think that our first need is going to be the having enough people to have simultaneous things going on at once, but we have to be aware of what might be happening. Thanks.  The other thing that I wanted to add is the housing that's right next to the library is now UVM and Medical Center. So there's going to be postdocs and graduate students and medical students, nursing students that may enjoy the library later in the evening and it's a lot closer here than heading on to campus. So that could be another reason for later hours. But if I could follow up, because I was actually, I was going to follow up on the question just from personal experience when I was a graduate student. I had the same thing. I lived closer to the public library than to getting back on campus. So it was just easier to go and have dinner and then go library or even during the day because classes or whatever. Is that going to be a challenge because I was at the library today. Checked out a book today. I've used I think every service that you have there, interlibrary loans, it's all fantastic. But I remember when I came here today, the park, I couldn't find a parking space. It was already packed. It was the middle of the day, it was packed. So assumably those people have parking on the back, but there'll be just more people. And so the library will increase and become full for people who I assume what I did, which is quite understandable study because I want a quiet place. Given the numbers that's going to come on board, which is up to a five, six, 100, do you envision that as a challenge and how would we manage that challenge? Is the solution switching the hours or is that what you're sort of intimating? There are a lot of different branches to what might happen. One of the things that at certain times of day or times of week that we already know is that people might want a study room or a meeting room and it's already busy. And so our rules when we started, we tried to make it user-friendly as possible. And so some of those policies might have to change to be a little less easygoing if we are trying to fit as many people as we can in a day. So study rooms right now, we ask people to stay for no more than three hours. We might change that to two hours and then have a wider array of people having a chance to use it. So there's that kind of internal thing. And certainly if we're open for more hours, it means that we have that many more spaces for someone to use if it's at the right time of day or night for someone to want to use it. I think we're just gonna have to get used to being bigger. One of the things that I've been, I mean, to busier, not bigger. We are as big as we're gonna be busier. But one of the things that I hoped for and have been very happy to see is that people share, they already share. So we have the community room in the digital lab. And if nobody has reserved them for a group meeting, then it's open for individuals or groups to study. And most of the time you'll see at least four different groups or pairs or singles in those rooms doing their own thing in a corner. And somebody might even be talking on the phone and still these other people are still in there doing their own thing. So it might just be that those rooms get a little fuller when these things happen. And as you're talking about parking, I think that's something that was brought up when the building was being built. And this is supposed to be a very nice walkable, bikeable, bussable building. And right now we're still working on accessibility because the drop-off for the city bus is actually in front of Barnes & Noble. So people with access issues may be driving their cars because it's harder to get the steps to here at the library. And I know that's something that has been an ongoing conversation and hopefully we'll continue with that because the more we can convince people to find alternate ways to get here, the less need of parking that we'll have. How many movies can I watch on Canopy per month? So the Canopy, the Canopy service has changed a little bit. So you have, I think, three different categories that are topical and you can watch as many as you want of those. And then they have a point system now that you can watch the ones that are not within those categories. So I cannot answer that question in a clear fashion. I'm sorry. But we are, I think FY24's budget has a little more money in it for Canopy because we have to step into that. Because we don't have enough streaming services, so one more is really great. Well, it's really good for people who can't afford the streaming services, right? That's the key. We're all, we're supposed to be about accessibility. I know it's Friday because I get an email from Canopy on Friday, go, oh, what have they got? Oh, look at these great movies that I never get to it. So anyway, it's good service. Well, great, well, thank you for coming. Tim, just a point, yeah, that's what I'm thinking. Hey, thanks. Hey, Jennifer, do you have a sense of the portion of the library of users, users that are, you know, South Burlington residents versus, you know, in the wider region? I do, I'm sure I do. So in this year, FY24 so far, 84% are South Burlington residents, 11% are home card residents. So those are the libraries in Chittenden County that we have a relationship with where they can come and bring their card from their library to us. And then under 6% are non-residents who are paying a fee. And maybe a follow-up, when we allocate, as you were saying, the community with other rooms, is there a preference for South Burlington residents or could anyone book those rooms? So we did not choose when we first opened to make that distinction, but that is certainly something that might come about in the future when we're trying to accommodate more and more people. Okay, thanks. And a very quick note that we had several people from out of town at Illuminate who stopped by to see us, including a lovely woman from Brazil. So far-reaching and it was fantastic. So stop by and see, we'll have a showcase of people that came to Illuminate to talk about why they love their libraries. And you had some great music on the first floor too. Yeah, during the Illuminate, yeah. Well, thank you. Can I add one more thing? Sure, please. So part of these orientations to give you all a kind of foundation of what our operations are. So as things come to you in the future, you have some familiarity. So one of the things that Stacy and Jennifer and I have been talking about for a couple of months is that you saw on the org chart, Jennifer's kind of squeezed by city administration and the trustees. I think it's in a loving way. I think Stacy and I are really embracing- It's totally loving, it's totally loving, I agree. But I think we have a really strong, the library trustees do have some statutory authority that's independent of council. We have a really strong history established right now of mutually supporting one another through a memorandum of understanding. That MOU needs to be updated. So that is something that you are likely to see in the next year. And I think we have a lot of good foundation built about how we do that in collaboration. But that's an emerging issue you are likely to see in the next year. Thanks for adding that. Just a quick follow-up or clarification of that. What are these authorities of the trustee over? What I'd always assumed was the city's public library. Just understanding, and are there, in that matter, any other organizations or entities within our city, public administration, that also have some external reporting requirements or to always be conscious of? Do you want to answer the library trustee authority? I would refer you to the library webpage again about us trustees. And that's where the current MOU exists and that we'll outline. But that is definitely out of date. And so I'm glad that this conversation is going to be happening. There's also something before the legislature now that clarifies some of that as well. So I think in high level bite size, the library trustees set the policy of the library. So how it operates, how they select books, how they keep books on the shelf, how they treat folks who come in and out of the library. All of the operations of the library sit with the trustees. The fiduciary of the library, while recommended by the trustees, still goes through the council process. So the employees of the library are still city employees. They're under our policy. They are admin of their personnel policies, their payroll policies there is all administered through the city. So the MOU really speaks to that financial relationship while the policy sits with the trustees. You still have to approve the budget. You still bring it to the voters, all of that. The other example that you heard about at the last meeting is Champlain Water District. And so we'll try and remember to tease those out as they happen. And I look forward to you in the next couple of months finding time to say hello to each of you and talk about how we can partner together. That would be amazing. Thank you. Thank you. Great, thank you. Thank you. Item number nine briefing on the kickoff of the parks and open space master plans with Adam Math and Silken Kirschner. So I think Adam and Silken are gonna come down. I think Adam is going to walk through his orientation presentation very quickly, recreation and parks. But we're gonna sort of combine eight and nine as it relates to recreation and parks because the parks and open space master plan which Silken is here for is a big effort of recreation and parks at the moment. But I think Adam, if you want to start with your orientation, that would be great. Oh, I need to give you. I think I'm SB City that jumped on. There you go. That work? Perfect, so I will jump in here and give kind of a rundown background on recreation and parks for you guys. So here is the team that we have. We're a five person team. I'm the director. Rebecca is our senior adult recreation specialist. So she actually started right around the time that City Hall opened up here with regards to the senior center. So she handles all of our programming that you see down the hall. Travis Ladd is our operations and event specialist. So handles a lot of our larger event planning and organizing was very instrumental in illuminate Vermont as well as the SB night outs that you see at Veterans Park. And then we also have two recreation specialists, Brett Leonard, as well as Kate Lickety. So they oversee our youth programming. A lot of times when you think of recreation departments you're thinking of youth basketball, youth soccer, lacrosse, baseball, et cetera, as well as they all play unique role in different events which we're doing throughout the course of the year. I threw on their our general mission statement as far as who we are. At the end of the day, we play a unique role and our thread in the fabric of the community basically bringing all different demographics together. Whether you're living in different portions of the city or different ages, we're able to blend everyone and also play a unique role when it comes to welcoming new residents as South Burlington continues to grow. The recreation departments are gonna play a very important role to make people feel like a part of the community through being a part of our events or our programming. Here's a quick rundown of the different parks that we have in South Burlington. When it comes to, I'll briefly kind of hit what