review of technology options we know how to get out yes go right or left out the back right or left outside for those who are participating remotely if you'd like to speak during the meeting turn your camera on and the chair will call on you or send me a note in the chat okay thank you item three is the agenda review are there any additions deletions or changes in order of agenda items Tyler or Andrew any changes we will move on to comments and questions from the public not related to the agenda yes mr. Metag so yes I'm Michael Metag I live just off Swift Street I've been here since 2001 I served on the Wheeler conservation easement task force I served on the city's form-based code committee I am a director of the South Burlington Land Trust and I'm a member of the South Burlington Planning Commission and I was very very much involved in having the voters approve the land swap and its associated commitment to have a conservation easement on the Wheeler Park December the 6th this year will be our 12th anniversary I wasn't planning to have a celebration but it's it's it will be 12 years and I was here tonight to ask the council or staff for the current status of the Wheeler conservation easement okay Jesse has an update so the next step is to stake the property that was an expectation of the land trust before we did the final closing we are in the park we are waiting a final LOA from CEA which are the surveyors to do that work once that is executed it will be staked once it is staked within a certain notice period we can finalize the agreement with the land trust this is to set the boundaries when to mark the not set the boundaries the boundaries are set for our understanding it's marked the boundaries so where the encroachment from the neighbors has happened they know they either need to unencroach or that their land will be there their perceived land will be conserved so is that a matter of months or weeks or days it's not a matter of days because it's got to be staked for a period of time but I think it's I mean it's whatever the council would feel comfortable but with but I think if it's been staked for 30 days then the land trust will likely feel comfortable doing the transfer okay to get out and do the work and as you can imagine a lot of environmental engineers and surveyors are quite busy with flood-related work right now so just need hours to get out and do it so it's it's risen it's risen to the top of the pie or near the top of the pile I wonder why my next question had to do with the potential easement on the Hubbard and whether the council or staff would like the land trust to connect the city with the Lake Champlain land trust which has expressed a very serious interest in in holding the easement on Hubbard sure if you want to do an email introduction of me to them that would be great okay and then they'll contact you great thank you thank you that's all no more questions your honor hey thank you mr. squeaky wheel are there any other comments from the public on any item not on the agenda seeing none we'll move on to item five counselors announcements and reports on committee assignments and the city manager's report so would you like to start sure Megan so the Rotary sponsored police dinner and it was an awards dinner where several of our officers and detectives were recognized not only by their peers but also by state and federal law enforcement officials for their fine work and I just I always enjoy that event I truly thank the Rotary for hosting it I learned that night that that is in fact part of the mission of the Rotary I don't know if it's worldwide because I do know it's an international association and I also attended the abolition and revolution film screening that April April Fisher a local film filmmaker produced that was on September 1st and it was I thought a pretty compelling perspective and I think that it is important for us even if we don't identify or or perhaps even what I want to say see it as as kind of the ultimate story about various events in this country I think it's important for us to hear stories told from perspectives that are different from ours because I learned things that night and probably because of my perspective I was not privy to some of the things I learned that night and I think it's it's really important for for people to go outside of their comfort zones and and to hear stories told from another one's point of view including our national our national story so I want to thank Lydia Diamond publicly for hosting and for the library Jennifer Murray was there to set it all up and it was I thought really well done and they brought food in and it was I thought a good a good use of the space and I look forward to future to future film screenings thank you thank you Kim thank you Helen so I attended the electric bus ceremony up at the Veterans Memorial Park the week before they had the Highland CEO there and the most of the SBSD administration people including Violet Nichols the superintendent and this was just a realization of the performance so far of the and the cooperation between Thomas buses and Highland that that designs the infrastructure for the electrical part of it and the school district and the work that they've done the fact they have four buses now they had they had three up at the park and I think they said that at this point they have driven a collective 29,000 miles electricity and I didn't get to go on the bus ride I'm sorry but and they also had a factoid about the amount of carbon dioxide that they had avoided was it like 900 some I can't if I knew the exact number I can't remember I was impressed it really was a lot and that's just four buses yeah four buses then so that is really a good story so far and I just returned from three nights of vacation and Portsmouth, New Hampshire where the weather was great and the waves were big and we got chased out of one of the beaches by high tide you have to know whether your beach or Hampton what the high tide is because basically you're squished off on the rocks and but the waves at Hampton Beach on Sunday were beautiful and great and yet to be careful because if you got sucked at the wrong place you could tumble and so I got tumbled my son got tumbled nobody got hurt but back at Wallace Sands which is another great state park excellent excellent weather and waves and perfect for body surfing and putting it more plus they have a summer's long arts festival in Portsmouth and it's combination of musical events with with nationally known and local artists and also theater outside rain or shine and so we happen to be able to see a Devon Guilphillion in his his a four-person band as well as Ali McGurkey I think her name opened for him but what a great band I mean this gentleman is from Philadelphia outside Philadelphia but he's in Nashville now and he has been raised on Marvin Gaye in fire you name it right if it's no town or something like that he has got that groove down and it was a great one-hour set and I appreciate the fact that we just stumbled into that so it was a good time getting away and getting a little bit of sun you tumbled in your stomach I tumbled and stumbled and I'm dead you know the ocean water does wonders for your sinuses especially if you've been body surfing for about three hours you know it's good for your skin and your hair to know it's great thank you okay thank you Andrew do you have anything to report can you he's saying in the chat that he's still getting set up changing computers but also attended the film screening and echoes Megan's comments okay thank you Tyler anything to share anyway everyone hear me okay we can thank you oh fantastic so I can all I can share is that I can definitely relate to Tim's sentiments about being thrown through what feels like a spin cycle at high speed that has been my professional life and personal life for the past several weeks I apologize for my absence I did have the opportunity to attend the South Burlington Police Department's recognition dinner on this past Sunday excuse me the Sunday prior it was a wonderful event I was really proud to to have been there and to to to have played it I'll be at a very small role in it and the only thing that I'll say is that I come my my big takeaway from the event was that what we see in our community what we have we've from speaking for myself there's so much that our police department does on a day-in-day-out basis to keep us safe and there are so many things that occur that we're we're we're not privy to it was it was remarkable and I'm deeply grateful for for them their service and for their families for being so patient understanding as they put themselves in harm's way to keep us all safe I was reflecting if I could sure yeah because they do put their lives on the line I was reflecting with an FBI agent who was at my table about how when we moved here in 2002 there was a homicide in the previous homicide had been 10 years prior and that was statewide and how many homicides did they talk about that night over the course of a year and a half to two years many many more so we right we we have a very different environment in which our police officers are operating and we don't know about it because they're doing such a good job Andrew can you can you hear me now we can see you and hear you all right I'm in good do you have anything to report or discuss no nothing nothing to add like I said I echo Megan's comment I thought it was a wonderful film that Lydia presented and a really important perspective thank you okay I went to the same two events the electric bus and the awards dinner and that I I totally agree it blew my mind away I said at a very high level table everyone got quite a few awards it was cool I just happened to sit sit at that table and then the other thing that I just want to share on one of my walks with a good friend we hadn't for a long time gone down to the goose park and walking through that I don't know if you have walked through there recently but the plantings are absolutely stunning the goose park yeah I would just really encourage anyone to just stroll through it the plantings are just beautiful some of the geese are still poking out from planting so maybe they did a little bit of a trim but the colors and it just was really fabulous and I thought how wonderful to have that kind of option to go and sit or walk through that in our city center yeah because even after everything's built that still will be as beautiful and embracing as it was the other night so Jesse thanks so I only have a few updates thanks we do a pretty heavy council meeting just a reminder that the advertisement is out for a number of folks to sit on external boards and committees so we're looking for an appointment for town meeting TV the Chinden County Communications Union District Muskie Valley Parks District and then our own development review board we still need one more person on that board the due date is September 13th in order for us to bring you candidates on the 18th we've only received one well we've received two applicants both for one board or for different boards so really encourage folks to talk to their friends who might want to serve in any of those capacities public works want to let you know that the Dortsett Street Signals project is ongoing the mast heads will arrive later this month and start being installed so we'll start seeing above ground work in late September early October it will continue to be a bit disruptive but we hope that we thank people for their patience just a reminder to the council that the library and staff are marching in the Burlington Pride parade on Sunday if anyone is interested in joining us you're welcome to walk behind our banner with us and then I also want to thank State Treasurer Pete check for joining us for that awards dinner I thought his commentary about loneliness and connection and how we all actively take roles to create safe communities was really timely so thank him for that effort what are town meeting TV when you ski valley district the DRB and what was the and the Chittenden County Communications Union district which was the new municipal union district we established to extend fiber it's very active right now we've secured a contractor to work on the expansion it doesn't have a huge impact on South Burlington we only have 20 homes that are not fully connected it has a very significant impact on other communities in our county so we're being a good partner we get more they the union district it's more funding if we are a part of it it's really for people who are interested in fibering connections it's a really interesting board really talented people on it and and county-wide not just for South Burlington how often are those meetings so right now there's they're twice a month from three to four thirty all virtual all remote I believe that will go down once we get through this mapping process all right town meeting TV still once a month yes Helen and then the winterski valley district do you know how many I think they are once a month once a month too okay okay great so thank you oh yep is that it yes but I'm can I make an agenda well keep going keep going and then I'm gonna make an agenda oh okay suggestion all right um so item six then is the consent agenda we have two items the disbursements and then approving uh the Vermont community electric vehicle charger program grant applications for the police station and public works I move to approve the consent agenda second very discussion yes one small thing yes in the um in the uh the share point whatever it's called we're the files are there was only one file for the the disbursements um in particular but it's the spreadsheet right and usually it is a part a and a part b there was only one file it was very short so the question is was there very little on the the warrants this this last period or was one of the files missing from that I can double check what was submitted in the agenda but it wasn't that low if you think it was one page it was more than one page there were two pages in the agenda but the spread here an excel spreadsheet kind of guy I always look at what's in the pack I love the spreadsheet because I can do lots of things with it I can make pivot tables I can order it I can you know stuff like that I just so it could be that only one was included in as an excel but two of them were all pdf okay well if I could just reiterate that I'd look at the excel spreadsheets I mean I can look at both but I can't do anything with the data in the pdf because it's I can't sort it or I can't you know highlight it I'm happy to email that to you and we will remember to include what next time thank you thank you um Andrew did you have a question on something yeah the ev charging grant application a couple of things one one I think it's wonderful I didn't know there was such a generous program so curious why um 575 is not um part of the grant application as well and also curious why we um are asking for you know just four charges which maybe sounds like a lot now but kind of doesn't really future proof us um in anticipation of where we hope to get to is a city in a few short years under our climate action plan so is there is there a limit there is a reason why we chose four rather than eight or 12 or something like that Martha's coming back up and and I don't know the answer to why 575 didn't apply are they able to or do you have to be a municipality in that education yes yeah I'm not sure if blue breezy is available online he was going to be I don't know why well there's there was limit the limit was only four that's why we only apply for four okay four uh pd and four at public walks because that's where we're getting our electrical vehicles too our electric vehicles are going there it's correct so blue is with us too so it's actually eight four at the police department or four public