be recorded the witching hours so I'm going to call the South Burlington City Council meeting of December 18th 2023 to order and we'll begin with the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Well given the weather I hope everyone is safe and thankfully they can join by you know virtually and not have to go out in the car or as in Barb's case from afar. Second item is introductions on exiting building in case of emergency and review of the technology options. So for those joining us in the room you can go out if there's an emergency you can go out either side of the rear of the auditorium and then turn left or right to get outside. For those participating online thank you for joining us. If you would like to be recognized during any agenda item please turn your camera on or indicate in the chat that you'd like to comment and I'll have the chair call on you other than that we are not monitoring the chat for content. Thank you. Okay items three is the agenda review. Are there any additions deletions or changes in the order of agenda items? Seeing none all those in favor of adopting this agenda signify by saying aye. So the agenda is as presented. Next is comments and questions from the public not related to the agenda. So are there any in the auditorium? Okay seeing none how about from home? Quiet night seeing none. So we'll move on to counselors announcements and reports on committee assignments followed by the city manager's report. Thank you. So do you want to start Andrews? Happy to. So I attended the bike ped committee and the energy committee meetings both had a wonderful update on our transportation demand management plans which basically are a set of requirements some options that scale depending upon the size of development that with the hope that those requirements and options will reduce the vehicle miles traveled by the residents. So for instance someone may choose to put a sheltered bike parking someone may choose to have spaces that favor high high accuracy vehicles a developer may choose to join cat mode give reduced transit passes a whole menu of options that intend to do that. So that's that's exciting both committees gave I think really good feedback on on those suggestions ideas and I expect it will be before us at some point. Great. Bike ped also had a robust discussion about patching road and issues that some residents encounter on Pouchin Road with speeding and folks kind of turning unexpectedly or when they're not supposed to and close calls with residents so it was a robust discussion about what can be done about patch and road include traffic calming improved intersections and things like that so that's also something to look forward to. The engine committee again spent some time with the TDM and also spent some time talking about this exciting climate change book club project may have seen an announcement in the other paper four books two in the spring two next fall so that's I think a really good way to educate discuss and engage with folks about climate change and our environmental issues that we face. Great thank you. Excellent books. Tim. Yes thank you I attended the budget retreat on Friday and I also went to the economic development meeting last Tuesday I think it was and they elected some officers and there was general discussion and I also informed them about some of the feedback City Council had about the $400,000 for kind of a daycare type fund so that's going to be under some review I think about how they would like to structure that so they better talk about it soon. Yes they better get it structured if they want it to happen. Okay Megan. Just to add on to the budget retreat I did go to the senior holiday celebration the handbells portion of it not the meal and it was really lovely and so I really want to thank Rebecca and her staff help I know that Adam I think Adam was there as well and I think Travis was there as well and it was just beautiful it was an hour of beautiful music with people singing along and it's just kind of friendly banter back and forth between the audience and the performer so I was really yeah looking forward to being a full-fledged medmer and going over here it was nice my grandmother used to play handbell so it was also nice. Good memory. Thank you. I attended the Reckon Parks committee meeting Adam's first meeting as a as a department head and what what I remember and I wrote down mostly had to do with their very spirited discussion about easement discussions at Hubbard and I think that they'll probably be follow-up from that committee about that. I'm not sure when that might happen but okay okay thank you good all right I attended the common area for dog committee last Tuesday followed by the Planning Commission and common area for dogs they had no updates on Farrell Street they're kind of waiting for the DRB to make a final they think either administratively or as a commission the final design for the changing the bike path so that they then can work on the upgrades to Farrell Park. About Wheeler there's a new sign for rules has been installed and a new bulletin board which I think should help with some communications with the public about that dog park and eventually they're going to get a QR code sign with the hopes that and I think they have to work on it with the city clerk about people being able to use a cue you know one of those signs whatever they call it so people can make get information as well as make contributions donations to maintenance or whatever for the dog park and we talked a little bit about how you might fund raise for that and we Adam math was there was his first time as the liaison with the city and he talked about we talked about with him and the friends group trees at Wheeler Park we kind of brought him up to speed on all the things that the committee had talked about in the past and would like those amenities would like they would like to have them done at the dog park so because there is money in the budget and so they're anxious to get some of it done that was followed by a really interesting and delightful I think planning Commission meeting it was really talking about what are some of the possibilities I guess that will be required for our LDRs to meet the requirements of act I guess it's 42 s 100 and some of the things around the climate plan and kind of laying out the work that they will be doing in the next year which is substantial and I just have to say I just sitting in the audience and listening it's it's really a very talented wonderful group of people I was very impressed with everyone how they contributed the way they contributed and the level of conversation so it was nice to listen in and feel confident that we have some good minds working on what to do next and then I also you know went to the retreat which I also thought was really wonderful and I I really want to thank Jesse for the kind of leadership she offers this community and even organizing those kinds of retreats and conversation it was a circle of all the department heads and the counselors and it was a really nice conversation with lots of good questions and it was not the kinds of conversations or hearings that you see on TV with the senators or the representatives or the board of select or the counselors kind of grilling someone and trying to get them to say something or admit admit something but rather in kind of an adversarial way this was you know I think a reflection of Jesse's leadership and it was just really nice to be part of that and I appreciate that can I add two things so I also Friday night after the gathering with city people went up to the Veterans Memorial Park to see the holiday lights that Rex and Park put on this beautiful beautiful display just one caveat you know if it's not frozen and I call wear boots it's a little muddy in some places but the blue tunnel is really beautiful and the last thing is that my wife met with the some of the librarians on Friday discussing a new art project and will not disclose any other details until they can be disclosed suspense suspense yes it will be suspense you great thank you Jesse thank you and thank you pal and fear really kind words I also want to thank the council for your engagement during the budget retreat sitting through two and a half three hours of PowerPoint presentations can be rough and I was really impressed with how engaged you were great you ask great questions and certainly questions that if you are wondering about the numbers of the community are two so I think helped engage some of our helped inform some of us how we talk about things so thank you for that much like this meeting in July I just want to take a moment to acknowledge that some of our municipal partners across the state are going through a lot of flooding tonight and hope they are okay we have a number of roads closed here in our city and thankfully our public safety crews are out there ensuring everyone is safe tangentially speaking of which today chief Burke and I traveled to Waterbury to the state office complex for an all day meeting that the governor's office convened around public safety and community engagement there are representatives there are probably 15 police chiefs in the room managers most of the AHS administration much of the state police administration legislators judiciary folks all talking about kind of statewide what's going on in our communities with our neighbors who are struggling and and the perception perceptions around safe feeling safe in our communities those really great conversation heard a lot from the state about what they intend to do and initiatives they're leading around community public safety we were sent home halfway through it because Waterbury is flooding so it will continue on at a future date but it was a really great event and thanks to the governor's office for convenient I want to let the council know that we did not receive the first of the four federal grants we put forward for the bike ped bridge as you may remember Alana and Andy are working on actually five different applications for which are already in so this was the most competitive one that's on the was out in the in the networks right now but we did not receive that but we will keep working at bringing in those additional funds to wrap up that project Alana and I are also meeting first thing tomorrow morning with our state delegation to brief them on all things city center as well as potentially start talking about some state funding for that project because of its true regional benefit to Chinden County want to give you two quick updates that we are trying to maximize next week and having things be a little slower so we are doing a massive upgrade to laser fish next Tuesday the 26th we need it's just a traditional kind of software upgrade it will mean that laser fish is down for probably that full workday we're hoping that the 26th is a day that not a lot of people are going to be looking for public meeting documents so we'll see but just heads up if you're going in to try and find something it will be done for 26th and then additionally Tom has arranged for the light infrastructure on Dorset Street to be put in in front of the school next week while school is not in session so you will see them working on that intersection as well just a reminder to me the city hall is closed on the 25th public safety will be here obviously 24 seven for whatever members of our community may need we will be operating with fewer staff next week to give people the opportunity to be with their families and friends so we will still be open and here for business but maybe a little slower with email responses and then just a few fun things I'm glad you were able to attend the senior holiday event we had about 70 seniors here with us last week for that event it was lovely thank you for folks who participated in that the senior center will be completely closed next week but looking ahead to fun things the Valentine's dance registration is open on our website if folks would like to sign up for that and then mark your calendars for April 5th and 6th this will be our next illuminate Vermont as you might remember last year we did illuminate Vermont in December it's really fun and interesting to sit to have a huge street fair in the middle of a snow storm so we are opting to try for a spring event this year just to rain it's actually what we're actually trying to do illuminate Vermont is coordinate with the eclipse so it will be the weekend right before the eclipse so we imagine that there will be lots of visitors to our region that weekend going into the Tuesday of the eclipse so should be a fun time the fun event for out of state or is to come and see how great self-reelington is that's all I have great thank you very much okay moving on to the consent agenda we have six items disbursements minutes from November 6th and December 4th the receipt of the November 20 2023 financials an authorization for the submittal of applications to renew the city's new town center and neighborhood development area designations and approve the v-trans transportation alternatives program grant application for the spear street shared use path and finally approve of Vermont humanities rapid response grant to implement Vermont reads in 2023 move that we approve so any discussion or questions all right all in favor of the consent agenda as presented signify by saying aye it's unanimous and is agreed to item 7 will receive the chinning county planning commission some annual report and Charlie Baker's here so welcome Charlie oh and Chris rocks excuse me I'm sorry that's right you're our delegate and who's the alternative and you are Megan so we got the Chris is so calm poor here only gone once that's right so thank you very much for the time on your agenda good to see you all this evening and happy holidays this is a little later than I usually try to get here but we were able to make it work and just context-wise this is I try to visit every fall to really do a customer service call and see how we're doing in terms of providing services to the city in the way that you expect them I'll kind of review and pause the through the report here the first page of the report gives you background of the history of the regional planning commission and a little bit about how we utilize your municipal dollars to leverage state and federal dollars coming into the region and then your representatives thank you Chris bag it is a