Six o'clock on Tuesday, September the 4th, 2018, we'll call it order the Muscular Control Board Meeting. We have a liquor control board meeting where we'll handle a couple items very quickly and then we'll transition into the city's regularly scheduled city council meeting. Now this is a good opportunity to remind folks if you haven't, sign it in the back. We appreciate you doing so and we'll make a call for public comment in a few minutes. That's where we'll also open it up for any items that aren't on tonight's agenda and you can see tonight's agenda there on that back podium as well. Thank you all very much. And with that, we'll call it order the liquor control board meeting. And we'll ask that everybody please stand and join us for the resolution. So I'd like to definitely marry Nicole Mace. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God and the rule of liberty and justice for all. Okay, we have one item on tonight's liquor control board meeting agenda. We have a first class liquor license and restaurant license for Winooski Boys, Inc. LLC, DBA, junior's original located at 348 Main Street. So this is the new liquor license for junior's original and Bogdan is here tonight. Answer any questions. This is the new building at the top of Main Street. It'll be next to Fodang and we have reviewed the application and have no concerns from a staff perspective and are excited to welcome them across the boarder from Colchester and to Winooski. What took you so long? Opportunity presented itself, so excited to apply. That's great. Well, I think everybody's familiar with the brand but anything you wanna update specific to this space? Not necessarily, to have a confused approach but I believe eventually it will be the first and third class liquor license. No off-site catering or anything like that or off-site alcohol beverages. Eventually I will do apply for outside consumption also the next spring, I would say. I previously held first class liquor license in Berlin and had a previous with breaches and no violations. I had no felonies or anything like that. So we've been in the restaurant business for almost 20 years, so very familiar at all. Great. Anything you wanna share with the public about the timing space they can expect? Oh yeah. You see a pizza? Yeah. It's gonna be open November 1st and about 50 seat restaurant on the side, lots of takeout, eventually deliveries, polished concrete floors inside, nice warm atmosphere, kind of modern but open kitchen design, so everything will be updated and new and fresh, so new generation will look forward to it. Welcome to Onuski. Thank you very much. Yeah. Any other questions, comments, concerns from the control board? Any questions, comments, concerns with the public? So seeing and hearing none, I don't entertain a motion for approval of the first class liquor license and restaurant license for Onuski Boys Inc. LLC DBA juniors, original located at 348 Main Street. That's a good. Motion by Christine, second by Nicole. Any further discussion? Seeing and hearing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. And those opposed, motion carries. Great, and that concludes the tonight's liquor control board agenda. I don't entertain a motion to adjourn. Motion by Nicole, second by Eric. Any further discussion? Seeing and hearing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. And those opposed, motion carries. So we have warranted our city council meeting to start at five past six, so we'll give it a minute and a half or so here and we'll call that meeting to order. So you all be prepared to do the pledge of allegiance one more time. Thank you very much. Thank you. You're welcome. We could bear through that one without you, if we need it. Just in case it devolves. How was your weekend? How about yours? It was good. Finally got a chance. It was a, I went to the ocean yesterday. Oh, I have a right beach. Okay. And I love the ocean. I haven't been a single time this summer. Wow.  It's fun. Yeah. That's the time to do it during the off season. Yeah, yeah. So being six o' five, being six o' five on Tuesday, September the 4th, 2018, we'll call to order the Manuski city council meeting, our regularly scheduled meeting. Thank you. And we'll start off by again, welcoming everybody with the Pledge of Allegiance led by Deputy Mayor Nicole Mays. This is the flag of the United States of America. To the Republic which is the name of my nation, my God, indivisible, with liberty, justice for all. This one's mine. Jinful. First up today is the January. This is an opportunity for council to make any adjustments tonight to Jinna. I think we have it stacked up in accordance with guests' needs, but if there's any concerns in regards to order, items on tonight's agenda. The one item I do wanna bring to folks' attention is, we did make one error in our listing of items underneath the executive session. We are also taking up a personnel matter related to the treasurer position today, the treasurer appointment. In light of that, I would actually like to move that to be with our charter change executive sessions because we will very likely end up, since it's a personnel matter that involves discussion of potential applicants for the position, we would not hold that in public meeting. We would have that conversation under the state's executive session privileges to discuss personnel matters. So I would appreciate if we could please move that to item B under the executive session label. B to B. Yep, and I would actually entertain a motion to approve that. I move to move the treasurer appointment discussion to item B under executive session. Motion by Nicole, second by Eric, any further discussion? Seeing none, I'll simply say aye. Aye. And those opposed, motion carries. Proceed with the rest of it as is. Okay, first up tonight will be public comment. This is an opportunity for members of the public to address city council, but any items that are not on tonight's agenda, as a reminder, the agenda is in the back. If you've got any questions about what's on the schedule tonight, this is an opportunity for members of the public to address anything. Yes ma'am? Hi, I'm gonna move out of the sun here. Sure, sure. My name is Margaret Abelman, and I have a news to you resident on Canal Street. I'm here tonight to speak in support of the resolution for the UN wealth, to support the resolution, the UN, I am not saying this right. The UN, literally. To support the UN resolution to ban nuclear weapons. I am a member of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. We have been around in Chittenden County for over 40 years at this point in time.  We have been working on this particular issue for a long time, and there's good reason for cities to support this. At this point, 211 cities across the country have either made their city a nuclear free zone or who have already passed a similar resolution to the one that we'll be looking at tonight. The timing for this particular one is wonderful because the international campaign to abolish nuclear weapons, which won the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize, is the architect of this particular ban, which is supported by a majority of the world's countries. Here in the US, the state of California, the legislature approved this particular nuclear treaty ban resolution that you're looking at. And a large number of cities have also are in the process of or are also looking at it. There are like four major reasons to consider this. The humanitarian reasons are obviously the foremost. And even if you look beyond that, we've used nuclear weapons twice in both times, the United States used them in Japan. Even if they were never to be exploded again over any city, the intolerable effects that the production of them, the testing and the deployment of them, and the ongoing personal and community catastrophes by many people around the globe are all reasons to consider it on a humanitarian basis. Just on the security case alone, nuclear weapons pose a direct and constant threat to people everywhere. And they're far from keeping peace. They breathe fear and then they breathe mistrust as we all know. And somehow to cling to the idea that a nuclear deterrence is going to make us safer is false. There have been too many undocumented instances of near use of nuclear weapons as a result of miscalculation or accidents. And as the number of nuclear weapons grows, the chances of those accidents not happening is kind of ridiculous to think about. It's inevitable that at some point there will be an accident once we start cutting down. There's the environmental case, which I don't even think I need to go into. And there's the economic case. What we spend today on nuclear weapons would, according to the World Bank, meet all of the millennium development goals on poverty alleviation. And that includes eradicating extreme poverty and hunger around the world, achieving universal primary education, promoting gender equality and empowerment, reducing childhood mortality, improving maternal health, combating HIV AIDS, ensuring environmental sustainability and helping to develop partnerships for future development. So all of those are reasons that I hope to see my community when we move forward on this particular resolution. Thanks. Thank you. So I'm just gonna make a quick note. It's, public speaking would be hard. Margaret got going, this is actually an agenda item tonight. So if anyone else wants to address that issue, I would just ask that we do it when the agenda item comes up. We'll keep Margaret to your thoughts in mind and you get the added bonus that when it comes back up, if you think you forgot something, you can add it back and then too.  This is actually an opportunity for people to address something that's not on tonight's agenda. So is there anything for? I have something that is not on tonight's agenda, though I also support this. I just wanted to take the opportunity to invite you to a really unique event that's happening in Chittenden County. The Vaprusha to survivors of the atomic bombings are coming and there's a public event happening at the University of Vermont. And I just wanted to make sure that everyone had an opportunity to know about this event and to feel invited to hear these people in their 80s who were survivors of the atomic bombings that are coming to Vermont to speak to us and testify about their experience. So please, I hope you're taking advantage of this very unique, really once in a lifetime opportunity. Great, thank you. Any other items for public comment tonight? Good, thank you very much. We will now move over to our consent agenda. We have two items on tonight's agenda. We have the city council looking for 12 minutes from August 20, 2018. And also Lawrence and Peral for 812, 18 and 825, 2018. The war ending for 831, 2018. Any questions or concerns for the city agenda? I think everybody's present for everything. Yeah, good. Any questions or concerns from the public? So if you can hear me now, I entertain a motion for approval of the city agenda as presented. Second. Motion by Eric, second by Christine. Any further discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. And those opposed, motion carries. City update. Thank you. I have a number of updates tonight. First, I'd like to invite Afea up to join me quickly. So September is always the year of our AmeriCorps VISTA transition. So we are about to lose two amazing AmeriCorps members and gain one amazing AmeriCorps member. We just started to date. Who's not here tonight, but we will bring her on a future meeting. This is Afea Lampert Harper. She's been with us for about a year and a half versus a recreation assistant in the AmeriCorps. Afea is really focused on community engagement. Under her leadership, we've analyzed our volunteer handbook. We saw the Parklet Demonstration Project. We got $3,000 in a grant from that, from AARP, that Afea single-handedly wrote in Scott, and led our largest volunteer service here ever, bringing in both a few value, that about $100,000 in volunteer hours into the city. She's done an exceptional job. She's a pleasure to have her on the office and we're really going to miss her. She's returning to Baltimore, her hometown, but has told us that she's gonna stay engaged in community service and government work, and we hope that at some point we'll be able to woo her back to Winiski. So just wanted to recognize her for her service tonight. Thank you. Any speech for you? I'm super grateful to have part to Winiski and with you all, and I couldn't feel more prepared for the next step, so. That's awesome. Wonderful. And we're also losing Zach, who is not here tonight. He's been worked, but you've seen him at past meetings. He's been working with our Recreations program. He's spearheaded youth basketball, a lot of programming at the library, the summer for young people. He's always willing to kind of jump in and get engaged. He also spearheaded the new community garden at the senior center this year that's seen a lot of traction. He's actually staying on in the AmeriCorps program, but will be moving to an organization in Bristol, Vermont, which is great to spread around his expertise, but they will be very missed on our team.  So I shared with you the recent communication from the ACLU about our panhandling ordinance. Wanted to touch base on that. As you know, section 6.14 of our ordinance talks about aggressive panhandling. And if there's interest from the council, I'd bring forward at a future meeting repeal of that section of the ordinance from staff's perspective. It's not something we've enforced over the last couple of years and we're comfortable with considering it's considering taking it off the record. So generally seeing some support, I'll put that on a future agenda. We have a number of new businesses in town. We heard from juniors tonight and you've heard from about several of these Eden Specialty Ciders is open. We encourage people to check that out. Mandarin also opened last weekend and are hearing good things about that. And Roan, which is a new women's clothing store next to Birdfold Collective are all open. So we're excited to see those three new businesses in downtown. At the last meeting I talked about the Burlington Airport Sound Mitigation Committee meeting that was last week. So we got a pretty significant update from them. They are working, as you know, on updating their noise exposure map with the F-35 data. That's what demonstrates where we will see the impact when F-35s arrive next September. They have indicated that they will release that updated map in December. They tentatively right now are planning a public hearing at the airport around that map on December 5th. Much more information forthcoming about this and we will joint promote it. I am really encouraging them to have that public hearing after they've released the map so people know the impact on Manuski before that public hearing. And then assuming that process moves forward, the map and the noise compatibility program application, which is what kind of mitigation, sound mitigation techniques will be used. We'll go to the FAA in the spring for approval. There's all sorts of timelines associated with approval. And then funding will be able to be requested the following year. This means that if Manuski is affected and if the sound mitigation funds are approved by the FAA, the soonest we could have access to that is fall of 2020, which obviously doing the math is a year after the F35s come. Having said that, it is a big advantage to us that the airport fast tracked the update of the noise exposure map. They had not previously been intending to do that, which meant even if we were impacted, we wouldn't have access to those funds. So more to come on that, but I want to put on your radar that likely early December, there will be some significant public process around what our potential exposure may be. The airport is also starting a new master planning process. They issued a master plan about five years ago. They're updating it much like we do. They have a regional master plan committee made up of people from all of our communities that I plan to attend. And if anyone else is interested in attending, certainly encourage you to reach out.  