It's the last paragraph, and I hope that's agreeable because I said I would support the position which I did today at the airport meeting, and I've got the message that that's what's self-healing can work. We're working on it. Great. Yeah, no, I think that's perfect. That's exactly, oh, you can have that. Oh, thank you. And I did the today's meeting. The new city manager was there today at the meeting. Oh, good. I think what they're going to do is she's going to recommend, I believe, that they go back and revise their vote and adopt the one that we adopt. All right. So these are on. So I would like to call to order the South Burlington City Council meeting of Monday, August 21st. We'll begin with the Pledge of Allegiance. Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. The next item is instructions on exiting the building in case of an emergency. Thank you, Helen. If we have an emergency tonight and need to leave the building abruptly, there are two doors in the back of the room or the front of the room, whichever way you're pointing. And that leads out into the lobby and take a right out into the main entrance to the city hall and please gather in the back in the parking lot. There are two doors here that also lead to the parking lot. So please move expeditiously out of the room and Tom and I will be responsible for clearing the building. Thank you. Okay. And before we get to item three, I wanted to take the liberty of reading a letter from the President of the University of Vermont that was sent to Kevin dated August 7th. And it says, Dear Kevin, the extensive fire last Thursday at UVM's historic Torrey Falls was a very unfortunate event. The fact that the impact was not much worse in terms of extensive damage and injuries was nothing short of miraculous. All of the first responders who fought the blaze and coordinated the comprehensive response and coordination performed in spectacular fashion. The fact that there were no serious injuries was a great relief. The firefighters who responded were heroic and showed great bravery in the face of a dangerous situation. In addition, the valuable collections in the building survived largely intact. An amazing outcome in light of the extent of the fire. At this time it appears that only a very small amount of the collection cannot be saved. We are deeply grateful, proud and impressed with the professionalism cooperation and courage of all involved in this incident. The University of Vermont is fortunate to be a part of such an extraordinary community. On behalf of a grateful university, many, many thanks to all sincerely. So I just wanted to note that we were there as a fire department. And the fire department has this letter over there in the shop. Well good. I think that's always nice to share. Thank you for doing something that's just your job. But we all appreciate their heroic efforts. Herbarium that's the best part. Most of it. Second meeting in a row over Helen has started. The positive note. Hey, yeah, okay. So our third item is the agenda review. So are there any additions, deletions or changes in order of agenda item? Oh, okay. As you were aware, item number 15 is being removed. That came out after the agenda was posted and also number eight, the first reading of the land development regulations to be considered for adoption as an ordinance. That's some further conversation with Andrew and they're going to work out some language things that's not ready for tonight, but probably September 5th, Paul, at the next meeting. Okay. First reading. Which item was that? Number eight. Number eight. That's not what I have. Yeah, it's on the written ones, which I think are posted. The agenda in the box got corrected in time. Kevin, can you grab me one too? Okay. I have mental health. Oh, I thought weren't they at our seat when we came in? I had one. No. Don't you have number eight? I had one from the box last Friday and it didn't have. Oh, okay. Yeah. So number eight is removed. The first reading of the land development regulations to be considered for adoption. Yes. The ones that were in the box. All right. All right. Is that all for you? Are there any other additions to leaching for changes? I want to add to other business and advise Andrew if the council is so willing to come up with a resolution that acknowledges the terrible situation or events in North Carolina that affirms this council's support against anti-Semitism, neo-Nazi. Virginia? Virginia. Did I say North Carolina? Sorry. Virginia. There's a Charlotte, North Carolina, right? But this is Charlottesville, Virginia. Just affirms that those values do not reflect ours. And so I'd like this to have a discussion whether we want to do that and then perhaps Andrew help construct a resolution that we can approve as a council the following meeting and share that with the public. Any other items? Okay. Oh, excuse me. I did this one item I would like to add to the end. I'm forgiving you just kind of spaced out for a moment. And it happened to do with a message that we all had received from David Villa regarding a circumstance of someone that was soliciting funds, standing in the middle of the road on a very narrow and David had asked if we had a policy on this. And I think we should at least put it on as another piece of business to at least discuss and see if we want to bring it up in a future meeting if that would be okay. Okay. That's fine. I didn't respond to him. An item that addresses the situation out down off of Van Sickland in the community that has that one street that they want the city to take over. Cobblestone? Cobblestone. That's on the agenda of course. September 5th. Okay. Thank you very much. Wow. You guys are good. Okay. So we'll have two items potentially resolution and then hand handling issue. Okay. So moving on to comments and questions from the public not related to the agenda. Are there any public members who wish to comment? Okay. Seeing none, we'll move on to announcements and the city manager's report. Okay. So who's ready to go? Well, I attended Bikes and Bites last week and City Fest. The presentation of Vermont Youth Conservation Corps workers at the Wheeler Park facility and Maggie was there. And so was Melinda Scott from the Williston Parks Department. I believe it's her name. And so it was a really great presentation and the young employees wore the same clothes that they worked in that day and they brought all their tools and they all spoke about what they had done, what they had learned and about the program. And it's just really refreshing to see that kind of work enjoyed by young people and they took it to heart, you know, because they were out there working in the mosquito infested swamps of July in Vermont, you know, in Williston and South Burlington. And they did a lot of hard work and built some paths and laid down those punchins, if I might say that. It's the first time I've said punchins before. Can you spell it? A P-U-N-C-H-E-O-N-S, I believe. Look it up. And so, and I was the first person in the 18 years of Mr. Woodward managing that program to ask what detergent the parents used to wash those clothes. And the answer is? She didn't tell me. Yeah. Yeah, Lainey's mom was there and she said, she, well, I think she, it was like, I think it was a patent secret. She didn't want to give it up to me, so. Okay. So it's a great program, great presentation. Okay. Well, I wish I could have been there. Unfortunately, I had another commitment I couldn't, but under the section 7, I will give a report on the airport commission meeting that was held today. Okay. Maybe. I went to CityFest and I thought it was, in spite of the weather, I thought there was a good turnout and the music was, I thought, really great. And, of course, city offices, but a lot of our local organizations, they're intent and couldn't get my daughter away from the balloon guy. So she had a ball. And I saw some lovely counselors there. I heard you were there. So anyway, very nice. Okay. Yeah. So I went to CityFest. I also did attend the South Road to the School Board. Their last meeting, they unanimously endorsed our resolution on the airport. So they have an interest in, you know, the position of the Chamber of Schools. The School Board saw the reason to show support. Which resolution did they? The one that we passed. The one that we passed? Yeah. Okay. Also, since I didn't vote my title in the Willison Observer, just published in the last episode, I have an article I've just been speaking for myself as a South Prolegate City Councilor on the resolution that we, actually doesn't speak to the resolution, instead the notion of governance at the airport. Okay. Great. Now you can really do it. Yes. Okay. I attended bikes and vids and CityFest. I also met with the Chair of the Library Board to, if you recall, we had some conversations around future possibilities with the Library. And I thought it was important to, and you had made some, shared some comments from one of the Board members. And she assured me that they are really very interested in going forward. But they do not think this move would be detrimental. Nor do they believe, place the majority that it's a permanent move. They're really counting on fundraising. In fact, they're going to come and meet with us. Maybe the next. No, they wanted to meet with you and me to have some further conversations about fundraising. So I think it was really helpful to sort of understand from her perspective what they discussed and what they support and how enthusiastic they are about really a new library and the fundraising and the temporary moving. That's good news. I also, Megan and I met, I think it was in the last few weeks, with two school board members, Elizabeth and Bridget. And again, we wanted to sort of understand their thoughts about some of the, it was a letter of intent that we had signed. So that was, I think, really helpful. Megan did a wonderful job of really sort of teasing out kind of what their concerns were, I thought. And I think we left the meeting, all four of us, with a better understanding of what, I don't know, guides each of the different boards. And that sometimes there's differences. But that she was quite certain that we could find a solution to this and move ahead. I think that's a fair assessment. So that was helpful. I think it's always a challenge when you have a school board that has the biggest part of the budget and the demands that they need to attend to. And then you have the city council that has our own set of issues that those don't always mesh and align perfectly, even though we've tried to improve that alignment with more meetings. So I think we will probably have a joint meeting in the future once we have the letter of intent to discuss and really understand how we go forward or how to go forward. And then I just want to remind everyone that the lead warriors will be a Dumont party. Dumont Park or City Center Park? OK. City Center Park, AKA Dumont, for some lead whacking. Not lead whacking, lead pulling. And so they're training again. And then it's 9 to 12. It's fun. We're deep. A little mosquito repellent.  Angles. Angles. Yes, three glasses. And I think there's a conservation board. They're here this whole week working on. I think they'll be here Saturday as well. Or is it next week? There's a group of young people who are working there and helping. Right, the managers. Thank you. I think the project itself should be taking off sometime in early September. So we're anxious to get that moving as part of the City Center. Fifth District approved projects. I took off a few days last week, a vacation. But Tom was in charge and so the state sailed smoothly. I participate, or I participate as an odd word. I was available for a step four agreement all day downtown at law firm. And that took my entire day today. But the housing, football housing committee met today as well as the Reckon Parks Committee, which I believe is still upstairs. Wheeler Heisman Task Force is going to be meeting on Thursday. And have a brief discussion with them about their interests and where recent issues involving the park are being concluded. I know that the committee is anxious for the council to take up their recommendations in their report. Make sure that the committee is aware of timing for those discussions. And that is something the council would like to do as well. But we're going to need to wait a little while. The community collaborative, which is the mental health group that I've been working with. In conjunction with the president of the hospitals meeting on Thursday again, and they're narrowing down some of the core issues to include embedded counseling services. Trevor is actually leading an effort for the central chip and county communities to put together a program that would enable us to bring on some counseling through our mental health and be the first response to mental health related occurrences in our communities rather than just the police showing up. Helen and I... Right, I forgot about that. So I was invited and intended a wonderful meeting of all of these partners in their mental health issues with Al Mbaye. He came and delivered some. He's the secretary of human services. So a lot of these issues fall into his lap. And he's clearly very interested and I think willing to really take some steps and think about how to improve the delivery of mental health services for the communities in a broader sense than what we're doing now. So he seemed to be on top of what was going on for the most part. But it was a very important meeting I think for him to be at because it was the police and the first responders and the firefighters. And then I talked briefly about sort of the municipal issues about how it impacts what's really happening, all those stories and data. And there was some really significant data from Colchester that they presented where the number of incidents I guess, or I don't know what you call them, at least go somewhere. I guess it's an incident, right? Calls, yeah, I guess it's a better term. Calls have just skyrocketed in terms of the situation meeting some kind of mental health intervention. So what he was shocked actually, Alice, because he had not seen that kind of data. This was just the local Colchester. I think they doubled, they've doubled in the last year. So it just underscores, I think what he already understands with the issues with mental health and along with the opioid addiction and other things like that. So it was a really good meeting and I came away thinking that he will be there for us and support us. He really talked about getting Medicaid matched for some of the programs that were discussed. And so I think, frankly, he was impressed with Kevin pulling together so many communities and so many different people to really tackle it. And I reminded him that, you know, as a community, we need mental health services for our first responders and firemen and firefighters and police because they're addressing all these issues in multiple times in a single week. So it goes beyond just the citizens needing better access to care, but it's actually our forces. I don't know if you've heard that before. So it was a good meeting. I agree with you, Alan. He is a get things done kind of partner, I think, and it was good for him to hear what the police are experiencing and the first responders are experiencing in the local communities. You're developing a multi-community regional response. I'm hoping to have an update for you toward the end of September about some progress that we're making on that early October at the latest. But there's some big issues. And I think the communities are on the same page with what we're going to try to do. Yeah, and I would just add, I think it's really wonderful that our community, I mean the larger community, the county actually, has someone like Jim Lennie who