works correct okay blue do you have something to add to that I just got on so I I think Martha just said it correctly of the grant only allowed for each location okay and but again I mean we have um also location at 575 right you're referring to the fire department yeah what's 575 but do we have electric vehicles for the fire department not yet well people drive to work right well we have we have one station one charger there that we use for the car for 10 years yeah I know but I mean I guess just in terms of if we can get four basically free chargers at the fire station and there's 30 firefighters um and hopefully in time everyone will get an electric car um I don't know why wouldn't we do that that's certainly certainly the plan that the thought was let's let's go for two now see what happens uh if we get the grants we'll we'll keep one moving there's every reason to believe that this program will continue okay all right I guess the other thing is have we shared um you know basically it's incredibly generous program with the rest of the community with the school even with you know businesses like there's just a 10 percent match it's incredibly generous do I had it I didn't know about it but is there a mechanic we can share or have shared this information with other folks around the city I haven't done anything along those lines but I know that the ccrpc has broadcast the availability pretty widely I don't know if businesses are eligible unless yes it's for profit organizations um have the 10 percent match so I think this state is doing a fair job as Lou suggests through the rpcs and other avenues to to get out the word on this funding source I would just remind the council what staff's what staff has the capacity to work on right now is implementing the climate action plan for government operations we are not doing anything proactively to publicize beyond municipal operations right all the funding that's available we have no capacity the question is jesse can we put something in the city newsletter about this we have not you could put it on the front panel from the energy committee yeah we could do that but can we put in the city newsletter we can and there we could do lots of things and that means we're not doing something that's government operations before we go down before we go down this road too far uh I have some reservations as to whether we're going to be able to install four charging stations at each of these locations for the amount of money that they're providing and until we get a feel for that I'm a little reluctant to jump in completely okay okay so we have a vote pending all right so if there's no other comments or discussion I would ask for a vote all those in favor please signify by saying aye so it is passed unanimously thank you our next item we're three minutes early but we can start it right so what I was going to say 10 minutes goes we could skip to item uh 13 and talk quickly about the FY 25 budget schedule oh okay we can ask Amy to come and talk to us about her application in advance of storing the public hearing at seven up to you um well why don't we keep it all together why don't we and Amy talk about the her application please oh so while you're setting up do you mind if we um talk about our um budget schedule okay why don't we do that and then we can get that done okay so item 13 then um approving an FY 25 budget schedule with this is typically what we do in late summer early fall and um Martha you want to make any colleges anyone have any questions or just have one comment just no one I can go holiday yeah so it's just if any of you have any questions but the proposal that we are adding in here is the fact that the budget process is currently going to be in line with the discussion on the city plan and we were going to pose to you if you would agree maybe setting up a day for budget retreats to just meet and discuss budget to allow everybody to have have time to ask questions and get answers so this was okay go ahead just a reminder going off of one a counselor challenge recommendations after the policies and strategies retreat was the I think not to put words in your mouth Andrew but he enjoyed the more kind of retreat conversational nature of that discussion so our thought was if you felt like um spreading the budget presentations over a series of council meetings that will also be your council meetings to hear feedback on the city plan you could schedule a budget retreat for friday december 15th which was kind of the one day we found that might work for staff um and do it in a one day session of budget presentations as opposed to over the course of several council meetings so that's really the kind of question on the table for you what's the pleasure of the council one day or spread it out I'd say one big shot sure on december 15th yeah it's a friday okay Tyler and Andrew does that sound okay okay with me okay and Tyler that's okay with you do you need a motion for this I don't do I don't think so I don't think so we'll just add that to the schedule or or include that in the schedule yeah so I think that'd be great is it too soon to ask the question that if we had a two million dollar surplus last fiscal here how would we be planning for next year do we expect to reach something like that or is it so so like Martha the finance person more precisely answer that but just a reminder that the biggest driver of that surplus was local options tax and that local options tax adjustment we already made in the fy-24 budget so we increased that revenue line by I think $850,000 in the fy-24 budget so we'll continue to track that and see where it comes in the permitting fee is a little more challenging we certainly have seen a development boom we don't know if that will continue we don't tend to budget more aggressively on that because it wait it ebbs and flows so much here to you what time do you foresee for the budget retreat um I don't we hadn't gone to that level of detail yet I think I'll just talk about the entire day yeah I would recommend either kind of nine to one with lunch at the end or a noon to four with lunch at the beginning session I think we're going to need about four hours to get through everybody okay okay that sounds good thanks yeah and just to add with that too the city manager will still have to do the final overall budget presentation here during your regular council meeting yeah right yeah and you would still likely do you would still do the public hearing for the public before you vote on the final budget to bring forward right right but this retreat is really to give us a little more detail and understand how the numbers were reached and free up your council meetings for city plan discussion okay that sounds good thank you all right well thank you so um I guess we have to open the public hearing so I'll move unless you have language nope go for it okay I'll move that we open the public hearing um on Champlain Housing Trust Vermont Community Development Program application to support feeding Chittenden second any discussion all those in favor signify by saying aye aye aye okay so we the public hearing is open and I guess I'll turn it over to Amy too and your team is the green light nice and bright you have to push the middle ah this now it's nice and bright thank you then we um then everyone else will hear you we can thank you so much for hosting this public hearing um to consider an application for the Vermont Community Development Program for the food shelf the Feeding Chittenden facility I'm Amy Dometowitz I'm the chief operating officer at the Champlain Housing Trust and I'm joined today by Paul Dragon who's the executive director of Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity and Rob Meehan who is the director of Feeding Chittenden um this the project Feeding Chittenden was the Chittenden emergency food shelf um if you all know it's on 228 North Winooski Avenue in Burlington on the corner of North Winooski Avenue and and North Union Street in the old north end and it was actually co-developed by the Champlain Housing Trust at that time we were the Burlington Community Land Trust and CBOEO um to create a an adequate facility for the important need of serve of providing emergency food that was in 1994 and the partnership has been very successful um maybe too successful um we the Champlain Housing Trust manages the real estate so we are responsible for maintaining the building for making sure the bills get paid for watching the financing doing audits that sort of thing and CBOEO manages the programs and the programs have um really grown substantially since then we honestly when we did develop this we're hoping that it wouldn't be needed for maybe more than 10 years that people wouldn't be food insecure 30 years later um but in fact the demand has only increased um and I'm going to turn it over to um these folks to tell you a little bit about how the programs have expanded and how it's being used today. Thanks so much. Thanks Amy. Thank you for having us. I'll start off just with the community resource center and the work around people experiencing homelessness and Rob's going to talk about all the food production and meals that are being served. Um the community resource center is fairly new. It's been at Feeding Chittenden for a little over a year about 17 months right now. Before that it was at the VFW. It had two rounds there. The reason why we opened up the community resource center was to um serve uh people experiencing homelessness so it really became kind of a day shelter in a place where we could provide wraparound services and food every day to people. Uh we were operating the Holiday Inn emergency shelter um as you may recall and when that stopped we realized it was going to be a dramatic need in the community to continue to support people who are experiencing homelessness particularly those people who are unsheltered. So we went from the VFW two rounds there with a gap in between and um we really pushed ourselves and we finally landed at Feeding Chittenden um which is a program of CVOEL and now it's stabilized. It's worked remarkably. Um the need has been overwhelming and non-stop. Um so we are seeing uh a a number of people there every single day that can the average is about 125 people a day experiencing homelessness or um marginally housed or staying in shelters. Um many of them are living out on the streets and the highest number we have seen is 185 people in one day. Um Feeding Chittenden is designated as a regional facility by the state because uh we do serve the greater Burlington and Chittenden County area so we are seeing a lot of people from all the communities around Burlington. Um we received funding from uh the city of Burlington for a CDBG grant for a renovation of the community resource center because the need was so overwhelming we had to expand the space and we in fact took up office space that our staff uh Feeding Chittenden staff were in so they have been working off site now for the past year. We finally with CHTs help kind of completed the renovations. You'll see some pictures there um so now we can better serve. It's still too small for the number of people but we can better serve the people uh experiencing homelessness who have come in. So just prepared meals correct? These are wonderful, hot, okay, healthy, prepared meals that are served from nine to noon every day. It is amazing. I invite you all to come by. I just wanted to make sure people because we have a food shelf but that's different. Rob's going to talk a little bit about the other meals that go out but and I'll just be quick. So over a 12 month period uh we served uh over 2,300 people experiencing homelessness or individually uh housed. That's a 12 month period and we've been open for about 17 months. We've had uh 26,000 visits and we've offered and provided 38,000 hot nutritious meals to people um and we provide a myriad of other services there. So it's housing advocacy services. We really try to work with people who are living outside to get them into shelter and then eventually into um transitional or or permanent housing as well. About half of the people are unsheltered and if you drive by North Winooski you'll you'll see um we we're we're dealing with a lot of people with um mental health and co-occurring substance use conditions and a lot of people with chronic medical conditions and a lot of older Vermonters. So that's the work we're doing. You know that homelessness has grown in Vermont. Um it's the second highest in the country per population and ever since the state had ended the uh hotel shelter pro hotel emergency shelter program we've seen a rapid increase of unsheltered individuals. Um so the work that was done through the first CDBG grant uh we've been able to um do a new heating and cooling system. We didn't have air conditioning there in the past. New floors, new walls, a greatly expanded space and then what this grant is about is about building up and bringing our staff back in so we can have office space and conference space and case management space. Um I'll end there and I'll turn it over to Rob. Thank you so much. Thanks Paul. Hi folks. Uh it's great hearing about uh Wallace Sands and uh I was just dreaming daydreaming back there. Um when Amy was mentioning food insecurity when I started with feeding Chittenden in 07 the census told us there was about 12,000 people experiencing food insecurity in Chittenden County. That number is well over 20,000 now in Chittenden County. I don't know what that says about the job that I'm doing but I think it's um it's been a small space that we've been trying to manage a lot. We have this intersection of compassion and justice where we're trying to make sure people have enough to eat. Uh Paul asked me to talk a little bit about some of our services. We have 20 staff people. We have some culinary ends on staff who teach people so we have a culinary job training program that we started in about 08. Very successful. We've been partnering with the Vermont Food Bank on that um and finding people jobs but also while people are working with us there's an esteemable process that happens whereby we make food that gets distributed as Helen was saying that's prepared uh from scratch on site. Also teaches people life skills lessons things about how to resume build and how to you know make it in this world we're living at. So it's it's a program that we're pretty proud of at CVLEO and we partner with our Financial Futures program that does micro business development. We have a food truck that accompanies the program and students go on the truck to places like mobile home parks throughout Chittenden County and serve food in a you know process of client to you know ready to eat food which is really wonderful and it's also a fun way to to serve food. On site we have a food pantry like you do here in South Burlington. It's open every weekday from nine to four. It serves about 300 people a day a very diverse group of people um so we've adapted our food to meet the needs of people with specific diets. We've seen a lot of change in the last 10 years at least with gluten-free and et cetera but also we look at culturally relevant food because we have a very diverse population that we serve. In the pandemic hit we really you know pivoted as you've heard most did. We created an online market that's now we're working with our Head Start programs through CVLEO really reaching those kids that are in deep poverty and making sure that families and specifically new American families are able to go online order food they actually want and then our advocates are delivering that to classrooms. We're also expanded our home deliveries that we've had for about 25 years that were really targeted for people with mobility impairments people who couldn't access charitable food and now we're delivering to homes