is at the different locations listed in front of you here. And then you also have a map showing where within South Burlington, these parks are located. So Baycrest Park has a playground as well as an open green space. The city center park is right down the street. It has a natural playground there. Farrell Park has a dog park, a playground, a little league field, two of them, upper and lower as well as a soccer field. JC Park is home to our softball field. It's also where youth football and youth rugby play during the fall. We also have a basketball court and a playground there. Overlook we were just talking about has the scenic viewpoint. Red Rocks is our beach as well as it has walking trails located there. Samansky Park, which we discussed earlier has tennis, pickleball, basketball and our playgrounds. Hubbard Rec is our walking trails. Veterans Memorial is where 90% of our programming takes place. We have two little league fields, one larger baseball field, as well as multiple soccer lacrosse fields there. And then Wheeler Homestead and Nature Park is the walking trails as well as our larger dog park that we have. Recreation, so we really kind of have two different arms when it comes to engaging residents within South Burlington. We have our programming, which I listed out here for you. And then we also have our events. So we cover literally all ages when it comes to our programming. So all the way down from youth types and Kinderbrow sports up to our senior center falls under the recreation department. So just kind of briefly highlighting a few of the different programs we do for the different ages within our senior center. We do weekly lunches through age well. So every Wednesday and Friday we do lunches for seniors. We do active activities for our seniors in the senior center as well as social activities for them. So the senior center is programmed every day from eight 30 to four o'clock. Adults is one area which we are actively looking to grow in when it comes to the programming side of things. Expanding programming like paint nights, cornhole tournaments, our community gardens, et cetera. And then the youth side of things is what everyone thinks of when they think of recreation departments, basketball, lacrosse, soccer, baseball. What is unique about us is schools out, overseas the summer camps. So we offer summer camps not for the entire summer timeframe but we offer specialized week summer camps. So during the summer we'll have a baseball camp and archery camp, pottery camp, robotics camp, sailing camp, et cetera. But we don't offer options for kids from the beginning of the summer through the end. It's all one-off week camps which we offer. Jumping to our events, there's a few of them that I'll kind of highlight and share with you which we'll also kind of go back to the next slide when it comes to the barriers to participation which some of these will kind of hit and develop on. So new events for 2024. We're rolling out a family series. So every month we've been doing a free family style event. So as our recreation department without an indoor rec facility, we become very seasonal heavy which in the past, during the October through March timeframe, there weren't a ton of events that we were doing for families. So we're trying to roll out one family event. We've done bingo, paint nights. We just did trivia the other day to engage families all year round, whether it's doing stuff here in the senior center, utilizing the schools or also the U-Mall has given us some space to utilize there as well. Recreation on the go is a new program for the upcoming year. We're actually gonna be taking our recreation to underrepresented or geographically isolated areas in the community instead of them coming to us. We're gonna be setting up our mobile trailer and we'll be going to them and bringing our recreation games as well as doing a free community barbecue at those. So we have six of those lined up for the summer timeframe. The July fitness series is going to be free programming in our parks during the entire month of July. So every day during July from the first through the 31st, we're gonna have a different fitness program, rotating throughout our parks. So regardless of where you live, there'll be an opportunity for a walkable location to get to and there'll be no cost associated with it. So programming from yoga, Tai Chi Pilates, full body workouts as well as dance class, those will be rotated, rotating in the area. And then the last one that I wanted to talk about is our park hop bruise. It's gonna be a new program in the fall to engage a younger demographic, your young adults who aren't currently really participating in our rec programs, as well as highlighting different parks in our community. So what we're gonna be doing every Thursday in the September is rotating in different parks throughout South Burlington and doing a traveling beer garden and a pop-up location to hopefully engage a new demographic on that side of things. This may be hit with your city manager. Some emerging issues that we have, and kind of before I jump into these, there's really three different barriers when it comes to participation in recreation, programming and events. The first is transportation. So a lot of our programming happens at Veterans Park. It's not on the bus line. So it's difficult for families to get to. The second is cost. And then the third is also our lack of an indoor facility and becoming a seasonal recreation department. So emerging issues, obviously kind of hitting off of what Jennifer was mentioning as well. City plan goal number 48 is to expand our reach to 40% of South Burlington population as the South Burlington continues to grow. In order to do this, we'll need increased funding as well as staffing. We are a very small recreation department staff compared to other recreation departments in the area. Indoor programmable space have already hit on that, but the key to that is during the winter months, we lack schedule and control. So we do have access to the schools, but as you all know, the schools are utilized during the day as well as post school with their extracurricular activities. So by the time we get access, it's well into the evening. So it's not realistic for young families to come out. The park master plan, which we'll touch on here is an emerging issue in the fact that what that park master plan ends up saying we're gonna be looking for the resources provided to implement those goals and objectives. And then also making sure that we're providing to everyone and recreation will change for what South Burlington needs as more and more families are going to multi-family housing and they won't have their typical backyard or front yard to plan. They're gonna be relying on the recreation department in a different way than we have been relied on in the past. That was really quickly in my presentation. Was that the last slide? Yep. So that's the last of the orientation. Do you want us to go right into parts of master plan? Unless the council has any comments or questions.  Okay, yep. I have to rejoin. Can I save some laptop batteries? So the reason we wanted to bring you this briefing tonight is that over the last year or two, there has been a conversation at recreation and parks about doing a parks master plan and then also a conversation at NRCC about doing an open space master plan and having them be separate documents. As staff was putting this together, we really saw an advantage of having those two conversations being two halves of a whole and thinking about our public spaces much more broadly. You were talking earlier about what's happening in our library as folks are using our public spaces in new and unique ways. The same could be said across all of our parks and open spaces about that. So because this is a shifted approach from how the council had previously thought about these two documents, we wanted to be sure that you all were fully briefed as we go into issuing an RFP for our consultant to help the community walk through these efforts. So there's no action for you all tonight other than making you champions of this effort and providing you an opportunity to ask any questions you may have about it. And Silken and Adam have put together a great, quite detailed presentation for you. So Silken's gonna fly here. Really fast. Hi guys, nice to meet you all. I'm Silken Kirschner. I'm the transportation and open spaces project manager working over in the DPW building. It's great to meet you all. Dean, Silken, are you Bright Green? Is your my daughter? Bright Green, yes. Can you live to locals? Yes, I can be louder. So why do we need a master plan at all? Master plans were explicitly requested under the recreation and environmental actions of the city plan under actions 39 and 87. The master plan will address many of the goals which were listed out on the recreation side of things. Some of the major ones are goal 54, 57, 60 and 61. And then on the environmental goals, it's gonna be 34, 35, 36, 37 and 40 from the city plan. So in getting started, we kind of developed these key questions that are pillars for each plan to address. I'll hit on a few of these here. I'm not gonna read through all of them exactly for you but in the end the key questions are looking at the parks and identifying needs and resources for the future demographic changes which we've been discussing consistently here tonight. A guide for redevelopment of our parks and our programming. A guide for adoption of private parks which currently we don't have in place as well as a guide for privately developed Rec and Park areas to maximize the resources and facilities that are giving us. And under the open space side of things, we'd like to create a guide for future conservation. We want to create true linkages for habitat blocks. We want to identify how open spaces can be utilized and balance our open space with active recreation. So why combine the parks and open spaces into one master plan? We basically came up with this Venn diagram of what consists of the two plans and what is active recreation, passive recreation and true conservation. When it comes to the funding side of things. So within the CIP for fiscal year 25, we have $75,000 allocated through ARPA funds as well as a placeholder in fiscal year 26 for another 75 in ARPA funds for this project. Under this diagram, you'll see that we have defined two different kinds of open space developed and undeveloped, developed obviously falling under the parks and more programming side and undeveloped being conservation areas and natural passive recreation areas. So we are currently in step one of kickoff. We have established a timeline in the project process. Adam and I are the contacts. We've found our funding and we're here presenting to you guys getting ready to get a consultant on board to move forward. We're in the process of identifying key stakeholders and participants determining who needs to be heard and how several of our committees have been very helpful and engaged in this so far, the NRCC Rec and Parks Committee, bike and pet advisory committee as well as the committee on common areas for docs. We really want to engage underrepresented groups like that youths and elderly and a main point of this step one is understanding where we're going with these two master plans. Understanding the context for long range planning is super important obviously if we're creating a master plan. So what do we want to