And it doesn't look like we have anyone on the phone at the moment. So. Folks should be able to see the chat. And sender is spelled as you. So I think we're going to, we're going to go ahead and call the order. The transportation energy and utilities committee of the city council. It's 510 p.m. And we've got two of the three committee members here. And I'd like counselor Stromberg know that we've started, but she is under the weather. So I'm not sure that she'll make it. So I will go do counselor Barlow for. A motion on our agenda for tonight. So I move we approve the agenda. Okay. I'll second that. Any discussion of the agenda. I'm not seeing none. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. All right. So we have our agenda. And next item on the agenda is approval of the minutes from last meeting. Would you like to, well, I guess I'll make the motion since you weren't there. Counselor Barlow. But hopefully you can, even though you weren't there, you can vote on it too. Cause otherwise it won't be approved. So I'll move the minutes from last meeting. Okay. Thank you. Is there a second. I'll second that. Okay. Any discussion on the minutes. And you had emailed me counselor Barlow was, did we have a recording from last meeting, a video recording? Yes. And I've actually watched about half of it. Oh, okay. Okay. Great. All right. Let's go to a vote on the minutes. All those in favor of approving the minutes, please say aye. Aye. We've approved the minutes from last meeting. And the next item is public forum. Do we, did anyone email in advance looking to speak? Maddie or Chapa. Nope. No. No one emailed in advance looking to speak. Okay. Great. I see. Two folks in the attendees looking to speak. So we'll go to them. And if anyone wants to speak, just use the raise hand function. Or if that's not working, you can just type in the chat. That you're looking to speak. So I first saw Wendy co, which is, which is Jean Bergman. Gene, are you able to unmute. Speak. We might need to. We might need to give. Gene permission. Okay. I see. There we go. You got me. Yes. Thank you. And I've spoken many times in favor of municipal. Consolidated. So I'm going to summarize the basic points and if that need be, we'd love the chance to be able to weigh in during the discussion. Solid waste collection and management is a public need and essential public good. Consolidated collections. Important in our fight against climate change since it reduces the redundancy in the trip collection of collection trips. It's also more efficient economically. But while I support that, Consolidation creates monopoly conditions. And so a public system, a municipal system is more in the public interest than a private monopoly system. And that's because it keeps democratic and economic control in the hands of the public. It means greater control over rates since rates are based on what it'll take to run the, the program. It allows us to be more flexible to adjust to changing waste conditions. And it builds. And I think this is very significant. It builds a significant number of new union jobs. And therefore it strengthens the region's middle class. More privatization of public services is not in the public interest, which is what franchising a consolidated system would do since the current recycling program would be eliminated and turned over to the private sector. The biggest advantage of privatization is that it has a supposed cost effectiveness, providing the same level of service at a substantially lower cost. But DPW's analysis, at least what I saw at the DPW commission last week, shows that that's just not true in this case. The franchise model. It's not the same level of service. It's not the same level of service. It shows that that's just not true in this case. The franchise model also accepts that there is going to be a cost for monitoring enforcement, but these costs have not been factored in. So the cost to the franchise model to residents is really low bald. The municipal program provides other benefits. It can help us purchase the Flynn Avenue facility for a drop off center. We could recapture lost revenue from the opt outs. If we allow opt outs, if we had a drop off center in addition to getting them the revenues from the municipal system, it would also add capacity to DPW by adding staff that could be used in other capacities. And finally, it would contribute to the city's economic health through the payment of indirect costs for attorneys and HR functions. Those are democratic and public uses of the revenues that are going to be generated. So I really hope if you're going to act tonight, that you will support a consolidated municipal solid waste system. I have left out a lot as Chapin has suffered through that. So he's shaking his head, but would love to be able to, to weigh in on particulars if need be. Thank you very much. All right. Great. Thanks, Jean. Thank you. Thank you. I would like to see. Tiki Tiki Archambault. Would you like to unmute and speak? And then we'll have Cameron Scott next. Sure. Yeah. Just checking in to see if you all can hear me right now or not. Yeah. Oh, great. All right. Great. Thank you very much. Yeah. So, so my name is Tiki. I'm on the public works commission. We did just speak to this issue here. So I'm going to go back to my meeting. A little bit similar to what Jean was just expressing. I did see some of the communication. From staff, which seems to suggest maybe that the. Owning this of their municipal level was just really not a feasible way to go. And I did express concerns about that in my meeting. Effectively. But you have two paths here, right? You're for a consolidated collection. I'm a big supporter. I'm a big supporter of it. I'm a big supporter of it. I'm a big supporter of it. I'm a big supporter of it. I'm a big supporter of it. I'm a big supporter of it. You can argue for it against, and I'm sure you're going to hear a lot of that. For my purposes, I am a supporter of it. The two paths within that are to keep it municipal. Or to send it out to private contractors to be able to manage that. So those are the, as the reality of it. In, in looking this and thinking it through from a public commissioner standpoint. I do support the municipal ownership. Despite the. The one thing I would say is that the.  The different focus it will introduce to the department. So it. I recognize that Chapin has a lot on his plate. This introduces yet one more priority. To manage. So it's something to consider. Is maybe it. Is that manageable under the public works, or is that another department? I'm not sure what the right answer to that is. Nonetheless. equity. And when I say that, I'm imagining the situation of hiring haulers, right, who are going to come along and pick up our trash, those haulers are going to earn whatever the floating rate might be, minimum wage or the living wage in Burlington. And even at 15 or 20 bucks an hour, those folks are still going to struggle. Whereas we're this municipal job, we could allow them to earn a bit more salary and kind of make a career of this, right, rotate through, drive the trucks, haul the cans, maybe work at the facility is so much to do around this project. They could also rely on a pension thereafter. So that's partly why I look at this as an equity issue more than anything to keep it municipal. And I certainly don't intend to speak for the commission myself, I don't speak for the department, I'm just speaking from on my own behalf here. So those are some of the thoughts that cross my mind as we explored this in the Public Works Commission. And I just wanted to be sure to share that with you all on the Duke. So thank you very much for your time. Great. Thank you, Tiki. Appreciate that. And I will now go to Cameron Scott. And if others want to speak, just as I said, feel free, just raise your hand or indicate in the chat. And then we'll call on you to speak. Cameron, you want to go ahead? I can hear me. Great. Yes. All right. I have a lot of thoughts I'd like to share, but I'll try to make it as brief as possible. I'm Cameron Scott. I started No Waste Compost, which is a local compost pickup service specifically for households. So I am directly my business and my career is entirely affected by this consolidation. So I am here today to voice my support for consolidating and specifically the municipal option. I'm going to try not to just echo some of the other statements that have been made. I do have concerns about the franchise monopolization possibility and also a concern about the additional costs that aren't being considered, especially potential lawsuits going in that route. And I can say that as somebody who would be on the other side of the table in those lawsuits. So I certainly think the municipal option is best, even though it appears like the more expensive option at this time, I think in the long run it will prove to be the right way to go. And I think the political process of trying to contract out and put bids on different areas in order to avoid a monopoly is it's too convoluted. It's going to be too complex. So I highly recommend avoiding going down that route. Regarding the difficulty of the departments managing such a facility and operations, I believe that's something the city can take on. Now I have no experience working for the city, but knowing the operations of a waste management business, I think it's actually easier for a municipality to do. That's my take on it and is definitely the route that should be considered. Now I'm saying that as somebody who will lose about 80% of my business if consolidation happens. So I say that truly meaning that I believe it is for the benefit of our residents and the greater community that we move in that direction. And on top of that, I'd like to express slight frustration that we didn't move in the direction of consolidating composting when we had the opportunity to get ahead of that. I had an opportunity and a plan that I presented many years ago that was a zero cost way for the city to move towards consolidated composting, which could have been a bridge to consolidating these other services. It would have made the process much simpler and we'd already have a blueprint in ways of how to make such a transition because of course we know we have Burlington recycling. It's really the transitions that are the larger tasks to accomplish. So I'm frustrated that it's taken so long for us to make these decisions and I wanted to express something that I don't think is being considered is that most of the companies such as mine, we have not been making the investments into new infrastructure, new technologies, new employees to create more efficient services in the Burlington and South Burlington areas. The reason being, as you can see from these plans, these are millions of dollars of investments to really provide a free bay truck picking up compost, trash recycling all at once. So had we made these decisions, be it a yes or no, even years ago, I believe that companies would have already invested in these technologies. The reason they aren't is because how can anyone justify investing in a market that's about to disappear. So I highly urge the committee to take a true action tonight, make a final decision and move forward on that and my support is for the municipal option. Even though my business would disappear, I believe this is what's best for Vermont. All right. Thanks. Great. Thank you, Cameron. Is anyone else looking to speak during this public forum? Okay. Not seeing anyone. We do typically and I will allow people to speak during items as well if they want to do that. So you may have another opportunity if you're going to speak to an item that we're discussing. But that being said, I'm going to go ahead and close the public forum and we will move to agenda item number four, the I-89 corridor study update. And we have Nicole Loesch presenting from DPW. The floor is yours when you're ready, Nicole. Thank you. And Maddie, thanks for promoting our partners from the CCRPC as well. I'll just do a very brief introduction. I'm Nicole Loesch. I'm the senior planner in DPW and I've been serving as Darlington's representative on the advisory committee and the technical committee for the I-89 study, which is being led by the CCRPC. And so I will turn this over to Eleni who will actually run the presentation. And if you'd like to do any introductions for you or the rest of your team. But thank you for being here tonight and take it away. Unmute. Unmute. Answer. Can you hear me now? Yes. Wonderful. All right. Well, thank you for inviting us. And I'm here today with, well, my name is Eleni Churchill. I'm a transportation program manager at the CCRPC. I'm also the project manager for the I-89 study. And I'm here today with Jason Charest as well as Charlie's here. Charlie is executive director of the RPC. And I'm going to let them introduce themselves in a second. And once we introduce ourselves, I will start the presentation. I will try to just see if I can share my screen. And then we'll talk to him with Jason on the presentation. So Jason, you want to introduce yourself? Sure. Thanks, Eleni. Hi, everyone. I'm Jason Charest, senior transportation planning engineer with the CCRPC and support staff on the I-89 project. And Charlie Baker here just to help support, answer any questions I can. Thanks. Thank you. So let me just try and see if this works. Okay. Let's see. Can you see the presentation? Yes. Okay. Great. So we're here to give you a brief update on where we are with the I-89 2050 study. And we're going to start with the project background and overview. And then Jason is going to go over the interchange concepts as well as the scoring. And then I'm going to talk a little bit about the recommendations to date. And we are trying very hard at this. So we are kind of in between phases in this study. So we have done a lot of work on the interchanges. We have done two rounds of evaluations. And we are now ready to actually make final decisions of which interchanges improvements are going to move further into further study in the corridor bundles. And I'm going to explain all that a little further down in the presentation. But we are trying to just shift our conversation now to look at the entire corridor that is going to include a lot more that just interchanges as improvements to this corridor. And then we're going to finish with next steps. Just to take us a step back, the genesis of this study actually was, you know, it was way back when we