is, he's on the Governor's Council, but he also is very active working with Kevin to really identify what we can do. And certainly his, I think it was 30 years at... Career in this field. Yeah, and so he's just a fount of information and really knows what he's talking about. It doesn't go as great as he was there as well. Yeah, Jim is, Jim is of course the South Burlington resident and has agreed to be an informal advisor to us which is just amazing. So anyway, in addition to that, we're working on the lease with the temporary, the transitional library facility and we're also looking at a purchase and sale agreement for property related to the future permanent library. So I can't go into too much detail beyond that. But that's a discussion we're having this week. Okay, good to know. And one last thing, Tom had a visit from a resident that he would like to, the resident specifically asked Tom to share his thoughts and comments with the council. With the council, yeah. So, lastly, Dave Deloria was in and he happened, Dave is I think the only resident of Deloria Street currently so I think you know where his house is. What's his last name? Deloria. Okay. And happened to be at home last Wednesday morning when he got a visit from GW Tatro construction and excavating. And they started taking some measurements of his house and yard and he went out and said, excuse me, you know what's going on here? And they said he was instructed by the airport to come over and get some measurements. He goes, no, you got the wrong place. And you all know Dave, he asked them to leave. And they did. And he immediately went in and called Gene Richards. This is on Wednesday from last week. And he also called Nick Longo. He didn't hear from either of them on Friday. Well, I know Nick was on vacation, but I can tell you this again. On Friday, Gene went over in his car and visited Dave and they had a discussion and I think Gene shared with them at the time that that was a mistake, that they'll take that vendor off their vendor list and he apologized. And Dave said I've made it clear that I will approach you when and if I'm ever ready and I don't want to be harassed by the airport. I think Gene apologized, but to Dave's point, he's starting to see this as a type of harassment and he wanted me to share that with the council tonight. I knew Kevin's going to follow up with him, but anyway, he wasn't able to be here and he just wanted to make sure that that message was not. Thank you. This has happened before? I'm not sure. I think he's been called before about putting in his house up, but this is the first time that I think he's physically had people on his yards. I had a conversation, a brief conversation with him one time and he said he said several conversations would be your point about the potential that they'd given time, maybe, but at that point, moving to another place, you know, price-wise, some things were not going to work and that his intent was to stay there at least for the foreseeable future, so yeah, he shouldn't be contacted. Yeah. You know, to continue this, I happened to run into, and I can't remember his name, but it was one of the Lily Lane owners with the child, the small child. Brian. And I asked him, he said, he located Howard Things, and he said, no, I haven't. All the other ones are rented, so the place is very different. It's a rental community. And he said, I'm still working with the airport to try to resolve whatever the price that he's... He was in the original, you know. Is that right? Yeah, he was in the original. Yeah, I think that was, that they had really... But I just was under the impression that everyone had moved out, but that is not the case just to keep us up to date. Good. So he thanked me for asking. Just two quick questions. Do we have a status on Market Street and 116 from anybody? Market Street, on or about the 25th of August. Okay. And I think... I said we're on in early November. Who laid off over early November? The Heinsberg Well. The Heinsberg Well? They kind of said that, right? Yeah, they did. They said it would be a long time. I think on that original song it said October 28th or something, so that was pretty close. I went down to look at it. Oh, it's pretty fascinating. I saw the Market Street.  Well, you know now you're... All right. So any other announcements? All righty. Consent agenda. So I will move that we improve the consent agenda. We have a motion and a second to approve the agenda. The consent agenda has presented. Any discussion? All in favor signify by saying hi. Any vote? Okay. So moving on now to number seven, council reports from committee assignments. And I know Pat has a report. How do you... I can give one. I'm not interested. You all are. We had a meeting. We talked about bus stuff. Okay. Well, if there's any bus stuff that relates to South Maryland and who want to hear. I will after our next one we're going to do a full day on the streets. So I'll report back to the law enforcement side. That's fine. Okay. What I'd like to do is to just redo the the end of the last paragraph. I put it in the council's corner because I think it leads into the Air Force commission piece. And I just ended it with a recent Air Force government's resolution was passed by the city council 4-1. I did not support it as presented but be assured that I am open to the concept of a broader governing board. I just could not support some items included. Meanwhile, this is the private ties into today's. Meanwhile, I will support the council's motion. We'll work diligently from the risk mitigation of many forms for the city. As your Air Force representative I will deliver our council's message of support for a broader governing board. And that's exactly what I did today. The city council, the Air Force commission met this afternoon at 4-1 which I really appreciate the fact that they are going to be not next month but a month after changing the day so it doesn't follow the same day as our city council meeting. But at any rate, going through the meeting today we went to the traditional pieces. There were a couple of items that I thought were interesting that I will just briefly go over. There were two grant pieces that have to do with what is on FAA's new regulation as to the depth of the condition of the runways. And they do boardings which I asked, I said they do boardings as they do so they come up with new ones. It's a three month process that they go through. The evaluation will be done in the fall and it is required by the FAA to make sure it's safe from handing all of the different aircrafts. The second one is hopefully to get approval for a master plan update that would have to be executed in September. This is pretty broad. It is to see the whole thing. It's on today's agenda for the airport. So this was a brief discussion but apparently under the master plan what they do, and it hasn't been done since 08. And things have changed since that time as we know. We have larger planes. At that time they were projecting a lot of smaller regional planes. Now we do have some larger planes. They take a look at the inventory of the planes that are coming in. What they expect to have going forward. But one of the pieces I thought was, well it was a lot because there's different parts and they didn't go over all the pieces with us. We do a review with that at fun. But it's not just conceptual. They use it as a guide for the next five plus years till the next master plan is done as to what other projects that should be done at the airport. And if something is not in that plan the odds of getting it funded for that particular infrastructure project may not happen. So of course I wanted to ask things like sound. And they said, are sound findings that are going to be incorporated into this? And I said, okay. They have, there will be a regional group established. I asked questions about that. It will have, oops, not to take the place of the sound meetings or any of that. This is something else but the surrounding communities will come in. Business groups. And they'll talk about transportation. So there'll be some stakeholders but it's not designed for just the stakeholders. I asked how this would be done. It was, I don't think they have the details so it would be done because it's not funded yet. But as soon as it is we will be able to participate in that to what level? That's open there, okay. What about the, but I was very specific and I said, it doesn't appear as though that there is a noise piece in here. And they said, that's because they're going to incorporate all of our noise findings as part of that into the master plan. And I said, okay, we want to know that this is going to happen. The sound meetings are going to continue and we're encouraged to participate and they will be incorporated into a document. This updates basically, it was a question, does this update the 2030 plan? Yes, and it would be an update to that. I mentioned the meeting time is changing. The airport, then I gave them copies of and had forwarded to them because the only place we had it was in our draft minutes, the wording for the resolution was adopted. And I said, I am here to tell you that this is our position as a city. We support the governing board being expanded and that the original resolution was dramatically changed. And while I did not have my vote on that, I am here to tell you that I am bringing our message and that I support this before you as part of the city. And I was very clear on that. Interesting pieces that we looked at with that, it was coming back, Gene was open and said that there were some items on the original one that were not, some of it was hearsay, some of it was whatever, and he said, I would like to be able to get those resolved or cleared and I am open to doing that. And I said, okay, so we all want the best for the community. We would like to have everyone on the same page and that was agreed to. So just so I am clear, he wanted to review with us in some manner. In that he wished he had been asked ahead of time to take a look at our original resolution so that he could have corrected some of the ones that were out. And I said, I understand, I said I did bring up a couple of pieces myself that are in the draft minutes and I said those were resolved but I said, you know, we are all pulling for the same piece. Bill Keogh talked about the voters of Burlington would have to vote and then legislative changes if there was anything. And then that he mentioned the fact that the FAA would have to approve a change. He didn't go into detail on that. Mr. Keogh has a very broad background in legislative items and so he just made that comment. That's when Jean gave the director's report and talked about how Fitch, which is one of the ratings agencies for bonding and all has raised up the airport's rating which was great. He mentioned the fact that of the population base we have here 47% of the catchable area fly through Burlington and when they do the catchable area it's pretty broad because it would include the areas that could reach out as far as Manchester, New Hampshire and whatever and we're getting that. The airport administrators will be traveling for a couple of months this fall at various times they visit all of the which I find interesting they visit all of the airlines that are and others that they would like to solicit they visit all of the airlines with a good PR they're talking to some and they couldn't tell us exactly which ones but there are three or four destinations that they would like to have discussed so that could possibly be just with the current airlines or maybe a new one and that's a possibility it's always out there we were told that the Councillor Karen Paul is going to be traveling on at least one if not two of those trips representing Burlington as part of the PR to the airlines the subsidies the subsidies we were told the subsidies to small airports and you may have read this I had they may be cut there is a proposal under the present federal our federal administration to cut some subsidies to smaller airports which could be Plattsburg we have some that comes into us I don't know the exact amount but that's something that is possibly on the table and that came from our chair Jeff Munger who chaired the transportation committee for Senator Sanders for a lot of years parking garage has some RFPs out to do some repairs and then coming towards the end it was interesting that Commissioner Keough wanted the minutes wanted the meeting the Shelburne meeting the last 15 minutes I think when Tom, you and Kevin were there discussing a little bit about the resolution we didn't have the video for that because we had some problem getting online but they had done the audio for people to hear and it was just kind of an update as to whatever and I said I reminded them that remember that when that was done it was two days before we passed a much abbreviated resolution so I said you have the new resolution there the chair of not the chair the manager from Winooski city manager she commented and she said you know we're talking a lot about regionalization for a number of issues stormwater dispatch etc and she said if this is something that would improve the airport then regionalization could be you know considered as I had said you know it's open to discussion and that we would look at that but she was interested and said that there's a possibility that their city council will take up the resolution and re-adopt the new one that has been there and I think the other item of importance to those that are sports fans is that on August 28th from two to seven the Boston Bruins will be at the airport and everyone is invited to attend I think they're bringing their trophies or whatever and everything else you know whatever I think they're doing a tour at different airports I saw a little map that had little dots at Manchester and Portland and so on and I'm going to have to say hi from Austin because I'll be at the meeting there but from two to seven, August 28th check them out they're there and that was kind of we abbreviated the meeting but what I wanted to bring to the fact was what happened here and when I did not support the resolution in total my heart is with you to represent you when I go there and I represented and said this is what our city would like to have done so I hope that is agreeable to you all I kind of missed the fine point in the update to the master plan I'll tell you honestly it's easier if you go online and look at the whole agenda that is outlined for it because we spent probably five minutes you know on this piece this is talking about who the company will be that will do the plan and I think if you take a look at all the items and if you have some questions on that I'd be glad to let a clarification it is very detailed and very lengthy and it goes into everything that happens at the airport the travelers, the transportation how people get there if you take a look it's on their agenda for today and it would be easier to try to get answers from that when you were talking about the sound meetings you mean the sound mitigation meetings those are still continuing and the findings from all of those are going to be incorporated into the master plan it sounds like whatever they recommend for sound mitigation would then be included in this plan that's what I was told the findings will be incorporated into the master plan I was very curious because it was a part that said the environmental piece and that looked like it was taken out and I said why is that being removed and they said because we're covering it within the other piece and those findings will be brought in and I went okay you know I just want to be sure that I'm not missing any pieces great thank you any other questions? thank you very much one last thing the city manager I thought it was important she