accomplish? Which led us to our key questions. What are the goals, objectives, metrics for success which we lightly outline here and leave room for a consultant's interpretation as well. This is our timeline. You'll see here we're on this third dot where we're presenting the next step is to engage a consultant to write the actual master plans, step two will be listening and learning. So a lot of outreach, canvassing, step three evaluation of existing spaces that we have and what we are in need of. Step four, options and goals and then five is really bringing that all together in a written master plan. Step two is listening and learning. So this outreach should be fun and engaging. We're trying to cast a really wide net maximize all of that input that we're gonna get which is also another piece of why we wanted to combine parks and open spaces together. If we're trying to limit the feedback we get to a developed park or just a undeveloped passive recreation area or conservation area it's gonna be hard to limit people and say only talk about these two specific things. So I feel like casting this really wide net will help us get the most out of this community engagement phase. That leads us to step three evaluating capacity and identifying needs. We're gonna start with the inventory and assessment. The NRCC has really helped us with a strong prototype of this existing conditions assessment but we wanna assess more than just quantity and type. We're gonna go into usage patterns, what's working well, what do we see fully utilized and what might the community not be fully utilizing or interested in. This is where we'll enter in with GIS mapping to enhance this existing inventory and be able to visualize it spatially. We're gonna create and define spatial characteristics of parks, open spaces and trails and see those linkages in real time, see that accessibility to parks within every neighborhood. We'll do a second iteration of site visits to really drill down on the problems and positives that we're experiencing. We'll meet with facility and program managers to get their intake and all of this will be consolidated into a comprehensive assessment of existing conditions. And the next piece of that is we want to make sure that the plans we already have in place are working with these master plans and vice versa. So going through any existing plans such as individual parks plans, rec programming, city plans, comprehensive plan, active transportation plan, et cetera. We're gonna extract those common policy elements to not duplicate the work and make sure all of our guidance is on the same page. And the last piece of this step three will be a needs analysis and establish a baseline. This is the really important piece where we help a consultant answer the question what does our community need in a data-driven way? This will use metrics such as acres of park per capita, facilities per capita, walkability, distance to parks and open spaces, et cetera. And this will create a gap analysis specifically using that GIS mapping to spatially visualize where the most equitable access to parks is. Step four, exploring options and defining goals. We're gonna do a recreational market assessment. So what can we achieve? What do we want to obtain? Using that gap analysis that tells us where we may be able to offer more parks or open space type programming or access, then we can overlay that with it's map nine from the city plan that has future land use goals in mind. So using all that together, it'll help us hone in on exact areas where maybe we hadn't thought about putting a park or open space before, but it would greatly serve X number of people, et cetera. So this will explore recreational trends and how they interface with the rec environment in South Burlington. We can provide case studies from recent projects. At this stage, there's gonna be a phase A and B approach where parks kind of comes first and then it'll be a rinse and repeat with open spaces in terms of coming up with those recommendations and finalizing a written plan. So instead of trying to split off into two directions at the same time, we will start step four and follow through with parks and then rinse and repeat for open spaces. Silicon, can I jump for a sec? I think this area of the plan, while it is processing and for council discussion in the future is where our comments from earlier tonight might fit in. As we think about where we wanna see active recreation that is going to fit in a neighborhood differently than other open spaces or recreation areas in the city, we can start weighing those things against each other. So if we know we wanna see these kinds of active recreation amenities in the city and we know we have this amount of public space in the city, how do we match those up in a way that is best for kind of neighborhood development and community development? And that brings us to formalizing our recommendations for phase A, again, that's gonna be parks first. So that's gonna be exploring new park opportunities. Where can we get a new park? Where can we retrofit existing parks? Would a ball field maybe serve the community better as a playground, those types of conversations? And important to note, this is also where we would identify opportunities for public private sector collaboration and interplay with the community and nonprofits and educational institutions. Formalizing recommendations for open spaces is gonna be where we provide upgrades for new linkages and trails within natural corridors, evaluate current stewardship or objectives and efforts and provide recommendations for improvements. Meaning, is there an invasive species management plan we could recommend for privately conserved parcels that would help that kind of land management practice and prepare specific recommendations for each open space within the city. The end of step four is develop actions, priorities and phasing so we can start looking at where do we have the budget to immediately serve a certain area or neighborhood based on that gap analysis and market assessment and where can we use some long range planning and allocate funds appropriately to get to where we ultimately want to go. And step five, we'll be creating the actual physical master plan and bringing it all together into a visually compelling and usable guidebook. This will use map and graphics to help tell the story and we will work collaboratively to communicate the plan amongst all stakeholders, groups, committees, city newsletters, online, face-to-face, however we can get the message out there, we will.  We want to focus on those four pillars of climate resiliency, being inclusive, fair and just, being people oriented, thoughtful and a sustainable built environment as well as collaborative and engaged. Any questions? I flew through that so I understand if there are questions or kind of need a second to sit with it. I'm exhausted. I do have one question that's going back to step two. No, step three, you're talking about creating spatial characteristics of parks, open spaces and trails, et cetera. And then the last slide was coordination. I hope that when this section is being done that it'll also incorporate the bike-ped trail network system and how it incorporates with the parks so that they can be seen as a whole. Yeah, of course that would be a layer we give to the consultant as well to help with this mapping and that would show the connectivity between different types of recreation, either the passive or the active spaces. And the only other thing I can say is great presentation, but I think I've probably only got about 10% of it at this point and I don't know if there's an opportunity to have a little more in-depth exploration into the overall presentation. Yeah, totally understand. I wish I could have had more time with you tonight to really dig in. Thank you. There's a member of the public that wants to comment. Dan, are you on? Dan, I'll break through. Can you hear me? Can you hear me okay? Yep. All right, thanks. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. Dan Albrecht resident. There's a couple of comments I noticed, I don't really need responses, but I noticed the issue of being reliant on the schools. So I would encourage this study as I go forward to address in some way the potential use of buildings. We did it for the police department and the interim thing. We lost the opportunity to have a community senator in the Hanifords building because of a lack of community action. So that's, we know we talk about indoor programming, which is many times a year. We're not gonna get on this new school or new space. So try to think about creative ways like the mall or other things where leasing space, the library was in there, of course, for a while. Secondly, as noted in the comprehensive plan, much of the future growth already occurring and also in the future growth that's coming is in the Shelburne Road Corridor and the city center in Ballistan Road Corridor. So I would encourage an emphasis on that to creating community and keeping that in regard. Third, in relation to those same corridors and a couple of blocks away from me over a fair old street area, we have, and then of course, over by the Lowe's and now we have lots of affordable housing groups and at least I haven't seen much dedicated outreach to that community. You've got a car, yeah, you can get the doors. You get the Memorial Park and other parks, but as I've known, we have a lot of apartment dwellers, they've already been around for quite a while and their needs are not being addressed and we're gonna have more and more apartment dwellers. So I'll just keep that in mind. The only question I would have is what's the best way if people wanna get more formally involved or get on a mailing list to keep track of this effort or serve on a task force or sub-work group. So thank you. Yeah, as far as staying involved, you're welcome to email me at escurchner at southburlington.gov. I apologize, I don't have my email written in this presentation, but I certainly can add it and maybe get this posted online somewhere. And Dan, just don't forget that, I know where you live and I know that Farrell Park is very accessible to you both down behind Vermont Gas and also because of the bike path as well that travels up around to back to UVM. So there's- Yeah, so the west side as the comprehensive plan pointing out, the whole west side of Shelburne Road is ignored. So in terms of newer parks, things like that. So just something to keep in mind if that's where the growth is going and I can see it happening right here up and down Shelburne Road then we need to have the community assets to serve that community. So I would love to see creative things I've said in the same two empty lots year after year next to Lowe's and Hannahford's just sitting there year after year and I was like, man, kids should be playing soccer. We should have a community garden there but it's not been happening. But anyway, hopefully with new leadership and the recreation and parks department things will change. Thanks. Think again. Any other comments? I had a question, one question, one observation. Have the ARPA funds already been allocated to the consultant to develop this master plan? Yes. That was a previous council action. Okay, I just wanna clarify that. And then the more of an observation when you put the two interlocking circles that was a helpful way for me to sort of see the overlap. I actually see a third circle and you've