alternate yes Steve's on our emergency management committee Tom and Paul around committees also and they're all very active and great representatives as you might expect so thanks thank them thanks to them for their service the second section is really the meat of the report which lists a page and a half or so of things that we engage with you on in the last fiscal year including several things on the climate action work some of which wrapped up last you know last fall but some which is still going on bike-ped things including the bike-ped bridge over 89 and quite a bit of bike-ped work geographic information services or mapping data technical assistance including reviewing regs in town plan or city plan in your case we also have traffic counts available and byways and just a little note on the E&D transportation service so I'm going to pause this there's a whole long list of any feedback for me on how we were doing in terms of providing those services and there's a wide range of those but just to comment it's a lot yeah so we really do use you it seems a lot and we appreciate that and you know I think it's an important relationship going to appreciate what you can bring to the table I was gonna wait till you get to the CCC UD before I made my comment oh excellent I'll say I worked very closely with two of your staff Melanie needle and and John da on the climate action plan and they were fantastic we not only could not could we have not done it without them but the the level service was just really beyond it was just amazing to working with them well I really appreciate that thank you I will pass that along thank you and sorry I should wait any other comments thank you the in the middle of the third page you also have a long list of things that are in our transportation improvement program which mirrors the state transportation capital program I'm not going to review all those hopefully you've gotten updates over time from your own staff on a lot of these projects but you have a lot of projects in the capital program and so there's more for your information to know that those are all out there and in some stage of progress though I guess the one thing I will note is you know I can't believe we're talking about flooding again tonight you know just after about five months ago maybe four or five but one thing and I haven't gotten an official communication from v-trans on this but I am expecting that as a result of the work that v-trans has to do in repairing flood damaged roads and bridges and culverts that probably the rest of the program it's going to have an impact on the rest of the program so I guess just my sense and I again I haven't heard this officially yet but I wouldn't be surprised when the governor introduces a budget you know a month from now or so that projects may slide back to accommodate what they're having to do immediately in this fiscal year and probably into next fiscal year so that's just so and I say that also to anyone who's reading this and see the date on here take it with a grain of salt please if it hasn't already started it's likely to I would not be surprised we got delayed to some extent and then thank you you mentioned kind of how much work we do together you have one request in this year's work program for the walk bike master plan for the city so which was an unusually light year of requests from the city and I'm not encouraging you to give us a whole pile of them we can remedy that yes we've already we've already talked to staff we know there's more coming in the coming year which is fine no that's good and then yeah at the end are a lot of things that we do without regard to one specific municipality regional activities you know equity work economic development housing energy TDM we are working on a regional TDM plan mention that as I heard you talking about that earlier emergency management culverts and all kinds of things and the CUD which is a communications union district is something last year we started supporting and helped that got formed I would get helped I got formed and thanks Tim for volunteering to join that board appreciate it you run a tight ship and you have a high-level expertise on your staff and and gender is a great job and so did you and the people in that that that you know participate in that process especially the one that was elected chair I'm really impressed with the technical knowledge that they have it's and that so it's really clear that that I think that that district's gonna make progress you know okay yeah we have an RFP out there right now looking for the internet service provider to help fill in the gaps so knock on wood that we get some good responses to that and Chris I don't know if there's anything you want to add I think I'm here primarily to show my support as board and your representatives help Burlington it's fortunate to be elected the chair or the executive board and the board and we couldn't be more pleased with Charlie we just had our audit come in another clean audit this has not been something 15 years ago we could have said but over the last 10 years with Charlie and it's been really a tight ship as much as you mentioned the CCUD committee there Tim we're delighted with Charlie we're delighted with staff and his management of them and we're particularly excited I think he did not mention the equity engagement manager that we brought on board I attended the equity advisory committee at the end of October and it's a great underrepresented portion of our community that I think we need to really bolster and bring to the fore so it's happening we're excited about it in addition to all the threads that you see in here from emergency management to clean water service provider okay which we have I think just the small regulates coming into the base and not necessarily the big Wanooski but we're on top of many many different things and there's so many people working on so many different committees from South Burlington and from the staff of CCRPC and we're just as I say delighted with Charlie's management he is also by the way on a national board you're the secretary of what is it now yeah National Association of Development Organizations yes so he's garnering attention to Chittenden County not only in our state but beyond and bringing back what he can learn from them so thank you I forgot to mess mention in my activities because I always forget when I do stuff but I did attend the CCRPC legislative breakfast I don't know when it was last week it was two weeks ago two weeks ago and it was great and there were a lot of people there oh Jesse was there and was there anyone else from our community I don't think so all the the reps yes for sure and Senator so it was really very helpful as you went through what you saw as the big issues and got feedback from the different communities both on the town level as well as the legislative levels and you know clearly Chittenden County is a pretty diverse county so it's can be a challenge but I thought it was a very helpful and informative meeting and I appreciate it yeah thanks just one one minute on that I'll just add just for the rest of you that weren't able to be there we talked quite a bit about kind of a follow-up from S100 and 47 right which was very as you I know you felt very focused on municipal land use regulations right and so there was a lot has been a lot of conversation about okay that's fine what about the state's role in regulating land use and and so expect this year to be much more around act 250 and also climate resilience connected in with that so I think I don't I'm encouraged that some positive things come out of the session but as always stay tuned and participate as needed so and let me know if I can help with any of those things yeah thank you very much appreciate the time thank you thank you do you have any questions for us other than you know a couple more projects no I will leave it at that not at not at the time I guess maybe a heads up that we do have I mentioned a TDM study but the exit 14 which those of you that have been on the council longer will know we've had a lot of conversations about 89 and interchanges and exit 14 and redesigning that was one of the kind of primary things so we're starting kind of to refine that scope in the coming months so just just a heads up hopefully it kind of supports and you know provides an alternative method to the bridge that you're also building but we are so looking at how to slow traffic there and you know help like a bike and pedestrians get through that interchange easily without impacting traffic congestion is that what all the survey teams were working on I doubt it oh they've been on Heinsberg Road for at least a week or two on Heinsberg Road yeah that I'm not aware of a transportation project beyond me and then over the bridge and yeah I was yeah I saw them out there too I'm not sure what that was about thank you yeah thank you can I ask a question you may so Charlie you sit at like 30,000 feet over the whole county right and and and you you have this ability to like I'm way down a lot of things going on and you also have you know like a sort of microscopic view what do you think are the challenges to Chittin County right if now out you know five ten years just off the top of your head I mean obviously there are some obvious ones right but yeah yeah and those are the ones I kind of got to you know the climate housing kind of been top of mind I think they'll be top of mind for the legislature this year I mean probably a couple years ago I was at broadband you know kind of but those are big ones I think the other thing that I'm hearing kind of come up over and over and you got to mention the diversity within the county and a lot of that's around capacity right I mean we have cities like South Burlington with lots of capacity and professionalism and then we have very small towns with no staff and you're seeing this conversation kind of gone around the state of like how can we most effectively provide the services that we need to for our citizens and so I think that that's an ongoing conversation I wouldn't dare to guess what the answer is but it seems like maybe it's a conversation that's maybe ready to be had you know kind of and I didn't grow up in Vermont but if you look back you know to the into in the 1960s we had a pretty big statewide conversation about restructuring state municipal and county government and figuring out which responsibilities belong where right like towns don't have you know poor farms anymore and so some a lot of those health and human services duties went from municipal to state so I'm kind of curious to see if there is momentum to kind of start those kinds of conversations up again just because I as I talked to my peers and even legislators around the state that's yeah or we try to do things like regional dispatch or you know other regional types of services and even the CUD is an example we had to create a new municipality to do that you know and every time we're trying to get towns want to work together you know Hinesburg and Richmond we're talking about could they do a combined police department and just the bureaucracy challenges in that you know they couldn't they haven't overcome them yet right and that's kind of going on a lot so anyway sorry that was a big can of worms you just opened up or I just opened up on your question I apologize but but is that I just to follow up and that was a great question thank you um when you meet with your um compatriots from other counties or regional planning commissions do they um have the have they come to this similar conclusions as you or are there issues really different I mean every regional planning commission kind of struggles with these issues that cross town boundaries sometimes it's around you know two or three towns have lost their you know they don't have an assessor but it's all you know it's kind of a full gamut of services that are issues so anyway sorry I didn't mean to that was a negative conversation but that was negative that was just what it looks like is there regional discussion about the unhoused at all um you know in Chittin County we have the homeless alliance some I just kind of awareness of it we're not directly involved you know because it's much more about that direct service provision and so we try to stay plugged in to see is there anything we can work on upstream you know which I think is led into some of these you know zoning regulation questions you know and just the big picture of are we providing you know is our how much of the issue is a supply a supply issue you know I just read an article you know where the first or second highest homeless rate in the country so it's not getting any better right now a lot of work to do there okay thank you very much yeah thank you have a good night okay item 8 then is update to the community of the potential purchase of 1720 and 1730 Spear Street for conservation and affordable housing thank you um so I'm going to start this conversation but I do want to also thank and acknowledge that Tom and Janet Bellavance are here in the room with us and um have been part of crafting this message to the community tonight I really appreciate their partnership in achieving some big shared goals so I'm going to provide a very high-level overview to the community we have not a lot of details at this point that we can share but I thought it was important that we come to you and present some work that city staff and the Bellavances are working on so the northeast agricultural trust neat as representatives offered to sell the city 1720 and 1730 Spear Street the city and me are working together to accomplish a shared set of goals on those two properties if that if and when that purchase goes through the vast majority of these conversations will take place in executive session as do most land negotiation conversations however as a lot of municipal time and resources and potentially dollars in the future will go into this effort we did want to provide a high-level summary to the community additionally neat throughout this process has been working with the south burlington land trust so I want to talk about what our shared goals are in this effort so primarily I think the council's shared goal with the Bellavances is to conserve the majority of the acreage at 1720 and 1730 Spear Street this would be done through a third party conservation easement that would be executed at the