Welcome everybody in person and online. Hopefully all the tech issues are resolved. I'm Josh Jerome, Community and Economic Development Specialist for the City of Montpelier. Thanks for coming out for the second spring engagement session about the Country Club Road Project. Just some housekeeping. We're going to have a presentation. It's probably going to be around an hour long. We're going to save time for questions after that. And so when that time comes, if you're online, please use the raise hand function on Zoom to queue up. And we will start with individuals who are present here at City Hall first, and then we will go to Zoom for questions. When we have a couple of people monitoring that chat is disabled right now. So please keep that in mind. And so I'm first just going to sort of give a little summary or like a recap of like why, what we're doing here. We are in the process of designing a master plan for the Country Club Road Project. And a master plan is not just these maps. These are conceptual maps, conceptual designs. A master plan contains this and a long list of other due diligence that's required in the next phase. And additional steps. It's the roadmap for continuing this process. So, you know, when you're when you're considering the survey and looking at these, this is not a capital improvement plan. This is not a zoning ordinance. These are all conceptual. There are things on here that probably will change as do as additional due diligence is discovered. So don't don't take a look at this as being in stone. This is a living document that will change over the next six 12 months. So to get things started here, I'm going to introduce our consultant Stephanie Clark from Whitenberg. Okay, so I'm going to project for the room. I might back up a little so I don't overwhelm anyone online. Hopefully if there's any issues online, one of our team is online. Yes. Oh, okay. All right, because I want to speak loud enough for the people in the room to hear me. And we do have with us today Evelyn Prem, the city's communication coordinator and online Dave Saladino from VHB, one of the consultants. I believe Jim Drummond is also online from Black River Design. We can't see everybody who's participating online yet right now, but that's the consultant team that's been working on this for a while. So I guess we'll go to the next slide. So tonight's purpose is to talk about we're going to take the time to really get into this. As Josh said, it's going to be a little bit of a presentation, a little bit of a longer presentation just because there's a lot of information, a lot of data. We're going to do another little quick technical. Here we go. We're going to we're going to get into the depth of the of the findings from the winter. We're going to get into the depth of the concept plans and to really bring everyone up to the same page because some people have participated all along. Some people are new to the process. And so I appreciate everybody being here online and in the room tonight to give this the time it deserves for the importance of this type of project and planning. So we're going to get into that. I'm going to talk you through the concepts there. They've been online now for a week, but we're going to go through them a little bit more. Dave Saladino is going to go through them and we'll talk about cost of the site, the high level order of magnitude costs that we've estimated at this stage and then a bit about financing. We're going to try to keep it a little bit simple, but it's complicated. So we'll give it the time it needs. We can also answer a lot of questions once we get into the Q&A. And then we'll talk about what's coming next and then have lots of time for Q&A at the end. So as Josh said, please hold your questions. We'll we'll get to them and we'll get to everybody online and in person. So we can go to the next slide. The process started as you know, most of you know, a year ago with the vote for the purchase of the property. And there was a listening session at that time there. We continued the city continued its work. The consultant team was brought online in September to help facilitate this process, deep dive into the due diligence work through the different concepts and opportunities. So we hosted a list series of listening sessions and community discussions in the spring, I'm sorry, in the fall. Then in the winter, we had the due diligence from the site, the site findings of the due diligence that we brought forward to the city council, as well as our with our findings from that fall feedback. And we presented what's known as a strengths and opportunities plan to talk about what the site could and could not support relative to what we'd heard for prioritized uses in the fall. What we've done since then has been a series of different iterations and just got deep dive into the data of what the community process yielded. So the survey we did online, we did individual stakeholder meetings, we did all of the public meetings, and we brought all of that back to the council in March and told them where we were going with the concept plans. And now we're in the spring stage. During this phase, this stage, we are having more community meetings, getting education out there launched a big campaign of messaging to get this out citywide and providing additional information. And there's a new survey for this final state stage of our phase one work. This is the last step. The actionable master plan is what's next. We will be presenting the survey, survey results and the meeting results to the council at the end of this month. I think that's maybe I'm skipping ahead to the next slide. May 24th is the city council meeting when we will report back all the findings from the survey and all of our recommendations. And that's when they'll make a decision on concept A, B or C, which we'll get into in a moment about what plan of those three should be included in the actionable master plan. But as Josh said, the plan itself, the actual land plan concept is not the actual actionable master plan. The actual master plan is the document and it is the recommendations, the goals, the due diligence, that whole package that's getting put together. So the concept plan is not the final land plan. And we just ask everybody to