alluded to it and the data you're gonna collect but it may be impactful when you choose to present it and when you collect it but it's really housing, housing density and demographics because that's really what you're intending to address with any recommendations but I see that third circle being a governor for the other two as well. Yeah, thank you. Can I clarify my answer quickly? So for the consultant, we've identified all the funds. We have those in place. That does not include implementing this master plan. So one of the points that they make the slides is that the master plan is going to result in new capital projects that are not currently in the CIP. So just want to clarify two different funding's need in the future. And that leads to my question. In my correct understanding that the parks and open space planning, I commend you for like strongly support looking at it together. There, as you pointed out, there's so many overlapping aspects and it's about again maximizing resources and trying to hit as many different sort of interest groups in our community as possible in the most equitable way, including an access. But in my correct understanding, based on what you just said, Jesse, is that there would be no movements or advancements, let's say, on open space or on parks until we have this master plan as a guide that aligns the resource limits and prioritizes them. Or is this something that goes in parallel to one off or a decision? I'm trying to understand how master plans sort of suggests everything's on hold until we have a sort of integrated vision on how to pursue this. Is that correct understanding? So, I don't correct me here. So I would not say everything else is on hold. Right, correct. I think that this is a, we're doing them in parallel. So we have pennies for paths projects that you heard about last time that are continuing on. We have field maintenance projects as part of the CIP that are continuing on kind of ensuring that we're doing the preventative maintenance and maintaining our current public facilities. But it's about, with exception of, just trying to understand. We're not building a new. Exactly, with exception of maintaining for a new park. There's no plan for a new park. And maximizing possibilities within these facilities. And as you said, the continuation with the pennies for paths. And there's, I understand some additional money from the city itself besides the benefit of the past to try to flush out these networks which hopefully will create this integration. Exactly. Nothing new would be taken on in terms of new parks as Dan was suggesting in this community or that community until this master plan is done. The only new effort is the village green efforts. And then maintaining our parks. But Adam, you're closer to the CIP, the Recreation Park CIP tonight. Yeah, I mean, as far as the CIP over the next couple of years, it's more heavily geared towards like maintenance and facility projects like that when it comes to redoing drainage at Veterans Park. Implementing a new soccer field at Veterans Park. Not so much like, hey, we should be redoing this park and turning it into something else. That type of stuff I would say we should be on hold for. Just two other questions if you can give me the time. Is in terms of one of the things you talked about is the weather and obviously the fields are always the question. Is part of this will be the question of artificial turf at any of the fields? I was just wondering. We just kind of spoke about this today. Sorry? We just kind of spoke about this earlier today which is why I started to look it up. I have this one question. And the other one is maybe I didn't hear Dan correctly. Maybe I did. So I'd give him kudos. In terms of creative thinking, was there talk about looking at perhaps school, future school construction and future recreational facilities construction and some sort of fusion of so-called school funds and city funds is that creative thinking which- I don't know about the funds between the two but we are looking at neighboring municipalities and what they have for parks and habitat linkages et cetera where we would be looking to link with them as well like not ending abruptly at our South Burlington boundaries considering those folks who might live on the edge of South Burlington and be able to walk to a Shelburner Burlington park. So I do know that from a geospatial standpoint we are considering looking around us as well. And again, I heard, we welcome the comment that you shared with us, Jesse, that you had the chance of meeting the new mayor of Burlington and she expressed a strong desire to look at economies of scale's collaboration. Is there any precedent in the greater Burlington area of shared use or shared access to recreational or is that to Dario and Cognito? I can offer one small example of like Burlington bike paths. We are actively trying to link where their bike path intersects with some of our infrastructure and create a smooth transition.  So definitely looking at that continuity between the two. So one of the things we did not highlight in the recreation and parks orientation and to your question, point earlier, sorry Elizabeth, I feel like I'm not looking at you. Your question earlier about other governmental or going to say other linkages. So Winooski Valley Parks District is its own separate municipality within South Burlington and the region and they maintain quite a bit of acreage in South Burlington in open space that they control and manage. So I think that that is another thing that we should work into this effort over time. That is the regional park system, if you will, that's layered on top of municipal open space and natural areas. And those Winooski Valley parcels are included in the NRCC's draft inventory that we have to create a full picture of all types of open spaces. I know that in their inventory we also include school parks and things like that. So it really encompasses whatever kind of open space you could feasibly walk to not just what is owned by South Burlington or what is managed by South Burlington. Another example is the CCRPC sponsor's study or scoping amount of scoping work last or two summers ago to look at the connectivity from the bike paths that across Shelburne Road that go down to Queen City Park because those paths are not in very good shape and they want to develop something new on Queen City Park Road. So because it's connectivity, they administered that scoping study and it came out really well. So thank you very much. I'm talking about connecting to you. I got one more quick question. Make it quick. I'll try to make it quick. So this has given us a really good overview of the process. What are the touch points through this process where it'll be coming back to us so that we have the opportunity to have input along the way rather than just be given a final product that we might have wanted to have been put along the way. So how many touch points are there gonna be through this process for input from the council? I don't have an exact number on touch points but the entire steps two and three are focused on public outreach and canvassing what we have and how that's working and making its way through our community. So I think all through those two phases and four and five is really just finalizing recommendations and writing the actual master plan. So I envision steps two and three being time wise, the longest. But I don't have an exact number on instances yet because we're gonna work with the consultant to play off of some like parks programming we might already have or existing committee meetings that we're able to get interest in or visiting different areas, et cetera all kinds of different outreach and that's part of this process is identifying what outreach would get us that widest cast net. If that makes sense. And who makes the decision on the selection of the consultant? We would be writing RFPs and sending that out and then making a joint decision on the consultant selected. And because of the scale of this consultant of this contract it's likely it would come back to council for final approval. That's what I was asking. And part of, you know we're trying to, Silk and Adam have done a great job kind of outlining a process here and we're trying to walk that balance between dictating a process to a consultant and using the expertise a consultant will bring to this process. And I think part of that question as Silk and just suggested is for master plans that have been very successful not only as community development plans but also implementation plans in the future not just plans that sit on this shelf what is that level of engagement with the council? How do we bring you in as participants and champions in a community process? And at what point do we bring you in as kind of decision makers of final policy? So we're hoping to get some feedback from them also on that touch point number. Great, thank you. Thank you. I have just two quick things. So still came with when we talk about stewardship of open spaces you mentioned say invasive species management which is terrific. I'm wondering whether that would also encompass say reforestation of thinking of the wet areas on urban natural area which were probably at some point bordered by cotton woods or other trees that thrive in those wet areas. And so would stewardship kind of encompass that? Yeah, so that would kind of depend on the ownership status of the parcel. So there are a lot of open space parcels that are owned and managed by South Burlington and there are a lot that are privately owned or owned by organizations such as Winooski Valley Parks District and that would kind of fall toward where their management lies and what becomes a recommendation and what becomes more than a recommendation based on what we are able to manage from a city standpoint and what we have resources for. Sure, sure, but I guess it would be a consideration. Yes. And second question for Adam just going back to the very beginning of the Council meeting today is there any precedent in Vermont for limiting a space say a pickle court to see residents or is that something that's not done? Not that I'm aware of as far as a precedent. I mean, that would be incredibly challenging to do. I'm not sure how you would do that but there hasn't been anything that I've seen that would like limit a public park to certain individuals. Okay, thanks. We have a public comment but it's gotta be really quick. I was just saying on that last point you just have to come up and identify yourself real quick. Linda Norris is on it. I was just saying President doesn't Shelburton do that with their beach or paramount with their strict access to residents only? They do. Yeah, not saying we should go that path and just saying that as a precedent. That annoys me a little bit. Linda, did you want to say something? Yeah, I just wanted to say thank you for the focus on the parks and open spaces. This is in my mind after living here 29 years and having kids go through the school system in all and every kind of sports. And I'm a part geek in every one of our parks every week. We really need to keep upgrading and maintaining the parks. We have a great system but it needs to grow with the growth we've had in our city. And that's the outdoor space. And then there's the indoor piece of it that Adam is a great hire and silk into it. It's wonderful that they are here to help spearhead this because I had trouble when Tom Hubbard was the recreation director and I'd have to get space for coaching basketball and indoor soccer and all these other recreation things that we have not increased the footprint of the gym space that we've had. And we're the second largest city in the state and we really need to go expand some of that. While we have the senior center as you can see that that's already at capacity and we're using them all and we're trying to do whatever we can but we really need to focus on figuring out whether we're gonna do an indoor rec center and some of all of this is a long-term thing and also please tactically make sure that we support Adam and his team on getting the maintenance and the upgrades for the fields and the water and the dog park at Farrell needing work or is it that the right thing for it? But when we build and upgrade these parks like we did with Samanski it took us about five years to get that one approved and done you guys.  