brought a piece up at the end and said you know we've contacted brollington and have not received responses so when she finished that piece and she was respectful but I think that was what I got from that and when she finished I said well I'd like to add a piece too that we have sent things and have not received responses as well and I said my term would be frustrating that we need to have that and I know people have vacations and everything else but when we send something getting a response to me is important I'll add that I put that piece in too that's great I'm sure our city manager would agree with you okay moving on to number nine staff mental health resources so who's going to present that? this agenda item comes about as a result of Tim's request from the briefing paper I did for you a couple weeks ago and we're fortunate that we have a representative from employee assistance Rebecca Weaver and our two chiefs are here too to participate and would you two like to come up as well? as we've discussed and as Helen alluded to in her presentation tonight our staff and particularly our first responders are not immune from having challenges not only associated with the workplace but in their lives very demanding work schedules very demanding situations that they encounter in the community and so Tim's request and Helen's point are both appreciated and important to talk about so with that could I preface why I talked to Kevin Godfors? so this this is a really difficult subject to talk about but you may or may not know that we had three really tragic incidents where I worked in the last year we had a particularly very tragic incident in the last two months in July and I made a request where I worked to ensure that every employee has access easy access to this and I know they've made efforts but I requested it again through my management chain and I asked Kevin to address this because at least for the city of south Burlington I wanted to ensure that every employee whether it be in the fire department public works or on your staff has access to this program knows how to get access to it and feels comfortable using it and knows what it's for you know that mental health is a serious issue right now and Kevin's already talked about it and we're trying to pull back the covers on mental health and bring it out into the open to people that it's nothing to be ashamed of I just want I want somebody who is feeling bad who is thinking that they might hurt themselves to take a chance and call the number that's on this alright and I want that message to be sent to every employee of this city that they do have somebody that will listen to them and that person will care about their problems and to start that conversation might just save their life that's the most important thing I can think of right now to say about this and so that's why I asked Kevin to bring you forward because I just wanted to hear what you're what the city's actual program is and how it works and how you think it's working okay great so I'm just going to give you an overview of what benefits every employee of south Burlington has and this is full time part time whether they're benefited or not anybody who gets a paycheck from south Burlington may use these services Rebecca will you just identify yourself in the organization so the I'm Rebecca weaver with invest EAP the employee assistance program and the employee employee assistance program is a free short term counseling program that's provided to all employees of south Burlington and not only the employees but the people who live with the employee so it could be roommates, partners obviously spouses and children could be aging parents who've moved back in anyone who lives under their roof on their own may call an EAP counselor and get counseling and it's confidential no one here at south Burlington will know that people are using the services unless they themselves divulge that information and the people on their own may call and say I live with an employee of south Burlington it's that easy they can get an appointment with a counselor it's short term counseling so it's not psychoanalysis it's more you know the employee comes in discusses what's ever bothering him or her and with a counselor creates an action plan to help them to get over what's ever bothering them and to move on and so it's free it's totally free for the employees there are no co-pays there's nothing like that also there's two main reasons why they might want to use our services the first one is that we have mental health counseling just like what you would typically think about counseling I'm stressed I'm anxious I'm afraid my son has a substance abuse problem I live with someone who's depressed I just lost a parent I'm grieving I need some grief counseling I have a co-worker I can't get along with I need to call a counselor and get some strategies to help me deal with this difficult co-worker it could be a supervisor problem you know it's confidential so it's a really nice place for them to go to discuss those things it could be relationship issues you name it we have counseling that can help them and our goal is to pair them with a counselor that's going to best suit their needs the second main reason they might want to use our services is we can provide resources for employees we understand that people are so stressed at work they're busy at work they're busy with their home lives that sometimes they just need us to gather information for them and we have a lot of resources at our fingertips so things like I need to talk to an attorney about settling an estate or I need to talk to an attorney about a real estate transaction or whatever your legal issue you can call the EAP they will put you in touch with the proper attorney and 30 minutes for free they can talk to that attorney and get questions answered and if you know when an attorney gets an hour that's a really nice savings for all employees they also get a 25% discount you'd be doing for retaliation college savings for children again that's 30 minutes free over the phone it could be elder care they have aging parents who live out of state they don't have time to run to that state to find out information we can do all that research in finding facilities in the area of assisted living skill nursing or just agencies to help with food and transportation we give them the list of those agencies and facilities then they can call and make the best fit for their parents but it's just a real time saver for them things that stress them out and they have to spend hours searching maybe on company time you never know we can save them all that time and it could be we could find daycare childcare we can find affordable housing it's just and nothing is trivial to us we actually someone call and want to find the category closest to Burlington to buy a Persian cat and we help this client do that so it's nothing as silly to us we know that pets reduce stress so we're happy to find that information and I only give you that example to let you know that nothing is silly nothing is trivial I'm looking for a husky there you go you also go through UVM so we know that employee assistance programs save employees they save money for employers and we service state workers we service school districts we service private businesses and we know that statistically yes this helps save money for these employees the help that they need that being said I want to tell you that we also support managers and so in that 4x6 card that you have it's that's the one if you look down on the dark blue side those are all the services we provide for free so we will come into south Burlington and do employee orientations what I just said to you that was pretty fast we do a little bit more detail but we will say that to all employees so that they hear it from an independent person not their manager so they can actually feel like yes this is truly confidential we can also come in and do supervisor trainings which is when we come in and talk to the town managers or the city managers and explain to them what benefits and services they have how if they have an employee who just exhibiting a performance problem how we can be supportive to the manager in how to talk to the employee how to get the employee back on track if we should refer the employee to see a counselor and we work in partner with the employer and the employee to get this employee back on track and save a lot of employees it's just another tool to help get employees back on track so we do a training that's like a 30 or 40 minute process where we go in and explain to managers how to go about doing that because they have free phone calls to the EAP to help them to support them we also have facilitated discussions let's say you have two employees that just aren't getting along as long as those two employees agree to it they can go see an EAP counselor together and the counselor will facilitate a discussion and get those employees to try to resolve whatever conflict they have and that's another free service we do critical incident stress debriefings where if there's a critical incident in your town we will bring counselors on site to let employees come in and talk to them is there anything else on there that's on I forget you guys have the card did I miss anything I was just going to say how many communities do you service well we service we service we service tens of thousands of employees all over the state of Vermont so this is a Vermont EAP so we service the state workers we service municipalities the city of Burlington UVM it saves employees it does save money is it state funding or federal that's a really good question there is some state funding there's also health trusts well like the v high it supports us for the teachers and the school districts it's kind of tied into some of the insurances things have changed now that the exchange is in there but there's a lot of different passive a lot of different organizations and supporting this program you weren't cut in the last round of Montpelier's budget making not that I know of not that I'm aware of and I will tell you also that and one of the new programs that we've just implemented within the past two years is EAP first which kind of segues into your department we have a counselors who have gone through special training for the first responders when they see horrific incidents and so it's called EAP first and that's also available to firefighters, police and maybe you are already aware of it that you have that so anyway I think these gentlemen are next and then afterwards it's time for questions sure yep so who would like to go first go ahead all right thank you for your concern it's a concern of mine I see reflected this morning 37 years we're in a batch and I've seen a lot of changes over the years and I think there's more stresses both internally and external to our young employees stresses in their personal lives that maybe are more than they used to be and certainly stressors internally with what we're asking them to do every day and what they're being exposed to on a regular basis so we see a lot of struggles so we're certainly aware of and appreciate and have had some great feedback from EAP I recall back a few years ago had an officer who completely unexpected was served with divorce papers didn't even know it was coming and was in a complete panic didn't know what to do phone EAP was connected up with a counselor with a finance person with an attorney within minutes and said that really helped him to get refocused and grounded and not in such a panic state made it much more bearable one of the things that we've done at the police department as an add on it came as a throwback to the years of accreditation recommended as police best practices is we have an additional contract counselor who is specifically contracted with us and other law enforcement and public safety agencies who provides even a higher level of service we have you may see his invoices from time to time I increased actually to increase that line item for current year to show the actual expenses we've been seeing but Sunny's available similarly to EAP on call on demand but what we also see from Sunny is he has office space in our building and what I've asked him to do and what he does for other agencies is he has an unscheduled time in the building so he shows up at roll calls he shows up at lunch time he shows up at dinner time and just becomes a known friendly face a known entity and known quantity and so he's has a lot of casual conversation gets to know the employees well and is available in a hallway hey Sunny do you have a minute I'd like to talk to you so some of this spontaneous conversation he's my go to guy when I get a call at home hey there's been a when we sent officers up to the highway to the five young people that burnt to death in the car we had officers there who were hearing them did not get down they were dealing with a little further away but we're exposed to that so I was able to call Sunny and just say hey Sunny got some officers up on the highway I don't know the status he's like I'll just show up and have a coffee and he'll just come to the office and be available we do do some critical stress debriefing another thing we have with Sunny is that even from a supervisory level if we detect something if I come to work and I'm normally upbeat very chipper and I've got two days where I'm just really not myself I'm acting differently I'm not as perky I'm maybe a little irritable frequently I'll make a call to Sunny and Sunny he'll come in and jump in the car with that officer for a couple hours and just do a check in we'll invite the officer to come and have a coffee with him that type of thing Sunny has been he has designed he has pre-existing curricula on he's doing roll call trainings for us so he's coming in doing a 30 to 60 minute training with our officers as they're doing shift briefings so that he's talking to them about stress management he's talking to them about a balance of home and work he's talking to them about a strong believer in mindfulness so he does a lot of discussion with officers about ways to relax ways to even in the heat of the moment ways to deep breathing he's very involved in yoga in meditation and recommends yoga studios recommends yoga practitioners to officers who may want to get involved with that to help them to deal with stress another thing that we've done is that we've started on a peer support program so that we have embedded on our agency now two officers who've been trained as peer support so that the other officers in the building know that if they need somebody just to vent to somebody to talk to somebody that has a higher level of knowledge that these two officers are available in our midst that they can have a conversation with them they can go and grab a coffee with them and talk about that and we will continue to train more and lastly you know we really with Kevin's support certainly and Tom have been very mindful of you know the needs of officers and the high level of needs and that you know we're not immune from things like happening in your workplace we hope they don't get to that degree but we have employees who have struggles from time to time and we've recently done some work with the uniform services program down at the Brattleboro Tree it's an inpatient high level program for folks that are really having a tough time and that's been made available to us and has been very helpful so I think that not a day goes by counselor that you know the mental health of our staff is not foremost in my mind and really try to have you know two tiers of service certainly we know that we have EAP there are some officers and it's obviously their choice that they can reach out to EAP or to our contract clinicians and we will continue to grow the peer support program