time of sale additionally there's a shared goal around using some of the acreage a small portion of the front of the acreage along Spear Street to partner with a development partner to build affordable or affordable homes or a very small mixed income neighborhood so we are currently working with partners in the housing development and conservation sector in vermont to think about how we bring the highest and best value project forward in partnership to the council and the community so we don't know a lot of the specifics yet and that's purely because it's an active negotiation and we are bringing in these other partners into the conversation to understand what their values might be to partner with us but we are actively working on this between city staff the council and the bellavances and i believe there is a path forward in 2024 so that's the high level of what i want to share i i can't answer a whole lot more questions about that but i um appreciate again tom and jamp being here and if there's anything i've missed in our shared statement i would welcome you to provide that comment and otherwise with that with that that's what i want to share do either of you want to make a comment or okay great all right i don't have any comments but i'm glad that the public is aware of this now and we hope to keep moving forward okay thank you very much yes you may i don't know if we can answer them but you can ask away would you come up to the mic please is the bright button on um push the button in the middle it says push of the mic the mic base or is it different than ours oh it might be a different one oh okay thank you oh sandy duly's east terrace i was trying to understand how this interacts with our land development regulations because i would assume this is subject to the conservation pud regulations so i'm assuming that at least 70 percent of the land would be conserved because that's the minimum under the conservation pud and i heard say a majority and 70 it's more so i'd be interested um in whether 70 percent is the number um and i'm also interested in um the whatever isn't 70 is the minimum in the regulation whatever isn't to be conserved um is the city proposing to buy that as well and um is the land development regulation that would require the land that's not conserved to be developed at r4 does that apply uh that's a minimum um required development and i've read stuff in the south firlington land trust minutes that talks about um dividing the property up into different parcels and what concerns me is um well first of all i didn't think that was the intent under interim zoning of the um conservation pud but i would certainly not want the property divided up such that you had one big parcel that um for conservation and a bunch of little ones that are not subject to the pud because they're under four acres and therefore we really lose an opportunity to get more housing than we would if it's a conservation pud so i'm trying to understand how this fits with our land development regulations and our desire in the conservation pud to provide both housing and preserve open space so i guess i think for the community to have some sense of how this is going to work we need more information than you have shared okay yes um thank you sandy um so absolutely it is the city's intent and the property owners intent to follow our own land development regulations um it is very likely that that will be done through a conservation pud um and i'm sorry that we don't have specifics now we aired on the side of coming to the community very early in this process to be very transparent and public about the conversations we were having and quite frankly we don't know that those details yet because we're trying to bring in development partners conservation partners in partnership with the bell advances in the city um to bring the highest of best value project to the community so when we have more answers i'm sure we will come to you and share them sure just sandy just um act 42 will require along where i think the housing is contemplated five units per acre so that's going to be you know that will kind of set the foundation okay um Janet would you like to respond can you would you come to the mic though please and that's really for the benefit of those online who can't hear if if folks aren't at the mic jenna bellivance um yes that we've had some initial talks but really there's been a period of about eight or nine months when we were waiting for an appraisal where nothing was really happening so even though it got started it was just kind of a start with an initial concept and then nothing it's been really a lot of wait time and so it's just started up again so that's why we're having this conversation mic did you have a comment or question good evening um i share uh some probably all of sandy's concerns uh i'm wondering why uh this conversation or sharing of the discussion of the city's potential acquisition of this property uh wasn't put out there sooner uh i'm actually wondering when the kind of reassurance that a buyer needs uh to have that uh i mean it's pretty rare when you see somebody acquire property for a million three that they don't intend to use so the reassurance is that uh might have been sought over the intentions of the city to be there uh to partner to acquire the property i don't know how early those were provided uh they may have been provided during a due diligence period before the property was acquired or very soon after the property was acquired but uh i'm just going to say it's a it's pretty rare when somebody goes out and acquires a property that they don't need personally without having an idea of what the outcome of the acquisition of that property is going to be uh i am wondering uh why the city's mindset here would not be to maximize the amount of housing that would be possible on this site which is perfectly located for housing which is located between two existing developments where curb cuts were actually uh required so that the infill development that was likely to occur here could be accessed when that development did occur we are in the middle of an acute housing shortage it is basically a supply problem we need uh new housing at all price levels and price points uh the longs uh had submitted a proposal for 49 units and uh the city council declined to support that application and it was withdrawn and the longs uh then decided to put the property on the market but i would hope that the city would pursue a path uh where the maximum number of homes that could be permitted on this property would be permitted thank you thank you okay oh i'm sorry yes uh for the record dan albrecht proctor avenue couple things first just a larger point about the use of the conservation fund um it a couple things one first of all if there was a time paul connor's more familiar with this but there was a time when conservation funds were more at play because zoning had not evolved and towns had not done the work to identify wetlands or habitat blocks in the case of south burlington or now we have river corridors quite a few different things and so you know one of conservation funds i don't know when they've been around since paul 20 30 years now um vermont so it's just sort of weird to spend city tax resources to acquire property the bulk of which can't be developed anyway you know the zoning takes care of that um second the city has acquired several other parcels over the years and done little or nothing to make them available to the public even though they're paid for all with public tax dollars and that includes not just parking but wayfinding signage trails clear delineation of where you can walk or you can't things like that um and the underwood slash hubbard part parcel is it's a great parcel but i've been very disappointed that of the lack of uh public access and public promotion of that use that was bought by it for all of us third in line with the city plan i'm disappointed that the city is spending efforts to potentially buy a property that doesn't need to be bought and yet where all the growth is planned for namely the shelbin road corridor we still see no efforts by the city to buy open space on the west side of shelbin road or create a park or a community center we had a chance with the hannahford's property but i guess i of course that has to go to the tesla folks um so when i look at this uh yeah i mean if the city wants to get in the business of land development i guess it can do that it's a tricky thing most municipalities don't want to get into the business of buying a parcel and then but it hypothetically could be done you put it out there as an rfp and we're saying we're looking for non-profit developers and here's the boundaries here's the constraints on the property um i wish you could have more units uh it's still located relatively close to employment on shelbin road corridor there's no bus lines there yet but um you know the density is the best weapon against climate change the back two-thirds of the parcel that is the ecological value would still be protected it was still been under protected under the long's proposal as well i wish there could be more density but the city felt the need to take away the density calculation from that acreage to punish people even though we could have put more apartments but by creating the habitat blocks and saying that doesn't count towards the density calculation you've removed the potential for more units and more density which is the best weapon against climate change it's got water it's got sewer it's close to employment so um i just keep those things in mind as you think about whether or not to go with this way but it's it's a pretty tricky thing because i could see many other people going well is the city going to buy my parcel i've been trying to sell it for years you know and i'd be back a year from now say okay what's your plan got more and more apartments on shelbin road what's your plan where's the services where's the equity so that's about it thanks thank you any others did michelle van turkovich michelle van turkovich you have your um light on which typically means you want to say something is that accurate no okay well then we will move on to item nine which is consider the charter change language to expand the number of school board members to seven and set a public hearing dates at special meetings on january 22nd 2024 at 645 and again on january 29th 2024 at 6 30 p.m and collin mcneill our city attorney is going to take us through the the language i do also just want to note that kate bailey the chair of the school board is online and tim waran a school board member is also here in the audience and i think that's everyone so that they are here as well thank you good evening good evening um so we have based on the recommendation of the the charter committee that that you convened and and your recommendation to us to to work on this to get it on the the march ballot we've worked with the school district to come up with some language to to amend the the city charter to increase the number of school board members from five to seven currently right now the the number of school board members is set partially by the charter but also by state statute so we're consistent with other municipalities or other school districts in the state so we would need to amend the charter to have it be specific as to how many school board members there are and working with the with the school district we we figured that there was only minor amendments essentially minor amendments that need to be made one is some very small edits to an existing section and one is to add a section to the charter that is similar to the section in the charter that relates to city councilor members so we have included that in a memo that is before you as a as a proposal to to amend the charter in order to to make a charter change you have to have you have to set out notice and you have to have two public hearings before it can be considered by the voters so we've suggested some dates for you to do that they're they're coming right up and we've also made a recommendation for a motion for you to make that will allow us to comply with the statutory requirements and and set this process in motion okay are there questions or thoughts yes i don't see an example of the ballot language here is that not ready yet or we have not put together the exact ballot language yet would it be ready by the first public hearing or the second public yes we can make it ready for the first public hearing thank you okay but you did lay out the election process and yep well what what you have in your memo is the what the proposal for the new charter language would be which is different than the language that goes before the voters um but this would be in obviously the the proposed edits to the charter would be before the voters so this this language if you were to support it would be the language that would be before the voters larry did you have a question so i uh colin i noticed that the you're suggesting the first public hearing is the 22nd correct uh it's that's the the night of our steering committee can can both happen so we intentionally did it that way one to meet the notice requirements for the public hearing because we require the statute requires 30 days notice but because this is a school related charter change we want to provide the school board an opportunity to participate in your discussion as well great okay we have kate and tim here do either of them want to make a comment tim are you in you can both if you'd like to come up tim you certainly are welcomed hi tim warren school board member i just wanted to say uh the board has discussed this we feel that more representation on the board would certainly be helpful for the community um and there is a significant amount of work that the board does and we would certainly welcome more people participating simply to help with committees and we have a lot of issues a lot of a lot of work going on so this is something we we really hope passes and strongly uh support so thank you thank you as the board taken a vote tim did the board take an actual vote yes to support it we did so we guess we did pass a motion to support this yes uh was it unanimous it was unanimous yes it was thank you and kate do you want to add anything kate bailey thanks for the opportunity i second what tim said i think he summarized our meeting on the 6th uh where we