The foreign unit building, our crews were able to keep the fire on the outside of the building. It didn't get into the building. So all four families were displaced last night. Three are now back in the residence. Three units are back in, one's out. The one we hope to be returning in about a week. And they are currently being put up by the landlord in a hotel. While there's no official cause determined, we do believe that it was caused by inappropriately disposed of smoking materials. So cigarette butts, which makes this the third fire in about a year that has started that way. It's about $50,000 worth of property damage. So we are intending to start some public education with people around properly disposing of cigarettes to try and prevent that in the future. So heads up that that will be coming out. Next Wednesday night at September 12th at six o'clock at the Burlington Elks Lodge is a public meeting on Act 250. Act 250 has been going around the state collecting feedback on the future of that state legislation. So if people are interested in development patterns around Act 250, please consider attending. I believe Eric and I will be attending that. And then tomorrow is our second to last Winooski Wednesday with thunder kittens in the rotary. It's going to be really hot. So hopefully the last hurrah of summer come out to Winooski Wednesdays tomorrow night. That's all I have. Thank you. Thank you very much. Council reports. We started on the other side. Mr. Allen. Okay. Yes, I met recently with Councilor Mace and Sue McCormick. Looking into designing a cultural intelligence engagement, but the council key staff and some of the commissions. Sue has experience working in our community with facilitation and she's looking at a one time event that will kick it off and then designing some ongoing engagement so that we can all become more culturally intelligent and engage with our community members who are different than the dominant culture. So we're pretty excited about what she might be proposing and we should hear from her buddy of the week. Thank you. So the Public Safety Commission had to postpone not meet in August, but they will be coming back in September as there was no quorum available to meet. But we did get an announcement that our chair Michael Rosenberg is stepping down as chair of the commission resigning. So I do want to thank, I don't know if Michael's watching from home right now, but I do want to thank him for his time of service as the chair of the commission. And I assume that when the commission returns it's September, they'll be voting on what that leadership position looks like for them. Other than that, the Winooski Community Partnership also was not able to meet at their most recent, sorry, downtown Winooski, at their most recent meeting as well because there weren't enough people able to attend. So they're looking at rescheduling their meeting also. And then the last, Jesse and I did meet about one of the items on the agenda that we'll be talking about later tonight, so we'll hold off on discussing that. I think in terms of actual content for update, just want to make folks aware that I met with the Winooski Housing Authority Board in an effort to engage the entity more broadly in regards to involvement with the city and connections there and working together, finding new ways to partner and being in the throes of a very intensive focus on housing right now. I felt like it was an important time to engage them. Also want to make folks aware that there is a leadership change that's taken place there that Ed Willamaker after many years of long service stepped away and the Executive Director is being filled on an intern basis right now. And with a little bit more time to think and to expect to be weighing into that board as a reminder that board by charters, it's one of the only things that you get assigned to actually do as a mayor is select that board and to open up broad counts of participation that has some legal complexities to it, unfortunately. But I look forward to continue to keep the group very updated in regards to how those conversations are unfolding. And then additionally, just want to add, I want to express my extreme disappointment and frustration with the way the ACLU actually handled their notice to a new scheme in regards to the issue. I do look forward to seeing us address it in a public open meeting. But just want to add that I would have really thought it would be a good thing to reach out to a community and have a conversation prior to the attack that was taken. I do support us bring that back as an issue and look forward to that conversation. And the planning commission made some great, two really important chapters. Chapters went under the belt on this go around and they're cranking through stuff and making a lot of edits and can't say enough about the good work that Regina and Eric are doing. I feel like next time I want to bring back in coordination with them a really substantial update on that because I think in my words, I won't do some of the progress that's been done there at service, but just want to assure folks that the master plan processes is really moving along. And it's been impressive to watch the group work. So I got my update from Councilor Paulson. I was unable to attend the housing commission meeting this month due to a work conflict or last month, I guess. So, but we're going to get an update about that later tonight, so. So I had a couple of meetings since our last meeting here. I met with my director of Public Works and Community Services and City Engineer to talk about the potential scoping options for Main Street and the pool projects, which we will be getting into on the agenda tonight. I also met with Jesse and Seth separately to talk about communication strategy for the city council based on some suggestions that came up at the last Public Works meeting and just some ideas that I've had about how we can be more effective. So we'll be getting into that later too. And I had a meeting with Nate Dagas, the developer of the new multi-income unit that's happening on East Island. He had reached out to me and wanted to me to talk about, I think primarily concerns about tax rates. So I did talk to him. And last thing, the next Public Works commission meeting is next Thursday, and I'm going to be at a conference for my job that I can't miss. So if anyone is interested in attending that in my place, please let me know. All right, I'm going to move on to this evening's regular items. First up, we have discussion, approval and resolutions for the UN nuclear ban treaty. We've heard one piece of public comment. Jesse, do you want to add anything to this other than the memo that's enclosed? Okay, so we'll open this item up. We've heard one, thank you very much, Martik, for a piece of public comment. I want to open up first for questions, comments, concerns from council. One thing that we've had discussions about here before is what types of content and resolutions the council wants to see on a regular basis. And as a group, I don't think that this crew has quite found its groove with that yet, which is understandable, less than a year together. But I know that there are a couple of folks maybe who felt strongly like this is representative of the community and I think there's been varying perspectives on whether or not to take issues like this up historically. So I think in the context of having this conversation, probably good to have both those so that we don't consistently bring things forward that either do or don't meet the needs and wants of the entirety of the council. From a content perspective, that would be really helpful to me. So I open up the opportunity for counselors. So something that I was thinking about with this resolution, so we're often voting on things, well, so far since I've been here, voting on things to bring to a public vote later or taking on resolutions, for example, the F-35 thing that have some historical foundation in the community opinions about it. And so seeing this resolution here, I don't actually have any context on how other residents feel about this issue. And so I'm a little uncomfortable with the council taking this stance without having any background. I think to your point, Seth, about, I think this fits into like your point about the kinds of issues that we wanna see. This is like an issue that's really big, obviously, world level, I don't feel like the direct connection to what we can do as a council, like for the city of Lewinsky. Like there's just a disconnect for me between like what we know about what our residents want and what this is putting forward. I have similar views. I think we could have agendas full of resolutions making statements on important social issues. And so for me, the filter has to be worked that is pointed toward Lewinsky business, city business, municipal business, issues impacting our residents. We have a lot of issues that we need to confront as a city and I'm concerned about our focus being directed toward making more political statements that I actually fully agree with some of the concerns and issues. And potentially it's a place for the Vermont legislature to grapple with this type of a resolution, but it just doesn't feel like the work that we should be doing at this table. I don't have the same uncomfortability around resolutions. I feel like it's less of a political issue or making a political statement and more about making a human statement in a lot of cases. And for me, I think that a chorus of voices is stronger than a soloist and municipalities have a really strong role to play in that choir. So I support the resolution and like I have supported or brought forward resolutions in the past and I absolutely understand in here where people are coming from, but I also don't worry that it will take an exorbitant amount of time for us to move through these as they come up on issues that really do have a big impact globally. And our effect on those issues might be small, but I think that it's still important. And I think it would be easy to kick the can to the legislature, which could then kick the can to Congress. And at what point do we just say, no, we're gonna step in and play, put our voice into this mix. I think it's important to join the other 211 municipalities that have signed on to this. I think there is something about power in numbers and I think more importantly, it's really a statement to take to convey to our children and our next generation that this is a really important issue for us to consider and to support. Who knows what the F-35 basing, what that's really gonna bring to our community. But I think when we can speak out in the name of humanity to take a stance against war and the infrastructure that perpetuates war, I think it's important and important for our kids to see adults sticking their neck out. Initially that could be controversial, but I do support it. And I think it's an important place that we should get behind and say that this is important for all of us. I think my perspective on this has been fairly consistent. I know I ran for office with very set municipal goals that involved taking care of concerns of the city of Wunuski residents. And I fully appreciate that this is something that's felt very strongly by residents and individuals in the community. It is not, to me, within the purview of the city from a general perspective in terms of business. And I share the concern that it can serve as something that actually becomes, quite frankly, an item that causes disagreement up here amongst this body over something that, frankly, at the end of the day could potentially detour us from being as high functioning of the body as we could in serving the residents in the way that I believe they elected us to do when we sit at this table. I do wanna reflect very strongly that each person outside of this form in this table has their own voice and their own independence. And in the past, I've signed on to joint statements with counselors from other communities and other politicians, including members of congressional districts or congressional offices and legislators. And I certainly think that there's a real place for that for people if that's the way that they wanna, issues that they wanna address. But when it comes to when we're sitting at this table, I feel strongly like, from a content perspective, it's important to stay really focused on the things that we control as a city and the outcomes that we can actually take on that benefit the community in a very direct way. I think that that's our charge. So with that, I'll see you any other comments, questions from council? Comments, questions, concerns from the public? Yes ma'am? I would just like to say that it is a hard issue. And I think that the city of Newsy has regularly spoken out in favor of peace in our community. So I think that the question of whether the community would support this as a majority of community, I don't think that there's a question there. I think that regularly the city of Newsy has spoken out in favor of it. And I think it is an issue that affects our community directly, specifically because of the F-35s, which will be carrying nuclear weapons over our airspace.  And so not taking a stand, I think is far more dangerous than it might cause dissension at the table. I would hope that our elected officials would be comfortable with uncomfortable conversations because that's where the real work goes towards creating a world that we want our children to inherit after we're gone. Thank you. Thank you. Other questions, comments, concerns from the public? Good, any questions or concerns from council? Good, so seeing and hearing none, this is on as a discussion or approval item. So I'll open it up for a motion. I've maintained a motion for resolution supporting the UN Nuclear Ban Treaty. Hearing no motion, I will move. I move to support the resolution presented to city council banning nuclear weapons. Thanks, second. Motion by House, second by Eric. Any further discussion? Hancing on all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. And those opposed? No. No. Did you record? Aye. Okay. Can I make a comment? If we're going to move to approve this, I am willing to go along with that, but I want to reiterate the previous statement about what we discussed about these issues not being exactly what I envisioned us spending our time on here. So can you please, for Janet's purpose, explain your vote? Just what did you vote for? I'm voting to approve it. Okay. So we have three ayes, two nays, and with that, any further conversation? Hearing none, motion passes. Resolution passes three to two. All right, we'll move on now to item B. Remember, has been moved, treasure appointment. And now we'll move on to the new item B, which is International Day of Peace Event Permit Application. Ms. Heather Carrington. Very much in keeping with our previous conversation, but perhaps an easier topic. Staff has received an event permit application for the second annual International Day of Peace event in Winooski, sponsored by the Winooski Peace Initiative. This event will include a street closure and will be held on Winooski Falls Way. Street closure is from five to nine p.m. on Friday, September 21st, and the event itself will be held from six to eight p.m. The event will include international food, craft tables, social bingo, speakers, and a peace pledge. The city of Winooski will serve as co-sponsors of the event, and staff recommends that we look for this event. Also, I would like to invite the entire community to that, and I have a specific invitation for all of you on council from Sister Pat McChick, who could not be here this evening. I bet. Good, any questions or concerns from the council for the event permit? Any questions or concerns from the public? So seeing and hearing none, I entertain the motion for approval of the International Day of Peace event permit application as presented. So moved. Second. Motion by Paul Second by Eric. Any further discussion? Seeing and hearing none, those in favor, please say aye. Aye. And those opposed, motion carries. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. All right, the new item C, which is approval of the 2008 Justice Assistant Screen or JAG application with Chief Heber. Chief, it feels like it's been forever. I'm sick of that. Happy to see you. Happy to see everybody.  This was a direct report. I'll try and make this as easy as possible to understand. All of the incidents that we have are run through what's called the Niver's recording system. Then the federal agency then uses those numbers based on the population of Vermont and the activity of your police department.  Traditionally every year, we usually come in somewhere within 10 to $11,000. This year, the award is for $11,375 directly awarded to the city of Gueske. Once we're notified of that award, I have to come up with a program narrative of what we'd like to spend the money on. And then we actually put in an application and once it's approved by the justice assistance people, they'll release the funds for us to do the program. What I'm requesting this year is to purchase the firearms and judgmental training simulator. For lack of a better term, it's a virtual firing range but it also incorporates de-escalation and judgmental training for police officers. So it incorporates basic firearm skills, being able to work on some things that would normally cost you money to drive to a firing range, expand ammunition. This is a laser system so we could do it on shift if we have enough officers working or it'll save us from having in the winter months to go out in the extreme cold to do this type of training. And then you couple that with the judgmental scenario training where officers will have the ability to use a taser and OC spray that works also with the system so that you can work on de-escalation, hopefully for more peaceful outcomes in deadly force situations. And then we're going to couple that. I've spoken with the chief in Burlington and South Burlington and we're thinking about trying to put together some type of tri-city across departmental training where all the officers could actually participate and it's called, I included a couple of pages in my program for you, it's called ICAP. And it's basically implementing communications, assessment and tactics. So it's a new program that came up where it's no secret that police officers around the country are responding to people with mental health crisis or target views on mental health crisis. It's a lot more complicated and it's a lot more volatile. So we're hoping that we could, if we cross train together, we could take advantage of Burlington's emergency response vehicle that has a tremendous amount of tools available for better outcomes. But we'd also be familiar with training in between injured departments so that we have to back each other up. We know what to expect. So this simulator would assist in all that. And also, we recently completed our three-year strategic plan. Part of that is going to be hosting a community police academy. And I think this would be a really good tool for people to experience what it's like to be in the shoes of a police officer. Sounds scary. That part of it, Liz. I think just to underline a point that Chief made, I think the real advantage of this system not only is bringing in-house some of our ability to do professional development, but also framing firearm professional development within the context of de-escalation. How do we use the least force necessary rather than focusing solely on ours dedicated to rifle practice, gun practice? Also in the event, if there ever is a shooting, showing that we were committed to a culture of de-escalation and inputting the training hours for all the officers on better outcomes would obviously show people that we are committed to better outcomes. And if something does go the way where we end up unfortunately having some type of shooting that we've done everything we can to try and avoid that. I think it's, it was fascinating to read material assistance along. Thanks for such a thorough package to appreciate it. So just for full disclosure too, I know it's in the packet, but I should probably voice it, is that the JAG grant itself covers $11,375. The remaining $10,926. I plan on splitting over three line items from the police department. One is the specialized supplies, such as ammunition. I fully believe that we'll be able to save that amount of money on ammunition. So it not only will be a savings this year, but each year going forward. The equipment acquisition line item is always just something that's there for replacement or something that's new. So I'm comfortable spending out of there. And then the third line item is from our asset forfeiture fund. Yes, please. So do the Burlington and South Burlington police departments also have this? I don't know what to call it. Firearms simulator? They don't. It's my knowledge, the only entity that has one of these and it's far more expensive is the police academy. That answer. So you would see this as a way to draw our counterparts and other communities that we would have an asset to share and we could then also access some of the resources. Yeah, absolutely. Burlington has robots. They have all kinds of really cool things to keep everybody safe. That cost a lot of money. Obviously if we're going to be having this piece of equipment, we would make it, it's horrible. So the nice thing is you only need a 12 by 12 space. You can set it up in 15 minutes and make it available to any police department that want to use it. And again, just to underline a point. I think the advantage of the combination of the simulator and the ICAD training, especially in Dunn in conjunction with the three communities is the officers all start speaking the same language. So when they're deployed for mutual aid on a scene, they're all speaking the same language. They know the prioritization of de-escalation, et cetera. So I think that that's in that resource sharing mutual aid approach has an advantage for all of our residents. Chief, does the simulator have the capability of addressing and mitigating implicit bias? It does. So every scenario I've been told by the person who's the representative of the company that we can change specific things within the scenario. You know who the perpetrator is, race, all different kinds of things, we can change based on how the officers are responding to the scenario. There's a little tree of options that the instructor, if they're not using good verbal commands, then it'll go one way. If they're using good verbal commands, it'll go another way. Great, thank you. Other questions, comments, concerns from council? Any questions, comments, concerns from the public? And so seeing and hearing none. I would entertain a motion for approval of acceptance of the grant for the 2018 Justice Assistance Grant application. So moved. Second. Motion by Christine Second by Hall. Any further discussion? Seeing and hearing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. And those opposed? Motion carries. All right, thank you very much, Chief Hubert. That's exciting. We appreciate the innovation and the support of staff and creating that training opportunity. That's awesome. Thank you. Congratulations. Well, we won't count the chickens right before they come in, but that's the confidence we have. Also be saying congratulations soon. All right, next up is discussion and charter change for non-resident voting, or excuse me, non-citizen voting, important distinction. So at your last meeting, you voted to approve the timeline to potentially bring forward a charter change amendment to the ballot in November on all citizen or all resident or non-citizen voting. After your approval of that timeline, I met with Councillor Covey as he referred to earlier to really understand the intent that he was looking for on behalf of the council. So there were three different things articulated. One was the intent to allow any resident 18 or older to vote in municipal elections, including city and school money votes. So budget votes, bond votes, as well as electing the officials to represent them. Two, intent to protect our voter checklist, much as the state has done. And then three, working to eliminate the term citizen from our municipal charter. So those were the intents that were articulated. I then met with our city attorney Bob Dupama to go over those intents and start looking at potential language for you to consider. And so what is before you tonight are three documents. One is an actual track changes version of the charter that would incorporate those three intents for your consideration. And this is what ultimately would be moved forward to the voters if you so choose, obviously after discussion. The second document is those places where citizen appears in the charter where we would recommend just changing that word to resident. And then the third because it came up is a memo from the city attorney about changing the municipal charter to reflect all resident voting and implications for the Vermont Constitution which calls out citizens in their voter language. So those are the three documents you have before you. Bob is obviously here to provide any legal guidance just as a reminder, the process would be tonight to discuss the actual language. If you choose to move it forward at the next council meeting, we would bring forward the actual documents to be voted on for placement onto the ballot. And then there would be a two public hearing process before the ballot was finalized once you would take that vote. Last thing I'll say is we're happy to answer any questions now or hear any discussion. If you do want to have a discussion about potential liability that we may open ourselves up to, we would ask that that conversation be held in executive session. So I would just say that I think because the word liability uses our job to hear what that could be. So I think we'll retain the opportunity, I'll certainly be putting forward a motion for executive session just to make clear to the group before they start talking to discuss that issue afterwards or after an initial conversation up here where we can cover the rest of the content as it's been presented. Okay, so we asked for things to move along the timeline as presented and this is step one. So we've got for us, I think the first one is in the agenda item summary. The first check is to ensure that the council as a body feels like it is those three points accurately represent the council's intent in regards to this item and its goals for outcomes. And I'm speaking to the allow residents 18 and older protect checklists from inspection, eliminate the term citizen and the charter more accurately reflect. We will be getting the public comment. We will be getting the- I'm scared, I didn't work you, but how can a public even have a side set here what you're talking about when we don't have the documents? George, just like every meeting with every item, these are publicly posted. We don't, we have no clue how many people may or may not show up for document. It's publicly posted where? On the city's website. I went on a website I could not find it. I apologize you had an issue finding it, but it's very much every, by open meeting law has to be available for- It's publicly posted on the website means that anyone that doesn't have a computer couldn't find it anyhow.  It's also- I'm playing as publicly posted by just being on the website. It's also posted here. We comply with telling them, now, what I was hearing, it says, I'm sure we would be happy to produce a couple copies that wouldn't be that hard of a thing for us to do on the fly. We've got some folks here who have that capacity and capability in computers. But just to note for the future, when you come to these meetings, we don't generally print out entire packages to just have available. They're available on the city's website. And if you would like a package ahead of time, feel free to call City Hall or email one of us and we'll be happy to make sure that's available for you. Okay, so we'll go back to the initial item question, which is we have those three items kind of framing the conversation. I think before even Bob speaks to the items that he's got, I think that's an important thing for the group to acknowledge that there's agreement that those are the three things we're after because that frames the whole conversation. Excuse me. Thank you for your work on it, Bob. Any issues, questions, concerns? Awesome. Well, I did, I guess not in regards to the three larger pots till we get down to more detail. Okay. Good. Now, maybe we can walk through the memo, Bob, or I don't know if you guys had a specific order you wanted to step through, but maybe just from a layman's perspective, you know, again for folks in the audience, if you did not see the publicly posted package, it's allow residents 18 and older to vote in a municipal, city, and school-related election, protect voter checklist from inspection, and eliminate the term citizen from the charter to more accurately reflect our value and the inclusion and access. And so then we've got three items before us, and the first is a memorandum concerning the change in the Vermont Constitution. So maybe we can just take that issue first from the memo standpoint. So as I was looking at this issue, one big issue that popped out at me was what effect does the provision in the Vermont Constitution have on this proposal, because it does affect the strategy that the city council may want to adopt, depending on how one reads the Vermont Constitution. So the Constitution, as it presently sits, has been that way since about 1828, and it currently gives to any person of 18 years of age who is also a citizen of the United States and a resident of the state the ability to vote in any election in the state. So the question is, does that constitutional provision apply to municipal elections? I provided my analysis of that, and the short answer is we don't know. There are some very old case law, they're old municipal tax collection cases that deal with the question of whether a resident of a town is a legal voter and therefore entitled to hold office in that town to act as tax collector. No case of the Vermont Supreme Court has directly addressed the question of whether a municipality has the power in the face of the Vermont constitutional provision to open up its local voting to municipal voters. I've talked with some other lawyers who are dealing with this issue. The view is that these old cases provide some foundation for a conclusion that the Vermont constitution would be interpreted to not apply to municipal elections. But the answer is unknown until the Vermont Supreme Court speaks on the issue. So that is one unknown that you folks are facing as you consider this proposal. And just to play out what might occur if this item is placed on the ballot, it is subject to challenge by a resident of the city on the grounds that it's unconstitutional. And that could occur at any step on the process either before the vote at the city level, while it's under consideration by the Vermont legislature or even after approval of the Charter Amendment by the Vermont legislature. So that could happen at any