we'll continue to train more folks in the house and continue to do additional trainings and as much connection as we can with our staff thank you so we have we don't have any proactive opportunities like Trevor has at the police department just something that we haven't approached yet we have had some very successful even though as our guest speaker has said tonight it's supposed to remain anonymous I have individuals who have taken part in EAP who have taken me aside and said thank you for giving me that card or thank you for suggesting that to me my results really worked out well I've never had a negative report from anybody that we know have sent to EAP normally have sent to EAP so that's great we also have used several times over the years the Green Mountain CISD team and they've been very helpful on particular incidents and since he's retired we haven't had an incident come along we used to use Ken Kelly quite frequently Ken was a public safety specialist in mental health issues and so forth I had gotten exposed to Ken prior to coming to South Brownton and used him several times here as well he was a great guy he was only a phone call away and helped me and my team out in several situations so it's something we take very seriously we make sure that our command staff is trained on this they bring anything to my attention that's going on that people like Trevor said the phone rings in the middle of the night by the way they've been involved in such and such and such thought you ought to know about it to make sure that those guys are offered whatever assistance that they may need and there have been several times they've been involved in situations where we say you're off the line we'll get somebody to take your place until the time comes that we feel you're ready to go back like Trevor 44 years in this I was raised by the guys that were more veterans and maybe in some instances even Korean war veterans who at that time when I was still wet behind the ears said you know suck it up kid just go on you know don't worry about it just put it behind you that's not the way to take care of this as counselor Barrett has brought up these situations have come to the forefront now and they need to remain that way so I've helped a personal friend through a tragic situation that happened in a New Hampshire community within the past six months that really made you begin to wonder and as Trevor has spoken of the situations that take you completely by surprise the things that happen like right out of the clear blue so we try and be ready for it so and the folks at EAP have been extremely helpful can I ask do you think you would the fire department would be better served if you had someone like Sunny popping in every once in a while or is it I mean it's a kind of different setup I suppose yeah I think probably to me anyways as I look at this as I look at this from a professional standpoint we kind of both can be exposed to the same situations however they can be exposed to different situations and we usually were reactive because something has already happened they may be the initiators of it when it comes to using a firearm or deadly force or something like that so we are a little different in that respect but we all have the exposure stuff when we get called to emergency scenes generally together and so we have that situation I don't think it would certainly hurt I like the idea of having somebody drop by and so people are familiar with that person so they're not looking for the poster on the wall with the card I keep a stack in my desk and in certain times when I hear people are having certain issues say you don't have to answer me just think about this and I have a very very close friend who used EAP on two different occasions one's due to divorce the different situation and he said so you know we didn't get into the weeds about it but he told me that that was the best thing that he ever did so certainly anything that was available would help I guess, you know, Trevor has somebody that's there frequently and I think it's very important that if you are going to have a program like that the employees that you're providing this service for are comfortable with that person I mean, comfortability is very very important because if they're not comfortable then they're not going to open up and that was that was a good thing about Ken Kelly Ken was just one of those people that could walk into a room and you were comfortable with them right from the very start and where this I believe in the instances that I've dealt with and they kind of cater to basic based on what the problem is it's being requested rather than having the one size fits all like I don't know it would be I mean we're always obviously we're just one call away from the next big and bad call so I don't think it would hurt and I would like to maybe if we had that opportunity certainly spend some time to try and find the right person to do that any other comments before we ask questions I think just to assure councillor Barrett and I agree with you very much is that mental wellness is part of the regular number of employees exactly, yeah we want to make sure that it's not a stigma it's something we all deal with whether it be ourselves, someone in our family people in the community and it's something that impacts probably every family it's not every family and it's not something to be ashamed of it's something to recognize and realize how to manage where you might need help and how to get that help so absolutely echo your concerns and I'm proud to say that it's part of a regular conversation at the police department and I would just like to add 95% of the people who come to see an EAP councillor do so because they've self-referred themselves they come on their own so to your point trying to get the message out there to all employees we will come to all facilities in South Burlington at your convenience you know whenever is the best time to get the message out there so yeah because that's a huge percentage 95% and over 50% of the people come because they've heard an orientation like you've heard tonight so it is really important to get in front of the employees can I just ask you Kevin what's the situation with the other city employees well all city employees have access to EAP I mean the first responders are typically the people who are arriving at very difficult situations it doesn't mean some of our other employees don't come upon those things too often times Doug's team in particular Travis too is accompanied by the plow guys or the guys from Public Works we've got to clear the road make sure that their trucks can get to the scene of what can be a horrendous situation so EAP is available to all at the end here I'm going to ask Rebecca for 165 of these so we are going to we'll put these in our next paycheck envelopes for all employees you know what I can deliver them actually I'm just off Burlington school district tomorrow so I can just drop some off I'll drop off what I have and then we can replenish as needed and we'd also like to schedule you in for the briefing to managers you talked about the supervisor training so we have every other week we have a staff meeting all the managers are there Trevor comes 10 minutes late oh that's because he doesn't use his whistle thing to get here normally he's used to using his whistle thing but not to come to staff meetings I don't know why anyway but he makes it that's the important thing and all kidding aside we'd like to have you come in and help us as managers work with our team leaders to make sure everybody understands the service and is using it when appropriate that's great because I think it's really I mean I think we all can recognize when it's a horrific fire or car accident or a suicide attempt but there's so many other things in our lives that I mean just like at Tim's place of work that was those issues came from somewhere else we know we have other staff members who are going through some difficulties and I know one certainly who has been in touch so we've got to get the word out to everybody I'm sorry I don't think so you were going to say something I just wanted to add a comment I think it's fantastic I knew of Sunny's involvement before and hearing more about it is great but I did want to share one item with you because mental illness is such a prevalent piece not only in the workplace but college students some of our guys from St. Mike's got to throw out a ball at Fenway Park recently they had started a program called Hope Happens Here and it's for student athletes and it's to deal with mental illness that they are and I think there are 12 different sports teams that originally got involved in it and it's spread out it's going to other campuses now but it's basically to say it's okay to not be okay and that there is someone there to talk to you they have a wonderful wheel I'd be glad to share that with you but I'm so proud of these kids most of our 26 years of having interns they have been from St. Mike's and this is a program that they are hoping will go national and there's so much support for it one young man said he wanted it started because there was mental illness in his family and he had seen the effects of that and what getting help could do and we were just recently made aware that one of our grandchildren who had started school college last year one of his close friends who went to another school had a serious breakdown and had to leave school and another took her own life and these are things that when you say it affects you but somebody has to feel comfortable to talk to someone these athletes I think it's wonderful because they know each other they're with each other every day locker room on the ice on the basketball court or whatever so I think it's wonderful that it's working its way down into the college level and I'm sure our schools see it they're on the lookout for it but certainly what you folks go through and what your teams do and the wonderful work that you do it's just fabulous to have somebody to have basically their own 911 line to call. Thank you for everything. Tim. I appreciate your comments and your services as well so the best case scenario and the worst case scenario in my mind is the worst case or the least best case scenario for an employer is oh it's time for your annual health benefits review pick your program by the way did you know there's an EAP silence the other 364 days of the year a year later it's time to pick your health benefits right did you know there's an EAP and it's you know my desire for the best case is that maybe on a quarterly basis right department managers hand these out or discuss this you know briefly at the beginning of a meeting with all employees and remind them because people are sometimes thickheaded right and you have to keep reminding them call this number call this number you know it's just a simple thing is the reminder there is this thing that you can use if I haven't told you in the last 10 minutes I'm going to tell you again and so that there's no way they could say I didn't know so that's what I want to impress upon everybody here if we can help that process so that there can't be a single employee that wasn't told at least four times a year if not more there's this thing you can get the card from that little packet on the wall over there you know and no one will know that you took it right and it's at you know it's off of our HR website and it's right there in the top of it right because the worst other worst case is somebody doesn't have this and then they have to go digging through a bunch of HR websites and that is the worst thing right because like oh is it on this one is it there is it right you know and really the responsibility of the employer is to make that thing as easily available as possible put the 1-800 number at the top of the page are you thinking about hurting yourself call this number right now you know so and that's the extreme situation but to be honest I mean where I work we've had three extreme situations and I know we're not the only employer in the country that hasn't had these types of extreme situations so anything we can do to improve it or to get people lifeline please let's do it so I appreciate your comments and the program sounds good so thank you I like the idea it's so broad I mean the information that you give is not just the wellness piece I mean it's financial wellness, virtual wellness, all the other pieces that's why when I saw that wheel I thought wow that is exactly what you have that's fantastic oh I guess it's my salesmanship that I've been in sales for too many years and it's like you sell the benefits of something wow this is just an amazing thing that can help you in a myriad of ways exactly it's great well thank you very much item 10 the web page rollout rum roll poorly home okay give me just a minute because I have to get this whole thing going here while we're waiting has anybody noticed that the utility box at the corner of like Timberlain and Kennedy Drive has changed the one that's the enter to George George Town Manor Woods I saw the person painting it and I assumed you had a permit but did you call the police? I did not because it looked nice and I was waiting actually it was Tim I'd call it definitely was so did she have permission to do that I don't know have you signed up? I think I signed up actually I think I should have noticed one somewhere but I don't know if that was it probably it was do you know who it was? it's my daughter it's her artistic talent from you didn't you help put graffiti you cover up graffiti? that's called just base painting oh okay I need to display help it reminds me that when we do our health screening and our flu shots and they have to wait 15 minutes after they get the flu shot so it's a brilliant idea Tim's right you need the conversation not just the literature you need to meet the people and understand the programs that's worked well for us if you could ever get people who've used it who are willing to share that can you restart your computer sometime? that's a big help too I know I'm like why is it not working you have to be plugged in before you start your computer I should have had my counselor's corner I got my board it's plugged in on there right look at the website thanks try re-plugging it is this no signal? what is your record? I plugged into the right spot Jim will stuff now you might have a single Tim and I can't believe it a couple of days off thank you thank you okay I know Charlie's going to yell at me I have to sit right okay fantastic so I'm Corley Holm I'm the public information officer here for the city and I'm here to talk about the new website which is not what you're seeing in front of you but before that did everybody get a copy of Sobu Life in your mailbox at home oh fantastic I'm glad that you like that do you guys all get one? okay there's more so hand them around we want to get them out to everybody but part of the goal there is to get more information out hence why there's more stories there than just what we used to have with the recreation brochure so we're trying to share more about the major issues that you guys have and the team has been working on so that's there you'll also notice that there's a new website address that's in there and so we were trying to time it perfectly and it didn't quite go as planned but the Rec and Parks Department has a new URL as the city will hook to the new website so I think you're all familiar with our 1990s website and so we're going to move into the 21st century here and I'm just going to see if I can make this a little smaller it's got the weather on there too? yes I like that so this is a responsive website it does get smaller and bigger depending on what tool that you use so if you are looking at it on your mobile phone it will shrink down and make things