that's great right well good evening everyone I'm gonna officially call this meeting to order so the first item is to review and approve the agenda I don't think I have any information about changing it I know John had some sent around information about the liquor licenses but that is otherwise in the consent agenda any others have thoughts on the agenda additions oh Bill go ahead one question Alec Ellsworth is sitting on some information about potential rem purchase and he will be available later in the meeting if you want to go into executive session to discuss that otherwise information that he sent is there so we could add that on if that's something you'd like to do one question I have about that is what is there a urgent reason to put it on for tonight like is there a deadline or anything I don't know where there is I think it's just you know it's real estate so it's moving so right right okay thoughts about that team you'll be okay with me to wait to put it on our next meeting instead of tonight okay yeah I was gonna say my anticipation is that this meeting is going to be kind of long one so yeah go ahead don't involve money in the coming year that we need to think about allocating it's in our context of our budget it does but we weren't gonna make any request in the budget so we'll be how do there was gonna be discussion of money but not with the change to the budget so whatever that needs to be done doesn't have to be done next year so we don't have to worry about money for next year well you're you know we're already getting into some details so there there's the short answer is we were not gonna ask to increase the budget okay for this okay thank you well let's plan to have it as an agenda item for next time if it's not too full I don't have recall if that is already very full already but not late tonight okay let's let's do that I think that would be good alright any other thoughts on the agenda okay so without objection we will consider the agenda approved so on to general business and appearances this is an opportunity for any member of the public to address the council on any topic that is otherwise not on our agenda if you do have comments on an agenda item you can make those when we take those up but otherwise if there's something else you would like to address the council about now would be a good time to do that and what's true for this time as well as any other following public comment is if you would say your name where you live and try to keep your comments to two minutes that would be fantastic alright so is there anyone who would like to address the council you can either physically wave raise your hand or make a react emoji and if you are on phone you can hit star six on you Steve Whitaker here alright Stephen go ahead I want to just relay for you what I consider a tragic emergency it's in addition to the ongoing bathroom problem and I spent three over three hours today on behalf of a passerby who might notice his story is he got out of Newport he's got a wife and kid he can't stay with and he stayed outside last night and it was like what two or eight degrees or something like that and so I spent hours today calling gone calling you know Ken Russell another way director calling talking to Will Everly and in the tens of millions of dollars that have been spent this guy doesn't have a phone by the way he doesn't have a working phone doesn't have a place to live doesn't have transportation and all of this combined horsepower and salary and committees and task forces and meetings and minutes could do nothing for this guy he walked away after three hours of me doing my best just totally disheartened and and despondent that this is the best we can do and you know you may see him wandering around Montpelier tonight if you want to go out but I just think that this is more serious than you take it you know and I'm calling on you to recognize that we have literally failed miserably you know I don't know what more to say I mean what the only offer will had was there's a spot up in Morrisville or Hyde Park if he can get there you know but he has to be back here in for an appointment in the morning so even if he could get there there's no way to get back in time for an appointment so you really don't take seriously how this crisis is but when a body shows up you will you know and I just I you've been hearing from me so long your ears are clogged so I'll leave it at that thank you Stephen and it's it is actually good to know um what's happening you know on on the street I mean there was a don said there was one room work on it go ahead Stephen okay all right um thank you he was interrupting she can mute me but she can't unmute me that's pretty clever okay so don said there was one room at a conelage and I said find a way find a petty cash something another way says he can come here and make phone calls to call two economic services but we're going to throw him out the door at five o'clock and and by the way economic services closes at four thirty and I'm like is this the best you can do I've said somebody find some petty cash get the guy in the o'connellage it will work out the paperwork tomorrow you know nobody could do anything so when when I plead with you to realize this is this is we are better than this you know we we have to recognize that this is a humanity this isn't politics this isn't you know take the can down the road or say we don't know how to do social services this is a human emergency so we came so close and the guy walked out and he's sleeping outside somewhere in montaigneur tonight you know so that's I'm sorry I took more than like two minutes but I feel okay yeah no fair enough thank you Stephen um rick I see you've got your hand up yeah hi uh this is uh rick de angelis and I live in montaigneur I'm the director of the good samaritan haven Steve if you want to contact me offline either by email or a phone I'd be glad to pay for a room at the o'connellage on behalf of the good samaritan haven so uh I wasn't aware of this situation and uh we can uh we'll do everything that we can to get that gentleman inside thank you um okay um anyone else okay um so we're gonna move on then to the consent agenda is there a motion regarding the consent agenda I move it except second okay we've got a motion and a second any further discussion uh about this oh I do have one uh comment or a question and that is that for some of the financial uh documents um Kelly's been able to set something up so we could council members can sign electronically and I wonder if it's possible to do that same thing for the uh liquor licenses or do those have to be signed on a physical piece of paper even during the uh state of emergency um at no I can't bring up videos sorry I hope you all can hear me at this point um there's nothing nothing to be done about um but the conversation is I'll push a little harder on that um let's see but right now it's got to be physical okay thanks Sam because in court we're we're not signing hand signing documents in court where courts are accepting electronic signatures and it seems crazy if the liquor control commission doesn't yeah it's a little scatter shot um right now but I'll lean on thanks okay thank you right so there's been a motion and a second um uh any further discussion on the consent agenda okay all in favor please say I and opposed okay so the consent agenda passes uh and um we are going to move on to um a series of appointments so there are a few appointments to be made here and the way we're going to um move through this time is that love to have any of the folks who are up for this appointment to or um for any of these appointments uh that includes to the uh uh transportation infrastructure committee to the police review committee uh or to the housing authority uh any of those candidates would introduce themselves and tell us about your interest in that committee then we will go into executive session and uh come out with recommendations for appointments on on all of those committees together having said that I think it makes sense for us to go sort of uh orderly through them so for the uh transportation and infrastructure committee are Kate McCann or Christian uh mayor on the call I don't necessarily see them but it's possible that that they're still here okay I'm gonna and Cameron you're not seeing anyone raise their hand or anything right I'm gonna take that as a no okay so um after that we have Abby German and Justin Dreschler Dreschler Dreschler for the police review committee I think I saw Abby on here oh and Justin is on as well um with either of you like to um actually be great if you would uh introduce yourselves to the council and um tell us about your interest in this committee and I see Justin has got his hand raised go ahead Justin hey everybody Justin Dreschler um so I had originally applied for this committee the first time through I um this is something of great interest to me I was a public defender in Boston uh straight out of law school for about five years and in the downtown Boston office I spent most of my time representing people in I would say anything from very very low level crimes like trespassing to you know more serious violent assault type things things that we would all consider I would say relatively serious um the that I left uh the primary reason for leaving was to try to pursue more civil rights litigation like 1983 lawsuits against in some cases police officers in cases of police brutality or discrimination cases things along those lines but I remained in large part a public defender in Massachusetts as a private contractor my family and I moved to Montpelier a few years ago we love it here uh I'm still working in Boston but I'm trying to get more involved in the community as I know now that this is going to be our long term home and that's it great thank you um any questions for Justin okay uh and Abby go ahead hello council um my name is Abby German my pronouns are they them and I live in Montpelier Vermont um I too applied for this position on the police review committee um back in the first round um and I was pretty disappointed to see that all of the people that were appointed were older and white and it just seemed like a sort of monolithic representation of our town um as a queer person and as a younger person I'm 24 years old I think that both of those identities would really add to the diversity of the council I've been working in food justice and housing justice for the past year and a half um and I hope to bring that perspective to the police review committee I've also lived in Montpelier my whole life um so have a pretty deep understanding of the town great thank you um any questions for Abby uh okay um Abby I do have a question for you I just want to um put it out there last time you were very clear about your thoughts about the police and you know appreciate hearing that from you this uh this committee since it is you know looking at um making recommendations for the for the police is is uh I'm I think one of the things that we hope for with this committee is that that people will be uh objective and um you know be able to to put aside any preconceived notions they may have to look at the data um for this and so not not going to assume that um you know any one conclusion is is right or wrong at this point but is that something you feel like uh you can do yeah absolutely I mean my work is definitely um informed by abolitionists that have come before me but I am definitely able to look at data objectively without my personal opinion um like getting in the way of numbers okay great thank you I just wanted to to uh check in about that um um just you know before we go into um you know appointments so thank you um uh Dan go ahead uh not a question for either the candidates but um overall how many positions on the police review committee are we looking to fill tonight um and I my memories if memory serves me correctly we had actually asked I think the police review committee to to think about how many additional positions they wanted and we received any sort of response to that so I I did check in with the police review committee and so both of these folks have uh been uh recommended by them and then adding to is within the parameters of our original um numbers that we set out for this group yeah I'm just why I was wondering if if this was an uh an am situation or an either or situation or a at our discretion kind of situation I mean obviously everything's out of discretion with appointments but just wondering what went as opposed to like the DRV that has a set number I just wanted to understand sort of where what type of selection we're making an analysis thanks yep uh Jack go ahead for as as one of the members of the commission I would say that as we were discussing it we were not seeing this as a choice between one of these two candidates that we would be comfortable with the the council considering both candidates and we felt that uh we would want to get people on kind of at this early stage because if we if we wait too much longer you know people are going to be behind they're not going to have the committee's not going to have the benefit of their input for how much longer the delay is and so that was why we wanted to get it on for tonight's meeting great thank you uh Michael go ahead I just to follow up on what Jack said and to answer very directly with Dan's question I think I can say with some confidence for the committee that we see these as the last two recommendations for for board because as Jack pointed out if we if we continue adding people we won't really be able we I think we agreed that we really wouldn't be able to bring everybody up to speed and time to finish our work as we see it now which is the end of June which is when our committee we we think that's the end of the lifetime of the committee as it was as it was created so I don't think that you can anticipate seeing more recommendations for the board from us I can't promise that I'm not the chair of the of the committee but I think that that was at center of our conversation and Jack may want to um confirm or dispute that but that's anyway that's what that's the way I see it thank you I agree with that thank you well Lauren go ahead yeah that I I agree um only thing I wanted to note as well we have talked about we have reached out to other community members that represent other perspectives and lived experiences that are not represented on the committee right now and we've talked about potentially doing a more informal advisory council to bring in different perspectives in different ways and are talking a lot about public outreach and engagement so even though you know this this is the set of folks that at least the committee is recommending to council right now just to be clear to to folks that the goal and expectation is to engage a variety of people in different in different capacities and ways and have had some good initial outreach in that vein great thank you that seems really healthy um all right so we're gonna are there any other um questions at this point comments okay um so the other appointment uh is to the um housing authority and Eric uh shoot this I don't um I apologize if I'm just pronouncing your name is Schulteis thank you um is Eric here okay I do not see Eric um okay so so from here that that those are all the uh jack go ahead and I pursuant to one bsa section 3 13 a 3 I moved to go into executive session to consider the appointment of a public officer and we have a motion and a second um any further discussion okay all in favor please say aye aye aye okay so we uh the council are going to hop off of this call but this line will stay open um so we will return to this um shortly okay so we are out of uh executive session and is there a motion regarding appointments uh yes there is I'd like to make a motion that