made the motion to support the ballot language uh or the charter change potential future ballot language so okay what tim said thank you okay other comments yes i want to make very clear i'm not at this moment representing the charter committee or the school board but will you say your name and where you live just because of public thank you wendell holman 69 joy drive f7 south burlington i'm sorry that it wasn't taken one step more i moved to eight members because i think it's been difficult for city governing bodies to work within the open meeting law and from long experience eight makes it so much easier than a quorum people are social animals i'm certainly no different and it is only normal to want to talk to colleagues before board meetings but less than a quorum and with eight a quorum is four so if i as a school board member i could be in that conversation and three of my colleagues and by that time i had no human need to talk to more so it was very easy to deal with the open meeting law and that's just a comment that i'll make every time this comes up thank you okay thank you any other comments discussion by the council we were very supportive yeah already so quick question before you warn or before you make this motion as a quorum of view available on the 29th that would be a special meeting date i.e. the fifth council meeting in january just want to make sure look the 29th oh no let's just send it whoops um it's january who's going anywhere i already happened on my uh calendar didn't we already um didn't you already ask us that you sent us an email you sent us an email something oh there's two special meetings on the 29th oh no oh okay well i've already got it on the calendar so we can just add another item huh okay i think that you will not be here right yeah on the 29th okay we'll we'll send some warm breezes up this way okay we don't need any more warm breezes yeah that's true we need some snow that's what we really need okay all right so i would entertain a motion to set those public hearings so moved can can you actually oh you want me to read the motion yeah if you wouldn't mind reading the motion that's in the in the memo oh i have a motion to read here it's a little bit lengthy but would you make me to read the long motion now yep i move that the city council moves forward for the public's consideration the proposed amendment to the south brilliant city trader sets public hearings to consider the proposed amendment for january 22nd 2024 and january 29th 2024 and directs the city administration to comply with the notice and other recommendations of 17 vs 2645 and resolves that after the public hearings and any revisions of the language the city council may take a vote that the proposed amendment be placed on the ballot of the annual city meeting to be held on march 5th 2024 second any discussion all in favor signified by saying aye aye so it passes unanimously okay they should start advertising now for the two positions all right all right so we move on to item 10 which is further consideration of a proposed residential rental ordinance information on staffing and space planning and our purpose is to provide direction to the staff in anticipation of a future first reading and so steve lock will take us through good evening callin and i have been working to update the ordinance based upon our conversation last month and so we think we have resolved the outstanding conversation topics that we had talked about conversed about that you were looking for us to change so those include those are outlined in the memo but includes increasing or charging a rate of $25 per unit for the permanently affordable units increases the owner the rental registration fee for non-owner occupied units to $1500 annually allows existing non-owner occupied units to be used to short-term rentals through april 1 of 2028 basically four years removes the exemption for congregate care facilities and updates the chloro clarifies the noise ordinance and in a version that was sent to you via email this afternoon added some language that i missed i missed part of the conversation in my notes that we had added exempts home share or if you're renting out a room in your home exempts you from the inspection and having to register so that is in the draft ordinances before you i believe that captures most what we talked about and then obviously the next step would be your approval to go to a public hearing on that in the future at a future meeting okay thank you further is there any discussion or comments by council members we'll start with under definitions yeah and it says in a rental unit rented to the transient traveling or a vacation public for a period of fewer than 30 consecutive days and for more than 14 per days per calendar year does that mean there's that's 14 occurrences per calendar year or were you saying that it's between 14 and 30 days that it's 14 and 29 days that it's actually rented out if you could just state for you what you think it's supposed to mean absolutely so first of all i believe we took this right from the state statue relating to short-term rentals but what it means is that it can't be rented for more than 14 days a calendar year and be considered a short without registering so if it if a unit is rented for under 14 days it's not considered a short-term rental it does not need to register under the ordinance that's consistent with the statue if it's if it's rented for more than 14 days it needs to be it's considered a short-term rental and must register as a short-term rental with the city and the difference between the 14 days and the 30 days is that well once you hit that 14 days threshold threshold then any rental if you're renting for under 30 days you're ready for over 30 days you're a long-term rental if you're renting for under 30 if you have a period of renters for under 30 days you are a short-term rental okay so what you're saying is if if the if each rental is less than 30 consecutive days no no yes well in a way if each rental is under under 30 days you're a short-term rental right but if but if you only do if you only rent out seven days in one year you're not a short-term rental but if you had just 14 days of rental total for the year you wouldn't be considered correct a short-term okay that's here i got it now i understand okay still and then the other question was sorry for oh yeah in in terms of documenting the addresses uh supplying a license and registration um are you requiring that that the owner's address on their license or other documentation is the same as the as the as the owner occupied unit or of the you know i think we have we've allowed some discretion in there okay so a drink a driver's license is one of the criteria because not everyone is going to have a driver's license so it has to be you have to establish proof that that is your primary residence or or um or your your rental is a is your primary residence is the is the identification solely for identification purposes is that what it is whether or not it's owner occupied oh okay so then that idea should indicate that their address on that item is equal to the the home that's owner occupied i mean i mean it can if it if it doesn't and there's other supporting documentation i think the building the the building inspector has some leeway to accept that other identification say for instance you own a home but your address is still your parents house where you grew up okay on your license i think that would be fine as long as you can establish that that is your primary residence in another way um i had a general question that maybe you know the answer maybe we've talked about this before but you know the um the the rooms tax that gets remitted to the state probably by air b&b and and verbo i'm supposing right do we know if that goes in lump sum to the Vermont tax department or does it include addresses and owners of those units as well do do we know i don't know no my understanding is that it includes at a minimum the zip code because they need to know how to apply the local options tax other than that um the tax department holds that tax data very close right but i mean so i'm just asking is there opportunity there to ask for the address not the amount but the address if they do get the address and an amount if we just had the address then we could boost our our our listing of of the of of who actually is renting out it's just just a tangential idea that's all and my understanding is that air b&b has the contract with the state yeah to to submit those taxes and but they're potentially the only one uh so all others are responsible individually for for signing up and paying those taxes and having a tax account like verbo doesn't do that i don't believe so no verbo does well they do because we use them yeah okay but we don't use them anymore so we have to submit them and you need to submit them on a monthly basis okay okay yeah but i don't recall well we're just renting one place so they have the address so when you do submit that you submit the address of the rental as well um is that a requirement my sister-in-law does it i i don't i can't remember okay what the form looks like but they okay they get enough information in the tax department to to be satisfied that we're paying the um state tax so all right the other question ahead was and there's no paid so in the um definition of the registration fees right in c and d they're both short-term at register rental registration fees once 150 once 1500 dollars so the 1500 is for currently existing strs non owner occupied non does it say that yeah so the the thought was if you run an owner occupied short-term rental and this is my my um what i thought i understood you to agree on if i had an owner occupied short-term rental so i live there but i run a bedroom out or have adu yeah that you wanted that to be at the normal 150 at the normal fee normal registration fee but if you had a non owner occupied short-term rental right you wanted to charge the higher fee okay do we need to add the fact that it's owner occupied on c or am i missing something here uh so i added it in one place i might have missed it in another place okay so it's quite possible you know i think that would help if it was non owner was added to pretty much every time you add non owner occupied i think there's it reads with a little confusion because you have to keep going back to definitions to see that that i think was all i can i ask a quick question certainly may um a couple of emails from folks today about the four-year period of phasing out and i really don't know where that number where that time frame came from is there a rationale for that could you repeat that the four year phasing out the yeah i was going to speak to it as well i'm happy to yeah so right um so we had a bunch of folks come before us that had really valid um concerns about short-term rentals that were adjacent to their homes that seemed to be largely owned by out-of-state residents and that were not monitored and controlled that well so that it was disrupting the quality of life conversely we had some folks come before us that live in the community that presently have one or two non-owner occupied rentals nearby and they said look um we rely on this to feed our family um and if you take this away from us you know it's going to cause a severe economic hardship and in my mind that four years was meant to balance those two concerns how do we address the valid concerns of the neighbors who want to see the short-term rentals next to them that are owned by the out-of-state folks gone and how do we not cause severe economic hardship to our residents so that that's that's that's where they came up with and we had we played around with other potential solutions which um we learned may have some legal you know infirmities to them so they just didn't they didn't pan out um that's where that came to what while i have a fork can i can i talk about one other thing and let me just do that i mean it was sort of picked out of like no that seems like a good enough time for local non-local people to make some other economic decisions and planning make sense i don't know if it's perfect but that's what we picked so just one i just want to raise again um last time i made the suggestion about i just want to raise it again maybe just a little more articulately what we don't have right now is a moratorium so until this finally passes there i think our folks out there or could be folks out there continuing to you know buy up properties and places we may not want them to do short-term rentals i really urge us to build a moratorium into this legend into this ordinance right now by um changing in the definition of existing short-term rental instead of saying prior to the effective date you know prior to today so that folks know out there in the public that you know the short-term rentals are not something that we can continue to create in in the city as of today would you be amenable to upon passage well no but that's implementation well it right now says prior to the effective hearings and then we have to um make the final decision which will i would take a month or two of a moratorium but the um implementation really doesn't happen for a year i think it's april 21st or april 31st or something 2024 but um was it april 24 or 25 i thought we gave 20 april 24 was it was because are the thought processes between two public hearings and getting to you have passage will be sometime in february and so that was that was our that was the our thought so i was still in 2023 and i was thinking oh we're giving them a year to get ready but we're not we're just getting giving them a couple months i mean you have been talking about this for many months we have that's true i mean certainly upon passage change that date if you like yeah i think certainly upon passage makes us feel okay setting a date i think we said the same thing last time setting a date prior to the adoption on the moratorium it can and probably more for a column than i is concerning is concerning because legally that would be an issue you know really i think so i mean here you're setting a date that's prior to all the public notice taking place so there's there's a little bit of a concerned just from from my point of view about you know due process and make sure that everyone is as well adhered and noticed as to when this is going to go into effect and the implications okay well you've