everybody in attendance so why don't we call the meeting so Burlington City Council meeting of Monday December 18th and we'll begin with the salute to the flag okay the second item is instructions on exiting the building in case of emergency case we have an emergency tonight we ask everybody to leave through the main lobby doors and gather out in the parking lot if there is a reason you cannot get out these doors both these doors here are available and again we ask people to gather in the parking lot Tom and I are responsible for making sure that the building is clear so do not hesitate just leave thank you item three is an executive session which we're changing our scheduling I guess agendas to help people not wait in the middle of the meeting or the end of the meeting was we often used to go into executive session and then come back and complete the meeting so we're trying to organize them at the beginning of the session and I'm sorry we have four guests who may want to speak to us under the public so we would just five guests so I would just ask you to stay we'll be back but anyway so I would entertain a motion to go into executive session sure I move that the council make a specific finding that premature general public knowledge of the discussion and update with the city manager on labor relations negotiations with employees probable litigation to which the city may be a party and confidential attorney client communications made for the purpose of providing professional legal services to this council clearly place the city as it stands as a manager second discussion okay all in favor signify by saying aye aye yeah so I also move that the board enter into executive session for the purpose of discussing labor relations with employees cba update probable civil litigation confidential attorney client communications negotiating or securing a real estate purchase options the appointment employee for evaluation of a public officer or employee and we're inviting Paul mr. Connor Tom mr. Hubbard myself mr. Dorn into session with the council we do we do you can enjoy okay okay so I would like to call back into session the South Burlington City Council meeting of Monday December 18th at number four item four of the agenda the agenda review are there any additions deletions or changes in the order of agenda item I would like to add under other business just a discussion to get approval for luncheon for the city employees during the week of between Christmas and New Year's there's time it's not really late I'd love to talk about rental registries and email I received from a resident not blue lyncher okay yeah well let's hope we have a very long agenda so maybe we could all keep in mind you were yes your words okay number item number five comments and questions from the public not related to the agenda and I have one that I'll read from Lynn Vera we had some people here are you wishing to make comments great please come up to the table I'm sorry could you just speak a little bit well these these are not microphones for here it's okay I'm Catherine young I'm here in regards to the dog park that got closed very suddenly and so I'd like to voice my concerns and how and why it happened so suddenly and also concerns so we knew for two years that the airport was going to the dog park and how we suddenly came up with this $23,000 okay and I'd like to know if we have the right to know my one person and it can be shut down well I will know that I think from a personal perspective I think we probably acted too quickly but I wasn't present at that meeting and the majority felt this was important to close the park in large part because we hadn't used a process about identifying a place for the park and as a result one of the pieces that I don't know why none of us thought about it is the impact of dog parks on residents that are closer adjacent to them and so we heard from one of the homes that is greatly impacted in their opinion by the dog park and felt that as a majority felt that it made sense to close the park and then develop a process so we are in that mode now and Maggie Looters the director of parks and recreation is pulling together and the reason why we're here is we want some answers from all of you and I think I'm going to comment too we have a noise ordinance that expressly cites dog barking as a nuisance and that is punishable and it had been weeks I think close to two months that we had been receiving complaints individual counselors and employees had gone out to the park to witness for themselves at times they didn't witness loud dog barking at other times they did there are only three homes that could potentially have been impacted by the placement of the dog park so I see that as a third of the residents as opposed to one I think that's an important consideration as well I've been Corey Ridge and I hear them playing football I hear them hollering and yelling playing basketball I mean I'm not clear on how well the noise ordinance you can take a look and if it is a nuisance to you you can take a look and you can certainly follow up those are your rights it's not a $23,000 mistake it will in the end be a $5,000 mistake if we're only talking monetarily but I see it as a mistake in a very human sense and that's where the process question comes down for me I wish that we had had a more thorough investigation of what policies exist for the sighting of dog parks before we were it was truly good intentions we truly wanted to respond to a need and a desire in the public and we had a recommendation from our director of public from the parks and recreation and I think and she had done she had gone to a door and I think it was hard for people to imagine what you know how popular this dog park was going to be it was very popular around us before how could that be well this was three times I guess more popular according to the numbers I was going to the other one for years it's just a smaller area if I might be able to explain my vote that night there were four of us here our chair was away and it could have been a split decision that might literally I know that Councilor Chittenden and I won't speak for you but in just explaining that as well as not to do an immediate shutdown and I did make the motion for that and here is my reason why I had said I could have accepted that if I knew a date certain because we were of an accord that it was perhaps improperly placed if we go back and look at the history we have a wonderful place unfortunately it was owned by UVM across from my recycling center and we were asked to move from there we were asked to move from the other part behind Picard Circle because unfortunately one of our residents spoke out at a meeting with airport personnel there that basically said I don't believe the FAA would approve this and it made the airport have to go back and check and find out yes they couldn't use that spot so that was going to shut down that piece to try to find another piece within our area and I say our area because I live near the airport as you know and I may not know but I do and to find that you know I looked at J.C. Park initially and thought J.C. Park that sounds like a perfect place for it it is not part of the reason is interestingly enough we found the park is used the dog park was being used more than the Picard behind Picard Circle it became a popular place one resident called me and said I took my dog out there were 12 dogs there she said three were South Brownington and I mean when you put a dog park and you have to expect others would come so leaving the liability and everything else out what we want to have is we want to have good dog parks in the correct places we were coming on to winter that evening when we had to vote I took a look at this and said if we're going to get anything moved before the ground freezes then we need to do it now so let's have a definitive date we couldn't really settle on a definitive date so the choice was and listening we had tried putting signs up the signs were being thrown aside I went over and listened I said my husband over another day and listened it wasn't 24-7 but people coming later with lights on and maybe you didn't see those things I walked from kissing, smoking marijuana, it's a park there's no time restrictions on going to a park we do have parks where you can take your dog off leash and I'm sorry that it happened but we were of an accord I believe the five of us that it was going to be an inappropriate place and I do apologize that people feel that it was that quick that it happened but I don't think a few weeks would have made a difference I don't think we could have had another place established that fast I just want to say I agree with you I'm sorry I wasn't more persuasive in my argument I do think the park we need to look for we have to have a procedure to identify spots for dog parks and we maybe rushed to put this one here but I wanted to keep it open until we found a new park and I agree with your concern about the waste resources in the space that could be used I would be open to reopening it temporarily if this council wanted to revisit the issue and tell a new park is open but I just want to state that from the outset I think that park should remain open and tell another dog park opens and I think we can assure you that there will be a much more open and public process for citing the next dog park so we can hear from a variety of people so we would like to I don't know the procedure the petition that the dog park get over into again well we hear you and I think the council the majority of council made a different decision so then we would like to be put on for another meeting and come in with 200 plus signatures when we take a vote I believe it has to be brought up by someone who voted on the opposition side I mean who voted on the prevailing side they would have to bring it forward in order to revisit it so you need Tim Pat or Megan to want to bring this forward to revisit it yes one of the people who voted to close it needs to ask for the issue so if you want to lobby any of those three councillors that voted to close it you have to support your colleagues so how do you lobby to and to re-event them yes I guess you get in touch with them that can be an email you only need 10 signatures on the petition to have something on our agenda so if you get 10 residents to ask for something to be on our agenda we have to put it on you had 20 displeased association members from our association our meeting last week so 10 is a very small number doesn't mean we will act on it but if you want us to dedicate time in a meeting to an issue you just need 10 signatures can I say one more thing so I believe it would cost more than $6,000 to move that fencing that's probably going to get damaged just a side note we've moved fencing before and it cost $6,000 just to put that little park I'm hoping the next park that we choose as a town will be much bigger because if you put five dogs in that size park it's too small yes my dog is this big so we've got to consider we have big dogs I've looked at other policies in other communities and a half acre is the minimum that many of those policies cite as the minimum so we work mighty small with a lot of dogs very close and someone's backyard literally thank you very much thank you thank you I have a letter from Lynn but we need to go into a public hearing we're a few minutes late so we'll skip over announcements and city managers will come back to I'll leave this to you and then we can continue with the agenda so we'll move on to item 7 public hearing ordinance codification project second reading for repeal attorney and there are four that he's recommending ordinance for the control of air pollution ordinance to control the sanitary landfill in south verlington ordinance to prohibit the disposition of ice and snow in the public streets and ordinance ordinance regarding solid waste dumping and littering so I move that in lieu of reading the proposed ordinance the council read an ordinance for the control of air pollution providing for the regulation control of the emission of the open air of smoke, dust, gases in the room ordinance to control the sanitary landfill sanitary landfill in south verlington ordinance to prohibit the possibility of ice and snow in the public streets and other public areas and ordinance to regulate the possibility of any waste on any land within the town by title only gases provided by the city charter moved in second all in favor so andrew good evening we'll next see attorney there's one other motion there now to enter to move into the public hearing so I move that we enter to a public hearing that was duly warned for this date for second readings of an ordinance for the control of air pollution provided for the regulation control of the emission of the open air of smoke, dust, gases and other ordinance to control the sanitary landfill in south verhington ordinance to prohibit the deposit of ice and snow in public streets and other public areas and ordinance to regulate the deposit of any waste on any land within the town all in favor so I'll just reiterate the memo and the motion we had back in the November the first reading of these ordinances and the general effect and this was in the public hearing notice of each of them and we'll just go through them pretty quickly for the ordinance for the control of air pollution this 1969 ordinance I'm recommending repeal as this will have no effect as I would state the city through its fire prevention and fire safety ordinance regulates the same subject matter after this one superseded ordinance to control the sanitary landfill in south verhington, that's 1990 but that is now controlled by chimp and salad waste district so I recommend repeal Ordinance to prohibit the disposition of ice and snow in public streets this is 1971 this is a ticketing authority and I also recommend repeal as state statute now provides for a $1000 fine and attorney's fees and cost of collection and self-help from our public works apartment in if needed so that's been enough of a stick in the past to essentially enforce the purpose of this ordinance so I recommend repeal that as well and the ordinance re-settled waste dumping and littering this one there is now a state statute that is as good if not better than ordinance would be that does provide municipal ticketing so those are left before any comment? on any of these, I mean obviously the state has their regulations are we at a higher level on any of these than the state or are we matching them? we are either below either below these are below what the state states do you know, does the state have any regulation on burglary of leaves in the fall? we do and with our fire prevention and fire safety ordinance so there is no way, so you would need a permit in order to do the permitting process do you know if showroom doesn't say I don't know I just remember dragging through in October and somebody was burying a huge pile of leaves right down off of that pile of road close to Irish showroom and it was just filled up the whole with smoke and it was like that's not right but not our town well it smells like our youth and we have to burn it in the backyard so some of it I don't know if you know that so do we need to set a if you can I've got a motion for effectively repeal these effective is there any comment from the public on any of these ordinances so seeing none Tim you have another motion do we need to come out of public hearing first I move that we come out of public hearing second so I also move that the council repeal and ordinance for the control of air pollution providing the regulation control of the mission of the air open air of smoke dust gases ordinance to control the sanitary landfill in South Korea ordinance to prohibit the depositing of ice or snow on other streets and other public