we appoint Kate McCann and Christian Mayor to the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee that we appoint Abby German and Justin Dressler to the Police Review Committee and that we appoint Eric Schulteis to the Housing Authority Committee I'll second it I think and maybe frozen again motion and a second oh no can you hear me yes yes can you okay okay great okay I'll any further discussion okay um all in favor please say aye aye aye okay and opposed okay all right well thank you everyone who stepped up for uh those appointments and um thanks in advance for your work um all right so we are going to move on uh in the agenda and I in all of my technical difficulties I am not sure which item is next um so um yeah somebody help me out which what item is that next above and beyond what's that the above and beyond awards above and beyond awesome this this bill you know those well I'm gonna hand this one off to Cameron but if she doesn't mind I didn't tell her I was going to but she's probably more prepared on this than I am but we had two this month because we missed last month so we have two wonderful winners are happy to tell you about them thank you Bill um so yes we're a little behind so this is for November and December from last year and we're all caught up caught up now we'll start doing januaries next month so we have two folks this month we have um Jacqueline Hutton Moser from our parks department um she's really been the driving force behind creating our feast farm program um the challenging COVID-19 environment um she's created a community farm that's growing food to support our um home food delivery program through the senior center and she's really been working through all of these quarantine days she's been getting grants for it on her own she's raised over seven thousand dollars to support this project and the food's going to a really great cause and really supporting our community and then we also have Mike Potter our DPW equipment division supervisor he's really been the sole person supporting our DPW department's equipment maintenance and repair um since um the beginning of the year really he's been working really tirelessly to prepare and maintain DPW's equipment for the winter season and um his nomination forms really noted that um the equipment that he maintains is the ones that make it possible for us to clear the roads and keep the roads in our environment safer folks so we really want to thank both Jack and Mike for their commitment and dedication and their service to the city and our residents of the city so thank you to them both just want to throw in there about both of them are very well uh deserving of this but with Mike in particular uh not about Jack isn't but um we normally have a second mechanic who's been out so Mike's been doing really all the mechanic work himself for quite quite a time and you know certainly in the winter season that's a lot we are hiring a second one now but um so he's really been super dedicated and also shouldering a double load so both very well deserve award winners I would just like to apologize to Jackalyn and Mike that we can't make a big loud applause but I hope they feel our appreciation it's awesome well we did use the emojis thank you and you want to go to the community fund um yes that'd be great Cameron can you see who's here uh there's Christine I think there's quite a few folks here to present thank you baby helpful Cameron if you just call in and you can see everybody family with employees oh thanks Sam all right I think Christine is here to speak and Amy are you all for giving a presentation so Judy and Christopher as well just Christine on behalf of all of us oh okay great thank you okay well I'll jump in um thank you so much for having us um we are cognizant that you have a packed agenda tonight and we're really grateful to you for fitting us in um so um this is the popular community fund board we usually come to you every year at this time and share recommendations with you and so we're doing that again tonight and also um hoping to share not only some recommendations but also stories with you um so to facilitate that I'm going to go ahead and share my screen um and um I didn't have permission to do that okay super thank you so much um super all right so the popular community fund um I want to introduce um our other board members who are with us tonight um if you all can give a wave so Amy Cunningham is here Christopher Kaufman Ilstrup Michael Sherman and Judy Sturmer um and so we are the five member board of the popular community fund um um like I said we want to present recommendations but also create some context for you tonight and just do a little history review of um to just revisit who we are why we're here and what is this work that we are doing so to do that I wanted to just take us down on a little walk down memory lane if you would indulge me this is um the city ballot from 2009 we can see there's 25 articles on here um you can probably all remember going through these long ballots you can probably remember signing petitions for nonprofits to get onto the ballot right I'm seeing a lot of smiling faces so this is a familiar site to us it's in our not so distant memory um the city council decided that um this was not the most efficient way to allocate funding to organizations doing important services in our community and so city council in 2012 designed a solution to this challenge by creating the Montpelier community fund um so there's three important pieces to keep in mind about the community fund one is um we are a five member board and our job is to do due diligence on behalf of the city to allocate these precious taxpayer dollars we ensure match with mission um and we hold grantees accountable um the city council in 2012 when they created the community fund board created our board with a very broad charge and so we can see that in number two our criteria are the extent to which the grant will benefit Montpelier its residents and the public good by effectively addressing basic human needs um or by enhancing the quality vitality and sustainability of life in Montpelier so obviously there's a lot that fits into that believe it or not we still get applications from organizations that don't fit into those criteria um and then finally in terms of the community fund board structure one of the really smart things that the city council did in designing the community fund is to say that if applicants apply to the community fund those applicants may not also petition to be placed on the ballot and that maneuver saves our ballots and our citizens from going through the dozens and dozens of applications that we see every year and also ensures a level of of accountability um so let's talk about um briefly just our process for folks who might be a little bit less familiar with the community fund board um what um our process is is that we will typically start our work um by meeting um in the late summer early fall we review the application and guidelines we have worked hard to um make sure that those applications and guidelines are streamlined as possible and accessible as possible for grantees we have a page on the city website um i'm going to pause and give a shout out to mary smith for her incredible level of support this past year thank you so much mary you made our work possible um and then we release guidelines and applications and promote them like crazy hopefully you saw our social media posts you saw our posts on front porch forum advertising the community fund board to make sure that anybody who's providing important services in Montpelier knows about this as a source of funding um every one of our five board members reads every application um applications usually are 10 to 20 pages um and then we meet for about a half a day in december to make final recommendations and then this tonight is when we bring you that final slate of recommendations for you to vote up or down as a group um so that is our process this year our applications um total 130 thousand 150 dollars they're for 34 grants in total um you have those grants um as part of your city council packet so you have um our minutes with a list of all of the grant recommendations that are included in your packet um i just want to note that um in comparison to past years the percentage of human services grants is increasing last year it was 35 percent this year it was 50 percent i think the phone call about the dire circumstances of the gentleman who did not have shelter tonight in the beginning of the meeting helps to probably make that shift make sense for everybody um and then we can see arts and humanities education and environment also make up really important totals for this um fund as well so in past years um we stopped here and what i wanted to do this year and again we're going to be cognizant of your time is to also share some stories with you because what we know from reading these applications and reports is that every single one of these 34 applicants applicants has an incredibly compelling story of impact to share with you um and you don't get to hear it we get to hear it but you don't and we want to give you some highlights um i shouldn't even use the word highlights it suggests that some grants are better than other we want to use share some vignettes with you so first of all to do that we're going to do a deep guide into that human services wedge of that pie that 50 with a little focus on food security the background here to consider is that due to the pandemic food security in the state of vermont has increased 30 in the last year to the point that now one in four vermonters don't have reliable access to affordable nutritious food so food security is something that we as a community need to be cognizant of and thankfully we have some amazing organizations in the city that we are supporting through the mob killer community fund who are working on this issue so community harvest of central vermont maybe some of you have been out on gleams with this amazing group i know my family has this organization is a gleaning organization and that means that they organize dozens and dozens of volunteers every year to harvest usable produce that is left over at local farms they work with 40 local farms and this is an organization that rose to the challenge of 2020 by almost doubling the amount of food that they harvested and then distributed in our community so much food accounted for over 100 000 meals i also really want to note that over 3000 mont pilier residents ate that food over 3000 almost i mean with our community of 7400 people almost half of our community benefited from glean food from the community harvest central vermont that the mob killer community fund board helped to support another food security organization is just basics um and you know probably most people are familiar with just basics it's our food shelf in trinity Methodist church for years this is a food shelf that had about 200 people um a month coming in and then two years ago prior to covid their visits started increasing exponentially they went up to 600 people per month coming in prior to covid and covid has increased the number of people they are serving by 17 percent again this is another organization that has shifted and been rising to the challenge of covid they're providing online ordering to help people stay safe during the pandemic since they can't offer a sort of grocery shopping experience and again another volunteer another organization with incredible community support in the form of 60 people who volunteer to keep that food shelf going so as important as it is to feed our bellies um it's also incredibly important to feed our heart and soul through the arts and humanities and especially now than uh more so than ever during this time of um national challenges one of the organizations that does that is the vermont humanities council um the humanities council seeks to engage all vermonters in a world of ideas foster a culture of thoughtfulness and inspire a lifelong love of reading and learning i had to read their mission out loud because i mean i think that there has not been a time ever before where the need for that sort of work has been more apparent so the humanities council presents hundreds and hundreds of events every year most of which are free what the community fund specifically supports are the first wednesdays lecture series and so these are free lectures they formally happened at kella covered now because of covet they're happening on zoom which is amazing because now you can go to the vermont humanities website and you can go to any one of their first wednesdays series around the whole state so there's 80 happening this year on incredible topics women's suffrage duke allington poetry the storytelling of the null peak and avanakis so i mean this is the sort of content that we need right now to keep our minds and our souls healthy as well as our bodies during covet and this is part of what we are hoping to support another arts organization that is the tw wood art gallery now again this is a well-known organization in town but um i want to pause just to note and have us fully appreciate um how incredible it is that in a town of our size that we have a community arts organization with a large permanent collection of incredibly important artwork from the first part of the century as well as galleries for new contemporary artwork and this is artwork that's not just stepped into their vaults and galleries they are getting out in the community they're placing this artwork at the state house and at the hospital they're encouraging people to interact with their artwork everywhere just the way that tw wood is inviting people to interact with them through classes and camps and poetry readings with an incredible commitment to making their programming accessible to everyone um they have a really strong emphasis on scholarships to make sure that if you want to send your kid to art camp if you want to send your kid to their after school programs you can do it um regardless um so let's move on and think a little bit as well about the importance in our community of also making sure that every Montpelier right is able to access this community that we all know and love and be a part of it one of the organizations that does that is the central Vermont council on aging um this is an organization i confess i did not know a lot about before i became involved with the Montpelier community fund board um they started whopping 362 Montpelier residents this past year with a whole suite of services some of what you see here um they're ensuring that people get meals they're ensuring that people can access medicare and again this is an organization that has shifted and in a remarkably flexible way in response to COVID um you know we all feel i will speak for myself and guess that others feel the same way isolated as a result of our lack of ability to connect to others central Vermont community or central Vermont uh council on aging understands that our elders are especially vulnerable to feeling isolated so they have recruited and trained an entire suite of volunteers whose job it is is to call and check in at our seniors the check in and say what do you need what can i offer you they even have a full-time staff person now who helps seniors access technology to participate in online events um and if that is not responsive to COVID i don't i don't know what is one more organization that we want to share with you and that is the Vermont Center for Independent Living um the Vermont Center for Independent Living describes themselves as people with disabilities working together for dignity independence and civil rights this is an organization that makes it possible for people with disabilities to fully engage in our community they are offering support by peers by peers with disabilities