made your case yet do you have any does um andrew have any takers does anyone agree with him that a moratorium would be i think i would agree with counsel as well i you know i don't think it's going to slow it down too much because we're just a couple months away i mean we could set it perhaps the date of the first public hearing if that addresses the legal concerns but it's got to be passed i think yeah i think it has to be upon pass i will say in my experience there are lots of regulations where there's an effective date that's when there's a proposal that's before in order to implement the moratorium and that's not an uncommon thing to do liars do that it's not uncommon well that's true so um that is the i mean that's the way to do a moratorium it's not i i've personally seen that in my professional experience many times well what's the council are you convinced by andrew or do you want to stick with i just wait till we pass personally yeah i i i think people want to wait i understand your concern okay i have a couple one more question okay um so we we received some emails from folks who administer affordable housing units right and some of them have said that they get inspected by bha i don't know if that applies here but hud right especially their section eight so and some of them said that there are three organizations that might be inspecting these units and my only question is um if there were one or more inspections happening from other organizations that that parallel the same codes that we were going to follow would we really want to over inspect like that and put an undue burden on the residents of those units that are seeing somebody once or twice a year anyway and if that's true then would we want to roll back the cost per affordable unit that we were contemplating anyway i'm just putting that out for general discussion i mean as long as those other inspections cover smoke detectors and especially if these are new buildings that were built in the last 10 years and they know that they were built to some code i guess my response to be this um two things one if they're up if they're if if we inspect them they're up to date no violations or limited violations you're only going to see us every five years i don't every five years that's the plan okay um and then two we are the authority having jurisdiction that's a building in our community we're the only ones that truly can enforce the adopted fire code your adopted fire code and so i would not feel comfortable giving that authority to anybody else that is you know that it's my responsibility it's just you through your actions to ensure our buildings are safe and if we're going to do this i i don't think uh i don't think every five-year inspection for the vast majority of our properties is and is that too much of a burden did i miss that in here that's five years so what there isn't a dendym based and i did share it with andrew because he asked so we uh in similar we basically borrowed the same document or same inspection cycle that happens in burlington that in the inspection cycle is based upon the number of violations so a building most in same happens in burlington most of the buildings that are um up to code and have limited violations on or quickly rectified violations upon inspection or is it every five-year cycle we could never inspect all these buildings every year with just two inspectors so i think at burlington the code enforcement officer told me over 80 percent of their buildings are on a five-year cycle and then some similar to the article you saw and and digger about a property on lower church street um has so many violations that it's there they're every year so we we we may have a couple of those i would i would almost doubt it most of our buildings are in pretty good shape but this we'll know for sure this way so does burlington inspect buildings like decker towers and as far as i see and i'll say this as far as i know they do um but but code enforcement was not under my purview in burlington so i wouldn't want to get ahead of my skis there can i jump in on this so um this is one of the areas i feel pretty strongly about that um in winewski so winewski also has a rental registry um there were some for this very reason there were some perpetually affordable homes that were not part of our inspection system and it became a real um differentiation in housing quality and some of our most awful fires and uh hurt folks came from those parcels so to create a system where we are saying we want quality life safety housing for all but exempt a certain population of our neighbors from being able to participate in that inspection i think is really detrimental and against some of our equity values and just to add one more thing for um not from a fire perspective but i think that there is a a huge possibility as we stand up this team and they build relationships with the significant landlords in our community that we could by policy have conversations about coordination coordinating inspections so the user or the neighbor experiences something different they may not know that there's you know south burlington inspector and a HUD inspector there at the same time for example okay but that's not something to ordain that's a best practice for us to implement does it make sense to include the appendix in the uh in this work i'm not a fan i mean personally i'm not a fan of putting something like that in an ordinance i would have to come back to this process that to me is more of a internal policy right okay well the appendix that the addendum that was outlying every five years or if you have so many violations it's sooner okay are there any other questions or concerns about the language that's being presented is there anyone um at home viewing that has wants to make a comment we got two here okay we got three here all right so let's start with ryan and then mr van durkovich and i don't know your name ryan doil with side drive um so we're pretty far into this ordinance and i think last time there was some discussion of the council of we're doing kind of two things with this one ordinance one is the short-term rental issue and the other is making this registry for rental units although it seems like a lot of this is actually geared toward the kind of negative situation we have over on austin drive where we have some very heavy fines that we're putting on the table to try to deal with um those problem houses in that neighborhood but some of those could be really detrimental to somebody who is just trying to get up and running so if uh i think it like in my case where i had a roommate just suddenly leave and i very quickly pivoted to air bnb it would be really hard to actually have all of those things you're asking for in the ordinance in place before actually getting somebody in there to help cover that loss rent um while it's pretty easy to set up something on air bnb for example um you know like getting notarized things um to the city and even getting like these account numbers for example from air bnb or approvals from the landlord uh that can take a while so even though like my lease actually says i can use air bnb in it i would have to go through a second round of meeting with my landlord and getting their time and i just think there should be a little more space a wiggle room for that flexibility of housing so that we can try to catch more people and have less low time in there uh i realize that's a very different issue than the issue of a problematic house where an investor is taking up the housing and causing i don't want to say blight but deleterious effects in a neighborhood the other question i have is like burlington has been doing this for quite a while and they've developed even more um robust ordinances that fit into place in different places here they also have lower registration fees um they do have a certain economies of scale to do that but i was wondering if the city spent any time in negotiation with burlington to see about the feasibility of actually picking piggybacking on to their system which has already been built out pretty well and either using the type of um software infrastructure they have or um paying into using uh their staff or something like that to see about doing this much more cost effectively um because again i see that we're trying to price these um registrations to a point where it can sustain the program including building um additional office space but again burlington has fees that are lower so clearly they're able to do something a little bit differently so i was wondering how much discussion had occurred there at all thank you thank you do you want to comment i mean i i i always think regionalization of things is probably wonderful but i look at some of our conversations um just around the um what do you call it when the dispatch and burlington wasn't really terribly interested um even though i think we made a case that it would be cost effective and and a really good idea so i don't know if i would support going down that road again with a rental registry you've got two different fire departments and i don't know we do have burlington's cordon code enforcement uh director coming over next in two weeks to talk about the software system that they are using um both mainly for permitting but i believe it's the same software system for registration um and if that works that may be something we would be obviously we're looking to modernize our permitting and making the experience for our customers easier to to to register and pay fees not just here but around citywide um but i guess i would i share your concern about um regionalization on this project there's two comments i think the burlington cost per unit is around 150 right now um and the city clerk can notarize documents right right so i also i'm just curious ryan i thought we had agreed that we included in this you know a roommate or um that you weren't a b and b if you had a roommate in your own home um so there was some exception so i'm not sure you know i think you're covered but yeah just for long maybe not advertising on air b and b for your roommate we just excluded long-term roommate not short term oh long term excuse me okay um i'm sorry yes thank you my name is frank bon turkovich and i'm interested in one aspect of the ordinance that i don't know if it's been considered by the council yet or the anyone who's been working on this and i can appreciate the um desire to uh stop the conversion of existing housing stock into short-term rentals but is there is there any reason why the city would be opposed to the development of new short-term rental housing product um i don't think that a new purposely built short-term rentals unit would offend any of the uh uh objectives of this ordinance and it could uh in today's economy uh enable uh non short-term rental housing units to be developed so i'm wondering if we're missing an opportunity here by totally closing off the uh the the having a policy that restricts complete use of short-term rentals which i'm not sure is anybody's ultimate desire i think a lot of people here use short-term rentals i know that when we've traveled we've used them and we've enjoyed them and they've been fine and sometimes they're even the most appropriate way to to visit a community and house a family or house a group or a couple or an individual but i am wondering if the ordinance uh doesn't need to go as far as to say that all of uh short-term rentals including new ones should be prohibited okay all right i don't know if we discussed develop you're talking about having a development that would build 15 short-term rentals is that what you're talking about that could be a possibility but i also think that someone who was going to build a duplex or a fourplex or a larger project may want a certain number of short-term rental units in that project to make it economically feasible okay so a new build yes all new build uh uh uh comments on yeah i mean part of what i guess is motivating me to be in favor of what we have now is um having a hard time drawing the line between a hotel you know um which doesn't really belong in a residential neighborhood and a short-term rental and so um you can build a hotel it could have larger units they can certainly substitute for the amenities that a short-term rental would have but then you have to build it in areas that are zoned for that type of business so part of what's motivating me is to not have that business be in an area zone for residential that doesn't contemplate it i appreciate that i i do think there's a difference between a consumer who wants to stay in a hotel versus a consumer who's specifically looking for a airbnb type experience so just wondering if the council needs to go as far as to say that no future units can be dedicated to short-term rentals especially keeping in mind that it may have an impact on units that could be could contribute to the housing stock of the city okay well thank you thank you yes um my name is marina i'm here on behalf of cathedral square we're a nonprofit housing developer for older adults and um i just wanted to speak in support of the rental registry we think that um that's going to be beneficial for the community for several reasons that have been discussed and we encourage you to support the earlier recommendation to exempt permanently affordable housing units from the registration fee all together we know that it has been exempted and then was added back at a lower rate of 25 dollars and that does add burden to our portfolio even though it seems marginal and with that our mission includes keeping rents as affordable as possible in this difficult cost environment where we face rising property taxes operation costs staffing shortages so we ask that you consider moving back to the previous version which exempted that and similarly um we support the recommendation to include congregate care facilities and also ask that you exempt permanently affordable congregate care facilities from the registration fee and um i know this was discussed earlier but we do request limiting inspections for properties that are already inspected by organizations um some of our properties really do face three or four yearly inspections um from burlington housing authority which does extend um throughout the northwest region as well as HUD the Vermont housing finance agency and the state housing authority um and that our residents do experience that