We sure could use more pickleball space but I'm not gonna complain it's been a wonderful park and the basketball people that are playing there now are much higher visits than they had before same with tennis but pickleball has really taken that park over. So if you renovate a park and make it look good update the Farrell parks with the baseball and whatever we need to put that focus on it for us so the kids really deserve it and I hope we can get it done. Thank you. Thank you. Barb did you wanna say something? Just a quick comment Tim. Linda mentioned the word that I was looking for I was trying to listen but I'm having to do it on my phone. And so I'm not sure if I missed it but did anybody mention the word dog or dog park in that presentation? Yes. I hope they are not included as a prime stakeholder in this. Thank you I just I listening on my phone isn't as easy as on the computer so I just wanted to make sure that wasn't lost. Thank you so much. Of course. Thank you Barb. All right. Thank you very much for your presentation. Thanks. We're gonna move on to item number 11 which is receive the Chittenden Solid Waste District proposed FY 25 budget with Sarah Reeves the executive director. Good evening Sarah and Paul. And Allison. Good evening. And Allison and we also have oh you're very welcome though. Thank you. Appreciate the time and the slot on the agenda. We also have Jen Holiday from CSWD as well. And if Jen could be given permission to share for screen I've been having intermittent connectivity issues. So if I flip out, Jen could jump in and take over the brief presentation. And I will be going as she's getting that permission. So again my name is Sarah Reeves. I'm the executive director for the Chittenden Solid Waste District. CSWD is an 18 member municipality charged with managing the waste generated by residents, businesses, institutions, schools and visitors to Chittenden County. And we do that through a variety of services. Sarah I need permission to share my screen and my camera's not working but I should be able to share my screen if they give me permission. Sorry I made Sarah the presenter. Sorry about that, Jesse. Jen you should be okay. Okay. Is it? Yes, thank you. Yep. So I usually start out with the presentations with a brief showing of who we are. And on this slide I focus in on the pie chart. This is where we generated our revenue in fiscal 23 and you can see there are three main buckets, user fees or tip fees.  Solid waste management fee, that's where that acronym is there and that is the fee that is charged to haulers when they bring trash for disposal at Coventry and Anthem. And the material and product sales. So the revenue generated from the sale of compost, topsoil, local color paint and recyclable. And I've also been asked in the past to let everyone know how we're doing. And this is also from fiscal 23 and I focus over on my column number three and that shows the amount of material that was generated in Chittenden County that was sent directly to the landfill for disposal. I know that just about 120,000 tons, just about half of that actually could have been further diverted into either recycling or compost or special materials like batteries and electronics or into construction demolition debris. So that's where we focus a lot of our attention is on making sure that material is being disposed that could be diverted, is diverted. And also I'm not generating that material in the first place from our own possible. Next slide. So for our fiscal 25 budget beginning in July one, we're expecting or budgeting revenue just under $16 million. And again, you see those three buckets. We're looking at in the bulk of our revenue coming from those user fees, then a small wedge from solid waste management and that sale of materials wedge tends to fluctuate up and down because that is mainly made up of revenue from the materials recycling facility. Next please. Similarly, our price of expenses. This is new this year. I wonder where the bulk of our expenses go and should that be a surprise to anyone in the council that a large, large chunk of our expenses are dedicated to payroll wages and benefits but also a very large chunk is dedicated to materials management. And that is specifically the money that we pay to others to move our materials either to disposal to the market. So really paying our money to haulers to work for us. But also a big chunk of that expense is the contract that we have with CASEA to operate our materials recycling facility. Next please. So on this bottom line this year is different from any other budget that I brought to you my eight years of being with CSWD in that we are budgeting a short file and I'm gonna show you how we're going to address that. Next please. And there are a couple of items here on this fiscal 20, 40, 25 comparison. You'll see that our revenue expectation is very low. It's just about flat on the year over here. And you'll see a very large percentage wise increase on that equipment and fleet number. Fully half of that number is going to be dedicated to the existing materials recycling facility because she's an old gal and she is aging out and she's at the end of her life and it's meeting a lot of upheat just to keep it going. So to manage that shortfall, we would, again if everything in the budget goes exactly to the penny as we are planning, we would draw that down from something from the undesirated reserve which is basically our rainy day fund. However, in each budget we always conservatively under budget and over budget certain items. So we are tend to under budget the revenue from materials recycling facility. And in fact, our finance committee which Paul Stabler is the chair of this year, the committee felt that we were too conservative.  We're over budgeting as we tend to do on things like wages and benefits. We are asking for four to five additional positions in this year's budget. And whenever we budget for new positions we always budget at a full family benefit for example and we don't know who we're hiring and we don't know the situation. So that is something that we always end up coming in under our budgeted expense, but we have to budget this way. And one of the areas that we would like to actually fully expend, which we don't is on the community cleanup fee. So we want to be able to utilize that. The one of the big changes here this year is an increase to the solar waste management fee. And this is the fee again that is charged to haulers either at the transportation in Charleston or if a direct haul up to Caledry for trash in the landfill. It is currently $27 a ton. We are budgeting $30 a ton in this next budget. And it's the first increase that we've made to this fee since fiscal 13. And so the bulk of the increase to the solar waste management fee is going to be designated for the closed landfill reserve. And we'll talk a little bit more about that in a moment. When we mapped out to the impact for households if we were to spread out the increase over all the households in Chippin County, the impact was less than 30 cents per month. So one of the things that we realized too though is that our drop-off customers really had the opportunity to be able to mitigate their exposure to that increase by doing more waste prevention, more waste reduction. They can truly have an impact on how much of that fee they, additional fee that they pay because that fee is incorporated into the price of the balance. Next piece. The other fee that we're increasing in this year's budget is at the materials recycling facility. We currently are charging $85 per ton. We're implementing a modest increase to $90 per ton. This will bring us closer to the regional average, being between 90 and 120. And the region we're referring to is Northeast and Northern New York. All of the increase in the expenses are related to having to manage, maintain, and keep up this existing old mark. We had tended to be out of this mark by this point. We wanted to have built it a couple of years ago. Code through a massive might be mentioned to that. So we are trying to hold this old yall together and it's getting more and more expensive every year. Luckily, we think this would only be another a year or two of these expenses. And then we'll decommission this facility and this particular expense goes away. Next piece. Some good news. There is no to fee being increased being proposed for the organic recycling facility. We will remain at $70 per ton. We are looking to budget slightly our in brown town spoke below last year, but we are always looking for additional material to come into our facility. The same with the materials recycling facility. We did increase our pricing on our compost products. We found that we were in the bottom level of comparable products in Jimming County in the region. So we brought ourselves up to the midway. So we're still in the middle of the pack regarding pricing and sales have been strong. We will be implementing a new contamination policy as of July one pending a board vote this month. And that is to help give ourselves another tool in the toolbox, give our haulers another tool in the toolbox to be able to address ongoing contamination issues that we're seeing in the inbound food scraps. And that's something that has been asked for for a while. We've been working with haulers for over a year on this and it mirrors the existing policy that we have in place for the market. Next piece. More good news. There will be no increases to bad prices at the drop off centers. And we've added an extra large bag as well, which is new this year. The budget does reflect additional hours, both in Milton and in Burlington. We're looking to expand services to add trash back to the Burlington drop off center hopefully by the end of this current fiscal year. So those changes are reflected in the School 25 budget. And everywhere we'll have the Tuesday to Saturday schedule with the exception of Hinesburg daily at this point around two days, but everyone including Burlington will have that Tuesday to Saturday schedule. And when Burlington is online, everywhere we'll be taking credit cards. Next piece. Just a couple brief looks at some of the capital projects. The new Murph being the largest one, we'll be bringing a recommendation for construction contract award to the board in May. And of course my fingers in May won't be any later in June. Ideally we'll be breaking down, breaking down, breaking ground on the new facility in the late summer, early September. And we hope to be up and running