time. The alternative route that the city might take is to pass a resolution recommending that the Vermont legislature commence a constitutional amendment process. That is basically a three-year process. There is a very specific method of amending the constitution in the Vermont constitution. It permits the Vermont Senate to every fourth year approve a constitutional amendment by two-thirds vote. If it's approved by the House, by a majority vote, then that is carried over to the beginning of the next biennium. It must be approved by both houses in the legislature at that point and then presented to the voters in the state for approval. And that process can be initiated only every four years in odd number years. So 2019 is the next opportunity. The 2019-2020 biennium is the next opportunity to present that question to the Vermont legislature. The next opportunity after that is the 23-24 biennium. In case of challenge, if the legislator had approved the charter with this change of amendment, would the case be, would we be the sole defendant in that case or would the legislator also share burden in that? Could they be named as a party to the case as well? And I'm wondering that because it, I'm wondering if that plays into the calculus for the legislator too, in terms of how far they're gonna, how much time they could spend exploring the issue and whether or not it could be a stumbling block. No. And really thought about that, but I would think that the charter amendment process depends on the Vermont legislature. So the state of Vermont would be a defendant in a case where the legislature has approved the charter change amendment. And that would make this potentially an AG's office question for them as well? Yes, the AG would have to, it would defend the state of Vermont. Presumably you would think that if the Vermont legislature takes up a charter change amendment either for Winooski or for some other municipality that's considering this question, it would seek advice first from legislative council and perhaps even the AG's office before it proceeded with a final determination. So the legislature would be armed with some opinions from one or both of those bodies before it approved such a resolution. Doesn't control the outcome. The Vermont Supreme Court does not have to follow the decision, the recommendations or the opinions of either the attorney general or the legislative council. But it would be armed at least with those opinions. Okay, what other questions, did I cut you off? No, no, I just wanna be clear that in raising these issues, I'm not trying to comment on the policy issue, whether it's a wise thing to do. I mean, that's for the first instance of the council and then the voters and ultimately the legislature. But I just want, as the council moves forward to be aware of what are the risks and possible outcomes as you proceed. Well, yeah, I mean, I think from our perspective, it probably doesn't color whether or not the issue moves forward as much as it does provide context for the issue moving forward, number one, but also public context. So people understand what they're voting on and what their vote means and what authority and power we do and don't have when it comes to charter changes. There's this piece that's outside of our control, it's the legislature, but this might be a little even additional wrinkle beyond that. So that's just, that's good for us to know. I mean, I'm sure it's not a big brain changer for people and I don't think this is a good idea or not, but what other questions do we have for Bob on number one? Yeah. So I've just got a question, if you wouldn't mind walking me through what the constitutional issue may be, understanding there might also not be one, because doesn't the constitution extend the right to vote two citizens, but it doesn't anywhere prohibit non-citizens from voting?  I think the necessary corollary to that is that if you don't meet the four criteria, you're not entitled. That's a technical question that's come up to me in reading your memo and looking at the voter registration is we would have to have our, there are things on the voter registration that would not apply to many people we are opening the door to to vote for, that they could not affirm the entirety of the voter's oath. We haven't asked you to analyze that, or my opinions are unexpected question on the fly, but that's one of those lingering technical questions I have as to whether we will have to have a separate registration process of sorts. So we have started to think about that operationally. Right now we rely on the state voter registration form to put together the one voter checklist we currently have. That form would not be applicable because it doesn't require you to affirm because if this charter change were to go into effect it wouldn't require this. So we would have to amend, we would have to have our own voter registration form that amended that oath and essentially took out those provisions that would no longer be necessary under our charter. Okay. And another question. My understanding is that as they're discussing this issue in Montpelier, they came to a different conclusion and I was wondering if you had any conversation? I have, yes. And Dan Richardson's working on it for the city of Montpelier. We talked about it briefly. He actually sent him the memo that I prepared just to see if you have any comments on it. He suggested a couple cases that he thought might have some bearing on it and a couple thoughts which were very interesting and they were germane to the point. It doesn't change my conclusion though that the answer is not clear. But certainly the information that he shared was favorable to the conclusion that constitutional provision does not govern municipal elections. And just to be clear, our own, the legal conclusion is only that it's not clear. Not that there's a successful argument on either side. Until the Supreme Court rules it's unclear. I can't help but wonder if it does make sense to ask the AG's office for an opinion from the state's perspective. But my other guess is that they're probably not all that interested in entertaining a hypothetical of what if the legislature passed this? What would your perspective be from a constitutional perspective that that's important? At the end of the day, it doesn't get you closer to the answer to what the Supreme Court's gonna say about it. Sure. Sure. Okay. Okay. What are the questions on Boxman? Number one of the three items for consideration. Questions, concerns, comments on that? Sorry. I wonder if you could elaborate further on the process you mentioned about the city doing a resolution that somehow initiates the state to take a possible constitutional amendment. So only the Vermont Senate can approve a constitutional amendment. Somebody has to sponsor that. Obviously it would be sponsored by a senator. A resolution from a municipality like Winooski could move some senator, one of your senators, to sponsor that constitutional amendment. But that's where it starts. So at the city level, a resolution asking that the Vermont Senate start that process is not binding on anybody, but it is a way to start the process. Thank you. How regularly that process has been used, how frequently that process has been used in the past? Actually pretty frequently, believe it or not. Yeah. In fact, this particular constitutional provision was amended not too many years ago to authorize persons who were not 18, who would not be 18 at the time of the general election, who would be 18 at the time of the general election to vote in a primary at a time when they were not 18. That was not that long ago. Yeah, that's right. But I think it had been quite a while before that particular case, hadn't it? To actually go through amending the constitution, I don't think happens really often. It's not really, really frequently, but it does happen. I'm sure that there are a lot of resolutions directing the legislature too. You cited the Woodcock case in your memo. It happened almost 200 years ago. How much weight might it have on this conversation? Well, so lawyers are gonna debate that, right? I mean, it was, from my own perspective, it was decided at a time when the statutes underlying the constitutional provision had, did not require citizenship. And in fact, the legislature, after that constitutional provision was enacted in 1828, had the opportunity to revisit and re-enact the statutes relating to qualifications to vote and had not changed those qualifications. So the Supreme Court in the Woodcock case sort of pointed at that as evidence of the intent of the legislature. In the case we have today, there is now a state statute that mirrors the constitution. So that both at the statutory level and at the constitutional level, there is a citizenship requirement. So I think, so how persuasive is Woodcock? Well, maybe it is, but that particular factor seems to weigh against the applicability of Woodcock today. I think other lawyers would say that our system of government makes municipalities purely a creature of the state legislature. So that notwithstanding what's in the constitution, the legislature has carte blanche to create a municipal government as it wishes because it's purely a creature of the legislature. It's an argument. I don't know that I am convinced by it, but other lawyers would in the Supreme Court very well might be. Other questions or comments for all on this particular facet of discussion time? Just in regards to the memo, or can we drill down into the specific language for the charter of Woodcock? Yeah, we've got three items. So we'll go through the charter language. I'm gonna stop at the end of each one and see if there's any public comment specific to each of the items. So we just heard about the memorandum concerning the charter change to the Vermont Constitution. We'll stop at each of the three points that we're gonna cover, the constitutional piece, the proposed amendment to the city charter, and then the elimination of the word citizen in the charter. We'll stop at each of those three points. So we'll stop first and see folks have questions in regards to memorandum concerning the potential charter change in the constitution. Yes, sir. Okay. I support this in theory. And I was on the council. We talked about this. We talked about it in the charter change committee that I was a part of. But I'm gonna say to you right now, you need to slow down as a council. You're getting, letting things get away from you. You're doing too much. You're taking on too much.  You're not careful. You know, you pushed special votes in two of the last elections and you're trying to push another one. I believe still we're talking November. You just keep doing that. You're gonna run into trouble. And you're lucky that you got the pool. I like it. That could have been a disaster. And this could be a disaster that's gonna be much, much worse and hurt a lot of people. Because it's not gonna, you're not gonna be able to bring it back very quickly if this vote, if you were to put this to a vote and it weren't to fail. So you need to be cognizant of what you're doing and how it can affect people. But as I responded pointing out when I was on that council, aren't in this room. You're not engaging that I've seen, and correctly if I'm wrong, I meant to have phrased this as a question. You don't seem to be engaging the people who would be most affected by this change. So I would hope they would do that. I would also recommend more engagement with the school. I'd be interested to hear if there's been any engagement with the school because it certainly would be kind of a mess if you passed this charter change and the school did not and people thought they could vote on one and not the other. And I don't even know if you're taking that on a consideration. So that's all I have to say. Thank you very much. Are there questions, concerns, comments? Okay, we'll open it up additional times. But next up is the proposed amended language to the charter for all resident voting. So this, as I said, the intro is the specific section of our charter 19202 that talks about qualified voters of the city. In the blue track changes, you see the language suggested to enable those three intents, the all resident voting if you're 18 and older and the protection of the voter registration list. I'll run through the paragraph just to tell you what I've done. So paragraph subsection A is the existing provision in the charter amended to make clear that things like voter registration, absentee voting, conduct of elections will remain as provided in general law, that the qualifications of voters for state and federal elections now will be governed by general law as well, which is the state statutory provision. And the key provision here is the last sentence which provides the qualifications for voting in city meetings and municipal elections is provided in subsection B. So subsection B then sets out the criteria for municipal elections and it tracks the state statutory provision except it eliminates the requirement of citizenship. That's pretty simple. And then subsection C implements that by requiring the city clerk to maintain a separate checklist for city meetings and municipal elections. And then subsection D is an ad that draws substantially from an act that was passed by the legislature in this last session, which it's act 128 which was established to provide some level of protection for voter checklists from unauthorized or undesirable use. And what I tried to do in subsection D in the three subsections there was to copy as much as possible the exact language from act 128 into the proposed charter change. So that's what that does. What I did not do in the instructions that I had from you folks was to actually include in the proposed amendment was specific amendments to remove the word citizen from other provisions of the charter. I generated a list that shows where it appears in the charter. Wanted to feed that back to you, make sure you were comfortable in changing those provisions as well. But in the final form of this amendment to be submitted to the voters will include some additional sections to make those amendments. It's not in the draft that you have in front of you. There are not a lot of instances of, I mean, relatively speaking, there are not a lot of instances of the use of the citizen. Three or four, yeah, that's all. But I think critically that there's no place where we're at other points running into issues with the word citizen being changed. In other words, I'm trying to think about, was there any functional practical impact that could be instantly noticed? So in terms of solely where citizen is used other places in the charter, it's really around engagement. So it's actually, I would argue, incorrect the way it's written. Now we're not asking for any citizenship proof as you engage with the city. I think there is an implication, not by the word, but about who can be an elected official if this changes. I'm putting you on the spot a little, Bob. Right, isn't there? So as it's, as this sits right here today, the proposal in front of you does have at least one other consequence in city government. It does, will now open the door for non-citizens also to serve as city council members or as mayor. There may be a few others. I haven't gone back and read the entire charter to see whether there are other changes, but I would propose to do that before you formally adopt that so you're aware of those. But there clearly is one, that non-citizens can be elected city officials. I suppose it does raise the question as in your official roles when you have to interact with the federal government, whether that may have some impact if you were not a citizen. I haven't thought through that either, but I think that some thought should be given to those sorts of