throughout Chittenden County but also beyond and throughout Champlain Valley. We partnered with some health care facilities to to work with clinicians so that now patients can order online from our program directly if they pre-screen for food insecurity and our advocates are really expanding the food that we're providing. The importance of 228 North Winooski in Burlington is that this is the hub of this work so there's more to share about our services because the people that I work with are just incredible and brilliant and the culinaryians are just fun and so they're using food from scratch and just one little anecdote to share you know the food that meal that we produce costs a dollar fifty compare that to school meal that costs five dollars and fifty cents so we're also cost effective when we look at how we raise our dollars and how we use it. It costs you a dollar fifty? That's how much we're spending. So we raise money ourselves and I know some of you know that from your own pantry here in South Fairlington it's not easy to do. We have to raise about one point five million every year to meet our goals and that's to move two million pounds of food throughout Chittenden County alone. There's much more to share I don't want to go into too many details but just to re-emphasize that the site at 228 which has been too small is still a good location it's in an old north end so people can walk there people can obviously bus there because it's on a bus line there's lots of parking there there's places you can ride your bike there so you know the leveraging federal dollars and state dollars to help this facility that CHT has you know taken care of for so long is is why we're here today and thanks for letting me share. Thanks Rob. Thanks Paul. How many meals per day do you serve? Is it breakfast lunch and dinner? Yeah we we serve 30,000 meals per quarter just on site there's more than that that go out so we're serving meals that go to the Elmwood Pod community to Harbor Place to the Beacon Apartments soon very a lot to Champlain and that's CBOO who's working really closely there so just at the Community Resource Center there's what now Paul 135, 150 a day yeah what's the number? We've had the highest of 185 and the average is 125 for people experiencing homelessness but Rob's work and feeding Chittenden at large is for the whole community. So just in just at the Community Resource Center you're seeing those people have come back for three meals a day so if that number's close to 200 you might see five to six hundred meals just in that cafeteria every day. In addition meals are packaged and by students culinary students we spoke of those are people with lived experience of poverty those are going right out into the supermarket so people are going to reach in coolers by the way this is one of the greatest things for anti-poverty anti-hunger work prepackaged meals are so important to mom and dad to just be able to grab and go and have something healthy so we're really focused on health and nutrition health and wellness I'm going to stop because I can go on and on I love this conversation. It's a great conversation thank you. I did want to just come back to that issue of this being a regional facility we know that homelessness is a regional problem someone comes into the food shelf and they're homeless well where are they from you know they're from all they're from our communities. The food shelf has always been seen as a regional facility back in 1994 there was a consortium of towns that applied for the same funding that we're looking for today. The reason that we're asking South Burlington to support this application the city of Burlington gets its own specific cdbg allocation from the federal government and so therefore the city of Burlington is not able to sponsor vcdp applications that program is only available for municipalities and not Burlington so Burlington did use its cdbg dollars to support this project with a three hundred thousand dollar that kicked off sort of phase one as Paul was describing we put in new heat pumps for air conditioning for heating we did painting we did new flooring we moved the administrative offices so that we could expand that space for the for the meals and for the community resource center. The second phase is building this addition it'll be an addition on the front if the if you could go to the site plan are you able to switch over to that view. Travis can you move the camera over to the that one great the white building is the existing footprint if you can see that and the the small pinkish orange is the new addition it'll be a two-story addition it's not a big addition no it's not and it's going to be expensive to build in part because it's in an urban center we have you know urban soils so contaminated sort of dirty dirt we call it that will have to you know manage that the excavation of those soils and it's just a very tight urban site but that's the addition that we'll be building the downstairs will be extended eating space dining room space there'll be more space for the community resource center to expand with their computers for apartment searches and job searches and all of the other important advocacy that that group does and then the administrative offices will be upstairs. So our request is for the city of south brillington to sponsor the vcdp application for $500,000 in vcdp funds those are federal funds at the state level they come through the city the city will grant those funds to cht we own the facility and we'll manage that construction there will be some work required on the on jessie and her team's part but we try to keep that minimal i'll be doing most of the application together we'll do the applications the reporting the requisitions uh trying to really minimize that time there will be some time needed for the city's attorney but the grant can pay for that there may be a requirement for a single audit and the grant can pay for that as well so what the community with south brillington we'd be putting in is is some administrative time to manage that grant when i call up and say hey can you can you check this page that'll be time for jessie and her team but there's no match no municipal match that's required this is just 100 federal dollars right well we're we have some other sources that are included in our overall project this is only a piece of the overall project um there there isn't a match required but there's a match expected from the community and how we meet that is with jessie and her team's time so it's just an in-kind match if i could just add one more thing vcdp funds are a hugely powerful tool as you as i think you all know it's a grant opportunity that comes around several times a year um in my experience both here and in other communities they tend to put good money after good money so if every so if we can be a regularly funded community and keep our staff nimble about using the system which is very complicated to use um it will bring more funding into our community over time so we were successful at getting the previous pass-through grant for summit last year looking at this grant we have no other community partners looking for funding this year so it's not that we've selected cht over another organization but i think it's funding that you know myself and martha and paul and alana really want to regularly pull down into our community to serve our region i ask you a question yes you may so is the gmaa turkey trot still a fundraiser for you folks yes yes so i would ask everybody to turn out at 10 o'clock on thanksgiving at uvm's uh gutterson uh parking lot and go into the lobby and sign up and make your donation because it's a great fun 5k sometimes it's a little chilly a little wet a little windy but it's a great way to start your Thanksgiving day and it makes more room for more turkey i was going to mention that okay are there other questions andrew or tyler all right so are there any comments from the public since this is a public hearing on line or in this room we'll seeing then we can probably close the so i'll move that we um close the public hearing on the uh shaman housing trust vermont community development program application second all in favor i i i so the hearing is closed and we'll move on to item eight which is approving the city submitting the application on behalf of the shamblin housing trust i'll move that we approve the city's uh submission of a vermont community development program application on behalf of shamblin housing trust to support feeding chitinan second any further discussion do you have any other information you'd like to share uh no okay thank you um so all in favor signify by saying hi hi hi so that hi hi yeah and yeah can you send him to me tim i would just say that this is part of our climate action plan we need to provide access to resources that all three of you uh your you know the associations um that you represent uh that you're providing so i just wanted to state that publicly that it's it's part of the whole solution that we all need to work together to to come to so thank you i was going to say we we installed some ev chargers at our affordable housing sites in south burlington and i would be happy to share that experience as well with your staff but thank you so much for your support and for the time thank you for your good work thank you thank you so much you're very welcome all right so moving on to item nine approving the resolution number 2023-17 to make the school zones in the city 25 miles per hour in accordance with state statute and tom d pietro this is one of those almost never ending to conversations huh and it's it's it kind of confounds me how this state can upend what i think is a good speed limit for the school zone but anyway yeah is that because we're rural why is that tom yeah good evening everybody yeah tom de pietro director of public works here to talk about school zone safety again um so the what you have in front of you is a memo and updated resolution basically just charging changing our new school zones from 20 to 25 because state law only authorizes municipalities to have a speed limit range set between 25 and 50 this is an update our interpretation previously in working with regional planning staff the traffic engineers there was that we could lower it to 20 in a school zone after further discussion it was determined we cannot i thank our south brunken police officers for pointing that out to us so we've gone through all that we've looked at state statute we're hoping to make this correction tonight okay so any i'm sorry i think one of the things we did learn through that research is that the only way you can lower it to 20 is if you're in a designated downtown so won't help for four of our five schools but for rick mark hot if we made city center in downtown we could lower it that's what state statue currently enables okay i would love to know why i mean we're we're not on a a rural highway i mean white street is it's like a thoroughfare i just don't i don't get it so yeah we went through and that's just statute doesn't explain why it just gives us that authority right it's the question of you know humankind our goal is to get these traffic or the the school zone signage up and the correct signage on them as soon as we can so that's why we brought it back to you so quickly so i appreciate that you thank you are offering this correction and i'm sure the school board well they might be um disappointed aren't um opposed to this and this is the law so if there's no further comment yeah and you don't need to add anything else that's all it does this change that yeah 20 to 25 the number all right two edits in the result i would entertain a motion to approve the resolution 2023-17 salute yeah and i'll do it i'll second it in spite of my okay uh any further discussion all right all in favor please signify by saying aye aye okay so that's affirmed unanimously all right so don't move tom number 10 receiving a presentation on the recent utility rate study and discuss the next steps yes um would you mind clicking slides for us jesse yeah did you send me the the actual powerpoint i think i did i hope i hope i did all right so i'll i'll do some introductions um well jesse is getting that pulled up again my name's tom de petro director of public works uh with me this evening i have wane elliot from alderjan elliot uh wane and his firm completed the rate study for us to look at our wastewater and sewer rates i'm sorry our water and sewer rates and also a jay natal our drinking water superintendent um and we may have a few others checking online i'm not sure um since i don't see their names up there but bob fischer is our wastewater superintendent who may also be joining us and dave wheeler our city engineer so um by way of introduction i just wanted to talk for a minute about why we're doing a rate study now and then also sort of next steps i'm going to give you the next steps to beginning here so you can think about them as we as we go through all the slides that we've prepared for you um so why are we doing it now we have not had an independent review of our rates and fees in recent memory um we have a couple of large projects coming up so we want to be confident that we're properly financing those as we go forward with uh specifically the wastewater plant and the water tank we're talking about and we'll give you some more details on those i just want to make sure we're in a good position to pay for those and so that we can spread those costs out so they're not really large rate increases uh in the past we've had some significant rate increases when there were large capital projects back in fiscal year 12 uh in the 20 percent range uh 22 i think it was percent for water 28 percent for wastewater so trying to spread that out so we don't have to do that again to to fund our upcoming capital investments also this is a good opportunity to modernize our ordinances implement some best practices sort of look at other ways communities are are billing for wastewater and drinking water and then again just um as far as financial needs going forward we have both aging infrastructure in our community a lot of pipes were put in in the 40s and 60s we're also a growing community so we have to make sure that we're in a financial position going forward and have a plan so we can address sort of both those financial needs um and again talking about next steps so tonight is really about going through the rate study and the work that Wayne has done he'll walk you through the slides but we want to hear your input hear the input of others in the community that have thoughts on this and then really looking tonight for council to provide some direction because we do have budget season right around the corner i'd like to be able to come back during budget season and present budgets in a format of if there are changes that we're going to make in that format so the rates showing a certain way and um i think i'll leave it there for now but those are the two big things so just kind of what is the rate structure and so we can have that in in one format and not present it three or four different ways in fy 25 so without further introduction i'll turn it over to Wayne to go through some of the slides good evening yeah so tom said the timing on this is good you know you guys are going to get in your budget process one of the things he don't oops uh don't want to do is rush through this process it can be very timely there's a lot of considerations here do you got the slides jesse okay so start a little bit about some of the goals we went through initially and we're going to touch on a lot of these things kind of as we go through the presentation and you know what we evaluated here you know the first one obviously is how customers respond the rate increases um anytime you make a change in the rate structure you