think in those terms when you're viewing the plan as not set in stone. And but we're also very aware that we have immediate recreation and housing needs in this community. So we are trying to purposefully the reason it's an actionable master plan is that there are actions the city needs to take in the following months and years after this work. This work is just a foundation. It's not a document to go sit on a shelf. There need to be steps after this to start addressing these needs in the community, but balancing that with a transparent and inclusive process. So that has been the goal of this whole last several months. Go to winter. So the in the winter stage of this process, we hosted several meetings. Some of you were in attendance at those. We had a lot of meetings. We had a lot of survey responses from the community. We also held a high school survey and all in all that was 12,000 data points that we were able to really look at, analyze, try to weave into some concept planning. And the biggest support was for a balanced site with housing and recreation serve served on this site. And because there's a high housing need, there's a high need for outdoor and indoor recreation in the community. And for the housing, there was a large support for a variety of different housing product at different price points. There was also strong support for conservation, abnackie celebration, recognition and education spaces on the site amenities for the new residential communities, whether that's community gardens or trails for the residents, but also trails in general around the site, gathering spaces, connections of wildlife corridors, connections to the surrounding network, whether that's bike path or traffic patterns, all these issues, all of these concerns and interests came up. There was also strong support for minimizing impact to climate and minimizing impact to taxpayers. Super easy job. Yep, no problem. So we prepared some concept plans based on that. And in that, we incorporated as many of those aspects, but you can't incorporate all of them. So I wanted to talk about what is not shown for a moment before I turn to Dave to tell us what is shown. And what's not shown are things such as developer specifics. So again, the city is not in the business of building housing. The city is not going to be the developer of the housing parcels. It's fully in the full intention of the city to do either a land lease or more likely a subdivision so that these parcels go back on the tax rules that an independent developer or partnership, a partner or multiple developers take on to build the housing. And they are going to have specifics relevant at the time because this could be in three years or five years or for some of the further out parcels even longer, they're going to very much depend on what's in demand at the time. So it's market dependent. So there's no market analysis baked into this concept plan at this point, except to talk about the market data, the housing demand and supply right now. So exact levels of affordability are not reflected on this plan, nor our specific technologies. We've heard a lot around geothermal, the importance and the emerging technology of that, or tiny house design. Those are levels of detail that don't come with a phase one master plan. Things that aren't shown specifically include neighborhood amenities. These plans are high level, so they're not going to get into amphitheaters or playgrounds or anything at this stage, but we do fully expect that something that gets incorporated as a developer takes over and as the public private partnership comes together between the developer and the city to navigate what the right balance is on the site. Also of note, we are not incorporating or designating any particular locations of abnaki celebration or recognition or education at this time, because those really need to be determined as part of a more collaborative partnership. So our actionable master plan is actually putting forward the recommendation to form a working group with representatives of the abnaki community who we've met with a few times. There's others to bring forward for tribal representation and that the city and this working group and stakeholders from the city will be looking at this more citywide too, not just this site in isolation. So these plans it'd be premature to suppose what should and shouldn't be incorporated here. We want to note that wildlife corridors are an important part of this site to really retain its history and how it's been used by the wildlife to date, and those are not specifically called out on plans but have been taken into consideration in the site design. And the last thing I'll point out and Dave will probably reemphasize, but you'll see on these plans something called the recreation and community zone, which is a 12-acre part of the parcel that is a designated space to be programmed in a later phase. And that is because since our winter meetings there has been an emerged process that's separate but parallel to our process master planning the site that's really focused on the recreational design and programming for indoor and outdoor recreational needs on this site. So it's been right-sized to 12 acres based on conversations with the rec department the rec advisory board with the design team that 12 acres feel plus on top of the survey results that talked about a balanced approach out of the winter phase. And so that's the right size it feels about the right size for the city to designate for those uses, but how that will look inside that zone is coming in a future phase. With that I'm going to turn to Dave to talk us through each of the concepts and then I'll get back to talk costs. Okay, thank you Steph. Can you hear me? Oh, you can hear me Steph? Testing, one, two, three. Test, test one, two, three. Okay, fantastic. Thank you Steph and Josh. Let's see if we can advance through to the next slide here. I'm just going to walk through these three concepts, concept plans, which are in some ways kind of a variation on a theme around, as Stephanie alluded to, kind of that balance between recreation and housing uses. Again, also as Stephanie alluded to, the fact that the community recreation zone is kind of called out specifically. The detail behind that is not