offering supportive peers with disabilities to um you know more fully engage in life in the community they are offering modifications to your home if you need a wheelchair ramp suddenly they're ensuring that meals on wheels gets to people with disabilities as well as to our seniors they even offer technical assistance to business owners so our beloved downtown retailers could call the Vermont Center for Independent Living and get help on figuring out how to make their businesses more accessible to people with disabilities um so this is just a small small selection of the 34 organizations that we are putting forth to you as part of a slate tonight of um grantees from the Montpelier community fund board um and we are grateful for your time on the agenda tonight and grateful for you being willing to take a little tour of grantees with us and we just want to leave the door open and say that we um are so would be so uh open to engaging in further conversation with the city council about um how to focus this incredibly important taxpayer monies on the services that we need in the city um or about the processes that the city uses to fund important services in our community so leave it there um and turn it back over to you for questions and discussion great thank you um if you wouldn't mind um uh unsharing your screen then yes that will allow me to see everyone awesome um great thank you that was so heartening and uh delightful um you know we we know we have a lot of um fantastic organizations that we we know are funded through the community fund but it really is um delightful to hear those um like how it's at least a few examples anyway of how that money is actually being spent um makes me really proud of of this this fund and and all of your work it's so grateful for um the time that you all spend going through those applications and and vetting them and making sure that people in Montpelier are spending their tax dollars not just wisely but to to help um our our own community effectively um so that is uh really wonderful um other comments or questions uh Dan go ahead here um yeah i want to echo this and i just want to say i mean i've been on a lot of non-profit boards and this is one of the best um presentations i think i've ever seen um and that's really um we're lucky to have a dedicated um group of people christine that you lead nami and judy and christopher and michael um we're really lucky to have that because i think you do a lot of the important work of making sure that you know it isn't a race to the ballot like it was before and who can get the necessary signatures and just sort of put on what what you know was either on before people were used to voting for or what may come off as sort of popular but what's really needed and i really appreciate the work and thoughtfulness you guys have put into this and like i said i mean it's really heartening to hear these stories it's also somewhat depressing to hear you know some of the rise of food insecurity and uh human services that are you you're addressing and picking up um so i i mean i the only question i have is really you know as you've seen in these past two years where there's been this growth and the shift from uh you know human services to eating you know going from 35 percent to 50 percent do you see that increasing over the next couple of years um and is this something that we should be thinking about and preparing for as a city um in addressing i'll jump in but i um also you know certainly turn to all my colleagues on the board um to other thoughts as well and um you know i mean you know as you know my answer is going to be informed both by my experience with the molecular community fund board but also my work as a philanthropic advisor i literally spent time on the phone today or on zooms with five different food shelves across the state um so i think that yes the demand is absolutely going to increase um i think that the only reason that organizations are not asking for more money right now is that there's been this tradition of very very small grants and so that's where the expectations are set um if there was more funding available there are organizations that could use it really well tomorrow um so you know in general both in Montpelier um as well um as you know across the state i think that we're going to see needs increasing for years to come i mean it it took 10 years for us you know after the great recession um for us to fully recover the jobs in the economy that we had pre great recession and the same thing's going to exist except you know the federal funding that has kept us afloat is not going to last for 10 years right so at some point the federal funding is going to go away it's going to be up to us as community members to fully support the services that are so critical for our neighbors so i'm sorry that was a long-winded answer but the answer is definitely yes and i certainly yield to any of my colleagues who want to share thoughts as well thank you um other thoughts or questions uh jay go ahead christopher did you want to add something i'm sorry i thought you put your hand up you were just scratching your head okay that's okay good um yeah i just want to echo dan um and ann's comments and uh thank christine and all all of for all in all of you all the board for your work um for all the qualifying organizations i wish we could fund them all at 150 of what they asked for that's for sure um just one one question that i had just to help my understanding was i did notice in the list that there are a lot of statewide organizations um that apply and there were um some that were fully funded and there were some that were called out for not necessarily not called out that maybe that's too tough but but we're in your notes would acknowledge that they didn't necessarily connect to the Montpelier community enough and so i'm just curious how you all quantified that i think you gave a great example with the humanities council about the lecture series and how it comes right to Montpelier i just want to understand how um you all sort of make those decisions for organizations that are not just Montpelier focused yeah that's a really good question jane i'm glad you asked that um so in our application we ask specific we ask you know broadly about mission you know the organization programs but then we also ask specifically about activities in Montpelier and the number of Montpelierites served so we ask about the total number of people an organization might serve but then of that total we're very interested in knowing how many people specifically in Montpelier are going to be served and you're right we that's a piece that of course we take really seriously there are statewide organizations who managed to also as you described be intensely local and offer very appropriate locally specific activities you know there are some statewide organizations that um offer programs with a broader brush stroke right and sometimes those are not we feel that they are not as appropriate for the city of Montpelier so um you know that's uh definitely a filter that we use rigorously michael it's the end of yeah michael go ahead um i just wanted to add that one of the other questions that we have on the application is um the extent to which any one organization interacts and and works with and cooperates with other similar other organizations doing similar work it which allows us really to assess so they're you know their uh understanding of where they fit in our in the community and in this community of organizations that are providing services and and that is one of the that is one of the things we do consider um and and try to incorporate into into our our thinking and and and award making great thank you any other comments or questions okay um well so again um thank you uh for the presentation that was really that was very helpful um i actually i do have one further question um is the timeline that you all are working on now does that work for you all that is a really good question i will say honestly the timeline is really awkward um and here's here's why i'm not sure that there's anything to be done about it though truly because you know we have applicants who are putting their applications together let's say um in october for a november deadline so let's look at this past year um they're you know they're putting an application in in november of 2020 and then they will hear about recommendations um they'll wait until town meeting day to find out whether or not the budget pass and they're funded and then in um july or august july august um they will be funded so you know they're going from november to july i'm sorry july beginning of fiscal year july um yeah july yeah that's right yeah yeah so it's you know it's an extremely prolonged period um you know i'm not sure there's anything that we can do about that you know but you know anyway in response to your question the timing is awkward and we just try we actually just recommitted as a board to putting together materials uh and as a list of fiqs so to as to explain that timeline to grantees and and make the process a little bit less mysterious for them um you know i i i don't think that there's much that we can do to address it but we'll just help to you know hopefully we'll make the process a little bit easier as we keep working to streamline things the other point if i may mayor um is that go ahead donna they're giving a report on data of the completed year they're in the middle of one year and then won't get paid actually the checks don't come until august so it's a very strange timeline and i don't know what you do with it but it's very strange yeah yeah um any other comments or questions okay um i'm afraid i'm i'm getting a little glitchy here so i apologize uh can you hear me okay yes yes okay sorry um okay well thank you thank you again and um i don't think we need to approve this separately am i correct about that because it's um we already included it in the um budget well you're totally fine you usually approve the correct yes okay got you we approve what they've given us uh bill i had a question in the actual worksheet i thought we had one thousand one 131 and she put on her chart one three zero she's saving us money that's that's our christine do word of the public funds it is $850 back what i make a notion that we accept the recommendations of awards as presented by the mcf committee okay uh there's a motion and a second um any further discussion okay all in favor please say i hi okay and opposed okay all right thank you again um for all your work so appreciate it all right so next up is the uh audit and i i'm assuming that the folks from the audit are here and so i'm going to turn it over to to them so i'm going to touch things off here we just provide a quick introduction i um don't have a presentation prepared um the summary memo um just detailing kind of a high level of um kind of the puts and takes of where we ended up um is provided online um hopefully get a chance to take a look at it um i'm happy to take questions on it um if needed but without further ado um on the call tonight um i've got myself um our senior staff accountant um and then you've got members from our auditor's form um ron smith and miranda mcdottle um and so i'm just going to kind of tee things up here and then they're going to take over and um provide more detail and then take questions um so just uh we engaged um r h r smith in 2019 so this is our second audit with them um and things have gone really really well we're really pleased with the outcome um you know we ended the year um with a positive to the general fund of $4,130 which is kind of a big deal because following the bouncing ball around um we're actually to the good um and that you know is through a lot of effort you know city staff you know putting in the work and conserving resources so our plans working um so that's that's good um the other thing that you know the audit does give us is um a single audit um for federal funding that exceeds $750,000 um there's also a chip report that's included um and so to that end we had an unmodified opinion over last year's opinion which means we've got a clean audit and um that makes me pretty happy um so happy to share that and then um moving on just to kind of the discussion for tonight and we'll we'll have um Ron and Miranda you know touch off here but what I want to kind of review is just sort of some of the results within the funds um the government proprietary um our net position and some of our proprietary funds because well you know it's good news in 2020 that we're coming in where we are we do have some work to do and I just really want to underscore that so that then we can kind of get the ball rolling um and then you know we also want to really highlight the impacts of our infrastructure upgrades um and what that's doing to our proprietary funds so um we are currently working with public works to get the utility budgets together and those will be coming forward in February um we're also working on updating the master plan so things are in the works um and this you know audit is just kind of helping us inform what's next um so I'm going to leave it there um and have Ron and Miranda take over I want to know how to do the emojis Miranda go ahead we'll have a lesson on that um so I want to say 20 was it's been a hard year and it's been a hard year for everybody um I will say the transition especially with Kelly coming on with Heather coming on and then you know three months later COVID hitting so that wasn't easy and the fact that y'all ended up positive by four thousand dollars you need to embrace that um I think that's that's uh that's a lot of communication that's a lot of talking and planning and I think that is is uh you know that's that's that's good and um that means well you know what that means um that is something though that you need to talk about also going into 21 and remember she's from Southern Vermont down in Texas you guys so forgive her there she's stuttering a little bit I am um but you know with that four thousand dollars it contributes to your overall fund balance um of just a little under two million dollars um so when you look at it you have about a 14 million dollar expenditure budget um for FY 20 so that's roughly about 30 days 30 45 days worth of expenditures which is good ish and we like to see it a little higher but um right now with what the world is going through I think um it's uh it's positive it's a positive note and I'll hop in here usually the standards say 30 60 90 days of your operating budget so in Montpelier terms a million two million three million and as Miranda said you know you landed on right around 45 days you know of your of your fund balance and unrestricted is the big one and I think that was a little north of a million four so I think that that's great and the fact that you landed this plane you know um with all the the adversity that you guys uh felt in last year I think is remarkable um so with that I think um the next topic is the enterprise funds um which is your water your sewer um parking and and uh district heat um water and sewer being your largest funds um you know water and sewer you actually had a net increase in your fund fund balance so you did put money into that but I do think a large part of that was you delayed projects um you know you didn't know what was happening in the world and I think um a lot of that was delayed projects going into the last three months of the fiscal year um parking and district heat both had um a um you over expended so you had a decrease um in that position with that so that is something that probably should be looked at um but also you delayed some projects in your enterprise funds um but you still have you know you've still invested heavily in your capital assets um you also have debt in your capital asset or debt