were doing our EGUS MTP metropolitan transportation plan. That's a long-range regional plan. And I'm just going to just go over some of the priorities that we had in that plan. So 70% and our plan was the future year of the plan was 2050. Some of the priorities was that 70% of the funding that we're going to get in the county between now and 2050 is going to go to maintaining the system that we have. We also are that we have a land use component in the plan that basically is looking to have 90% of the household growth in our villages and downtowns. And that's very important because in order to promote and, you know, improve and increase our biking and walking and transit and all the things that we want to do, we need to have more growth in our villages and downtowns. We need density. We also have, we address a lot of safety, you know, that we have especially in our intersections and where there are high crash locations. HCL stands for high crash locations. We also invested in TDM programs and TDM programs, you know, transportation demand management. And this is, they might include park and rides, carpool, van pools, car sharing. It's just basically ways and programs to manage our travel, especially during peak hours. In our MTP, we have substantial increases in transit services from what we have today, as well as improvements and investments in walking and biking. And ITS stands from intelligent transportation systems. And this basically, you can think of smart signals and maybe a variable message signs to alert you for some issues up ahead. So you cannot just take alternative routes. And then in our MTP, we basically have capacity expansion and this is a roadway capacity expansion only when we need it. So having said that, when we run our model and we have a regional transportation model for the county, it's that looks at traffic mainly when we run the model for 2050 and granted the assumptions that we have in that model. It's a pre-COVID and pre-pandemic and we need to monitor conditions afterwards to see how things go. But that model indicated that there was an issue with our ID9. And the issue was especially between exit 14 and 15, there was that specific segment of the interstate was overcapacity in 2050, which means that there was gridlock. There was no movement of vehicles. So you had more cars than space. So that's an issue that we needed to basically investigate and address in this study. And that's what we're doing with this study. There was also some other issues with the exit 14. We all know that there are delays in exit 14 as well as a lot of other issues like bike and pet connectivity and safety and all that. So we wanted to take a closer look at all the entire interstate as well as the interchanges in Chinatown County. I just also want to just briefly mention some of the outcomes of the MTP with all the investments that we did for bike and pet transit, the TDM, all that stuff. We had some good results, even though we definitely need to work a little harder on that. But we have some decrease in VMT as well as VHT, vehicles hours of travel. We have increased in the non-auto mode share from 12 to 16. And then in order to meet our state and regional energy goals, we also have a goal of having 90% of the fleet. And when I say fleet, I mean passenger vehicles and light trucks, 90% of that should be electric vehicles by 2015. And that basically gives us a 77% reduction in fuel consumption between the 2015, which was the base, and the 2050, which was the future. So just this little bit background on our MTP and how we came up about to do the ID9 study. And the ID9 study includes the entire interstate in Chinatown County. There's 37 miles, seven interchanges, as well as the arterials that they are adjacent to those interchanges. And you can see them in the little boxes on the upper right there, where we are in the process. So this slide basically provides all the major tasks in this study, where we are now in the dotted line. I'm not quite sure. Do you guys see my cursor? Yeah? No? No. Okay. I won't use it. I do see it. Do you see it, Jack? Okay. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think we all see it. You can see it. Okay. It's, you know, sometimes the mystery, if you can or not. Now I know, but I did. Now I do. Now I do. Okay. Maybe I think, maybe when I'm moving it, you see it. Yeah, I think we do. I see people nodding. Okay, great. So right now we are actually trying to just, we are kind of like right here in between task four and task five. We have done a lot of evaluation of interchanges, new and upgraded interchanges that we're going to go through in a second. And we are about hopefully this, in May, we're going to have an advisory committee, not hopefully. We will have an advisory committee meeting in May, I believe it's May 19th. And then we're going to report all our findings as well as all our input that we received from the South, South Burlington City Council, other stakeholders on the interchange question. And then hopefully we'll be able to move forward to look at the much more comprehensive, multi-model package of improvements for the I-89 under task five. I just want to just mention that we have developed a vision and goal for this. And we spend a lot of time with our committees, both the advisory committee and the technical committee, as well as a number of groups, you know, like wordsmithing this. And as you can see, we're looking, we are actually our goal is to have a safe, resilient interstate that provides for reliable and efficient movement of people and goods. But the important thing is that, and that last sentence says that we want to do that and we want to just develop a corridor basically supports our goals as a region, a state, and as municipalities, as well as our, you know, plans that we have for our communities. We have six goals under the vision. You can see them there, ranging from safety. We are looking at livable communities. We're looking at the mobility and efficiency for all users, not just vehicles. So we are looking at connectivity of bike and pedestrians through the interchanges. We are also looking at environmental stewardship and the resilience of our corridor. Economic access is also important for us and the vitality of our region. It's important. And one major item that we will be spending a lot more attention when we're looking at the corridor versus the interchanges is the system preservation. Our interstate is getting old and it's getting to the point that it might need some major reconstruction, at least parts of it. In Inchon and County, in the urban core of the county, we have the most traffic in, you know, at least we had the most traffic pre-pandemic. And we need to monitor it to see if that will return or not. So that's the vision and goals. I did mention the two rounds of the interchange evaluation. As you can see, the first round, we had a lot of fun with eight interchanges. We evaluated, we say it was a high level, but it was actually a pretty detailed evaluation that we did for those eight interchanges. And from those, we chose three locations. And we had five concepts on those locations. So the locations that came out of the first round to move forward for further evaluation in the second round was at Exit 12. This is a new exit. So this is the next at 12B. And this is at the Heimsburg Road overpass in South Burlington. Exit 13, we have two concepts. And Jason is going to go over them in a second. And Exit 14 have, again, two concepts that we're going to go over in a few minutes. We added this slide here because there was some confusion of what this study was going to accomplish. So we want to make sure that everybody understands that there are probably three different kinds of recommendations and outputs that can come out of the study. The first one will be minor capital improvements and investments. And those are the things that can be done in the short term. Shared use paths, sidewalks, crosswalks are something that the municipalities and veterans can move forward without a lot of process. I mean, always when you're using federal funds, you have a lot of process, but this is something that can be done in the short and medium term. Operational investments. Mainly here, we're talking about transit services, but also some TDM programs that can be done under those. And then we have the major capital investments. We're talking about like a capacity, roadway capacity investments here, interchanges, or an ID9 project like a third lane on the interstate, let's say. Those investments are very long term. And we will be using federal funding for that. And these projects and these, well, these investments will go through a very rigorous NEPA process. And they may require environmental impact statement. And I say may because it depends if it's an existing interchange versus a new, it might be something different under NEPA. But there is going to be a lot of process, a lot of analysis again, a lot of concepts to be evaluated again, but also a lot of input from the communities then. And these investments are not going to be short term. These are very long term investments. I don't want to put a year, a number of years or anything like that, but it's definitely going to be like 15, 20 years into the future. There I put the number two. So, and then I'm just going to point you down to the very last statement there in blue. And that is, we are recognizing that there are a lot of uncertainties in the world.  We don't know post pandemic, what's going to happen with the travel, we don't know how people will travel. We don't know how the telecommuting is going to continue or not. So what we are proposing to do is that we are proposing to develop triggers that is going to tell us when an investment and we're talking about the major capacity investments here, you know, when an investment is needed because we do not want to spend money and effort in investments that they are not needed. So we're going to develop, we're going to have monitor of conditions, especially traffic. We haven't developed the measures yet, but we will be developing the measures under task six. And then we're just going to basically have the trigger when you meet the trigger, then, you know, you move forward to actually with that investment. And this is again, in recognition of the uncertain times that we live in. And now I'm going to just hand it over to Jason to, you know, talk about interchange concept plans. Oops, sorry. Did it go through? No, it's great. Starting with 12B. Go for it, Jason. Thanks, Eleni. Okay, we'll start towards the south at 12B, which would be, you know, a new interchange at the bridges that go over 116 or Heinsberg Road. And what, dear, the colors you're looking at in the background, that's just from our Ecos plan, and those are designated areas that we have. And the, all the colors aside from green, which is rural, are areas planned for growth. So just so you understand kind of what's behind that map. So this is what it would look like. 116 goes north to south. It would need to be widened. There'd be a new bridge that would be four lanes wide. The bridge would have, you know, a sidewalk on one side and a multi-use path on the other. That's just, that's what we're showing right now that could change if this, you know, move forward in the future. There would be three new, either signal or roundabout on 116. Thanks, Eleni. The northbound on and off ramps themselves would, would actually intersect with Tilly Drive. So let me show you those there. And that would be another either signal or roundabout. So kind of four, four new, either signals or roundabouts as a result of, of this, this interchange. And you were just showing the other things that we're just showing on this map with the other future proposed connections in South Burlington. So you can see the black dotted line. That's a one connection. And then the other connection is extending Tilly Drive over to our community drive. That's on the right side or the east really side of the screen. Moving, moving. Well, it's technically north on the interstate, I suppose, but more, more like west in this location over to exit 13. The first one we're talking about here is the U-turn or the hybrid option, what we're calling it. And that would, the main feature would consist of a U-turn ramp that would go from the westbound side of 189 to the eastbound side. And along with a couple of new ramps, the northbound off ramp, excuse me, that's northbound off ramp and then the northbound on ramp that would in effect make this a full interchange, which it is not today as many of you are no doubt aware of. The other thing I want to make mentioned here is we've shown in and the yellow dotted line is a new shared use path that would go over the interstate. So it would be a new bicycle pedestrian connection that could have the potential to then link up with another proposed path on Spear Street. And then that could maybe someday continue westerly over to order root seven. This is the single point diamond interchange or SPDI for short and starting on the western side or the left of your screen for those directionally challenged like myself. This is a rather much, much larger construction scale new change to this interchange compared to what you previously saw. So this would actually kind of decommission the existing eastbound side of 189 and move it. So that is it is directly adjacent to the westbound side and would kind of convert this to a more of a Boulevard style roadway kind of similar to what you would encounter on Kennedy Drive today. And so it would lose its interchanger excuse me interstate designation and mainly because there's a signal on it thanks for zooming out and then this is you know what it would look like itself. And the main features are that it would kind of reduce greatly the number of assets that need to be maintained. There's you know two bridges that would that would get removed all those existing ramps that are around there would get removed. You can if you look closely you can see those they're kind of hatched out in like a gray sort of hatching shading there. And then the two bridges on the interstate those those would get removed. And then the bridge on 189 that currently goes over the ramps that would get removed as well. And it would consolidate everything into one large bridge over the interstate with one traffic signal in the middle. And similarly to the previous interchange design it would consist of a new way for bicyclists