Good evening, everyone. I know you are excited as I am for night three of the budget marathon, as I'm thinking of them the four magical nights in May when we discuss the budget. We are waiting for board of finance. It is 502, both the mayor and President Tracy, let me know they were running late. I haven't heard from anyone else. So let's just hang tight for a couple of minutes. I'll check in with a couple of people and we'll go from there. Thanks for your patience. Well, Councillor Carpenter, okay, let's see. Good evening, everyone. I see we have a number of councillors with us. Welcome, Councillor Barlow, CEO Shad and Chief Stafford L for here. Mayor, I don't believe we have a quorum yet and Councillor Pine is calling in. I'm coordinating with him directly. I think you may have also missed my announcement that President Tracy is running late. He said we could start without him, but of course we need a quorum. Okay, and just to be clear, it's a quorum of the board of finance that we're looking for, right? Yes. So I guess I am the only board of finance member that I see on right now. So why don't we, we'll look to get started by 510. So thank you, the councillors that are here. Thanks. Councillor Powell, welcome. We are looking to get started in the next two or three minutes here. We've targeted 510 to get started here because we're still waiting on Councillor Pine and Councillor Tracy. So 510. Mayor, I wanted to point out that I believe Councillor Jang has joined us and Councillor Pine has now also joined us by phone and he is in the attendees list, but he is, I've labeled him as Brian Pine and he is able to speak. Okay, great. Thanks for that. Just trying to log in on a different computer as well. Give me just one more second. All right, folks. I think we are ready to get started. Welcome, everyone. I'm going to call this special budget meeting session of the Board of Finance to order at 510 p.m. And welcome my colleagues on the Board of Finance here and see we have a number of City Council, of non-board councillors here tonight as well. Welcome. It is certainly our hope to include you to all councillors in the conversation who have questions during these presentations. I will try to keep my eye out for raised hands using the raised hand function and physically raised hands and manage the questions. And let's dive in. The first item on the agenda is a motion. We need a motion to adopt the agenda. So moved. Thank you, Councillor Powell. Do we have a second? Second. Second by Councillor Jang. Thank you. Any discussion? All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Are there any opposed? Councillor Pine, just so you know, your mic appears to me as muted here, but I'm going to count that as a yes. We have a unanimously approved agenda. Then this is an opportunity for members of the public to speak to the Board as well. We have a warrant public forum. I'm looking at the attendees. If there's, is there any member of the public who would like to speak to the Board? Jordan, maybe you could help remind people how they do that. Yep. I don't have anyone in our inboxes who signed up to speak to public forum, but if you're a member of the public and would like to speak, you can just use the raised hand function and I'd be, since we're a small group, I can enable folks that way. So I'll just get folks a second if they want to use the raised hand function. I don't see anyone indicating they'd like to speak on public forum. So... Okay, very good then. I'm going to close the public forum unless Glenn, were you trying to get in? It doesn't appear so. Sorry. I'm going to close the public forum and the first, the first presentation of the night will be from Taisha Green and the Race, Electrity, Inclusion and Belonging Department and Taisha, welcome, the floor is yours. Thank you. I cannot share my screen, it says it's disabled. Can you do something about that, Jordan? It should be on set now. Yep, good to go, good to go. Okay. Actually, I should probably stop sharing in a second. Geez, one second, sorry, that does not work. You're just going to have to see my notes. Share on the screen that I wanted to share it on. So that's fine. I sure would like this. I don't have very many, I don't think I have any notes anyway. All right, so let's go here. Great. Okay, you're going to see my notes. That's fine, or the notes are the next slide. My name is Taisha Green. I am the Director of Racial Equity, Inclusion and Belonging. Thank you for listening to my budget presentation. The REIB, one of the things that we want to do is to shift culture in the city. So that people aren't bringing in an assimilated version of themselves, they're bringing their authentic selves to the table. And so our whole focus, as far as what we're doing in this budget is to make Burlington a more inclusive place where people can be their authentic selves. Our department functions. This is not an exhaustive list, but this is what we are currently doing and will continue to do for the city. Racial justice, racial equity, economic opportunity, community engagement, research analysis, data collection analysis, BIPOC advocacy, public policy, public health, methodology, development, strategic planning, cultural analysis and anti-racism curriculum development and implementation. This is where we want to be, not just where we are. So we have myself and two public policy and research analysts on the team, but we're going to expand this team out further. On the right side of your screen, you'll see limited service employees. I know that we are trying to steer away from that. However, we do need to have a few limited service employees for the anti-racism curriculum. Those positions will end within the year and we're going to have a new internship program that we are hiring for right now. We're in an interview process for right now for interns. The public health and equity engagement manager and health equity managers will be moving over into the REIB as we'll have new positions with the anti-racism curriculum manager, equal opportunity specialist, non-employer and a racial equity and data analyst. As far as our expenses in FY22, the bulk of our expenses will go to salaries, but we do have a general operations expense of $306,000. Public ARC, which I will speak to on the next slide, our Juneteenth budget will hopefully be a standing budget item every year and our empowerment budget. So I am from Minneapolis, Minnesota. I think everybody knows that. I'm very proud to be from Minneapolis. Minneapolis has a sculpture in, well, we have a sculpture garden in Minneapolis, but most people know Minneapolis by the spoon and the cherry. And if you go to Chicago, another area from which I am from, you have the bean. And if you go to St. Louis, you have the arches. Every major city in the country has some kind of public art piece that speaks to what that community is. I want Burlington to have the same thing, but the public art piece that it will speak to will be inclusion and belonging for the city. There is $165,000 in the FY22 budget to commission this art piece. It will be a sculpture. It is not a mural. It will be a fixture in Burlington for decades and decades to come. The Empowerment Fund. This is for financial support and resources for the BIPOC community. It's very similar to what I did this past year with raising funds, in particular for the grant programs that we have done, Food and Security. The grant programs that we have done most recently is the Food and Security program, but before that we did a program for BIPOC businesses, small businesses and nonprofits. We're gonna extend that into trying to figure out housing and other areas of social determinants of health, community engagement, paying for the listening sessions that we are asking the community to come to. Community support is kind of a catch-all. It is gonna be us redefining what community support means and how we reach the community and how we get them more engaged. And the other, and the remaining funds will go towards completion of the eight point plan. And this is just another page that shows the same thing that was on the organizational chart. This will be the REIB for FY22. As you can see, it's being expanded pretty substantially to accommodate for all the work that we have yet to do in FY22. I'll give you a second to look at that slide. I see Councilor Powell looking at it closely. Great. But now I just have an area for questions so I'll stop sharing my screen. Pretty quick. Thank you, Taysha. Thank you for the really strong vision behind underlying that expansion and the growth projected for the year ahead. There is, in addition to the PowerPoint, up on Board Docks is a line item budget for both this presentation and I think all of them tonight that Council and the public should be aware of. And the floor is open for questions about the REIB effort. Councilor Powell and then President Tracy. Thank you. So, Director Green, so I, you know, a lot of the positions obviously, since there's only three of you right now and we're talking about a number of other positions that'll be added. Those, you have a budget for salaries and I'm just wondering and just want to make sure that when it comes to the, because these are all, because most of them are newly created positions, the city has never had an anti-racism manager. The city of Burlington has never had, you know, we've had data, but we've never had this particular kind of position. And just want to make sure that you feel that the positions and the, not the salaries, but the step, gosh, I can't think of the word, but in any event, I'm sure you know what I'm talking about. If you feel that those the, because you have a specific amount for salaries, I mean, literally down to the dollar, if you feel that all of those positions are fully taking into account all of the responsibilities and that you feel comfortable with the, you know, gosh, I cannot think of the name, it's not step, it's something else. Are you reading? Yes, yes, if you feel comfortable with each of those as they are. Well, I do think that we have a outdated grading system, however, the mayor's office and I have talked about this extensively and I do think that where we are with what we are offering for these positions, we have not created a drive description for the data analyst or for the equal opportunity specialist. However, we have had them graded just off of kind of what is typical for that position. And I do believe that the amount of salary that we'll be giving to these new employees is fair. Okay, all right, thank you. And thanks so much for the presentation. It's exciting to think that it was a year ago, it was 13 months ago that there was a department of one and now we're talking about a department of many. So congratulations on that too. Thanks. That's where Paul, thank you. President Tracy, go ahead. Thanks and just want to echo that as well. It's just incredible to see how you've grown this department and just the vision with which you're doing this work and really bringing that to Burlington to really push the envelope on so many different fronts. So just really want to just thank you for that work and your team as well. One question that I had was with regards to the ongoing reparation study, just to understand, you know, this is something that not many cities have done. We got into it kind of with what we thought might be enough to fund that endeavor. Just wanted to understand your thoughts on if what we've set aside for that effort is going to be sufficient or if we might want to contemplate adding additional resources to the budget for that work so that you're able to really do what you feel like you need to do to provide a complete document at the end of that. Right, thank you President Tracy. I do not believe that we do have enough funding for the reparation study. However, I'm being very creative in how we're going to get the work done. One thing in particular is the scanning of the historical documents that are in two different locations here in the city. The quote for that that came back was $300,000. That's a lot more than we have allotted for for this