inspection fatigue so to at least coordinate that with the inspection schedule that we have would be really appreciated i certainly think we would attempt to coordinate that because it makes sense for sure thank you thank you very much is there any are there any other comments or thoughts i just wanted to be sure that we answered Amy Demetrovitz's concern about the fees if something was not wrong that it was a daily charge um she's at the last meeting she stated that where um where there's a multi-unit um building and then there was some repairs that needed to be made and she was i think concerned about kind of a daily build up of fees that's not ringing any bells i think they're penalties i apologize i don't i don't remember that discussion aspect of the of the discussion i think that we addressed uh one request relating to the noise ordinance uh in long term you're kind of separating out short term and long term uh rental units from noise noise ordinance violations in this particular ordinance but i don't remember the other topic which you are referring to okay well i am in favor of it going to a public hearing and perhaps she will come forward at that time and speak again yeah i was saying the seven hundred dollar fee was if you were in violation of something then the you paid the fee and you had to make the corrections i would have to watch i'd have to watch the tape in order to to understand i don't i have no recollection of it and it's not my notes so okay all right any other thoughts yeah it's here a civil penalty of up to eight hundred dollars per day for each day that such violation continues so that that is that long term that short term that's a short term yeah so let me find yeah i didn't compare to the previous one which i just wanted to get a quick nod of the head but i guess ryan you have another comment ryan dole again um so one of the things i i tried to look for with uh some of the streets people complained about was if i could figure out which house was actually on air bnb um and i couldn't i looked at the grand list and i really couldn't tell also and so i was wondering if when we talk about the existing homes that are going to be charged fifteen hundred dollars a year that are not owner or tenant occupied um if perhaps there's a condition on their registration that because they're really commercial properties they should be paying commercial taxes and so if they've been billed as residential tax properties that in order to be registered they would have to come up with the difference of tax they haven't been paying is that difference making sense i think that that does happen now as people file their income taxes with rentals in their homes it goes through the uh non homestead process at the tax department and we are informed of that so you think what you're suggesting exists now so any of those homes that are on like austin road are being taxed at the commercial rate not the residential rate i don't know the specifics of every property on austin road but if they're not on owner occupied if they're a non homestead then they're taxed at the non homestead versus the homestead rate which is not commercial which is not commercial commercial is a little bit lower isn't it yeah i don't know that there's a commercial tax rate i was saying commercial instead of non homestead that's okay yeah so you think that that's they're all if they're not their primary residents they would be it'd be they'd be lying on their tax when they fill out their form if they were paying the homestead tax rate thank you okay thanks well they they have to file a homestead tax form in order to be eligible to be considered for homestead right yeah and if you're late you're late and you don't get it we've heard those concerns before andrew yeah i'm just wondering um chief could you maybe just describe a few minutes the schedule that you propose which we conversed a few times about i know mr bolder proposed some very um sensible um had some suggestions about sampling i know you were going a different route which sounds you know appropriate to me but just for the public and sure the council just understand that and and understand we took this uh when i when i first went to brovington the working with code enforcement they were working to come up with a cycle in order to clarify how they were going to do their inspections and so we mirrored hours very similar to off the off theirs but basically at a high level um if you if you have a inspect if we inspect the property and it's found to have um no violations and you're issued a five-year certificate of compliance so you we don't come back for five years unless there is a complaint if we inspect it and it's had five or less and they're corrected within 30 days the building receives a four-year inspection cycle and then basically the greater violations the the less the time frame to a point where where they're every year so again like as i said previously talking with burlington's code enforcement director the vast majority of their properties receive a five-year certificate of compliance and when i was in a apartment in burlington in a rather large setting um they came in and did the whole complex in one one or two days so your landlord lets you know you know today's the day or this week is the the week we're going to be testing the fire alarm we're going to be in your units um and then again if most of these larger units have property management they make sure everything is corrected in advance the fire department's in and out a few in a day or two um and then because of that we're back there five years so that raises the question for me um i have a friend who lives in an apartment um in south burlington with an HOA and i don't know a couple weeks ago they had all the fire alarms were tested and and and so i'm just but it was the HOA or the rental group who was doing that and then they did stuff with the elevators and it was you know all organized if that's the case do it under this scenario would you also have to go in and do the fire alarms so we go in make shall we just make sure the fire alarm has a certificate issued by the state saying that it's been inspected by a technically qualified person so we don't will we go in and make sure is that the stickers on the fire alarm stickers on the sprinkler system so they're required and we typically will work with the HOA or the property manager to coordinate those so we're not trying to coordinate with 32 tenants we're coordinating with one one person so those people really wouldn't see a difference not really are you intending on inspecting or looking for inspection tags on um on heating systems as well the oil or gas on yes to make sure that they have been inspected and checked yes and is that it is that the ordinance that they did be inspected no that really comes in a variety of and terry is on terry is on but they they basically have an inspection checklist and not again not included here in the ordinance that outlines everything within occupancy that they that at a high level needs to be checked and that would include like uh you know a probe reading of the gases and the exhaust from a combustion so again we don't check that we make sure that that has been checked okay right so again we we're we make sure someone else okay who is technically qualified has inspected and validated that with typically an inspection sticker okay matt did you want to comment on that i mean that's up your alley huh or was i guess not maybe this moment but what the last comment was exactly correct matt go to for the record any commercial building is governed by the vermont fire building fire safety code which requires an inspection of any combustion heating appliance every three years with a sticker in the tack by a certified boiler gas tank okay so that's commercial buildings only not single families thank you so i'm pretty sure burlington requires two years but i don't know where they it's and that's why i was being purposely vague and i was hoping terry was going to bail me out i didn't know what the cycle was i knew it required a sticker i did not i did not know the cycle and terry what's the cycle has this little green light on can you clarify terry he's having audio problems but i'm sure matt had it right in three years it's in the code so great all right any other comments questions thoughts okay so do we have a motion to i think technically we need to bring it back to you for a first reading oh that's right okay and then you can set a public hearing date because yeah we haven't really changed anything but you had given us a few more things it'll be a very short agenda one last question does yeah do burlington and winewski talk to each other that each of the code enforcement offices rental registries do they yes because you have uh you know landlords that span many many towns right in cities so okay and those are constructive conversations i mean i would say just in my experience just as the chiefs talk to each other the managers talk to each other they share best practice they share information there's a lot there's actually a fair amount of work that's done between those two around the hoarding test chinning county hoarding task force as well that's often issue that is rises to that top of lists in these kinds of inspections okay great thanks okay we'll see y'all again on the uh 20 second thank you welcome thank you for this hard work no before the 20 second right it'll be the we have five meetings second i know we will see you a lot okay all right so now we're down to what time is it okay um item 11 which is the fy 25 budget we're all pretty familiar with that having spent four hours on friday going through that but um we made some changes that did not show up in the article by the um other paper so for those of you that read that and had a heart attack or close to one i hope you didn't really have a heart attack but you you you're um i don't know your heart started to race a little bit we have some good news tonight so um martha may much are and um jesse baker will be kind of taking us through that so i'll let martha talk you through the numbers but just a reminder folks are watching remotely or on your tablets in the audience all of this information is at the city's website click on the fy 25 link right on the main page and we'll go to the finance page where all of the documents martha's about to talk about are posted okay so i'm just giving you a summary of uh last friday's meeting what we understand was what you proposed and how it is reflected in the budget as uh proposed and the changes so during the last friday's meeting the three big things that we took away were that the climate action projects would be funded with our fund the staffing would be fun with general fund and the contribution of affordable housing would be reduced to 75 000 so those changes made to the budget resulted in a a budget increase or or tax rate increased to 5.82 percent or 0.0286 cents on top of fy 24 budget and one other ad ad that has been made to the updated proposed budget is that the curve and sidewalk proposed amount which was 40 000 is now reduced to 30 000 and the bike path budget paving has been increased by 10 so it's just a real location of funding between the two budget lines and that is to consider the budget request that came from the bike path committee laid into the budget so in the memo or in just the updated summary that i emailed to the council earlier on i also updated the offer funding what is being allocated to that and what the balance would be with the proposed funding allocations also in here and what was not discussed or council did not make a decision on what the three items that are currently included in the effort in the budget and it is after the council to decide whether to fund those with upper fund or surplus funding and those include market street heinsberg road signals and bike and park master plan and also the the grand march for the heinsberg road share use path those are included in that memo and those are to be discussed with the council and make decisions on the council actually also had a discussions to fund the signal worked on the dosage street heinsberg road with surplus that is also included in there and i have also included a summary of what the surplus funds would be with that if it is funded out if the fund balance located to fund that project i think that in the summary of the last friday's discussion okay yes martha i just wanted to ask you is that open space master plan included in the general fund budget uh no that's not open space that's just park right okay because it was discussed on friday um as something um that would be in the work plan um i believe a public works i was just curious where that was okay did so uh from conversations staff has had with the committees i believe this has been with the committees um the i so the park's master plan is what you all have prioritized to date and the thinking is what is that we do that one this coming year and then finalize the open space fund or open space master plan the following year okay because we're concerned if we run them concurrently it's going to be a challenging communication public engagement process okay and that the park's master plan is almost a sub or a subset of the open space master okay okay did you have a question not yet oh not yet okay andrew does thank you martha thank you jesse for the revised budget i just have two comments really please not but please we shouldn't reduce the sidewalk budget by ten thousand but we need all the money to fix our sidewalks that we can i don't think that was part of the request from bike pad so where did we think we were getting that ten thousand dollars i think originally you had wanted to take it out of paving but then we wouldn't have enough for doors or just increase ten i don't know i we shouldn't reduce the sidewalk budget i guess is i i personally would be very uncomfortable with that um the thinking one that is that there is a cip project for all the sidewalks and that is a 60 000 already in the cip budget but that's just for an assessment not for repair and the sidewalks desperately need repair correct i mean you can add it back in i would like to want to do you want to propose taking that ten thousand dollars from the surplus sure you can also just add it back into the budget on expense budget okay so the the thirty thousand or forty thousand is just a line in the