shown on this plan, so the plan that we'll be looking at on these next three concept drawings are more focused on the housing, the residential component and kind of the internal circulation and so forth. So we'll get into that. I'm going to see if we can get access to the pointer. Let's see, are you seeing my pointer? So looking at this first concept, I think one of the first things just in looking at it, it's easy to think that this is a flat site as we look at kind of two-dimensional drawing here, but it is certainly, as we were looking at this, trying to consider it in its context. And so this site itself is on a fairly prominent terrace along the Manuski River, just downstream of the junction of the Stevens Branch of Manuski River. Obviously, the golf course designers recognize the fact that we had some nice level land here, which made sense as a golf course back at its time, and also presents a real good opportunity for housing and other uses here within Montpelier. So really wanted to respect or kind of take into account the lay of the land as it exists, as we look to lay out these three different concepts. So a couple of things that are common to each of the plans we have, I guess, just to orient everyone. Just right where my hand is pointing is the Roundabout, the new Roundabout on Route 2 and 302, heading east from that Roundabout. We have the Country Club Road access point here. You can just see under the screen here, this is the existing, the former Elks Club building, and then the golf course itself is kind of shown in the light green. So that's the area that we're looking at. The entire parcel is outlined here in this yellow outline, about 133 acres in total. And so a couple of things that are common here. We have our access road that's coming in. Again, as Stephanie alluded to, this is the 12 acres that's been programmed or reserved for future discussion around recreation and community uses. So we have the access road coming through that area. First node here is a residential, the highest density residential node here. So these are five story buildings with just under 200, about 196 units as shown here. These are clustered around a community garden or an opportunity for a community garden and community space here in this location. On the note here, these dash lines that are shown, these are anticipated trail connections through the site. So we have this connection down here to the Country Club Road trail, the Cross Vermont trail, just along the Manuski River. So we have a connection point here so you can get up to kind of different locations within the property itself. Trails throughout the site. And then more prominently shown here in purple, this is the proposed U32 trail. So we've got, those are shown on each of the three, the three graphics. So then continuing through the site here, we've got this first node, then we move beyond. We've got these three clusters of townhomes. And those could be a mix of duplexes, triplexes, quadplexes, more than two units per house. And again, that would really play to the market demand at the time. We wanted to show the mix of potential multi-unit housing. It's about 100, just under 100, about 96 units there in these three clusters of townhomes. So that brings this concept total to 292 total units. Well, this is the most dense of the options in terms of number of housing units overall. So before moving on to the next concept, just a couple other things to point out here. This location here, this number seven is at least identified as a potential neighborhood gathering space. We don't have the detail as Stephanie alluded to. We're not showing a playground equipment or other uses within that location, but it feels like kind of the right general location within this site to prevent, to present some community space for the community to gather. We're also showing off here to the northwest corner some opportunities for some future roadway connections off to the west here to savings pasture up to the north. These are potential or in the future should those be needed to connect to potential, you know, additional growth or development in these locations or to provide a secondary means of access back into downtown Montpelier. Let's see, I think that, oh, yes. Just move your mouse back to the center of the plan. For some reason it's pulling up the, this year remote control is pulling up the laptops menu on our end. Oh, that's good. You're good. Okay. Whatever you did. That worked. Okay. Fantastic. Thank you. Okay. So then moving on to concept B, see a lot of similarities to concept A. We have the same, generally the same roadway alignment here. We have the cluster, the five-story multifamily units here, again 196 total units, the community garden located here. We have, we continue out with, we have these similar two clusters of townhomes. Real big difference here is a cluster of single family homes kind of at the end of the roadway. This is really building off of feedback we received during the winter round about different types of uses on the site and single family homes did receive a relatively high vote total. So we wanted to make sure that one of the concepts did reflect an opportunity for single family homes. Those could certainly be of any size. They could be tiny homes. They could be, you know, traditional single family homes, again, playing to the market at the time that that would move forward. And then if we move on to concept C, concept C is the lowest density in terms of number of units. Oops. I guess I'm in control of the slides. Yes. So concept C, again, the lowest number of units. This one has 184 total units. A little bit different here in terms of the layout and allocation of housing. So again, as you're coming up Country Club Road, instead of the four or five story buildings here, we have a single kind of C shaped five story building flanked by two, three story buildings here in the red. Both of these locations would have their first floor as parking so that we're not filling up lots of kind of impervious surface away from the footprint of the buildings. Then moving around, we've gotten rid of this cluster of housing to free up some more space for future recreational or just open space uses. And then back here we've got the townhomes or multi-family homes