associated with some of those capital assets in your enterprise funds um so when you look at your net position especially in the sewer fund um there's a deficit balance in your sewer fund and your parking fund and district heat so um that's something that um as you as you plan your budgets as you look at your master plan and I know Kelly um we've had these conversations that that as you are building your budgets and as you're looking at your master plans and you know we are in 21 in covid but these projects can't be put on hold forever but it is something that you are going to have to address um and look and look for and and and really um understand um what it's going to take to to maintain um the infrastructure and I think it's fair to say you all what what equity that you guys have in your utilities and these enterprise funds it's all tied up in your infrastructure there's really not a lot liquid there and I think you're going to face some big challenges in the very near future you know with all the projects that you got going on all the delays that you had all the future forthcoming projects reviewing this master plan that you have there's going to have to be a lot of thought that's going to get put into you know get put into this master plan and and and I'm hoping back in 2008 what happened then with these era and stimulus monies back then that the governments are going to start seeing a lot of money in the next third fourth and fifth stimulus packages you know here and uh and I think Montpelier could be a great benefit of uh of that when that happens I wanted to ask Miranda a question yeah yeah go ahead just you labeled the page differently but your numbers match the ones on statement b where you have those water sewer parking and district heat um what did you call this as you were talking you called it something else this is uh the enterprise funds enterprise fund okay statement g yep well this is actually statement b that i'm looking at so i should the statement b um is a consolidation of all um operating but if you go further into the document um okay statement c is your fund financial so when I looked at the general fund that's usually what I look at is statement c um that's going to show what the fund balance the 1.8 um or 1.9 million and then if you go further down into uh statement e yes and then statement g is what I was looking at for the enter proprietary funds um but their their enterprise funds okay thank you it helped me to follow like the documents with you yes sorry about that are there any other questions um I don't have a question I am just thrilled that we had a clean audit I'm modified and um I think that speaks well of our financial team and I'm so grateful for all of their work um I also just think it's worth uh saying out loud that you know I certainly hear you on the um the fund balance uh amount you know whether it's you know 30 60 or 90 days worth of fund balance and and you know it it seems to me that that um you know as we consider what we put our money towards uh when we hope things turn out to be better than we expect in this budget um that some of it I think ought to go towards um building up excuse me building up our unassigned fund balance um so that we have um some resiliency for when when times may be hard again um so that's um yeah your point is well taken um other thoughts or comments questions uh bill yeah I just like to offer a couple comments first of all thanks to the auditing team for the report and the hard work that that you did it's been great working with you and one of the nice things about when we do the audit is we get to recognize um at least one person that we don't normally see so Heather Graves is with us today she's the our head of our you know our top accountant and doesn't come to many council meetings but really does all the the work that keeps us together and as Ron and Miranda said we had you know Ruth retired Todd left um we didn't backfill positions so Kelly and Heather and their team were really doing the short staffed and Heather really had to step up in that chief role so not only did we were we able to pull off a clean audit but doing under some pretty tough situations forming a pandemic on top of it and uh so we're really proud of both of them in the whole finance department but I really want to give a shout out to Heather because we don't get to get to thank her publicly enough so um thank you well said well um Madam Mayor can I make a comment um you may Steven go ahead uh I just want to uh thank the presenters and uh ask that you this this issue of the the infrastructure the repairs the money coming our way and our preparedness to act on that money and spend it wisely requires a whole lot of planning that that we're not that good at or that demonstrably we're not that good at so I'm I'm glad that they made the point I think you'll hear it better from them than from me but this is going to be a once in a lifetime opportunity to use stimulus money and we are we we are still not yet acknowledging the the depth of the overdue and deferred maintenance on our our sidewalks and and our curbs and on our storefronts and and streets and and water systems so I just I just want to um commend that they brought that up and uh ask y'all to find a way to discuss this in a real in a meeting as soon as soon as possible and uh get started on it thanks and I would offer that we'd be more than uh embracing and extending our hand to participate in that because I think come March or April you guys will be around with better information you know on what what relief is going to look like fair enough okay any other comments or questions on the audit okay all right well thank you again um for all of your work and thank you uh to our financial crew for all of their work as well um all right so I think we are ready to uh move on then uh to the um second hearing of the budget um yes you should vote to accept the audit oh thank you good call okay um is there a motion I'll make a motion to accept the audit as presented I'll second it okay uh motion and second any further discussion okay uh all in favor please say aye all right all right okay and uh opposed okay all right so the motion passes all right thank you again everybody be safe and well okay all right so now we are on to um the uh second public hearing on the budget FY 22 budget um so I'm going to officially open the public hearing before I forget to do that um and I if I am not mistaken I believe um Bill has comments um or uh presentation to make um so go ahead thank you Madam Mayor and sorry let me just say one thing we're going to hear from Bill and then we'll go from there into public comment okay go ahead sure thank you Madam Mayor Council Members members of the public as you know this is the the deadline night um to put a final number on the ballot and and that final ballot is coming up later I'm just going to walk through a amended version of the presentation you saw last week so hopefully my share screen will go a little easier than it did last week um so here we are look at that all right can people see that is that working yes great okay well I'll try to get through this as you know it's not terribly long uh this is January 21st our final budget hearing as we are working on the FY 22 budget this means it runs from July 1 of this year to June 30 of next year so still almost the end of this budget is almost 18 months away always a challenge to to look that far ahead um we obviously our struggles this year we had a major budget gap due to COVID-19 we were hoping to implement our strategic plan that council had adopted to the extent possible with our financial resources the way they were we made collectively the policy decision to base this on a one-year COVID-19 horizon making the assumption that with a vaccine and other things that by the time we are doing this budget next year we should be in a different situation we also did this with the recognition that residents and businesses were hurt by COVID-19 not just the municipal government and that they are facing their own financial stresses the strategic plan priorities that we tried to incorporate in and we did put a summary in the initial budget book of how we thought we met at least some of these priorities our community prosperity COVID-19 response environmental stewardship more housing responsive and responsible government and sustainable infrastructure later on tonight assuming we make it you will be getting the second quarter update on the strategic plan areas so we started with a pretty a large gap in revenue our general fund was projected to be down about $520,000 this was through a combination of all sorts of general revenues that we receive and our parking fund in particular is going to be down another $525,000 and the question I was going to ask that we you know isn't the parking fund an independent fund and it is but several activities police finance dpw many others are funded by the parking fund because of the work is related and normally portions of their budget are shown in the parking budget and because those those revenues had dried up some of those funds over half a million of those funds appeared in the general fund helping to create an even bigger budget gap of about a million dollars we in addition we had as fate would have it in the COVID year and a revenue bad year this we had the rare once every 12 years 27th pay period which basically built in close to 4% percent on top of all of our personnel costs with with 127th more of the year so that added added funds plus we have steps and other costs of personnel we recognize we've been underfunding legal and needed to set something aside for that and we are as you know we're about to embark on a reappraisal uh and which costs in the neighborhood 260 thousand dollars and we're going to start putting money in reserve for the next one in another 10 years because that's actually what state gives us money for so all of that was about 400,000 making a total combined budget gap when we started working on this budget of 1.44 million dollars obviously we've we've had some budget challenges in the past but never anything like this so in order to try to close that gap we left uh six positions vacant throughout the budget uh one police officer one finance position two rec positions and two dpw positions we also scaled back on our capital equipment plan and uh realizing what a difficult decision that is based on the conversation we just had we reduced some of our external community funding and again we just tried to report from the community fund and we heard report early of homeless issues so clearly those are our areas that need funding cutback at operations funding and we have one less ballot item of this year at least we did tonight we'll know for sure I guess so those were made aware we managed to cut about 1.2 million dollars from the budget to try to close that gap so what is what's in the budget uh that we can talk about the current budget has less than a less than a cent property tax increase lower than a percent just a little over half a percent increase 0.6 percent um we indeed include funding from appeal you're alive we've included um funding for the equity project that the social equity justice committee is working on we included some operating funds from the act uh the energy committee the social worker for the public for the police department excuse me is still in the budget the library ballot item is in there the central von home health and hospice ballot in there ballot item is included and those personnel cost out reallocations that I just talked about from all the hit all these different departments that came from the the parking fund back into the general fund so again as you saw that was 500 and some on thousand dollars of impact to the budget um and through it all we've tried to keep all our basic services that we provide residents and what they pay for intact so that they can get the nuts and bolts of what they've come to expect some key budget items that that we spend a lot of time talking on uh just so people can see this uh the first column is what was in the current budget the middle column is what we adjusted this current budget to in order to address the needs of the of the covid crisis and then the third column is what we're proposing in the budget for community fund we've kept flat throughout throughout this at 131 housing trust fund we originally had 110,000 of the budget we adjusted it to 60 in this current year and proposing 50 for next year popular development corporation had 100,000 in which was adjusted to 75,000 and we're proposing dough funding for that uh in this coming year homelessness task force again originally at 45,000 we dropped it to 225 council restored it to the full 45 uh for this coming year recognizing the importance of that public arts fund was dropped again originally appropriated at 20 dropped to 10 in the current year and reduced to zero for this future year on the other side of the spectrum the community capital area neighborhoods had not received funding in prior years but was added for 20,000 for this year so you can see this funding area originally a little over 400,000 in these in these areas now we're just under 250,000 so one of the questions we've been asked a lot and has come up a lot is is the police budget up 10.4 percent and there seems to be an understandable amount of confusion about that so i'd like to walk us quickly through this this is our budget in the general fund so you can see the changes over the years and if you notice uh first of all the police operations and school resources uh school resource officer combined or what we consider the police department and then in red is the dispatch operation which is while connected to police department is not um has not been the source of i think some of the questions and controversy in the study committees and all that sort of thing um so you'll see that was actually up 20.6 percent so when you combine the two of them who are run by the Montpelier police department that budget is in fact the general fund budget up is up by 10.4 percent the police operations itself are only up by about seven percent but i'd also ask you to notice if you look at the prior three years you see you know fairly steady growth obviously just some inflationary growth and then a pretty large jump $150,000 this year uh and i think that's what people are objecting to you see the similar thing in dispatch so why is that why why would we do this a year where police are under question and i think the answer is pretty simple um we talked about these so out of the 500 some odd thousand dollars that had been previously charged to the the parking fund $208,000 of that actually had to do with police and dispatch similarly the cost of the 27th pay period for these two departments for this work combined is just over $100,000 so if you take a look you see the combined total of the increase for this year is $312,000 and yet the combined uh sort of impact of the parking fund and the general fund is $308,000 so it's a pretty direct shift of where the money's coming from not increases in money so we'll take a look at that at police itself since that's the area so again we take a look at the police department combined and we take out that that 27th pay period and then our now we're at a sort of a more serviceable 3.4 increase which is not that out of line with um departments that we've seen in the years past but again $123,000 in that budget has come over from the parking fund so if you actually netted that out which you know is a kind of a simplistic way of putting it but you know technically we're actually at a lower budget than we were last year for for the police department I'm not going to make that claim but I think it's important to look that you know this kind of this you know 200 somewhat thousand dollars