fit it will also work on Mac devices as well as Android devices yes you can Tim you can write down that URL that's what it is at the moment cms6.revise.com slash revise slash south brolic so that'll work for a couple more days we are in the process of going live we revise has us in the queue and so what we're working out now are any final bugs like some images won't load for me or things look wonky and of course folks are still updating information which will be ongoing after we go live anyway because it's dynamic and information changes every day and so I just want to give you an overview of what's there and what we'll have for communication capabilities so you have this slider at the top you can click on any of these things we can have as many as we'd like we can also have a video here if we wanted to we don't have one of the city but that would be something nice for us to work on in the future here at the moment we have four items that are hot buttons the rec department has asked to be there so we're having an icon created to go on there for the rec department I imagine once that happens the library has two major areas but what's nice is these are shortcuts for us to go right to some of the most useful things that citizens are looking for so they want to make a payment you want to pay online, in person send a check and here's the four ways that you can do that and if you click online it takes you directly to here you go pay your bill so super select you click and someone can pay their taxes or licensing dog license, any of those things yep instructions for ACH that will be in the tax section oh it opens a new window conveniently so we don't lose this one let me go back to the top here so you can always go back to the home or you can go to any of these makes it very easy for people to also hit back any of those work so then we move into city news and I will tell you this is a place there's been so much happening I have not populated all the different things that we have but that's on the workflow of all the news that's been happening this summer so basically what happens is you have an image and you have a story some of these are from the magazines so you just click on it and my image finally comes up and then here's the story from the magazine so again you can just go back or go back to the home to be easy to get anywhere one of the thoughts we had was a suggestion of the next story to read down at the bottom so we're talking about potentially putting that at the bottom of each story something else that leads someone to read something else about public safety or city clerk or elections upcoming events so the upcoming events will list the three next events that are on the calendar so sometimes we have days where there's five or six things happening and it only lists the three so that's an improvement I've requested of them but it's not how the software works at the moment however you can go to any day and click and I know it's probably hard to read here but each one you can have any text you want in there you can also have an image so let's see like on Labor Day offices are closed so we say happy Labor Day there's a little bit of information about why we have Labor Day and you can share as much or as little as you want you can also go to an event page for each event so this stuff will be there let's go down again this is all about getting people where they need to go as quickly as possible so as few clicks as possible so here's an area where I'm having a few problems with the images that they actually just sent me an email said they're working on it so you see city center this is just a hot topic and if you click on it you can go learn more stormwater here's one I can't get the picture to load so they're working on that fireworks and stormwater blowing up a public work so there's something going on right here planning same deal so these can change it just depends on what's the hot topics for the city at the moment so for example here's one on parks my problem at the moment is the images are a little pixelated so again these are minor tweaks but this is what we're working out this week in the kinks before we go live when you click on learn more it might take you to that section like parks and facilities it might take you to their main page does it discuss I'm just curious will it ultimately discuss each of our parks yes so I can show you I can show you that in just a second here so for the main page as you scroll all the way to the bottom you'll also have a site map which gives you where everything is so if you're one of those people who's like just show me everything there you go and if you like to click around and you have that option as well you do have social media down here that connects to all of our social media outlets as well as here on the side if you expand that then you can click any of those as well so one thing that keeps catching my eye is the encouragement to call us today and I just I think of that as being really fragile or rigid because it's only business hours that we're going to take a call and it's also somebody's on your website I'm a big fan of either putting a generic email address which I know has implications for managing but it's just more convenient since people do have issues outside of regular business hours or what the other towns in our area do do which is a web form which can route inquiries based on the type and topic so I'm just I'm concerned with the encouragement for the call us call us call us. I'm so glad you said that Tom because earlier today I was speaking with Kevin about that so there is a form component and so we are going to add that I've added it to the city council page but we're going to add that on the front page as well so I think you're absolutely right it should be everywhere some way for people to reach us. Is there a contact us thing at the bottom? So let me just... I saw that it said call us Yeah it says call us so that's just the standard form but yeah we right we could have a button that says contact us. I mean every department has an email address right? Is there a listing of every email for every person in the city? Yeah so when you go into the departments and you look at staff you can click on them the same for you folks in the city council we can click on you and but people would have to know how to do that so I agree that the contact us needs to probably be on every page possibly in the footer. So this is a topic that we talked about right after I first joined the council two and a half years ago and the fence of the public I don't think they quite understand the difference between the Rec and Parks Committee versus the Rec and Parks Department or Department of Public Works versus the city manager structure of what council does so that's why I would point us to town of Middlebury which we reached out to them and they were a big fan of what they had which is a web form which asks what's the nature of your inquiry and that sort of gets them to the web form routes them to the right area right department head so we don't need to rely on the public to know how to navigate the departments and figure out what their inquiry where it best fits so we can have a web form as their point of contact as they first interact with the city on their issue which will get them to the right that's what I'm saying I can send you a write-up that I did a while ago on this I don't want to like hash things out about the design of the website in this meeting other than getting over you for it again but I mean if you're someone knowledgeable and I need to know the city clerk's email address and I want to see it on the bottom of the page town manager, planning and zoning administrator, zoning enforcement public works water department, I just want to email because I got it's 11 o'clock at night and they my bill was blah blah blah and I'm so Joe strong you know so it's like otherwise they have to wait for the delay of that person that's going to be monitoring that general account to go oh they're really thinking about you know so at least give the person who knows what they want access to that email address bang right at the bottom that way you know go ahead I was just going to comment that yes so that's the part that we're working on in the departments so two things one it's nice for the citizens to know who the people are who work in the different departments so we're working it'll take us a little time but working to have faces but also the email address and the phone numbers in each department and then if there's a general so what you're talking about Tom there's actually I've been looking at this there's several services that are like C-click fix or 311 where you can just plug something in that says you know it's a tax problem and it automatically routes so there's no person who has to do that it's just an add-on to your website so that's something that we're looking at but I don't have a suggestion yet as to who should provide that so really isn't that complicated to and we can have everything you just described and also just another form that would just not even be a separate service account it can just forward to the appropriate person so right into the inboxes of the relevant individuals so they can also look up directly the names but also for the individual that doesn't know who to talk to when their street lights out or if they don't understand how elections work they just go to the web form and they throw it over the fence and it gets to the right person's inbox it's doable Middlebury does it other communities do it I just think it would be a nice value to add for our community are the right people do they tend to be the department heads I mean I if we have every single person in the city government in their email and you know does Justin want people addressing some little question just in terms of time management or I mean it depends what people are asking most of Justin's stuff is C-click fix so he's sort of taken care of what about planning can I can I answer that so planning and zoning right now is actually looking we just started looking at software one they have some general emails that come into planning and zoning and those are monitored they also use one general number that rings to all their phones so somebody should always be picking up and someone should always be monitoring that email address but we're also looking at software that would coordinate with our GIS that would give us a lot more information on the website as well as being able to put in any permit questions things of that sort and also move in a digital direction for permits to be done digitally so that's like the next phase of that but the initial pieces that I think the planning department has a function of how they want to deal with things so they can all access that information or the phone calls so our school district has it and I notice a former chair of the school district was just raising her hand and maybe she was going to talk about their experience with the the online web form that the school district has Diane I don't know if that's what you were raising your hand for but the school district has a similar form so it's just not that that wild eye yeah and on that particular form it says you know is your issue this this this so it's more like a what I would say a survey is where you'd have several options you click on it and you fill in sort of a blank field to say what your issue is and then that goes into the queue Diane do you have a question just related to accessibility is it available in audio and for our residents who are English language learners is it available in other languages yeah so you'll notice up here where it says select language I believe I want to say there's like 70 or 100 oh it's not live until we go live but we didn't we did not make it where it was just like four languages it's literally there's a slew of like 70 different languages that people could choose from yeah it's expansive it's done through Google so that's why it's so expansive the other pieces that we are attempting to get everything so it's ADA compliant so descriptions are going in for pictures and whatnot so that's a little bit of me policing any department putting things in so that is also a piece that we're paying attention to so okay so just let me show you a couple more things so for example under government here's all the the you know main government pieces and again this will evolve you might recognize these folks the bookings I'm glad I'm under government like right across my and so Pat I apologize yes because you weren't here the night that I took the pictures yes so I will get one of you so I'll stand next to a green wall and smile I will get your picture yes ma'am got to have the green wall and then you know here's Kevin and Tom they don't have pictures up here yet because they're always hiding when I have the camera out and then feedback so here's a place I know this is important to you guys so I'd love any feedback as to and you know Tom maybe we can have a conversation offline if you have some other suggestions but we have a have created an email that's City Council at SBVT.gov that will we will then forward anything to you unless it's you know from China or you know some sort of spam stuff that comes through and also there will be a form attached and that may be something that as I create that if there are certain things that you feel should be on that form happy to take any feedback there but that is one place if people are looking to go to City Council and they don't want to email one of you or email address there are two other options for them to make that happen we don't have to go and monitor that no we'll monitor that we'll monitor that and forward that out to to all the councillors that will also help us mitigate any open meeting law issues that we may have I don't think you have to monitor it could just be a distribution group correct correct I think we want to monitor it initially because I want to make sure we're not getting you know all these deals for items you don't want so and then City Council work plan so this does have last year's work plan on there I know that you guys are probably in the last details or I don't have the final copy so I know that's coming so that can go up here as well and if there's anything else that you feel like you'd like to have on your page happy to add whatever that may be but this is just a little more lively people can see who you are versus just a picture on the side as well no not all of these are fully designed out but you can see on agendas and minutes want to see what's on the docket then you can click here to go to agendas and minutes it tells you that we use clerk base it takes you over to clerk base so trying to be more user friendly so that if someone's on the page and they're trying to figure out where do I go that it makes sense this may take some fine tuning as we move forward just as we learn what people where people click so you'll see also that there's popular searches none of this is populated yet because we're not live once we go live then that will automatically calculate and say things like oh people are looking how to pay their tax bill or right now everybody's looking at you know fire safety or what that may be same thing with city committees and boards so you'll just see that throughout we're trying to get more images make it more engaging and as we have video that will also be included so let me tell you that the rec department has been working on their page they still have some work to do but you'll see as I go through this that they have some different images really showcasing the city again they have their own events page so it doesn't have all the city meetings on there but it has events related to them and again here we are with our green screen and you folks wanted to know