back here, which would be two stories. Those are 32 units of townhomes here. I do also want to mention kind of further to step in this point of the green circles that are shown here are existing trees. We've heard from the community wanted to make sure that we are designating or identifying the existing mature trees on the site. We recognize that that's an important resource on the site. And so we took every effort to avoid impacting those trees. Certainly as this moves forward, there will be much more landscaping integrated into the site. None of that, none of that detail is shown here, but I wanted to note that the green trees here are the existing trees on the site. I guess one final thing here just in terms of the overall allocation of land uses, so 133 acres. In each of these concepts, we have a minimum of 80% of the space that's reserved or is maintained as natural area. So we're really kind of impacting a fairly small percentage of the overall site. And those breakouts are shown here in the bottom right. And I think with that, I'll pass it back to Stephanie. Okay. Thanks, Dave. Again, we'll have time for Q&A at the end. So we'll have an opportunity to ask Dave specific questions or whatnot. But, yeah, to hit his point, actually go back just a slide or so, to go back, one other point to make is that one of the interesting things that we were remarking about after the winter phase and what the city council discussed and what we talked about was that the similarity of these three plans really speaks to the strength of the process up through this point, which is that there was large consensus toward these designs, toward these layouts of infrastructure. There's not a ton of variability between the three, but it builds on the resounding support we got for the test sketch C, which was part of the winter stage that showed the balance of the two wreck and housing uses and the level of housing there for density and quantity. So it really is a, we didn't know where this was going. We didn't know how this was going to turn out, but it really is a testimony to how this process has unfolded and what's come from the community. So with that, I will turn to cost and we're going to talk about cost for a moment, then we're going to talk about some financing. So at this stage of the conceptual planning, this is a master plan and these are very high level estimates of what could happen on site. Now, again, I'll remind you the intent is for this to go out to an RFP to a development partner, could be a development, one developer for all of it, it could be different partnerships, they could be people working with different groups like Down Street or Habitat for Humanity or a co-housing entity. This city, one of our recommendations will be for the city to send out the RFP to specific groups too and specific developers who've done innovative things in other communities that we want to see here. And so we can't presume how that will unfold and when that will unfold. And so a lot of the finance of it comes from the development partnership and the public private partnership. But at this stage, it's appropriate to start talking about some high level costs. So again, in this stage, in this effort, to achieve a certain level of housing, we all know housing is incredibly difficult to build and incredibly challenging and pricey to build. And that's what we talked a lot about in the winter phase. Why isn't housing being developed in more places? And we talked about the challenges. And the thing the city can do and what a lot of communities are doing around the state and around the country is looking for ways to facilitate what you want. And so if the market is not coming forward with the housing that you want to see and the level of housing or the product you want, how can the city incentivize that? So in these scenarios, we are conservatively assuming that the city is funding all of the infrastructure and assuming no contribution from a developer to purchase the property or put in the roads or water or sewer because we're looking at the most conservative estimate and what the city would have to do and invest in order to achieve a goal here. But that's not at all to say that's how it's going to end up, but we're trying to look at it from one extreme. So again, this looks at the city's commitment, not individual units or driveways. That will be a developers and it does not include the rec zone that I talked about. So we can go to the next slide. This does talk about the infrastructure within the property limits. So what you see up here, and I know the font is it's hard to read maybe from the audience. Hopefully online you can read these are also available all online. The slide deck is available on the website, but this is what's within the city, the city's property limits. So sidewalks, roads, trails, water, sewer, connector, road over to, this is the old deck. Yeah. Anyway, there's a line, but it doesn't matter. This also then calls out specifically if you needed to do a signal or roundabout at route two and this intersection, that would be applicable under concept A and concept B, but likely not with concept C because it's a lower volume of a lower quantity of housing. So you can see how from that top, from this new signal and roundabout up, there's cost differential between the three scenarios, A, B, and C. Then we have a list of costs that are offsite costs that are the same regardless to support this level. Any of the three levels of concept A, B, and C, we have a water pump, a water sewer pump station that would be needed for any of them. We also have costs that are already invested in the property. There's sunk costs of $3 million purchase price, and we know that there's going to be it's not $500,000 now, but that there will be due diligence associated with all three scenarios. So you have three different costs, one for each of the scenarios, the three concept plans, $18.8 million though for A or B, they're the same because there's not a huge variation in the layout and then C is the lowest of the three at $15.3 million. So we'll talk a little bit more about that at the very end with some takeaways, but go ahead, Josh. So what we thought about is how could this be funded? At this stage, it's really too premature to discuss actual