areas and ordinance to regulating the depositing of any waste on any land within the town effective upon this date second any discussion all in favor signify by saying aye all in favor thank you very much okay so we will move back to complete the comments and questions from the public this is a note that Lynn Vera left the justice of the peace and a BCA member and it says to city council thank you for your service I am always in awe of your civic commitment I hope to address you in person but I also cannot wait for public comment I am here to ask for your serious critical and protective approach to the pending request from UVM to rezone the forest along Spear Street for development the recent letter in the other paper from Fred excuse me Fred Kozinski clarifies three essential points I am heart sick at the loss of open land and wildlife in the areas in south Burlington please don't give way to UVM on this under the guise of priority affordable housing not near senior not near services or on a bus route the use or reuse places that are already paved over for example the Kmart Plaza so I guess she is saying use places that are already paved over like Kmart Plaza before ruining the oldest growth forest left see the south Burlington Land Trust white paper the lake suffers from what we allow to happen on Dorset and Spear and Farrell all feed into Potash Grove as does this land I live in Cleans City Park downhill from all of it a well advertised public hearing UVM knows there is huge resistance to this plan they paid someone to remove neon protest signs that were visible last week in the trees don't let this be a behind the scenes deal that you that you rubber stamp please protect and force UVM to be the land steward that they were charged to do okay so let's move on to announcements city managers we've got it twice so let's do it as number six I guess we don't need to do it as number eight so Tom any announcement or okay I'll try to be quick I just wanted to say that I've been to the library twice and I think it looks beautiful reports say that there are and that was last week upwards of 65 new patrons completely brand new patrons to the library I overheard people explaining why I was there too and I just I'm really it's very good to see that the second thing I wanted to say has to do with the survey on the I know that at the last meeting and I was absent you had all of me to keep open the survey however it has been announced that it was going to be closing so I think if we want to keep it open announce it as being open definitely it was announced to be closing at Monday at noon prior to the last meeting all of the notices that went out on the Fumprich Forum and really? Yes so that was just I thought we had mentioned that in Coraline's coaching because as a council we agreed that it made sense to keep it open and get more it might still be open but I mentioned the public okay so maybe another Fumprich Forum and on our website we'll do that right do we get those responses in an e-mail just like to process them again you mean from the website I mean from the survey you got to print out that I didn't think I saw that great Pat? I literally had a three minute maybe a five minute or quick meeting it was one that they were just asking for the oversight approval to present to the finance board for changes that they are doing to all of the garages as being able to have them automated and updated and what have you garages where? the airport and the downtown garages oh okay parking parking not lily not lily lane and it was literally three to five minutes at the most and several of us had called in and we did it by that there was no other action that was the only item on the agenda no one finished business we were down and it was approved to send to the finance board to take a look at it something the city has been working on because they need they needed updated the services to the garages all the garages have a need for this timing I kind of equated it to them putting in new parking meters and things that they had downtown they eventually got to those self worth and so this is just one more piece okay but they needed it done okay I spent a couple hours two hours ago in the battles of the U-Mall storage bin in the cage areas reassembling some shelving for the library it was all by myself it was traumatic it was like a puzzle but it was fun so luckily I don't know if anything's falling down there I hope it has so we're going to London Bridge just following down Tim Shelton yeah I hope not yeah it was I jumped on them they're not going to I also was invited by councillor Chittenden to come to City Hall last Wednesday night to talk to the Cutscouts which I don't know whether you did want to mention you forgot yeah talking about asking questions about government city and energy so refreshing to talk to a bunch of eight and nine year olds just really interested and the parents they had pre-prepared questions it was good discussion we did wind up with three councillors at my office party but it was very short lived and we didn't stand together and then councillor it was a very nice party too thank you did you want to mention something oh yes and I had one comment I wanted to make I'm sure that many people read the letter of the editor excuse me in the other paper last Thursday where Karen McDowell expressed an opinion about in agreement with the majority saying closing the dog part was probably right to do but taking exception to the comment that I made where I said dogs don't pay taxes so for the life of me I can't remember the context of that comment I know it was a moment of levity didn't mean anything bad by it didn't mean any harm to people who have dogs I apologize if you feel it's necessary so I'm sorry I'm not going to go back and watch the video but I guess I just have to watch when I say a little bit more closer sometimes people take things very seriously sometimes they take them out of context when they're published in the paper there's no context with it there was no video that night I don't remember but anyway I mean she felt strongly enough to write it to the other paper about it so I just wanted to say I'm sorry thank you I spoke on our behalf at the senior dinner last Friday it was a really lovely affair that the parks and rec department in collaboration with more sponsors than I can mention but most notably notably not most notably the what was it called? Homewood sweets gave their space and sugarstaff gave the food and it was really really lovely ironically I'd gone to my first senior luncheon as an invitee that Wednesday so I'm part of the tribe now who is out to senior senior events but this one was really lovely and they had a great time I think for most appreciative in fact the John I can't think of his last name who's the general manager said before this afternoon as we were setting this up the staff at Homewood sweets voted that this is their favorite event that they put on during the year and we thought that we should do it once a year I mean once a month where did the seniors come from? Invitations went out and it's limited to 50 or 52 to the senior housing area facilities in the community so they're all self-reliant in residence but it was really nice so that was fun I also attended the noise technical advisory committee and Pat you were there as well and one of the things that I came away with I'm very impressed with the consultants through all this and what do they mean and what will they look like and they made it very clear that you don't have to have navigation easements for the portion of the noise mitigation program that adds sound insulation or build burn arms or does that part we do some of the other programs than they're required and that will be discussed in more detail at the next meeting and I have to agree with you I thought that was an interesting piece to find out you both kind of looked at each other at that moment and I that not all airports have one so that was good I also as you know met with along with the mayor we had a second meeting with the mayor here and we all had homework and so the mayor did share with us where he gotten with his homework and as you know we received about three days after that the first meeting the official response to the MOU because that had been a request I did raise it again and say that we were very disappointed that it felt like the response was using the FAA and what they think they require as a an excuse that they couldn't sign an MOU and we kind of went back and forth on that but the mayor did agree that he would look again I said you know if you have other language if you don't like the just cause language why don't you come up with some additional some alternative language and we can continue the conversation we may not accept it but at least there'll be a dialogue and more of an understanding about what your objections are and if they are in fact valid so he agreed to do that we also had asked him to spend some time and engage his management team I guess and really look at the governance model study and so he assured us that they were doing a deep dive his legal team was diving deep into taking all the information that we had shared in different white papers and reports and we'll come back to him with their response unfortunately he kind of said well but it probably will take a while and he anticipates that that won't happen till probably the latter part of February the beginning of March and he thought that that was a good time because he's running for re-election there'll be other candidates and felt that it would be best to have this report or deep dive and then the new mayor or he could take it on in March I think that's sort of putting it off a little bit but that's what he said that he would do or will do so we should get a response we also push him on exactly what they're diving deeply into and it seemed that it was really just are we willing to change governance and what are the pros and cons so we encouraged him to give them a slightly broader mandate to dive deep but to include you know if we get this right it might work under different conditions so what are some other things that would address better some of our concern maybe short of governance but at least do a bigger dive he did also indicate that he would take that final report or recommendation or whatever you're phrasing it to their council for a discussion so I think at our next meeting at the end of January we will really propose that council meeting include the councils of self-reliance and Manuski or at least some real representation as part of the conversation and the dialogue just be sitting in the audience and then getting in three minutes like you and Tim had in the public hearing but rather be part of that conversation I don't know if that would be acceptable but that was certainly our hope I also just quickly I did mention Uber and the Lyft who are parked near the airport and it was a concern they're idling and people don't know scoping the neighborhood or whatever and he was unaware of that and he did say that he would with the airport and and follow up on that so that was so that was good and lastly I I'm not 100% sure Uber and Lyft are real problems but we're the green cap because they don't sometimes they're not on the airport property they are a little more problematic he agreed he thought that they should be able to find some place where they can park and wait for the planes to come in before so they're close by so they're working on that and then I also lastly attended the ribbon cutting at the O'Brien brothers hillside at O'Brien farm you know, it was great I was very impressed that they have developed a relationship with Sun Commons so if you are going to buy a house there you can buy a solar ready house and that's one of the packages you can add so it gets rid of your mortgage and it's really just built as the house gets built versus the add-on just an add-on just an add-on you can do a granted counter-talk so you can do solar so that was good there were a lot of people there thank you thanks Helen a lot going on thank you Megan for your report on the library I would agree there are still a few things to work out but it's going very smoothly and the staffs and Maggie and Tim are volunteering down in the depths of the cages there it's most appreciated I really had a great honor to go and attend the and brief the citizens of some of the residents of Allenwood some of the seniors who live at Allenwood after dinner they have a speaker come in there must have been 15 or so there and I gotta tell you those folks were extremely well read and up to speed and I got peppered with questions and it was a great dialogue it was really fun and I look forward to going back I sent you this afternoon whether or not you've seen the Second Circuit Court the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals as ruled it's a firm bill of report decision that relates to the EIS so I sent you the opinion on that and just a couple of comments from Anne Ruan University of Vermont Medical Center hosted one of their community forums where they invite community leadership in this one last week happened to be on mental health and so I was one of the I was one of the speakers I was well attended, maybe 100 people along with with Chief Morrison from Colchester representatives from Howard also the Commissioner on Mental Health so it was a great opportunity to talk about the programs and particularly the Community Outreach which the state is supporting CCRPC had their legislative breakfast last week well attended by legislators talking about mostly about the role of Chippin County and the state's economic climate in helping to pull the economy forward Charlie Baker presented and there were some amazing statistics about what's going on in the economy that I could get a chart out to share with you we are very pleased to announce well first the retirement of two long time members of the South Royal Fire Department but you know Gary Browns you honored him here, his son Craig who was also a captain as he retired and our two new captains are known to you Jordan and Micah Genslinger have been elevated from lieutenant to captain so we now have three captains again and Doug will be looking to elevate two senior firefighters into the lieutenant role so we wish Gary and Craig well and we have great confidence in my friend Chris Corbin I was going to make a note that we met with John Simpson last week to talk about some fee issues and he's sitting here tonight I think I might know why he's here I'll let him come rather than later I mean I think I know later I'm here to address the general item with the community yep, item 13 we talked about fees and John is representing the affordable housing committee to Paul and Andrew and I and finally as we discussed when we sent it back to the airport issues Jersey barriers were placed in our right-of-way over Kirby Road extension Andrew wrote a letter to the attorney in Burlington and I'm pleased to say that the barriers have been moved and so they're on the dog park side of the road but off of our right-of-way which is perfectly fine I responded to that as well and said this was not acceptable to us so those have been moved and it's just fine that's it okay, thank you let's move on to number nine the consent agenda I'll move that we approve the consent agenda second any discussion all those in favor of approving the consent agenda that includes the sign disbursement approving the self-point storm water system acceptance and related easements approving the dorset farm storm water system acceptance and related easements approving the minutes for December 4th all those in favor hi great thank you do we have any other reports from committee assignments? right okay so let's move on to 11 presentation and discussion by representatives of the board