about parks so if I go to community parks and this is one area we just started to get fixed on Friday so you'll see each one and then if you click on one of these parks you can go here there's pictures what are the amenities here's a map and I believe this will grow you know evolve as we move forward 21 parks and natural areas I think together natural areas did you generate the content navigation yourself or is this a template that they offered or did you do some benchmarking with other municipalities and figure out what they had okay did you identify any things that other municipalities had that we just don't have and that's something new that we should be doing yeah there we have a list of things we'd like to add to the website and I will at this point say to you in two weeks right after Labor Day I'm headed out to a conference that's focused on city and county government and the whole premise of it is communications so there are sessions that are about how do you keep your citizens engage what tools do you use how do you use social media to engage as a city council how to have the best website what tools to use and things like that so I hope that when I come back we'll have even more options I'm also pretty close on a software that would we have no newsletters so we have no way to get out to all of our community members that want to get information in a timely fashion we have to put something in the paper or maybe the rec department can send something out so what the plan is is that we would have an email list that we would then be able to send an e-newsletter you know at the drop of a hat but also on a regular basis so this particular software I'm looking at would have an overlay which would be like that would be on our front page and it would ask people to sign up for the newsletter and that could also be tailored if you just wanted the rec newsletter or you just wanted the fire or you know anybody who wanted to do that so it will also give us a lot of more communication tools that we don't have at the moment so that's another piece that will layer on here and I anticipate that's something that could happen this fall where are we with the budget so right now we are under budget and Tom I don't remember how much was originally budgeted but I know that we're under 28 or something thousand on the website so there's presumably enough money to use one of these like the overlay and some of that use no applications or whatever you're calling them correct okay well that's good and then so what do we budget for this sheet for so I think the original project was 28,000 and so we've just accrued the money I think we're about halfway a little less than halfway there so we've got some money now and I think I think what I'm hearing at least from Coralie is that we'll do enhancements maybe with other providers not through the company but in other ways correct yeah because I think that we will be at our capacity for what this particular company provides so anything additional and some of the things that we see on other sites there are companies out there that provide that at you know a relatively low cost but also that they service bigger bigger communities so that we will get that benefit that you know maybe Sacramento California gets because they're much larger last question the other thing that's come up over the my two and a half years in this role is I see a lot of value in having our committee members having a page with a presence is that going to be self-managed they're going to be able to populate it themselves the question the software does allow us to do that so whoever wants to have access can do that so we do have a guide a style guide as to this is how pages should look so that would take a little bit of training but we'll set up a template but other than that yeah absolutely if they have information that they want to share that could go up so it's just a matter of how much Jennifer the frustration that I have with the current is that it's almost impossible to find documents the open space well the government has a plan is there but finding documents is a big problem is that something that's going to be much easier for this time so some of that it has been tailored to the committees so if you're talking about I hate not looking at you so if it's an open space report then that would be under that appropriate committee but it could also be in its own section on open space and I have seen in other communities where they have a documents section and it sort of has similar to what we've done in the leadership training for the committees where you can say here's all the reports that have been out and so it's a bit of an index very hard to find so it sounds like an index for those folks who just want to let me find it here that that could be a good enhancement okay um Coralie that just prompted me to think about some of like an archival section so we had four IZ committees they are no longer but they had minutes they had reports they existed they had members we've had I think other temporary or short term committees and it seems to me that's part of our history and ought to be um found searchable right okay um so we could have a page on here that says former committees and have that information there I know that clerk base I don't know if all that committee information went on to clerk base or not I can check for that just because that was prior to me um being here but that would be another place for folks to be able to access that but um let me think about a solution for how do we archive that type of that maybe we can only do it going forward but it still might be really important I agree committee reports some kind of page are there forms there are place to find forms that people can even do online perhaps yeah what it is at the moment and you can there is a form function to this website I will or to this tool I will say that it's not the most robust um form uh builder but it's pretty generic but we do right now we've been going moving in the direction of fillable forms um that folks can then just save and send in so that is a place that can be improved um but again that may be a place that we have you know reports as one page and forms as another um up there so just to aggregate information yeah I love fillable forms it's good to make them all that way yeah yeah I mean maybe a history page if you wanted to think about it yeah that's what I was going to say is I wish there was a city history log right so it's hard to go back and build that unless you really know right but I mean moving forward it would be great to have a chronological milestone for everything that's done including reports that come out of committees right um budgets votes right um decisions by the development review board approved plans by development review board right uh major documents come out of the planning commission things that get built right you know it's just like a history log that you can go through oh that was 2013 that we blah blah blah you know I mean clerk base does clerk base somewhat accomplish that I don't know I mean it's like it would have to be a chronological thing where you go oh 2013 expand it boom you know years everything that happened 2013 in the order that it happened right with maybe some small notes it doesn't have to be you know huge but well that started I mean um at when was it two years ago at City Fest or something um Donna had made that whole was our anniversary that's what it was I mean that was pretty short but at least it's the like when the city was founded right I think that would be I think that would be a nice yeah the history piece and what you're talking about Tim let me see what I can find out about a way to do that because there's a lot that happens in the city to try and log um complicated things but it's just a high in the sky yeah but I think there may be a way for us to determine what things we want to log and how to make that easy for people to find Megan and then Betty so there was in the branding project that we did there was a description of our city yep so kind of our values what we have to offer and something that I like to see on the different city websites that I've kind of looked at is how do you start a business here or where do you find resources that kind of um information a click away I think agreed so there is a businesses section it's not super robust at the moment however Kevin and I have talked about economic development and how we create a micro site that will help bring business here or help folks start business that type of thing so that as soon as this is launched then we'll move on to that piece because I think that's critical so yeah absolutely can you just airbrush my hair a little bit there Tim mine too I want to know were we seated and you guys were standing oh man bookends I said on each of them I just want to take it back about before we started possibly with what leadership that process where the different committees identified the documents so at least started hundreds I'm sure of documents that would be valuable to people to see on the website but at least through the committees the various committees identified those those things they wanted a new committee members to have so I mean I know we have about 20 things there different reports that were dug up um and going through you know departments because I think there are a lot of reports that the council's never seen that studies that they paid for that are in there and then to Tim's Tim what you were just saying if you want to look at old stuff you go to the city clerk's office I've read minutes from the 70s it's quite interesting to see some of that so I don't know if you get somebody to scan some of that stuff but it's quite interesting but even if people knew that they could go you know even if there was something that said you could go to the city clerk's office and you know read the old minutes or whatever people were interested in the historical sure, yeah I'm just so delighted to see it is just fantastic it's new, it's upbeat, it's modern it's um it's missing my picture but I'm in there I'm behind the home I'm in the home at nine o'clock and I know that with all the suggestions we have in all and everything that you have to go through to get everything in that's there now so I think all of our things for the wish list you know is great and then the prioritization of which you know we leave up to you as the guru of doing this and getting them in but it's nice to be able to put our thoughts and ideas out there but kudos to you this is just fabulous so as far as how to promote this there will be a communication plan as to how to get this out to everybody and so I would anticipate by Monday we will be going live with this site and on the front page of the esporal.com it will direct people here I'm not shutting that site completely down in case there's something I need that didn't come over but for the most part if you go to that front page it will direct you here and we'll start using this as a short URL which is just sbvt.gov and that won't affect any of your email or anything at the moment but it's really south Burlington Vermont.gov and so we've got this really short URL that we can use when we're marketing so then we'll start to push that out to the public in a strong way so people will know there's a new site and how to use it great any other questions or comments thank you welcome what would have happened if we didn't have you great to see it there's a council notwithstanding the great smiles in everybody's face it is kind of bookend do you want to have an official city council photo at your second meeting in September you want the rotary switcher that's probably the first time you ever came I'm looking and saying the only one who's got an uninterrupted face up there is you it was raining it was raining and it was green up there it shows you guys working I think at the next meeting maybe in front of the picture you can get the guys sitting down and you guys standing behind them I feel like I'm not that short oh look we're all the same height we are thank you thank you item 11 pack presentation by susie americans welcome oh we have a third while they're coming up I'll just remind you I sent you a separate email today that had the attachments from susie in it your regular email not in your box so thank you tom and thank you members of the city council for having us here would you all introduce yourself yes we definitely will so my name is susie and I'm the co-chair of pack I'm Oliver bugby and I just graduated from sbhs in June Steve lawyer co-chair of pack we're lucky enough to have Oliver here tonight he's been a member of pack for many years he'll talk about that and he's served on our advisory board for the last several years I'm starting out tonight to just do words of gratitude for the city and the city council you support our work we're very grateful for that and the update the very brief update I have is community and the members of the city council know that our work continues and we will have our traditional events once a month in the 2017-2018 school year all events are free and open to the public and are led by our teenagers and the second item I wanted to mention before I pass it to Steve is that we have those anchor events and over time what's evolved is that we find our students are desiring to be more engaged in topics that really matter to them and they've been very generous with us as pack and have invited us to partner with them because we have the structure already in place that they are welcome to use and with our high school student advisory members the word gets out that they are welcome to use the structure we have which is a system of communicating an event that's being held and setting up, reserving the room and having food provided these kinds of things and so we had an event last year that I want to mention that was especially compelling called End Mental Health Stigma and we had a panel of teenagers lead the event and they shared information about mental illness and then after they did that which was very powerful they followed best practice and had experts from the community in the mental health field come in and offer guidance and next steps that all of us could take to support our own mental well-being and it was a really wonderful night and quite transformational so that's the kind of event we're seeing through the courage of our teenagers and now I'll turn it over to Steve I just wanted to add that you have copies of the balance sheet and profit and loss for the year we're in great shape we're positioned well to start out the new year so all is going well on that front, thank you for your help and I wanted to take a moment to have us all reflect as a community the outcomes that we're starting to see from the efforts of all of us where we're having dialogue and we're having the youth in our community lead us and continue to humble us with what they say and how they do things it has been just an awesome ride and it continues to be and we're so fortunate to be able to have the structure to take on the topics that we have to take on and I think that's a good thing that we're able to do that so I'm continually grateful to all of you folks for your participation showing up matters when you're there it's unbelievable our own little rock stars showing up and we appreciate it so thank you very much to all of you and I told Oliver I'd be short so that I wouldn't steal his thunder thank you good evening as I said before my name is Oliver Bugby and I recently graduated with the SBHS class of 2017 so PACT has had a really special impact on me it all started when I was just eight years old when I went to my the only people I knew there were Mrs. Merrick my parents and my brothers and I felt so welcome and I just enjoyed eating and talking to people this