considerations. Yes, please. So a good point was just raised earlier. Does this language apply to school district elections? Yes, it's intended to. I think our charter, our city charter applies to the school district. I think for voting purposes, I think it does. We administer the elections. Yeah, we're the governing body for elections in the city has always been my understanding from a legal perspective. I do think though it's in statute who can serve on the school board. So this wouldn't, my understanding is this wouldn't impact that whereas our charter designates who can serve on the city council or as mayor and there's an eligible voter clause. I think it's in state statute. It's definitely in state statute. Right, I think the question that opens up is that there's another body whose elected composition is impacted by, because that is the other election that we would be opening up. We should also check with the control board of the water commission. That's a joke, I mean, they can laugh. Which is, it's the city council. But in seriousness, I think that does raise the question of whether the body wants to reach out to the school in what manner. I think it's advisable at this juncture that we engage them in that conversation and ask that they take it under consideration to provide feedback. Cause just as a reminder, we are moving at, the timeline does not have a lot of wiggle for those things in terms of sticking on it. I would also, just while we're on that subject bring up and I should have brought this up in city updates, I'm sorry, at your next meeting, it will be our annual joint meeting with the school trustees that has been scheduled to talk about the MOU we have in place with the school trustees. If both of those agendas are on the, if both of those items are on the agenda, you wanna give them a heads up. I think we should, we'll do a formal, and we'll put them tomorrow on this, I think between Jesse and I. So I have talked to the superintendent about it, but that's where the end to it. Am I correct that our next council meeting is not the final date for any potential little, you know, gritty language changes that after at least one of the public hearings, there is a date by which language that actually gets before voters can be amended? So my understanding of the process is that the next meeting or a special meeting that you call within the next two weeks, you must vote to put forward specific language to the ballot. And then there are two public hearings at which that language is discussed. And after the second public hearing, you can amend the language based on what you hear at the public hearings. After the first one. And does the act of approving the language is simultaneous with putting on the ballot formula? Correct. We simultaneously approve the language and the composite and the ballot itself. I'm saying that that's the one vote. Language and it's going on the ballot bill. But the language can be amended. Right. Right. Okay. So we should make that notification tomorrow. Take care of that. Try to have that conversation as quickly as we can and see if they have a meeting where they can take it under consideration and provide any feedback or concerns. Go ahead there. So you do in subsection B, it does have has taken the voters oath. The voters oath does reference the state of Vermont and it's super quick. I can just read it quickly.  You shall judge with most conduce to the best good of the same as established by the constitution without fear or favor of any person. So do you think that this would or should necessitate a Winooski voters oath or something that references Winooski rather than the state of Vermont? Because the actual issues that we're voting on are specific to the city of Winooski or is this can it stay as it is? Yeah, interesting question. Other than the reference to the state of Vermont which they would not be voting on directly, there's nothing in this oath that would be inconsistent with respect to a non-citizen making the oath. So it may be that we need to think about adding language here that tweaks that oath. But there's no reason by which we would have to. I think for simplicity for the courts if we don't have to. So I just want to make be really clear that with reference to 128, when we're limiting access to the list, I want to understand the philosophy behind including that in this change that occurred from your conversations. Because that's, I just want to hear it because that doesn't have anything to do with what we're initially tackling, right? It wasn't part of what we were just discussed. So from my conversation with Eric, his intent was to protect our voter checklist without and I think from an operational standpoint what is going to happen is we are in the city clerk's office is going to be required to keep two voter registration lists. There's going to be a state of Vermont voter registration list and a municipal election voter registration list. And I think there's some concern that if one is accessible, then we will essentially be creating a list of non-citizens in our community. And if that is publicly accessible, are we putting our residents at some risk? So we're basically tying ourselves to 128. And I thought that's what the way you explained it I wanted to clarify and make sure. So basically we're just affording residents who are entering into that, the Lewinowski list, the same protection that's being provided under the state provision by 128. Is that essentially correct? Yeah, I mean, I certainly have some questions as to how 128 is going to work on its own because it refers to a statewide voter checklist. It says nothing about the multiplicity of municipal checklists, which are amalgamated to form the statewide voter checklist. And I don't see any particular protection built into 128 that protects the checklist that city and town clerks maintain. So I may be wrong about this, Eric you may know better as to how the Secretary of State is beginning to implement this act. But I have some questions about this. The language in this proposed charter change sort of weaponizes 128 a little bit in terms of the Lewinowski voter checklist, both the municipal and its statewide version of the checklist. And I will say currently we treat our voter checklist as a public record. So if you request it, we provide it. And I can give a little background to that's true of the statewide voter checklist as well. It is a public record. There are some protections around it that existed in statute previously, mainly in regards to it not being able to be used for commercial purposes. So whenever somebody requests either a municipal checklist or the larger, like you said, amalgamated statewide voter checklist, it can't be used for commercial purposes and they have to attest that they won't. The, when 128 was, I don't remember the bell number, but while I was in discussion, the idea was to create some additional protections for the statewide voter check, for voter data, essentially. Somehow in the process of that bill being worked, I don't know the complete history there. It ended up being written. So as just to apply to the statewide voter checklist, which I think you're right on the money when you say that doesn't extend down to individual municipal checklists. So while it addresses the concern of somebody taking and potentially misusing the larger statewide voter checklist, by which they'd only have to make one request for, they still could, if they wanted to go through the process, make a public records request to every single municipality in Vermont, get it and cobble it together themselves. But they couldn't get the larger statewide voter checklist. So I think the intent really was to just ensure that the protection that was passed and the intent behind those protections at a state level also do apply to our Winooski Municipal Voter Checklist, especially given the even more sensitive nature if that checklist expands. But it sounds like we're putting in an additional layer of protection versus what the state's actually is currently possibly providing. Yes, that is correct. So that, again, I think that's really significant once again, that is not just an auxiliary thing. That's a solution that's found a problem, right? But this is a whole nother issue because there are a lot of really normal, not normal, that's a bad word, valid reasons why those checklists are public too. And I can see it's limiting the requests or the types of requesters in terms of who's accessing it. But I think it is specific on those circumstances. The other typical uses that you would think of would not, would still be admissible under the law. How are people requesting this? I mean, what's the process for determining if it's a government or an agent of another foreign entity? Are we doing extensive background checks on requesters? I'm not trying to make light of that. I'm just again, pointing out how much we're doing for. Well, I think that's correct. So right now we consider our voter checklists a public record. Right. So if you put an appropriate request forward, we have a statutory time period where we have to provide that and we do. And don't you need to get some sort of affidavit that it won't be used for commercial purposes, though? I don't think so. I think that's the statute. We have not done that. Not from my history here, requesting it. Nor has it been that case. I've requested other municipalities to have never had to fill out an affidavit. Maybe that's another thing where it's at the statewide because I know that that's true for the statewide checklist but it may not extend out. And so the language in 128, which I've imported here does not prohibit public access to the voter checklist. There are certain categories of uses which are prohibited and requires an affirmation. The checklist not be used for one of the prohibited purposes but beyond that, someone could come and request the voter checklist and get it. But they'd have to swear an oath. They would, that is correct. Yep. If they're not affiliated with a federal entity or a foreign agent. Yep. I think that was a lot of considerable discussion and the language that went into 128 was vetted through the Attorney General's office, ultimately, passed by the legislature and handed it to law. I mean, the red flag in the language of 128 is the limitation on disclosure to a federal agency. Just from my limited experience on charge changes, this is the kind of stuff that quite frankly ends up becoming just as big of a deal as the major issue is arguing about this. And that concerns me. Okay, so. So just a plug for this really quickly. I think if we are to move forward. Nothing. If we are to move forward with language of enable non-citizen voting in Ruseki, I think it's incredibly important we do that as well to build in protections around this voter checklist so that it cannot be weaponized or we are not putting community members in harm's way due to a curated list. Okay. You said red flag. Does a municipal official have the ability to turn down a federal agent who's made a request to see information under their jurisdiction? That's the question we have in our FIP policy now. And my understanding is that the attorney general has raised a lot of red flags about our FIP policy. So that is, I would call it an unresolved question. I think the federal government and particularly the Department of Justice has tried to use various tools to discourage state and municipal entities from impeding federal investigatory or criminal enforcement efforts. So that's why this is a red flag. It's gonna raise that issue. And I don't know what reaction there has been to Act 120 itself. Yeah, I haven't seen anything. But I imagine it will arise at some point. Isn't it just information in regards to somebody's immigration status, though that's in question as to whether or not the feds can ask for and must be provided with? This isn't that section, subsection 1373 of federal law. That is at the whole debate here between the Department of Justice and municipalities specifically related to immigration status. I don't think there's information at large. There's no reference in Act 128 to immigration status. No, but the larger question of if the feds request something does the municipality have to provide it? Yes. I guess what I would just say is I don't think that we're experts on that given the fact that we've received very clear indication from the attorney general's office that there's not agreement that our policy meets their expectations and their interpretation of federal law. We have yet to receive that in writing. Okay, we also have yet to receive an approval on the municipality that's had that experience. So I'll take that for what it is. The, I think the issue here is this is a secondary issue and that concerns me. It's not the original issue that was brought forward. And I don't know, this is the first time we're hashing this out and having this conversation. So I know I'm going to need to read more on it and think about it. Not going to try to make a decision on it at first cut. Should we be interested in bifurcating the two for the next council meeting? Well, we'll figure that out. I think what other municipalities are relying on the state's blanket 128? Are we aware of any other municipalities taking action to limit voter checklist? Okay, that's telling enough for me. So we'll, I think have to take that issue up again. I think there's going to need to be some time for people to marinate that on that unless there's other comments, suggestions. I just, we can't spend an hour and a half tonight on that second issue that just got thrown in. So this is, we just finished number two. So we want to make sure to pause and turn back towards the public and see if there's any comments, questions or suggestions. And we're probably not totally done with number two but it's a good stopping point. Yes. I have a variety of questions. First one, I'd like to thank the Council on the administration attorney for presenting all this information tonight and having a chance to think about it. Let me remind you that the school district in Lewski has a separate municipality. It has its own charter. Its charter does not refer to citizens in terms of who votes but refers instead to the city's checklist. But doesn't say which checklist. So it will probably, if there's going to be more than one, it would have to be changed to identify which checklist it's referred to. I would also point out to you that there's nothing in here that deals with whether it says of non-resident and non-citizen in the Senate country legally or illegally. And is there no condition that would apply to that point of being either legal or illegally. Also I've heard no discussion of the cost of this. Now this board has discussed costs on a whole bunch of issues. No longer sends out its annual reports to the public because it costs too much. A few hundred dollars, by the way. You're going to have to maintain in the city clerk's office a separate checklist, a separate set of forms to be identified to get on that checklist. All of those things have a cost. The other thing I haven't discussed is what happens to justices of the peace. Currently, they're on the same ballot with all the state officers as a courtesy to the city of Winooski by the state of Vermont. And to probably all of us, communities of the state. However, if you're going to have justices of the peace which are local, and they are local people, then you're going to have to have justices of the peace on two separate ballots. Now, how are you going to count them? Will a non-citizen have to go through a different spot at the elections in order to get a ballot? So everybody knows they're non-citizens as soon as they go to that table. Or do the people at the table have to have two checklists and someone has to declare whether he's a citizen or a