and pedestrians to cross across the interstate a little bit more direct in this situation compared to the previous. And to exit 14. First up we have our diverging diamond interchange or DDI for short. This would be another large kind of consolidation of the interchange itself. You can see the existing clover leaf ramps kind of on the exterior of this interchange. Those are hatched out again. And so those with those are no longer be there. This is a the same design that is currently being moved forward at exit 16. So if you've been following that that's what we're talking about here and there's videos available to to see how that works. But if you're traveling east to west on route two you would actually cross over at the signals to the other side of the road as you proceed over the interstate and then cross back at the next signal. And the advantage of this is is mainly just efficiency reasons. It removes a lot of turns left turns in particular which is also a safety improvement. And for the bicyclists and pedestrians this would have signalized crossings at each intersection and have a central shared use path that would be kind of 14 feet versus the 10 feet 10 foot shared use paths on both sides. So a little bit wider in the middle there where the paths on either side kind of come together. And here's our other option the enhanced clover leaf which more or less keeps the same configuration that's out there today but makes improvements and its geometry mainly in the name of safety reasons. So it would beginning on the left there it would reduce the radii at all the ramps which would force drivers to slow down and make those crossings for bicyclists and pedestrians much safer than they are today. It would have 10 foot shared use paths on both sides. On the main line of the interstate itself it adds an additional lane in each direction excuse me it's not like on the main line in where the ramps come in so that if you're let's say you're traveling northbound on the interstate and you want to get off at exit 14 you would branch off of the main line of the interstate in the in a new what we're calling a collector distributor lane and then at that point you could either choose if you wanted to go west or east and the idea here is that it separates the weaving movements from the main line traffic and therefore simplifies the decision making process for drivers and increases their safety. The only other thing I don't think I've mentioned that I wanted to was that this would have an additional northbound on ramp lane which is not present today. So Aleni mentioned there's six goals as part of this that we came up with through working with the technical and advisory committees and under each of these goals we have a host of metrics and those metrics are what we've used to evaluate each of these changes. Here are the other three I'm not going to I won't read them. So skipping right to the evaluation we've broken this apart to be a decision between either 12B or something at 13 and then what to do and what to do at exit 14. So first up we have 12B and 13 here and you can see the looking at the top box on the left most column we have all the goals there's your six goals and as you work your way across you can see how each of the interchanges scored for each goal and then we have them totaled up in the black bar at the bottom so the PDI scored the highest as part between exit 13 and 12B and we do have for those interested available on the website is a complete breakdown of the total the larger evaluation matrix that can you want to dive in to see how an interchange scored for a particular metric you can do that and that's available on the Envision 89 website. Could you just go back real quick Aleni? Yeah sure. All right I just wanted to highlight you probably read this already but the green shading in the top box just highlights you know which interchange scored the highest for each goal and then below there we have the strengths and weaknesses who tried to kind of boil this down for everybody. This is kind of our what our takeaway is from the larger evaluation matrix that I mentioned that you can see you know 12B had some large traffic reductions in certain areas for exit 13 the SPDI had larger traffic reductions in other areas and also provides you know a new bicycle pedestrian connectivity across 89. So exit 14 a little bit closer in scoring with the DDI coming out three points ahead of the enhanced cloverleaf. Strengths of the cloverleaf were a higher anticipated decrease in crashes for vehicles that's largely due to the collector distributor lanes minimizing conflicts and it also had the lowest overall costs at $119 million combines the construction and preservation costs. Aleni you can correct me if I'm wrong but I think just to maintain this section of interstate between 12B to 14 was on the order of 90 something million I think it was 96. 96 yeah it was a lot. People have that information out there. Yeah um thank you Jason I'm just gonna are you done with your sorry you should just move it forward sorry so just to finish up a little bit here I'm sorry we're taking a little bit more time that was budgeted but so we had a lot of outreach this past few months with a lot of stakeholders communities organizations and a lot of communication with South Burlington City Council the committees in South Burlington and we also had four focus groups with underserved populations to get their input on the 89. So what this slide shows is basically the the official recommendations we got up to date up to now the South Burlington City Council voted on April 19 to move forward with exit 12B as for further evaluation as part of the quarter bundles and you can see the South Burlington Committees there that they mostly voted for exit 13 SBDI you know with the exception of the Economic Development Committee which voted for the 12B. Our technical committee also met in April and basically suggested that based on the scores you know that exit 13 SBDI should move forward to further evaluation so taking all this input and we got a lot more input from a lot more groups and some of them were 12B some of them were you know 13 SBDI so this is what we are proposing this is a proposal this is you know the first time we are you know we're sharing with people and we're going to be presenting this to our we share this with South Burlington and we're going to be presenting it to our advisory committee coming up so this is the way we we think it's an appropriate way to move forward so we have three bundles three groups of improvements and investments that we're going to evaluate in task five in the next task so the first bundle we are proposing to what we call a more like a TDM bike pad non-auto kind of a bundle and we are including the 14 DDI in there because we believe that the 14 DDI I think I don't remember if Jason mentioned but it does decrease the actual capacity of that interchange so but it increases tremendously the safety and the connectivity of bike and pads so our recommendation is that we're going to evaluate this first bundle and then to move to actually include 13 SBDI in the second bundle and the 12B in the third bundle as we move forward to a set of evaluation so the idea here is like you know we have a lot of contradictory kind of like just recommendations here coming from very different groups we haven't looked we and we looked at these interchanges separately at this point and in isolation almost so what we want to do is like look at them together with a number of other improvements so we're going to this is our proposal that we are bringing forward to the advisory committee and finally the next steps is that we're having a public meeting on Thursday please join in go to the Envision 89 website and you're going to find a lot of information there we are going to have our advisory committee meeting on the 19 where hopefully the decision on the interchanges and the bundles take place we're going to take the summer and fall to evaluate our corridor the bundles and then we can come back we will come back to the public and the stakeholders to share the results and hopefully we will conclude this project early 2022 and that is our presentation I know that we went over time over allocated time but I don't know if we have time for questions I'm going to stop sharing now great thank you so process wise because we do have a couple other major items for tonight so I am mindful of time is this is this meant to be an official feedback opportunity for you all like are we expected to weigh in here and if if we do weigh in on this because I have a lot of thoughts on it is this can you all hear me okay yes okay um is now the time is it important for us to weigh in right now does that help inform the process or so so that's a great question I think that we are presenting it tonight we are having a public meeting on Thursday we're so we are accepting comments after the public meeting too I mean we are meeting with the with the advisory with the advisory committee May 19 so we probably will be accepting comments I would say until May 10th we can put it on our website and make sure that people understand when the deadline is I know that we May 7th okay we already thank you Charlie I knew that we had a date but I couldn't remember it so May 7th is our date so if you can just either go to the website and just comment on the website we got a lot of comments on our website so you either do that you send them you know like comments to me you give it to Nicole and it's going to bring it to us you know there are so many different ways that you can we want to hear from you we want to we want to get your comments so yeah but you have time it doesn't need to be tonight great okay I'll be sure to I'll be sure to do that in way in and I'll be there on Thursday um I just didn't know if the city council or into this committee has any sort of formal role and if so do you need us is tonight is tonight a step in that process or is this just you sharing information with us yeah I would say um you can have as much of a role as you want let us know if you'd like more public meetings on this in the city of Burlington um you know recently we've been very focused on south Burlington because that's where some of the improvements actually are and will have impacts on their neighborhoods but there are certainly implications for the city of Burlington here too um so and there's going to be um I think a healthy discussion come the fall you know fall winter season also as we start to get a more holistic picture of this so um anytime let us know we're happy to come have more conversation and get more input and yeah Councillor Hanson also just add to that I did not um request to action on this tonight this was an informational item but as both Eleni and Charlie said um if the Duke would like to make a specific take a specific action on anything you saw tonight we still have time for those conversations and this was a lot to digest tonight as well and that can either happen through a Duke action directly or I'm happy to take those comments directly to um the RPC through either the technical or the advisory committee meetings yeah okay all right yeah I mean I I this this is a really enormous project it's an enormous amount of money it's a huge impact so I definitely I'm gonna weigh in individually but if the city of Burlington or the council has an opportunity to weigh in I certainly think we should because I think this is a big deal um so I guess what I'm hearing is that we can we can do that but it's kind of up to us there's not that's not baked in to the process but but we can but you do welcome it oh yeah yeah and and um yeah I think just I think we're trying to take our cues from the municipalities and not trying to force process you don't want um and and definitely this fall I think when we have a more holistic picture um of the recommendations because right now we're still in a very hypothetical stage of you know what we're looking at so um yeah we you know if you want to kind of target it either in the next month or two would be great or in the fall winter either season works great for us okay great that's great to hear I think I'll definitely be advocating that we that the council weighs in on this um but we and we can continue that discussion with staff and with other counselors um and I'll be there on Thursday as well but we really appreciate the presentation and um Mark did you have any questions um I I want to make sure while we're all here um Mark if you have any questions for them while while they're here or comments that you wanted to offer well I did I did have one question and I don't want to um get too bogged down because I know there's um other opportunities to give input but um early in the presentation you mentioned that um between exit 14 and 15 we're over capacity and which one of these enhancements would address that specifically would it be the 14 DDI concept would that address the the capacity issues between 14 and 15 which would seem to be more directly applicable to Burlington specifically so I'm just going to start then maybe Jason can just jump in because he knows more about the modeling but um so the the capacity issues that we identify was in 2050 right so this is the future not right now so make that sure then that is also with the assumptions that we had in the model which is pre-COVID right the traffic uh you know uh pre-pandemic and at the the and what we did for that is like we added a third lane on the interstate the interchange improvement did not really affect it to it you know it affected but not to a tremendous degree and Jason I'm going to stop talking and just tell me if I'm right yes okay great yeah it was the it was the third lane that it was it it made it the problem was and I'm just going to stop talking after this the problem was that if you add the third lane between 14 and 15 then you push the congestion between 15 and 16 right so you have the bottleneck there so that that's another reason why we wanted to do this study versus just say we needed a third lane on the interstate yeah and it's really the next stage because we're looking at a whole a host of other kinds of investments to reduce traffic demand to see do we really need to address the capacity there uh with a big capital investment or can we do it you know with transit biking walking all those other things to reduce demand so that's really the big question we're going to get to this fall great any other