know some people see a significant change some people see a lesser so that's always a critical item that we want to make sure we've addressed and looked at contractual rate obligations um on the sewer side you have an agreement with cold chest or that places some limitations on what you can do with your billing structure availability of billing resources a little bit unique where shampoam water district does all the utility billing so we want to be a little bit careful not to you know significantly increase the administrative burden for from their standpoint level of future costs future costs as tom mentioned you've got some very large capital projects coming up both on the water and sewer side so we want to make sure that you know it's thoughtful the rate increases are the rates are going to go up here regardless of whether you change the rate structure or not so we want to make sure those things are thoughtful and you know we don't jump at all up significantly in one year and then obviously the impacts of the rate changes to the vulnerable populations you know that's always a consideration because those on the lower end that kind of usually pay the less are always the ones that are generally more impacted than others you know when you go through a change in rate structure uh objectives one thing when you get into going through these rate structures i've done a lot of these over the years there's not a one size fits all you know you get into various size communities what fits for south burlington doesn't fit with a smaller water sewer system nor medium size if you look at 12 or 15 remote communities you're going to probably find 15 different variations in how they do and there's not a right or wrong way you just got to make sure you know it passes the state statue it's fair equitable um so the first one um obviously the one is necessary revenue in a stable and predictable manner again you don't want to have you know pretty gentle increase over time without huge annual increases in the rates uh unexpected changes in customer bills third one is always important you want people to be efficient with use of water some smaller communities don't have metering so they just bill x amount of dollars every year so that really doesn't promote conservation uh discrimination simplicity is important you know you can get into a lot of different complicated rate structures and you know you need to be able to explain it to people it needs to be understandable the last one obviously whatever changes are done or made or implemented needs to comply with state laws and statutes um a little just very briefly on definition of terms so when we're getting into the water and sewer utility fees you know you basically have three components you have the water and sewer fee that generally is made up of a base rate or flat rate and a usage rate and then separately you've got an allocation fee and then a connection fee so in the case of south brunington you just charge on the usage rate so people just basically pay for what they use unless they're at the low end um many communities have a combination of a base and a fixed rate plus a usage rate um you get in the smaller communities and you want that base rate to be at least cover the debt retirement or you know typically 60 to 65 percent of their expenses and then when you get into the o and m budgets you know you have the fixed and the variable expense again we typically see small medium communities the fixed side you know 60 to 65 percent of the budget is fixed which means you know irregardless of how much wastewater you're treating or how much water you're producing you know a lot of those costs are there the labor that benefits you know the insurance those kind of things the variable side is you know what you're purchasing for water for example you know you purchase the water directly from Champlain Water District and then when you get into the allocation fee you know those fees are really there to fund you know major capital projects um and facility expansion costs so those are generally paid by developers they come in to request those water and sewer allocations the connection fee in most cases is fairly nominal in the water it's the cost of you know providing the meter and overseeing that um what's interesting with the allocation connection fee those are used um terms are not used consistently across the board you can look at a bunch of different municipalities you know for example I just did a update for Wallace and a few months back they call their connection fee is really the allocation fee so when you're looking to compare these fees just be aware there's some different terminology and these are used differently in some communities are we considered small medium or large community? Vermont large you know and we primarily for what we do is focus on Vermont okay yes yeah we primarily Vermont and you know the western side of New Hampshire so South Berlin is absolutely on the large side yep thank you um this is an interesting slide we talk about um from an educational standpoint you know I think we generally undervalue the public water and sewer utilities um the other thing that's vastly different is um generally the water and sewer utilities are billed on a quarterly basis in some cases semi-annually so we all get all our other utility bills on a monthly basis so you know when we're paying $230 for a certain you know um Wi-Fi and Campbell TV you know we're comparing that to our quarterly water and sewer bill so if you look at this chart you know on the minimum side you know somebody in South Burlington is paying $20 a month for water and sewer you're paying over $80 for a cell phone um the other thing that's interesting too is in your case everybody's billed on it currently on the usage except for the minimum but if you look at your um internet cable TV obviously that bill is not based on usage you pay for whatever your plan or program is and I just got my gas bill um a couple days ago and of course you don't use much this time of year and a good part of that bill is fixed so you pay x amount of dollars irregardless of how much gas and the electric is the same side too if you're not using much there's a significant part of the fixed fee there so general just for comparison purposes again I feel like we really undervalue these public utility when we compare them to all of our other monthly utility bills the estimated cost column there for and you went down internet cell phone electric natural gas cable tv is that just a fixed cost rate or is that just based on the the actual you know bills that their their customers receive and that's the average that they've put out there that on the average this is what our customers pay per month yep so for the top two for the water and sewer the minimum charge so that's i happen to live in south burlington that's what i pay 28 bucks a month for both water and sewer if you're looking at an average customer in south burlington it uses of just under 60 000 gallons per year they're going to be paying about 56 dollars a month the other ones there just kind of generally think what somebody would typically see for and it want to get in a specific you know internet services in a lab but you would see for some of those other private utilities yeah so that's not a fixed rate cost that is their bill monthly bill okay for the south burlington portion it's based on usage yeah yeah for the other utilities i think though yeah that's just kind of available yeah i understand you that's a combination of the other fixed and you know whatever you would generally use except for the cell phone and the cable and the reason i ask is because we we don't use much gas anymore and we pay 20 dollars exactly right and then we pay much less for the one cubic whatever it is that we use per month yeah i just got my bill and i don't use much and it was still like 30 bucks most of that was fixed so yeah and why that's again important is it generally the way the city bills water and sewer except for if you're in the minimum you know you pay for what you use there isn't a fixed charge base rate component as part of that uh so current water and sewer rates again no base rate or fixed fee you pay on what you use the exception to that is if you're at the minimum side of things so you pay a minimum of a thousand cubic feet per quarter so it doesn't matter what you use under that you pay that minimum charge the other difference here too which can vary in other communities is everybody pays the same rate so by that the residential customer pays the same usage rate as a commercial customer as the industrial lazy institutional customers so we thought this was a good slide to put in here you know just some background and how you know the city has really set your rates and in the past years and why we're really kind of looking at this and recommending some changes moving forward typically you know you've really held your increases to less than three percent to cover operating expenses we know that's a challenge moving forward you know with the inflation rates and we're seeing everything increase much more than three percent labor cost benefits electricity chemicals it really hasn't allowed the city to keep up with inflation and this is probably the more important piece really to set aside adequate funds for future upgrades so that really hasn't allowed you to put money aside for capital and that's one of the changes it really needs to be implemented moving forward as to with the rate increases to cover some of those capital projects but also be able to cover the debt retirement you guys are going to see you know down the road here once some of these projects are completed the allocation fees really should be generally put towards the debt retirement or the capital projects they've really been used to keep the water and sewer rates lower in previous years which is why you've really kept under the three percent and you regardless of whether you decide you know or support a change in the rate structure the rates need to go up because you've got some significant capital projects that are going to be implemented soon you're going to have some large debt payments so the rates are going to have to go up to cover those debt payments at some point in time so the way we split this up is we're going to talk about water rates right now and then we'll flip back to the sewer you'll see a lot of commonality ideally we'd like these to be generally similar they can't be quite so you'll see those in the recommendations the water rates have really when you go back over the past several years have increased from 1.7 to 2.9 so that's where you know it's been less than three percent which really hasn't been sufficient the 24 rate again on usage 36 dollars and 21 cents per thousand cubic feet an average customer uses just under 59,000 gallons per year so you're going to pay $290 roughly annually for water about $72 quarterly last one you know I do a lot of this around the state and Tom and I went back is this the lowest or it's really close to the lowest in the state for water you know we're very fortunate especially in Chittenden County where you know somebody had the foresight to start the Chittenden Champlain Water District you know and it's scalable when we get into a lot of other water systems around the state you know the water costs are significantly more water supply so you know the city of South Burlington does not produce their own water everything's produced treated and produced and supplied by the Champlain Water District to all many of the Chittenden County communities the city really pays for what you purchase for water so the city is not in the business of producing and treating the water you purchase that at a wholesale rate the CWD wholesale rates recently have ranged from about 3.4 to 9.5 percent so you can see where the delta is and this is a significant part of your water expenses so when your rate increases are less than three percent you know you're starting to get a little bit behind every year because the purchase wholesale purchase of the water is more than you know what the rate increases have been previously set at. Water customers a little bit over 6,349 about 12 percent are non-residential so the non-residential category would include commercial, industrial and institutional customers this was a pretty interesting statistic here is about 41 percent of the South Burlington water customers pay the minimum or use less than a thousand cubic feet just an interesting number here and that creates one of the challenges you know we have with changing and resetting the rates and then not a big surprise but we have the list of your largest water customers and those Trader Dukes, the Air Guard, you know the Car Wash, UVM Medical Center, you know in the airport several others so those are really your largest you know commercial industrial and institutional customers so water budget FI 24 your expenses were a little bit over 3.7 million largest expense 48 percent is the purchase of water we just talked about those increases and the range of increases versus the water rates the other thing that's always important too is the majority of your revenue really comes from the water sales or the customers so that's 80 to 85 percent the rest of that is made up with some minor miscellaneous fees but that's where you're generating the majority of your revenue so water rate alternatives there's a lot of information on the report there's a whole bunch of different options you can go with here and as I mentioned previously there isn't one size fits all we went through a lot of different billing structures scenarios ideally you would like these to be the same for the water and sewer you know just kind of quickly go through these number one is really how you're doing it now with no changes you're just billing on usage the minimum would stay the same at the thousand cubic feet the second one is what we would do is create a fixed rate so we would try to cover your current debt retirement with a fixed base rate and then plus a usage charge so in that case the usage charge is going to go down a little bit because people are paying up paying a base rate number three different fixed rate for each customer category so for example the residential customers paying x for a fixed rate the commercial customers paying a little slightly different base rate the usage rate there could still be all the same Williston for example on their water rates so for example the residential customer pays $10 for quarter the commercial customer is paying two times that so that can be a structure number four is the fixed rate based on meter size so if you have a five-eighths inch meter you pay x and then based on the size that fee goes up quite a bit especially when you get up into the four six eight inch larger meters that's a common rate structure with you know some of the larger other Vermont communities and you can get into a lot of complicated scenarios you can have different rate structures for different or different fixed rates for different customer categories you can use the usage side residential customer can pay a certain usage rate commercial can pay a certain usage rate you can have different tiers but again we really tried to keep this simple you know and follow what you've generally done in the past again there's not one size fits all but we really tried to follow kind of your previous methodology so the recommendation on the water rates is really to go with alternative number three that's the different fixed rate for the residential non-residential customers and what we're doing there is we would set the fixed rate for the non-residential customers at two times the rate fixed rate for the residential customers and what we keyed in here is we've looked at trying to use the fixed rate to generate certain levels