non-citizen, or she has to declare when she goes there? I would urge you, as I did in the last meeting, to listen to Ronald. This is not a bad idea, but it's also not a good idea to just push through. There's a lot of work that needs to be done. There's a lot of discussion that needs to take place and you have to remember that once you send a change in a charter to the legislature, they can do anything they want to to it. And what they do is final, it becomes law. And it may be different than what you did and you have nothing to say about that. Not long ago, when we sent a charter change down to Montpelier, all of a sudden the gun people came out of the woodwork. Because in the old Wulmouski charter, used to be a combat or a concern, but you couldn't discharge a firearm within municipal boundaries. Well, let me tell you, the gun advocates noticed that for the first time and God knows how many years. Because then- It's the Sportsman's Association. It has been in there for years and years and years. It's not in there anymore. And it's not in there because when you set down, they change and they can change anything you send out of there. You don't have control over there. Once it's done, it's done. So I would suggest to you, you go very slow and you try to figure out how to make that work. Thank you. So there are questions, comments, concerns at this point? Yes, ma'am. Yes, I think, you won't believe this question. No system. A resident. So I moved to Wulmouski day before the election. What's a resident? Is it anyone who just moves in? Do they have that proof of a piece of mail saying I live at, you know, too Main Street or? Currently. Or does it matter, I mean, I don't know. No, no, no, it's a great question. I think currently under the voter registration system, somebody could move here tomorrow. And as long as they do the oath prior to the election or the day of the election, they don't have to bring us a piece of mail or a lease or a mortgage document. So, you know, we haven't talked about that specific issue. It did come across my mind at the end of this meeting, whether or not that was going to be discussed at any point in time or not. But in thinking about it, I think the way it's done now for registration is done just the day of it. What's all about the person taking the oath? I think there is language and statute and I think it references intent to stay. And the Supreme Court has actually struck down time residency requirements. So for instance, having a one year residency requirement before someone's able to vote was actually found unconstitutional. So I think it's domiciled with an intent to stay is currently how residency is defined for voting. But there are like 46 different residency or resident descriptions across the statute in general, depending on what you're talking about. Any other questions, comments, concerns? To the third item, so we will have a final opportunity to for folks. Any other items on number two there that we didn't cover? Yeah, so let me, one comment just for compare and contrast. I do have a copy of the draft of the Montpelier Charter Change. It does not contain any of the provisions importing act 128. Silent on that question. And the eligibility requirements for a voter who requires that the person be a legal resident of the United States. So that is different than the way we have crafted or I have crafted this draft. Okay. Well, just out of curiosity, was there, I mean, not without trying to interpret, I mean, it's intent that they be a legal resident, but is there anything from a operational functional perspective that's done to, I mean, I guess the oath itself, right? That's where the change would be. I don't think the oath affects that at all. It raises an interesting question as to what proof must be proffered when someone registers. If the Montpelier proposal is adopted, what does the city clerk have to do to satisfy him or herself that the person is a legal resident of the United States? Obviously for citizens, they can present to Social Security. Indomitable. Registration can be challenged as well, can it not? I mean, even on petitions here, you can challenge a signer's eligibility to be considered a registered voter, I'm aware of that. My understanding too is that it, Montpelier's plan would just be to continue our tradition that we use as we register voters now and that their affirmation when they registered a vote, they swear or affirm that, you know, that list of things is true. And if they're not telling the truth on that, they are committing voter registration fraud and perjuring themselves. That's my understanding there, which would be similar. I thought the point of prior discussions was not to have the demand municipal staff not ask people about their legal status in terms of residency. Right, ours doesn't. Right, and that's, I think that would be challenging for us to try to integrate in that case. They agree. I will just say that I have global concerns about, I think number two is a whole different vastness that seems like it's got a lot of technical questions and implications that go maybe beyond our potential timeline just being bought from my perspective, but my perspective hasn't been shared a lot, so that's okay. The next or final question, if there's nothing else on this item? I have one really small thing and that's just in, so if that language, let me, whoops, of subsection D, if within the list of things that are protected, if that should include, I'm not remembering the exact technical term, driver privilege cards as well. So that's something that are commonly issued that are different than driver's licenses and are different than, what else does it say here? Non-driver identification cards. I know that that language is copied verbatim from Act 128, but, so I just don't know if. So it's a weakness of 128. Yeah, well, but I don't, they don't need that because non-driver or non, I keep getting it wrong. I keep getting it wrong. Non-driver identification cards. Driver privilege cards are often issued to non-citizens, I believe, I don't remember the exact, but it's something that somebody would not use that number on currently to register as a state of Vermont voter. Got it. So I don't, I guess it actually doesn't matter because I don't think there's anywhere that we need to ask for that, so. Yeah, do we ask for this information as part of, do we ask for people's email addresses and social security number when they register, vote? Last four of the social. So all this information is information we currently collect. And that's just the standard. That's the state of Vermont form. Yes, state of Vermont form. Okay, so, but we're gonna have to come up with a special form anyway. Yeah. My last question though too, does this allow, from an administrative standpoint, somebody who is using a regular state of Vermont voter registration form to be registered to be both on the state and federal checklist as well as the municipal checklist. That way they wouldn't need to do two different forms. I thought the whole point was that's not, that by doing that form, they would, people who would utilize this provision that we're offering would not qualify potentially under that oath. So, no, they would be violating that oath instantly by signing that form. No, I mean for a citizen resident. Making sure that if you sign that form, it also gets you on this municipal checklist. But then people are only eligible to be on, to vote in municipal elections would need to use the separate form because they can't use that form and register in state and federal. With the state and federal, I mean. So it's. So I think the operationally, and again this is a challenge of moving this process quickly as we've had conversations about this, but there's a difference between what's in charter and an operational implementation plan. Operationally how we've talked about it is citizens would fill out the state of Vermont voter registration form and create the state of Vermont voter registration list. Non-citizens would fill out the non-citizen form, the resident form, and would be added to that municipal voter registration list, but not the state voter registration list. So the two lists, the municipal voter registration list would be comprehensive of all residents of Winooski including citizens, whereas the state voter registration list would only include citizens. And there would be likely right now with our demographics, a smaller amount of people using the all resident or the non-citizen voter registration form. Make it clear. Completing the state and federal form automatically gets you on the municipal checkbook. Exactly. Okay, we'll move on to number three. Proposal language filming, the word citizen from the front. Again, you know, Bob brought up, I think he answered kind of key questions to it. Is there anything else you guys wanna mention on that? This is on this. Citizen. The word citizen. So, as I said, I guess in the beginning, I think that this is. Something that from a charge transfer perspective needed to be done anyway. Exactly. And how we're operationally running the city anyway. Yeah. And that was the case that was made to me and it made sense, but I think what I said was that, that I'm totally on board with this, but that obviously we have to have that discussion as a council. What did Jesse brought up to my attention? Well, and I also think if we're just to add to that, if the intent is to allow all to vote in municipal elections to then have somewhere else in the charter that limits participation to citizens is contradictory within the document. There's some other language in this page that's awful. Is the proposal to replace the word citizen with resident or what's the proposal to replace that word? My recommendation would be to replace with resident, but as Bob said, since we had not had that conversation, if there's another word that council would prefer. Yeah, so there's one provision that is a peculiar, peculiar to a particular issue, which is the right to using, developing, conserving the resources of the Winooski River as it flows through the city of Winooski. And it says no citizen or association of citizens can do that without obtaining approval from the city council. So I don't, changing that to resident is not the right use. I think it should be no person. Oh, boy. I had a long conversation with James, probably see about this, about why that existed. And it has roots with hydro one. Oh, I'm sure it does. Yeah, it was put in as a specialized, and it was made very clear to us we could not touch it. Yeah, that was in the charter change. Now, with that being said, I think it was the thing itself, whether a citizen was an important component of that or not, I can't remember, but just to flag that conversation, we can look back from what Jim was doing. Who was that, sir? He was Paul Franklin Collins. He was our charter attorney. Yeah, when we did a charter update. So we've done this before. So the other two places it appears is in the section on the general powers and duties of the city council, which include, one other thing is the power to provide for citizen participation in appropriate departments. You can change that to resident. I think that that would be appropriate. The third one is a section titled citizen engagement. And it is a provision that relates to the city council appointing boards and commissions to do a variety of things. And it refers to all unpaid appointments of citizens to boards, committees, and commissioners. So before a term, certainly citizens once appointed to a term, blah, blah, blah. So you can change that to residents as well. Okay. Any comments? Oh, well, it's not comments time. It's, we need to give direction. So I think residents make the most sense. Anybody with issues with that since we're doing resident voting? Anybody want to make a play for inhabitants? No? Okay. Public comments, questions, concerns? Just we're going to clarify the power over water resources question. If it makes more sense to say person, what's fine in that context, but you're going to give us a recommendation. I'll try to revisit that conversation that the mayor has had and see if there's some, some limitation on what we can do to that language. And if not, I would suggest changing it to person. Yeah, I've got a mocked up. Bounce back and forth. I'll look to. Okay. Okay. I think the way that I'm taking this then is there wasn't, there was not significant language issues. I think we're going to bring number two back and number two of number two, the voter checklist protection piece. I think that there were some questions opened up. I think the school is the most immediate beating one, right? And then I think there were a number of technical things thrown out there that I mean, some of those we won't have time to answer, which won't write to work through in terms of how that will functionally work. What I think though, wouldn't that be something if it passes these multiple stages, we'd have to figure out the actual, some of the administrative procedures, some of the big questions are important to answer. I would think that we would want to be able to explain that to the public when we're explaining how this is going to work to the people who are supposed to vote on it. I think I as a voter would want to hear that it had been thought through and that the entity asking you to do this knew what it was doing. So that's, I think it's important we get there. I just don't think we're gonna have it next week or two weeks from now, possibly all those things tied up, but. I mean, it's the school district charter needs to be changed in order to clarify which checklist it refers to. We have no authority to direct them to begin that process, right? I mean. As George, they're a separate charter. They're a separate entity. We have no authority to do anything. And you are planning to connect tomorrow. I'll send something to Mike and Sean. All right. Anything else on this issue from council? Sorry, Seth. I think you just tried to do this. And I just want to be really clear on what you all are expecting staff to work on between now and the 17th. And then on the 17th, what we would be bringing before you is language that you feel comfortable moving forward to the voters to start that public hearing process. And are there specific things you want from us either to change on these documents in advance of putting together those documents or other information you want us to prioritize figuring out in the next two weeks before you're ready to take that vote. So I think number one is to me that the school notification number two is number two, I think needs to be, we need to be able to extract it, is my opinion. We need to be able to easily extract that. The 128 language. Correct. What do you mean extract it? Pull it out. So that I would just have as a movable piece in part and be prepared for that. Because I think, again, I don't think it's a good idea. This spot is just hearing that for the first time here tonight, asking them to make a decision on something like that and give specified directions, not the way we do things. So the idea that, again, this got thrown in to this mix is giving people time to think about that and come up with questions to those to staff, but that's number two. From a technical perspective, what was the link? Were there any lingering questions that I'm missing on those that you guys got balanced at either in this session that you feel stood out? I do think we need to look at the oath in B2. If we refer to that, what does that exactly mean on the voter checklist on the registration form? And do we need to specifically refer to a Wenuski Oath? And then incorporating the charter languages about citizen. Could we also clarify any joint state, local, ballot items that were mentioned by an esteemed commenter in the area in regards to if we're having our