work. So I've been in contact with Brian Lowe about how we can get this work done by utilizing interns to scan in the documents. There's a small training that they will go through and hopefully that will help us get most of that stuff scanned in if not all over the summer so that the reparations task force can continue their work. But $50,000 is not a lot of money to do a task such as this. And I'm just trying to be creative before coming back to the board of finance or to the city council and asking for more funds. We're going to try to get as much done as we can by being creative. But if there's a discussion that can happen later on I will welcome that discussion. But for right now I'm just trying to be creative. Okay, all right. Well, I certainly appreciate that. I just want to signal at least for myself that I'm certainly open to considering that and supporting additional resources for that work. I don't want us to get deep into the work and realize we need additional resources to complete the job and have you all deliver what you feel like is not necessarily a complete project or up to the standards that you'd like to deliver. So if that is an ongoing conversation just I just want to signal willingness to have that conversation. Because I really want us to, I think I see this as an opportunity here for Burlington to really lead the way in this effort. And if we're going to do that and really show other cities just how special this kind of an effort can be, we're going to have to put some resources in to your point about $50,000 not being a lot. So just wanted to make that point. I think it's really important. I'm excited about what you all are doing with that. And just want to make sure we complete it well. Thank you, President Tracy. I do welcome that discussion. If we want, if we're in a position to have that discussion, I do welcome that. I was under the understanding that we, what we have allotted is what we have for this project. And so I was just trying to stay on budget. However, I do realize that eventually I am going to have to come to city council. I just don't know when that day will be. And I don't recall if that money came out of my particular budget or if it came out of a different budget line from that resolution. So that's something that I will talk to the mayor's office about and we'll try to get that going for you. Awesome. Thank you so much. Thank you.  Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Taisha again for being here. And I think I have to recognize a great work about the toolkit that we sent to the full council just yesterday. I think that's amazing and specific and it's concrete because most of the time when we talk about diversity equity or racial equity people cannot touch concretely. This is something that we're doing but that is definitely something concrete. Thank you. And the strategic planning I believe also is coming. That will be also something that will drive this work.  That's it. And then the cost is around 100, how much are we getting? So typically to commission this type of art piece cost about 150. Speaking with BCDA, we would pay for the artist to come up with a concept, pay for three different artists. That's about $5,000 per artist. And then we will have a selection committee that will pick who has the best concept. So we actually have to pay for those concepts and then the rest of the money, the 150,000 will go to that winning artist. Okay. So thank you for explaining it because to me you already have an idea or who you're gonna pick or what the piece of art will look like and how much it will cost. But it seems you baked the process into the point that you requested. Yes. Which is, I believe is good. Yeah, no further questions. Thank you. Thank you, Councilor Jayne. Yeah. And there are any other counselors that have questions at this point? Certainly the team is happy to follow up offline as well. And this is a, I think a unique budget in that it's so much of it is new, creating a new function. So happy, we're happy to respond to other questions as well as we get closer where we're into the, about a month now between now and when we're hoping this budget will pass. So we'll, as a quick aside, President Tracy and I had a meeting about this yesterday just to make sure we're on the same page about upcoming council meetings. And we are, even though the charter does not require the administration to deliver the budget until June 15th, which is the Tuesday after the June 14th meeting, it is our goal and our plan unless something knocks us off it to deliver the budget to you ahead of that by the end of the week, week before per normal so that it is ready for action if you choose to do so on the 14th. So we're about a month away from the earliest at which the council could be asked to weigh in here. And there are certainly a number of additional occasions, meetings and there's offline opportunities as well. So if I'm not seeing any hands have popped up here. So if there's nothing further, I'm going to close out the REIB section of the evening. Thank you, Tayshia. And we will move to the Church Street Marketplace and Economic Development budget. So welcome, welcome Kara. Good evening, everyone. I have the pleasure of giving you all two presentations tonight. So I will start with the Church Street Marketplace and hold on, let's dive right in. So similar to our current fiscal year, the commission and the administration have decided to continue the arrangement of having 80% of most, not all, I will show you in future slides of staff salaries transferred to the city. And so that the team can continue to focus on economic recovery and business support city-wide. We have recognized a real desire from businesses outside of Church Street for more coordinated support from the city. And we've really had done some great work and I will get into that with my next presentation. We are however, the commission does feel and I feel as well that the street is ready to return to charging full fees. So we will be back to our full marketplace fees. However, since some of our salaries will be transferred to the city's general fund, some of these savings will allow us to hire what we are terming a Church Street coordinator. Someone who can handle a lot of the on-the-ground logistics, things like coordinating the cart vendor program, permitting the street entertainers, helping with the outdoor cafes, coordinating with community partners on hosting our festivals. This will relieve staff of some of their Church Street duties so they can focus on the rest of the city. There is a great amount of savings as we now have on the team. We have two members of the team, one who is focused on marketing and graphic design and social media management and one who is focused on project and event management. So we see a savings in the Church Street Marketplace budget in that manner because previously these had all been outsourced and we find it really, it works better to have these staff members be full city staff members. However, we are anticipating a slight loss in what we term corporate sponsorship due to reduced foot traffic, we are hoping that that is not the case but I'm trying to be conservative in my budgeting. So to give you the staff cost breakdown, the 80-20 is myself, the project and event manager I mentioned, the marketing coordinator who I mentioned, she also handles all our social media and an administrative support position. What would be 100% under the fee payers for the marketplace will be this marketplace coordinator position that I mentioned and as usual, our fabulous maintenance team, we have a foreman and two general maintenance workers. I think I hope most of you know what Church Street offers which is an enhanced level of maintenance, nothing against Director Spencer but I will say that Church Street has it's snow and ice cleared before a lot of the other streets. We have seating and biking, we're bringing some of the electric bikes to the Church Street Marketplace. We host multiple free community events, we manage all the marketing and advertising for our fee payers, essentially how we spend their money. We create a clean community gathering space and as you know, the Church Street Marketplace is one of the top tourist destinations in the state of Vermont. And coming up at the fiscal year, we're planning to host at least five large events, yoga and exercise classes on the street. Again, the return of the cart vendor program which had been suspended during the pandemic, we have our street performers, we're going to get some new seasonal lighting, which is always LEDs, but ours have reached the end of their lifespan. We're going to launch a new marketing campaign to help with our economic revitalization on Church Street. This fall marks the 40th anniversary of Church Street and we're hoping to have a celebration for that. And as always, we handle our own tree maintenance and we coordinate and support all the marketplace merchants. And especially in this past year and hopefully as we move forward. This is what our budget looks like. I'll give you a second to take a look at that. Obviously the vast majority of our revenues come from our common area fees and our outdoor cafe fees. So we do own two properties that we rent out. One is the kiosk, which is currently occupied by Lunigs. The other one is on the corner of Leahy Way is a small boutique called WIM that is also a city property. So that's part of our income as well. Corporate donations essentially represent holiday sponsorships and summer event sponsorships. On the expense side, you'll see I broke out the salaries for maintenance and the salaries for administration and marketing and event planning. And so aside from salaries, events, marketing and promotion are our largest expense. And then we always have maintenance, which I boosted a little bit this year because we have some vehicles that need some more in-depth maintenance, if not replacement. And in terms of the savings that I had mentioned previously, I went back to fiscal year 20 to try and go back to a more normal year. You can see we spent almost $50,000 on external consultants for marketing, event planning, things of that sort. And we're gonna bring that all in-house and use it instead to make our marketing and promotion budget more whole in terms of being pure marketing. And that is it. I don't have one of those fancy slides that says questions, but I am ready for questions. Great. I have one. Thank you, Kara.  Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Kara, for this presentation.  I know I was preparing for this, I'm sorry. We understand, no problem. Yeah, thank you. And maybe this question is both for you, the mayor and if the city attorney is here about the legalities around transferring, you know, general funds to the street market place for the salary. To me, street market place is a different type of this. Yeah, can you explain that a little bit? I see the mayor took his microphone off. I'm happy to answer that. I'm happy to take first out of it too. I mean, you're quite right, Councillor Jang, that there is a restriction on the use of general funds for marketplace activities. What the reason that, what we did per the MOU that you approved in the current year and that we would be doing for the upcoming year under this proposal would be paying for expenses that are citywide expenses that are not, I've asked Kara to lead our response to the pandemic and she's serving in that broad citywide role that goes way beyond the activities that's in marketplace. So that's what we would be paying for here. Are those broader activities and her responsibilities on a job description that goes beyond the, you know, that are essentially part of CEDO and the broader, our broader economic development activities coming out of this recession. Thank you. And the other question is about the maintenance of the just fit, not the just with the downtown park. Are you involved in that maintenance or is it just strictly through the parts and recreation maintenance and promotion in the streets? Because we made substantial amount of investment there and we want to see it for generations to come. Yes, absolutely. So right now, Parks and Rec is handling most of the maintenance. My maintenance team is paid for by my fee payers. So they are concentrated solely on the street. However, as part of my role that is more 80% citywide, I have been assisting in programming City Hall Park and making sure that we have open and free events for everyone and things of that sort. Thank you. I think I see Councilor Hansen has a hand up.  