has of the 27th pay period in the personnel plan have sort of offset $153,000 budget increase so at the very least the budget is is even and compared to 21 it's possibly down a little bit and how do I say that how does uh Dan can I just finish and then I'll go ahead go ahead um so what does that actually look like take a look at the police department summary and we see that we actually have budgeted for one less officer we've gone from 17 to 16 there's no new equipment in the budget at all uh typically the police department gets a new cruiser they get things like more body shields more uh you know various police type equipment things maybe radios those types of things nothing there's zero in the budget for the for police operations the only equipment budget for the police department is a uh dispatch console that's been budgeted but not purchased that's it and then we despite all that despite these reductions we continue to include our share of the social worker which had which we added last year as a new innovative way to to provide policing in the community so I think it's pretty simplistic to say the police department is up 10.4 percent when you look at it more closely you can see that there's actually better reduction in force reduction in equipment funding and that it's a pretty simple explanation of how those numbers work and you have to split out police and dispatch to get the true picture just moving on uh key budget numbers in the overall budget the general fund is reduced by two and a half percent from the prior year's approval and we're asking for a small amount of new tax dollars because of the lost revenue we are not planning any changes in the water and sewer and CSO benefit charges for the average home for the municipal taxes they'll see about a $16 tax increase and compare this to the the end of december c cpi consumer pricing index for our region was 1.4 percent so we are about half of that we did do a survey we asked questions i went through this last week so i'll do this much more quickly but we got 320 responses 96 percent of them were from city residents and they identified public works infrastructure those types of things as their top priority they also fire police and parks as their next priority so i think trying to recognize that this is what our finally asked the questions would you support increasing taxes to support the revenues to keep our current service levels about 30 percent supported that about 33 percent were neutral about 38 percent did not support them so kind of split uh and as you can see the city council has worked very hard at not increasing the taxes substantially in order to provide the current service levels so where are we in the schedule today is the final public hearing when council needs to adopt a budget in february we'll begin discussions of the utility budgets which are not valid items so we have less about time crunch on those and town meeting voting is on march 2nd 7 a.m to 7 p.m early voting will start in mid february and i'm sure the city clerk will talk about this later but it certainly looks like there will be mail-in voting and remote voting so that's where we're at with the budget i'm happy to answer any questions now yeah and if you want i can leave this up or try to go back to slides otherwise i'll just answer questions um thanks bill it is it's easier for me anyway to call in folks if you can stop sharing your screen so that i can i'm going to do that um see everybody and we need to go back that is okay um so i did see a hand um from dan uh and so but uh to any member of the public who'd like to make a comment um now is an okay time you can um raise your um hand or um just wave at us or something and we'll we'll call on you in a minute but um dan go ahead thanks i just wanted to make sure i understood with the police numbers bill um you're really siding to two sources one of which seems to be an increase because of the 27th pay period so there's a chunk of money that just because of the quirk of the calendar gets added for payroll purposes um that's right and that's every every city employee that's on a salary right um and then and then the other it seems to be um the fact that we're moving the fund some of the funding from the parking fund over to the general fund so it's not that the funding's increasing it's just that rise represents the increase that comes out of the general fund because we're shifting from funding sources is that that's exactly right um the way the way it worked and actually uh this going through this was a good exercise thing for kelly and i um because we'll probably change the way we do this in the future um um when we actually budgeted the expenses into the funds that they're charged from so say a police officer was 90 percent general fund and 10 parking fund 90 percent of their pay would be in the general fund budget and 10 percent would show in the parking fund perhaps a better way to do it but we put 100 percent in the police budget with a with the revenue being transferred from the parking fund to the general fund offset it I think that's probably a clearer more transparent way of doing that but it isn't the way we've done it since before I got here and so what happened is then that $200,000 of police and dispatch money expenses that had been chart being in the just parking fund are now moving into the general fund and to be clear that also happens in public works because a lot of the maintenance of the parking structures are not structures but lots you know those kind of things is also picked up by public works finance has a huge amount of that because of you know processing parking tickets and all those kind of things work so um you know like we said at the beginning there's about 500 someone thousand that came from the parking fund into the general fund this year and about 200,000 of that was in police and dispatch well that that's actually anticipating one of my other questions are there other funds where we're seeing that that same sort of percentage rise in part because they came out of the parking fund and now have to go into the general fund yeah scattered throughout the budget police and finance or the excuse me police public works and finance are the biggest ones um but then there's no other things and we did recognize that shortfall at the beginning as you know I think we gave you the heads up on that way back in November that that was going to be one of the major impacts on the general fund budget is making up for this transfer um so you know some of it was already accommodated through in the whole thing and and as was with police but that said if you look at the general fund budget police said dispatch just this year to the lecture they are at 10 but the budgets themselves aren't it's just where they're being paid for right so it's it's more reflective of their their funding sources than any additional dollars on the table apart from the the payroll um court that's true of every part of the city right right um so I did and and just sorry just to maybe make bring back one of your points just to be clear there would there are other accounting methods that if you had done it that way this wouldn't even necessarily be recorded as an increase because of the uh you know for example if the police were expenses were simply booked to the police and the general fund we wouldn't necessarily even capture this yeah it would look differently um a little bit on that hundred whatever well it goes for 200 000 of the combination police and dispatch obviously the the extra pay period would show up all the way through okay thank you great thanks all right I see a hand from uh Sarah Parker Gibbons Gibbons and then uh Lauren go ahead hi and then sorry and then we'll we'll also hear from Abby after Lauren okay sorry thank you go ahead Sarah um hi my name's Sarah Parker Gibbons and um I live on Terrace Street in Montpelier I live and work here and um I'm here to speak as a community member and as a taxpayer I think it would uh it puts it mildly to say that I'm disappointed in in the proposed budget um I was looking at page 14 and you know if you look at these figures um you know three million for police dispatch and even if you separate dispatch you're looking at like just over two million for police it's the largest number in this budget and then you go down to community which is that um just over 500 000 um or say if you look at the senior center which is at 134 000 um which the senior center I know provides valuable services to community members um so just looking at these these numbers I guess um it just raises questions for me uh two two questions and and I would hope that it would raise these questions um for you too as council members you know why are we investing so heavily in police why is the largest money going to to police and um and why are we not investing more in community services like like affordable housing like food security making making sure people can eat making sure people have a roof over their head um you know education human services um um yeah so I would respectfully ask you to um to not approve this budget thank you okay thank you um Lauren and then Abby and then Constantinos yeah I just um I can comment more later but just on this point um I know that a couple kind of concerns last time had been raised and it might be in the in the vein of Sarah's comment as well just there was not a philosophical or a different charge given to the police department compared to every other city department like there's been this kind of um assessment based on the quirky numbers for the year that we asked for austerity from every department but then we increased the police budget and I you know Bill just went through the details of why that was not the case but I just feel like like I'm confused looking at all of that so I imagine some people are still a little confused but just we were given you know across the board every single department I think had similar you know holding positions open and a similar outcome including the police department and I you know I hear the the concerns and would just again say that there is a deep dive going into um understanding what are we spending on our police um what are our police spending their time doing and a whole bunch of questions and that analysis is happening at the police review committee that I encourage everybody to attend and participate and help shape um the the vision and uh the the recommendations that that committee is going to be making um it's not ready right now um but that is happening so I hope people will get engaged in that and happy to share um the details of how people can do that a way more later thanks thank you um Abby go ahead hi my name is Abby German my pronouns are they them and I live in Montpelier Vermont um after listening to your rebuttal last week and tonight regarding the public outcry to defund the police I feel deeply disappointed with my city leadership apart from the fact that the city council manager or budget manager created the budget behind closed doors which is a whole other issue a claim that you have made is that the city is not really increasing the police budget from last year it only appears that way while it is really remaining the same remaining the same is not enough it is unacceptable to continue to fund an anti-black colonial institution that originated as slave patrol and for you to think that this is somehow acceptable is incredulous to me the fact that this was your defense to the public cry for defunding the police shows me that the city of Montpelier is more interested in preserving the status quo of insidious racism in our institutions than it is in actually being the liberal accepting and welcoming place that it claims to be I fear that white exceptionalism is plaguing the council the belief that somehow our town is different or our police are different than others in our nation many Vermonters would like to believe that racism isn't a problem here that racism is something that happens somewhere else and there's no denying that Vermont by some measures is a very progressive state however when we look at the data we find that Vermont is not the different liberal haven that we would like to believe that it is here are some staggering facts about racial profiling and state sanctioned systemic violence against black people in Vermont Vermont currently leads the entire nation with one out of every 14 adult black men incarcerated in our state recent data from traffic stops shows that after being stopped black drivers are four times more likely to be searched than white drivers although white drivers are more likely to be found with contraband and black drivers are two times more likely to be arrested black people make up only 1.4 percent of our state's population while making up 8.5 percent of Vermont's prisoners this data shows me and hopefully shows you that whether we like it or not Vermont is racist and it's past time that we take an aggressive stance against systemic racism beyond the performative allyship of painting black lives matter outside the state house it's time to show up for black people in our actions and values and that starts with defunding the police so echoing Sarah I would ask the council not to approve this budget without significantly defunding the police thank you thank you I'm Constantinos I did it hi my name is Constantinos Tavares and I'm a resident of district two I actually prepared a separate set of remarks but after I saw last week's hearing I was kind of disappointed in what transpired but first I just want to echo all the public comments so far today and last week that are asking to reallocate our community resources away from the police into services and resources that have a positive effect on the quality of life of our entire community for example reallocating two FT's from the police department would be about $200,000 that can fully fund the housing trust fund and even fill one of our DPW vacancies DPW was even in here back in November telling you all that they couldn't effectively maintain our infrastructure and either now or in the future and to add insult they even said that they have difficulty recruiting and maintaining and retaining staff because their wages are low and that was never mentioned in any of the budget workshops when you were discussing the budget it's also obvious the police don't need those two FT's one of them is already vacant we can probably attribute that to the SRO position not being funded but the other officer is collaborating with the federal law enforcement which again isn't providing services here in our community but assisting federal law enforcement whatever it is they do whether that's tearing apart families and putting children in cages and whatnot so you know and working with the feds is also contradictory to the department's fair and impartial policing policy but that's kind of beside the point anyway last week after public comment the first person to speak was the city manager not one of the elected officials so this rebuttal before our elected officials got a chance to speak I feel kind of poisoned the discussion because I think it's hard to go up against someone in the administration when they make remarks that I don't know how comfortable you would feel if your boss or someone that you really respected said something and you oppose it I don't know if you want to oppose it publicly something else was in December the city manager held a budget congress with the staff if that's correct right yeah so I believe that's where most of the budget decisions were made and that that congress was not open to the public there are no minutes no notes nothing was ever released to justify those decisions made the council never questioned any of those decisions in the base budget and it seemed like you spent most of your time discussing small changes