justice of the pieces are carried on the... I think how we've talked about that thus far is that we would always have municipal ballots and state ballots and we would no longer be putting items on to the state ballot the way JPs are put onto the state ballot. And those would all need to be hand counted. With the current technology we have in place, those would all need to be hand counted. I think that JPs are specifically named in the Vermont Constitution and is also the only party designation and a local election that we have. I think it's out of our hands. I don't think it's a municipal thing we have as much control over. I think that's correct. Because it's the only party designated item. So this is just another one of, I think. You search that. Yeah, because it's the only thing we have political affiliation for in the city. They're named alongside all the attorneys and county positions and elections officers, terms of office, subsection 43 by any elections. So I haven't thought about this as the question whether a JP election, a state-wide state election as opposed to a municipal election. Yes? And I think for the best of our ability and we went into the policy this time, I think an operational overview, the best that we could give for next time would be great. An associated cost. And as close to associated costs as we can. I mean, I think that's gonna be, I don't know, you measure the cost of hand counting 1,200 ballots versus having a machine do it. That's, but whatever we can come up with. You can get the machines programmed to count our municipal ballots. We just couldn't have those same items on the statewide ballot, but LHS, the group that programs the machines, can't they, they can do separate. They can program the card to read more than one ballot. That's never the way it's been explained to me or the way it's been done here. It's always been hand counted. So I, I mean, I'm not a professional on it, but it's my understanding that they couldn't do that in it. And again, it might be a programming cost that to understanding that would be good. What else? Yes ma'am. So this is not really your work. I think it's our work. I'm not sure where we're going to, if we're gonna talk about it under item H, but this is moving forward. We've got a couple months before the actual vote, but not very much time at all before we vote to move it forward. I'm wondering what folks, I do not think it's appropriate to limit the public discourse around this to our meetings and call that a public hearing and call that public engagement on this issue. That falls far short, I think. So I'm just interested in, it's not tonight, which probably it's not a good idea to do tonight, but at our next meeting, I'd like to hear those thoughts about how we're actually gonna have a conversation with our community about this proposal, because if we get this wrong, it will be very wrong. The problem with that is that the next meeting is when we go on putting it forward in language. So there's not really a window for that to occur before this body has to take action. But there is to engage them in the issue before they decide whether or not they want to vote for it. That's true. As a policymaker, it's usually a good thing to engage people while making policy as well to be able to understand how to put forward a policy that's going to best meet everybody's needs versus saying, hey, I came up with this great policy. Let me explain it to you. So that's something that I don't know if there's, I don't have an answer for that. And what's gonna occur in the next two weeks? There's nothing scheduled? Well, I don't think anything can occur unless this body decides something can occur. So I don't think it's appropriate for individuals to go out and do an engagement process until we've had a conversation about what that process is. That's my view. I think that's the agreement that we made. At least. To not engage in discussions, or do you mean to hold them, type them? To not hold events. When we've done efforts around the pool, around Main Street, it was a discussion that we had at the council level and people were designated as the council's representatives in the communities on that topic. That is generally the procedures that you passed at the beginning of the year. That's generally what everybody signs up for. Just being really blunt, since that's what we're doing, right? That has not necessarily been this particular group's MO on all things from a stylistic perspective. So I think there's opportunity for, it's a short window. So if there's something specific people are looking for from an engagement perspective or an expectation of what's gonna be executed, it's number one, I think, totally unfair to ask staff to do almost anything around that in two weeks. We have them running in a billion different directions and this is a self-made timeline. And number two, I do think that there should be broad agreement about what that is and what it looks like. Well, I think if at a minimum, there's a statement on Front Porch Forum or elsewhere letting people know that at the next meeting, this question is going to be discussed. And doing on residents the courtesy of letting them know that this conversation is happening and why it's happening, why it, you know, we're on an expedited timeframe. So if people wanna show up to the meeting and weigh in, it's not a limited number of people that for some reason from the city council agendas and know that this is what's being talked about, but we're proactively saying this is a big deal, we recognize it's a big deal and we would like your participation and comment at this meeting. Because it's your only chance to do it before we take action to put it on the ballot. That makes sense to me. I'd like to ask you to do that as our spokesperson. I would like it to come from the city officially. If this is something we haven't decided as a council, what direction we're moving forward in, I think it makes the most sense for just notification that we're having. That's what the communication would be. The mayor is our spokesperson. I think similarly to Christine not doing the presentation on a diverging vote that we had, I wouldn't feel super comfortable with. Seth, you spoke in opposition of us moving forward with the timeline being the one authoring that personally. I think communication on front porch forums different from multiple community presentations and dialogue with residents as the city's representative. I think that's why we have a mayor. That's the idea. Generally guys, when things happen at the table is the way that this politic is designed is the decisions get made and then you move forward. The city's communications are informative to residents and explain things and help them get information, gather enough information to be able to make important decisions. That's what the goals of those communications are. And I'm sorry if I got lost somewhere for people in terms of how the city communicates and what the intent of communication coming from directly from the city is. But that's what it's for. And that's what I've been asked to do for the last four years is try to do that and not share my own personal perspectives on things. Lots of times I'd love to. And if you ask me on the street I'll be happy to share those. But generally when you guys make a decision it's the job of chair of the board to communicate that to the public. I hear you have my board. Thank you. Any issues with that? Okay, so we'll post an official update and on the city website and front porch forum. And I'm sure we'll get shared via the social media outlets as well. It'll outline process. I'll be happy to just, because this is such a touch point issue we'll provide an opportunity for individual feedback. Just as a reminder, we can share things like that. I can share something like that. You can individually send something back to me from a comment perspective or concern perspective. But you can't reply all because then it becomes a conversation and that's the mean law. Other questions, comments, concerns from council? I'll turn it back to the public one more time. Questions, comments, concerns from the public? Next item, executive session. Sure, let me open that one up and then we'll go right into it. I think we're excited to get this one close. All right, so that concludes this item unless there's anything else for council. Very good. The other thing that we did place in here, and pardon me, I think this is what you're referencing, George, is an opportunity for the city to have an executive session with our attorney related to implications of charter chains from our, I think, ramification standpoint. And I'm gonna just ask, is it, I think it's good for people to hear what concerns might exist from liability standpoint for the body to hear that if there's content there, or if this wasn't just for those placeholders, my understanding. I think whenever we're thinking about setting legislation, there are potential legal implications. That's enough of an answer. I wanna add that earlier this evening we also bumped the treasurer appointment to an executive session too because we're gonna discuss specific personnel and specific individuals that would not be appropriate to do so in public. So we've got two items now that we did an original review for executive session. The first, as just explained, is a potential executive session pursuant to 3131E to discuss potential charter change implications in confidence with our attorney utilizing attorney client privilege. In addition to that, we are also proposing to discuss the treasurer appointment. And just as a reminder, that's a personnel issue, personnel matter as a selection of the council. No decisions get made in executive session. Anything that requires a vote comes back out for public vote and is discussed publicly prior to doing so. So now I'll open it up to questions. First of all, I have no problems with you discussing personnel issues in the executive session. However, they must be posted on your agenda in order to go into executive session. They were not. So I frankly don't believe that you can take it, have an executive session applied on the issue of personnel. Secondly, if there are any issues with legal challenges or costs or other things dealing with the charter change, then the people need to know that. I can't think of any reason in the open meeting law that would allow you to go into executive session over potential charter changes. Just hearing from your attorney is not in itself a reason to go into executive session. Are you going to get information that the people aren't going to have when they vote on this issue? I think the idea under that provision is to allow the council to get free and clear legal advice from their attorney, number one, and number two, also for the council not to be placed in a position adverse legal position because we discussed something publicly that could have ramifications. So that's- Doesn't, I mean, I said for most of the day, listening to Republicans in Washington, this sounds like them. I don't think you want to sound like them. Thank you for the feedback. The fact of the matter is that if there's information that there's going to be legal implications over such a change, the people need to know that. They need to know the reasons why. If you change your mind and decide not to put this on about, people need to know that. Each of you is accountable to the people. So do you want to be accountable to them or do you just want to be accountable to yourselves? I rest my case. Thank you. Yes, sir? I tend to agree with George.  So there may be a narrow legal where this fits, but not withstanding the office aren't very good for something that could be potentially broken down. Thank you. Are there questions, comments, concerns? Very good. I would entertain a motion to enter into the aforementioned executive sessions pursuant to the stated case for first the charter change implications issue and then second for personnel matter related to the charter appointment. Second. Motion by Nicole. Second by Christine. I want to note that the city as previously will be bringing Attorney Bob De Palma to the executive session with us too. And Jessie Baker? She's ex officio, so she's automatically there whether she likes it or not. No decisions get made in executive session. Correct. Okay, we have a motion from Cole Second from Christine for the discussion. Seeing and hearing none, all those in favor, say aye. Aye. And those opposed? Motion carries. And just to note, council will reconvene the meeting as soon as these issues are covered. We don't expect it to be a terribly long conversation. So I was just explaining that it's probably, we're thinking this is a 10 to 15 minute type of thing, not a long session. So we will reconvene tonight's Gnusky City Council meeting. Just a couple of notes. City Council in an executive session with our attorney discussed potential charter change implications from a legal perspective. That was an attorney's client privilege conversation and discussion. No decisions remain in regards to that matter. And we also specifically addressed a personnel issue related to the Charter of Appointment, which will be an item that will be back on next week's agenda if you're curious as to how that process is unfolded and I'll expect a selection to be forthcoming soon on that. Okay. And with that, just a reminder, no votes take place in the executive session. All decisions will remain public. As we'll go back to the regular agenda items, capital projects financing. Just some lights, just a little. So just by way of introduction, John and Ray have done work following up the last council discussion about financing for the Main Street Revitalization Project in the pool and presented to you in the packet that's online and in front of you the revised financing models. There's two in front of you, both integrate the pool and the Main Street debt service and associated costs. One is an all-in proposal and one is a phase proposal. Also before you as requested is, there's a request to lack of a better word, be more realistic about the financing on both sides. So we, Ray, took a very close look at potential revenue streams and built some new revenue models for the pool project. And additionally, Angela put some numbers together about what we anticipate, very preliminarily going into FY20 for other cost escalators. These are very preliminary. You'll hear much more about this on October 1st, assuming you pass the budget schedule on your agenda later on. So that's the introduction. John, I guess I'll turn it over to you to walk through. So I think that covers pretty much everything. I'm sorry. I love, no, that's fine, that's great. So I don't know if there's anything you're going to hit on specifically or go through the memo. And what, well, okay. I think something that's really important that I've heard some people explain in a confusing fashion is the, the cumulative tax impact over the years for residents and citizens versus a one-time annual increase for one budget. All of our modeling is showing not just a one-time increase in property tax that has been put forward, but several. And I think that, I want to make that really clear because in watching last time's session and in watching some, the door, I'll watch the guys. We're here. I quite frankly think that there's been some confusion about that here. And I think that that needs to be called out really clearly as to what we're trying in the community or from a consistent tax increase perspective. So I'll try and answer that, but John, jump in. So the best way to look at this quickly is on, if you think about table two or three, both have the same setup. The bottom three lines present the property rate, property tax rate impact. So table two is the full scope all in. The tax rate does increase not