finance strategies. We don't have a development partner on board to talk about what the public-private partnership would look like because it hasn't been designed further. We don't know what grant opportunities exist, but we can make some assumptions and start figuring out how would the city make this feasible. So we've made some hypothetical mechanisms for the discussion purposes. Here we say in this hypothetical, we have a million already invested in the property from the REC fund. That is already money in the project. Then we have possible grants. We've assumed about 1.5 million that would probably be accessible through any of those three scenarios, those three concepts that could be Northern Borders Regional Commission money, REC grants for trails, it could be federal dollars for recovery and revitalization. We don't know, but these are some sources possibly. So what that does is it keeps that remain what says municipal bond needed. That's really the gap we're trying to look at. How would the city finance those numbers? So 16.3 in concept A or B and 12.8 in concept C. We're going to have to take a one minute break and switch up a slide because there's at least two slides missing at the moment. No, but I will talk about that in just a moment. Evelyn, do you know where the slide deck is on this? Or am I missing it? Oh, here it is. Thank you. Perfect. Perfect. I'm just going to go ahead and actually download this, make it full size. So how do I get out of this and go back to Zoom? No, just kidding. Here we go. Okay, here we go. Sorry about that. All right. So we had an older version in there. So as we talked about, so there could be, oh, there was a question about cost and cost of financing. I will get to that in just a second. So that's going to come up in these next slides. So as I said, this could be funded in a variety of ways. What we did not assume was any developer contribution at this point, but we did. So we're really taking a deep dive on TIF and water and sewer user fees as two possible financing mechanisms if you could just advance the slide. Thanks. So as I said, if we look at the funding that we're getting to that 16.3 number and the 12.8 number that we had on the previous deck, that's counting the total cost but minus what was already been invested by the REC fund minus possible grants leaves us with 16.3 and 12.8 to finance. So we have a focus on TIF. I'm going to talk about TIF for a moment because not everybody is as familiar with TIF as I am. Lucky me. So tax increment financing is a mechanism that municipalities can implement to use tax fund tax revenue to pay down infrastructure debt service. What that means is actually, why don't we go to the next slide? It's kind of a loop. It can fund itself because you take a bond out to finance the infrastructure, then the resulting development, the incremental taxes, the new taxes from that development, private development, go to pay down the debt service. The key here is but for the investment into the infrastructure, the development wouldn't have happened. The actual private development would never have happened. So it's new product, new tax revenue that didn't exist before. And there's a state program, the Vermont Economic Progress Council administers a program that allows municipalities with a designation to retain a portion of the state taxes. The education fund taxes new created for an area as well as your municipal taxes. So there's two different mechanisms you can do. A city can do a municipal only TIF, which means it's just taking its municipal to new taxes generated on a parcel, dedicating it to a TIF fund to fund the infrastructure, or you can go through the state process and be able to retain the state portion. Slide? Okay. So what we look at is the revenue that could be generated from these three concepts. If you've got these three concepts with units ranging from 292 in concept A down to 184 units in concept C, you can see that the range of taxes to flow off of that property is quite high over 20 years. And we talked about 20 years because that's the frame of TIF districts. That's the length of a TIF district. It's also the term of a bond. You can have longer bonds, but we're for the sake talking about a 20-year bond. So over the course of 20 years, the concept A with those 292 units would generate about 18 million taxes municipally, 22.7 from to the state. And down to concept C, which generates about 10.8 million and 13.4 million respectively. So those are just to kind of orient you to the amount of generation of taxes overall. Go ahead. But let's say we just do a municipal TIF, municipal only TIF. That means the city has decided that every tax dollar that comes off this property for 20 years is going to go to pay down the debt service on the infrastructure it takes to get it built. And this is looking at it as if we were developing all of the parcel, all of the housing at the same time and really looking at it on a gross level. So the amount to be funded was that 16.3 and 12.8 number. And then the cost of financing, this was the question about debt service.  And then you get that revenue. Well, you bring that cost down to the general taxpayer or to the cities leaving this to the city to fund. And you've got between 2.9 million and about 5.7 million depending on the scenario. So you start to close that gap using just municipal only TIF. So it's, you know, bringing it down a little. Well, how else can we bring that down? Let's look at the next slide. What if we were to use water sewer fees? So everything that top box is what you just saw on the previous slide. So there's that gap of 2.9, 5.7, 4.9. But if you add water and sewer user fees, which can be paid, can be used to repay the cost of building water, sewer infrastructure. Yeah, just the water sewer infrastructure piece. No, no, just the development. Sorry. Just, just, we're just talking about, see country club road as like a isolated piece. Yeah. If you add those fees, and you have to add in your additional cost of financing, because you haven't, you're taking out another, you know, you're, you're trying to finish the bond there, you can get down to $0 to the cat taxpayer or to the cities took to fund in concept A, all the way up to 2.1 million in concept B. So what you can see