was just the beginning of my years at PACT throughout the rest of elementary school and then middle school I went to many dinners learning more and more about why PACT was so special then the golden opportunity arose when I was just a freshman in high school Mrs. Merrick offered me the opportunity to become one of the teen leaders who helped host the dinners and events I proudly accepted this offer so I've learned a lot from my experiences hosting dinners and dialogue meets it was meaningful to meet community members I might not otherwise have connected with to showcase the talent and special events happening at our high school and to facilitate dialogue about difficult topics hosting PACT dinners improved my public speaking skills and also helped me become more self confident I also learned a lot about how to be present with others and also to simply listen and to have empathy for those who have different experiences and viewpoints these are all skills I will bring with me to college on Friday and beyond PACT has helped me to become the person I am today and I am committed to continuing similar activity similar community engagement activities in my next steps thank you for the opportunity to talk about PACT and thank you Mrs. Merrick and Mr. Lawyer thank you so where are you going to college I'm going to assumption college in Worcester Massachusetts you know what you want to study I'm thinking between geography and global studies right now good luck congratulations it sounds like you'll take some good skills with you that you learned outside of the classroom but participating in PACT that's terrific are you leaving this week yeah I'm leaving on Friday best of luck to you happy birthday your birthday today too it was on Wednesday I just had an early celebration nice okay any other comments or questions I have a question I'm not the finance person so I looked at this and said you were able to have grant funding in the year 1516 but it was not there for this year was that an impediment for you and what can we do to help you with that or whatever great question I think you know what we find is where like most groups like ours we find a way we find a way to get along I want to say that when we need help the mechanism is there to come and ask at that time so we've been in a good position from that perspective we've not had to turn anything away or stop anything from this from my understanding of the expenses compared to income it kind of gave me a little bit of a choking feeling there for a moment and said we certainly I know when you say that there are other sources and things like that we certainly want it to not have to be coming from your personal side because you're doing something so extraordinary for our community so when I see this that first thing was sure everything gets paid but at whose expense and I'm not asking that personal question but I just want to know that we don't want to be short changing you either that's appreciated I think we evolve we look at what's working what doesn't do we need to do something because we did it last year was there enough participation we're weighing that stuff all the time so we're always finding the right balance if you will but we know where to go if we need to get something meaningful done and we'll come in and have the chat thank you other questions are coming just thanks for the great job you do it's fabulous thank you very much your real asset to our city oh terrific good luck have fun too not too much okay item 12 applicant interviews for appointment to committees so we have a spreadsheet we've done some right where we're beginning have we done any so we have do you want to do an order in the packet since we don't have anything it's got Lee Freeman get in here guys oh good will you come forward please thank you so welcome Lee and you are applying for the library board I am alright I'm sorry your name is hi my name is Lee Freeman I'm a resident of Mackintosh Avenue he's the first one in the packet yep but not on the list I guess okay so you do you want why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and why you would like this I know you wrote it down already certainly Celine Engels scheduled me to come here this evening at the behest of Jen the director of the South Burlington Community Library Jen Murray I apologize for my lapse of memory where my family and I are high volume users of the SBCL my boys take out a lot of books as well as my wife and myself it's a great resource and Jen and I have spoken over the years as I've made the transition from a job in publishing to teaching English so we've had a lot of talk about Turkish shared interests and Jen asked me if I could help by joining the library board is what I believe yes and in a the function of an a manuensis or a note taker just wanted to get that on public record my 50 cent vocab word so this will be in the way of civic volunteerism if I can help the city I'm a proud resident super okay and you are aware of some of the fundraising that the library will be doing and I believe so the opportunity to build a new library is extremely exciting and I would like to do whatever I can to help I'm going to ask all of us of every applicant have you attended a library board meeting and do you know when they generally meet is that time convenient for your personal schedule as far as you know I have not I do and it is great and a few words that's good any other questions we have three openings for this board is that correct yes and are you which one are you applying for just so we know the the three year term two year or one year and whatever way I can be most helpful to the city is how I could I honestly don't know much about this beyond I would be helping taking notes and possibly publicizing the new library which is extremely exciting to me well that's an important piece is to help translate their their vision to the public I've experienced writing for the other paper which is a great resource here in the city I've written for art reviews in Burlington I've written for the the cynic up on the hill I have worked in publishing and in printing so I feel that I'm qualified to keep those functions alright I don't see the name on this spreadsheet where is it oh right there and so we have three openings it looks like we might even have seven I think there's yeah that's right seven open is that possible I think there may be a mistake there but I believe there are five active yes Bonnie is saying yes five active members and you have up to nine right nine or eleven oh okay and so Bonnie you're the only returning one right oh see it's not on this spreadsheet right it'll be on for the next okay I'm just trying to figure out how many but it sounds like we have plenty I mean there's only five active members and two are reapplying so if you know they're reappointed then we'll still have five so we have the opportunity to meet six additional people if we want to go up to eleven pardon what terms because we do have someone else that is I'll get that clarified okay okay but it sounds like you would serve a three-year term or a two-year term or a one-year term whatever you're open you're open okay so if someone else requests one of the others we can fill you in okay do you have any questions for us um no okay anything else we should know about you that would be good okay alright that's fine how long have you lived here I've lived here oh I guess since about oh three or oh four as a full-time resident you're not a noob come on I'm a UVM grad from the class of high school um and I've been coming up here since I moved up here to Middlebury before high school in the south okay I appreciate his comment libraries are the arsenal of democracy I like that too I really did particularly proud of that one and the general process that for all the candidates we deliberate over the next couple of weeks you know after we have interviewed all the new applicants month or two well I would hope your next meeting on the fifth should clean this up right possible holdouts until the next meeting but then you didn't make your decisions so early September that's our next meeting when we'll interview some other people for other committees and commissions and then we will shortly after that meet and decide this is awesome awesome thank you for taking the time thank you for your work and have a great evening well I appreciate your interest thank you alright so the next one is Katie Langrock and Katie come on up we're going for parks recreation and parks we've just made Jennifer happy is that a nickname Katie or an alien my real name is Catherine Catherine we see that just to be clear just to be clear okay and this which term does it matter we have a doesn't matter to me or is it fine there's a three year term and a one year term so I met with a staff member recently and they said one of the most important things that council can do during these interviews is just ask the candidates if they have attended the meetings and if they know when they meet so you're familiar with the meeting pattern I've attended I don't know three, four, five of them and they work by very well and we know from your campaign that wellness and the huge part of the overall community wellness is to have active residents let us see a wheeler park for the open house underwood property is that yes you did I was there for our when we opened that up to get feedback from the community so I've been helping out participating was this for three year, one year, either year all right anything else we should know I think we all have met you and chatted with you numerous times so thank you for nice to see you all nice to see you too have a good night thank you very much Stacey hey and Stacey is oh another library another library person good I have lived in South Burlington Orchards for a little over 20 years I have two beautiful daughters who have worked their way almost through our last one as a senior this year so let's just get to college the older one just finished her master's at U Penn and has a full time job in New York City I said to brag for a second it's truly because of the library we had to be those parents that were not paying our children a dollar for every book they read we actually had to go and take them to the library because it was so expensive to pay them a dollar anything that works because I think you get to a certain point and then they hopefully will enjoy it whatever the incentive is we had the opposite of that so I am very interested in joining the board I also have almost 20 years of fundraising experience I work currently at the UVM Medical Center with Academic Health Sciences which is the Medical Center College of Medicine College of Nursing and Health Sciences as well as the Cancer Center I do more behind the scenes work but I am very familiar with annual appeals and looking for appropriate people to be able to help with the cause it's important to get a community library outside of the high school building just seeing the seniors as well as the younger children trying to use that space while the teenagers are trying to do what they need to do sometimes it's very difficult so have you ever done other volunteer work? yes I have done all things I do a lot with the Children's Hospital because that's a part of what I do for work I also work with the kids safe collaborative on a regular basis I've helped with Lund I worked at the Howard Center for a few years I don't like to have free time so I tend to do a lot of different things in the community and soon to be an empty nester I will be ever more available to do things okay Tom, ask your question do you know when it meets and have you been to any meetings? I have not been to any recent meetings years ago I do know when it meets and my schedule is very flexible so any other questions or how do you feel about the transition to a temporary site? I think if it's done right it can be done well so I don't think it would be necessarily a bad thing okay good question alright thank you very much thank you is she available for all terms? oh yes oh sorry do you care which term? um no okay three, two or one? thank you very much alright so next is Jennifer Cokman are we interviewing returnees? do we need to? why don't you come up Jennifer but I mean we know who you are Jennifer Cokman I've lived here since 1987 and I enjoyed our exercise in choosing the geese for the market street public place and I've enjoyed serving on that committee as well as recreation parks so the public arts selection is, let's see how many years? are you signing up for the three year term or the one year term? do you care? um no I don't care whichever you think okay and so and obviously you've served it on it you know the time commitment and you know when they meet you obvious since you've served on the committee now you know when they meet and the time commitment and it's been fine and I just enjoy looking at public places looking at public art and building design and art in general so it fits I've noted that you have posted a lot of your findings you know trips to different public places yes the neighborhood community watch yeah so that's helpful share what you learn which is great any other questions? alright thank you so much for all of your work Sean Goddard and Sean you are applying for the bike and ped committee yes we do don't have on the application which term that's why we keep asking people so bike and there's a three year term okay favorite committee so Tom why don't you ask your first question it's my favorite committee so I have not been so my name's Sean Goddard I live on Meadow Road in South Burlington I've lived there for almost three years now grew up in Burlington lived in the area all my life I haven't been to any of the committee meetings I just saw the committee openings on the website and was interested I'm a biker in the area I bike commute regularly out to Global Foundries actually work with Tim and yeah interested in being considered for the committee I do know the time commitment I've reviewed some of the meeting minutes from the meetings and I'm definitely available and would love to be considered I have to disclose that Sean and I work at the same place that wasn't clear we're not going to hold it again until he works with you I just want to know did you bike here tonight or is that a helmet just a a prop my girlfriend said that I had to bring it in so that you knew that I just am not a slob that comes to did you put it on the prove that it's actually your it is okay any other question it sounds like I don't know if there's a bike and ped committee member who actually is a commuter does anyone know but that would certainly be a wonderful perspective that I think could be helpful and we are doing they're working on the plans to go over the interstate so your committee will be part of that yeah that's great and I think it's great that you actually read the ad and said hey I'll sign up that's great did Tim encourage you to actually no somebody who reads the other paper somebody else we all read it and I would be open to either term as well so whatever would be most useful for the committee have you ever done any other volunteer work so working at global pound region and at the end of the year they provide they provide ample opportunity to volunteer within the community and regularly a few times a year we volunteer through work I've never done anything you know an extended service like this in the community but it's always been something I've been interested in I have a lot of free time outside of work now biking is a big part of my life you know at this time so well it sounds good the bike commutes to global foundries from meadow road which I did a couple times that's a real challenge and I suspect that a lot because they understand what the travel lanes are like and where there aren't travel lanes and