of income and what we keyed in here initially was to use that to cover your debt retirement which is about 18 percent of the fixed expenses one of the reasons we ended up on number three here which you'll see with some of the increases is if we didn't do it this way it more increased the rates on the lower end users the residential customers so we were trying to soften that little bit and in the middle ground as we've mentioned previously the rates need to go up here regardless of what you change the rate structure so we're concerned about the head or the impact for those customers that are using the minimum and this seemed like a good kind of middle ground compromise here the usage fee would stay the same for all customer categories and so that we can maintain the same level of revenue the usage fee would still remain the same so you'd pay a thousand cubic feet per quarter how many gallons is a thousand cubic feet about 7500 yep 7500 and the typical family or residential uses about 58 000 yes yeah okay yep so in the water costs you know obviously when you're looking at any kind of change in rate structure you want to see how you kind of compare to others here this charts based on the fy 23 you know kind of pulling it off some of the different websites um what's interesting is the first you know three or six on the list are all supplied by Champlain Water Districts so south broleton s6 well as then s6 town shelbert and milton so you can see they're all relatively close south broleton still has the lowest rate currently you know based on the fy 23 numbers when you're looking at this you really need to pick that kind of average residential customer and then run the rate for each that's the only way you can equitably kind of make sure you're comparing apples and apples when you're doing this exercise broleton is quite a bit higher their course you know have their own supply their own treatment and then heinsberg is even quite a bit higher and they have their own water supply treatment system so again it's just not as scalable but we're fortunate we have the scalability of the Champlain Water District because that's really helped to keep water rates affordable for many years and hopefully even moving forward so what we're trying to do here with the water rate projections with implementing this base right here is really trying to soften the increase um and we're going to get into this in a couple more slides but on the water side you have a couple pretty large um significant um water improvement projects coming up in addition to some capital projects and what we're trying to do by the time we get to FY26 is to make sure that you're generating enough revenue here to be able to cover those future debt payments so we took those project costs and I'll get into a little bit more detail later here but you're really um and then to really to start with you know we started with FY24 your current rate it's just on the usage fee but what we do when we try to calculate these rates is we need to generate the same amount of revenue so for FY24 for residential customer you know we would predict that they would pay about 17 dollars and 89 cents per quarter 71.56 annually and then the usage fee would go down from 36.21 to 29.69 yep just go back please jesse I think that's the one that's the one I'm sorry yeah okay got it um and then what we're doing here is we're increasing this fixed rate um as we go into FY25 and FY26 and you'll see it starts to stabilize but we're trying to make sure we're generating enough revenue out of that fixed rate to um cover your future debt payment and then when you're going down to the bottom part of the table here so this is the non-residential water rate which is really two times the residential so for example if we're going to FY25 you know the quarterly fixed rate on a residential customer is 2525 on the non-residential side it's 5048 and again we went with this alternative number three or ran this scenario because it lessens the increase on those residential customers that really are at the lower end and then everybody has the same you know same usage rate per thousand cubic feet and remind me how many years did we project that the capital expenditures would take to pay well we're looking at 20 year loans on the wastewater side we're going to come back to you in on town meeting day to talk about loan for the water tower still coming up yeah okay so when we look at these numbers these just go out to FY28 but they'll continue I mean go up because you will continue to want to pay for the capital expenses yeah but those won't change right won't they be stable yes yeah and we tried to be conservative I've got a couple slides later here that would help with that a little bit but you know what I did is I took the total project costs estimated when that first loan payment we do we included the principal and interest assumed no subsidy no grants so you know I'd like to think we presented kind of the worst case scenario here for you so this can be revisited a little bit you know as you move forward but the objective here is to make sure there's enough revenue out of that fixed rate to cover that and you're right that's going to be the same payment of what we've estimated over that 20 year period and are those non-residential rates similar to other communities yes so if you go back to that previous slide I mean you're already on the lower end Williston has a similar on the water side so they do two times so yeah they're in line pretty similar with you know those communities are you know connected or purchased water from Champlain Water District okay so for those if the typical resident if you looked at the business you'd increase the bars would be twice as high yeah yeah but they'd be consistent not twice as high it's just it's only the part of the the fixed rate oh for the yes that's great yeah yeah yeah and they're only like 14 percent or 18 percent yeah that's right yeah and this is just water this is not sewer that's correct yeah yeah just water the sewer is in addition to that I understand that I don't have either personally so do what you want so are you going to be biased about this I've got the other bias I'm connected so I'm paying for the increases potentially so yeah so this gives you an idea what the annual impacts and what we tried to do on the left here is pick some you know what we kind of typical customers we really want to make sure we understand how this is going to affect different customer categories the first one is that residential it's on the minimum side then then second row down is that average residential customer third one down would just be kind of a typical non-residential office and the one at the bottom would be a restaurant so if you're going up to like FY 25 you can see you know that 17.3 percent then 11.8 percent 23.8 percent 13.9 percent and those kind of vary a little bit as we go forward but when you get to FY 27 the increases have dropped down significantly because we're getting the fixed rate up to a point you know where you're covering that loan payment that first loan payment that's doing FY 27 and we're really recommending that the increases be phased in because what you don't want to do is wait until FY 27 and you're going you know into a 25 or 30 rate increase and really kind of step it up slowly so it's a little bit easier for people to you know manage with their household budgets this just gives you a rough idea it's just a graph of the last table and you can see the majority the increases here over the next couple years and then FY 26 they really start to stabilize and the increases are really generally consistent you know between the different customer categories so the next part of the water side is the allocation fee and again that's typically goes to you know that's when a developer comes in requests a water allocation ideally you want those funds to really be going to capital projects or to cover debt retirement for you know plan water system improvements so currently that fees three dollars per gallon you know you have relatively limited existing debt the two projects that Tom mentioned that you have coming up that are pretty significant is the east storage tank and then the umal high service interconnect and what i did again worst case scenario here is i took the total project cost um and factored in the principal and interest over the 20 years did not account for the receipt of any grant or subsidy so you're looking at about 8.4 million over those 20 years so we're recommending an increase to nine dollars and eighty nine cents per gallon by FY 26 and if you did get some grant funds for example on the tank or there's some modifications on that that fee can absolutely be lowered but we wanted to make sure we were conservative kind of painting a worst case scenario at this point time and then one thing Williston does that you may want to consider too was the they offer a reduction of 50 percent for affordable housing on those allocation fees so that could be a city council decision but just wanted to present that that could be an option for consideration developer pays the fee when when they get their permits and then and it's based on an estimate of you know x number of houses that use 58,000 gallons of water times three bucks correct yeah okay thank you is there income sensitivity with regard to individual homeowners as well that they can i i don't know for the sewer allocation fee i have no idea what exists in terms of assistance yeah um typically not because that's generally paid by the developer um you know so that cost is passed on not on allocation on the monthly charges all the monthly charges for the water and sewer now there generally isn't you know it's something we've talked about quit off into you know it's the rate increases honestly are awful top because at the minimum it's always that person in some cases on a fixed income yeah exactly you know and that's obviously something you could have some more discussion about i think the challenge with some of that we actually talked about some other you know considerations too i think trying to manage that administratively is how do you do that to be fair it can be quite a quite a time commitment change from here here yeah that's right yeah just as a reminder so the Champlain Water District does do our billing through a annual contract so it's sort of their capabilities whether software or staff time as well to manage that we'd have to chat with them what what did you call it what building all our utility billing um so they have staff with the Champlain Water it does all of our billing wastewater drinking water storm water be mindful of their staffing ability and the contract we have with them got it okay got it do they have the ability to put in fixed fixed costs per per bill at this time yes they're doing that for other communities are they are they doing billing for just you or for other communities too the number of different water systems we currently own uh four water systems in Colchester we're billing for that okay plus the city of South Burlington this will be the first one that will go fixed rate or you know as proposed right but i think the other four we're looking at something similar and our billing program does have this capability because just a couple years ago there was there was no report on the bill about past usage i think right historical usage and that is that is there now right but that was asked for for a long time it took a long time to to get that i believe right so just just asking about the capabilities of that billing system whether you think it's up to snuff yes okay yeah i i'm just thinking you know i'm i'm glad that we saw cht cb oeo and the feeding chitin in here um you know the bus fares are going up the start of the year we have water bills going up we have you know food bills going up i mean we just everything's going up you know and so i just i'm i'm mindful of that and thank goodness we have cb oeo and feeding chitin and cht how is barb service going to be best served by these changes is what i want to know i was reading that she isn't on we're in issue tonight i actually made myself a note to send her the video i just on the um i i don't disagree with any of the comments about affordability for our residents i think one of the biggest challenges with administering that at the local level is income data is not data the city has access to so the primary way that's stabilized in our communities through the state ed fund and the homestead declaration but which is directly linked to all the statewide income data we don't we don't we would have to go through i think believe a charter change to get that i understand no and and what this means to me you know is i hear from residents you have to consider changes you have to consider downsizing you have to consider bringing in more people to live with you you have to i mean we just have to be open to to you know as an individual you know homeowner or or uh renter renter right yeah one thing that's interesting you know very few communities just build strictly on usage um it's kind of gone away especially small meeting it's very difficult to get any kind of revenue stability because it's so dictated like if you think about during COVID or if you have wet or dry year you're using more or less water what's interesting on the usage side is we've seen it flat now at or even decline in many cases too which is a good thing because you know you're better able to manage the capacity you have but with all the new construction you have smaller households so people i think are just in the younger kids are a lot more educated about water conservation too so you know you're shutting the faucet off when you brush your teeth and the appliances and all that so that's the thing that we've which which is a good trend but you know it affects the revenue side too it's just the toilets can be expensive yes yep and plumbers are hard to find just put that out there as well and good plumbers come with those you know water saving you know shower heads and all they have like a stock in their truck we have a good so this is a photo of the you know there'll be the twin east storage tank which is one of the significant water improvement projects that you have forthcoming just quickly a chart on allocation rates by system again people have kind of different nomenclature and i'll ask stuff but you can see self-prolict and still at the low end of this and there's several of these communities are looking at some pretty significant capital projects on the water side melton winewski what other ones i think essex town so as those kind of move forward a lot of those communities their allocation fees are going to have to go up to start covering some of those future debt work costs for some of those major capital projects well as then was just recently updated so they're already up to you know seven dollars and weren't your recommending 9.96 or something over several years yep and helen if you get if you know the funding you know you guys tap into some grants then that will give you the ability to back that down or not raise that quite as quickly hopefully that's the case grants the magic word who's providing the grants don't you have one on the water storage tank tom for the accd we do so um we looks like we're going to be awarded half a million through the crrp program i sent some paperwork back but it looks like that was our allocation i think we'd ask for a million and we were lucky to be awarded half million so that's good on the water side but we're finalizing all that met your federal dollars the federal dollars uh what state it's it's our funds but it's a pass through to the state yeah through the uh okay yep so just smooth it out for us so i'll just smooth it out right i do tom correct me if i'm wrong on this but i do want to call out