questions or thoughts mark just just one and you know there's this talk of this giant federal infrastructure bill and would that have any impact or influence on the schedule of these improvements or would that be one of the triggers you alluded to that might move you in one direction or another in this plan yeah I actually had a little bit of conversation with v-tran staff earlier today about that topic and this study in particular I would say if we identify in that mix of improvements to reduce traffic you know the sidewalks bike paths transit routes those things might be able to take advantage of this federal funding that's coming quickly or if there's some safety improvements and things like that the bigger things the you know the idea of an interchange very unlikely that it's going to be able to take advantage of this federal investment sorry if that's just a point to anybody but just trying to be realistic about the federal process the permitting process and frankly the community vision process like is that really what we want I think we need to have a lot more discussion to know if we're ready for that okay thank you yeah thank you great thanks Councillor Barlow um I do see I believe Jean's hand is up I don't know if that's carry over or Jean we did you have questions or thoughts that you were looking to share or any members of the public before we move on to our next item okay um yeah I um I have some pretty big concerns with with this proposal or plan or study um but I can I can share those outside of this this venue um because yeah I know that there's a big public meeting coming up this week and other opportunities and it sounds like the council has the opportunity to do that as well I would also add if there's any group you know that is also interested in having a conversation we're completely open to that so just please get in contact so okay great appreciate that um all right does anyone else have any questions or comments before we move on okay seeing none well thank you both so much for for um presenting and um for the opportunity to continue engaging after tonight thank you very much great take care all right all right that will move us to item five water resource rate study um we've got Megan Moore and Jenna Olson from DPW thanks for your patience and please take it away hi folks and it is just me I'm giving my staff the night off uh Jen is close to having her baby so uh she needs all the nights home she can and I also have Dave Fox who is our consultant who worked on this project I guess before we get started um uh counselor Hanson we have presented to you as recently as January we've also had some more detailed conversations counselor Barlow super excited to get you up to speed on this project I guess Chapin and I wanted to check in and see what level of detail we sent a healthy memo completely understand with your busy schedule if you weren't able to review all of the details so I can I can give you the full spiel or we could go right to questions or I could try to do just a quick summary what what is your pleasure um math man um yeah yeah that was that question was for you I think because I've been deeply sort of briefed on this so there's it's really up to you though no if you do want a full explanation that's totally fine well I may have the phone I well you can tell me Megan um I did attend the um one of the community meetings you had and watched the presentation that was given um and so is that the same presentation you were going to hear um largely uh so did you did you attend uh in January February like npa or the recent public meeting the open house one was it called April 14th yes that's the one okay then that helps because then I will focus um almost exclusively on the few minor tweaks and changes that we think are improvements even since that public meeting because our staff are constantly thinking about how to make this better so that that is helpful and then we can spend some more time on um detailed questions so let's do that does that work Chapin okay that works on my end is that okay councillor barlow absolutely all right and I can always I can always go back and go through any slide in a more detailed fashion so let me um let's see so I guess one one point I wanted to drive home because we we did spend a fair amount of time have had a number of questions uh about this particular thing um because right now we are not drastically changing um the differential and how much we charge commercial properties versus residential the whole point of um the affordability programs and the rate structural changes is to protect that essential amount of water that residents need to cook clean bathe and so on and so forth whereas other types of water which do have a higher burden on our system and aren't really related to the sort of essential life activities um we aren't currently charging commercial customers a different volumetric rate and here's why um it's primarily we're setting up a structure that will enable us to ask that question and work with the council in the future to continue the cost of service realignment but when we started looking at the rate increases or the bill increases that our commercial customers in particular were going to be experiencing as the result of the introduction of the fixed um fixed charge by meter size as well as the private fire protection those those two things themselves are sort of cost of service realignments and with those changes alone we were seeing increases on average about nine percent which is a bit higher than what they would see under a status quo um so for that reason kind of to phase them in as well as because of the impacts of COVID on the economy um we you know aren't choosing at this point to leverage that volumetric rate differential but we just wanted to convey that that is something that could be in the future um as we continue sort of the transition towards really making sure that each customer is paying uh in accordance with the burden that they put on the system um the other piece that changed uh was we took a closer look at our lifeline rate tier if you recall the presentations you've seen in the past the lifeline rate tier was only going to apply to single family uh residential properties um and the tiers were going to be the break of the tier was going to be at that median amount of usage 400 cubic feet um I think it was shortly after I don't know if it was the day after the public meeting we started looking at things a little bit more and running some other scenarios to see if we could in the um with the philosophy of trying to really help residential users with that essential amount of water to see if we can do that for our duplex and our triplex customers and when we ran a scenario we did we were able to come up with one where using the break points of the median usage for those particular types of properties so for duplexes it's 600 square 600 cubic feet and for triplexes it's 900 cubic feet we were able to implement a tiered program for those guys as well which when we get to the customer impact you'll see does yield some benefits for that type of customer the other piece that changed was uh doing the last fine tuning of the fy 22 budget and using the rate structures that we are implementing or proposing um including fire service addition of fire service and collecting that additional revenue from that our fy 22 budget um has room in it to allow rebates for the filming of private sewer laterals so it's we've discussed for a long time it's been certainly a goal of mine before i retire that we figure out how to help private properties deal with their sewer laterals the sewer lateral is the piece of pipe between the sewer main which is public and the house and unlike the water line which does have some shared ownerships for portions of the line the sewer lateral is entirely on the property owner and time and time again we see people have issues with that sewer lateral and then have to pay emergency costs you know sometimes in the realm of eight to ten thousand bucks to replace that lateral we're hoping that with this program we can at least get people engaged in knowing what the condition of their lateral is so that they can start planning for those low larger costs it will also give us some data about the condition the general condition of the laterals that we can hopefully um turn into potential future loan or grant programs for pseudo lateral replacement we're also keeping an eye on some of the um federal stimulus funding money that's coming to the state and think there may be a possibility of being able to leverage that for um lateral and service line replacement but those details haven't been worked out the other piece that we added is um some conservation assistance rebates um providing up to seventy five that seventy five dollars per household for a water sense plumbing fixture a dual flush low flow toilet is about a hundred bucks and so you know that would be a great thing to put this money towards and be able to start help reduce your amount of water that you're using which can hopefully bring your bill down and get you down into that first tier so I think uh that those were sort of the functional elements that we added to our current proposal that we're trying to bring forward to the council I also added a I don't think I don't believe that this was in the public meeting but it's something that certainly has come up in discussion and we wanted to kind of just address the elephant in the room that the water resources assistance program the sort of foundation of our um not the foundation but the the piece of our fill out ability program that we think is really going to help um some of our income constrained customers which is the fixed fee waiver right now as it's constructed and frankly as it's constructed in many communities across the country it's really going to only apply to single family properties and other individually metered residential units where they occupy just the account holder we did add uh with one of the turns of the wheel um added the fixed fee waiver for non-profit affordable or senior housing accounts but the fact of the matter is is generally renters and multifamily rentals are not going to have access in this phase we get that 64 percent of properties in burlington are rentals and we're missing a potentially large proportion of people who actually need help um you know why is it that we can't figure this out one of the reasons is that if we if we um provide the fixed fee waiver to landlords we don't have any control over whether that landlord's going to pass on that affordability measure um good landlords will but there's lots of landlords who might not decide to pass it on the other tricky piece that I mentioned is that those multifamily units often share a meter you could have four six however many um units in a building and there's only one meter for that building and so you know just giving them the fixed fee waiver is not really going to be beneficial and we really need to think about how we could provide benefit to the individual units as I mentioned water quality water utilities across the country you know have struggled to address this gap they're called hard to reach customers and don't have a renter specific program only this year DC water launched a program that we think could be applicable to a place like burlington um and I'd be happy to get into what those details are but suffice to say we want we kind of want them to forge forge ahead and we want to watch how their program rolls out we want to have a year with at least a year up to 18 months with our own program to see how many people actually apply even given the current eligibility and also then see how much money we may have made left over um from the nugget that we've we've set aside for this type of program but what we want to do is is commit to the council that by April 2023 we're going to you know bring some options back to the council so that we can have that conversation about sort of what what rap 2.0 or what the next level of affordability is that we can provide and with that I think other than uh this slide which shows those those new tiers for the duplex and the triplex uh that would be something that you hadn't necessarily seen before and then showing the benefits to the duplex and the triplex customers particularly at the median volume range uh you're seeing a pretty we don't see the presentation so if you need to share the screen oh that's why I tried to share it a long time ago sorry I wasn't sure if you that's okay oh no that's not I was I was wondering that I thought about interrupting but um well let me we can see it now okay dang it that was falling along before okay um okay well this is probably the only one where I need to actually point out the what I'm talking about so I guess it will be what it is uh without the rate restructuring when we we do the the bill if we were just to continue things as is the typical single family residential customer would see an a bill increase of about 5.9 percent uh given our revenue needs given the fact that we need to collect money to kind of help with the fact that we didn't have a rate increase last year and then also primarily to address debt service that's coming start payments that are starting for all of our capital investments um so keep that in mind as we look at what changes we may see in the bill under this proposal this proposal and I'll come back to the low volume customer single family low volume customer um because I know that one sort of jumps off the page is like what's going on um so for the median volume customer so this is not somebody who is income burdened or has you know demonstrated that they're uh uh qualified for any of those other federal programs your average customer who uses 400 cubic feet a month is going to basically see no change or a very slight decrease in their bill over this this year's bill assuming they use the same amount of one of um water if in fact they qualify for wrap so they show us evidence of uh qualifying for snap or three squares light heap one of those programs they're going to see a significant decrease um under under our full our affordability program we're also seeing you know positive benefits for the median customer in the duplex and the triplex and that really corrected what we were sort of seeing when we looked at the data with just the single family tiers and then for multifamily residentials that qualify for that rack waiver the low income