Thanks and thanks so much, Kara. Yeah, just following up on, I had a similar concern to Councilor Jang about the transfer and is there gonna be like an accountability mechanism in terms of those positions and the amount of their time that is spent citywide versus on the marketplace to make sure that that split is appropriate and that we're not having taxpayers kind of subsidizing what was paid for by the members? Yes, so just to explain the mechanism, the city attorney in the previous year drew up an MOU which you all saw or those of you who are on council at that time, which essentially loans out my services and those of my staff to the city and loans it out at 80%. If you look in Kronos, which is our timekeeping system, employees track their time based on what they work on. For example, CEDO employees will book their time if they're working on a CDBG grant, then it gets booked to the CDBG. So my employees or those who are being split like this will be entering into our Kronos system what they're spending their time on. So this estimate of this 80-20 is generally based on, it's based on how our work was split this past year, for sure, and it's also based on honestly the amount of businesses and economic activity in the city. The tertiary marketplace is not the only place with economic activity which I will get to in my next presentation. And to manage those four blocks does not take 100% of our time. Great, that's super helpful and that answers my question. And so, and there's just a follow-up question is, so if the split does end up being different that would just be adjusted then to reflect that. Yes, to be clear, this number didn't come out of thin air, I see Shad taking her video off, but no, we do make it an adjustment in that case. Great, great, okay, thanks so much. Yes, of course. Yes, just to be clear, Councilor Hansen, these are estimates, they are true to up by Kronos and that is required by our auditors and double checked by them. So we are certain that those numbers are correct at the end of the year. Thanks so much. And I think it might be worth saying at this point, I do not anticipate, no one thinks, no one is suggesting that this model will become a permanent model. This has been proposed for the upcoming year, knowing that that year is gonna be dominated in significant part by rebuilding from the pandemic, rebuilding from this recession. We believe that not just church and marketplace, but businesses, but small businesses across the city are gonna need assistance accessing, understanding the guidance coming down from other levels of government, accessing the resources that our own emergency funds are making available, accessing the resources that are coming from the federal government and state government. And kind of getting, activating the city again after a 15 month period of dormancy in some ways, which of course, you recently approved funds to support that activation. Kara and her team are gonna be deploying those funds and getting them out city-wide, not just on the marketplace. So I do continue to think that, I do think one of the things in that this period, up until now, and I'm hopeful for the year ahead, that greater level of coordination between the marketplace and the rest of CEDO and the rest of the, and other downtown businesses and city-wide businesses, I think that's been a good thing and something we've been lacking in the past. So I do think this is a conversation we should return to, no one, we're not gonna be coming back here next year saying let's do it another year unless something very unexpected happened. I don't believe that that's what's gonna take place. I do think there's, I think we should take another run at thinking about what our long-term visions for supporting the activities in the downtown should be, whether the marketplace, this now 40 year old model, right, is exactly what we want. We're gonna be celebrating our 40th year, I think this year, right? Whether some adjustments to that 40 years in might make sense. I'm not anticipating or have any intention of kind of re-litigating the question about replacing the marketplace with a private nonprofit the way many cities do. But I do think the conversations that came out of that, that were not fully resolved about a greater coordination around the downtown about better serving pro-Lentonians and businesses and visitors is one that we should revisit in the months to come. So it seemed like a good opportunity to kind of share with council my thinking on that. Are there any further questions for me or Kara at this point? Okay, I'm not seeing any. So what do we do next? Kara, do you have another? I got another one. Yes. Okay, so go for it. Switching hats, here we go. This is a very short presentation and I will dive right in. What to expect from the economic recovery team in the next fiscal year? Here's some of the things that we've already started working on and we're really looking forward to continue to work on them. We're tracking everything coming down from the state and federal government right now. It's looking like the legislature in my pillar should be wrapping up soon and we're intent on doing a gap analysis of these programs coming down and figuring out how best the city can fill those gaps and support our individuals and our businesses best. And we will be proposing use of ARPA funds. We'll be actively participating in public forums and town hall settings to help understand how the population and how small business owners would like to be assisted with funds. We have been and will continue to work closely with REIB and CEDO to help design programs to support these individuals and locally owned businesses. We'll be running multiple grant programs. We have been running multiple grant programs for the past year, including HEPA filter grant programs for nonprofits and small businesses and houses of worship. We've also done, we worked with REIB to do a BIPOC small business grant through funding that they had flexible funding. We've also done a CVBG small business grant program where the majority of the funds went to businesses that provide low moderate income jobs and were also BIPOC or women owned. And currently with the help of Will Clevelle where we just launched another grant with CVBG funds to help businesses reopen. We're finding their businesses right now, some well-known businesses that are having trouble reopening because they can't make that initial investment in let's say the ingredients they need to produce the food that they would be selling. So this is our reopening and expansion grant. We are managing and supporting all sorts of micro business activity. We've done webinars to help support people who want to launch businesses out of their homes and learn how to do that, how to use QuickBooks and accounting practices to understand taxes for small businesses. We have provided a lot of one-on-one support to businesses and we hope to be managing a revolving loan fund to help seed finance some micro business activity. We continue to provide one-on-one direct support and outreach to BIPOC business owners throughout the community in coordination with the trusted community voices. And then there's marketing and consumer stimulation Citywide, which involves the new loveberlington.org website which can be sorted by women owned, BIPOC owned. We also have added all artists and makers on there and we are working on cataloging and adding all home businesses as well to that. And then we have had, I hope some of you have seen some of my emails that go out, my email blasts which are constantly informing people of grant opportunities or changes in regulations that may affect them or their businesses. And we've had, I have to say a really great response to that. Some of these activities were born out of, honestly, there was a meeting right when the pandemic broke out where a woman said, artists have the BCA and the businesses on tertiary have the tertiary marketplace but who's there to help us? And that sort of spurred the growth of these programs and initiatives and policies that we've been working on. Our budget is primarily staff driven. It's the staffing costs, those 80% staffing costs that I had discussed previously. There are some administrative costs and we did set aside $60,000 to do some additional. I know you all approved those ARPA funds that would do a lot of community activation. Some of those will be sort of a burst of activity right now and we wanted to set aside a little bit of money to continue some of those neighborhood specific activities and economic activation and community activation beyond sort of this summer. This is my org chart. The solid line, I don't know if you can see my cursor. This solid line here differentiates those who report to me who are part of the marketplace versus what we have for the economic recovery team. So we have the admin support. We have the project event manager and marketing coordinator who are already on my team. We have Will Clavel who is the business support and policy manager who has been reporting to me for a little over a year now and the early learning initiative manager which is to be determined. And that is the end of my short presentation. Questions. Great, thank you Cara. I would recommend just Cara's newsletters if counselors are not signed up for those. You really might want to consider every chapter and doing so that you may find it unhelpful and working with the businesses in your wards and districts, they've been, I think, a really critical resource through the last year. Okay, the floor's open for further questions about this part of Cara's work. All right. Good. All right. Well, very clear presentation Cara. Thank you for that. Thank you for your hard work. Thank you. I'm going to close out this section now and we will move to Katie Kinstead and CEDA. Katie, welcome. Thank you. And thank you. Let me like to reiterate here my appreciation that for Katie and what she's done in what is now hopefully a short remaining stint serving as acting CEDA director during Luke's absence, since Luke left and before a permanent director is in place. She's only been with us a little over a year. She's just done a great job and really jumped right in and provided a lot of support to me directly and I very much appreciate and people still understand what a great job. She's done in a tough situation. So with that, Katie, I turn it over to you. Thank you. And thank you for those kind words. So I will share my screen. And then present. Okay. So I have the privilege here to give you a little bit of a look back over what we've accomplished just fiscal year as well as looking forward into our budget for fiscal year 22. I was told about the time limit. So if I speak quickly and go through the slides quickly and spare with me and hope to have the opportunity to come back for questions at the end to clarify anything if I go through it too quickly. So to start back in terms of a look back over this current fiscal year, what has been accomplished I think it's helpful to look at the strategic objectives by division. So to see essentially the core work that CEDA has continued during this period implementing I won't go through each and every one of these programs here but I just wanted to show this and put it in the presentation of the bill online just to get a sense of the core work that CEDA is doing that has continued this past year and will continue through our fiscal year 2022 budget. So moving on to focus on the recap of the past year I think it's helpful to look at what has changed within CEDA what are some of the new initiatives and programs that we've implemented this year. So one of the largest programs