where traffic is bad so you know where things are needed so it's really important you know we're transforming our roads and it's an exciting time and we're transforming them to be multi use so you have to take into consideration different perspectives and it doesn't have to be a zero something where if you're going to give some space to a bike or it negatively impacts the cars or the pedestrians I feel like there's a lot of great solutions out there from cities around the country and around the world and cities have come at this before us and it can really transform the roads for everyone so it's exciting I was very excited to see that the city had a committee for bicycle and pedestrian use and so even more so to be considered great on the topic of connectivity where would you see the need for connections what comes to your mind foremost so there's a lot of solutions out there right now that what I think there's been in the past a lot of you know we're building specific bike paths recreational paths those types of things and those are nice if we want to try to alleviate traffic on our roads or open up our roads for multi use it has to stop being programs that are specific to a single type of transport or single type of use and start transforming the roadways and safety is a huge consideration but you know taking input you know as a lifelong engineer you know a big part for me is always understanding the problem and trying to solve it from multiple perspectives and trying to take that input in order to because I'm a biker and so naturally as I bike down these roads I am very much seeing things from a specific perspective then I overhear people that drive and hear about their frustrations with bikers and I see how those conflicts can come about and when you're approaching it for me I think the exciting part is to make the roads safer and easier for multi use and I think that it can be transformative if it's done right where we actually improve the experience for everyone who's using the roadways not just a single you know if you're adding bikers obviously you would be improving it for the bikers but you could actually improve that experience for the cars as well there's less traffic there's designated lanes, the bikers know what to do the cars know what to do, everybody's predictable and everybody's happy Yes Tom? One thing I've noticed over the last year and a half is one of the bike and ped members James and Goodwin as well as others regularly if not always attends the DRV meetings and just always looks for projects where the bike and ped can influence it so not development review board so it's another important meeting that occurs and I don't know if that just to keep in the back of your mind if you have the flexibility to attend those as well I'm sure that would be appreciated by the committee to keep in touch you know hand in the pulse of what developments coming down the pike in South Burlington to make sure bike and ped is influencing or at least being considered That's great, yeah thanks for the comment if I am selected I'll definitely make that a priority Okay, thank you very much Thank you Hey Glen We also are very familiar with your six years so far but Good evening I'm Glen Spruill I've lived in South Burlington since 1984 and raised our two sons here and I'm reapplying for the recreation and parks committee Three-year term Three-year term, yes It was interesting to listen to Sean he thought it was so exciting that there was a pedestrian cycle committee and I was thinking yeah it's pretty exciting that we have recreation and parks committee too actually in the sense that when I six years ago when I retired from my college teaching career I volunteered to join whatever I actually applied for the bike committee I think but they were full so I shunted on to the recreation committee which is led by Tom at the time and he was gently nudging the committee to become active in certain arenas such as advocating for decent recreation space and new developments and advocating for some kind of indoor recreation facility in the city I mean it was a we had a committee but it wasn't particularly active and when I made a noise to that effect midway in my first year somehow amazingly I got elected chair later that and together with Jennifer and look what's happened yeah Jennifer was my really my co-chair vice chair officially but my co-chair and and we did a lot to transform that committee it's been messy and sometimes confusing but also exciting we're in a period of tremendous ferment in the city and what might develop in the next dozen years in city center in a real recreation center it's really exciting but also demanding yes I know when the committee meets I actually shifted I think it was on my account that we shifted the meetings to Monday so that I could attend them and not have to run away to a rehearsal that I lead my experience in volunteering that's the recreation committee is my only direct city volunteer experience but there are a lot of others I'm now the senior warden in my church and there are meetings and responsibilities that I have there that are usually in scale not but overwhelming but they're significant and I a few months after I joined the recreation committee I started training in the Red Cross for disaster services I'm now carrying the pager as the leader of the county disaster action team if it goes off while we're talking I'll excuse myself but it's not too likely and because of this sort of proliferation of things that I felt called to do I realized a year or two ago I needed to back off a little bit and I told Jennifer that I needed to step down from the chairmanship and from being an officer but I'm happy on their both of their insistence happy to volunteer to serve another three-year term as long as I'm not a chair great hold them to it that's here so I'm happy to answer any questions you may have happy to be here it's a great city right well I've appreciated your leadership coming to council meetings as chair and you know keeping us up to date with the goals and the mission and the hopes and dreams of parks and recreation so and I think you've been pretty supportive from actions by the council I you have to be careful when you're retired from certain things that well I don't see how I have time to work I don't know how I ever had time to work exactly well I am that person I very much appreciate the consistent support that I have felt from the council for our work on that committee and for me personally it's easy when we work with people like you that's right well it's okay any other questions or comments oh and the other thing I would like to say is Jennifer at least would really love it if you would make Katie a three-year term and not a one-year term I was thinking that probably was how it would work out right okay Barbara Finnegan and you want to continue on the library oh Bonnie did I say Barbara oh it says Barbara on this but I know I'm sorry yes excuse and why oh thoughts questions you know you obviously you share it now so you know when you meet you know often and the time commitment yes I'm hoping that our nominating committee will find a different chair this year I've been doing it for three years I think it would be good for somebody else to do it and I have also volunteered at the library and I this past year has just been so busy that I felt like I couldn't spend the time to volunteer at the library so I'd like to go back and do that as well as be on the board but I'd like not to be the chair it just seems like a long time alright you've been on the board for how many years but it seems like longer well you've had a lot of things going on yeah a lot of training for fundraising it's exciting many times for the library yeah I hope so too and it sounds like you've you know beat the bushes and we have gotten some good candidates too and I wasn't aware that we had anything but I'm sorry hold me that or oh what's this on here I don't know we did have someone that filled in a one year term and we do have so we we do have another term that would be filling in for Susie so that would be good alright well we've got four applicants so we'll give you a couple more yeah okay are there any other questions or comments well thank you for your work Bonnie yeah thanks Ben and thanks for your support you're welcome Bonnie Stratman welcome and Patrice is interested in the public art committee yeah great I was on it last well this year I was chair lived in Burlington for the last 18-20 years we've got a great group of people could you just pick up just a little yeah I'm sorry Burlington or South Burlington I'm excited about the geese and wish we could have a couple more on the committee because I think that would be helpful there's three right now right three people there's actually another is four and then we had a woman from among council in the arts which was really really really wonderful to have her there good what name do you go by? I can't read I go by Trees actually okay it's just fuzzy so I couldn't make out whether it was Trico yeah Trees so you clearly know when it meets yep do you have some other things on scheduled from what Ilana said the next thing on the list was a small park that is going to be over by Al's french fries because the road direction is changing there and so a little building that they're taking land away from the travel agency that I think was there and adding it to the other side of the street just straightened out so that was a discussion that we have touched on just a little bit so there might be some public support in that little park yes all right well thank you for your service to the community and thank you for wanting to continue yeah it's fun I enjoy it good I bet it is fun you had some great choices the final free so I was so impressed I was so worried that nobody was going to submit anything you know super okay thank you and Thomas more the fourth is he here Thomas is bike and head first choice recreation in park second so he did send us a letter do we want to meet him or just we can check and find out if we can come maybe have the wrong date or something yeah I think it would be good since he's new it appears okay more applicants than there are positions for bike and are there okay but he also said he was interested in bike and and wreck and park and natural resources natural resources was his third I'd really like to ask my question right I don't see natural resources on this thing okay alright well let's let's ask him back so we can maybe determine what he's really interested in okay okay and then the last one is Larry Kupferman and we know him because he's been I believe but do you want to come up I'm sorry but Larry Larry's not here either okay well then let's see Dave Dave Crawford I've been around for a while I think the committee knows me I would start off with just saying that I've had the pleasure of working with the Wenuski Valley Park District that's been three years and when I went on it I believe I was questioned by your finance person about the formulas that we use for generating funds at the park district and we took a hard look at them and continued that and have reignited that look because of some of the concerns that have been expressed mainly by Wenuski I'm sorry mainly by Williston and that is very much something that's going on now and will continue and I'm very hopeful being able to contribute some more ideas Nick who is present here has stimulated us to take a more comprehensive look at that formula and already is drafting several alternatives we will be hopefully presenting those alternatives as part of the budget not for adoption but for getting input from you people choices it really comes down to if you change the formula one way somebody wins you change it another way somebody wins and there's losers all the way around if we keep shifting around ideas but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be looking at them and we are very hard so that's something that I'm interested in continuing with and also would like to encourage the council to take the survey that is on the website Wenuski Valley website we're interested in getting input from the public we're interested in getting input from each of our member communities as to again our re-examination and looking at some alternatives with some funding mechanism the second part of the funding mechanism was the contracted services agreement which we reached was the city and that we think is a way that we're hopefully going to be encouraging maybe to expand to other communities also and I'm going down this letter actually here just highlighting things the upgrade of our accounting system is something that is treasure I've been very interested in and supportive of I would say a bit passionately it just was one of the things that time would come and Nick has really gotten that going in good shape we're also analyzing several park expansion projects and that involves the city and various communities but we have a pretty good matrix of just how the committee how the district looks at the acquisition of properties and we're looking at a couple different ones now and we've had some expansions too so that covers that word natural resources commission I really felt very good about being appointed to that committee working with the goals and priorities that you folks asked us to do and that was a I think a very interesting time for the committee the spirited discussion that that stimulated was very positive we learned to get along with each other and really present some dramatically different ideas but it's been a good good experience and finally I've put in my name in for the charter commission just because of my background and I couldn't help myself or I'm a masochist I don't know which if you don't know you didn't look at his resume you were the town manager for Essex for how many years well five years for Essex but that I took a buyout after 40 years I got my 40 years certificate as municipal and local government from ICMA so still working part-time project manager and a small project and and I want to say Ferris Berg Virgins boy the mind goes and that keeps me going and gives me some money that I can spend away I want to say did you wrestle the charters in your previous roles did you wrestle the city charters in your previous roles several times several times Middlebury I was a first manager Bedford New Hampshire having to implement a new charter so that and then making some suggested changes to it so had considerable experience with charters and none of them are perfect I think we have all three of these committees yes you said that we could do that so I put them in priority order but the clearly of Wenuski Valley Park District and the natural resources are prime areas of interest okay said it before I just really appreciate you giving time you've got a wealth of experience so South Burlington's better off with your time so thanks for putting all this in thank you so hopefully I'll be able to continue them at least two out of three okay so two out of three would that be your limit or would you do three out of three no three I would take all three if they came up city charter as I understand it's going to be more active probably in the next couple years so that's of interest but that's I can't help myself do you think we need seven counselors do I think I have to answer that question remember Tom that there are five people that are voting for you at least need four voting the right way but the council has the right to be wrong I firmly believe that it's been a principle that I've managed to survive through several difficult times in the past just telling myself they're the council they have the right to be wrong I'll be quiet they're the ones that are appointing and they're always right they're always right they're different on that one you'r