like the homelessness task force and other items labeled as other services and the city manager even suggested you make those changes in the narrative the budget options worksheet you were provided also doesn't give you the option or opportunity to consider any of these anything in the base budget other than the other services with the exception of the capital plan even today's presentation is just an accounting method differences council richardson explained and not actual or reflection of the increased budget for the police so sure it might not have been 10.4 percent that it increased but it still stands at other departments have been effectively reduced your level funded while the police department was still increased so it seems no one really wants to stand up and hold the city manager accountable for his decisions he's not elected and there's no way for the public to hold them accountable that's your job council and mayor and it doesn't seem like you're doing that and I hope you don't take this as a criticism of the city manager because it's not I think he's doing a good job and he's in a situation where he needs to be taking direction from you the policymakers and that's what he's doing but it seems they're not questioning him and asking him for justifications of his decisions so this is on you city council and mayor to make sure that unelected officials are actually being transparent with the public and accountable to us so for me this budget was created in the dark it was never questioned by those of you charged with policy making power and actually fails to provide resources and services to our community in times when it needs it most it doesn't even address the goals and priorities contained in the budget document itself this is not a budget I can vote for on town meeting day I'd also like to point out that you didn't even try to you know entertain any adjustments to the budget today based on any public comments made as made because the language and numbers for the budget is already included in today's agenda um and to my knowledge based on any of these public discussions that I've been following there have been no adjustments to the budget based on any comments from the public so it seems like you know the actions that you've been taking have shown that these budget hearings and public comments in general to you are really kind of a farce since nothing changes from it okay thank you um other comments yeah Steve Whitaker here go ahead Stephen um I want to commend the well-organized speaker immediately before me um I couldn't have said a lot of those things better myself uh the fact that let me use a comparison uh our senator Polina got some statute inserted in the state budget which is being ignored um but it requires active participation in the budget development process to get the priority of the public's goals embedded in the budget and that's directly what's not happening we don't have that as our uh municipal you know ordinance or whatever about how the budget is created but that's in effect what the prior speaker was asking for that we define the priorities of the budget and not just let the city manager do it and as far as transparency I want to uh remind or uh be labor the point that the records the records I asked for prior to the year end uh I granted a generous extension so the city manager could go on vacation he comes back he produces some records uh there's a couple days ago and in what those records I find that he just subbed it out through Kelly to this v3o contractor who used useless uh search terms and didn't even apprise me or run those search terms by such as console or Motorola so that was all useless and and bill has to start the search again today again I recommended both console and Motorola and he put Motorola in an ignored console and said I'm screwed again but I'm not prepared for tonight's public hearing because of that lack of transparency and lack of competency and that's just really unconscionable um I I'm not going to belabor the point because it starts to get personal but I want to point out that I have done more research on that issue the uh the three new 7500 ip consoles are not just 135 000 as bill just stated it's 135 000 a year for the next three or four years okay so this is a three or four hundred thousand dollar commitment prior to the tell of eight independent expert assessment of what our needs are coming in and that's just irresponsible it also the only need for those ip consoles would be if the the main feature of the ip switching is that it can immediately switch to a remote site such as our backup site if Barry is willing to be our backup site but Barry is nowhere near voting or approving uh that kind of expenditure in this year's budget so we're proposing to prematurely buy these consoles uh that have not been vetted or analyzed by anyone other than take take bill's word board take friend's coming to work for it that's that is unconscionable the few documents I've pulled out of public records request show that the planning was not done the need is not there we bought new consoles five years ago cvps a paid for one of them those consoles have at minimum a 10 year life you can even squeak 10 15 out of them Motorola has discontinued them in favor of the new one but a Motorola rep was is on record speaking to a public safety authority saying buy a few spare parts you'll get five more years use out of us so I'm not asserting that we will especially if the tele-mail report comes out and says we need to have a backup site in Barry and the ip console might be better suited but that we're not there yet so to be funding new equipment which bill says we're not funding new equipment at 135,000 which is only the first down payment of near four years is really irresponsible and I agree that the way we've got our process organized we don't take input at the budget congress or whatever you call it the fact the private meetings and that in effect it's the hurdle the it's not a robot it's a rebuttable presumption that everything's just fine and I hadn't given all the testimony and others last budget hearing and it's like thank you go vote to approve you know that's a slap in the face to the pretense of public meaningful public participation I mean the people that I'm out here doing the work and doing the deep research that that you all ought to be doing or that you should require an independent you know retake anyway I think you got my point I won't belabor it I have spoken to several and I think this is this is one area where you can uh take some action without harming anything there's no evidence at all other than a little bit of hearsay that the sky is falling and we need to do consoles you know we we just replaced the phone system in a few short years so we should not be having our technology decisions made by self-interested staff who like new toys and don't do good planning and don't have over adequate oversight uh so I'll stop there thanks okay thank you uh Rebecca uh Deljan go ahead um hi my name is um Rebecca Dalgan and um I live on cream with Harris um I use she her uh she her pronouns um and I wanted to express my deep concern over the large amount um of our taxpayer dollars that are going to funding the police um you know I know the council puts a lot of work into supporting this community and I feel like all of you seem like really caring and compassionate people I've met with one of my uh council representatives and she was kind and approachable and listened um and you know I love I love hearing about community fund and you know these are things I love about our community and um I am just sort of devastated with how the conversation around policing has have gone um and honestly really feeling really angry about it and tonight uh particularly feeling angry as I've been sort of trying to research what was going on with the police and the budget and trying to get my ducks in a row to um speak coherently to all um and uh being interrupted by my two-year-old uh constantly and I think then I just started feeling uh more angry and heartbroken because um what I was really thinking about um is knowing what it's like to be a parent with the all the worry and heartache and joy and lack of time that comes with that and then not even being able to imagine what it would be like to be a parent of a black child but just thinking what if on top of all of that all of those things you had to tell your child that like their life um you know they had to fear for their life and their body from the from from an institution that theoretically is protecting us um so um to see this budget it is devastating and I think it's hard because what I've seen over and over again is people come to these council meetings and speak about the kind of reform we want and the response that I feel like we've been getting um to me has felt kind of has felt paternalistic and and paltry and um you know what I've seen is that um we've gone on uh you've gone on to create the um the committee to look into the police um which I felt excited about but then I was disappointed when I found that um that the selection of the people to be on that a lot of that decision making was uh was done behind closed doors um and that not one of the people on that committee uh with someone who had expressed a desire to abolish the police um I was really pleased to hear tonight that um Abby German will be joining that committee um I do find it disconcerting that the objectivity of someone who might be an abolitionist was questioned when that same line of questioning was not uh at least during this form extended to the other person being considered to join the committee um and I'm bringing this up um because I just I fear that that discrepancy and questioning is perhaps the bias uh that may reflect some of the biases of this body and those brought to the budging uh process and to this larger conversation um and I'm not trying to be accusatory but I did raise a question for me um so amidst all of this uh for our budget to continue to fund police and the way we are at least me saddened and disappointed though uh honestly not surprised um I'm asking you not to approve this budget without significantly defunding the police if there's anywhere we should be putting our money it's to make sure that the basic needs of our community are being met the need for housing for food and for safety that makes everyone feel safe I'm hoping that you'll take to heart what the citizens are not failure have come here to tell you tonight and last week and in the many meetings like this uh rather than just listening and then proceeding forward is already uh what feels like sort of pre-ordained and pre-planned um I I wanted to uh close my comment um by sharing with you an article uh just a quote from an article um in the Atlantic by um Michael Dengel Smith um this was an article called incremental change is a moral failure um and uh this is a brief quote from the article he says justice is a proactive commitment to providing each person with the material and social conditions in which they can both survive and thrive as a healthy and self-actualized human being he goes on to rate I have grown past impatient with injustice I'm incensed by the delusion so prevalent among the country supposedly serious thinkers the tinkering around the edges of an inherently oppressive institution will lead to freedom thanks for your time and service much appreciated thank you um anyone else okay um so I have some um thoughts and comments about some of the things that were shared um first of all I want to thank all of the the folks who uh took the time to share your thoughts with us um we do appreciate them um even if you know we end up making or not making some um some changes um I I just want to make sure that um I'm clear about a couple of things um particularly a couple of things that uh the last speaker that Rebecca you just uh brought up for us um so in terms of all the appointments it is very typical for this body to make all appointments in what's called executive session um which is which is done behind closed doors but that is um so that the council can have candid conversations about the people that were about to appoint so but that that is also consistent with um appointments that we make to every other committee um so just just so you're aware that that is generally how that works and um you know I I I appreciate what you were saying about you know uh was my question for abby um you know conveying a bias and I uh I want to acknowledge that I thought about that before I asked um because but I I went forward and asked anyway because she was the only one that had made um uh that she had uh had expressed an opinion about um the outcome of the of the police of all the the candidates that we um had had interviewed previously um but but thank you for that and I appreciate you um bringing that up um uh also on the um on the topic of the police review committee um I think probably the the the the biggest thing that I am hopeful for for from that um committee is to come up with um some recommendations about um you know what uh what makes sense for policing in our community and want to acknowledge that the solutions that um might make sense in other communities may not make sense for us but that that we may need to do might need to have other solutions that um that were not um necessarily a part of other communities solutions um and want to be open-handed uh about about what that might look like for us so um having said that um I do have a couple of questions um oh actually there's there's a couple things I wanted to point out um there were uh I do want to make sure that everyone's really clear that should any council member want to make any adjustments to the budget you can make that uh proposal that's fine um I remember being on the council when we used to get more into the weeds on particular line items uh and the the trend more recently has been not to do that but we absolutely still can and that is anyone's uh prerogative to to do that um and and that I just want to also point out that anyone is free to to make a proposal for adjustments if you um feel so moved uh also I um appreciate the the um I really particularly appreciated how informed all the the um comments were this evening that was really um helpful um all right so having said that I do have one question um which is about the console for dispatch um can you help us understand why like what state the council is in now or the communications are in now that warrants uh purchasing this new council now well I can although Chief Pete just popped on and I think he'd be better able to answer that than me I would like to respond quickly to that though um which is we have not made a commitment to buy the console we put the money in the budget uh and we understand that there's a process going that might suggest something else so it doesn't foreclose that option uh and certainly uh when I said there was $135,000 in the console it did not mean to you know I wasn't saying precluding that it also it's a multi-year commitment we I know that uh so I feel like some of those some of those things maybe weren't weren't totally uh there but anyway in terms of the details of the console the chief is on I think he can explain it better than I can I would say that there were a number of requests that the police department put in and um when we needed to reduce budget we basically gave them a number and say here's what you've got you please prioritize what um what you can what works for you within that number and this is what they selected so um so they prioritize it higher than anything else so chief can you respond to the thinking behind the console yes sir and good good afternoon um good afternoon madam mayor members of city council members of the public uh so basically the the console system that we're at