about a year or a little bit more maybe after that. So my goal when we're pushing our folks hard is to get that new facility accepting material by September calendar 25, total calendar 25 at the very latest, which is very, very exciting. And as far as our reserve funds, all of the funds other than our landfill post closure fund are adequately funded. The landfill post closure fund is not surprising that it would be underfunded at this point in its existence. We are in year 28, 29 of a 30 year closure period. So it is expected that at this point in that closure period, the fund would have been broken. However, what is not been expected and could not have been foreseen was the need to potential need to be managing PFOS in the leachate that it produced through the landfill. The EPA just came out this week last week with a new rule for tackling PFOS in drinking water. And that will eventually have some effect on wastewater and on potentially on leachate. So we don't know how much that's going to cost. So the increase to this always now can be the bulk of that revenue will be used to beef up this particular reserve fund so that we can have enough funding in there to be able to properly mitigate manage that leachate depending on what the EPA or ANR tells us we need to do next week. And every year, as always, I ask our members cities and towns to please consider our budget for adoption. We do require each of our members families to vote on our budget as part of the charter and everyone gets one vote. So that is the end of my presentation. I'm happy to answer any questions that you may have. I have a question, Sarah. Why are the prices depressed for recyclables? It is supply and demand. So there's a lot of supply of certain materials and the demand for recycled content, those in cycles. There is interesting the demand for recycled content for plastics or PET water bottles is fairly high however, getting it to market can be tricky. And it kind of comes and goes in waves. So as larger producers, manufacturers, makers of the materials, without new sustainability reports, there's a surge of only need to source on sale of oil running with the price of crude oil. So if oil pricing is low, then you're not going to get a lot of recycled material, recycled content into your products and that's how you do. We have seen a nice rebound, which is why you're like being conservative, but I think we can hedge our bets on fiber products, which is great because we, of the material that comes into our facility, about 73, 74, 75% of it are cardboard and paper. So we want a nice strong regional fiber market to be able to continue to send our material to and again, it's commodities, right? It's, you know, a lot of it is outside of our control and we just do the best we can to reduce the quince material possible and we keep moving everything. Everything goes to market comes in. Thanks. Any questions from council? I had submitted a question. I don't know if you're prepared to answer it, but I just kind of wondered what the year over year impact was to South Burlington residents or businesses if you had an estimate and aggregate based on last year's utilization. It's a great question and I wish I could answer that for you and I'll tell you why it's difficult. It's because of the way that we, as in Vermont collect trash. We don't have specific to South Burlington your exact numbers of exactly how much your city produces. So we have no way to know which tons of 300,000 tons that were generated in Chenning County are specific to South Burlington. Part of the problem is the, you know, trash trucks cross lines all the time, routes cross lines all the time. So there's no way to have a dedicated number of South Burlington trash unless there was consolidated collection and you knew specifically that each trash truck that was collecting within your city was only collecting from your city. That way we would know exactly how much South Burlingtonians were producing and could do those projections. So the impact that I showed in the presentation was spread out across all households in Chenning County. So you could extrapolate from there with the number of households in South Burlington and do the math that way. Without those dedicated collection routes, there's really no way to peace out exactly what is South Burlington material. So thanks for the presentation. I mean, just one question.  Yeah, just a question, sorry. I was waiting for you to say something. Thank you. Paul, we're getting a lot of feedback from you. So I'm the one muting you. If you could just unmute when you wanna talk, that would be great, thanks. In terms of the voting, I would say that every municipality has one vote. Does there have to be a consensus on passing the budget or just a straight majority? There does not have to be a consensus. It just is a majority of the members on the legislative body. And when we reach 10 of our 18 communities voting in the affirmative, then our budget is considered adopted. Okay, thank you. And since I've been through a few of these presentations, I just want to lament again the fact that we shipped 60,000 tons of something rather to coventry when it should not have gone in the first place because it wasn't properly sorted into recyclables and organics and whatnot. So please, everybody, do your recycling and your separation of your organics at home and properly bring it to Patch and Road, all right? If you find restaurants are not properly sorting out their organics, let them know that you wish that they sorted out their organics. It's supposedly the law, right? It is the law and you can also quietly let us know if you like as well. We do have a very active outreach and education team. We have someone who is dedicated to businesses and she'll be happy to approach folks and offer some assistance. We prefer to go the outreach and education route before we go to compliance, but we do have a compliance sector as well. So if you're interested in climate change and greenhouse gases, trucking 60,000 tons of refuse up to coventry for no good reason is not good for the environment. Not good, but anyway. Any other comments? Andrew, I guess not. No, thank you. So thank you, Paul Shaver wanted to speak. Paul, you can unmute. Yeah. I apologize if my mic's got noise. I don't know what's happening, but I just wanted to say express my appreciation for Sarah and staff. I believe this is a very responsible budget. It's realistic. It's conservative, which our budgets always are. Never seen us go wildly out of budget. So I feel very confident in it and I really appreciate what staff has done. I also just want to mention, of course, we're the increases you're seeing, of course, probably no surprise. We're being impacted by inflationary pressures as is every other organization around. So hence the reason for some of the cost increases and all. But again, I do believe this is conservative and reasonable and not the increases are not too onerous at this point in time. And then lastly, I just want to give a shout out to Allison. Allison's been a great alternate for me. I've been on the board a long time and she's among the top in terms of attendance and paying attention to all the issues and what we're doing. And I think it was a great decision to appoint her. So I just want to give that shout out. She's she's doing a great job. So and lastly, just thank you to all on the city council and all I know how much work you put in. This is not easy. So thank you. We love talking trash. All right, well, thank you very much for the presentation. Everybody take care. We're going to move on to a breeze. No, but to oh, we have to do that. Does it say it doesn't not say does not say. Well, I think we should probably have a motion to accept the budget that proposed CSWD budget for FY 25. So moved. We need specific language. So moved. I'll second that. We have a motion and a second. Is there any other discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. It's unanimous. Now, thank you very much. Thank you. All right, we're on to 10 30. It's been two hours since we had our last break. Does anybody need a quick break or can you keep going? You're going all right. So item 12, which is a request from Common Roots for a $400,000 allocation of ARPA funds to acquire property at Spear Street and Allen Road. Just as a reminder, as the team is coming up, this is a request to receive a request only with no action recommended tonight. And tonight we have Robin Jeffers and Jeff Culkin. Jeff Culkin. Can you pull the mics closer to you please and just make it easier to hear? Green light. Can you hear me now? Hi, thanks for having us and for staying up so late. We're here from Common Roots and we are making a request for ARPA funds for the Common Roots, which is a 501c3 nonprofit in South Burlington. And their primary focus is food equity, food access and growing food organically here in our city. And can our slides be brought up? Please. Thank you. So this image right here is Common Roots Farm. It's located within the South Village neighborhood in South Burlington. It's at the corner of Allen Road East in Spear Street. It's a 12 acre farm. To my knowledge, it's the only existing operating food producing farm in South Burlington. Bread and butter does raise cattle on some acreage. They form an aquare farm in South Burlington. But I double checked this tonight. This is our only farm. With the word fortunate that they're growing organic food on these acres. And as you can see, it's quite beautiful as well. Advance to the next page. So Common Roots is working on growing sustainable, equitable, local food system. So all the food they grow is organic and primarily it gets sold at a retail farm stand that's onsite and then goes out to three food shelves. They are one of the primary producers at the South Burlington food shelf. They bring literally a farm stand to the food shelf three times a week when the food shelf is open. And they literally operate it as a farm stand. So they don't parcel out food. Anybody shopping at the food shelf has a shopping experience. They're able to pick out the vegetables that they like, the produce that they like. They're able to do tastings. They're able to get recipes. It's the same as if they were in the farm stand onsite at the farm. But free of charge. So there's always a nutrition person there along with someone from the farm able to explain what the food is, how to cook it, how to eat it, what are the nutritional benefits of the food, et cetera. We also are a tenant of the Wheeler House in South Burlington and we have a culinary kitchen there and our chef makes food with the food from the farm so that we have no waste and he actually makes delicious food from that food. So soups, casseroles and things like that are also brought to the food shelf in season. And if you wanna move ahead to the next page. Thank you. So common roots, they're a nonprofit and we're currently looking at some challenges. Vermont is losing 15 to 20% of its farm annually. That's from the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources last year. So that's kind of shocking. And that means Vermont itself is in danger of losing all of its small scale farms in the next 10 years. And then another fact that we picked up is that 41 million people, this is national, died last year from preventable chronic diseases. And the good news is that eating the right foods can prevent and even reverse the most major illnesses of our time. And