civil authority related to the notice of property taxes due we're back on schedule we're almost there welcome good evening for the record my name is Peter Taylor I'm chair of the South Burlington Board of Abatement I'm vice chair and I'm here tonight to get a couple of items out to you for discussion first time I start out for people that may not know the board of abatement is composed of 15 justices of the justices of the peace in South Burlington City Clerk and the five city councilors so you all have experienced some of these disinformation on their present here the board of abatement has the ability to abate taxes, penalties and entrants on the request of the taxpayer there's seven qualifications when we cannot enough require tax during the last couple of years a couple of issues have come up before the board and the first one is a notice to people who purchase properties after April 1st I'll explain that in a minute and the second one is about adding language to a couple of notices we send out that reiterate to you the public that they should file the homestead declaration if they haven't done that and they'll help them in some of the problems that they'll be facing I'll explain that in a minute but let's go to the tax notice as you all know April 1st and the owner of the property as of April 1st the year gets the tax notice so if someone buys that property sometime after April 1st and before the next April 1st they never get a notice from the city they're supposed to get a notice in the closing process and remind it that the taxes are due when they're irresponsible or unless it's part of the deal it's a sale that the previous owner is going to pay them or whatever but they become the that's responsible to pay the taxes the issue that came before our group was is there a way the city would consider sending a tax notice to those who purchase properties during the middle of the year after April 1st it wouldn't be an official tax notice it goes to the owner as of April 1st but it would be a nice reminder particularly to new residents where in the process of sale of a home they might have just missed that tax notice either was given to them and they missed it we got a couple of requests for abatement based on claims that they never received by what they informed and then they get an 8% penalty etc. you've all been through this with us so you understand so that's our first request that the city consider notifying new owners of property of the tax bill a one time notice when the city knows the property's been purchased and just reminding them who's responsible ultimately we think that would be helpful and probably a service to new residents do you want me to go on to the other issue sure okay yeah why don't you go through it and then if there are questions or other people who want to the other issues come up that people will request an abatement and for inability to pay and recently we found a couple of instances where people say oh I never knew about the homestead declaration we were supposed to file it but some people don't we send out two notices to people one is the uh you have some of this in your hand out yeah I do better with few others the notice to apply the notice to apply right the notice to apply and the other notice is the tax sale notice I think you have both of those and so it was the thought that um perhaps one sentence could be added to each of those documents and I'll just give you an example of a sentence I would assume if you do it your attorney would want to put the appropriate language in but it could read something like be sure you have filed the Vermont homestead declaration if applicable longer, shorter whatever you think but it's another way of reminding people about the homestead declaration and um again I think it would be a service and who would this go to Peter? this would go to people who are you know rears full who are feeling to pay the taxes on time and the second document is the tax sale notice document so it would fit in either of those documents so we're reminding them of the abatement process as well as the right then by adding one line and just reminding them in case they don't know and haven't done it because we've had several people come in seeking abatements, inability to pay and we find out they're very likely would have been eligible for a reduction in the education tax but they neglected to file their amounts there so those are just reminders that you were felt the city council should consider sending out to homeowners um to help them understand the process better so those are the questions or um have you got anything to add or your moral support there? total moral support he's my good right on okay just really quickly maybe Tim was going to say this I'm under the impression we used to send out welcome packages in the city and I'm wondering if that might be a place where you see some of these reminders and tax bill notifications is this something you would technically support to bring back? I wouldn't oppose that and I don't remember the packet I don't know what it looks like but again from our perspective these two things are the best as possible so if they're in a big packet will they get lost? I don't know but it's worth considering however we get that information out to people to avoid having people come into the board of abatement and ask for an abatement for this getting the word out is so important because of the penalties not paying the taxes and things Tim, you got it? So the late notice is mailed out to the resident the tax payer if you're in arrears does this notice of right to apply for abatement does that also get mailed out? when does this get mailed out? this is when the arrears become known to city and when does this one get mailed out at a later time? I've got these letters I think the first one goes out when they're late the second one goes out when they're actually going to have a tax sale because you can get late on your taxes without a tax sale right off I'm not sure of that time so I think the first one goes out when they're the first time they're late on getting their taxes just delinquency delinquency correct and it goes under it's a single length there's nothing else with it the language again that I thought of and it's probably better language than this but it's be simple be sure you file the Vermont Homestead Declaration if applicable if they don't know what that is if they have their thought process to ask what's that mean and then they can begin the process and come up on that rather than waiting until they get to an abatement and we remind them which is probably run into trouble I have a question before I do tend to I do tend to support these recommendations and I think adding a line to these two letters makes perfect sense but I do also support the question I have is with regard to homeowners who have been paying penalties for years which was the case with one of the homeowners who came for us and the penalties added up to thousands and thousands of dollars that they have been paying for years and they just weren't able to catch up do those penalties come into the city's coffers only or do they also go through the state education tax okay and so I do think that it would I think it would be a service to new homeowners as I understood if I remember correctly this was not a typical sale that had occurred I believe that there was some federal assistance I think it was a HUD purchase if I recall correctly and I don't quite know what what goes into the different types of sale that there are but I think that a simple solution and the same for people who bought a house and then they left on vacation and I don't know there were just situations it seemed difficult for them to know when things were due and I hear people were going to say whether we know the law or not but if it could be a simple letter that we send out when we know that there's been a sale in town just a reminder these are our tax due dates and I see it as a simple I mean I understand that there are work hours involved but I see it as a simple service that would save I think a lot of harding and dollars so by doing that we could play devil's advocate then if we send these out and we make it as transparent or understood as possible as simple and people toss it in the trash don't read it, don't respond don't do anything then are we as the you know evapement committee are we more inclined then to say because in the other paper you got a letter that reminded you when you purchased the house you were reminded again I think too bad I think it would but that's when you see a number of opinions because some of the cases are hard you know your heart strings well I would look at this especially in say the new homeowner because I think there is a lot of confusion even though they may have a lawyer there to tell them what was paid, what wasn't you're making back the taxes to someone I think it is a very difficult and I look at this and say new homeowner I think that's more than a courtesy for us to do and I think then to your point if we have done everything that we can to notify them these additions then I guess let the buyer be aware but I think a reminder and I can recall one case and it was one of the lovely condos up on the golf course and the gentleman literally believed that the taxes had been paid because he didn't receive a bill and I mean you know some of the things you think I had to pay it well he probably did but he didn't get a bill so if you don't get a bill you're going to go in and say do I owe the money and I'm sure you recall that case two more comments related to this in the minutes of the February 27 meeting which we sent out to you Donna had made a comment that the state discourages municipalities from sending tax bills out when property changes hands as it puts potential liability on the town in getting ready to come in here I asked Donna to follow up on that and figured out that it wasn't the state it was the league that she was thinking about and I had a note from her here and basically she asked is this counting a greater liability if they send a note second notice out to the new owner at the home or if they don't send one out and they send it out to other people is there a mess up in the notices I don't think it needs to be a bill just the days whatever it is and I guess this was the turning of the league to hold on to this I'll just read it the town should not be held liable for attempting to notify new owners in fact when a delinquency notice is sent out to the old owner and the new owner so that was a comment from an attorney at the league I don't know Donna can get you any specifics on that I'm sure Andrew will figure it out if you want to go further on that but that was just another is there a role for maybe educating or reminding realtors because they help usher in these sales or even the banks should that be of course you need to fill out a remember to apply for in my limited experience in the BCA it's often been the exchange of properties where there weren't realtors involved there was some female lawyer or estate sale where there wasn't as much involvement by a professional it is based basically on income and I think that could be a little bit of a conflict if they I mean maybe the realtor knows what they make for income I'm not suggesting that the realtor fill it up for them just a closing for the bank closing at the closing to say don't forget this is state law you have to fill it out we were talking about two different things right so is there a way for us to quantify how frequently this has happened in a 10,000 occurrence I mean whether you measure it by the number of tax payments the point I'm trying to make is that if we try to quantify this as a problem right the problem probably is very very small and I hate to try and implement a solution to fix something that generally probably isn't broken 100% or more of all real estate transactions go through correctly where somebody understands their liability for tax and they act accordingly there probably are very few transactions where something isn't transferred in terms of model right so the question is do you want to try it or educate or do you want to let it be caveat and toward when people enter into you know legal contracts to purchase real estate everybody knows that you have to pay property taxes some frequency throughout the year and when you own a house in the town you have to pay the paper says what it's do every time so I hate to be the other devil's advocate on this but I hate to try to apply a solution to an extreme exception from my limited time on the BCA just in terms of people not knowing that they had to pay a property tax it seems like I'd really find that definite exception so as much as my heart went out to people who had problems mount because of interest in penalties that's what comes with owning real estate in a town I hate to say you're supposed to know but nobody gets away with owning real estate without knowing that you don't own property taxes it's death in taxes or the two finite things so I can answer your question to some degree in recent history we've had two one was in 2016 and the other one was in 2014 which was people are going to stir over again however at the meeting relating to 2014 I believe Martha stated that this was an issue with moaks and that might be the wrong word of South Village but only this one couple applied for abatement so the question is how many people really want to know is how many people pay the penalty and just don't appeal some people will appeal and I can't answer that but for some reason at that point in time Martha made the comment that there were others in the South Village there was a complex issue because there was a change in developer right so there was really a complex issue there I just I don't see this as the name broke don't fix it I see it as is it worth, let's say there are 300 sales post April 1st I was picking a number out I don't know the number of sales is it worth $30 I don't know how much I think the culpability of individuals I'll close this down on Farrell Street and because obviously the new homeowner and he had the presumption and it was very difficult to get it resolved because there was kind of an intermediary that had come in from the original developer so you know I look at this and say I think it is it's good PR for us to do this I don't think it is over the top we can always cancel it in the future if we find that it is not productive but I would really like to give it a try I think that we're getting the recommendation from our chair who has been on the BCA for longer than I have and that's 20 years so I think it was a consensus of the Board of Education about that who is this guy who I ask what staff member or members get to tackle this new project so if you're telling me property changes hand it triggers a title recording in the office so I'm just saying Donna has owned the patches familiar with the welcome packages that was put out by the family center recording the times that was not a city activity So we don't do it to them, we do it on our own. So Domin knows when a title has changed, because you have the files that they have to pay. It also goes over to the tax office. So they both have that information. Goes from there. This is an opportunity to remind and tell us, I know we want to really draw out the importance of paying your taxes and finding the homestead declaration, but we also struggle with getting people to register their pets, to register to vote, and to use our parts and be aware of our parks and rec services. That's why I think a welcome packet is not a foreign idea. Well, that might be for another piece, but I think this is something immediately to do. Getting back to who does it. My understanding on this sheet is the link on tax. You would like to add a sentence somewhere, bold it, perhaps, or underscore it. It says remember to sign up for the homestead. Well, careful how you word that, because that will not be applicable in past years, right? Didn't Martha say that the state cannot reimburse you for homestead declarations you didn't fill out for previous years, but only going forward, or maybe part of the current tax here, right? But it gives them a head start. No, I know, just be careful how you word that so you don't give a false hope about the new people. I guess it may be Amber will put the language together for you, for what you wanted. So avoid this in the future, right? Remember you, yeah. So who would do that? This is, I mean, it's... To my daughter's office is the... Because this is a form letter, right? Yeah, Martha says that out. So, Martha... So this would go out to the owner of record on April 1st. So who would continue to send it out? They could do it, yeah. And somehow another version would have to go to the new owner. No, no, no, no. I think this is the same version, it's just editing it, adding one line to each of these documents. No, I'm not talking about that, that's an easy thing. I'm talking about doing the research to find out who the owner is, who the new owner is. Does the new owner live in the house, or does the new owner renovating the house, and is living in Milton for three months while the new home is... Should they have a home also? There'll be some process that we have to go through to verify there's a new owner, what the new owner's current address is, if it's not the actual new home. And this will still have to go out with new language, which it's easy to do. There'll be some work involved to do. Wouldn't the new owner, even if they weren't living in it, they were getting it renovated? I mean, I'm looking and saying, I don't see any difference. I think the old owner and the new owner could get the same letter. The old owner already gets it. Well, they do, but the new owner should be getting it. And then they can deal with the old owner and say, did you pay the tax bill? Am I paying the tax bill? Well, I thought we needed to do two things. And one is when there's a sale and there's new owners, right?  