housing and the senior housing it's going to be different for every type of property depending on what other features they may have like fire services or the size of meters but uh for some examples that we pulled we're generally seeing a good benefit for them so what about these low volume customers the challenges with these low volume customers in this year in this transition because the um the fixed fee they're seeing a fixed fee uh for their meter size a readiness to serve charge for the first time um residential customers currently don't have one at all um and uh commercial customers have a minimum charge where there's a volume of water that's associated that they get charged um every single month but it's not really a readiness to serve charge like you would see on your your gas or your electric bill because I think as we all know even if nobody turns on the faucet we still have to maintain our pipes our pumps our staffing all of that and so that that is very important because our fixed fee our fixed expenses um for water are actually in the neighborhood of about 20 percent um with the current fees that we are proposing we would be recouping about 10 percent and that is another thing that over time we would be working with the city council to potentially um bump that up so that we slowly bring our fixed fees potentially more in line with what our fixed expenses are so we've had a lot of heartache over this low volume customer I think if it wasn't for the fact that we do have this sort of um uh security blanket for somebody who truly is experiencing uh um financial burden and who qualifies for rap um that I probably would have more heartache about this low volume customer uh the fact that we have this program and that if somebody is doesn't use a lot of water but has income constraints they are still going to see a benefit from that program um the slow volume customer is going to see an increase overall annually of about four dollars and 25 cents a month or 51 dollars 51 dollars a year um and we're we're hoping that within the context of everything else that we're providing folks understand sort of the mechanism of why this is happening and it's really bringing those low volume customers uh back towards sort of an equitable charge because even right now they're being charged entirely volumetrically and they're not actually contributing enough to those fixed fees uh Dave did I explain that well enough I don't know if there's anything else or if anybody has any questions because I know this this is a sticky part I think you did a great job explaining that Megan um this obviously looks bad from a presentation standpoint you know just looking at that number but there's a strong impetus for for wanting to make that change um and just one other thing I'd point out is that the rate structure that we're proposing to align with that with the the lifeline rates um over time we'll be able to more easily adjust the volumetric rates to not necessarily impact that low volume customer um and can actually will be beneficial from them from a um a bill impact standpoint in future rate increase uh years so although looks a little a little scary from a percentage standpoint right now with our first iteration uh the the volumetric structure with that lifeline rate will allow us to not as negatively impact that that low volume customer with future iterations thanks Dave this is the this is a snapshot of some um typical commercial or institutional and again this looking at these percent increases that they have is one of the reasons why we are not fully leveraging the the cost justified you know increase in volumetric rate for them at this time um I think that is I think that's it other than just you know highlights which I may have shared uh at the public meeting we are super excited to if you remember one of the slides that had the triangle that talked about you know raising sufficient money to be able to take care of the system but not having it impact the people who are already having a hard time paying for it um and I think that we've accomplished that the FY22 budget we were able to build it with proper operation and sustainable stewardship of infrastructure as well as that targeted funding funding for customer assistance programs um if we weren't doing this rate restructuring everybody was going to be seeing uh you know a healthy increase on their bill but with the proposed changes in particular those income qualified rate payers and seniors are going to see a decrease in their overall water resources bill potentially saving them a hundred bucks a year for somebody who uses you know that that 400 cubic feet a month um the vast majority of single family rate payers are going to see a benefit on their water resources bill i.e a less than five point nine percent increase um you know and then various other users are going to see potentially decreases like the duplex and the triplex customers who use that median usage um and then this really sets us up for our future of how we can price water in it as we move forward and making sure always that we keep affordability in mind um around that essential residential water usage while also making sure that we are still collecting enough money to properly steward our system I think with that uh we we do come here tonight with uh to ask for the Duke support if you're willing to give it um and recommendation to the city that the city council adopts this rate structure and affordability program we are planning currently to go to the city council or board of finance and city council on May 10th uh hopefully with that approval we would then actually be coming back with the specific rates uh the ones that we've shown you um for the city council's approval when we approve the budgets um for FY 22 uh with that approval in place we will then shift our outreach to a pretty healthy amount of education of our customers this is going to be a pretty big sea change as far as what our bills look like how those rates are how the bills are calculated and we it's always going to help our customer service folks if we do a lot of uh pre-education even before that first bill comes out in August um so I think that is our plan and I will stop sharing now that I shared great thank you um Councillor Barlow any questions thoughts uh yeah I did have a couple of questions um first on the um the low tier customers like as a percentage of the uh of the user base what do what do they represent I mean because of their advert they're they seem to be impacted more but are they are there a lot of them or do you have my question yeah I think Dave I have it written down somewhere I want to say it's like in the 15 16 percent range 16 percent of the uh residential customers fall within two ccf or below per month the single family residential single family residential thank you 200 200 yep okay I also had sort of a just a technical question about on the on the lifeline uh rate tier it was 400 for a single family home but it was like 300 for every sort of increment above that I was wondering where the under the extra 100 was I didn't didn't get into that nuance and those numbers actually come from our data like looking at the median um and it when you think about it it kind of does make sense because generally a duplex duplexes are going to have shared yard space generally those units are smaller and probably don't have as many bathrooms and people it's not you know monolithic there's some duplexes that are probably ginormous but generally speaking duplexes and triplexes are going to have be smaller units and so it is not uncommon to see that their per unit um usage is less than a single family home and I also had a question was the were these uh tweaks that um you've made since the public meaning or is that information updated on the affordability project webpage if I wanted to point people to it I will make sure about that I don't know off the top of my head because uh but I I will make sure it gets posted posted tonight because we may not have updated this yeah that's a good question uh in general it doesn't it doesn't hurt the single family folks it only helps the duplex and the triplex um but we should get that information out so that people can see it and be even happier um and generally just as his feedback I think it's it's it's um it does a good job of addressing affordability and uh sustainability of the system overall so nice job thank you very much thanks councillor Barlow um I have a few questions as well so I think you had told me this when we met but the duplex and triplex um the rates that still we're still only talking about owner-occupied situations or are we now talking about renters within that those um those rates will be applied to those properties um it again is going to be up to the landlord whether or not so say if somebody's a certain amount of rent and that water is in part of that rent it will be up to the landlord whether if they see a benefit on the water bill that they pass it on right to the renter um the only place where it would where somebody would see that if it was um occasionally we see duplexes that do have separate meters although actually those duplexes that have separate meters would be treated as single family residentials but they will see the benefit directly um and certainly an owner-occupied duplex is going to you know reap the benefits for their own unit and then right they get they get to decide what they do with with with their duplex friend right right um yep okay um and then my other question or just point I guess to reiterate is so yeah there is this huge disparity among the low volume customers between the lifeline rate which is like a pretty significant decrease I think 13 more than 13 percent and then without the lifeline rate it's a significant increase of 14 percent and so I think that really underscores and the whole thing but especially that underscores the importance of the folks who are in need understanding how to you know getting them enrolled because otherwise they're going to get hit hard so what it really is going to come down to is our ability as a city to get those folks enrolled and can you talk a little bit about how we're going to try to make sure that everyone who needs it is getting on to that lower rate yeah we've been um having some meetings about that particular outreach but again we we see that outreach that particular piece of outreach around the the affordability program and the fixed fee waiver as being probably the most important piece of outreach that we do uh we we didn't we didn't end up translating the informational part postcard that went out earlier but we are working on translations of all of this information um that we would be working with various partners whether it's the family room or alv our current concept is to figure do another postcard and figure out how to direct people to those locations where we then could have complete information packets in all of the different languages um for accessibility we're certainly open to other ideas but we know like we need to be doing you know it would be successful to me to see all of the money that we set aside for this program actually get used that often doesn't happen in these types of programs um we were very conservative with how much how many customers we assumed would apply for this um the other piece that we're keeping an eye on and we'll certainly be communicating with ratepayers on is the new LIWAP so there's a program that's going to be like LIHEAP coming um they're working on it right now I'm still figuring out exactly how that's going to be administered I think Vermont is figuring out how it's going to administered because it's not just about income sensitivity but also the percentage of your income that is being used by your water bill and I don't I haven't figured out how the state's going to figure that out without engaging us um I think we're probably in Burlington going to be maybe better set up than other communities to actually help administer that that funding I'm really hoping that's the case and that may also help with the renters that may be a bypass in the short term of how we can help rental folks um I don't know yet so yeah well I think that's a great point it's just the need to continue um trying to get at the majority of residents who are renters um within this um but so just from a high level in terms of outreach so there's postcards that are going out to customers there's you said you're working with different community groups can you just run through the other outreach NPAs front porch forum I mean yes the standard suite NPAs front porch forum um I think we've recently learned about you know possibility of radio I think we're open to new new uh types of outreach that are um uh not usually within our wheelhouse I mean having our partners with CBOEO so that they know about our program so that if somebody shows up and is applying for other types of assistance immediately letting them know and having information there that if you're already qualifying for these other programs like you just need all you have to do is mail in proof of that program to us we try we try to keep it as low burden as possible yeah we are qualifying people for a whole year you know if somebody mid-year that we've qualified them for the fixed rate happens to all of a sudden you know hit the jackpot and it doesn't have an income constraint we're not going to be knocking on their door we're going to you know just say that that is the universe doing good things um but people will have to they will have to reapply on an annual basis but their qualification for our program would be good for 12 months again we're not they're not submitting income we're not reviewing income we're just saying hey clearly one of these other programs has already reviewed your income we're going to take that proof right for for seniors they would just need to show proof of their age there was one concern uh the public meeting that there were going to be seniors who didn't really need this help who were going to be getting it right we're relying on people generally not applying for assistance unless they have a financial need um so and is that communicated to the seniors as well like are they discouraged from applying like does it lay out please only apply for this based on need or I mean we haven't we have not developed the official we're working on those outreach materials but I think we would make it clear that if you're having trouble paying