sag how much benefit we're gonna have we're pretty hopeful that We will see a good a really high reduction in overflow events after we Are able to do that one Just so that you guys know Every time we do something to one of them. There's a cause and an effect right so we raise a we're here and then We see something else happening somewhere Outs down the line so CSO number eight We actually have not overflowed this year, which is the that's a first for us And we believe it's because of some of the other changes We've made to the weirs down the line that it's not allowing it to get to that level over at that CSO structure One of the interesting things about this in the previous slide for me is just the timeline Is it am I correct in thinking? from these slides that we will achieve the goal of CSO Full separation by fiscal year 41 That's that's what we intend and once once we get the the flow monitors and we'll have a better idea and able to do a couple of these these projects right off of the bat like this the sewer sag we'll have a little bit more analytical data to really put a good Grasp, but that's our current. Yeah, that is our our current plan in our estimate of when we can Take make sure that we can eliminate all the CSOs We do also feel that we can do it a little bit faster, but we want to be conservative in our estimates both fiscally and just We don't there might be some other complications that Arise that we are not aware of yet if The fiscal problems were Disappeared in some way like if we found Is it Six six and a half million dollars Somewhere else how quickly could we do it in terms of The work itself is that more like A ten-year plan instead of a 20. I mean I know this is total speculation You can tell me to back off. Well, so there's just some unknowns Like we went into talking about the steam curing of that pipe We were very hopeful that that was gonna be our solution. There's a couple other things that we're looking at that are potentially really good alternatives But without knowing how successful some of these practices are gonna be it's a little hard to to put a Pinpoint answer on some of them The hope is that we can start doing bigger projects You know a mile at a time rather than a Thousand a couple thousand feet at a time and that if that if that is occurring we would see it Speed up tremendously I have now are some of these tied in with road projects And can they be done independent of any road repairs? Well, sir, if we if we do the lining project then that does not need to be if we're doing full replacement Like Clarendon Avenue, then we do like to time it was with the paving It's not on your map, but at one point I thought Tom mentioned something down at the bottom of East State hitting Maine and that That I thought doing that one had to do with the bridge it does. Yep, okay So that's why I was thinking there's some that are tied to projects that are roads, but you don't even have that one on your map I'm missing. It's not an overflow point. Okay, what it is is a combined system, so right? It's a combined system. Yeah, so all of the all the storm water in East State ties back into the sewer system And that contributes to the overflows, but it's not an actual overflow point And the problem is we don't have a storm outfall that can carry that volume of water So we have to put a new one in when the bridge is rebuilt the realtor bridge on State Street Right. Okay. That's what I thought it just wasn't mentioned here We're also kind of brainstorming some other creative ideas about whether if we can't get it to the realtor bridge How we might be able to still achieve that same That same goal I'm sorry. I'm like total broken record tonight. So you mentioned like hundred-year rain events Like knowing that those are not gonna be hundred-year rain events or like the what was a hundred-year rain event could become a ton year rain events like what are we planning to and is Is the system being built for a long-term view of changing precipitation patterns or are you How is that being considered? So part of our goal is to really increase that capacity which would more translate into like a 50-year storm So when we're what I'm talking about getting flow to the plant. We're really looking at Making sure that we can take all of that, you know, so that we're looking at May 100% we can get all of the 50 years. It just may be a few Extreme storms that That are that remain which is why we have that flow reduction and or treatment in case That we're not able to to tackle it with the change in weather and climate the other part of it is You know heavier rain events are more They contribute overflows more from in direct inflow So like catch basins on the street that go straight to the sewer system or roof drains that go straight to the sewer system Our plan is to really eliminate all of those so that you're not so affected by rain events In that case it becomes more groundwater levels and and the sewer pipes that are don't have tight gaskets in them to keep the water out And that ties back to the sewer master plan where as we replace our old sewer pipes That component will also be eliminated So I think we will be by not having direct inflow anymore that we're going to be have some protection from that Those heavier rain events So just looking through your time line No, this is like this is actually your next slide. Maybe I don't want to stop you if you have more to Know what you guys guide the conversation. I think we've told you what we came here to tell you So we'll just answer your questions. So I find this timeline very helpful just to think about you know how Like all that the monitoring and the testing that needs to go into figuring out what needs to be done Or what sort of the next steps are but if So we've got some some city-wide things that happen Over you know that for the next You know seven years or so and then but it looks to me as though then Well or that so the the next one to be addressed more or less It's a little it's a little funny because you've got you've got it sort of chunked, right? So all the CSO number ones Are together so but then we've also got some 2020 to 2022 Deadlines not dead not deadlines, but you know timelines anyway for CSO number eight and number nine So