equally over time because when debt service picks up. So debt service picks up at a point in the future after you've taken the money out or at a point in the future after a grant or a low interest loan has been realized. So what's presented in the very bottom line is the tax rate increase that we would see each year that accumulates up to the tax rate that's on the property tax increase line. So for example, in FY 20, the property tax increase is 0.021 for a 2% increase. In FY 21, it's a 16.9% increase for a tax rate property tax increase of 0.184. So that's adding up. There's a two plus the 16, et cetera. Does that, Seth, is that cool? Yeah, I just think it needs to be pointed out that this is not a one-time tax increase. It's an annual increase, but the amount of the increase is on an annual basis, different year to year, right? Correct. Okay, so then when it jumps to 14% for that... That's 14% on top of the previous year, 16.9%. So you will have over the course of... So go from 1.27 to 1.45. Over the course of three years, you will have seen a 30, almost 33% increase. Without any growth in the overall budget. You mean there's other stuff in here? Absolutely, honestly. Well, then that I appreciate that something else we asked for, right, was this graph on the other anticipated increases, which gives us a couple of years of those, but... So this gives us next years of those, but you can extrapolate out from there. I think it's important to know also, this is for those things that we know increase annually. It also does not take into consideration any grand list growth. You will hear this comprehensively presented on October 1st. Right. This is solely if things just rise with no offset. And it doesn't account for the budget process that you go through as a leadership team in order to present us with a budget that doesn't have a 4% increase, which is... So when you say that's why we have been more in the area of 1 to 2 cents rather than 4 to 6. Because of the grand list growth offset. But also because of some difficult budgeting. Yes. But so that does not contemplate that process having complete right. So there are, we'll have to jump into your discussion, but there are a universe of things between... So table two is essentially the worst case scenario if you tell us to go now with everything all in. This is the impact. Table three is the value engineering of the pool and the phasing of Main Street. And we can talk to you about what that means in detail. That these are, I just need to be really clear. These are models. It is, there are other options in the middle. We just tried to give you two options. And I think one of the hard things sitting in your chair over the next couple of months and years about this is we can build models and what happens on the ground is what could change. So at some point we want to provide you with a model that we believe reflects the community's vision and your vision. It's still a budgetary model. I also just want to say that we as a body have not had this yet, but it is time for us to have this conversation too is we're going to have to start saying some deadlines for ourselves in terms of giving that information so that the budget can be prepared appropriately and that we can back into these financial decisions on a timely basis as well. But I think that's another conversation for us as well. What's the goal for this evening? Well, the goal was really to see what information was necessarily needed for us to start to formulate real decisions guiding some direction for staff. We brought forward last time memorandums providing comprehensive updates on the two models. The decision was in that meeting to marry the two conversations so we could have a holistic budget directional conversation. So this is our opportunity to have pieces of that conversation. I think from my perspective, I think we need to talk about components of what lines and thresholds are going to be and if we're going to give any direction to staff as they go into trying to construct next year's fiscal budget for themselves operationally. Like that's our most important responsibility I think is giving them clear guidance so that they can do that so like the city can continue to effectively run. And then there's the outlying issue of, as you look at these, if it becomes really apparent from a prioritization standpoint from a project perspective and or the scalability of the projects and if one should be scaled over the other, those are all those decisions that we need to come to. So I think we can space some of those out but I think the biggest thing is we need to know if there's enough information to make informed decisions here. And again, just you just said that models can change, the adjustments can be made, but at the end of the day this body eventually has to pull sugars. And send forth with a really clear direction what's going on. So there's nothing per se to approve tonight. I think the big thing is, number one is, are we happy with this composition of information as it relates to the two parties? And just the last thing I'll add in is there's this whole fundraising conversation that's being had. And I think we decide that there's anything that we're gonna let impact our decision making to do with that. And if there's any decision to provide additional guidelines there to that group. So, in the, that's helpful, thank you. Excuse me, I don't know what your goal is at nine o'clock. I am interested, the memo alluded to scaling back Main Street or phasing that in would be more expensive. And I'm trying to see more what that amount, by how much we're talking about. And then there's wise kind of foolish stuff that we could easily get into in order to avoid political heat in the first couple of years but we end up crossing the city taxpayers. I'd like to know what the order of magnitude is. I was talking about. Yeah, so if, just stepping back, so phase approach with Main Street, that project has a little more opportunity to phase in versus phase out. So what we showed with the model was if we utilize the USDA water resources grant, completed that work with the schedule that's been presented, bring in the curb lines to kind of set the table for that additional streetscape work. If we phased in the streetscape work and say we did up to Spring Street as phase one and then that curb line work for the entire project as part of phase one as well. If we phased in the rest of that streetscape work, future dates, we could complete all of it. Say in this model, we show that work aligning with the TIF expiration. Just a better line that that additional, getting back to your question, so that additional cost, you would have to go back to our consultants, talk about cost assessments. What's a potential material inflation cost if you start in 2025? What's the cost you potentially mobilize as contractors? Right, and I know it's very difficult to estimate what might happen in the future, but some order of magnitude would be useful in evaluating the approach that makes sense. And then also just in terms of usability of the corridor, what kind of disruption would we be talking? I mean, I'm pretty sure a perpetual construction site up and down Main Street is what people had in mind when they approved the project either, so sort of what the customer experience might be. So one thing that as we've been talking about phasing as well as with the form-based code, there is some opportunity to kind of work with developers as they do some of this construction work. So form-based code, we're pushing everything to the property line. One of our concerns is if we do complete that streetscape work and developer comes in, they construct this new building or the property line, they could be tearing up some of that new streetscape work with this assault. So there is some benefit to the phasing. So phasing, yeah, that makes sense. And when would the utility undergrounding happen? Was that part of phase one or phase two? It would be phase two. Phase two. And how long does phase two go for? It depends. So we could do it in one chunk potentially, maybe a two-year construction cycle, or we could break it up if we have an idea how developers are moving forward with projects. And depending on funding as well. If we feel like if you guys set a target for a property tax rate increase, we can phase the project to meet that. So part of what I struggle with a little bit is we've got this dissent. I'm not clear when the timelines are for us to, I understand we have to put together a FY20 budget, but there are assumptions built into FY20 that I think are relatively consistent. That scenario doesn't change for FY20, depending on whether you go all in or take a phase approach. And I think the results of the other grant requests that we made will have a significant impact on the options potentially, is that it? So I'm struggling with when do we, I don't like to use the pull the trigger, but when do we need to make decisions in order to? We didn't put forward a defined schedule for that. I mean, we could discuss that now in terms of, you know, when it's most beneficial and helpful to them, so our own internal deadlines, go ahead. So one of the times of linings we have put forward to you is the pull opening in the spring of 21, wrapping up for the end of the 20 construction. We don't have a huge amount of legal time on that schedule. And so if that is something you wanna move forward on, we need to be moving into final design on that this fall. We can't wait until after town meeting day to do that. We will lose that summer usage schedule. I think similarly with Main Street and figuring out those construction costs, we would likely, well, we have to get from, John jumped in here, but my understanding is we, even if we do a phased approach, we need to move the whole project as close to final design as we can so we know where pipes are going. You can't design a water system without knowing where the underground utilities are going over time. So we would need to advance that section of the work in advance of the construction phasing. That I think we don't have quite the same, you know, in the next two months, we need to be approving that contract. But I think before town meeting, if we really wanna stay on this schedule, we would need to be moving forward. So phased or not phased, that work needs to happen. I guess I'm trying to understand how we can help make decisions that are gonna have an irrespective of the specific pathway we pick in a timely manner that doesn't waste construction seasons or whatever, while also not rushing to a decision point when we don't necessarily have all the information that would be useful on the Main Street side. Yeah, I agree. So Main Street has more flexibility because either way, with phased or not, we would still move forward, but the pool is sort of a critical path, I guess, to the side of it. So I guess saying it another way back to you is to, at one point, are you going to be comfortable enough that both of these are gonna happen to some degree, that they're financial models that work to some degree, that you feel comfortable authorizing us to move to final design and bid documents with both projects? And with the acknowledgement that those final design and bid documents may sit on the shelf for a little while until the financing models catch up. And that's what we've been trying to do with these models is give you some options of how those revenue streams and expense streams could line up to provide options. Right, so on the pool side, I would be comfortable with a value engineering approach. I confess that I don't remember all the recommendations that were behind that, but my recollection was in general, they didn't substantively change the resource that would be made available to the community. And they were all endorsed by the engineers in terms of. And I'm also happy to set fundraising goals around the addition of those features. I think a community room, a pool, there was one over there, and a slide, the slide. Those are concrete goals, and I do think the committee, you know, we haven't necessarily been as clear as we could be with them around what is it we need in order to move this project forward. So I feel like those are some tangible asks. I think they need that. And I think I agree. And I would be, despite the fact that there was a lot of conversation and the lead up to the bond vote about the value of those features, I think when we're looking at tax rate increases and the order of magnitude that we're looking at, we have to be willing to be very clear with people about what we can support and what we can't support in total. That's, I guess I'm just trying to put my cards on the table. To just get some clarification real quick though, because I might be reading it wrong in the memo that table three, which has the valued engineering option, still does include a community where we slide heater and heaters, and that the memo says it could be farther scoped down from 3.6, which is the value engineering to 3.3, correct. Okay. So it would be like a fundraising goal of 300,000 dollars. Okay. So I also like the realistic fundraising goal. We also though have the same revenue in both pool models. What we've heard consistently is the features are really important to the revenue. Right, so we have a discussion as we develop some of these models, and I think as we have seen now over the last couple months, you can massage these models out of the place. I think given that the goal in looking at this approach would be to give the fundraising committee something to shoot at and hopefully give them work to do to keep those models, keep those features in place, it didn't feel appropriate to us to peel that revenue back out and then have to go back and add it back in if they do their job and do the fundraising piece. So we left it as is. Again, with the hope that that fundraising committee would take that charge and go get it done and bring that money back to the project and keep those features in place, if that makes sense. At the end of the day, it seems to me that the slide may be one of the last things to go in. I mean, it seems like if they can't meet the goal, then we have a discussion around, well, our funding assumptions have the built into it. Is it, it came 50,000 shy of a slide. Should we put that in there? I mean, I don't know how all these things get timed out, but the engineering plans would include those features. We just would not move forward with the construction of them unless we add. And as we said, I know you talked a little bit about this as well. I think it's easier to peel those pieces back out of a design than it is to do a design and then have to go back and add them in. So I think we would engineer or do the design work for the full project and then be ready to get to the fundraising. It doesn't come through to pull back the community revenue of the slide. Right. And how that conversation gets managed as to which one gets prioritized or I think that's a conversation for down the road but Christine, I'm sorry you got caught up like four times. I was just saying that I also fully support that move of moving forward with the design, setting the fundraising target for the fundraising committee to cover those features and having the value in the engineering. Because as we can see in table two, we can't do both of these things at once as this. Fulfill. Yeah, okay. Yeah, and I think the sooner the better because you're going to need the time to fundraise. My concern with the main street phasing for table three is signing up that quarter or 10 years of continuous construction season. But of course, obviously with that too, my concern of not having some level of phased approach is the numbers. I'd like to share my takeaway from the meeting that we had actually about this. So looking at this phase ap