your bill you know if you uh if you're on a fixed income and you're having trouble paying your bill you know you can you are eligible for this you know are people gonna potentially take advantage of it maybe but yeah yeah I mean there's always that risk but I think a lot can be done just communicating the program because if it's communicated as oh you're a senior you're it's good then they'll be like great why not you know but if it's indicated as need-based I think a lot of people will say oh I don't I don't need to you know yeah I mean at the same time we want to be careful because I think sometimes the senior population is is proud and doesn't want to ask for help so it's a fine line because we we just don't we don't want somebody who right now they figure it out because they you know they don't buy the right food or they skimp on their medicine we just don't ever want anybody to be in that situation and so it's a fine line of having it be welcoming but as you said not having the door wide open for anybody to walk through because it's not a free ice cream cone right right um that's great yeah I think and then the other question on on getting folks in who need it um is there an ongoing tracking of that metric and sort of to to monitor you know uptake of that and where it should be versus where it's where it is and yeah I mean we would be able to with our billing system say how many customers how many customers qualified for the fixed fee because it'll actually be like a different thing in the in in the billing system so we'd be able to run reports and then compare that against what Dave and Raft tell us his estimates were of how many customers that's great yeah I just want to make sure that we're not sort of just putting it out there and saying okay great whoever takes it great and if not not like I want us to be I don't want it to be acceptable if it does have low uptake you know what I mean absolutely no it shouldn't be just lip service it should be actually to help people for sure and and and if people aren't if people aren't you know applying figuring out why that is if it's a communication barrier if it's we made something too hard about the program if it's that we aren't considering enough of the different qualification programs we're definitely open to all all of that great great well that's yeah those are all my questions I really really appreciate um all the work that you all have done on this it's going to have a huge impact for for people in our community and especially folk struggling and this was the very the very first issue that I grappled with when I got on the council and it's really cool to see just how intensely that you all have dug in and made this happen and it really is going to pay off now so I really really appreciate that thank you so much Councillor Haynes that means a lot yeah and this is going to set us up as you what you really hammered home when we met and tonight a little bit is this new regime puts us in a position to where we can go even deeper with equity you know with creating an equitable system um for decades to come so it's really exciting and I'm looking forward to supporting it yeah it's kind of crazy that we just charge everybody the exact same amount like sort of when I took this job that's just the way it was and I hadn't ever really thought about it when we started digging into it I'm like whoa yeah and then I'll and then all the stuff that we don't charge for that we basically provide like all the fire flow capacity um so it has been very eye-opening absolutely great well um Councillor Barlow would you like to make a motion on this item um I would be glad to I'm just not exactly sure of the motion that I'm making I guess it should be in the bottom of the memo oh heaven of the memo is a sample resolution or a sample motion if you would like okay it's page seven page seven of the memo the water it's standing it's yeah the bottom of page seven there's motions and page seven it's a one-sentence um motion if you can't find it I'm happy to make it as well I'm uh I'm page seven of the water rate study memo or on our agenda yeah of the water rate study memo page seven of that page seven it doesn't have a motion um interesting all right well I'm happy to if you make the motion I'll gladly second okay great yeah I can do that we must be looking at different documents but I will I'm in the appendix I think but oh okay got it page seven would you like me to make the motion other yeah if you have it go ahead okay I move to recommend that the city council approve and adopt the 2021 water resources rate restruct restructuring and affordability program proposal I second that any final questions thoughts um from you Councillor Barlow or anyone on staff have anything else to share I don't all right great all those in favour please say aye aye all right that passes unanimously noting Councillor Stromberg's not here but thank you both so much for for presenting and for all your work on this these past two years two plus years thank you so much I really appreciate the time that you guys have invested absolutely all right great that closes thank you all right take care that closes that item um and now we will move to our next item consolidated collection and we've got Ubi Perry from DPW um presenting how's everyone doing this evening pretty good good how are you uh it's been a day okay um doing well thanks so should I do a quick overview of the memo I realize Councillor Barlow has not had as much information as uh Councillor Hanson we did have a previous discussion to kind of bring them up to speed um where we're at now um we all got the memo last week uh I don't know if you had a chance to review it or not I think an overview would be great is Councillor Barlow did were you going to share something um well only that um Maddie did provide me with recording of the of the march meeting and I've haven't been able to listen to all of it but I've listened to about half of it um and uh Lee and Chapin also um brought me up to speed a little bit at my request this afternoon so um and and I have read the memo so I am sort of apprised up to this point unless there are additional details we haven't we haven't covered but I welcome any additional background as well of course okay so I think we kind of brought you up to speed to at least the uh march tuke meeting so we presented our uh conceptual budget at the march tuke meeting uh with a zero percent opt out and 25 percent opt out chart similar to the one in the current memo um and upon discussion it was asked that we go back and make the chart reflect the original um options that were outlined in the franchise model at zero percent opt out in 15 percent opt out so that's what we have done since the march meeting I went back I can share my screen if needed um to bring that uh chart up with the current options if you would like or we can just yeah I think that's good for the public to be able to see it can you all see my screen um it says that your screen sharing but it doesn't show the screen maybe you okay now now we can see it yeah so you see the memo yeah okay perfect thank you so yeah I'll go right down to the chart here so we reworked the the opt out options zero percent opt out 15 percent opt out 25 percent opt out and reflected the changes in our municipal option we did the same as well for the franchise model at zero and 15 and when I was running the numbers I found that there was a an arithmetical error for the franchise option that actually lowered that cost from 412 83 to 410 03 and upon reviewing the 15 percent opt out option in comparing it to what I had for a 25 percent opt out franchise option it really wasn't a big difference as you can see in the monthly and annual costs um upon reviewing my my figures I went off of what the consultant had on their cost table and because they only had up to 15 percent opt out I didn't have that additional overhead information so those numbers um need to be updated for the 25 percent I recently talked with the consultant they're supposed to get back to me tomorrow with updated numbers for the 25 percent opt out um so that's why we have those asterisked with an explanation below um so you can see the cost differences between the 15 percent opt out and our zero percent opt out I think it's you know it's minimal and it's you know comparative to what the franchise model is you know we're a little bit higher yeah great and you know what we're looking for is you know we're not looking for a recommendation tonight um we have some more outreach and research to do on the municipal model and uh you know municipal hybrid model as well so we'd like to get that information and bring it back to you at your May meeting and as it says in a memo you know request a recommendation then to proceed to council got it got it okay all right um counselor barlow any questions or comments um well only that I really appreciate uh the um your responsiveness this afternoon to sort of try to bring me up to speed I realize I'm I'm new to this um I shared with them some of um my initial um thinking on it or thoughts on it um and I welcome the opportunity to spend a little bit more time reviewing some of the material and um listening to uh some of the prior meetings that had happened on this so only that great great thanks counselor barlow um I yeah I also really appreciate all the work that's gone into this and I also did receive a communication during this meeting um from damien Gilbert the president of um the local AFSCME union um and he expressed support of um the municipal option which was something I was very I was I was very curious to understand um where the union was at so that was just something I wanted to know I that matters a lot to me personally um perhaps other other folks as well um so I wanna I see that we still have members of the public and I know a couple folks had spoken to this item initially um so I'll just I'll open that up before I share my thoughts um do do any members of the public who are on wanna speak at this time to this item I see Cameron um yeah Cameron go ahead yeah I was just wondering if anyone could provide any sort of timeline as to when more final decisions would be made because like I said the um the free market isn't moving forward and investing in these and new equipment and the things that will will drive the rates down naturally um until these decisions are made so that's that's my concern thanks great thanks yeah that's that's great um Lee or Chapin because you walk us through expected timeline at moving forward on this that's uh happy to uh our goal is to do the additional research that uh Lee talked about and be able to share that in advance of your next Duke meeting and as well in advance of the DPW commission meeting in May so that both bodies could make a recommendation to the council ultimately uh at that point uh it's the council's deliberations and you know there is a question given uh the pandemic and the difficulty with public engagement around an important policy issue like this as to what additional outreach uh we want to try to do there was significant engagement around the GBB study which looked at a franchise model these meetings have been open and and we've tried to work with our public information manager to get the word out that that's a question for the for the body here and for the council our thought would be that after you deliberated in May that if you had a recommendation at that point that it could be brought to the council at one of the two June meetings great ultimately it's the council's choice of where it wants to go at that point and okay okay great and and I think the other thing I'll just speak to Cameron's point as well that still is up in the air that we would need to I think determine if we well regardless of what direction we go with this policy is sort of that on-ramp or that timeline of implementation too so I think we are getting close to making a policy decision and I think that's good we've been grappling with this for a long time and I I agree that we should get this over to the full council at this point and let the full council um you know decide so I'm supportive of moving this out of committee and making our recommendation um next month and then I think yeah part of that and part of what the council's going to need to decide is not only what direction we go but how we get there and how long it takes for us to get there. Chapin did you want to add to that? Sure um you know as the GBB study pointed out that under either model we're looking at a significant time period from the point of decision by the the council to the point of actually switching over. The reason the reason for that is that there are significant uh efforts that need to be put in place for the bidding of this uh this selection if we go the franchise model if we go the municipal operations model you need to give time for the current haulers to kind of phase out and be able to plan uh as well as for us to build a new building to acquire the assets the higher staff I think 18 months on the on the near end would be a very aggressive and would expect it to be two years or potentially more but we will cross that bridge and get a tighter timeline the closer we get to making a policy decision on which way we're going. Okay just to clarify you just mentioned 18 months to two years um that would be the consolidation services beginning or the just final decision being made. Uh I was describing the process to move towards implementation once the council made a decision on the direction the amount of time it would take to move to implementation. Gotcha thank you. Yeah I think the just to piggyback off of that the decision I think we're getting close now you know we've been grappling with this for quite a long time and it sounds like the path we're on now is to get it to the full council um the full council would have this for June um and they wouldn't it's not not necessarily that the council would vote on at it initially at their first meeting getting it though that is the norm when we send things out of this committee usually the council votes on it immediately we could take a couple of meetings but I wouldn't see it I wouldn't expect it to take um much longer than a month or so you know it could be that first meeting that the council votes on it or maybe that's an informational session and maybe a meeting or two later we vote on it is is my expectation you never know how these things are going to play out but I do