here, and this is just an illustration, just to kind of start to show how the city would approach this, is that you can bring down the cost overall and look for creative sources, using municipal only tiff or water sewer fees, or both. And then if you get a state tiff, which again is a different designation, it's a more intense program. I can go into more about that. If that's of interest, the city used to have a tiff district, which has been closed in downtown, but could be expanded, redesigned to include this parcel, then you generate a lot more taxes because you're now allowed to retain up to 70% of what would go to the education fund. Otherwise, however, again, keep in mind, but for doing this investment, this project would never even happen. So you're saying this is all new taxes. It's nothing that's going there existing today. And you start to look at how much more you can generate. And actually, you see a surplus. So now the line says 7.2, 2.2 million and 1 million from the three scenarios. And what that means is that because this would be a tiff project, this would be looking at the site as a whole, you actually could use potentially the surplus to start funding some of the rec zone and the outdoor indoor recreation uses just based on the taxes flowing from these units on the parcel. So those are a lot of numbers, but I'm hoping you think about it more as a theory and as a concept. So we're going to go through the concepts again in these next two slides. From the cost, the takeaway is that you saw A and B are about the same cost. They are the same cost because you have the same infrastructure set up for different layouts of units and different quantities of units. Concept C, while 20% less overall in terms of cost, also yields the fewest housing units. So gross cost per unit is actually the least for concept 47,000 per unit. Concept B goes up to 51,000 per unit. And even though concept C is the cheapest overall, it's got the highest cost per unit because you're setting up the most infrastructure for the least density. We also have to reiterate here the cost of the recreation and community zone is not known at this time. So that's not part of this phase. What I want to emphasize about the financing piece and I think, you know, as you think about it holistically, the city would be, it would be incumbent on the city to be focused on grants, seeking grants, always looking for grant sources. What exists today, it doesn't exist in three years. It may, some of those things may expire, some new programs may come online. Using a municipal only TIF plus water and sewer gets this close to being completely funded. In scenario A, it does in scenario B and C, it doesn't, but close and using the state program could potentially cover the cost of all the housing infrastructure and provide extra for that rec zone, which is a really useful tool. So it emphasizes the importance of TIF. We do know though, what this also leads us to say is that there is a lot more due diligence needed. We know that this is just phase one, there are more steps to come. The reason I say it's an actionable master plan is because we have actions built in that we're going to be recommending to the city to get clearer on all the design and engineering and permitting implications. This could increase the costs. We don't know. We also don't know if it opens up other grant sources because as you discover XYZ, you look at the design, you can find more opportunities for different types of funding. And we also know that as the developers are chosen and partnerships are explored, that there may become opportunities for other types of financing structures and we don't know what those kinds of programming benefits and revenue could be generated. So big picture takeaway from process is that the city is going to continue to look for these funding sources and continue to hone costs. This is not at all final. And ultimately the city voters have a vote on the cost. This is not capital cost yet. Like what you're voting on in the survey is not a vote on capital. Right now it's pre-development dollars, it's economic development dollars that are being spent by the city to do due diligence properly on this parcel. And there's not a vote right now in phase one on any indebtedness. There's no vote on spending, but rather on a vision for what we want to see here. And that will enable us to take the steps needed to get to phase two in the due diligence. So our survey has gone out. It went live on Monday. It's open through next Friday, May 12th. There are two questions that really hone in on what we're trying to get out of what we need to be able to go back to city council and provide them with the information and guide them in what we recommend go forward into the plan, which is to rank choice concepts ABC. And for the people in the room too, we also have plans out in the hall that you can see if you wanted to take a look after the meeting to actually look at them on paper. And the second choice, the second question is around support for the rec center, the building itself, the facility on this site. Because as I said, there's a parallel process going on with the recreation and communities own programming and design, and they need additional data, we want to provide them additional data to help move their process along. What will be seen in the actionable master plan, I just want to note that again, these concepts are not the only piece that are going to be that is part of the actual master plan. It's a much bigger document living document that's going to have a lot of steps and recommendations. Everything from setting up a working group with the Abnecki community to talk about opportunities for integration here on the site, rezoning the property, we know is an important is the next step and need that will take a lot of lead time. It's not zoned for housing at the moment. And then possibly an expansion of the growth center designation, which is also a precursor to getting a TIF district. So there's a kind of consequential series of steps that have to happen. We're going to recommend doing some of those as soon as possible. Looking at transit, that's a huge issue here. We know that, especially if the rec building becomes located here, getting people to the site. Having discussions