general fund operating budget so you can make that line thirty thousand or forty thousand no that won't change the tax rate i mean it'll change it a hundred yeah right so what was the second comment and then i'm i think i'm good with this is i i'm okay with the signal coming out of star plus for now but i gotta tell you it makes me uncomfortable i just don't understand why it feels to me like it's a b a u item it should be funded by right sized traffic impact fees or other fees for development particularly in city center we're not needed that light but for the city center development it just feels to me inappropriate to fund it the way we're funding it and so i'd love to have us take a look at that are we right sizing our traffic impact fees to fund all the traffic infrastructure we think we will need and is there a way i think it was alluded to on friday to recoup this 350 out of future traffic impact fees well is it it's part of the tip district is it eligible okay well we let sorry no it is not to well we've already incurred all the debt we're going to incur for the tiff and so there are impact fees in the signal project two hundred thousand dollars of impact fees what we talked with staff talked about since that conversation is we can get an opinion from our impact fee consultant about how we can maximize that impact we cannot pay for it is and paul correct me if i'm wrong here we can't totally fund it with impact fees because it's not needed now so the impact fee can only cover the added use above a stop sign but we're doing this as much for safety versus and the kids crossing the street it will be needed in the future which is why i understand that oh i think it's needed now well but it doesn't meet the no it meets it it will meet the warrant as it's fully built out which is why right at the moment how do we how can we say that it doesn't meet it that it meets the need now hi folks paul connor director of planning his own name so under impact fees can only be used for the incremental volume that the intersection handles so if a stop sign can handle a thousand cars an hour and and and a hundred pedestrians and a traffic signal can handle 1500 cars an hour and 200 pedestrians or 500 pedestrians it's only the difference between the first and the second that can be charged impact fees even if the cost is a brand new cost because there's only a certain amount of new traffic however you want to define traffic that is enabled by it's not going from zero it's going from whatever gets through is can get through there now to what can get there with with a new signal which is tricky because it's not it's like a little percentage right so it's not a service level question like because it's f there right but it's still handling a certain number of vehicles so it's not so the service level problems that exist today is today's taxpayers problem new development is only responsible for the incremental paul could kind of understand that but is it is it like statutory that it's proportional like using your numbers because there was a thousand base and the newest 15 that statutorily they can only responsible one third of the cost because it feels to me that there's a cliff effect here like when you go from a thousand to 1500 all of a sudden you've got this huge new expense to handle the 1500 that you didn't need for the thousand it's not like you have you know an incremental expense of a third and but the statute prohibits you from charging that kind of cliff effect that's our understanding from our consultant who went through this analysis for us at the intersection of kimball and gregory well it's sort of like the speed limits around a long 116 well the zems have the same idea or the the school impact fee right it's only what the new incoming students require that that fee can can cover so even though it might need a new school we can only cover what the impact key what those you know 20 to 50 new students you know per year would require it's it's it's the same kind of thinking do you have a question now not yet okay he's holding back on us okay so are we all amenable to finding ten thousand dollars just adding it to the general fund for the um sidewalks or you want it from the surplus it's okay it's okay with me their increase is fine for more okay i have a small increase that i would like to propose and it has a funding source even um several months ago i was invited to meet with the director of turning point which is a small non-profit in burlington and they deal with persons who are recovering from substance disorder and they provide the service for i think most of the young people in shunan county including a number a great number from south burlington and they were looking for a five thousand dollar contribution from each community but we had already completed our a service projects funding for that year and it occurred to me that we have money from the opioid trust fund i can't remember how much came to the city it wasn't on your list but i know we got some and it was more than five thousand dollars did that get redirected back to the state though i don't think so no and i we just have never discussed or thought about how to i mean maybe internally you have um but we haven't as a council and it seems to me this is a um you know a really important service we don't have anything like that in south burlington our people go there and they seem to have a good track record with working with these individuals so i would like to put that out there i don't know what our opiate settlement dollar figure is so far we have received forty four thousand nine hundred and six dollars i'm sorry how much forty four thousand nine hundred and six dollars so out of the forty four thousand and change i'd like to give them five thousand is that a static account that we have right now it's cash on the side correct do you want to double to ten thousand i mean well we could i mean i'm just i'm sure they wouldn't say no it certainly is a growing um right problem what other places could we use that money i mean for for what's intended so i would make a recommendation i think this is a great allocation and staff totally support allocating five or ten thousand to turning point i think if you want to talk about allocating the total balance of the receipt chief berg sits on the statewide opioid council which is what's allocating the statewide settlement funding so i think before you make you fully spend all of those dollars we should hear from him about how we can best leverage those funds to support what they're already doing i think if you want to do this now five or ten thousand i think we're comfortable with martha and i talked with chief berg about that and he thought it was a great idea well i would definitely support ten thousand i mean we probably need ten million but um you know goes you mentioned the social service awards when when in the year are those made um this summer you can make them any time since i've been here i don't know what you've done in the past we've made them towards the end of the fiscal year like in jean i'm martha and i've been talking about this as well um again since i've been here i don't know what you did before those have all been allocated to the same um partners i think if we have some capacity this this spring we would like to do a very quick rfp or or a call to the community for funding requests um and have them provide you know self burlington residents served budget data things like that right and we have a request in our packet tonight from um yeah turning point from turning point oh for turning point no this was i'm sorry for from dr child so would that source of that money be so in terms of a budget in terms of general fund budget is already an amount set up for the for social service there is 15 000 in the budget there's already an amount correct 15 000 is what the budget has carried for a good number of years now i must have missed that in my review of all the lines yeah well they're small and and it used to be 30 000 i think and then we really tightened our budget and decided to reduce that and we actually just made um we also agreed that each um recipient got approximately the same amount and i also agree that some sort of reporting on the money would be helpful in terms of numbers and yeah it was a bit time consuming for the council i think we had a subcommittee which i served um that reviewed all of these and then came back and then we go back and forth i mean we probably spent you remember quite a few hours on divvying up 30 000 dollars right so we eventually got to the point where we said do we have to have these same discussions every single year why don't we just you know have fewer and make it um a more substantial award i mean we were literally giving five hundred dollars to some people and right um 300 and it just was um not very satisfying for anyone probably i mean they all like the money they didn't return it saying it's it's not enough but um but you know i think looking at them again and having them um there might be some new organizations that we're not even aware of so so i would make a motion to um use ten thousand dollars of the opioid whatever the fund is called money um to turning point second is there any further conversation or discussion okay all in favor hi hi hi so that carries thank you do you need a motion to order public hearing for the budget uh we do we're not we're not there yet we're not quite there yet sorry is there yes we will yeah so can i just bring up one other thing that martha called out and her memo to you um there were two other when we built the budget there were two other uses of surplus or arpa funds that that we put out to you 125 000 for the park's master plan and 200 000 for the um heidsberg shared use path and we don't have firm understanding of what fund you would like to use to fund those two efforts offer i'm hearing one arpa do i have two more would you repeat the uses again the park sits on this the memo yeah we agree to that it's park didn't print it our semester plan and the heidsberg road shared use path grant great super yeah we talked about the shared use i'm taking that as a yeah so i think both of those to arpas okay with me yep those seem to be sort of long term and having a thank you first okay and the road signal that was coming from surplus surplus an impact yeah but the 350 is surplus because the whole thing costs more than 350 650 unbelievable for that's the american way though right someone's making a lot of money would you like a motion now i don't think i'm clear yes oh pardon i don't think i'm clear on the 10 000 for the by pet paving is that surplus or are we adding oh that's going to be surplus too okay wasn't it the 10 000 for the the curb the curb things what was 10 was from what's the curb thing not curb the sidewalk the sidewalk oh yes okay that was going to be um it's the same line right sidewalk yeah that was going to be surplus okay so one more that's a total of what 450 from surplus and 325 from arpa tell one other question from surplus oh that's right sorry yeah yeah 360 there is questions one quick question about arpa and um rental registry the have we discussed the request for arpa funds for the rental registry office has that been that was in steve's memo has that been was that i assume that would be a capital but you know i mean well i don't think we ever talked about actually how we would fund it other than steve came forward with some um charges you know that we could accumulate the fees and things and then a capital expenditure that's a little floating still isn't hard um and i think that the original thought was we would um to use money from an enterprise fund borrow it to build it and we would pay it back over 20 years over so currently the plan as we've ran the numbers is um based on a 10-year payback to the to the general fund and trying to run it like enterprise fund but the fees in the proposed ordinance are not enough to cover without about a $500,000 cash infusion for a one time either from fund balance or arpa unless you wanted to raise the fees to about 170 so to make it completely sustainable i thought the fees were paying for the people so the fees are paying for the people and paying back the one about 1.2 million it's going to take about 1.7 million to to do the addition to do a 10-year payback with a $150 payment it needs about a $500,000 cash infusion okay so we we've never talked about using arpa for that but we certainly can because what do we have left now meaning arpa was seven uh 1.7 million and we just decided to spend 325 right so it's 1.2 um three hundred and um 76 yeah well does that need a motion or is it just part of the discussion well let me just if you guys would like to allocate that tonight knock yourselves out i think that allocating it before you have an ordinance in place might be a little premature all right okay you can always reallocate it in the future if you want to do it similar to the previous discussion about making it well we could certainly think about this as an option and maybe not even all of it but just half of it okay great it does kind of raise the question of the fees whether we should go to 1.7 d with the notion that in a decade we'll lower back down to 150 right not a big 20 bucks a year for nothing ever goes down you know but i'm just saying right i mean it's something we could do and not i i mean when we get there i'm not going to be supportive of using half million of arpa dollars for this okay but it can be something that's discussed for sure okay other things need a motion to schedule the hearing the public yeah are there any other thoughts or or petitions or cuts to the budget that anyone is what's the final tax rate increased i can publish to people five point five three five point eight eight two five point eight two well that sounds much more reasonable okay so we need a motion you need a motion so i would move that we uh warrant a public hearing for the f y 25 budget on january 16th at a regular city council meeting well and the cip as well second all in favor hi hi all righty so now we move on to the sustainability report um when we are ahead of time but we could do a quick little break we're almost done so i'd like to call back to order the south burlington city council meeting of december 18th 2023 our last one in 2023 right we don't have any next week um and we'll move on to item 12 which is receiving the city's annual