that is the third tom and his team wrote three different grants to support that project and this is the one we are awarded we are we are starting to face a challenge in south berlington of being a with statewide prioritization of nonch into county communities we are becoming less and less competitive for these kinds of grants but tom and his team and paul are doing a huge amount of work to try and leverage as much money in as possible okay so just quickly in the water connection fee not right recommending any changes it charged one thousand two hundred and fifty dollars per unit that includes the cost of the water meter in the city shamplain water districts cost for performing supplying materials inspection that's pretty straightforward so no changes proposed there and then the last one is on the water ordinance um it's pretty dated it's over 20 years old uh shamplain water district has been through that and uh propose a bunch of updates and changes that really need some housekeeping several updates some of the changes that may be needed there are going to be determined by you know whether or not you want to change the rate structure so a lot of that updates are in definitions terminology and how things are used and if you do change choose to change the rate structure then that's going to be part of the updates required to the water ordinance but that would be a step after if you concur with the changes in the water rate structure i have a question do do does anybody in this in our city inspect brand new development installations of water and sewer lines like you know where they dig a trench at a certain depth and lay in those lines are those inspected by somebody in the city all the time yep contractors uh well we go through the plan review process and once uh when construction is ready we'll meet with the contractor have a pre-con meeting and then throughout the project we will very frequently um stop in to inspect every aspect of water line installation so materials depth and the the bedding materials underneath it and you know the pipes everything right that's correct and the city has adopted the cwd specifications those are identified during plan review type review yeah and um contractors are very familiar with our specs okay and that includes hydrants as well probably right yes okay thanks okay so we're jumping the sewer you'll see some commonality so probably open the sewer yes for this one speed this up a little bit those tom's suggestion we were instead of intermixing thought it'd be easier to just go through the water and the sewer and separately so um that's good we need the laugh we need it yep um so fyi 24 rate you know 48 dollars and 20 cents per thousand cubic feet average residential customer pays a little over 385 dollars annually um 96 dollars quarterly again some of the lowest sewer costs in vermont you know sewer costs generally start at 450 to 500 a year for a typical customer and get up as high as a thousand 1100 1200 dollars in some cases um so very low sewer rate compared to many other vermont communities sewer budget um fyi 24 expenses a little bit over five million uh annual loan payment this is a little bit different in the water because you're carrying some pretty significant debt on the sewer budget uh 1 million 155 thousand the good news on that is coal chester pays a significant portion of that so they pay 742 thousand 310 dollars towards the airport parkway upgrade that was done for them to purchase and um pay for that capacity that was loaned out um that million gallons per day coal chester is also the largest customer so they contribute about 16 percent of the total sewer flows to the airport parkway wastewater plant they don't contribute anything to the Bartlett's Bay wastewater plant is that the only wastewater that coal chester has do they have their own treatment facility uh no no because most people have septic systems yeah um so there's municipal sewer runs all the way up um you know that excess 17 area goes all the way up route 7 up into the severance corners area yeah um which they're seeing quite a bit of expansion and then ultimately it's going to extend out to um Malletts Bay and we'll process all that at at airport parkway yeah that's all within their million gallons per day capacity yeah okay thanks so sewer rate alternatives very similar to the water again we want to make sure this consistency we really would prefer not to have a different billing rate structure for the water and sewer that just confuses people um so these are really the same options we kind of vetted and decided upon to look at the sewer unfortunately we didn't end up where we wanted to because of some of the contractual limitations but at least that was the goal objective here so the recommendation on the sewer rates is you really have to stay with the current rate structure alternative number one which is strictly on usage we wish it was the same as the water but it cannot be implemented because of the agreement with coal chester the agreement with coal chester is very specifically written that they are handled as one residential customer and they can all be billed on metered usage so for example if we tried to implement alternative number three on the sewer side coal chester would in theory only pay one fixed rate or base rate even though they're contributing you know 16 percent of the flow to the airport parkway plant um and and that aside the current agreement doesn't even allow them to be billed a base rate it's all just going to be billed on usage and so what would happen if we did go to number three as coal chester would and actually be paying less on the sewer than they do currently now so it really didn't make sense unfortunately to really try to implement that alternative number three on the sewer side so it stays at it's no fixed rate and same usage fee for all customers so this table again is a little bit different with the water because it's just based on what you do now and what we're really trying to do with you know you pass the bond vote here back in March for the three wastewater projects and what we're trying to do on the death side is get you to the point in FY28 where you can cover those future loan payments so if we're looking at where you are currently on the usage side you know it's at 4820 uh FY25 you need to get it up to 5565 and what we're trying to do here is phase in the increase over those three or four years um you know about six dollars per year um added to the usage fee so that really gets you up to um about $78.59 by FY28 and that's the total that's the annual fee uh that's the usage fee yeah yeah quarter yeah no that's the usage that's what they're paying for thousand cubic feet the next table will show you what they would be paying yep so this is the same table we had for the water on the left you have just the different types of customers so if we're looking at um you know FY25 you can see the range of increases um you know everybody's looking at about a 15.4 percent increase across the board again it's because it's based on usage um 13 and a half you know a little bit under 12 percent but again we're trying to get that that payment um by the time we hit FY29 so you've got enough revenue in there to cover that first loan payment so and again kind of recommending you phase in the increases because what you don't want to do is end up with a 28 or 30 percent increase you know two or three is out at least so it's a little bit easier for people so one of the challenges here you know going back to the goals and objectives because we can't change the rate structure you know this is a little bit of a tougher hit or the increases on the um you know those on the residential side to use the minimum um and because we just don't have a choice here we have to add that into the um into the usage fee I just want to note too these are again the worst-case scenario numbers so we're yeah actively working on getting grants we're waiting for the intended use plan to get finalized to figure out a full funding package for the wastewater plan the Bartlett Bay wastewater plan upgrade and the other projects as well so yeah is there any I think I know the answer to this but to the anticipated question is there any growth projections included in these rates so if we're adding about 140 new homes new customers a year is that built into these no it's not jesse so that's a good point I mean if you guys you know historically moving forward if you start connecting more people on that that can help you soften or back down you know I feel we've tried to do kind of the reiterate times try to make kind of the worst-case more conservative scenario here so more homes even though they'll produce more sewage would spread out the the cost that's right people to cover the debt service because the debt service isn't going to change and that's the big driver you're going to use more so that number goes up so that it's going to allow you to reduce the rate yeah and you're in the business of selling sewer so the more people you can connect over the four years that's clearly going to help you lessen some of these potential rate increases yep and the chances of coal chests are deciding they want to do their own is probably yeah not possible yeah yeah virtually impossible very difficult you remember they used to have their own wastewater plant over on the other side in the um for the St. Michael's area the pretty difficult to get a new discharge permit today or moving forward and they did pass at the at the town meeting last march a vote to attach the whole mallets bay rim right to some sort of a to a system that would probably be pumped to us right that's correct i try i mean that'll take years and years and years yeah yeah that's going to take yep right because you know mallets bay has a lot of septic systems and they might not always right next to the lake in the best of shape right so where does it go yeah and coal chesters already made a significant investment in the um airport parkway facility so really when you know they've still carrying quite a bit of debt so be pretty challenging funny their sewer rates honestly are already high they're in the eight to nine hundred dollar range because of the debt they're carrying so be pretty hard for them to go in on their own you know with a different approach so annual sewer costs again that's just a comparison to other kind of some of the other county communities a little different than the water because everybody has their own wastewater treatment facility except for you know s-exjunction the tri-town takes wellest in an s-ex-town but you can see south brolicton is at the very low end of what a typical residential customer pays for sewer i'm going to have to give up netflix or sling or some other flush huh in order to flush when it's yellow let it mellow there are solutions that's right yeah these are all solutions yeah but you said that are summer homes there's a little sign in every bathroom the uh so the sewer allocation fee you know is currently 1457 plain sewer improvements you know the Bartlett's Bay upgrade which is a if there's some minor solids handling improvements at airport parkway and several pump station upgrades that was a bond that was passed in march for 33.8 million again assuming no grant subsidy with principal and interest you know we're up at around 41.7 million if you calculated what the fee should be for sewer allocation uh it should be a over $30 per gallon which isn't really affordable to pass on to others to cover that cost so you know we're recommending something lower than that $20 or less so that you obviously want to remain competitive with the other kind of surroundings in county communities and then the last thing for consideration with a lot of the focus on the lack of housing and supporting affordable housing as you could choose to you know provide a break or a discount on the sewer connection fees for anything you know by definition as affordable housing so the calculated fee is what you charge developers is that right no um that's what the real costs are to the city but we're suggesting that's really higher than what you can really charge people and still recover and still be competitive with other communities so would cold chester pay these allocation fees on new no connect no they wouldn't because they already own a million gallons per day over there so they would be considered a new customer yeah but that's a good point here the thing that the city also has to be careful about is per the agreement with cold chester is you know they're not on the hook for contributing to the debt retirement for anything that isn't specific to their um convenience flow in the airport parkway so for example the parklets bay plant you know they're not on the hook for helping or assisting with paying that debt retirement the other thing keep in mind with the allocation fees you know as we talked about initially is those are really to go to the debt retirement and these planned capital projects you know if you get to the point where you're collecting and get some good historical data and it gets kind of ahead of your projections you know you can take this and probably back down some of the rate increases in the sewer rates because this is really intended to go towards the debt retirement that's embedded in those costs for the sewer rates so again i feel like we've taken a conservative kind of worst case scenario and as if the allocation fees start coming in better that you anticipated over the next two to three years it's going to lie to back down on you know maybe even what you're charging for the allocation fee but what the sewer rate increases need to be to you know be able to make that debt retirement you know once construction is completed just a couple photos a couple of your sewer projects we talked about the barlets bay upgrades the other ones the airport parkway solids upgrades again that was the bond both to us past and march uh no changes recommend the sewer connection fee you just charge 63 dollars per connection for recording purposes so no changes really needed there the sewer ordinance kind of a similar this one's actually quite a bit more update because it wraps in the storm water some kind of minor recommendation changes but again there's not any real recommendation or change in the race structure so nothing needed in the sewer ordinance specifically to that change but just some other kind of minor health-keeping things that should be considered well we've asked all our questions i think that's why i don't know if andrew and tyler did they know i have some questions thank you okay i'm sorry you should have broken in as we were going along i apologize i was waiting for the questions comment page um i want to actually just go back to focus on the question we're being asked which is the change to the rate structure and so i just want to make sure i understand that 41% of the customers today basically have a meter where they're using less than a thousand cubic feet per quarter and they're paying this minimum so is that right so 41% basically paying that's correct like 140 bucks a year and those customers that the entire 41% group of customers are going to be moving to paying what like 260 something by 2028 people basically use no water no they would be so for a residential actually i'm sorry this is yes you're correct yep so the minimum would be going up to 260 they would be paying so that to me feels a little harsh no we say 40% of customers use no water and they're going to be basically doubling what they're paying every year by 2028 they use less than a thousand cubic feet what's the salary there i mean i don't see that well if you're using less than a thousand cubic feet you're probably using nothing honestly well i mean that's you're basically not using water right i mean your meat is probably turned off i