Well, it's not a sale bill, Tim. Yeah, but then, I mean, let's say it's new construction. And don't forget. If it's new construction, I mean, I don't think there's a problem with those sales, right? It's these funny cash transactions that, you know. But they still have to restructure them. No, I'm just saying, you're gonna be selling postcards. Most of them are gonna be wasteful. You're just gonna be thrown on the trash because they already know it, right?  If there was some other way to ensure that, that'd be great. We could talk about this all along. Time, I think adding proper wording to each of these documents, which people will probably ignore anyway because they're gonna see this and freak out. I did when I got one because my bank discontinued, the linking of two accounts and they didn't tell me they were gonna do that. And I had to pay the penalty and... I still think it's worth adding the sentence. I really do. I think it's an opposed... No, that's fine, it just, you know... It's doing the legwork to make sure that the link when tax collectors notice goes to the right people. The former owner. Can we re-engage the family center and maybe they might have an interest in doing this again? Or they want the social services funding and requests? Well, they can't deal with deletions. No, but the welcome package. I don't know how, I don't know how they're doing. That's an organization, I'm not sure. Do they agree with this? But we could agree to add those sentences to these two papers and see what happens. Is that acceptable? I mean, it's not... Star, isn't it? Here, folks are part of the board, so... Yeah, I mean, what you can do to make it easier on the residents. And that's really what you're doing. Last quick question, not last, second or last. On the notice of right to apply for abatement, we use the tax sale notice. It says, second paragraph, abatement must be received within 14 days. Well, I think that, I'm not sure, but I believe that's the 14 day appeal process for the tax sale. An abatement request can be sent in any time. So somehow, I would just simply, I noticed it when I was reviewing the letters. Perhaps that language should be changed a little bit to just clarify what you mean by the 14 day notice. Could Donna correct that? She doesn't do that. She doesn't. No. Who do? I mean, will it be the tax department? Well, it just said to apply for an abatement, you must notify Donna. I was just going on for a minute. I think the 14 days is in there because that's the appeal process for the tax sale. Right. So you wanna, we wanna, Andrew, clarify what that actually means. If you wanna do it within the tax sale timeframe, it's 14 days, but you can apply for abatement any time. Just because it's a little misleading. Just a thought. Since Donna's an elected official too, I think it'd be really meaningful if she came forward with some of these recommendations that she would want us to budget for. So if Donna wants to have a welcome package or to make changes to these things, I would just encourage us to make those requests. This is a part of another larger problem, right? Which is, is bills that aren't paid to the city for a lot of reason, right? So I know I'm a friend and they didn't receive their water bill. This is an adjacent town. They didn't receive their water bill. And so then they got this bill with, you know, penalties and interest just like you would for taxes for an unpaid water bill, right? But you can't pay your water bill if you don't know what it is because you have to receive the bill to know what amount to pay, right? And then they were told, well, we mailed all the water bills out. Well, apparently there was a problem delivering the mail. So sometimes people receive other people's mail, right? So in this case, it's like, well, if somebody's paid their water bill for 37 years straight and never been laid on a water bill, right?  Did you not get your water bill or what's the problem? What, oh, what's the problem?  I mean, the just communication when something isn't paid, even if it's like a very informal thing, right? Notifies somebody that, you know, they didn't know about something, which is what you're talking about, right? Right, I mean, without the personal phone. But whatever it is, though, but it's like, but notify them before it's like $5,000 worth of damage, right? To their finances. And I think that when you receive a letter from the city of South Burlington, you don't just toss it. I think you really open it up. Yeah, I think it's a pretty, you know, clear. So I guess the question is, as soon as somebody is... Of course it's a welcome letter. I think that I could go like a regular... Let me ask this question. How quickly is a homeowner notified if they haven't paid their taxes? If the city doesn't receive remittance of their taxes, how quickly are they notified? I think it's within a couple of weeks. A couple of weeks. Oh, really? Okay. Martha prepares that ad. Inverse installment. And that letter only goes to the address of record for the April 1st tax bill. Yes. And for her to check and make sure every address is the right one. Is it possible to send two letters, one to the address of record and one to the home itself? I think we start with the sales, the purchase and sale, right? But the title, right? And when you see that, that triggers something. Past April 1st, we receive it. And to have Donna and the tax department dig into this because it's important to the council. I think we can make that stated. Yes. The people who do the job know best how to do it. Okay. But I'll check with them and report back one of the two meetings in January. Sure. And Donna will be in, I think, to talk about her budget. So you can ask her a quick question on the floor. When you have your budget, but I'll get them to work on this in the meantime. Okay. Is that amenable? We just want a fair sense of the question. We have to put those sentences and then a clarification on the 14 days. That we can do. And then this additional process of potentially finding out if there's a second homeowner that needs to receive the reminder or the bill. Can I just ask one more question? Does anybody here have knowledge of using TurboTax online for free, whether it has the homestead documents? Yes, it does. It does? Now I've done it. Online. The one online, not the one that you buy. Of course, you have to remember, they changed that thing three different times in three years and it made it very difficult as to people knowing when they had to file it by as well and when they could file it. Just curious. I think it's just the federal's room. It's the state government. Right. Okay. Well, I guess I've got your attention. One quick thing, and I'll be quick with this. I'm speaking for me on the board of civil authority. We hear requests, appeals to the assessed value homes. Assessments sent out. People appear to Todd and then appeals come to us. Since 2010, we've only had three appeals for assessment values after it's gone to Todd. We've had several more, but they were all airport. And so you know what, all of those were for it. But from regular citizens, we've only had three. I don't really want more appeals, but that seemed like a very big number of people for the size of our city. So it just surprised me. You may want to look into that and just see why. I don't know why. Maybe Todd gets very few appeals. Maybe that's most of them. But not many come on to us, so maybe that's a good thing. I just toss it out, there's a number that I came up with the other day. Probably not even. Or undervalued, but not depleted. Yeah, I think it was probably undervalued because the ratio was pretty good. Well, Todd was in to discuss that with us. I was not suggesting that we do that on the assessing. Well, thank you for your service. Well, I appreciate your attentiveness to all these details in your interest. Sorry, come on in. Yeah. The item 12, the Winooski Valley Park District Presentations and Assessment for F-29. Big corner, also kind of for our representatives. Yes. Great. So, please introduce yourself for the record. Dave Crawford, I'm your representative to the Winooski Valley Park District. And Nick Warner, Executive Director of the Winooski Valley Park District. Well, thank you for coming. Good to see you. We'll try to get you back on track with your agendas. Yeah. We have negative one minutes, so. Well, you sent some great, you know, details. Great. I thought it was very helpful, generic, so I don't have a whole lot of questions. Personally, I think you covered everything that you could even talk. I can proceed any way you'd like. I mean, I have a presentation, it's not super long. That's why I don't, that's great. Does that have to go through it? So, while we're waiting for this to come up, I do have a question. Yes. Do you have plans to supply, you know, plastic bags at some of the parks for dog poop? To encourage people to pick up? It always annoys me when they don't. I always bring my own, but sometimes you forget. We do for quite a few of our parks. And honestly, I tend, since Tim's not here, I'm not sure within South Brown to which ones are served, but we spend a lot of time. The joke is not, when we walk our dogs there a lot, and I always bring bags, but I find lots of other dog owners have a joke. Yeah, forget to bring them. Thanks, Tom. And of course, I don't bring enough for lots of other people. You can talk about your dogs all the time. I love when the technology works, that's great. Great. Thank you all for having us tonight. South Pearlicton is a great member of the park district, one of the seven towns. And most of you know who we are, just a quick reminder. We're a hybrid 501c3 nonprofit and incorporated municipality, which is a very unique plot and allows us to take advantage of both aspects of those organizations. And that map on the bottom gives you an idea of our properties and where they're located. We really have very significant conservation lands under management. It's a bright line around our role, which is the acquisition and ownership of conservation lands. So we, it's all passive recreation. And we have very tight screening that we use when we acquire lands to make sure that we're getting lands that have high conservation values and screen up. We also own the Ethan Island Homestead. There's another nonprofit that operates the homestead and we have an operating agreement with them. So that's also where our offices are located in Burlington. That's a 274 acre parcel. Within South Burlington, we have pretty significant park land, 103 acres that get quite a bit of use. As you can see from our map before, the parks are riparian in nature. They're close to water bodies for wetlands, floodplain forests, or very significant, significant natural features. New Ski Gorge, if you haven't been there, it's an amazing view. It's right near Lime Kiln Road. Moneybrook Park, which you mentioned before, is a gorgeous spot. The Wetland Reserve down off Van Siklin Road. And Valley Ridge. And this park, I mentioned one of my previous presentations, we're going to be in the field developing a trail system for. If you look at that parcel map on the upper right, inside the South Burlington parcels on the right, the Burlington parcel that was donated to us by the Ireland folks. Yeah, right there. And the new housing project, which is where the SD Ireland property... How will it be accessible? There's going to be... Dave just carried me in there. There's going to be the Shemanska Parking. This is Shemanska Park. And there's a parking lot right there, and there's a trailhead. So you can have a connecting trail that's going to go on here and connect to the property. And we haven't designed this trail and now it's going to operate. What's intriguing about this is a few things. One is this is centennial woods. So there is the potential, although it's very steep, that at some point in the future you'll be able to have a walk where you can go all the way through here and then get out to centennial woods, which would be spectacular. So that's a long-term goal. And this is that new Baybury housing project. Of course, this is an image back when it was still a concrete operation. What's also intriguing is this is Catalan Island, which is owned by the city and casted by the parks across the way. So you have a real sort of ecological buffer here along the river, which is quite important for the conservation system. We have an intriguing acquisition we're working on in Burlington. This is looking from the north. This is the White Bath Bridge. I love this shot by the way, because you never see things from this perspective. But this marina property we have under option right now, and we're working with a couple of different funders. That would connect with Derwey Island, which we already own right here, and also Nays Landing, which is right there. So we would have conserved this whole area. Then you have Delta Park, which we own here. The town of Colchester owns this, and then Half Moon Road, which is off the map. How many acres is the marina? The marina is 2.4. And that's a very complex transaction. A big part of what we do, both from a community service standpoint and also frankly from an income standpoint is environmental education. Our sole camp, our summer program, it's been eight weeks last summer, and we filled it up almost immediately. We anticipate the second thing to happen this year. And our winter winters camp is held on February vacation, and that's already filling up for this year. We also have expanded our after-school programming. We see that as something that's going to be part of our growth over the next few years. We rely heavily on partnerships. This is