with the railroad is a next step. Once we've known this, once we kind of a better sense from A, B or C what the impact looks like, we can start having those conversations with, for example, permitting regulators and talk about that impact. We couldn't do that before because we didn't know what we were asking for before this last stage, especially if it had been voted on by the community and really everybody spoke up about only being recreational, then we don't have that number of denset units to try to get on the site to talk about what that impact would be on natural resources. So permitting due diligence, further design due diligence, and then kind of starting to put together some ideas of what a subdivision plan would look like so that it preps everything going toward a RFP process, which is probably at least a year out to go out to the private community to look for those partners. So lastly, what I'm asking, what we're asking of everybody in the room tonight, online and in the room, and of our people that have been following the process all along is to help get the word out, share with your friends. We've done a widespread campaign to get the message out as widely as we can. But if you can help educate and point people to the webpage to get educated on this, that would be enormously helpful. And review the concept plans online at your own leisure and the costs are on there as well. This whole slide deck is online and the survey, take the surveys, three minutes, not a long survey. So please get out there and take the survey and it closes next Friday. With that, we're going to stop the presentation at least. And why don't we, we can probably stop screen share just so we get to see everybody online. So we're going to start with questions in the room. And you would need to come up to the microphone so that everybody can hear. And we're probably going to ask if you want to speak, you can queue. If you have any issues standing, you're welcome to have a seat in one of those chairs to wait for us turn at the mic, but we'll take a few turns at the mic here and then we'll pivot to people online and then pivot back. My name is Bill Doldger. I'm from Montpelier. My name is Bill Doldger. I'm from Montpelier. So have you estimated the number of people who need affordable housing now? No, I had some others if we're going to do that. So where, can you tell me where the two proposed roads go? One goes to Saban's pasture. The other one goes up the hill. Is there any proposed development pending for Saban's pasture right now? Okay. And how would the properties be managed if they need to be managed? And how would they be owned? That's it. Yeah, so the questions were what kind of analysis around how many people need affordable housing in Montpelier and the two identified possible road connections going over to Saban's pasture and then the property to the northwest. And the third question I didn't get you out. Okay. So I'll speak to the first two. Regarding the affordability, we are in a housing crisis and I think if you're paying attention, there is a lot of unaffordable housing in Montpelier. I think single-family residences had an average sale last year, about $407,000 in Montpelier. I think that figure is probably a little higher already this year. And obviously, if you are also paying attention that a lot of the multifamily properties that have been sold in Montpelier, some of the rents have gone up, escalated quite a bit, forcing some people to move out of the community because they can no longer afford it. So we know that there's quite a few people in the Montpelier area and also outside in the secondary area, which is like 15 to 25-minute commute. Since we are on water sewer here, we have a pretty significant system and it's only being used at 50% capacity. There is a lot of opportunity to concentrate affordable housing in Montpelier and connecting to the system. So we don't have exact numbers. The market analysis is ongoing. But if you have heard in the news, VHFA, Vermont Housing Finance Agency, did a report several weeks back and said that by 2030, we need 30 to 40,000 units of new housing in the state. So if you just, in the state, if you just take a per capita look, Montpelier is 1%. So that's 300 to 400 units to meet our demand by 2030. So pretty significant numbers. The roads that you see on the conceptual plans, these are possibilities, one going over to Savins Pasture and the other one Northwest. Those exact locations are not known. We would, that's additional due diligence that we would need to do in the next phase to discover the opportunities to do that. Obviously, we have discussed with the owners of Savins Pasture and those conversations are ongoing. And so that is our, it is our intention because the community in the fall and the winter sessions did say that one of their desires was to have this parcel connected to the downtown. And by getting a road into Savins Pasture, that would be an easy way to do that. So the question, the follow up question was reminding us that he asked also that is there any plan development in Savins and not not been proposed? I don't think at permitting level, right? They have not submitted for any permits, but there have been plans in development. The city has been talking with Savins owners for a while now on possible development. And it's really a best practice that we've applied here to show how it could connect illustrative only as there's a note. It's really hard to see at the in the room that said location TBD and it would likely not be two connections. It's one connection. But just to show that's something the city would have to do further due diligence on, especially if we get to this quantity of units. If we don't do this quantity of units, the number could have been down. If the number had been down, we may not have needed that, but that is an important egress for the connection piece, but also from an egress perspective, safety perspective. But again, long term and could be phased over time as these nodes of housing are built, that could be phased. You also asked Bill about how the properties would be managed or owned. It's a little bit too soon to tell because we don't know who the partners would be, but it's very likely that these would be subdivided and managed