has been the resource and recovery center. So this is a program you're very familiar with it's an initiative that started with in CEDA but really was supported by a number of different departments and different staff within CEDA teams and divisions that came together to address the key pandemic and recovery topics different focus areas, whether it's housing or employment opportunities, access to resources. And through this we were able to set up kind of the blueprints of what's constituent services and we'll talk about that in terms of our fiscal year 2022 budget but really providing an avenue for constituents to contact city staff through phone, email online through C-Flick fix and to really understand key health messages and key information about the pandemic as well as get their questions answered about how to access really important resources. We helped a lot with unemployment at the beginning and really getting caring from citizens to really give feedback to different programs has been something that's been really powerful throughout this pandemic. So that's one of notes and those that may have been paying attention. This is newer. So this is kind of something again that was between departments and not core division within CEDA. And we, you know, as Kara demonstrated looking at the economic recovery bringing her in and many other departments has been a big focus for CEDA and you'll see that kind of as a newly proposed work set or budget within our general fund in the subsequent sides. Some other programs of notes for them either started at the end of fiscal year 20 or during this fiscal year the trust and community voices program by our opportunities and engagement team also kind of work really important work on the language access plan helping to assess MPAs to navigate the pandemic helping with the 2020 census to make sure that all Berlin Tonyans were counted and then important workforce development and job training. Within our community justice center we were able to support the St. Joseph orphanage restorative inquiry. The Department of Children and Families offered us a sub grant where we're working in early school district to reduce racial disparities and suspension and expulsions. And we received a burn grant that's funding a new community conflict resolution and mediation program. So again, new programs to kind of look for that was glossed over on the first slide but exciting programs within our CJC team. Within the administration and finance team we are very proud and we brought it to council earlier to have applied for and received another three year lead grant. We threw some of the federal funds that were available implemented about double our normal community development block grant funds. In this upcoming year, we are anticipating kind of formal guidance and notification of increased home funding that's available. So we're looking forward to that. Our role in the continue of care at the COC increased dramatically in this past year and will kind of coming into this next fiscal year taking on the permanent supportive housing vouchers. We also increased the support to senior service providers and then helped support a number of COVID grant programs to the burn grant, FEMA and Algar among some others. And finally within our community works team, important work commenced and is nearly finished with the Moran frame. Important work to really help negotiate the Champlain in to find a permanent place for the low barrier shelter and then finally just other really important progress on development projects. So jumping into the budget now kind of transitioning from the recap just to kind of orient some of the terms that I'll be using. At the highest level, CEDO has two budgets that we're presenting. One is our 301 budget, so grant funded and this is revenue neutral and the other is our 101, so our general fund budgets. And there's a breakdown here. We are primarily grant funded as you can see it's about three times the amount of our general funds and we'll dive first into our grant funded or 301 budget followed by our 101 budget. So for our grant funded budget 301 we have it divided within four different divisions here. And I won't go through all the specific numbers or details about the divisions but just kind of focus on some of the highlights. So one important highlight is that our overall 301 budget is increasing by about 1.2 million. The main drivers of that are taking on the continue of care grant for to combat homelessness that I talked about in the previous slide. The new leg grant is larger and so that is increasing our total amount of 301 budget the new COVID funding that's coming in and additionally the new CJC programs that we talked about. And in terms of our 301 budgets again overall we only incur expenses that are eligible for the particular grants that in turn are reimbursed by the revenue that's received from the funders. There's one smallest exception which is the cost share that's required by very few grants in this upcoming budget. The only grant that has a cost share is our community justice center. And up note here is we stay pretty steady at about $90,000 the past years but we are actually requesting an increase this year and that is to transition some of our limited service staff to regular service. They're going into their third year of the grants and so we really wanted to bring this forward but unfortunately the award amounts for fiscal year 2022 didn't cover the increases in the retirement benefits. So we're coming to ask for a slightly larger transfer. This breakout here I apologize if the text is a little bit smaller, hard to read but the blue is labor and then the gray is other direct costs. So the other direct costs a lot of times are just direct pass through grants so with our community development grant program we're getting grants to other nonprofit partners as an example. And so depending on the program for example with the community justice center it's primarily labor. So a lot of their funds provide staff positions to do very specific functions within restorative justice or the parallel justice system. And other programs the labor is a smaller part but bringing on $1.2 million of additional grants has resulted in us filling some vacant positions in our org chart or adding two positions in the case of our CJC program. So those positions are we are filling another web program specialist position. We brought that to board of finance last week. We are proposing to fill the project and policy specialist position that's been vacant a year primarily due to for savings on our general fund that resulted in us just not being able to fill some positions. We're asking here to initially fund this position under the one-on-one budget. So we'll come to that. The reason for that is we're anticipating more grants to come on board that may in part or in large fund this grant specialist position but we really don't want to be restricted by the 301 the $6.2 million budget having to be 100% funded because really sometimes that doesn't allow us to one implement the grants to the degree that we need as well as it sometimes with the size of our community and the size of the grants it just isn't possible to do all the tasks that are required under the admin camps camps that are available. So we have included that it's gonna primarily support the grants but it will be coming in the one-on-one budget. And finally the two community justice center positions the youth and family restorative liaison that's a part-time position and the resolution and mediation coordinator. Moving on to our one-on-one budget. So this is our general fund. And again, I apologize for slides that are a little bit hard and complex but I was trying to convey the information giving enough detail to help really paint the picture but at the same time like driving home some of the key messages. So within our general fund budget and the past years we've been primarily or almost exclusively divided between CEDO admin and neighborhood services. So then CEDO admin that's where we are doing policy work staffing committees anything that a grant will not pay for directly. The CEDO director for example has a large portion of their salary out of the CEDO admin budget. The second kind of major category of our general funds is neighborhood services. And so this is where we're doing a lot of the support to the MPAs. Coming into this year what we're proposing is a continuation for some of the resource and recovery center types of activities. So we have two new programs that are of note. Cara presented previously on the economic recovery budget. So while that is presented in our Excel file and in the org sets that are uploaded in the accounting system, it is managed by Cara. So it's just worth mentioning here but I won't go into details in the subsequent slides about that program because she already has. And then the portion of the RSE that's focused on constituent services. So we feel strongly with the mayor that the services that have been provided to Berlin-tonians are really important to continue, especially in the recovery. So moving forward, we just want to make sure that we transition some of the staffing positions that were temporary into regular service positions within CEDO. So looking, taking the deeper dive into our neighborhood services in our admin budget, those are kind of the drivers over the year over year change for CEDO's budget. The increase from fiscal year 20 which I think is a better comparison than fiscal year 21 where we had a lot of forced savings just due to city-wide austerity measures. So comparing fiscal year 2020 to this upcoming fiscal year, our budget is proposed to increase by about $250,000 and this is driven almost entirely by staffing. So we had to keep a position empty which for the city hall, they're full of receptionists which also doubled as an office assistant helping with some of the more administrative support of some grants and programs. We're proposing to fill that position in the upcoming budget. The grant specialist that I had mentioned previously. And then finally, the converting the two positions that were temporary into permanent positions within CEDO, or regular service rather, positions within CEDO. So that's the communications and outreach specialist. And that's the first one and then the second one which I will be on the next slide. So I'm sorry, I'm talking ahead of myself. So I'll just wait the second one for the RIC on the next slide. And then the ELI program coordinator which is coming to council next Monday. And I apologize, I have a typo which should be ELI program manager on that slide. And then finally, something to note about the 101 budget is that we have a little bit of funding for the first time to help allow some of the CJC staff that are fully grant funded and have very specific tasks to be able to come to the table to integrate some of the restorative justice principles into the interdepartmental efforts to really take a look at the current criminal legal system and look at different models. And so we have 10% for one staff and 20% of another and we're excited to have their input in some of these really important initiatives that are moving forward. So now that I got ahead of myself, I will move on to the RIC constituent services which is the position I talked about the second one of the positions that were hired as temporary positions that were proposing on this budget to move to regular services. And that position in the current order chart is called the RIC administrative assistant but since that title is more constructed to just RIC and we believe it's gonna go beyond that we thought that title which hasn't been decided yet hasn't been determined or the position description has been finalized by something called like a constituent services specialist but essentially a continuation of the person who, sorry, of the role that was filled by the RIC administrative assistant really coordinating all the outreach to community members that are calling in or emailing with questions and seeking information. Another important point to note with our constituent services