just a short list of some of the groups that we work with. As you know, or you may remember, we have a fee-for-service contract for the City of South Burlington. And our board just extended that for another year, and we have a project list that we're working on. This bridge was the first major piece of that contract. This coming year, you can see a lot more punchin' and bridge at Wheeler Park and at Red Rocks. These steps also lead down to that bridge. We constructed these under contract to you guys. You haven't been conscientious about asking too many questions. I noticed the Muddy Brook Wetlands Reserve in South Burlington. The sign says sponsored by the Burlington International Airport. Do they contribute perpetually every year for some of these things? Or was it just a one-time deal? It was a mitigation project. It's part of their runway expansion. Can we get them up for some more money for these things? A call of G. That's not a bad idea. That's a great question. But I believe they didn't contribute quite a bit into getting the park out of the building. And they don't need the land. But no, they're not a continuing sponsor of this. Not a bad idea. This is more work at Wheeler. That was completed this past year. And this is work we did at Red Rocks. This is where there's a culvert right down there. And some of the work we'll be doing this year involves erosion control in this area. We also have a great three-way relationship with the city of South Burlington and youth conservation or our park superintendent actually did some supervision through the crew this year. And they think it's going to work a lot more efficiently. And so we're looking forward to continuing that this year. And there's going to be eight weeks of YCC crews this year. So things are ramping up in a way that... Just as a quick example. Do you see expansion with other communities doing collaborative like you've done with South Burlington? Yes. Or would you... I mean, you might be limited because of your number of employees. But this seems to be something that's worked out well. Yes. And it's an incremental growth. So we've had other towns ask to do work for us. We can handle a certain amount of extra work with existing equipment and personnel. And then we have to make more decisions. We see it as growth over the next few years. We see it as a role that we can play. In many ways, it also helps reduce the reliance on towns for support. Thank you. Yep. This year, this is something I'm working on personally with Justin Rapadoo. We had an engineer take a look at these sites. I don't know if you've been to the beach or Red Rocks, but these are early eroded areas. And there's also this pipe that's exposed. And we're going to deal with those this year. There are problems, but there are also opportunities. For instance, this is the path that goes down behind the picnic shelter. And we're planning on building wooden stairs after we deal with the erosion. Similarly, this is an area that's near the water department site. And that also presents an opportunity for new access. And some of these other areas, you can see a lot of riprap and riparices here. So that's something that's going to be a high priority. And this, the engineer is coming up with some ideas about how to probably, they're probably going to cut this back a little bit, put a new ending on it, and increase the riprap down here, and do some work upgrading as well to reduce the amount of sediment that comes through. So those are all improvements we've seen this year. This just lays out our overall approach. We really work hard to be entrepreneurial and to keep our operations lean and to use more and more outside sources and new sources of revenue. And this is sort of the screen that we use in thinking through new ideas for revenue. And it's been very successful for us over the last few years. So the potential we're looking at this year is increased rentals at the Ethan Island Homestead and also renovation of the Colchester Park Farmhouse and going after some third-party money to do that. This is how we come up with our formula for payments from the municipalities. And I have a chart that I think you guys got that lays out exactly how that triggers out. I think we've been through this before, so I think you understand how this works. This is the chart that compares our current fiscal year with the request for the next fiscal year. Our, the key thing is our overall municipal ask is identical. So this was really important to us this year. The amount that we're asking for next fiscal year, overall, is identical to what we have this year. And just through virtue of the way the math works out, you guys are actually being asked for less. There is less. Yes. That was one of my questions I was going to ask. How is the FY 18 and 19, 19 a pair for South Barrington to be less? Yes. It's all on the math. It takes equal last-grand list in the population and weights them equally in terms of, so if you look back in that chart, you can see how it all works out, but it's just the way it's working out for you. I mean, that was okay. Yeah, no, you know what. So thanks for your time on this. I appreciate it. And any questions or concerns? Any questions? No. I did let Dave, do you have anything to add? Well, I did have one. In there, they had one piece where it showed a couple, and it showed, we just gave 9%, 9%, and 4%, 1%. Can you explain what that was? It was on your chart. And I can't access the page here, but if it's not, if it's not your main, then... Is that population or the poverty value? Oh, that is the result of the math. So, if you're looking at Winnowski, last year, they're equal this year. They represent 4%, 1%, 5%. The other page, it was, one had 9%, 9%, and then it was 4 and 4. And I thought, well, but I know that they are paying in, so... Yes. And I knew that, I had had a question with that a couple of years ago, so I'm fine with that. Thank you. Thanks for your time. Okay. Dave, do you have any comments? No. Anything to add? Okay. Well, thank you for your service to the community. Yes. And Dave, your service on that gorge. That gorge part. Pardon me? I'm going to go to that gorge part. Yeah. Be careful. I... Is it... Do you worry about being slippery in the wintertime? Is it... Could I follow in? There's a very solid, nettle rail fence. Oh, there is. Yes. Okay, good. We don't want to lose you. It's safe. It is... I mean, it is sad to see that it's a broken glass. That breaks your heart when I go to places like this. My kids and I love the money park water players that are reserved out in the Encyclinus. They're in their favorite places. I've been to Encyclinus. It's crazy. Do you check it out? I skate a little. It's a little hot in the winter. Yeah. It's safe, is it? Okay. Thank you. Well, you know, it makes sense. Right now. Oh. Okay. You know, it's five of nine. And I'd like to get a little stretch in. We're going to walk around. So let's recess for five minutes and come back at nine. And then we will hear from the Champlain Housing Trust Committee or their presentation with our housing committee. Do I need another one in here? I don't think so. Probably. Probably. Probably. I don't know. Well, it's, now it's, it's, it's like 87. It should probably be closer to 90. So. Okay. Yeah. Yes. Okay. So I would like to call back into order. Monday. December 18th. And we will continue with the agenda and have a presentation by Champlain Housing Trust. City center. Yay. For application for funding under the community development program. Yay. And possible warning of public curing for such application. Yay. Hello. Thank you. I'm Amy Dimeshowitz with Champlain Housing Trust. Very much appreciate you putting me on your agenda tonight. Yes. I'm here with my old school, you know, visuals. Okay. Here for me to talk about a project that we are proposing to do in Sacramento city center on the southeast corner and the intersection of market street and garden street. Just to orient you. I know you guys are very familiar with this neighborhood. So market street here and garden street coming in from Dorset. This corner over here. Okay. We're talking with Chris Snyder and Ken Bray women about a 60 unit apartment building right there to really anger that corner. That's a large project for us at 60 units. And we're able to consider doing that in part because of that $5 million bond that the state passed last year to support the production of new affordable rental housing. So this would be one of the first beneficiaries of that funding new 60 apartments. It'll be very mixed income. We're going to have a higher portion of more market rate units targeted to people above 80% of median income in this project. So we are asking if the city would consider supporting the city P application for $625,000 to support the construction of the project. We are in as I mentioned for the bond funding will be in front of the Vermont housing conservation board in January with our request there. That's for about $3.5 million of the bond. So that's a big request. We typically do more like 30 new units a year. So we're doubling the request here with the state.  So this would be, we're asking to apply for the VCDP fund $625,000. The application is due February 6th. And they hear the applications at an April 4th meeting as well. We did the same thing previously. We did that, yes. The people square right just down the street. So exactly the same type of arrangement where our staff would take on as much of the administrative burden as possible, writing the application, doing the reporting, making the repositions. There are some things that the city obviously has to do, just for fiduciary responsibility. But we've tried to take on as much of that as we can. We can also have the grant cover legal expenses for the city. And if there's a single audit required, we can pay for that as well out of the project funds. That's great. Any concern, city manager? None. Great. So we would need to have a public hearing. And it needs to be, needs to have 15 day warning. It looks like the next meeting that might work, Kevin was saying you won't have a meeting probably on Martin Luther King Day, which would be the 15th. Maybe you would be doing that the next night on the 16th. Of John Verde. Oh, okay. Okay. That would be the one we would ask if we could do a public hearing at that meeting. All right. We'll take care of doing the warning and work with Kevin. I don't get that question. And only as it relates back to prior project, that was and always being done. And at that time, it got put off because it wasn't accepted at that they would have to, we had to wait and kind of the queue to get that do anticipate something like that with this as well. VCDP, well, all of our funding sources are very competitive. So there definitely is no guarantee. True. I think it's a really strong project. I think there's strong support obviously from the state government to increase production of new affordable housing. And I think this is a project with a proven team. We've worked with Snyder before on building new construction affordable housing. I think there's all of the reasons for the funding to be approved, except it is always competitive. So it's possible. And then the only other question I had is on the 60 units with the next income. And you mentioned that there would be, what percent would be market rate? 18 of the 60 apartments are targeted to what we consider a slightly higher, it's the 80 to 120 percent median income. Whereas we're typically targeting below 60 percent. We'll also have nine units set aside for formerly homeless families. So it really will be a broad mix of incomes in the building. Thank you. How does that relate to the O'Dell apartments? How does it compare? The O'Dell apartments, we have a smaller number of market rate units. And that has obviously more units overall. That's 140 units. 4 times 40? Yeah. 160. Okay. I think it was 40 per. And are you sure about that location? Yes. Is that still fully or is that the location? That location, we're sure about, we're finalizing the floor plans and then moving on to the elevations. Do you think it would be five storage or four storage? Four storage. Over parking. And what size apartments? We tend to have a large number of two-bedroom apartments in the apartments that we own currently in South Burlington. So we're going to have a heavier presence on the one-bedroom units. And actually we're going to do some three-bedrooms and even a couple of four-bedroom units. We're really finding a very strong demand for some larger units. So we're going to do that here and we always have a deep demand for one-bedroom. Great. Nice. So we will agree to have a public hearing on January 16. Great. We have to make a motion and set a time. So 7.30. Does that sound good? Okay. It's moved and seconded. Any further discussion? All in favor? Signify by saying aye. Aye. Great. Thank you very much. And again, I was very willing if I am up for reelection in March, but if I get re-elected, I would be more than willing to join you in Montpelier and assure that South Burlington is very strongly behind us. That would be wonderful. That's always helpful. Yeah. And I know that John is going to talk about me. If I can't do it, Megan or someone else will. That always helps a lot in terms of making us more competitive. And in fact, I know John's going to talk about the Affordable Housing Committee and some recommendations they have. That would in fact also strengthen our application in terms of perhaps making some reduction of impact fees for affordable housing. Great. Come on up and talk with you about that. Thank you. Well, thank you very much. And thank you for the work that you do. Great. Good evening. You all know me. I'm John Simpson, chairman of the Affordable Housing Committee. And first, I wanted to just pass on that our committee discussed this application for the law grant. And we were 100% unanimous to support it. So you have our blessing to proceed. And obviously, if any testimony appear, then I would be happy to participate or other people in our committee as well. I had a couple other things. Kevin already spoke briefly about the notion that we could discuss having a policy which would either discount or waive fees for nonprofit housing projects like this one for the impact fees and the other fees. We had to meet Kevin and Paul Conner and Andrew and I to discuss how it might work. And we came up with a recommendation which also my committee had worked on which I sent to Helen in an email and Kevin has a copy. I think the way we left it, Andrew was going to work something up to be presented to you. So this is basically a hands up. I'm not asking for any action. But the principle is that these projects are so needed in our community. When you consider who is going to be housed in this 60 unit building, people at 80% of median or 60% median then come to 67,000 household right now in San Juan. And it sounds like a lot, but for housing it isn't enough. And yet if you walk up and down any of the commercial or service businesses, real estate, law offices and ask what people make, that's really the sweet spot for the folks who work in self-reliance. And a lot of them are not able to live here now and this will help and more housing at this price point will help even more. We're really housing the people who want to be built. And when we consider how valuable we are a commercial center for the region, a business center for the region and how important it is to have people housed near their work for all the reasons that we all understand, I think we need to perhaps think about doing a little more than we have a housing trust, some money in every year. But when you're getting a project like this from an organization that has to build the financing block by block, grant by grant, they combine a whole lot of different things