mean i'll give you like my example i have it's pretty minimal like i have a meter that's just for my sprinkle system which i don't use 10 months a year right so i mean people probably have meters like that right where they just don't use it a lot of the time right there's a few of those but for example i happen to be in that category and you know it's just a two-person household i'm probably using maybe 60 or 75 percent of that i think that's probably the case with more people and not just because of the smaller households so one of the thing to go back 75 of what way the thousand cubic feet per quarter yeah um yeah i i don't think we're very far away from that thousand number either and we're a house of three yeah and yeah the thing that we need to kind of go back to you know and i know these again that's a tough category to hit significant increases but it kind of comes back to the cost of service um you know if we go back to these other utilities the challenges as you pay and i know they're private but vermont gas green mountain power you're cell phoning you're paying a certain amount every month just for the cost of service and when we go to your expenses in both the water and sewer you know a significant portion and the water is a little bit different here because a lot you know about half of that is water purchase from Champlain Water District but a lot of that is fixed costs and part of it is people paying their fair share of the cost of service um and what you need to be a little careful about is you preferably don't want certain customer categories subsidizing so for example you know you don't want the average residential customer subsidizing those on the minimum side nor the commercial you know subsidizing the others so a lot of this is making sure that people are paying their fair share portion of what the fixed cost and really the cost of services here but also recognizing that's always a customer category that is challenged financially at the low end and may not use again we're you know to use example of maybe that household that's on a fixed income and that's that's always the difficulty here honestly it sounds to me um the people who so someone's using hardly any water is basically two fixed costs right a fixed um for the minimum amount of water that they may not be using and then another fixed cost right um that sounds weird honestly it sounds unfair I don't know to me well I I would be open to you know people use 500 cubic feet getting you know kind of a rebate just like the affordable housing could get a rebate uh but I right there's if you don't use any water it's it sounds unfair to be paying for the thousand cubic feet every quarter plus now this new fixed fee that just sounds it sounds harsh well I get clean water as a result so it's you get clean water there's a baseline there's a there has to be a baseline there has to be a baseline somewhere yeah yeah those are the order for you to use and I guess can I sorry sorry and can I just can I can I please yeah there has to be a baseline I'm really quite done but okay go ahead good okay there has to be a baseline at at some point and the challenge is if it if it's not if it doesn't go here it has to go somewhere right so if if if we if we if we reduce the burden on on these individuals where where does it pick up well I guess what I was saying is if you're not using any water or very little water um you should probably just be paying the fixed fee not also this thousand cubic feet and then the people who are using water then I guess their rate per thousand cubic feet um would would be a little higher because they're actually using the water I would say some people you know don't use any water I I can't think that there are people who live here and don't use water if they if they go away for six months of the year well they still use water two quarters and they're not using any water right but they use water for six months of the year yeah so yeah I would cut that too and they could right they might be renting their house and someone true but yeah yeah but I mean we know some people right service who goes away totally right for at least two quarters or whatever and has has no usage that's why I would be open to the 500 cubic feet having a rebate for people like people in that category um I would be open to that and I I would really encourage people who water to use rain barrels um I don't know if that's good for your rate structure but um we certainly haven't had water much this summer yeah that makes sense to me Megan if you use less than say 500 then you know you just don't pay the usage fee right or something like that because that's less than that makes sense his household of two so that tells me you know I'm assuming you're an engineering type I'm assuming you're not a wasteful guy so I'm assuming that 500 is a pretty well I'm good I think we can do that analysis and bring that back what it's going to do is increase the right increases right for everybody else but maybe right but Jesse do I have it right too though you're proposing to actually reduce the usage fee from 36 bucks to 29 bucks yeah because some of that is being moved over to the base rate Andrew right but you could if you maybe you play with that you leave the usage fee as it is but if actually someone uses no or very little water they don't get charged both that actually seems to be more fair well here's another option for consideration too is if you had somebody that truly does not use any water you could just charge on the base rate like if they're not there for three months and legitimately don't you know that that would be fair and that would be yep and I'll just note exactly in our list of fees it's you know every time uh Jay and his team come to turn water off at home or turn it on it's $50 a trip if they were physically turning off the valve at the street too maybe maybe folks that are going for extended periods would do that yeah I think Megan's 500 was probably getting at that I mean maybe 500 is zero but maybe it should be 200 or 100 but some number which is so de minimis that the family's not really using any water can we ask if if the water district has all of this data can we ask how many households how many how many quarters per year in the last year have and the number of households that have had zero usage that's all and if we were to do something different for them could you come up with a proposal to to maybe not penalize it seems like it's penalizing them if they use nothing I mean they should have to pay a connection fee yeah but the thousand minimum maybe we give them some kind of a rebate on that to some degree but if you if you knew how many quarters you had in residential that and what an impact you would have maybe we could come up with a number yeah agree so but you're not I guess to spend the 50 bucks to turn the water off to the home well so make sure that they're not using anything right that that becomes problematic because if there's an emergency let's say and they have to come home for some reason because there's a there's a loved one that's that's sick and they think there's sprinklers well if it's a sprinkler that's totally different right um but there's that issue where they have to come home that would be up to them right you mean you know um the homeowner could shut it off or not but presumably they wouldn't right something else my issue with with that with the proposal is that in essence there's a minimum threshold to water usage like if and ultimately what it feels like we're doing is if you are a second homeowner and you're only in your home part time we're going to shift a disproportionate amount of the increase onto full-time residents who might have larger families who are going to have higher usage rates that's a good point because at the end of the day if we're using less right like if and I'm not an engineer I'm not an ecologist I have no idea what a low water threshold is but if we're talking whatever the measure is that's 500 or less I would imagine the only way you're realistically going to achieve that threshold is if you only live there part time or you have a meter or you have more than one meter and and you would have that again if you you would have that if you had a sprinkler system or something along those lines yeah the issues me so again that's not the demographic that I would want to but you still don't want to set up something that's unfair Tyler to have folks that are not using water basically pay now two fixed rates well I mean it's not equitable has to be an equitable system well and I think we all Tyler's getting to the ability to pay as well Andrea which has to do with equity but I think that the important point that Wayne has brought up is that this is not unusual what he is suggesting to us that this is something that currently exists in Williston and in surrounding communities and and so we are simply replicating kind of the norm currently we are not the norm we are on the very much low end of things which might come as kind of you know not necessarily a happy surprise to people who want to pay even less but I think it's the truth and people have to deal with the truth so in terms of equity I hear Tyler and if we're talking with people with second homes they could potentially pay and therefore the residents who have two kids are making $24,000 a year because they're working two jobs and that's all that they got they don't have to have a bump to have the person with the second home pay less there's something to be said for that and I appreciate Tyler raising that what about the summit properties they have one one meter on the whole building pretty much will they I would think so large apartment buildings usually just they they don't have the meter for every apartment so multi-family buildings he's talking about the summit one that's going in one year okay so the HOA or whoever administers gets one bill would that bill that's it would be well it would be a residential rate but they would have many thousands of cubic feet of water and so that's kind of built into their cost structure for what they charge for rents and things like that okay an HOA might even have a variety of charges well so like an apartment building that is managed right that's just market rate apartments right that's not an HOA there's a property management that takes care of that and that's built into the rent right some it's probably the same way a condo like let's take for example Eastwood Commons one there's probably one pipe that goes to that and no you know one meter and so so my point is what's interesting here is that large multi-family units don't have any incentive to conserve water other than education right and or the HOA or the property management saying you're using too much water you know and in fact the the the manager property manager doesn't even really know who in the building is using the most water right they have no that's you know visibility that so if somebody if there are 10 running toilets in a 90 unit or 45 unit building right they have no i which is really too bad yeah it's really too bad and so if we could Tim to dig into that a little more is it also the case HOA would basically just get one fixed fee so it effectively be all on a usage fee basis so like that example of summit so they would pay two times the base rate so like okay but yeah so with like 90 units are effectively just on a usage fee basis they're not really going to see the impact that's yeah that's right it's diminishing that's right and that's it seems like it's getting unfairly honestly i don't know it doesn't sounds off it sounds like an odd system to me yeah well that's why we looked at alternative number four which is so if you've got a building like that their base rate is on the meter size and you know when we went through the numbers on that the some of the larger water customers were going to see some pretty significant increases but what you're really trying to do with that is proportionally you know build them that fixed their base rate on what you think they may be kind of using and that's why we kind of ended up in that middle ground of number three where it maybe didn't get us all the way to number four but it also was a good middle ground it wasn't a tough hit on some of these other commercial customers because you get into also there's a lot of just office building kind of basic that don't use a whole lot of water that may have a larger meter and again you don't want to penalize that customer kind of guard either so number three seemed to be kind of a pretty kind of utilizing everyone else now right i mean i don't know it's the system to my ear doesn't sound equitable but yeah well we've asked them to look at a rebate yeah um what other questions in direction have we given so i i don't think it's a rebate i think you are asking us to look at a lower base rate a minimum charge for a lower base rate is that well i think we want to know the impact is if you had to shift some burden off of the people that use zero what they use no gallons in a quarter right and how many people have that condition and what effect would that have if we wanted to give them some sort of relief i don't know what that how do we know though who doesn't use any water that's that's all the building they know how many how many you can yeah well it's how many their meter tells them how many gallons it's a deeper dive into that in a multi-family but a single family right and that that may not be a big not big number either until we kind of look at the data it may not multi-family because they wouldn't how would they right but for the multi again like all the buildings we're building a city center those also one meter yeah so all those buildings basically the fixed rate also is not really meaningful it's all usage based effectively because they're only paying like you know a dividend at a fixed rate i would say the usage rate is not you guys answer that question do we know the answer to that correct me if i'm wrong you they have a separate account for the for the sprinkler systems it all doesn't run off and that's a larger meter so i guess is that answer the question or because there is one pipe for drinking water but then there's a second connection right i'm just saying but for those buildings i don't know how many apartments or a couple hundred apartments basically the fixed rate charges the minimum that's right it's just all usage fee because they're getting just a 2x fixed rate that that just i i just don't get it what why are we spreading out the cost on that unfair way i i don't know well we can make sense we could say that a building of 40 units right has to have a 40 times some you know fixed rate in their bill right 40 times the fixed rate that everyone else is paying and they would see a large increase in their water bill but it would be fair compared to you know a single family exactly residential unit that has its own meter so i think if we were to tie it to the number of units that add some complexity to our billing structure because that can change for a lot of properties that would be administratively a lot more work for us to go through so is meter size a proxy for that tom in some ways but if you go to um i was just looking for i think it's on page 24 of the actual report it talks a little bit and you can see some of the different meter sizes and it wouldn't just impact those types of buildings so there's other types of businesses that have larger meters as well and i think we have to think about what we're incentivizing are we incentivizing you know single family homes or are we incentivizing people to reduce their water usage and to perhaps live in multi-family we're trying to spread the cost fairly among all the customers that's what we're trying to do right that's what we're trying to come up with a bigger system to make it nothing