right now is currently the system we have now is not uh is no longer supported by Motorola so they're not making parts for it it would be something that we would have to go out to see if we can scavenge systems if the system if our consoles went down so basically uh we we've had a couple of instances that we we had a scare and then this is how this is this is when it came to light it was something that wasn't on our radar until a few months ago when we had a potential scare and uh when we when we were researching the parts and everything else to it is when we learned that the system was no longer supported so basically as it stands uh if the system goes out uh we we have no way of communicating via dispatch uh with our console systems if if we we would have to go out to look for extra parts um those parts we would have to to reach out to other agencies that may have had them in the past find out which parts they may have to cannibalize the same system so I would kind of equate it to having uh a series of failures within the roof point within a roof and then uh just moving forward from there and I apologize I'm a little discombobulated because I'm not feeling too well tonight um but but yes essentially that that's where we're at so if we if our console systems go out with dispatch we we lose all ability to to communicate outside to be dispatched to calls to get uh and pretty much essentially everything would you know for 911 functions and this is an operational issue this isn't uh a multi agency issue it's it's something that that has to be done for the Montpelier police department thank you um other thoughts or comments or questions yeah could I uh some clarity to that this is Steve Whitaker um actually before you go Stephen um Dan how does handups go ahead Dan why I just had a couple of follow-up questions for the chief about the console which is um you know in light of the fact that CVPS is starting its um examination of the dispatch infrastructure within the the various central Vermont agencies is this console uh with this does this console preclude um various systems would it require uh not only us but other towns or cities to have the same type of system to communicate with um is my first question and then maybe a second question about the the cannibalizing of of other sources I mean are you talking about only agencies or there are other sort of source secondary sources secondary markets for for these type of parts I know sometimes with older computers there's secondary markets where you can get the replacement parts is the only resource the um you know basically calling agencies with these machines in storage yes sir to answer the first question no it's it's it's it's a system that's that's not going to require upgrades for for an infrastructure or anything else like that it's just essentially uh we just need a computer system to dispatch uh it's not going to it's not it's not an upgrade for infrastructure or anything else like that to that effect um and uh and and for this the second part yesterday would be like the equivalent of like um first thing that pops into my mind is the old Tandy computers from Radio Shack I mean we would have to reach out and maybe you know check out and see who's got the old Tandy 1600 or 600 or Commodore 64 and see if you know if they still have in play which specific parts we may need depending and that's all that's all keeping in mind the system goes down we're going to have to get somebody to come in to diagnose it to find out which parts we need then reach out to find those parts then have those folks send us those parts then pay for somebody to install those parts and then hope that the patchwork will last and moving forward maybe as a follow-up question um sorry um you know it's it's it's funny the Vermont judiciary for a long time till its upgrade had the same problem and apparently one time the Supreme Court had to call Russia to get a replacement part on their their database server um but yeah just from an emergency preparedness point of view if if the console comes down are there backup systems available um I understand this is not a situation we want to invite necessarily but I'm maybe just trying to understand too the the level of I mean is there a sort of a backup generator as it were um for the console system to my understanding as it was explained to me no sir it would just be the system that would be down and we would have no way of communicating until we were able to locate again a system have it installed uh and moving forward from that point uh and can I comment um I feel like we should probably let um Stephen go and then and then Donna does that make sense um okay Stephen go ahead okay uh I have I mentioned this at the last hearing and I don't and I've offered the paper documentation nobody's asked to see that surprisingly uh the Motorola discontinued this in uh June of 2019 and in 2019 they made a presentation to another public safety agency and they said clearly we're going to discontinue this because we've got a newer fancier model that makes more sense they were also quietly making plans to buy the only competitor if we really needed new ones Abtec was just purchased their lot cheaper than the Motorola's and they're now owned by and supported by Motorola but that's the base the Motorola rep advised that public safety authority you can get five more years out of this by a couple spare parts uh the chief is warfully uninformed about this and that's troubling uh because of the reliance we put on that department which means he's totally dependent on Fred Cummings these are standard compact computers that the standard little $800 desktop desktop or power computer standard power supplies you could get down on the very Montpelier road that swap out so this is not rocket science and all we think special about these is the Motorola software which they actually bought from somebody else so this you're being misled and i'm uh not saying intentionally by the chief but the idea that this would just be down no it you you let we have three of the three of the consoles if one of them goes down the other two can do the dispatching while one power supply is swapped i could swap a power supply in about 15 minutes been doing it for years so this idea that the sky is falling and this isn't 911 either by the way this this is dispatch 911 is handled entirely by the state since Doug Hoyt took Montpelier out of the public safety answering point business so we need some institutional memory we need some professional engineering advice that y'all will believe because obviously you're not believing me and i'm not believing the chief so uh because i know more i'll stop there thanks hey thank you i'm Donna and then uh bob bob you want to go first no go ahead okay well i my understanding was when public safety authority bought one of the three consoles for Montpelier we also bought one for Barry so there would be redundancy and Barry and Montpelier would both have this particular model and could depend on one another as a backup and so if one upgrades you no longer have that it does impact one console talking to the other the other thing i really came tonight wanting to discuss removing this 135 from the budget because i feel there are a lot of questions that haven't been answered i do think it's important that we actually do consider in three months that the public safety authority will have finished this need assessment and making this recommendations so that it would be done with more clarity and appropriateness i feel we could put it back in should revenue go up should we find out all the questions that i now have and clarify things and then act on it but for right now i'm inclined to take it out of the budget thank you um bob go ahead yes i just want to remind folks there's been a lot of discussion tonight about a failure of one of these systems and how the impact it would have on police communications and i know chief p can speak more to this also but a failure to one of these or any of these consoles could have a major impact on police i'm sorry fire or ems dispatching communications um if one of those systems were down and we were to have a major incident in my pair any of our 18 communities that chief p dispatches for a failure one of those systems could have a major impact on those services i want people to keep in mind it's not just police communications it's fire and ems communications also um bill go ahead just need to point out that you are not actually proving the purchase of this tonight you're simply allocating a budget for a contract of this amount when the financing else would actually come to the council at some point so presumably uh this decision is something that can be talked about at a later point if the cvpsa were to come up with an alternate solution presumably we would need funding to purchase whatever that alternate system was going to be and as i mentioned there are certainly plenty of unmet needs uh equipment needs throughout the city so i you know taking the money out of the budget and then adding it back in later seems to me we could you know if you choose not to buy this that's a later point when you have perhaps more information um i'm sure we could put it towards any of the number of other suggestions we've heard tonight from people where they could go it was funding for community items or for roads or anything else so um you know obviously it's your call but you you know this is 135 000 out of uh 14 million dollar budget i i'd say um you're not committing to purchasing this particular model of console you're budgeting an allocation of funding i'm dan go ahead sure i mean i i i tend to agree with with build point and this is sort of a philosophical point about budgeting which is that if you if the money's not in the budget you can't spend it um so regardless of this question if the money's taken out that's simply 135 000 that doesn't get um approved by the the voters presumably or or you know eventually collected um when we go to spend it and i but i should say at the same time i share donna's concerns and some of the concerns that are expressed here and certainly being on the cvpsa board i i i believe that you know the fact that we've just signed a contract with televate to look at the systems you know does say that you know we need to we need to think about we need to let that process play out before we make these purchases but as build points out we're not approving the purchase of it with the purchase of this budget and you know what we are what we are doing is we're saying 135 000 has been identified by the department um as a to spend on this dispatch need um and there's a certain level of trust in the departments that you know is not a blind trust or a trust that we go without question but nevertheless i i think at least at this point it it makes sense to keep it in there and if we have if um you know the televate uh review or you know further examination shows that this is not a good investment we do have that opportunity to do so and it touches a little bit upon i think you know one of the earlier points of what people were talking about which is you know the the budget process and i've been through a number of these in a number of different towns um you know what we're what we're planning in some ways is a big single number which is the budget that we're allocating and we're trying to identify and we're trying to be careful and thoughtful about it in the city with this many moving parts and as bill points out you know this is a multimillion-dollar budget so you know um haggling over 135 000 is it is important because it's more money that i'm going to see this year um and that any taxpayer is going to see this year just about but it's still it's a small small part and um i think you know this is the difficulty of of the budget process is that we do rely upon professionals and we do rely upon their advice and judgment and that's why we hire that's why we have a finance department as opposed to an elected city treasurer who does all of the budgeting finance we we ask for professionals because the numbers are big enough and complicated enough that we want to make sure it's in trusted trusted hands and i think we benefit from that as we saw tonight with the audit um and the same thing goes for fire police to public works uh and administration um but ultimately at the end of the day a lot of these numbers you know can can change if the needs change as we saw over this past year as well with the with the fact that when when revenue went down the city was very responsive on budgets and so you know a lot of this process is in flux and budgets don't necessarily occur when we're ready to make decisions on other policy things but it's really about do we have a nut do we have a a pile of money to put on somewhat crassly that can fund all of these priorities that we've identified and if we change our minds can be reallocated whether it be you know turned into community funding or other things so i i would generally support the 135 thousand staying in the budget but i think the message is pretty clear tonight that we have as a city council some questions about this particular purchase and certainly given our interaction with other agencies like cvpsa we want to be careful about expenditure so thanks thank you um so just speaking for myself i tend to agree with dan on this one um it also feels like i uh the kind of thing that um i would not be inclined to gamble with and that if there is a different model to be purchased that there's still time to make that decision um and rather anticipate having the funds to to purchase something like that if um you know should it be necessary um so sorry i'm speaking for myself here um other thoughts or comments uh jack go ahead yeah thank you um i i think this has been a good conversation i i think that i've gotten i've learned more uh certainly than i knew at our at our last public hearing and i thought it was valuable uh i had a conversation with donna about this this afternoon and i think she raises some very good questions as as to dan and steve about what we should be how we should be spending this money for for communications equipment and systems but but bill's right that this isn't a proposal that we write a check to motorola for for the console and and so i think it's prudent to it would be it would be foolish to spend the money right now when there are unknowns out there but i do think it's prudent to include it in the budget so that as uh more more information becomes available the cvpsa study is completed we'll know what to do um so that's how i feel about this particular item thank you um other thoughts comments yeah very briefly madam chair the clarification this is only this is a three or four hundred thousand dollar uh commitment if it gets made the motorola correspondence which i got from emails they were offering no payments for a year if you commit and then first year at the end of the first year is when the 135 comes due so i think i would ask that you be really explicit and they don't take delivery on these until some further action action of the council because just by taking delivery motorola is offering a lease purchase with title residing with the city and the first payment not due for a year but this isn't just a 135 thousand dollar commitment this is a 400 thousand dollar commitment that is uh inadequately planned and vetted so uh i think if you are going to amend the budget at all either by removing the money for now or constraining the money that it cannot they cannot pull the trigger without further action by the council i would suggest you do that thank you thank you thank you steven um jack go ahead and then bill i i think that this uh what's being described to us is the arrangement where motorola would get the city to sign a contract over a number of years to to spend