that come up with the very expensive construction money that they have to meet for us to make a statement as a city that we are willing to contribute to that building block with some additional money in the form of waiving some of the fees or discounting some of the fees that we charge. And I just throw that out as a principle that does seem ridiculous when Cathedral Square when they got $75,000 from the housing trust and then turned around and gave it back to us in the form of fees. And I think we need to think through what our policy is going to be towards projects like this that bring so much value to the community and you'll get a chance to look at the numbers and look at the details when Andrew doesn't come forward with a proposal. And then the other thing I wanted to mention a long time ago we talked to you about the Housing Preservation Amendment to the plan development rights and we prepared that it's gone to the Planning Commission it's gone back and forth through the Planning Commission's outside lawyers we were very near having it done from Kevin at our little reading that I was talking about gave everybody a heads up that they needed to get it back and so you'll be seeing that soon it will be it will put a fee on demolition of any house it will require the developer or the entity demolishing the house to build one somewhere else or put some money in the Housing Preservation and I think that's important Would that be similar to Brolin? Yes. Very similar. So I think it's something that we need to move on and so to do my part. Would you say a comparable house somewhere else? Do you say same acreage, same would it be comparable? Yes, so it would have to be a comparable affordable house. But it would be a house that has been demolished and they've built a quarter of a lot a house on a quarter of a lot as opposed to an apartment It would have to be a house built for somebody to buy it could be a condo I suppose I would think carefully about because people do search also a garden they search life outside of their floor walls I understand we've tried to be to keep this as simple as possible the understanding really has been Burlington they've had their ordinance for 20 years I don't think anybody's ever built a house to meet the requirement they always change Well, I think that the payment should be based on what they actually had how much it would cost to rebuild something comfortable that's what I would recommend Well, I will say it isn't that much at this point we've come up with a way to calculate how much it is which came through the Champlain Housing Trust which is really the difference between the sale or let's say the sale of a property and full construction of property and then what it would be sold for to under a subsidized situation like Champlain Housing Trust the reason that so if that money goes into the our housing trust and really it's very similar all over the country this is very close to what some of them are up or down but that's how they all handle it because but every lawyer has said that that would work and so that's really what we need to do we will work it soon every time this happens and so the differential is going into the trust that can be applied to a project like we just talked about and it all sort of sugars off in terms of providing the differential between the cost of construction and the cost of delivering the unit to an affordable unit but it's also a loss to the city I mean I think that an apartment would attract a different buyer than a quarter size lot I agree and I think that we're not going to see a little of demolition if this goes into place and other things that you all are working on will also get done so I think what we need to do is have something that's going to stand up to a challenge and will be in there and it will be a primarily as a deterrent I just want to add one more thing is that with the current acquisition relocation federal program to the FAA they are required to give what is necessary in order for it to be a comparable replacement to the homeowner we're talking about the addition to the homeowner I'm not the lawyer but I'm just saying that the federal government does see that as if they pay it to the homeowner then should they also pay the same amount to the city? not the FAA but I think that anybody who tears down a home should see we should claim I think what is due to us what is the loss of the home on acreage if that is the case and I think in the actual cost not a fraction of that right well because the federal law seems to in my mind set that precedent but that is the just reimbursement what if shaman housing trust bought three adjacent single family home properties a quarter acre each because it was zoned properly and decided to put up a three story or two story block of apartments what would happen in that case? that would be substituting one to one so there would be no I call this an impact please it's a negative impact it's basically a housing reservation we're trying to preserve houses we haven't done a very good job in that I'm just curious if I just want to see the regulation I think we all have a question and I appreciate this this conversation is really warm so you will be coming back at a later date there will be a document there will be a hearing planning commission will have one and then you'll have one well thank you very much the next item is the actuarial evaluation the FY17 actuarial evaluation of the pension plan or just Tracy Tracy's law is here good evening thank you for this opportunity to talk about the actuarial evaluation which is all stimulating conversation at 9.15 tonight I'll try to go through the highlights I'll welcome the questions as we go along so I'm going to go through this outline that you have in front of you we're going to hit some highlights which include the review of the recommended contribution, the plan experience which is important to understand the calculations, the funded status and then address any other questions that you may have so on the next page the next full page is the recommended city contribution for the fiscal year starting July 1 2017 so the current report we've shifted to actuarial value of assets last year and we're going to go into a little bit later on but this contribution recommendation is based on the actuarial value which is a smooth value as opposed to the market value which is a point in time so the current year actuarial value on the 10 page and when we advertise the unfunded approved liability the contribution is about 1.5 million on a 20 year basis it is 1.246 million which is higher than last year we're going to go into why that is higher the prior year you'll see in blue was about a little over 1 million so it's gone up about $200,000 in a shift from last year to this year so what's the reason for that increase number one the actuarial return on assets was about 7% versus the assumed rate of 7.5 the actual market value was much higher and I'm going to explain why the actuarial value is less because we're again smoothing assets means we don't go as high when the market value goes up when we don't go as low when the market value goes down so we're trying to smooth out the results instead of going like this the expected compensation increases were a little bit lower for public safety this year which is a plus which means that reduces the liability the assumed rate of return on the assets was reduced from 7.5% to 7.25% this is used as the discount rate to develop the liability so the lower the interest rate or the lower the discount rate the higher the actuarial liability is so that decision was made for this year because of the market and where things were going into the future the mortality assumption was updated I'm going to talk about that in a few minutes that's a good thing because it will smooth out mortality results going forward the next page shows the historical rates of return on market value basis from 2005 to 2017 and you'll notice on 6.30 2016 you actually had a negative 1.06 return in 2017 you had a positive 12.21% return hence the smoothing is a good thing that's a three wide swing for one year so down to the next slide the assumed rate of return is 7.25 the market value rate of return was 12.21% compared to last year's negative 1.06 the three year average the market value returns for three years was 4.24% five years was 8.52% and the 10 year was 5.26% you can see there's a lot of variation in those returns over time the asset valuation method on the next page is called the smoothing method and if you would like to go through the actual how we get there the expected assets based on the assumed rate return which would be the 7.25% and we subtract out the market value and we take 20% of that difference and then we adjust the assets by that difference so we're really only recognizing 20% of the gain and loss on the assumed rate and once we do that we have to be within 80 and 120% of the market value we have to deal with our actuarial value we have to make sure it's within that corridor so the actuarial value on 7.1.2017 was 32 million dollars the market value was just a little bit less as 31.75 so they're converging together the slide kind of on the next page points that out I'm sorry this is kind of tiny here but the red line is the actuarial value of the assets using the smoothing method the blue line is the market value and we started doing this in 2015 from 2017 so you can see with the red line it's a smoother line than the market value going down and then ratcheting back up so that's working I think well for the city of South Burlington especially in this market environment I want to talk a little bit next about the mortality assumption last year we used a mortality basis that actually projected future increases in longevity out of 7 years we did that because we really didn't we have a small group here compared to plants that have hundreds of thousands of employees so it's hard to really judge the mortality rate to be credible in such a small group so this year we looked at beemers which has a population much larger but very similar because it's made up of municipalities beemers used the this table which is the RP2006 with a projection scale MP of 2014 and then generationally projected forward we used all future years this time not just 7 so we projected all future years as did beemers consistent with what they are doing the other change we made is that there is a general mortality table which is based on the general population of people but there's also a blue collar mortality table we used the blue collar for the police and fire and the reason we did that is it's consistent with that profession and also actually beemers used the same blue collar table for their police and fire so I think we're going to be very consistent with our body of participants and applying it to the South Burlington population doing that the impact was an increase in liability of $5,000 so using the blue collar lower the liability somewhat in the police and fire and the general table increased it and the general population was using the non-public safety so it came out to be about $5,000 difference but we're applying it to the correct populations in our case the other assumptions I want to go briefly over employee turnover that's how many employees turn over in the beginning of the year we used the T3 table which is a moderate table we have not changed that the experience is consistent with that long term rate of return as you know went down and that was a known fact that contributed to an increase of $1,050,000 that was the big driver for your increase in your contribution of $200,000 this year because of that reduction in the discovery anybody have any questions about that that's when we said the discovery goes down and the liability goes up that's exactly what happened assumed return age is unchanged public safety assumed return age is 53 even though they can retire at 50 but the experience is closer to 53 non-public safety it's age 65 plan compensation our assumptions are unchanged 5% increases for public safety and non-public safety is at 4% as far as plan experience goes public safety active participants decreased by 1 there was no change in the non-public safety active participants overall there's 233 total participants versus 229 last year and we just talked about the compensation I won't go into that too much but that's there the compensation for each particular group but it was consistent with a little less on the public safety side but consistent overall the next thing most people ask is how well funded is your plan and what we do here is we prepare the benefits that have been earned today so if you stop the plan today what would everybody be owed in terms of benefits and we compare that to the assets so on the very next page you'll see the funded status based on actuarial smooth value and there's a I'm going to go to the total column the present value of all the benefits that have been earned under the plan is about 31 million versus 32 million in assets so you're at the plus side a little over 100% a load down from last year but still over 100% I want to make a point that this is just the benefits earned to date it's not benefits that are going to crew next year in the year after that we have a snapshot in time different from the GASB reports that we give to the odors of the city we happen to be lucky because of the 12% this is actuarial value so it is the same value you went down a little but not a lot 105 to 103 the next one is the market value so that you can see the prior year was 98% and it went up to 102 that is the reflection of the change in the market value of the assets is this the ratio that was at like 72% or determined to be at 72% about 5 or 6 or 7 years ago then we brought it back up to 100% with the loan with the loan how many years we pay that loan on forever spend 7 of it 20 years are we how many years we have 13 months we can't refinance my understanding right Tom we can't refinance at a penalty and right now that penalty outweighs what the game is we're probably a few more years but we do move into a variable rate which might help bring it down a little bit because of that way of destruction we started at 5, 6, 5% so we might be able to do better than that good to find out when we have a crossover point because I thought I'm glad to hear that because I thought we couldn't refinance at least for now the number you're recommending are you recommending that we mandate it to fund at the level of your the unfunded liability amount that you're proposing or do we ultimately have a choice on this well that's where Gatsby comes in yeah, Gatsby is probably going to drive that a little bit more but you do have the ability to choose whether you want to do another 10 year amortization or on the 20 year amortization I believe in the last few years you've used as your benchmark which is fine 20 years is fine, I've seen city plans that go out 30-40 years in amortizing their unfunded but those plans are much less well funded than your plan so the 20 years is a comfortable amortization period I'm not saying I want to do this but do we have the option to just put in a million 46 and short it 200,000 municipalities can make those decisions unlike private sector plans that are mandated to use a certain minimum amount that's one of the reasons we've had well for many million dollars that has typically happened in other municipalities over time and that's why many many cities and towns across the country are under water it is more in Chicago I just wasn't saying I want to do it knowing the options California you're one of the much better funded plans here the viewers is a Vermont organization Vermont Municipal Employee Retirement Plan it covers municipalities who don't have their own plan or portions of their own is that ever been considered could we just