is that we have $90,000 in this budget to support the language access plan and we have 38,500 to support the trusted community voices program. So with that, I'll show a look at the CETA order chart which again, I apologize is complex and I don't expect you on this presentation to be able to read the really small print but I think the important takeaway is looking at our CETA org chart, the highest level you're still proposing to keep one position vacant in the org chart. We are proposing to add the position in the ELI program manager. The two positions that I talked about the RIC that are temp to make those regular service here and these last five positions are kind of grant funded positions that will be filled just with the increase of $1.2 million in our 301 budget. So with that, we're on over you. Again, apologies if I spoke too quickly or went through things too fast but I welcome questions and conversation about our budget. So thank you. Great, thank you, Katie. Good job covering a lot of the material there. The floor is open for questions. Okay, Councilor Pine. Maybe it's a little bit odd to be asking a question about a department that I'm about to join but I think it's just worth asking, is there money in the budget to pay specifically for translation services when those are needed? So the language access plan but I think those aren't really the same. So I just wanna check in on that. Yeah, so the primary spot where it's budgeted for translation services is the language access plan but there are some grant programs where translation is eligible costs where we've budgeted it under other lines. So I would say there may be $20,000 spread among the other kind of $8 million a budget but the primary point where we budgeted was under our constituent services under the language access plan. Thank you. President, I have a question.  Then we'll come to President Tracy. Yeah, I think along those lines, I thought that the $38,000 that was budgeted for the trusted voices is actually for the translation and outreach services, isn't it? There is a $38,000 on top of the $90,000 for language access plan. So they're separate. So there are two separate budget lines. So the $38,500 we're bringing kind of as the continuation of the prior amount that was budgeted for the trusted community voices, the liaisons, they have like an on-call contract with the city. So that's for their time and then the language access plan is for the translation services and interpretation primarily. Thank you. President Tracy, go ahead. Well, just, you know, one of the conversations that we've had as a body over the last several budget cycles has been around the ongoing sustainability of CEDO, specifically with regards to funding and in particular federal funding, recognizing that prior administration, federal or presidential administrations and Congress have taken a very different approach to funding municipalities and we're starting to see some positive results from that. Which I think is really welcome and is allowing you all to do so much more great work, but I'm just wondering how in the context of what, in so many ways feels like a windfall is now, like how are we going to maintain this and how are we creating structures to make sure that if that changes, that we're able to continue that work going forward. Because I think that's sort of like that. That broader perspective that I think is concerning. And, you know, I was concerned just about the sustainability of CEDO going forward. I'm not in this budget cycle at all. I think you all put together a really expanded budget, but I just was curious as to what, what the thinking is around that, that federal funding picture. Sure. They are doing it. Answer the first part. And I cannot answer some of the, like what CEDO is doing to prepare. Why don't you go first and then we'll flip the order there.  So yeah, I think we are also very excited by the movement with, with the Biden administration. That seems really going, kind of swinging back in the right direction in terms of the federal funding to the local government. So that is something we're welcoming and following quite closely in terms of what CEDO is doing. One example is looking to more proactive hiring instead of reactive. So as I talked about this grant program specialist that is initially entirely general funded. It may be in part or enlarge grant funded, like having the ability to hire that person, give them on board on before they have a grant that sign that they're fully billable for. It's huge because you have somebody that who's a person that's not fully billable. It's huge because you have somebody who's available to help respond and to staff and to implement some of these grants instead of a really long delay. And in the case of the recovery, a six month delay from kind of getting a grant, signing it, post hand position, hiring the position, getting somebody up to speed. That delay is like, has really big impacts on getting resources out into the community. So I think that's one, you know, the proactive instead of the reactive hiring. Specifically in our, for our grants budget. I think that's one example. And I think. Another piece of this that works in our favor and what is speaking to as well is a lot of the funding because of our size actually going to the state. And so it makes it a little bit easier from a grant administrative standpoint because we're not actually the ones administering and doing all the documentation, sending checks out if you take the rental assistance program at the state right now. Like we are advocating strongly in terms of how that program, if there's improvements or accessibility issues. Answering questions for Brillentonians, actively promoting and kind of local media and social media channels. But like the administration itself, those large federal funds because of our size is actually going to the state. I think ARPA is slightly different because we do have our own allocations we've all been talking about. But if you look at the per capita amount, the state still has a lot more funding per capita than we do, which is why we are very happy that, you know, Brillentonians are included in those statewide programs. So happy to get into any more details, but I'll hand it over to you, Mayor. Thanks, Katie. I mean, I think thanks to those really important detail. I think you're hitting on a key issue here, President Tracy that is definitely very much on my mind. I think we should be grappling with as we work towards finalizing this budget. Here's how I'm thinking about it. And this kind of goes beyond just the CEDAW budget. I. I too, I think. I think there's a possibility. My. Observation of the Biden administration is, you know, I do think they are making structural, attempting to make structural change in. Key areas that overlap with city interests and that strikes me there. That it is likely that. We will come out of this period with funding that goes beyond emergency funding in some areas and perhaps in public health, perhaps in. Infrastructure. Housing. Child care. And maybe other areas, but at least those where I think when everything sugar is off here, there may be. Permanent, if you will, or at least semi-permanent funding. And I think that's exciting. And I think we're going to watch that very carefully. And it's going to be, I think it's going to take some effort and time to figure out and really understand. We're trying to understand all these opportunities. We're trying to follow everything as close as we can. But a lot of it hasn't even been written yet, you know, down in DC. Or even it has been written. They've just. The only drafts of the guidance have been written for the bills that have passed. So. So we don't really know. But, but I do see an orientation in that way that's encouraging. At this, in addition, another thing that. I'm is very much on my mind as we craft this budget is we, we genuinely have. Found. Many areas within. This pandemic. That has forced us to do new things that we realize we should keep doing. That we should not go back to the, to the way we used to do things, whether that's in. We've talked about some of them tonight, the, the translation services, the constituent response, the. Public health supplemental public health services, public health equity services. And more. And we. It's probably unrealistic to think that, that that additional bill is going to be entirely paid by the federal government. So. I think we will have a period here. What we're working towards in this budget, it was a principle of the budget, if you recall, and these ARPA funds are sort of prop principle. And it's one that Catherine and I are talking a lot about. By the time we are asking you to approve this budget, we're really going to try to lay out for you. What, where we think we are using federal funds this year. Just to, to bridge a shortfall of revenues. And where we are using federal funds to cover. Real, ultimately, what will be a structural. Gap that we need to figure out ultimately how to fill. And. That was sort of the principle we articulated is if we are using federal dollars for non one time costs. I don't think, I don't think we should adopt the principle that we will not do that ever. I think we think that could hold us back from a period of innovation and moving forward. But I think we owe it to you and the public to. Explain clearly now upfront that this is something we're going to try to do. We're just something we have an opportunity to do with these federal funds, but ultimately we're going to have to figure out some kind of local funding strategy for doing this. And I think it's going to be a combination of the two. I think if that makes sense, I think we will. And some there'll be some unknowns where maybe they're, maybe they'll get federal support long term. Maybe we won't. And there probably will be some unknowns. Almost certainly. Sorry. There will be some unknowns as we pass this budget because. These two major bills won't have passed yet. We were going to have to pass this budget before the infrastructure bill passes. And certainly before this, what is talked about is what do they call it? The families bill, I think. You know, there hasn't even been a pressure lease on that yet, but it's clearly something that's a lot of discussion on. So. I hope that makes sense. And I welcome reaction to this little speech here. Because it's a hard part about this budget. And I'm not totally confident we got it right, but it's how we're proceeding with it. And it's what we're going to try to deliver to you in terms of information. I think that's really helpful, mayor. I certainly appreciate that. And I hope that we're just able to, you know, I understand that we, we have, we have to pass the budget and there's a certain. Uncertainties that will come out of it, but I do hope that we're able to engage in a conversation. Be clear with folks like you said about what we're able to accomplish, but then also to engage in a conversation about identifying other potential revenue sources to really. And hopefully progressive revenue sources. That's a really great question. And I also want to thank one of the folks who have the most in order to really make sure that we're able to keep these programs that I think speak to a wide variety of community needs going in the future. Great. And it probably should just add here. And I remind counselor, soon director pine of this as well is, you know, one of the efforts we. community works department, the commitment we made to the council to over a five year period, try to transition some of the new investment from the general fund in the kind of economic development services to transition to some additional, creating some additional local revenue streams that weren't property taxes or at least not additional property taxes, not general fund taxes that as a way of like long-term funding area of CDO that for a long time now we've struggled to properly fund as the federal government has been cutting back. So that kind of transition and commitment to try to move CDO funding remains. It's been disrupted, no doubt, by the last 15 months in the