does that I guess my my question is Do So we're at six CSOs basically right now It's gonna take us a little while to figure out how to to eliminate or some time and some money to eliminate the next set I suppose When do you anticipate that we may have? Mitigated sort of the next one or the next you Is that a fair question? Yeah, it is a fair question. I'm hopeful that eight is done, but I'm not already already done because we haven't had we've hit up to upwards of seven million gallons to the plant this year and it's not had an overflow event But I'm not sure that we're there yet So I would say that the really the biggest thing on this list is in between the year of 2022 is that really that first project that sewer sag on State Street? I think we're gonna see a lot of changes after that project has it has occurred I don't know like I was saying before it's hard to put in a really definitive answer on What year is the first one going to be eliminated and then after that? Which one is the next one to be eliminated in and so on because they're all connected We have a very flat system. There's almost no pitch between the plant and back here Like maybe I think a foot of elevation or maybe two feet in between from like here at City Hall All the way down to the plant. So, you know, we're we're running slopes at point zero zero zero one feet per feet So it's just so it's a little hard because it's a whole system that you have to And also the flow monitors that we're looking to install that's actually going to measure the volume that is being discharged right now We have to report a volume, but it's estimated because we have no way to measure it So by having that data of actually quantifying the volume In relation to a rainfall event will allow us to better answer your question in a couple of years I feel like my understanding of CSOs is shifting a little bit actually because of this presentation, which I think is a good thing, but my So if we make it through the year and eight does not overflow Just that effectively means that it's no longer a combined surrogate overflow point. Is that more or less true? Is it It's still an overflow point. It's still an overflow. It just didn't have any events this year Okay, so that's how the state would look at it. Does that mean that you would not do anything to it or? That you could just close it up. You could just like seal that off and it'd be fine Yeah, I'd be reluctant until we actually get the data that I was just referencing. Okay, okay that's all thinking in terms of budgeting I assume this is like the Water master plan, which is that all these expenditures are Projected to come out of revenues in the in the sewer system and and So the new financial assistance we've gotten for the for the plant Does that potentially? Increase the capacity to the revenue capacity to devote to this No, that's why I wanted that on the agenda to talk to you guys about tonight I couldn't I can do that in five minutes if you want to just Go there right now So so the master plan of the of the sewer master plan was based around a three and a half million dollar debt service for the plant upgrade I think three years ago When we got with ESG The project grew to sixteen point seven five million dollar project We were looking at major rate increases if we didn't get any grant assistance So this having this grant money now essentially, you know it Interestingly, it brings the level of debt service Backdown almost backed exactly to that three and a half million dollar debt when you factor in the guaranteed savings From ESG. I think we're actually gonna we're gonna pass that a little bit, but conservatively It's almost identical. So we're back on master plan debt service again. This is very similar to the water if you want to do accelerate sewer overflow elimination You would have to increase the rate of sewer rate payers to achieve that So I that's that was really the gist of that that presentation is over that discussion It's just let you all know we're back on track now that we don't have to do these major rate increases that we were The concern that we might have to and the plan that we came up with was really based around Not having any increases any additional increases. We realized that Increasing the tax rate is not something that we don't really want to do so we've made really every effort to Keep it within our means But to be clear that just so there's no misunderstanding the plan calls for us to increase the rates one percent over inflation each year So so there are rate increases, but that we're staying within that plan The other part of the the funding is or the project is we we did we had a second plan improvement project plan for ten years out We're doing all of that work now, so in ten years there is going to be a surplus funding available on the sewer fund Because we're not going to have to do as much there still are going to be a few plant needs So the plant will need some work, but it's not going to be as significant as what's structured in the master plan So that is an important distinction that in ten years because we're doing so much work up front We are going to have some flexibility in sewer funding Was there any other questions? Is there any action of this required now, or is this just informational? Super just and just a reminder that first of all these are all important topics But second of all when we did our strategic plan at the beginning of the year you had asked to be briefed on the finances of the plant and CSO on them Didn't just show up by accident Oh Wonderful, thank you, and I I think we still have time to talk through the water resource recovery facility if Yeah, any any disagreement on that Half an hour before we hit 10 Thank you so much part and I assume you don't have any slides for this portion Okay, so Bill commented on this earlier, but it is a discussion item But thank you for the recognition. I appreciate that couldn't have done it without Dodd He's a great resource. That's been a great resource So just to summarize how this funding works We our first pool of money as we draw down Payments our first pool of money is actually from the state of Vermont pollution control grant Unless through the facilities engineering division of the state throu