think we're we're getting very close to a decision but I think there would be an on ramp um leading up to that and just to share my perspective and thoughts on it I think you know I'm I'm I've become more over time I've become more supportive of the municipal option that's definitely where I'm at at this point is supporting that um and but I um I don't feel I would rather um take the time to phase that in properly I don't feel like we need to really rush the implementation I don't feel too much urgency on how quickly we would need to implement it but I do feel like that is the direction that we should go so kind of just where I'm at and just to share with you all this yeah my concern isn't how long implementation will will take my concern is more about the decision-making process so that clarifies a lot for me thank you great great um yeah so I support municipal I support taking as much time as we need to get there even if that takes whatever two three four years I don't know um any other thoughts from you Councillor Barlow um on this um no not not yet like again like I said earlier I've I've started to digest all the work that's been done to date and I know there's a lot of it so um I am I'm grateful for the opportunity not to have to load on this this evening great sounds good um so sounds like you're not looking to make any motions on this item and I'm fine with that I'm I don't need to make any motions either um so before we close out this item any final thoughts from anybody else whether it's members of the public or staff or Councillor Barlow um just one and and this arises from my conversation I would shape it and leave this afternoon is I would like to understand what the impact is to some of the local businesses who um make their living like like Cameron's you know um so whether it's the the trash haulers or the the compost collectors I just would like to know what the impact is to um the private sector potential if we went with the municipal option or even a franchise option that excluded some from participating mm-hmm and staff have you all had much engagement with um I mean we have Cameron here right now tonight um who is a who is a organics hauler um have you had much engagement from other players in the industry I haven't gotten much feedback from the bigger outfits they weren't too um talkative about the subject I guess you know I kind of asked for some information and they were you know not inclined to give it um when I did initially reach out to um you know the area uh compost collectors I did talk to a couple um when I was you know letting them know about their public engagement and you know got a sense from some of them that they weren't interested in bidding on that uh franchise option if if the opportunity came about um but no I as far as what losses would be I really couldn't tell you right now I could do some outreach and see if they'll give me any information or their thoughts um so but go ahead I'm sorry no I'm sorry can you can finish sorry I said they were they were all emailed and you know I did my outreach to them for both public meetings um to attend so they could you know see what impacts the study had on it and um I didn't see too many people show up from any of the uh like the gothiers or any of those Myers mm-hmm anyone of those attend the meetings got it got it yeah I mean my my thought on it is I think it's really important to make folks aware I don't I don't know to what extent I I don't feel that you all need to sort of press them to you know press them to weigh in or provide information is my perspective and maybe that's maybe that's conflicting with what councillor Barlow's saying but I do want to make sure that they are aware of the process and know what's going on and have the opportunity to weigh in which it sounds like is the case at this point yes um so that's my perspective I don't know councillor Barlow if you had more any more to share on it or say about it I would I would just um I guess uh clarified that I don't think they need to be pressed but um to be made aware that a decision of this magnitude would be very impactful potentially to their businesses and if they're unwilling to share information with you you know perhaps a a nondisclosure agreement or something like that or explaining to them the reasons for which you might not you would be seeking the information or analysis I mean I don't know I just I could see that there are local businesses who could be impacted by this and I think we have to be mindful of that when we make decisions like this can I chime in great um Cameron yeah go ahead thanks um I actually have not been contacted regarding this uh which is somewhat concerning because I'm 99 percent certain that I'm the largest hauler of household compost in Burlington um and in south Burlington um we've we service thousands and thousands of residents here um so I'm kind of shocked that outreach was done but we didn't even catch wind of it um but anyways on that note I'm I have been in contact with a lot of these hollers regarding this consolidation and I I can certainly speak not on behalf of them but to the the mindset of hollers in general so if anybody does want to discuss um what we're experiencing or just wants information from our end please let me know I'm happy to provide as much information as possible great I I did do outreach and I did send you an email on 721 for the outreach for a public meeting to cameron dot scott at no waste compost.com is that the correct email address yeah that is correct thanks lee sorry I didn't catch that appreciate you're welcome okay and that that was just to clarify for folks watching and listening that time period was the time period in which we were really pushing to get input from the public that's around the time when we had um this the public sessions on this so that kind of corresponds with when we were doing the last big outreach push around this item shape them yes thank you uh public information manager rub building lee and I are going to be meeting here in the next day or two to get another plan in place for one big push to your point counselor hanson this as we near a decision we need to be going back out to the public and making sure they're aware that this is coming down the pike so uh this has our full attention and we will give it the time and Karen feeding and would ask the counselors and other members of the public interested on this to to help us get the word out great yeah that that's great and as I said I do feel I feel we've been grappling with this for a long time and have done a lot of work and do diligence so I I do feel it's ready to continue but that being said you know we we should of course be publicizing it as we as we move close to that decision um sounds like we're all on similar pages any other comments questions before we close this item okay seeing none we'll close down that item thanks everyone um for weighing in on that and thanks for the presentation lee thank you thanks for having me absolutely all right great so that brings us to our next item which is I believe um counselors or is it director's report or counselor's report I don't uh director's report director's report yeah go ahead director sponsor all right thank you counselor hanson uh so construction season's now underway we are very excited to uh be shifting gears from winter maintenance to construction we're touring the NPAs depending on schedules either this month or the following month with overviews of the work that's coming down the pike but we're really excited one of the big projects this year is the shelburn street roundabout which will be under construction in the next month or two it will be a two-year uh process with significant traffic uh control to keep uh traffic flowing in and around the project so more information is online we're also working with parks and waterfront businesses to talk about the bike path relocation on the waterfront to bring passenger rail to burlington which is a really exciting project great collaboration and we're having conversations specifically around the the detour for the coming season for much of the season the bike path between college street maple street will be closed so we'll have more information for you soon on that um and i'm pleased to report that uh bike share uh which has been operated as green ride with pedal bikes about a hundred bikes in south burlington winewski and burlington is about to be expanded and uh in the next week uh we should expect to double the size of the fleet and have it transition to all electric uh bicycle so more information forthcoming on that so uh busy busy season here um i thank you for recognizing all the contributions of staff on these big items tonight water resource has done an amazing job on the the water restructuring and the consolidated collection is a the major lift and a consideration of really a new way of of collecting uh our waste streams in our city and we're proud to be part of that uh and trying to keep track of all the existing uh operational tasks as we go so thank you i should also maybe let you know that we've had a bit of a transition that's senior engineer susan mulzon who's been uh at these committee meetings a fair bit in the past is relocating back to our hometown and will be leaving us in about a week and so we're going to be a little short staff and tech services over the next couple weeks so give us a little bit of patience as we uh uh staff back up thanks great thank you director spencer um we will close that item and go to counselor updates um counselor barlow any questions you know this this is the time in the agenda where i often no we all often but i've i've been the main one that's done it is we sometimes ask director spencer um you know for questions on items of interest or if we have items that we want to raise um at a future meeting or understand more about this is kind of an open time for counselors to ask questions or share thoughts so you don't have to but i'd like to take advantage of it so feel free i'd be happy to actually um uh director spencer i'd ask you about um that piece of uh property at the end of van patent parkway that constituents wanted to um potentially use and i was wondering if um if there was any update on that and just for the public and for counselor hanson there's a piece of unused um property that is i believe uh part of it's unused as part of an agreement with the state of vermont or something and part of the 127 can route 127 construction but um neighborhood uh residents want to use it as a green space for a picnic a picnic area and just a just a quiet small little park space so yes thank you it's been a good conversation an interesting idea i always enjoy getting creative ideas from constituents and residents um this one is largely being uh led by parks and i have not gotten a recent update from them they're looking at uh whether they can maintain it what it would cost to move the fence we are on our end looking for the finance and maintenance agreement for the route 127 belt line as the fence that would need to be moved was installed to protect the public from the limited access highway so uh we're we're digging that out uh it's it's on our list it's not at the top of the list to be honest given the operational needs of the spring but we will get to it and follow up with the residents understandably for that update great thanks anything else counselor by the nothing other than i'm excited to serve on this committee this is one of the ones that i've um had a keen interest in so i welcome the opportunity and look forward to working with the counselor hanson and scromburg and and and then folks at dpw great yeah we're excited to have you i'm excited to transition into the chair role and we do actually normally this is the last item um counselor barlow but we do have one other item just to talk about the committee priorities going forward um director spencer go ahead yeah i forgot one update that i was important i provide so if you didn't tell me yeah which is that uh one item that we would like to bring to the council is an update on the new streets surrounding city place burlington the new blocks of ein and st paul we were hoping that in working with uh city place burlington that we'd be ready tonight to to show uh those plans uh not quite ready yet and given the full agenda tonight the plan at this point given that we're going to miss this meeting would be to aim for the council full council meeting on may 10th so that it would be in vance of any escrow closing or transfer of of the parcels for those new streets so just want to let you know that that's coming and we're excited to come to the council with city place to talk about those and plan to see that on the 10th great sounds good it's going to be a oh i'm getting some echo i think i don't know um that's going to be a packed meeting on the 10th i think um so i'm sure you'll work with president tracy to negotiate that um it's going to be a very busy one um so all right so that closes out or counselor or counselor updates i guess i'll do my just normal asking about um um bike lane projects and see if i know we discussed recently director spencer but just any updates you could provide on winewski avenue and colchester avenue um if there's been any updates recently or changes to the timeline great so on the spring painting we have our contract with our striping contractor they have tentatively given us a date of mid may for coming to town after clean sweep so just a week after clean sweep to be able to reinstall all the long line markings in the city which i know this time of year there some of them are hard to see so that's good news um we are uh looking at for this year for bike uh upgrades looking at enhancements uh concept of a two-way bike facility on north champlain street connecting the old north end to downtown uh there is a shared use path uh on mansfield avenue that is under design and we will be having an upcoming public meeting that would stretch from the old north end greenway and connect to the shared use path on colchester avenue so we're excited by that and um the parking management plan that you referenced on north winewski avenue is underway and thanks for serving on that uh committee and um i have not gotten an update since we last talked about where we stand and my understanding is that we want to bring that uh to a close sometime the middle of summer and there's possibility of installing the fall i need to check back into an update