pandemic, but I don't see the need to do that going away. Great. Are there other councilor pun? Again, acknowledging the awkwardness of the question, but I'll just ask it anyway. If you could maybe, Mr. Mayor, I think you're the one to do this, or perhaps if I don't know if Brian Lowe is on, but I'd like to hear the thinking around the ELI position landing where it is landing. And I know there's a year review, perhaps I think is what I heard and what I believe is the case, but what's the strategy there? What's the thinking around that? Yeah. I don't think Brian is on with us and he might be the best to speak to it, but I will do my best. And Kara, maybe if you're still with us and she might want to speak to this, the thinking comes out of this. Councilor Pines is the, we have attempted to make expanded childcare services a relief, one of the supports that we're providing to Burlington individuals and in-sense workers, businesses in this challenging recession period. And we've expanded the eligibility criteria for getting the assistance through the ELI program and did see it as a service that would help with the economic recovery, basically expanding those services. One of the challenges right now, clearly is coming out of this kind of defensive crouch of the pandemic and getting people back to work is childcare is an obstacle for many people. And that's maybe one of the reasons why we're kind of having, you know, there's a big question going on right now. I don't mean to take us off track, but it's a pretty interesting thing. I think we should be grappling with as a council that we don't really know if this economic recovery is going to be smooth or not. There was a very troubling jobs report at the last jobs report. And it's, I've heard some helpful discussion. It's unclear right now as we sit is what's going on, kind of the parallel to a car getting up to highway speeds by hitting the merge and having a little bit of, having to slow down a little bit to let the car to it's your left to get ahead and then we'll speed up again. Or is there some real kind of problem here? Are we getting overheated? Is there, is there not, is there too much money going into the system in a way that's gonna be a, kind of lead the federal government have to clamp down on inflation soon and, you know, lead to another, you know, really difficult period here. And one of the, in the theory that maybe we're kind of having merging issues, one of the ideas is that you have a lot of people out there that can't really return to full work yet because their childcare situation is not up to speed. So not to mix metaphors there, but the, so I do think right now, even, I think childcare always has an economic development component to it in the way we've been organized with the departure of Luke, with Cara being on the board, on board we have, have given, have set it up with these additional responsibilities for now it is explicitly something that would be reviewed in a year in the way we're proposing it. Cara, do you wanna add anything there? No, I apologize. I stepped away, but it sounds like you covered it, the main discussion. And this will be in the memo that will be presented on Monday. And I believe the mayor just touched on this. It's the integration of getting the workforce back in the recovery with the childcare component. Is there any, anything else on that or other questions out there? And there will be more, like more detail coming because that position is actually being created Monday. That's actually on the agenda for the council meeting on Monday, right? It is on the agenda for the 24th, correct. And the memo is fairly detailed about the integration with that the important role that childcare will be playing in our economic recovery. Especially as it relates to some of the low and medium income jobs that we're creating through our CDBG grants and how we're attempting to have our small businesses bring our workforces back into play. And that that's essentially not possible for a lot of people as we all know without a childcare component. And to have that position working closely with us and our team to make sure that our programs integrate well between childcare and jobs creation. All right, are there any, not seeing any other hands. So if that is the case, we will close out the CEDO section of the evening. And although we still have, we will come back to CEDO related, CEDO will be back up again when we get to the TIF budget. But next on the agenda, we have planning, the planning department. So welcome, David. Thank you, Mayor. Glad to be here. Take a minute to congratulate my friend Brian Pine, Councillor Pine for your new position. Excited to have you back in the city team family and look forward to working with you. I will put up my presentation here on the screen and try to run through it fairly quickly. On the, on board docs is a little more detailed both on the slides and in the notes. So like I said, I'm going to run through this fairly quickly. Some of these early slides really talk about what our department does. I mean, we are actually a fairly new department even though I've been around for a while. Our department was created in 2019 when the zoning permitting functions were moved into the new department of permitting and inspections. So our core areas of responsibility are long-term land use and development, planning and policy, amendments to the zoning ordinance. We serve two different boards and commissions, primarily the planning commission and its three subcommittees, as well as the conservation board in collaboration with staff permitting and inspections. We're a small but mighty team. There are just two of us, myself and Megan Tuttle, but we do a lot of great work and are just happy to just take a moment to make a note here that Megan was just named the Vermont Professional Planner of the Year by the Vermont Planners Association. Despite our small size, we have a very large realm of responsibility, everything from kind of city-wide plans, the city's master plan to area neighborhood plans like NBTB we did for the downtown, land conservation, historic preservation, housing and economic development policy. All of our work though is done in collaboration with somebody else. We either support or work in partnership with many other city departments in the work that we do. This slide kind of tries to illustrate that a little bit, the kind of primary relationships where we work with other departments in kind of supporting the work that they do to facilitate the city's urban land use and development planning. We are often both a compliment and a supplement to the staffing of many other city departments. So when you look at the work that CEDO does, in our collaborations with the work of CEDO, we're there to kind of help them in the development of some of these planning and policy documents that help frame the structure for the kind of programs that they can deliver. We work with parks or DPW and help them frame kind of planning questions and kind of related infrastructure plans like the walk-by plan for an example or the plan that's going on at Perkins Pier right now within the context of the broader city planning framework and planning objectives. We spend a lot of our time supporting the work of the Planning Commission and its committees and the work of many other city departments in this way, leaving a little leftover for the projects that we see as being kind of priorities for us or things that we are kind of uniquely positioned on. Over the past year, our time and effort has been dedicated almost entirely to the city's COVID-19 response. We've been collaborative management responsibility for the city's analytics team with Brian Lowe from the Innovations and Technology. That team has been responsible for putting up and maintaining the city's dashboard, doing policy intervention research, standing up the wastewater monitoring program, managing the contact tracing team that we loaned to the Vermont Department of Health over the winter and standing up various testing and vaccination clinics. We've worked in partnership, particularly from the beginning, but throughout with the RRC that is run through CEDO in order to feed them the information they need to be able to help answer key questions in the community and help us present key points of information about what's the risk, how do you manage the risk, how do you get tested or get vaccinated. In our spare time, we've tried to do our best to keep some of the higher priority zoning amendments moving through the planning commission. We finished the parking minimums last fall, I believe, and have continued to work on short-term rentals, which will be coming to the council shortly. And we've tried to stay engaged on a number of other high-priority projects with other departments. Most of our time has been focused. So for fiscal year 22, we're really expecting to get back to doing our normal work, our typical day job, but building on some of the lessons learned and new ways of doing things, particularly around analytics and strategic planning. So all of the work that we do in supporting the planning commission, some minor amendments to the zoning ordinance, working with other city departments on internal planning-related projects, monitoring external planning-related issues, things that are going out at the Regional Planning Commission and adjacent communities within the legislature. For example, we're also expecting to provide some technical support for the Mayor's Cousins Summit over the course of these coming months. Development of a citywide economic development strategy in collaboration with CEDO and REIB. This is a good example where we look at how the city is delivering right now programs around economic development to support businesses and job creation in our city. This is an opportunity for us to step back and take a bigger picture of what we understand. What are our larger needs? How do we also include manufacturing and other kinds of businesses? What are their needs in the future and how do we best support those businesses going forward as a city? Part of that is rezoning of the Enterprise District, which was a key recommendation in the South End master plan that we completed a few years ago. We'll also be undertaking a completion of a new and expanded impact study. We expect utilizing funding from the Regional Planning Commission. Our budget highlights, we are largely a general fund-supported department. We do anticipate funding from the Regional Planning Commission, about $40,000 to support this impact study. The Regional Planning Commission will only pay for the transportation-related portion of the impact study. So we'll be utilizing money, general fund money in our budget to help cover the remaining costs of that project to cover the other aspects of the impact fee. So schools and police and library and parks, being some of the other key elements. On the inside of the equation, like most other departments, the focus begins with restoring or operating budgets to pre-pandemic levels and increasing and accommodating new staff that we anticipate. And you heard from Brian Lowe last week in his presentation for innovation and technology that two positions from that office are going to be transferred to planning, the senior policy and data analyst position, and the city data analyst position which is a new hiring process. Those positions will become part of the office of city planning going forward. We're also asking for a new part-time position, senior urban policy advisor. And this is where it's timely for me to just make note that it's my intention to be stepping down as planning director in over the course of the coming months and moving into this part-time position where I can help support the department in focusing on some of the kind of more in-the-weeds ordinance development work and helping with the transition of the department going forward. So I'll be working with the mayor's office to help facilitate a nationwide search for a new planning director and then through that transition. And the final element of our budget is I'm using consultants as