is ever going to be fair we're all going to have different ideas of fair let's just be really clear this one seems particularly unfair what's not fair is a market-grade apartment building that doesn't have a scaled fixed use cost compared to my house right so if a 40 units market rate apartment building has got 40 times the amount of water that i use essentially then that should be a trigger saying if you use that much water then your fixed rate is going to go up as well or you increase their fixed that you increase their rate you know per 10000 cubic feet period but you got to know that it's you know if it's residential and it's you know multi-unit and it goes above a certain then you just just double their rate or whatever it is to make it fair i wouldn't make it one to one i i do think we have to think about again our climate action plan where we have to determine what style of living to be quite honest it is going to be more resilient is going to make us less consumptive in terms of energy water everything and and we incentivize that and i'm not saying that there should be not kind of a threshold like what you're talking about but for it to be one to one i am not on board with that what do you mean one to one where if they you know use 40 gallons for their 40 units and a single family home uses let's just say one gallon right so that one i'm just using simple numbers so that one gallon would be a threshold for the single family home that the 40 gallons for that 40 unit multifamily structure would not trigger right so i would not make it 40 gallons i would make it perhaps 60 gallons something to incentivize that multifamily housing making the way it works now right if you have a two or three bedroom condo in a marker rate unit you basically no fixed fee where if you have a two or three bedroom home in a duplex you pay a fixed fee it's just that's just not fair right and in terms of creating incentives to use less water i i don't know how much that even what that even means anymore since the federal mandates on efficiency have made you know low flush rate toilets uh low usage what dishwashers you know you have a half hour shower you can use a lot of water i know i know that's so there's some behavior in there but then our baths use a lot of water they're building fewer and fewer homes with baths now so but the point is is that but also when you but we're talking about the fixed fee we're not talking about the usage fee right then you see the appliances the appliance and assuming behavior is the same the appliances have caused these decreases in usage and then decrease flows to the wastewater treatment plants as well because because they're doing their job right that's why our former president complains so much about the low flow shower head so much right he hates it when there's not no water so i forgot that so the so the the part of that is that again like andrew's saying that a large market rate apartment building that if you have a three a three bedroom unit a three bedroom unit versus a three bedroom residential home that apartment building is not going to share the same fixed costs as the home because we're going to get that fixed cost i've heard that and what i'm suggesting is that it not be a one to one like what you have said i would make it a little bit more attractive in terms of utility rates to live in a multifamily i think you're saying a reduced unit factor a single family home may count as one fixed rate a multifamily home two apartments may count as 0.8 correct yeah no i'm fine with that i just want to make sure that that apartment building shares fairly in these increased capital i've heard it several times i got it andrew did you have another comment no that that's fine i mean i would make it one to one i think there's different ways we should be incenting um multifamily um living not by kind of distorting the water rate structure but that's fine i maybe just interject here quickly so great points and i think we all kind of shared those same concerns which was number four where we looked at the meter size and the base rate so we had some pretty good numbers from shamplain water district and we there's actually a pretty detailed spreadsheet in the appendix and i think when the hesitation so what i did is i took a five eighth meter size and then i said here what we're starting is a base rate for that size and then if we're going up toward three quarters how much bigger is that pipe and i increased the base rate proportionally as we got up into two inch four inch and eight inch i think the thing that i got to be a little bit concerned about it it was a huge increase in some cases um like the four inch i think by time you projected they were going to be looking at over seven thousand dollars a year um just on the base rate side and i didn't feel that like so if you've got an apartment building that's got 20 units and another one that's got 40 i didn't feel that the pipe size coming in was necessarily proportional to the number of units in that building so that was my hesitation a little bit which is why we kind of looked at this alternative to see if we could kind of make that work but the pipe size to me didn't seem to be a great indicator accurate indicator of how many units were in that building so you could maybe have a building that had five units it was a two inch and i'm just guessing maybe have another building that was four inch that had 40 units in it didn't seem to be proportional maybe to the number of units that were in that building if we just looked at the looked at the meter size so yeah it's gotta be on you yeah mm-hmm i also think the bottom line is everyone's getting really good clean water and when they flush everything goes to the appropriate spot and gets reconstituted into you know clean water and when you look at all the other monthly rates that people i mean everyone crabs i guess about their cell phone but they don't get rid of them it's it's a bargain i mean the rest of the world would love to have water this cheap you bet so i mean i appreciate the equity issue but i think you can get caught up in those details in a way that makes it pretty cumbersome and not cost effective even though maybe you can say that someone who doesn't use very much water is getting a deal but they are getting a deal now in my opinion mm-hmm but see i don't get any of it anyway hey helen yeah why not why don't we just go back to usage fee that because solves this multifamily apartment issue too you you pay based on usage you don't have to know the size of the pipe the number of units the base rate just it sounds to me like it's just distorting this whole system well i guess in a number of the developments we have they don't have a use base for each apartment you can't do that no if you just do usage then you know however however much water the apartment's using you you pay based on usage food everyone pays on usage like we do know and i think so going back to the beginning and Wayne of course correct me here i think the the point the starting point to look at a base rate is especially as we're investing 40 million dollars into new systems is you still have to pay to play so even if you have no usage you have the opportunity to have usage you have the asset that belongs to your home you have the six months a year you're back in the city and getting an asset you you still have that makes sense that's why i think that they went with that fixed fees no no no with that pay to play i'm sorry just that makes sense if it's usage and there's a minimum usage that's fine is pay to play but doing our usage avoids this distortion of having to figure out you know how to evenly allocate the fixed rate among different building types right that's why we had to have this whole discussion that we're not resolving if you just go back to usage and minimum usage so everyone pays to play i mean don't have any usage pay to play we'll just have different trigger points for increasing usage that triggers a fixed use charge i don't know who's so part of the concern with trying to get away from just billing on usage was um where the increases that you're looking at are going to happen irregardless of whether you change the rate structure or not and if you don't get into some kind of a base rate or fixed fee the increases are going to be greater for that person at the lower end that isn't using much water if you don't implement some kind of a base rate or fixed fee because what we're proposing or recommending on the water side is you know the residential is one times the non-residential two times and that's a help kind of defer to fray in not hitting that person at the lower end with the same level of increases so and that's a customer category that we're always a little bit concerned about you know from an economic standpoint and affordability yep and i think equity equity piece is really important then i hear that okay can we ask for some data i mean i'd like to take have asked no well i'd like to if you took like i don't randomly like a hundred residential you know addresses and calculated their cost per gallon and then took the you know 10 multifamily structures and tell us what their cost per gallon was you know for a year or a quarter that would be interesting and then we could see if there's a huge difference in what people are paying per gallon and i don't know what the h o a charges right but in terms of the building the cost of the building i'd like to know what that is because if it's grossly what's the word in in equitable then i want to take care of that yeah i think that's good data and and you know i think we should also look at household size if you truly want to look at it right i mean i i know we're not going to get into that i'm not asking you i don't think they have a household sign i'm just saying i'm just saying you know i mean we could get into really fine fine data points if we truly wanted to know how equitable things were okay so do you have some clear idea of what we're asking you in terms of data okay yeah you can follow up with some of the information we took it okay that's good do we need to go through this same conversation with the sewer stuff that didn't change that didn't change that's right okay we dove in and okay my last comment is that it's it's always cheaper to clean water that's relatively clean than it is to clean it up after you've used it and flush it that's the interesting thing but of course that's the way it is right yes so the cost per gallon for your cwd is a lot less cost per gallon from then discharge it back into the wanouski or into the bay right it's always harder to clean it up afterwards all right well thank you very much thank you gentlemen okay why don't we take just a five minute break any discussion all in favor seeing none all in favor signify oh tyler did you have something you want to say oh okay um no i'm just excited i got my camera to work sorry um signified by saying i if you agree i i okay so that's unanimous okay moving on now to item 12 approve the expansion of our neighborhood development area to include the north side of williston road so paul connor folks paul connor director of planning and zoning here um so as you know um we have uh two layers of a designation program city center the first later is our new town center is the core of our tiff district and then on top of that we have a state program called the neighborhood development area which um when the city demonstrates that we have certain levels of regulations in place and certain planning tools in place it affords both municipal and um private sector benefits um we are allowed to expand it out to about a quarter mile beyond our new town center and so we are proposing in this application to extend it to the uh northern and eastern extent of our form-based code district we've already worked with the state staff those districts are already approved so we think this is going to be a really quick one and we'll really be a strong benefit to our partners who are pursuing projects in that part of the city to help them have either lessened act 250 fees or in some cases maybe not being in act 250 which is a really strong benefit and incentive to be in our work here also in your packet are uh three draft community investment agreements so the both of the excuse me both of these designation programs the new town center and the neighborhood development area have to be up for renewal every uh periodically we're up for renewal in a few months and so we're getting our ducks in a row here um this is the exact same or almost the exact same development agreement that we've had with the umal prior owners and with the folks in the heart in along market street we're proposing to add a third development agreement partner in joe larkin who is owns property at 10 cxd 8 welliston road and also where the cbs that property so really right uh one of our key gateways and so we'd be seeking your um authorization for the city manager to enter into um agreements substantially similar to those the agreements are essentially an agreement to agree um there is no hard commitment or anybody's part other than in partnering to to develop a downtown that's what i've got for you okay are there any questions i very much support this i'm willing to make a motion a little right ahead i move to submit the application to expand the city's neighborhood development area designation to the north and east within the city's center form based code district as presented second any discussion yeah just a question poll so um would the area then like when you look at the future land use map and the comp plan with is that kind of co-existent of what the orange and and red is with the whole it's uh it lines up with the red oh it's all red okay it's all red yeah okay yeah okay any other comments or questions okay all those in favor signify by saying hi hi hi hi okay i unanimous and then we have a further recommendation to authorize the city manager to enter into community investments agreements with snider braverman eastern real estate and larkin realty in support of the upcoming new town center renewals in a form substantially similar to the draft agreements present in the city council packet second any discussion seeing none all those in favor please signify by saying i hi hi all okay all right thank you for your time folks you're welcome back shortly so we did do item 13 so now we go to item 14 review the city charter in advance of receiving the charter committee's report on september 18th i'm not exactly sure what we're gonna i'll just help that's okay sure and i want to thank you for putting this on the agenda it was a request that i had made the reason i made this request is multifaceted but it grew um at least kind of was compelled by the last meeting of the charter review committee where an audience member seemed dissatisfied that the the charter review committee had not considered other options to ensure which is the charge that we gave to them to ensure that voices are equitably represented represented at policy making tables and the response of the charter review committee members to that question was what would the council ask the committee to do further to quote-unquote according to the charge ensure that voices are equitably represented at policy making tables and so the direction that this council through our priorities and goals retreat back over a year ago and those don't represent the views of two of the five counselors here gave direction to the charter review committee to specifically look at the number of elected officials on our boards whether or not we should change from serving at large to wards or some combination there of and also to look at the executive profile i guess or or you know structure whether you know we continue with the city manager form of government or we have an elected mayor and as the