pick up a whole thing and give it to the viewers and give them the possibility it would be a huge expense I'm just curious one of the things that have been looked at by the prior administration was doing that Tim and I think where the positions where the levels of employment made sense to transfer it over to beavers that was done and then all new employees had started going into the beavers plan non-public safety or bargain and the plan that those bargaining units have with the city is better than beavers so they're not inclined to want to switch but a number of changes were made back in 2012 to determine what positions currently existed within the city that made sense to transfer them into the beavers plan and those were done at that time and that's what I meant when I said a piece of a plan to go to beavers some employees could go as long as the new employees also go in that same does Burlington have the same they have their own pension plan as well and then coal chester has their own coal chester I don't believe has a defined benefit plan anymore they used to I think a long time ago I believe so I know this is so exciting but does anybody have any questions about are they ready? I'd love to know more about other municipalities that might have switched a defined contribution from a defined benefit here that would be a true community here we could comment and talk about that at a different time with your license so you did say that there were 233 participants versus 229 so does that mean that many more people have retired we've had some people that were active who were made to term a retiree and then they replaced so the active population has said about the same but the total population which includes retirees and terminated participants the total is 233 do these pensions come with the spousal benefit a possibility? and once that's chosen and time retiree can't be changed there's two different spousal benefits one is a pre-retirement death benefit the other is a retirement benefit where they can choose to cover a spouse so a continued benefit to a spouse and it is irrevocable once they choose okay thank you very much Tracy it's a pleasure to work with you for your help okay moving on to item 15 update of amendments to the pensions plan document I'll take this one so a few months back a number of months back we talked to you about one of the things that we wanted to do was raise the payout maximum from $10,000 in the plan and $25,000 basically what this does and actually and Tracy put this memo together put the amendment together for us here and this was reviewed by Andrew and this would incorporate the appropriate language into the South Burlington pension plan and so we need to do this as a formal action of the council and I think Kevin has a formal motion there but I'd be happy to respond to anything that basically allows us at this point to go ahead and start making these payouts I remember the conversations so I'm still ready I'm still ready just check it out this doesn't have any implications with the current labor contracts they were fully in support the $10,000 limit goes all the way back I think to $72,000 this is just setting the $25,000 that's not scaling automatically yeah it sets it at $25,000 now and I think the idea is to look at it every five years or so does this require a spousal release at all or a spousal agreement or a signature it does that's all if you're concerned no no no it used to be that you had to opt if you wanted to exclude your spouse from a pension remainder benefit they had to sign up the spouse originally it used to be they had to they didn't have to opt now they have to opt but it's been for a long time 30 years ago or so there are stories of spouses who retire who did not give their spouse a choice of a remainder benefit for a reason so I was just curious whether that was a requirement so no problem we've come a long way can't do that that's okay I would like to make the motion that the city council direct the city manager to sign the amendment as proposed for the south rent and retirement to authorize the amendment in fact the proposal is signing any further discussion just to add to the fact that it was unanimous coming out of the pension advisory committee and recommendation and what I do good okay so all in favor they say aye thank you Tom thank you you're in here and next up is supposed to be in town so just remember a whole lot of questions overview of the draft 0.19 budget so a lot of figures on these pages so go through them with you fairly quickly here basically at the top of what you have on page one we are projecting a three quarter percent growth in the grand list which will generate just over $221,000 the 3% proposed increase in the tax rate which is your guidance basically provides $550 for a total just over $771,000 increase in the budget from in the tax rate to $221,000 just below that you see some pretty startling figures here where group health insurance is going up about 12% just over $218,000 the pensions going up mainly with what Tracy just described here but keep in mind this number also includes those employees that are in the beamers plan which is going up slightly but not as significant that's $290,000 and then the salaries projected with Steppen and Kola you see the non-public safety there just over $70,000 the public safety that's going to cost about $165,000 totaling just over $744,000 so you can see that with the growth in the grand list and with the 3% increase that is the council guidance we're almost out of budget dollars for this year just based on three items in the budget we had, we shared these figures with our managers this morning and basically said that looking at this it's not hard to determine that this is not sustainable moving forward that these things have to change anyway the delta is a positive number about $27,000 so with that we also had some additional things that happened within the budget we knew that within the revenue budget that there were going to be some figures that we had to look at to make more realistic and some we had had some control over and some we didn't the fund 240s are summer rec camps and as I think you've all been informed the school district is taking over the summer rec camp programs that's going to affect our general fund budget of $32,000 that's just how it affects the general fund it significantly impacts the recreation special fund budget which allows them to do a lot of different things during the course of the year in terms of the general fund that's $32,000 rec donations, rec programs both have losses in them and those numbers are there the fire inspection revenue as you're aware currently sets at $475,000 a couple of years ago we hit that that was a great growth year within the city there were a lot of inspections there was a lot of development last year I think we finished up $169,000 significantly off the mark of $475,000 a revenue projection is a number we want to hit we don't want to have to make out in our budget for not aligning a revenue number properly so we're in the process of bringing that $475,000 down you'll see that we anticipated wanting to bring that down $125,000 you'll see in a later page here that we weren't able to do that much just to make the balance meet the budget meet but we are going to lower it some same with the electrical inspection although not as significant a drop there and then there's some the court finds we're continuing not to be able to make the dollars there not that tickets aren't being issued the tickets that are being issued are compromised in terms of the money that would come back to the City of South Burlington so we're not getting the if a fine for something is $100 and the person hearing the case lowers it to $20,000 we're getting a portion of that $20 and the state is getting some of that money and that's what's happening on a regular basis so you'll see in the court finds and the police dropping that number has significantly dropped over the years the impact fee money because growth is projected to be a little bit lower we're taking that down a little bit in road opening permits are down almost $300,000 drop in of revenue dollars that we would have that need to be made up within the budget if you go to page 2 of expenditures that had proposed increases either by department managers or by Kevin and I a couple at the top were on the top of our list the increase to the sick bank fund we wanted to increase $25,000 same with the stewardship program and on the recommendation of our auditor the recommendation of we support as well establishing a stabilization fund none of those things are going to happen as you'll see on other pages we wanted to increase the paving $25,000 a year we've been at $575 for I think the past story of four years we're going to have to stay there public art was in the budget this year that's been cut the scanning and digitizing of documents that's a movement within the planning and zoning city clerk stormwater where people can call up their property and see all the different tax documents property documents everything is on a file that's where we want to head we want to be able to pull all these documents up and have them as a resource to the people within our city you can see what the cost is to do that it's about $85,000 to make that happen that's been pulled out of the budget for next year would that have completed it or is that just that wouldn't have completed it but then there's an annual cost to maintain it which isn't as high as that Helen the garage doors of the fire department that's to repair all of them I'm sure we'll have to do some of the work but we won't do the $27,000 Doug wanted to institute a resident firefighter program that's been cut the CIP's increase over last year as you know was approved at $115,000 we've made some adjustments to that the two positions that were included initially in the budget included the deputy fire marshal position this would be a backup for Terry Francis we're not going to be able to do that next year you can see what the salary benefit cost is there and I know Bob's here the bike and head coordinator was the other position that the council had also expressed interest in and you can see what the cost of that position would be that's also been cut I think you're shifting over to the back page in your presentation I think I'm kind of covering both because I think the numbers are different I was just trying to say so anyway you see on page 2 what the expenditure increases are it's at two of about a million dollars can I just go back to the bike and head coordinator is there a possibility not to hire someone but is there any money to have like contract someone to write grants possibly right now Helen you'll see all the individual budget so we'll come to you right now we're at 3.44% increase in terms of everything that's been proposed and everything that's been we've had as opposed to 3 3.44 covers what do we get as a result of that extra 4.44 you get most of what was in the CFP most of it but not all about 105,000 dollars I'm surprised I'm open to seeing the center reserve fund cut by 110 so it was cut from what 800 and that was a significant one there's 860,000 dollars taking us five years to get to that number and the idea was to fund that on an annual basis at the 860 so this was the first year we weren't going to see an increase in it but we've actually to balance the budget we've actually had to decrease that number and so this would by 110,000 so this would put 750,000 750,000 of that amount of money into the we might draw attention to that and cut it more but I would just say this I think paving is really important I hear constantly from people about the importance of having more money to have a bike path another roadway is just attended to I've gotten neighbors that can speak to it so I don't know if 110 can go a little bit more and we'll be able to listen to that but that might not that's exactly what I want you thinking about I want you to take this sheet home we're going to be sending you a draft of the budget in the next couple of days and you can compare that with what's here you'll see exactly what's being appropriated so that by the time you're meeting with department managers on the 4th, January Thursday the 4th then you'll have some good insight and be able to really give some thought as to what you might want to do and might not want to do with the reserve funds the designated reserve which is a council account which was established back when we were losing money from the airport to offset the loss and tax revenue from the houses there now that the court settlement has been done we've been able to keep that money in there but abatements last year were $72,000 there's got to be an expenditure item somewhere that offsets that I don't have a question for you and I'm looking at the 3.25% grand list growth how far are we seeing the Oblian project? that could be a number of years before we see that I know there are hopes to have houses up this year but keep in mind the grand list is set on April 1st you know I don't know that we'll see anything that's going to add to the grand list for next year based on that but at least it's something that's in the pipeline we know that eventually there's going to come some grand list growth oh yeah, you've got Rye still building it Southern Health Phase 2 at some point you're going to have some of O'Brien's bill side I was reading so in terms of reserves then are we going to wipe well we still have you say 700 that we're putting into the city center reserve for 750 but the designated reserves looks less than that 50 there's 150,000 so there'd be 50 left in that and then the undesignated reserve 21 we're cutting 11 out of that so there'd be 10 you notice that there's a cut to the social services fund in here so much for having a bigger impact yeah and it was a complete scrub of the budget I mean this is really just to fill in what was asked for and what was needed to make the balance on the city center fund where did we come up with the 860 and now that we're three years from or four years from when that target was set do we need to update based on current circumstances and now what we know about plan development on our time horizon is that 860s or now 750 is that fungible is that the soft spot to move things around I think it largely depends on our perspective it's going to be public facilities I think this goes back to the original expectations that there would be a library city hall and recreation facility similar to what was suggested by the Bobby Maynes committee of four years ago so this ties back to that if we're going to be able to do those projects and the component and other components of storm water and all that I think we're in that plan we need to get the 860 and the non-tip portion rather than hitting the tax fair to that point the reserve is there and then bore out with the vote by the public on Market Street the park we were able to say to them no impact on the tax so that's how that worked to be able to do all the other projects so what that might force is a revaluation of the public projects in the city center which is the conversation you're talking about I think Tom because part of our logic when we presented those TIF votes was that no tax because we had reserve funding and we had the TIF money coming in on these projects that were already done so the question is if you decrease the reserve fund do we start getting close to having to renege on that promise we had to get close to having to adjust our expectations about public about future projects so when Amy came in and presented tonight just to recall when Amy came in to present tonight she was presenting the project that completes the TIF funding for Market Street and city center park remember when Tom and I presented on that last year before your