an extension of our staff capacity and expertise. Again, this is for the revised impact study and the city-wide economic development strategy. So our future or our new org chart then looks more like this with the two data analyst positions coming over from innovation and technology as senior policy advisor position. And we also use interns where we have the resources available that's supporting them. So using those analyst positions in the city planning, really, again, it's an example of how we're trying to build upon the synergistic relationships that we've learned in working together as part of the analytics team. It really allows us to take the city's analytics work and making it more strategic and comprehensive in its focus and also to ensure that its city's planning work is more data-driven over time. But it's important to note that those two analyst positions come with their own workload and responsibilities. So it's not like they themselves actually add to the capacity of our department in the undertaking planning project. Over time, they'll be more likely a melding of some of those roles and responsibilities, but that will be kind of an ongoing transition. The role that I expect to move into, again, adds senior level professional capacity as well as providing that continuity of experience during the leadership transition. And that will be focused more on some complex ordinance development projects, things like the rezoning of the enterprise zone, looking at residential zoning districts and how to make them more inclusive as a couple of examples. There are a lot more projects that we have on our radar screen and we have the time and capacity and energy to take on. This is just a list in no particular order. But I know that there's some New North End city counselors on who have particularly been asking for a number of years about a New North End master plan. And I want you to know that it is indeed on our list. And as we have both the staff capacity, the consulting resource funding for consultants. And I think importantly understanding that this community only has so much capacity of its own in order to engage in these large public engagement exercises to talk about the future of their neighborhoods. You can't do all of this stuff at once. You can really only pick off one or two in any given year and expect the community to participate and to pay attention. But as I said, in order to make a dent into this list, we will in the future be needing additional staff and funding for consultants, particularly on a junior level capacity that really will help us do more work in the data collection and research and administrative tasks that right now Megan and I are responsible for expanding the senior level capacity where we can actually take on in-house more complex projects, higher profile funding and then using in-house capacity and particularly our expertise. Things that we're not particularly well versed at or don't have that particular profile. Those are the things we had to hire in in order to allow us to do more and do more. So that's my presentation and I'm happy to take any questions. Great, thank you, David. The floor is open. Councillor Pratt. David, there's some great projects there that you're planning to undertake and I'm wondering a few of them look like they might be good candidates for the municipal planning grants. Are you planning on seeking some funding for maybe the impact fee study or the rezoning work because that may require some consultants? So we will come the fall when that money becomes available, look to that program to try to fund some of that work that we already have ongoing. Something like the economic development strategy we have applied for in the past and not received funding for. So we'll need to be kind of careful and strategic about what we make an ask for. That money too is in quite high demand but we use programs like that. We certainly have used historic preservation funds and wood in the future for preservation related work. But I typically don't include those kinds of things in the budget because it's speculative. I don't know whether we'll have the money to be able to take some of that stuff on so I don't wanna make a promise that I can't. If you're all set, Councillor Pine, go to President Tracey next. Yeah, so I noticed that you had the city-wide economic development strategy highlighted in the presentation. Just wondering if you can just say a little bit more about what that effort is going to entail and how you're gonna involve different areas of the city in that economic development conversation. Sure, happy to. Thanks for the question. It's a project that comes out of the city's master plan. It's being a very high priority for us to step back and take a big picture of luck and understand more about what are the city's economic characteristics? What are some of the past and future trends around the kinds of businesses that we attract, the diversity of business types that we want and need and have a strategic advantage to support here in our community? And then understanding what are our priorities and particularly our role within the larger region to support those kinds of businesses. You heard a lot from Carl and then within CEDO of some direct service to small businesses, retail, restaurant and the like. That's really important work and particularly right now is helping those businesses get up off the ground. And what this approach is really looking at is those businesses and others. And then you've got small makers who maybe they're working out of their garage today but eventually they need to move into a larger space or they're working in a space in the South End and they're growing and they're adding employees. How do we help them find and create larger spaces particularly within the South End to support more manufacturers? What about all of the different innovators and the opportunity to collaborate with particularly our institutions? The University of Vermont has a new office that's particularly looking at how do they kind of support spinning off some of the research and R&D work that the university academics produce where they're collaborating with businesses in our community, they're maybe starting businesses of their own. How do we support that? How do we facilitate that? We place the programs with other things trying to answer those kinds of questions so that we really are thinking about our local economy here in Burlington. How does it fit within the bigger picture? But also how do we ensure that it has the diversity that it needs to be resilient through the economic ups and downs? Pandemic with great example of that that if we were solely a tourist based economy we'd be dead and we'd be digging ourselves out of a very deep hole but because we have good diversity, there's more balance, there's more support for kind of not for keeping different kinds of people employed in different ways. And that's what I think is critical is for us to think more strategically about how do we ensure that resiliency going forward. Yeah, I think that's absolutely crucial and I appreciate your work on this. I think it's gonna be an aspect of diversity that I think is that I hear a lot of anxiety around is economic diversity and maintaining cultural and racial diversity throughout the city. And so wanting to make sure that this effort is really cognizant of those factors. There's deep anxiety I think in many corners of the old North End around gentrification. And so I would just specifically ask that this effort really name that and identify strategies for confronting gentrification so that we have neighborhoods that are economically diverse and that where folks are able to really participate in the businesses, the different organizations and entities that make up their neighborhood. Cause that is something that I think is a deep concern and I'd really like to see planning focus on that. Thank you for that. And this is something that is a really critical collaboration as I mentioned before with CEDO and with REID. And in the housing realm, we think of this housing tenure ladder where you kind of start at the bottom and your work your way up. It's the same basic concept when you're thinking about the range of economic development opportunities in spaces where you got somebody working out of their garage then making pesto and all of a sudden they need a commercial kitchen to move into and it becomes a restaurant. And you have to create that pathway and you have to facilitate that pathway. And that only happens when we step back and think about what's needed in order to be able to do this kind of thing. Okay. I'm not seeing any more hands. Sorry, Maya. Okay, go ahead. Sorry, Councillor Chang. Go ahead. This is a question more for you, Mr. Mayor. And thank you, Mr. David for the presentation for all you do. Now, based on the list for maybe the FY23, right? I was just wondering if the mayor can maybe speak about the need of the new North End to get more attention in terms of planning not new North End zoning changes but basically just North Avenue. Where is it as a priority for you, Mr. Mayor? So I'm aware that you've expressed interest in a new North End master plan and I've heard that from some others and I would like to understand more from you and your colleagues. And I see Sarah and sorry, Councillor Carpenter and Councillor Barlow here as well. And we should talk about what you envision coming out of there. And I'm open to it becoming a top priority of the planning office. I would like to understand a little bit better of the goals and are. And I think we, I think David has articulated well that we do have limitations on how many planning efforts in any given year we can push through. And I think there are other high priorities as well. But I think we should talk about it. I think we should come to some collective agreement about where the priorities are gonna be. I just heard President Tracy's strong interest in the economic development plan. You're expressing interest in the new North End master plan. We are certainly relying on the planning office in a significant way for ongoing housing work and housing reforms as well. So we got, I think we should, this is the time of the year, I think to be dialing in what are priorities and deliverables will be for the upcoming year. And I appreciate the questions from the council tonight. And I think that should be part of our discussion as we work to finalize the budget about, you know, maybe even a multi-year timeline for what our realistic scope of work to move our way through and, you know, over a two, three year period of time. So let's talk more about that. I appreciate you raising. I understand your interest there. Thank you. Are there any other comments? Okay, seeing none, we will close out planning. Again, thank you, David. Great presentations as always. And we're getting close to the finish line tonight. I believe we have just one more. The CEDO and clerk treasurer budget, which sorry, the TIF budget, which is a joint effort of CEDO and the clerk treasurer's office. Since Rich Goodwin has long played a major role in helping manage the TIF districts. I see Richard as his camera on. Richard, welcome. Thank you. Rich actually has helped me prepare. He's got the spreadsheets that you have on this agenda item. Rich is, I'm not sure whether we want to put them up and have me talk, walk folks through it or I see Councilor Pine nodding. So Rich, if you could put up the waterfront 6A. I think it's important to, to, I guess, emphasize that all of these expenditures, the revenues and expenditures have already come forward in presentations through other department, well, partially through CEDO, also through the Rich's presentation of the bonding and John Vickery's working through expected revenues from the grand list. And we're carving them out here now to show just how it all works within the parameters of TIF. So what we have for the waterfront TIF district has been a pretty steady holding pattern of revenues with 2022 anticipating 2.76 million in TIF revenues to service debt and related costs for the district in the