sustainability report and paul connor director of planning and zoning we'll share that with us i'll be brief here it is no no this has been a big year a lot of work has been done um outlined in the report happy to answer any questions i did want to draw your attention to the very last paragraph where um we will likely be submitting a unified planning work program request that you will see at your one of your january meetings to the rpc to begin to do the um analysis both from the big picture of the inputs in terms of total vehicle vehicle miles traveled total carbon uh being used in the city as well as on the targets in terms of things like total numbers of vehicles registered in south burlington that are ebs and plug-in hybrids that kind of thing so this next year will be our first year where we start to get some real data um this year is a little more qualitative as a uh report but there are the beginnings of our quantitative metrics in there around some of the ordinances you passed as well so happy to field any questions that folks might have they can guess up my shelburn road the fire trucks they don't have to go all the way yes that was the savings yeah yeah and that's a really exciting one so many people were jazzed by that work i think by lue and nick going over and hearing the question of you know what why do we have to do this and just it didn't take a lot of digging to discover that i didn't have to um but we've always done it that way and and that's how things get that's not it meant to be um you know offensive it's with everything doesn't bend me at all no i think it's perfectly yeah yeah um will this report also include some of the improvements that um the schools have made is there a way to integrate that that's it we can certainly reach out to our partners at the schools if that's something you would like for us to um ask them to share and then it'd be somewhat of a joint report um we're happy to do that um you know when i went to the i don't know what it wasn't the cushioning of all the um electric buses but they were celebrating them and they had saved um it was huge i can't remember now but it was a very impressive dollar figure and number of gallons of fuel that they didn't use because the buses had driven i don't know like 79,000 miles in a year the four buses it was just astronomical and so um and i'm sure they're doing other things in terms of you know using led lights and junk like that so um i think it would be really helpful for the public to understand and see in real metrics what the entire city is doing to meet these goals so i think it would be important to include the school and also include probably not in this work with CCRPC but um we really need to figure out how to present this to the public in ways they understand appreciate and can um you know generate support for that and we don't do that as well as we might and i think as we go forward with climate change it's going to be more and more important to make sure that they um understand you know how far we've come as well as how far we need to go so i would hope that that's part of absolutely i you know i think moving forward as we move into the more quantitative work it becomes a much more graphic presentation and then the pieces of it can be shared via our city news and social media made available in a lot more accessible ways the first couple of years are sort of necessarily very programmatic you know we put together a plan we can pull out a piece of the plan but it doesn't excite as many people as data no but little pieces like saving however many gallons of gas for the fire trucks and however many gallons of gas with electric buses that's real to people i think absolutely and it helps um you know paint the picture yes what about the commercial space permits that you've you've had since december um do you have any idea how many kilowatts of solar might be installed there do they have to furnish information on the permit application or is it sort of an act and you don't know they need to demonstrate uh the amount let's see there was a fair amount of discussion about how this is going to be done it's that they have reasonably maximized the area the planning commission then and decided not to try to go into a whole kilowatt analysis with the the the key thing being let's get them on the roof or wherever they're going to be so we will know the area that will be including them but not necessarily a kilowatt unless they're requesting that they produce less because of some oddity of the building they don't have to produce more than the building would um would would generate um so they might provide us that information that way but otherwise it's they just need to provide us the area of solar will we ever know the the the amount of energy that they would produce in that area later on uh i'm i'm not sure that we are have it as a permit requirement of them whether it's something that we can partner with green mountain power to start to collect i'm not sure we can certainly fall upon that though because that'd be one nice thing to measure is that we've issued 12 permits and two years later the buildings are constructed and it's 15,000 kilowatts you know of added power i mean right okay but the houses it's more difficult because it ends up being sometimes just the homeowner's choice after it's been built and you don't know if they'll ever do it so we can change that no um any other comments yes ander so just um in that same vein do we have insight into all of the folks that have the 24 new homes and the commercial space that have been under the um primary heating system ordinance do we have insight into how those folks have been complying whether they have natural gas back off whether they decide to go all electric and i think i think that information be useful um to to understand how the rollout's going but also to inform us in terms of um potential future changes if everyone has decided that you know what the technology is sufficient we're gonna go all electric we're good with it you know we don't need a fossil fuel backup um i would be you know of a mind to tighten up the ordinance for instance um i'm not aware of our knowledge just yet on it it is um possible that the fire prevention team has some more knowledge and i happen to follow up with them on it the 24 new homes is uh nine of them are in one building that also has the 5 000 square feet of commercial so that's one building and then the the remainder are in small buildings each so it's likely mostly single and two family homes and then this one building so far so we can reach out to the fire prevention team we can also informally at least initially ask the builders and communicate with folks like efficiency vermont to see if they're tracking it could because certainly any and all of these things are presumably the builders are taking advantage of rebates and programs through efficiency vermont and they were close partners with us as we did the vetting of this ordinance at the beginning so yeah it'd be great to get more color the the other reason personally why it would be good to get more color i know i've had conversations with other municipalities that are um very seriously hoping to copy what we've done and our experience will help inform their conversations and there are other conversations taking place that i think our experience would help inform so any color we can have on that front would be really useful okay do we need to we don't need to accept this do we i'm sorry i have a few other oh i'm sorry so just um so i love the report i know we're we're doing a lot i know we've done a lot um i wrote down this whole thing about what came out of COP 28 but i don't want to bore everyone everyone knows that like it's a plan an emergency and you know the quotes that came out of there are frightening so i would really like us to see us move even faster particularly on LDR changes i think there's just a lot of low hanging fruit that's still out there we talked about enhanced EV charging maybe splitting out the rent of a parking space for an apartment um you know we talked about maybe regulating small gas engines blowers trimmers in the thermal space we've got burlington's example for ensuring that rental units existing rental units become more efficient over time and better weatherized we we learned we do have the um power authority to regulate existing um fossil fuel infrastructure in buildings when they get a permit so we have all the stuff that we can do and i would really really encourage us to like move at the speed of trust and continue to to chip away and do these things and keep them on our agenda and and worry about them and move them forward they're you know they're not going to cost the city money and we've got examples of other folks doing them and i just i personally would like to move faster in this space okay yes jesse very excited that you're willing to put staffing in the f y 25 budget to do this work and we can also do some of this work on the council honestly so um yeah okay other comments or thoughts well how how do you go how do you propose doing that um if the council is amenable to putting some of these items on the agenda i'm happy to push them forward which items are you talking about well the ones i just listed okay well they have to go through planning commission right to become proposed directly here right the solar commercial well the planning commission likes to have a sense from the council do they not of what we would like them to focus on and they have a fair amount on their plate now so they you know that's a conversation that goes back and forth right for the things that are within their purview they do have some elements of the work plan that involve following up on the climate action plan including that is they'll be getting an analysis in either the second meeting in january first meeting in february on ev charging facilities so that is underway um task developing that right now some of the others that counselor child like you spoke about um would live with the council unless you chose to give them to another committee is there are there changes in in the works for lear for for new commercial buildings to require x number of you know parking spots to be to have car chargers level twos or so as i just said yes that's something we're going to be providing an analysis to the commission to in the next six weeks date six date weeks we are first looking at the new commercial building energy codes and and residential building energy codes we're just wrapping up an analysis that there's a new set of statewide rules that are coming out that will apply to all new construction that sets a foundation of that exact subject okay well that's a start and then if there's other items that i mean that sounds like a great start um if there's other items that the um you know andrew would like to push forward he just needs to find one other person who says yeah let's put it on the agenda we can talk about it and if we want to direct the planning commission to work on some enhanced ldr we can and i would agree with you we need to do this too sweet but would you also consider um so yeah i think you mentioned prohibiting certain tools that that would not be a planning commission item that would be an ordinance ordinance that would be an ordinance right i think we could do that through our noise ordinance right yeah yeah and i think that would not be a heavy lift okay great all righty so we don't need to adopt this or anything we just need to hear it and read it can make a side comment you may so i just wanted to say that um i have a friend that that's renting in a new apartment building in morrisville and it's got a split system it's got an electric water heater but it's not a hybrid heat pump type water heater and so he's been there for i think a little bit over a month he got his first bill so we've been trying to work together to figure out how much the heat pump is is costing the heat the place right so he's been looking at his bill unfortunately the i think the utility doesn't provide you know that the hour by hour or you know web you know presents for graphs and we could look over last year's bill and no no he just moved in it's a brand new building so but it's been interesting going through the process of trying to figure out how much he actually paid electricity the heat this 700 square foot apartment you know so we've got a little bit information you know it's like a hundred dollars plus but we're not sure how much was water you know and the lighting isn't very much refrigerator you know and then turn off the hot water heater for a month he did that for a little while when he was gone right so but once he understands if the if the utility has a website that lets him in that looks at hour by hour smart meter usage then you can start trying to dissect that and figure out how much power is the heat pump is taking but so far so good you know so that's great the whole building is like that even so all of the units have got to have their own electric water heater they don't have a natural gas fired central water so anyway there's that little side okay well thank you paul we'll move on to item 13 convene is the self-growing and liquor control commission to consider first-class licenses for and third-class restaurant and bar license and an outside consumption permit wants to be outside in this weather so i would entertain a motion to enter the south billington liquor control board i'll make that second all in favor hi and we have three licenses to consider so i would entertain a motion for old post and windjammer in the poor house so moved second any discussion all in favor signify by saying hi hi okay that passes it's anonymous i'm out of the self-growing liquor control board and i'll second that all in favor hi so we are back to normal here other business item 14 pardon we're not normal she said okay if there's i see seeing no more business i just want to wish everyone a really happy holiday and um safe travels if you're going somewhere i know you're going to go out west and if you're staying here we can all pray for a little snow no snow no snow i know it's coming okay long-term weather forecast forecast is for the early part next year to have colder than average temperatures oh really yeah that doesn't mean snow though so it must be true right exactly all right entertain a motion to adjourn second all in favor hi hi hey guys 50 minute