vote we knew Cathedral was coming in we were building and we more left knew about CHT at the time so with the CHT project the TIF revenue that we have expecting to come in will cover what we're doing on Market Street next year and city center park with the reserve with the reserve without using the taxpayers without again without using we won't need to use the reserve funds with those additional buildings we won't we had proposed to use them at the time because we didn't have we only knew of the one building so what you saw in that sheet was a projection of what we might have had to have taken out of the reserve fund to make it work but what Kevin's saying now is with the addition of this building the reserve funds will not be needed they'll be all TIF revenue that will pay for it we're off on total now I think we're just over 3 million and that 3 million and that 860 that was on all 13 projects was that number of configured on the parking garage and the bike path bridge over 89 bridge over 89 was intended to be another funding source other than TIF revenue and I don't know how deep the number I don't know how deep into the project list we will check that though because that that discussion really needs to happen as we begin to if we begin to bend down the curve on that 860 besides the city center reserve fund what are the other soft spots is there a soft spot term sweet spots where there's play impact fees to some extent other impact fees so these are connected to one thing to change the flexibility of them to cover other things are you talking about city center projects which is where else could are in general are you just talking about pots of money that are collected that might be they're meant to be rated what we talked about a while ago about changing the impact fee ordinance to permit an application for other uses is that part of other projects so some impact fees are designated for certain projects in city center so that's another funding source for some projects I have to think a little bit more about other well of course private fund raising when we're talking about the library had always been a component of the library construction so that was a pool as well I'd have to think about whether or not there are others I'm sure there are so I mean it is possible if we're at 3 mil in the reserve fund now it is possible to take a larger pause on the reserve fund than just 110k if we we have only so many years we're not doing as much we're not planning to do as much as I'm just asking that question because we were taking each 60 a year right for that well I'm a little reticent to rate that that's the future although I I get it looking at a very lean budget are you finished with your presentation no we're all I was just a suggestion on pocket of money the recreation to a grant writer for instance if the ordinance can't use it for can't use impact fees for that purpose okay is it for physical that's what they're doing so Tom are you I think somebody asked a question about a grant writer are there options in terms of what you could use a bike and ped coordinator for yes it could be a part time position you could describe what it is you're hoping that person would accomplish in the course of a year and try to determine the funding for that but it would need to come from somewhere and so when you see the line items within the budget that whatever whatever that would cost if it's $20,000 it's got to be met with $20,000 somewhere else or the 3.44% that we're currently at would go out are you saying that you went through this process and found where the growth was and stuff so the budget you're going to send to us in a couple of days is predicated on a 3.44% you couldn't get it down to 3 in other words without listing some additional accounts alright and how much does .44% yeah so putting I'll tell you this putting $150,000 back in gets you to 3.21% 3.21% 3.21% $25,000 or $50,000 $300,000 probably cutting $300,000 to get us to around 3% probably pretty close if it comes from revenue or expense because it adjusts the grand list differently so the formula is built into the budget you know you I think Sue will send you in a format that if you play with the figures you'll be able to see how it adjusts the tax rate that's basically what we've done to get us to this point today our current city tax rate is 2.04% that's with the M back group health insurance in our this country needs a state the total rate for the city is 2.04% that's 1.46% no I have I'm looking at this I know you do everything you can to get it down I am concerned in hearing what the state may propose but there are 8 or 9 cents you know which is huge and of course we're not going to know that for quite a period of time so and I think we have unfortunately in some ways limited capacity on the taxation piece and I think that's why we've tried to stay in that 3 and I think we can see that it's an increase in the grand list would certainly give us a boost and that's why I was asking what are the outstanding projects that will be coming up over time that would help us not that we want to make a one year decision to have it higher and I know where they come in because I can remember doing some budgets where we are absolutely the former chair leveled at that year and how difficult it was because it meant almost a 7% that was not thrilling for me so I'm wondering if if the 3% is the beyond and over as we start looking through this we find that it needs to be 3.44 marginally raised no I don't necessarily disagree it's a problem I mean this is tough splitting the cuts that cause me the most are the cuts to paving it's worth you all hearing it's not a cut it's just not an increase I don't know if we need a bike and pen coordinator but that's what community members hear and I think bike has really connected out of every corner of the city so I'd like to see more progress in our bike and pedestrian paths so I don't know if the coordinator is the way to get there but I heard about having it for a contractor so long or using it to contract somebody's services I'd be open to prioritizing that but that's just me would you like to see more resource the construction the maintenance of the four hot spots as well as the maintenance so you might get projects done blind kill I know is the big one but the other three we could nibble and we should go ahead yeah and I think that would be important to have some sort of more immediate projects completed we need gratification of what people like versus I mean I think blind killings that's such a huge project that's going to be quite a few years in planning and execution I mean people see stormwater projects right sometimes I don't know if they understand the value and there have been a lot of stormwater projects right but they haven't seen any kind of construction or major revisions so that's the kind of thing where they go oh here's my tax dollars work for me to be able to get from point A to point B let me address that it's a fascinating point my perspective Bob and I have talked about this my perspective is that's because you have probably the states leading expert on stormwater finding a grant himself having the engineering done by people who he knows and he pushes him on and then moving the project forward we get tied up in the grant process for state funds to support BytePass and it means we have to accept all the strings too and so to do it the way the state wants you to do it you have to do the scoping and we talked about the scoping for the Dorset Street project was two years and then you have engineering and when all that's done my understanding is Bob correct me on this when all that's done what's left in the grants will pay for half of the construction because it's used so we've spent a lot of money on scoping and engineering only to find that our our funds are depleted so we can't do all the construction and so is there another way I don't know I have an idea but there's another way you mean like half a cent or no I mean I mean like going out and finding a a 60 year old Vermonter who's been digging holes his entire life and as an excavator and say dig a six foot wide eight inch deep one mile long hole and do it right in our right away from here to here for free not for free but then fill it up with fresh product there we go and my guess is that 60 year old Vermonter probably knows more about engineering a path like that but that being said it's just not the way we do things so but that means we get a lot of planning done a lot of engineering done and very little bike path try it your way next year I don't know I think our public works director would probably tell me a hundred reasons why that's not a good idea but I think we have to find new ways to do things if we want to give the public services that they want which is not the engineering and the scoping they want the path and maybe lower our expectations as to whether or not they could be a paved path for a few years but get something in the ground you know the safety aspects of it I mean these hot spots there's no shoulders and people aren't strollers out in the middle of the road so I think it should be it's a priority for me and it helps me the goals of the city as well as the transportation getting people out of their single this might be unfair to put out to our staff but I'll risk that anyway and say this we have a list of proposed cuts and for me since you're the day to day folks that handled this and I think any one of us could have prioritization that we have a pet project or a pet area or so on I want to know if there is some guidance that you can give us that would help to prioritize a little better what would be overall city wise getting either projects done or plans done or things in place that if we were to adjust this and if we found that we couldn't get consensus on a 3.44 where would be the areas that would have the best impact for the general citizens of the city what do we need from the promises we've made or the pledges that we've had out there to those that we might be able to hold off a year or so until our grand list is in better condition you can tell me that's unfair to ask I know it's always well we're going to lose the cruiser this year or something like that I just want to know where we can have the best impact and you that deal with this every day you and Kevin and the staff you make the hard decisions on that but if there was another hundred and a half coming in what would be the areas that would most probably need to be boosted first and I won't ask you tonight obviously for that but is that something that we might be able to explore that we don't want to have a lot of deferred maintenance and things like that we understand that that's problematic when we have those things so the stewardship and items like that but if we had to make those decisions as to which ones were critically important that we need to do can we get some help with that so I just want to be certain that's the way you're asking for you're looking for a priority list of projects citywide that would be a higher recommended more highly recommended than others on the list I mean the fire department car store right the fire department maintenance I don't know if that's one that's going to be done you know what we were talking about uniforms before certain pieces of equipment for the fire department that they had to have for the safety piece and we didn't have the funds and so on so I'm looking and saying if somebody came back into this budget where does the city see that that would be applied to first within the 3.44 percent right if we came up with 3.25 so I guess the first thing we have to do is decide where is that additional money come from right if it was right well I mean the 3.44 includes all of these proposed cuts correct so if you're going to raise it and you're trying to find $150,000 are you thinking you're going to cut somewhere else or are you saying maybe it needs to be maybe just a little more I'm just I know I guess I was looking at and I thought when I said 3.44 okay with that increase over maybe I was not understanding that that is with all the cuts okay fine alright that being said with the 3.44 being out there I still in taking a look at your cuts you know the proposed cuts and the amounts from them there's no sharpening the pencil beyond where you are now do you feel I think the city center reserve fund resides outside the general fund the general fund dollars are the annual contribution if you decide that you're comfortable putting less into that that's an area you can take from if you're looking to cut anything further within the general fund this year I mean we finished $1,000 on accounts receivable last year okay I think we're looking at on the verge of cutting positions okay so if we had to cut paper we'd have to go to the city center reserve fund is what I just heard you say unless you cut the other reserve funds completely but I would not be confident telling you we'll make the budget soft spot we're talking about physical to the taxpayer now there were a lot of bites and bites there was city fast and that was very visible is that something that is affected by these cuts so if the bike and bites is completely offset with revenue so if that does not hold to be the case then those would be cut city fast has been reduced and I think it's pretty much balanced out with revenue we have to recheck that well revenue maybe if I could reframe what I thought part of the past question was which of these cuts were the most painful for you there was something you would add back what surfaces to the top for me it's the reserve fund because there's no leeway the city center reserve fund or no and designated reserve fund if you didn't mind we have three contracts that we're bargaining for we have no idea what the outcome of those is going to be after the year from 150 to 50 is there a way to make the city center reserve fund 100,000 or more flexible so that halfway through the year when we know more information that the 100,000 that's currently in the city center reserve fund could be designated reserve or is that too misleading for the public I think it has to be said in terms of what the public knows it's going to be done so that's your first choice as manager that's your recommendation if you were to add money back from what is prepared here and I agree with Tom our recommendation would be to go into the reserve that's helpful it's scary how the treasure it's a designated reserve fund what's to stop that just coming from the city center reserve fund and hopefully we don't spend it because it's a reserve fund we just move it into the city center reserve fund next year does that make sense what I just said I mean I understand what you're saying it's a council it's a council prerogative to do that you have the right to do that within the last three months of the budget year you can decide that that's something you want to do even mine doesn't put anything else on the balance sheet either that's the other if we're looking at what's the health of our total balance sheet we can't just look at the budget it's what kind of money do we have if a catastrophe is upon us and we can't and you're going to I don't even have to say that because you're going to hear from Ron on January 2nd and he is definitely going to say the same thing you've got to be putting more money on the balance sheet which is why we want the stabilization fund but to catch 22 you've got to be able to have the money to put there so that begs the next question which is if I had to project out from 19 to 25 on health insurance right and I look at salary costs for a long term the question has to be asked are we sustainable on the number of positions that the city has right now because if if I'm reading this council right and the future of the head fund continues to be a drain on available