coming year. The breakdown essentially works, the bulk of that is debt service through all of the various bonding of the waterfront TIF over the course of the years. That's 2.126 million of all of that. And then related costs are borne primarily by CEDO but also by the Clerk Treasurer's Office. I think there's been some discussion recently. CAO Shed has made a move towards bringing in an outside consultant to work with us to I think more focus on centralizing our TIF record keeping and Municap is under contract now to do that, essentially for both districts. So we split between the two districts. They do this basically all over the country. And we have found, and I think Catherine has appropriately identified that having various departments serve as the custodians of the records for their individual work in the various departments is all well and good and makes perfect sense. But we need to create an electronic database that centralizes them as they pertain to TIF so that it's all there. And this has become apparent just because of employee turnover and loss of institutional knowledge. It's unfortunately I'm now kind of the institutional knowledge for most of this, but I didn't actually work on a lot of the projects. I'm not as familiar with them as you might imagine. I worked as the lawyer on them. So I think Municap is gonna be significant. In the meantime, we've got two ongoing projects that have both staff time and consultants and that's down in the CEDO block. That's the Moran project. And there's a placeholder on some potential city place time. And all of that is a placeholder. We still have to go back to Vepsi to get Greenlit to continue on with once. I think you folks have been hearing about updates on that project. All of that then sugars out where we have a grand total of $478,639 surplus. The district as a whole has been carrying surplus over the years that will hopefully be dedicated to projects namely city place in this district. But we have a couple more years to work that out and then assuming we work that out and incur the debt, we would be able to run it out through 2035. So I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I'll go through 2035. If you bring up the downtown TIF. Yep. Give me one moment. So the downtown TIF has actually has even through COVID experienced increased revenues over time And that's fortunate. I think Mr. Vickery probably has been able to talk about how commercial properties did over the past year. But in any event, what we're showing here is an expected 1.5 in revenues. We are hopeful that we can move into the next phase of Great Streets. But that similarly, we have to go back and get Pepsi approval. So there's, I do not believe there is an expected expenditures for new projects for new projects in FY 22. Those projects are will be scheduled to be on next year's budget. What we have for this year is servicing of the debt. The city clerk treasurer's office is related costs where our audit expenses and our unicap expenses. And then down below the CEDO staff time and consultant expenses in attempting to advance downtown Great Streets to the next project development phase. The total there ends up 826 in expenditures with an escrowed amount of a surplus balance of 727 to carry forward for excuse me, $727,000 to be carried forward for future debt service over the course of the life of the district. That life of the district also runs to 2035. So with that, again, I guess I wanna emphasize that each of these revenues and expenses were incorporated into the other budget presentations you've had over the last few days. I see Rich nodding. But this is the call out from those budget sheets to show how they apply to TIF. With that, I'm happy to take any questions. Great, thank you Richie Richie. Can you just bring the council up to speed on? I know that there has been an effort in the legislature this year to extend once again the TIF deadlines as a result of COVID for it was already they were all extended by one year for incurring debt already. And I thought I understood there was an effort to extend them another three years. But what is the status of that, the question? The status is just to set the background to all that last year, Burlington is one of six communities that are in time crunches around debt incurrence periods that were set by statute that have been negatively impacted by COVID. I mean, the realities of this pandemic are that it's had a chilling effect on development and not only for communities working with developers and public-private partnership, but generally speaking, knowing how to advance to municipal legislative body and to the voters of the community with all this uncertainty, how you can essentially advance a TIF project and for those of you who've seen us come forward with these, they're all anticipate that you can rely on the success of the project, you can rely on the success of the grand list, you can rely on, and so all of this is on hold as we've sort of been waiting for the dust to settle on this. We anticipated that at the end of last legislative session, we asked for a two-year extension and they only granted us one because they were not prepared at that time to imagine that this could be as protracted as it turned out to be. So now we're back this year. Most of the municipalities are asking for something more in accord with a lot of federal development grant actions in various things, which are setting a three-year extension period. And so that was the ask and it now looks like they're preparing again to just give one. And that's getting tricky because it's all tied in with the S-33, which has a bunch of other things in it that are starting to become controversial. I've been speaking with Karen Horan today. They're trying to talk to all the legislators about pushing that, whether it needs to come out of S-33 and go into something else or not, but it needs, So, unlikely three-year extension, maybe one. Yeah, I think now it's just a matter of keeping people focused on not forgetting that piece if they're gonna fight about S-33, pull it out and put it in the miscellaneous bag spill or something. Okay, so great. So I mean, with the downtown TIF, with the waterfront TIF, just to remind everyone where we're at it, sorry if I'm being redundant it's something Richard said, but really what's left in the waterfront TIF is for all intents and purposes, city places all that's left and the deadlines for incurring debt. Certainly it would be helpful to the developers if there was another. Extension, I suppose, but the city, because of the settlement agreement which we're now closed on, the city is sort of our, we have limited kind of risk on the kind of city piece because of the settlement agreement and because of the protections and modified public improvements and whatnot. So that's that. The downtown TIF, we have a lot still to get to do with the downtown TIF and it is certainly, I'll just share with the council, it's certainly my plan, we're working in this would be crucial if there is not a further extension but even if there is a further extension I think we might want to keep this timetable. When you've heard me talk in the past about a special election this fall, one of the things that would be on the fall election would be some additional authorization for the downtown TIF because we clearly have capacity there we have not millions of dollars of capacity there we have not yet committed to any projects and through a voter vote. So I guess I'm not totally sure Richard if we did that that I agree that there wouldn't be any expenses in the FY 22 year if we had a fall election I think we might quite quickly start incurring some downtown TIF related expenses in the first half of 2022, no? I think that what we're showing is consultant fees and the fact of the matter is that we would, well, I mean, I suppose that's a DPW conversation in terms of whether or not they want to. We should probably act that a little further before we finalize this budget because I'm not sure that that assumption I have I think I would anticipate there would be spending in 2022. On the design costs here. Yeah, design and project management. So, okay, sorry to helpful context for counselors the floor's open for questions. Councilor Klein. Richard, you gave us a deadline of 2035 that's a deadline for when the city can no longer essentially capture the increment to service the debt, correct? Correct. What is the deadline for incurring debt? The incurring the debt right now as the mayor described the November special election would bring us in in time even without the extension because the downtown expires March 31st of 2022 presently. So you would have to get the approval bond and you don't have to build anything.  So that I was leading to the same conclusion that the mayor was on the fact that we will then need to incur, we will need to incur costs to bring this to the voters in an informed way, right? So, if we're bringing this to the voters in November I guess is what I'm getting. There'll definitely be some costs. There are some depending on what we settle on something we'll have to do together. But I know there's a lot of interest in the main street plan and the main street plan a lot of costs have already been incurred and spent. I think the amount of additional costs necessary to actually for a vote would be modest with the approval and there's a bunch of costs. And if there are other projects that could absolutely be cost you had to get ready for a vote and there could be other projects. This is definitely something we have a lot of work to do together on. Great, thank you. Rich, did you have a hand up? Yeah, I was just going to add that we are working with Municap and I have been working over the last couple of months building the actual cash flows to determine our capacity. And I'm very close to finalize that. So I would build into that those costs that we feel would be incurred. I would do a projection of debt capacity and we would be bringing that forward. Great, that'd be very helpful. I will say that my conversations with Martha who did the capital presentation on Monday night were focused on the Moran budget. And I think I would ask that have some opportunity to just check back with Martha on whether or not there's a great streets placeholder in the capital budget or that would have been in the downtown that we just simply didn't discuss. I suspect based on what I'm hearing from the mayor that there is. There may not be. I'm not sure with everything we have, again, this is really exceptional in budget year in lots of ways. And I'm not sure every conversation has that it needs to happen before this is approved has happened. Fortunately, we still have about a month in the process to go here. So I think there may be an amendment to this. Counselors, we'll see. So that's part of the purpose of these sessions is to flush out areas where we have work to do still to get this finished. Are there any, is there any other questions for Richard and Rich or me about the TIF? Great, thank you all. We will adjourn in a moment here. The final full evening session is tomorrow. Again, as I said last week, I will not be able to be a part of this tomorrow. Catherine will be leading the session for the administration tomorrow. I do just want to make sure everyone saw the note. The police budget, we're going to add a half hour to the Board of Finance on Monday for the presentation of that budget because the work on that still continues. And I know I want to get it right, or at least ready for a full discussion and we need a little bit of extra time. We hope they might be ready for the night but we need a couple more days on it here. So we will try to post those materials before the weekend so that people will have time to review that and be ready for the discussion on Monday. So thank you everyone. I feel like we've had some good discussions and I've got a bunch of notes. I'm sure Catherine does as well in the various departments and we'll keep going with this. Thanks everybody, see you again soon. If there's no objection, we are adjourned at 7.15 p.m. Good night, everyone.