this is something where common roots is right at the core of its mission. It truly believes that organic healthy food and access to that food and equitable access to that food really matters in a community's health and well-being. Market development, we currently have a seasonal market at the farm stand. A seasonal market at the farm stand. We seasonally have, I'm tired. We have a farm stand on the farm. It is in a shed, it's a beautiful shed. And it's been eclipsed recently by development. It's very hard to see. We can't heat it, it doesn't have running water. So it's very limited. So our plan is to develop a year-round market in a new location on the corner of Allen Road and Spear Street. And that's what we're here to talk about. So that's one of our challenges is having a seasonal small farm stand when we plan on having a year-round market. Workforce instability is another challenge we're facing. As we've heard earlier here tonight, workforce housing is a challenge. And then just in the food system itself, wages for workforce, which on a farm are determined by the sales of food, tend to be very low. Food is not generally a high-profit item. If you wanna go to the next slide. So the solution that we've identified is to purchase the lot, which is right at the very corner of Spear Street and Allen Road East. It's a little orange square on your map drawing. And that is surrounded by the farm itself. Thank you. And so that lot is specifically disowned for a food hub, retail food, childcare and personal instruction. And that's our intention is to build that on that lot. And with this opportunity, we believe that we can expand our sales engine and that that will bring us the sustainability that we're looking for, both in increasing the money incoming into common roots so that it can sustain its public programs and also to help us bring up more equitable wages for our staff. Our goal for the market is to sell what common roots grows. In addition to that, bring in products from all the other area, local farms and artisans. And some of those products would then have a higher margin other than just produce. And that would help us to also work our sustainability into a higher profitability market and moving over. So our current financial snapshot, 50% of our income comes from five enterprises that common roots does in the far left column. It's our retail farm market. That's our seasonal farm stand currently. We do farm fresh meals and pantry to go. And that's what I alluded to earlier. It's what our chef makes from our food that we grow flatbread Fridays at the Wheeler house. People might be familiar with that, but we make pizzas in the outdoor pizza oven every Friday. And farm to fork Tuesdays is again, food from our farm made into meals that are also available for sale at Wheeler house on Tuesdays and Wheeler house events. We can do catered events at Wheeler house. We also do events on the farm. And then another 50% of our income comes from philanthropy. So it's primarily gifts from donors, local businesses and local foundations. We do receive a few grants from NCRS and the USDA. And then what common roots provides free of charge is farm to school education. So from pre-K through eighth grade, common roots is in South Burlington schools teaching kids about nutritious food that goes with tastings, it goes with recipes. They make it fun. Last week was flaxseed and beet pancakes. Little half dollar sized pancakes they got to dip in maple syrup and they were pink, yes, from the beets but kids absolutely loved them. And that is one of the ways which we're teaching kids the benefits of eating well and having it be fun and healthy, but it's a great time for them too. Farm to go is a program where kids come to Wheeler house after school, it's an after school program for middle schoolers and they actually make a meal again from the food that we grow. They get the recipe from it and they actually leave with a portioned meal that they will have made that would feed their entire family and they take it home. And then the three food shelves that we support are the, as I mentioned, the South Burlington food shelf. We also support Chittenden feeding Chittenden and the Ebnaki food shelf. Gatherings on the land, our summer camps and other programs where we invite people to come and learn about land stewardship on the land. And then the fourth column is just where we're truly grateful for all of the help that we get from the community currently through sponsorships, volunteers and kind gifts that help common roots stay in business. Go ahead. So putting it all together, we really feel that we need this step to for our sustainability. 50% philanthropy isn't something that you can rely on forever, practically. Right now we're very grateful for all of the gifts and the donations that we do have, but common roots believes that the public service that we provide the city is in alignment with what the city's identified in its plans and its equity planning. So food access and food equity. And so in the interest of moving that initiative forward, we're asking for the city to allocate 400,000 in ARPA funds, which is the purchase price of the land that that development, that that lot requires for development. Here, this also talks about our capacity funding, which we are not asking for. We are consulting philanthropy for that and outreach to donors. And then we're talking about our next phases. So we'd actually be looking at construction in 2026 and at conducting a capital campaign in number, in phase three. And advancing to the end, essentially, in short, we are very much dedicated to the city of South Burlington. We're very dedicated to food education. We're dedicated to the food access and food equity. We want everyone who wants to be able to have good food to be able to have access to that food. We're dedicated to growing it and sharing it. And we're hoping that the city can support us with this request. I also, we attached our entire business plan here. I don't know at this hour that you need or want to go through it. I'm happy to answer any questions. If people have that, otherwise, we can keep it right here. Questions? Elizabeth? Nothing specific. Thank you for the presentation. And I've been to the shed many times on my bike. And it's a construction that was more bothersome than going to the shed. But I did, I know we're going to have conversations about allocation of ARPA and surplus funds going forward. So from my standpoint, it's really just a question of where does this request fall within the priorities?  So this was a great background and I appreciated the business plan. The one question I have is in the business plan, is there, do you see a path to self funding at some point? We do, we see our business plan shows that we would have a profit the first year and that's including having a mortgage. So certainly by the time our mortgage would be paid off, we see that we could be sustainable going forward. It will require that we have some, continue to need some philanthropy for some time as we edge forward. We should be showing, the market itself should be showing, the market, the culinary kitchen and the eatery should be showing a profit. And then I forgot to put an emphasis on, we had childcare, I left that out. We're planning a food market culinary kitchen and eatery to be, it'll be a two level building on the upstairs and the lower level would be childcare and that that childcare would also be self-sustaining from day one. Abe, Robin, it's good to see you again. I know that we probably don't have time to go through the full business plan, but can you just kind of summarize in the aggregate how much funding you think we'll need to complete this vision really from beginning to end, from a personal end to design, building it out. And of that amount, how much do you feel you've kind of secured at this point? I think we've secured 15 to 25% of what we would need to build the building without actually having even started a true capital campaign. At this point, we've been reaching out to donors for our capacity level funding for this level the level that we're at. We believe that the whole project honestly is probably about a $4 million building that would be $4 million for if we were to include the land. We have in kind commitments from people in the development world who are helping us with some of our planning, our permitting. We have commitments on some scope of the actual construction of the project and with partnership with a childcare that would cover a significant portion. We are currently in a RFP process for an owner operator of the childcare level. So that would be self-sustaining for half of the building. So do the commitments, are those part of the amounts that you described to secure the 20% to 25%? Is that including the commitments you described? Yes, it is. You're welcome. Could I ask you to clarify a little bit more on the childcare? So that would be, because that is part of setting off the cost, as I understand it you mentioned in terms of the building, that's a private entity which is not affiliated with common roots. And so this would be a big process to, or in terms of how you bring on the childcare in terms of a competitive process because there is a public fund if we were to provide funds here. Yes, it would be a competitive RFP process. We're looking for an owner operator who has a track record. We're currently in a conversation with two applicants who are, each already have two childcare facilities and they're interested in expanding. And their facilities are expanding? They are currently not in South Burlington. They're currently in periphery towns and would like to be in South Burlington. I have a question. So if this were built, how would this affect operations at Wheeler that you have today? We, Wheeler House would continue to have events on the land there and catering of events and the pizza oven events. Our Tuesday, the farm to fork would probably move over to the new location but could also still be available at Wheeler House because there are people who have dedicated muting up and down. So would the kitchen move over to? No, we intend to keep, have two kitchens. So the kitchen that Wheeler would remain. Yeah, but meals would be served over there or shipped over there? There would be a kitchen in the new facility. So probably both would be used because there would also be food being made. We plan on having sandwiches and soups and things like that at the new location. So it's hard to explain. Essentially, they would both be used. We have no intention of giving up or not using the Wheeler kitchen because the Wheeler kitchen, honestly, it's used, I wouldn't say 24 seven, but most waking hours that kitchen is in use. If it's not in use in food production, it's in use for educating chefs. It's in use for interns or it's for making the pantry items in the food to go. So for example, all the tomatoes get turned into ketchup or tomato sauce. Ongoing, we have no waste from the food that we produce on our farm. So seasonally all year long, food is being produced there. So recently, chef is making pesto because we're already taking greens off the farm. And the food, it takes like two one or two days to prepare all the food for Farm to Fork Tuesdays. And then they roll over into prepping food for the next event and the catered events. So I've honestly never, I'm there most days, I have never seen the kitchen, not fully busy. You know the questions? So