great great yeah and just councillor barlow you may or may not not know this but the winewski avenue corridor study and the changes on north winewski avenue that are coming up we have a role in that because there's going to be a joint committee um to look at the parking management plan and it's a joint committee of um us and then some stakeholders from the corridor this committee plus stakeholders from the corridor so i'm sure you'll get something in your inbox soon about that joint committee meeting and i'm hoping that we can keep keep this item on track and moving because we're we got significantly delayed by covid and um there is sort of an impotent well there's plenty of reasons to to have urgency to move quickly but i think one of the big ones is just the fact that the state is going to be repaving in 2022 is my understanding and so getting the configuration set ahead of that repaving is pretty important for efficiency's sake of having the state provide the proper layout for the corridor when they do make that investment um direct response or any did i get anything wrong with that uh no uh this is the last we've heard uh state is still on for doing most of the repaving of class one town highways in uh in the city next year we're hoping that with covid and financial impacts uh that that has not uh slipped we have not heard it has to date and so uh we'll certainly keep you posted if anything changes great counselor barlow were you about to say something sorry no okay and then colchester avenue that was delayed it was going to come to the public works commission this month and so now it's set for may is that correct uh yes yes certain staff members have needed to uh uh take a little time uh for various reasons and that has affected the the delivery to the two but uh we are looking forward to bringing that to you next month okay great so that'll come to us as well as the public works commission in may uh i will confirm that but that is my understanding yes okay all right great well thank you appreciate that that was all i had for that um so i'm going to go ahead and close down the counselor report item and move to our last item for the night which is um just kind of a discussion of the committee priorities and looking ahead to this coming year in this committee what we hope what we hope to accomplish and kind of a structure for the committee um and counselor barlow i guess i can i can start by just giving you some insight or updating you on some conversation that director spencer and i have had um around this um so we've been meeting on the monthly on the fourth tuesday that's kind of been our schedule and we can talk about this what director spencer and i had talked about would be to maintain that and keep keep going with that but then what we discussed was adding in additional special meetings on specific topics that we want to take up that aren't already being taken up so an example of that is um an email thread that you were on around solar rez your rooftop residential solar in burlington and trying to reduce barriers to that um that would be an item where we could have a special meeting dedicated to that item we could bring in stakeholders learn discuss um and and then from there roll it into a normal meeting but so to sort of the idea would be to pepper in these special meetings on large topics that we want to dive into and have those just scheduled separately from our typical um fourth tuesday meetings so that was just a bit of a high level process wise of what this committee might look like um and then i would love so i'd love to hear your thoughts on that and then and then i'd love to have a just a conversation to run through some of the items that we might be interested in taking up in this committee over the next year oh i think that's a great idea and i'm supportive of it um so the special meetings would be to be topical in nature as needed to address specific topics and then the it would be to collect input um and then we would bring that back to the full to to process is that the thinking on it yeah so the idea that we discussed and i'm open to feedback the idea that we discussed is basically um it would be informational so we wouldn't make any decisions at those meetings but we would be really it's almost like a hearing as they do in the state house so bring in relevant stakeholders um and experts and a diverse group of voices to really learn and gather that input and information but not to make decisions and that might be a little bit easier on staff too is if we know we're not making any decisions it you know it doesn't it does they don't have to abide by the same um the same they don't have to follow the same protocol i guess it's i think it's a little bit less work in terms of the public notice and everything um but then once we did that we would look to bring it you know into a normal meeting and and try to move forward on policy on that item or decide or we might decide we're not going to you know do anything on it but these special meetings the way we envisioned it would just be more so a hearing or an informational meeting i think it's great idea um really supportive great that's that's great to hear and um i can talk to councillor well now i can't really talk to councillor stromberg offline because we're a quorum of the committee but um i'm sure she'll watch this recording too and um um we can discuss it at the next meeting so one so i'll just flag with you two ideas right now that i already have so one of them is this solar issue that i'm hoping to schedule a special meeting and working with maddie um and maddie i'd love to hear your thoughts on this too but um this would be around around the issue of residential rooftop solar and trying to reduce barriers for folks to be able to install solar in burlington and the the thinking would be to do this in june um and try to bring together relevant stakeholders from the city side and then um from the community and business side as well to grapple with this issue um so and then the other idea that i have um is around pedestrian safety that i've been discussing with some different constituents and stakeholders would be to do a hearing or a special meeting and improve pedestrian safety in the city and i'm hoping to do that in may at some point um and try to get that scheduled soon and do that in may so maddie or mark or chape and love to hear your thoughts on those two ideas i think i've already um responded to you i think the solar um rooftop solar and looking at the barriers and possibly reducing them is something i am supportive of i've seen some of the email around that and it seems like it's worth exploring and i know i know less about um the pedestrian safety topic but i know that obviously it's important and i'm you know interested in are you thinking about specifically having a hearing on um pedestrian safety issues particular geographic spots that need um you know uh some sort of remediation or improvement um or or just more generally about pedestrian safety yeah actually both um so i have some constituents who have particular concerns and have been gathering data at particular intersections um but i think more broadly a question of what can the city do to enhance pedestrian safety um not necessarily at specific intersections but just a wider conversation about how we can improve that um and what what treatments would help you know could be helpful or is there a process that we need to set up or change so i think it would be yeah really an exploration of how we could improve in this area um and i actually just a side note i saw i saw a girl almost get hit by a car a young a young girl riding her bike across a crosswalk that it was a red crosswalk by rosevelt park with the with a traffic cone in the middle of it but the car almost hit her it had to slam on the brakes and it was honking at her and she was clearly pretty you know rattled by it um so that was another reminder of this issue but um yeah that would be it's it's pretty open-ended at this point councilor barlow um so those are two specific ones i think there's there's this topic area of transportation energy and utilities there's a lot there and so there may be other ideas and i'm certainly welcome ideas from you and councilor stromberg and from staff if there are other issues where we want to do this hearing format and try to grapple with um and take up there will also be as there always is just a steady flow of of items that come our way through staff um so this would kind of be over and above that i would say and maybe more generated from counselors um because yeah the stuff from staff is kind of already coming into our normal meetings typically so i have one that is um sort of an ongoing one and one that director spencer's probably heard about before great but um in the in the far corners of the new north end um it's really hard to get uh if you live down there to use bus transportation so um i know we've talked about it in the past and um about ways to you know get specials and other routes but just generally getting buses into the sort of um the less served areas of the city i think would be something worth exploring great great yeah i'd be very interested in that as well and i was thinking just for staff's sake and committee members sake is probably trying to probably trying to do at most one of these a month and so um if we do the pedestrian one in may and the solar in june then we could do that one in july i'd be certainly open to that i'm trying to get people to a public meeting in july is always yeah that's true that's true well we doesn't have to be july but um okay and so then yeah let's let's open it up to just some other topics um i'll run through a list that director spencer and i had discussed mostly for your benefit um counselor barlow so there's two item well there's one item that was designated in a council resolution to to have ongoing work in the two committee which was around fossil fuel investment the city's pension funds um um ending their investments in fossil fuel companies and there was as part of that resolution the took was to look at um potentially ways to invest the money that gets divested to invest that locally um i don't have the language right in front of me but that's something that i think would therefore be coming to us from that resolution um this issue around rental weatherization that's that we sent back to ordinance committee recently as that's written right now as it's drafted would be overseen by this committee um i think semi-annually or annually so that would be an item that would that'll come to us at some point if if the if the ordinance passes um the champlain parkway and the rail yard enterprise project has lived a lot in this committee and i imagine we'll continue to as we keep grappling with that with those issues um and yeah green mountain transit issues um i think we'll continue to grapple with as you just brought up um there was another issue that i had that i that's on my radar and i'm we may take up in this committee around the idea of rail service between um the south end and downtown between the hula having a station near the hula site um that's been an interest of theirs and some other folks so that may be a discussion here um yeah plan btv walk bike um issues so culture star avenue as we discuss when you ski avenue main street as well um looking at changes on all three of those corridors um i think there'll be activity here on those items so those are some of the ones that director spencer and i talked about um director spencer are there other items that you wanted to foreshadow for this coming year um no i think yeah as you pointed out there definitely ongoing projects and planning efforts that will come to this committee in due course when they're ready um i think it was a good conversation we had i'm looking forward to working well with this committee uh as we uh look to make our transportation system more resilient and uh more sustainable great great um counselor barlow any other issues that you that are of interest to you that you want to just kind of get out there as things that we could maybe look at this coming year not at this time but i will think about it more deeply and and share them as i occurred please do please do i definitely hope to make this a very active committee i think it already it already is just because there's a lot of traffic of items coming through it but i also want to continue to proactively raise new issues and items um and i encourage um you and counselor stromberg to feel free to do the same and hopefully we can we can get a lot done this this coming year um great well that's that's really all i've got on that for the time being um any further questions or thoughts before we move to adjourn and maddie i don't know if you want to share any thoughts on on the direction of the committee from your perspective as well but i'd love to hear if you do um no uh thanks for the chance to give input um i think it's it's a great opportunity for for a special meeting um additionally if needed so excited to see what you guys come up with well great and i i think i'll be yeah we you and i can probably talk offline maddie about trying to pull together these these first two meetings and trying to get those um locked down in terms of a date and time okay great and we're happy to do so and given the recent staff change i just want to make sure that we uh are sensitive to our staff capacity but we clearly want to help make this happen uh counselor hansen and we'll we'll figure out how to do that great great should i be having that conversation directly with maddie or do you want me to loop you in director spencer as well yeah why don't you loop me in just so i can participate but maddie's the one who's going to help make it happen okay great we really appreciate it i know that you all are always managing many many things um and i guess one more thing that i do want to just mention as it relates to that is the capacity the staffing the resources of public works because we are taking on a lot and i want to make sure that you all have an adequate resources to do that and so that could be something that we discuss in this committee as well potentially okay all right well counselor barlow would you like to make a motion do adjourn make a motion that we adjourn i will second that any final discussion seeing none all those in favor please say aye aye great well thanks so much everyone we're adjourned at 735 have a great night thank you