a large amount of money for equipment purchases and that's the kind of thing that the manager would not do without the probably couldn't do it certainly would not do without the approval of the council i don't feel a need to pass anything that says bill phraser don't you sign that contract and take delivery of the consoles um until we tell you you can yeah that's exactly what i was going to say the multi-year financing agreement for this level of money would require council approval so we could not make that commitment without explicit vote of the council um furthermore i just want to remind people that we're talking about funds that aren't available till july 1st um so again that's six months to evaluate choices i don't know what the cvpsa schedule is um but anyway so that you know they may not be that far apart great um donna i do want to circle back to you um if you uh would like to make a motion that is certainly you're prerogative if you would like to i don't find the support in the council and i'm not surprised but i am glad we had the discussion and i certainly think we do need a clear have i frozen can you still hear me yes so uh so i you know i'm glad we had the discussion i would like to say something to the other speakers tonight can i do that now can you hear me an absolutely go ahead and that's just i mean you sort of yes yeah absolutely go ahead sorry i'm my internet is cutting out i just wanted the the people who showed up to the hearings are appreciated but we do have other residents who talk to us and we are trying to balance what the whole community wants as well as trying to nudge it in new directions so i i feel very good that we put the peer support counselor in that we have the social worker the equity consultant and i do feel we put money efforts in housing and i just keep thinking we'll just keep moving and moving in that direction so please support the things that are supporting your ideas behind reducing the funds in the police but and help us make changes that's all but thank you for coming thank you other thoughts or comments okay uh jack go ahead um take stepping back from this one uh item to the overall budget this this ties in very well i think with the report we had from the auditors where where they said we we did well we managed to have four thousand left dollars left over at the end of the year and given get given the uh you know i know we have expectations for for fund balances and i know that uh it's prudent to have reserves at a higher level than we have now but it's also clear to me that it would have been irresponsible for us to hold back money and end the year with more than four thousand dollars in the bank because that would have meant that we were not funding services that were really essential at at at a really low point in in the life of our city so i do think we'll we'll need to look at the fund balances and and a lot of other things in the future but uh for this year i think we've got a responsible budget uh to put before the voters okay thank you uh all right any other comments or questions about the budget okay i am going to um close the public hearing um for this and uh is there a motion uh oh sorry i glitched there a little bit um i'm going to close the public hearing and uh is there a motion uh jack go ahead i moved the uh that we adopt the budget and put it before the voters including the allocation from the Vermont your community fund also okay so there's a motion in a second um any further discussion uh lauren and then dan yeah i just wanted to really reiterate um i'm really appreciative um to the city staff we had given direction to you know look with really tough numbers a lot of hard decisions um really you know just echoing things we've discussed at previous meetings but you know centering our staff and trying to maintain uh you know people in the positions to maintain services to keep a focus on services we're providing for the community and um and then trying to plan for you know what kinds of opportunities might come if additional funding comes in and how could we be positioned to take advantage of that and i think there was a lot of really good thoughtful thoughtful work and um really trying to to center the the people in our community and the people on our staff in it and i think the the staff did a great job trying to strike that balance and it's a very um i think responsible but also responsive to the moment budget um you know on the policing issue that i know a lot of people are on the line today listening about you know again i really hope people will stay engaged really hear the heartfelt pleas for quicker and more progress um and you know we do have this process and um you know welcome that input i think to get the kind of systemic change and long-term vision that people are talking about i think it needs work it needs analysis we need to look at you know what would we do instead if we're going to reallocate money instead of just doing some kind of flashy statement um in the budget i'd rather do something that we know will actually work and make our community better um so i look forward to that ongoing discussion and appreciate the pushes and the heartfelt pleas for keeping a focus on that um i know i plan to and look forward to that work and hope to have people stay really engaged in that but i'm really appreciative of the budget um that has been put forward and we'll be supporting it thank you um dan so you know in in vermont every year every town every city re-in has to essentially approve its budget from zero whereas a lot of towns in the midwest and the west start with last year's budget as approved and only only put before the voters a question of increases um you know i think it's a it it's a process that forces us to really look each time and i'll say that one surprise about this budget um and it's really a credit uh to the staff that that did take our direction and policy choices to heart um is that you know this is a budget that i this isn't necessarily a budget i would have thought would have gone the the way it did i would have expected as in as i've seen in prior years um you know points of of contention more more more consoles and fewer points where we um sort of had agreement but i think it's reflective of the fact that you know this budget is really in some ways about maintaining what exists um and in that you know all of the city departments did an outstanding job of trying to hit each of those points to you know come up with a budget that they can continue to provide services while not passing on increases uh to the taxpayers and that's a challenge um because that in some ways is like trying to pull a rabbit out of a hat um and so i really congratulate you know the city staff for for the work that they put into this um but you know anyone you know listening tonight it is it is the budget process every year you know we start next year we're going to start zero and we're going to have to build back up um you know we don't take necessarily for granted but hopefully next year we'll be in a better position and we can have some of these more robust discussions um i anticipate next year will be a year where the need will be greater as christine said um and there will be more challenges um but i'm really pleased and happy and and i i think it's only because of the hard work that was put into this in advance that we're not you know trying to make the budget fit our policies and priorities um because it's it's large in there so i again kudos to the to the staff and uh the good work thank you any further comments questions discussion okay um all right um i'm i just want to also express my my gratitude to the staff for um for your hard work on this budget and coming up uh with the a budget that met all of our requests as well um so okay any further discussion right all in favor please say i hi hi hi no no can you hear me oh dear okay can you can you hear me now okay all right um all in favor there's a motion to second all in favor please say i hi hi oh no no we all said i am i'm i'm still glitching we have to vote for it again they all voted we all voted john's got it on the note minutes right john you did vote okay great um is it time for a break yes well before we do that anyone opposed to the budget no one is opposed any opposed no no one's okay all right thank you um yes with that i think now is a good time to take a break everyone one two three four five six okay everyone is here um so we're gonna come back from our break um so the next item is uh approving the warning um for this item i feel like i should turn it over to john unless there's um someone else um madame i just say that this is uh when you approve the final ballot uh it's also an opportunity for anybody in the public to ask questions about items that are on the ballot there was a question asked earlier about how how the number was on the ballot for the budget just to be clear we do that every year but it's obviously can be changed uh you you already voted on that but just to be clear it's not assuming a final result and um so that's it it's and then obviously anything else you want to add or delete or whatever okay uh jack go ahead jack and the the the dollar figure in article six is the final amount from the school board yes thank you okay any other comments questions about the warning if you're looking for a motion sure go ahead dan i'll be happy to approve the or make a motion to approve the warning um as printed second okay is there a second right i second it okay all right any further discussion okay um all in favor please say i all right okay and opposed okay don't keep all right so the warning uh is passed uh all right and so we are up to uh the review of uh second quarter strategic plan um i assume this is either uh bill or cameron you'd assume correctly and you would um and it's going straight to camera all right let me get my screen shared um i'm excited to share our order to updates with y'all i'll make sure it's great if i could share my screen that would be great right hopefully y'all can see that yep great so um we have come before you in uh last couple months to give you our quarter one update but um we've done a lot since then so this is going to be an update on what we have done um since the first quarter report also in your packet is the full report which breaks down each goal and initiative um by action uh by person and it gives you the last five updates so it gives you a lot of history on what we've been doing and what the updates have been but as a reminder your strategic goals that you voted on to include in your strategic plan by a majority vote included community prosperity COVID-19 response environmental stewardship more housing responsive and responsible government and sustainable infrastructure which is again sort of what we have worked on as staff um to prioritize um in our work in our work plans and in our budget so i'm really excited about our quarter two status um we have hit 43 percent progress in our initiatives in the strategic plan which is great when i came to first quarter we were at 14 percent which is a little behind sort of that 25 percent goal for each quarter um we've gotten many of our a majority of our initiatives are on track we have a few delays but most of them are COVID-19 related um i'll get into that a little bit further um and a good majority a good quarter of them have been completed so we've completed a fair few initiatives right on schedule for what they were anticipated to be so we're very excited very close to our goal 50 completion for this update which is great considering the challenges a lot of the staff have been up against so i'm going to jump right into the goals and give you updates on each initiative if you have any questions please just go ahead and stop me so under community prosperity one of the goals are the budget process which we've sort of just rounded the corner on for that the status is great we're doing on track with that our new initiative since last time as we developed and implemented a survey that went live in december and closed in january we had um responses in the hundreds as you heard earlier briefings were given to y'all the budget process has been um we think pretty engaged this year um the budget was submitted to y'all for consideration early december and the warning was just approved we also have all of the details line by line um everything can be found on the city's website so we have a few initiatives under COVID-19 response all are on track right now um the sort of highlights from the supporting the community in the rebound from COVID-19 is that the city has received almost $200,000 in funding most of that is money that we're receiving back we've paid for it we're getting money refunded to us but we've been really continuing to work on our policies and our internal procedures around COVID-19 we did when the governor changed his travel policies and some other guidance about gathering we did create new policies around leisure travel for staff so they have to let us know if they plan on traveling out of state not saying that they can't just got to let us know we've been working very closely with our neighborhood partners including the capital area neighborhoods who've been very supportive of us getting information out in ways that we normally don't have access to so they're doing more boots on the ground communication than we have the capacity for which we really appreciate um they've also since then really set up uh neighborhood information kiosk which i'm sure y'all've seen around the the sandwich boards and some neighborhoods with information on it and that has been really invaluable for us um as far as mdc and the Montpelier alive partnerships we've really discussed a lot of that within the budget process the funding for mdc has continued to be an issue in this budget process and the recommended budget had a zero dollar funding for mdc i've moved on to environmental stewardship we've got our net zero goals for the 2030 plan and i think you know we got a little update on that before but um you know we you have awarded a contract to the vermont energy investment corporation for the net zero 10 year action plan um so they're anticipating to come back in the spring so it's very exciting the updates the stormwater master plan is sort of on it's sort of in status right now waiting for further updates related to the committee reviewing the stormwater utility option so that will be coming at a later date so right now that is on hold until that comes together next goal is for more housing the implementation of the city plan housing initiatives um they've updated it to let you know that the housing task force has been meeting they met in november and they don't currently have a work plan for their fiscal year for fiscal year 21 to this to discuss the budget um they also however have been talking to both the housing task force and the planning department about the municipal administrative procedure act which is a sort of more stringent and um more definitive path to getting permitting through so there'll be more information and more presentations on that in the future but let they just won't let you know that they are talking about that and what that means to implement um so there's also uh work on zoning to remove barriers for additional housing and as you know their recommended budget was approved for $50,000 for the housing task force so all that work is still on track according to their goals regarding responsive and responsible government we have the lobbying subcommittee that is on track the newest update is that our office the city manager's office is aiming to prepare a tracking tool to report on issues that you have voted for within your legislative agenda so we want to make sure that we're staying on top of it so that y'all can stay on top of it as far as th