like Elizabeth said, at a future date, we're gonna have to have an agenda item to go over all the, there's a certain amount of money left that has not been allocated, that has to be allocated by the end of the year. And so we will fold in your request as well. Thank you, we very much appreciate it. Question from the audience. You wanna come up and talk and give us your name? We all know who you are, but say it anyway. Is that a page each for us or is it all five pages? I'm at Sandy Julie and I live on East Terrace and I've lived there for about 50 years. These comments are about the common routes request for $400,000 in ARPA funds to purchase 1.3 acre lot at the corner of Spear Street and Allen Road in South Burlington. Let me make clear that I am a strong supporter of common routes programming in our schools and their participation in three local food shelves. Every year for several years, I have provided financial support to common routes. After reading common routes request for $400,000 for purchase of this small parcel, my first thoughts were as follows. I recall that increasing affordability for city residents who are under stress due to the high cost of living here was a universal goal in the platforms of candidates seeking election to the city council this year. I recalled that during election forums, several of the candidates mentioned that, well, campaigning door to door, many residents shared the struggles they have in making ends meet due to the high cost of living in South Burlington. Residents also mentioned to candidates that they don't feel represented in the work of city government. My additional thoughts are a product of having viewed Besso Bryan's new documentary just getting by this past Friday. And many Vermonters share how not having enough money to meet basic needs affects their lives and the lives of their children. Food insecurity is a major theme in the film. While being unhoused is also featured not being able to afford enough food and the resulting needs to rely on food shelves and our soup kitchens are also recurrent themes. Several of the folks who talked about food insecurity were not unhoused. It is fairly well known that food insecurity in Vermont goes well beyond our unhoused neighbors. I am grateful to Besso Bryan for making this film for many reasons. Perhaps the strongest impact comes from my recognition of how easy it is to be separate from folks whose circumstances are so difficult and so different from mine. And as a result, my having only a minimal awareness of their struggles. So I come back to those campaign promises about working to increase affordability in South Burlington and I ask myself, how would the cities granting $400,000 in common routes for their intended purpose bring about an increase in affordability for our residents who struggled to make ends meet are so challenging. Other than the possibility of being able to provide more locally grown and healthy food to area food shelves than is now provided, I cannot identify any outcome of providing this grant that would have a positive impact on the affordability needs of our most stressed residents. The beneficiaries of the establishment of a retail food market open year round at this location to appear to be high income households living nearby or other high income households who pass by this location as they commute to and from work. I cite the following quotes from the narrative accompanying common routes request in support of this conclusion. Quote, the profile of the computers on the street are typically those with substantially higher incomes in our county traveling to and from Burlington, South Burlington, Shelburne and Charlotte on an access of higher income households and neighborhoods and away from public transportation. From common, this is taken from the common routes for market 2.0 business plan page two even though it's not paginated but it's in the package paragraph one. The second quote is the spear street route has commuters of highest income based upon median incomes of communities in the travel zone. And this is from common routes for market 2.0 business plan page three paragraph one. I wonder what percentage of annual farm stand revenues come from three squares Vermont benefits excluding any purchases of food shelf outreach activities. Although I think I learned that there's no cost to what's at the food shelves. I do not oppose common routes plan to purchase this three acre lot and construct a building that would include a year round retail farm market and other programming. I do oppose having the city provide a grant of 400,000 to common routes to assist in the purchase of this parcel. And thus I ask each city councilor to vote no on such a motion. As an alternative and a demonstration of the city council's commitment to addressing the affordability challenge, I suggest this council task the city manager with issuing a request for proposals for plans that detail how the city might invest $500,000 in our funds to decrease food insecurity among city residents or for some other effort of the council's choosing that would address the affordability challenge. And since I now know you're looking at things for the ARPA funds, I would strongly encourage you to arrange a showing of Bessel Bryant's film just getting by for South Burlington because it's remarkably informative. So, and obviously I think you can see it affected me a lot. Thank you. Thank you, Sandy. Any other comments? Yes. Mr. Siminoe, come on down. And I was just gonna say, Sandy, that all of Bessel Bryant's films are amazing. Identify yourself, please. Good evening, Mike Siminoe, South Burlington city resident. And I hate to not be aligned with anything that common roots would be investing their time in to attempt to accomplish. And I also support them financially and their mission. And so my position here is no knock on that. But I don't wanna get into the nuances of the ARPA program and where the money's supposed to be sent and whether we send it out to not-for-profits here and there or whether the programs and services that are funded by it should be channeled through the city at the request of, you know, committees or what have you. So not that, but I've expressed concerns before about when we have resources that we attempt to explore for ways to leverage those resources, use them more than once if we can. And so the idea here of, you know, having 400 grand and if you were gonna consider sending it out the door, saying goodbye to it, never to see it again, it being a one and done kind of a deal with that 400 grand when instead there may be opportunities for those resources to be the foundation of a larger deal or an acquisition by the city where an asset might be acquired. And, you know, as we do in a couple of other instances with common roots already, we have lease arrangements with them on terms that are pretty attractive that play a great deal in the affordability for common roots to continue operating their programs. So again, without the nuances of NARPA and, you know, what the council should respond to, I would just say that I would hate to see 400 grand go out the door without our looking at, you know, an opportunity for, you know, whether we make the investment and lease it, whether that money can be leveraged for something, that's where I'm coming from with my comments this evening. And thank you. Thank you, Mike. Any other comments? Anybody in the public? Anybody online? Well, it's now almost 11 o'clock. Oh, yes. Can I just respond? Yes. Common Roots feeds 400 people a week through at the food shelf. Yeah. As far as Mike's comment about Common Roots does lease currently from the city of the Wheeler Homestead and Hubbard Park, I couldn't speak for our board, but if the city wanted to own the land, I think that that would be a good idea or we'd be happy to own it too. Well, it's 11 o'clock. We still have more things to do. So, but thank you for coming and presenting. Thanks for having us. Thanks for having me. Tim, do we need a motion to receive the, do we have to make a motion to receive that? Oh, it's just a request. So now we're on to item 13, which is convene as the South Brennan Liquor Control Commission to consider CVS pharmacy, Shaw's beer and wine and tobacco, that's a tobacco license. So we need to convene. Can I have a motion to convene as the liquor commission? Motion to convene. Move a second. Second. The motion's second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. It's unanimous. So now we are convene as liquor control commission and we need to approve the CVS pharmacy, second-class license, Shaw's beer and wine, second-class license, tobacco license and tobacco substitute endorsement, whatever that is, I'll take it as I see it. So I did attach a little fact sheet to this agenda item and a tobacco substitute endorsement is needed for businesses with a tobacco license to sell any e-cigarette products or paraffin alia. Oh, vapors. So businesses not need to sell tobacco products but must have a license to receive the endorsement. Thank you. Can I have a motion to approve these licenses? Can I have a motion to approve these licenses? Is no one gonna move to approve them? Is somebody playing a joke on me right now? You go to stay here all night until we approve these licenses? Andrew? Sure, I'll move. I understand why people hasn't it. Can we have a motion? Can we have a second? After we get a second. You have a reluctant second. Okay. So now we have a motion to second. Is there a discussion? These all license that are being renewed in every instance. I think, no, I think, I mean, speaking for myself, what you're seeing is some hesitancy around all of the recent press, around the health impacts and the concerns around vaping in general. But this particular business is not unique in their retail sales of that. So I don't wanna single anyone out. Thank you. So are you ready for the vote? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Mike? Aye. Okay, so it's unanimous. All right, thank you. A motion to come out of liquor control commission? So moved. Seconded. And we have a second. Mike's seconded. So we have a motion to second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. That's unanimous. Aye. Well, thank you, Andrew. So we're out of liquor control. We're at other business. Does anybody have any other business tonight? No. Okay. We are going to go into executive session to make decisions about these committee appointments. I move that the city council and turn to executive session under 1v.s.a.31.3. A parentheses three, for the purpose of discussing the appointment of public officers of the planning commission, economic development committee and public arts committee, inviting Jesse Baker into the session with the council for the discussion. I second. We have a motion and a second, a discussion. I will say that after we go into executive session, we will vote and then we will not appoint. So if you want to make, you don't vote in executive session. So if you want to make a series of recommendations tonight, what I would suggest is that you make recommendations, give me authority to inform the candidates, but then you officially approve those appointments and your consent agenda at your next meeting. That sounds fine. So we will be coming back after executive session. Great. So, all ready for the vote? All those in favor? Aye. Aye. It's unanimous again. Aye. We are now in executive session. Whoever has to leave, leave. Yeah.