just as if they come forward with their zoning application. They're going to have to, you know, propose their development plan for the note of their their parcel. It's going to be a subdivided parcel on a city street on with city sewer and water that we provide. And in the development agreement, there's opportunities for the municipality to affect some sort of long term covenants on the property, for example, but how that gets negotiated is too big to permit. We're going to do these two and then we're going to go online. I'm Tina Muncie and I live in Montpelier. Those are the two things I was supposed to answer. And I understand that this is a big concept, but you did say you ended up with the three that are fairly similar. So given that, I'm thinking of me who lives in Montpelier and what am I going to pay? And when you looked at the costs, it looks lovely on yours. There are a few things that I think are missing that I think because they're similar, you could figure out. You sort of alluded to the issue of the railroad track crossing, which to me sounds big. Then what will the state require for modifications of the country club road and the route two to be connected and how much would that cost us? And then those two access roads, no matter where they go, it's going to cost us money. None of those, as I see, are in any of your calculations about money, which would inevitably go on my tax dollar with the city's paying. And then of course, the other thing not included at all is the rec department. So another thing going on my tax dollars. So I have to tell you on your survey, it was ranked choice and I didn't have a choice of no other. That was a problem, but I wish somewhere in here you'd figure out all those costs. Thank you. Thank you, Tina. So this slide, now it's pretty small, sorry, but before we switch slide decks, this slide had been updated since the draft I had sent Josh and this was what we showed on Saturday. The new connector road was actually factored into one of the, whether we went over to Sabans, we went with actually the Sabans cost because it would be most expensive to go over the Gorge, the ravine. It is actually in that bottom line. It was 2.9. It just wasn't called out as a line item. So we had, then I'm coming back to this slide just to show you that the math is still there at 18.8. The 2.9 million for any of the three scenarios would be the connector road. So that has been factored in, but you said three other costs, railroad crossing costs, state requirement for connection to route two. And I'm going to let Dave speak to those and then the rec zone. We know the rec zone is another question. That is absolutely something that will have to be discussed when the rec zone process unfolds and the programming evolves on that. Like we said, we know that these are the costs for this defined set of assumptions and this defined set of scope. And then it's going to be a matter of looking at funding sources and financing before this comes back to the voters. So as a taxpayer, absolutely. What does this mean for my tax bill is what's going to have to be answered when this comes back to the voters for a bond. If there is a bond, if a bond is needed and if a bond is needed without being able to show that it can be funded through another mechanism and it's going to go on your tax bill, that's when you'll have an opportunity to see that and see how all those costs are borne out because there may be costs. As I said that we haven't fathomed at all or you haven't, you know, listed on that list and we just don't know that at this high level. But Dave, did you want to speak at all to the two railroad crossing and state connection from route two to? I guess I may need a little bit more clarification on those. As I understand it, Steph, you did include the cost to reconstruct the roadway all the way down to route two, right? Are there any, I think, her questions? So yes, the intersection which would be either a roundabout or a signal was included for those two A and B scenarios. Scenario C didn't require that kind of upgrade so there is no cost there. Are you asking if there's other kind of state fees to be able to? It only, right, right. And so that's what that 2.9 or 2. whatever that number was, Dave, I can't remember the intersection number represents because that, yeah, that's the trip, that's the threshold for when the state, I think you said cares, you know, like that's when the state cares is that threshold of units. So that's what that was addressing. Dave, do you want to talk a little bit about the railroad crossing? Yeah, I assume it's the railroad crossing heading up the hill on Country Club Road and that would need to be, you know, a discussion with Vermont Rail or Washington County Railroad. But upgrades there, there are currently cross books there. It is, you know, an active crossing now, I think it's one or two trains per day, so fairly slow moving trains. So whether or not there would need to be upgrades for, you know, flashing lights and gates would be a discussion that would have with Vermont Rail. Presumably the cost would be borne by the railroad. This is something that if they're looking to enhance their safety at this crossing, that would not be anticipated to fall to the taxpayers of Montpelier. So we're going to take one more question here and then go to the online community. Okay, I'm Eve Jacobs-Carnahan and I live in Montpelier. I'm trying, I was trying to understand the TIF revenue and tax income coming in and wondering whether the scenario of the largest construction, which is concept A, coming to zero is, is actually realistic or is unrealistic because you had mentioned, and so I, and I'm hoping you can explain some of this and the pieces that are puzzling me are, I'm wondering whether all of the infrastructure of roads, water and sewer all gets built upfront at the beginning. But you had said it's quite possible that the housing would be built in phases. There might be a little bit of housing built in the first two years. There might be more housing built later and it might not all be built until 10 years later. But if we're paying for all the infrastructure upfront, we're not receiving the tax revenue. And the other part of that is you also had in that scenario, you said, well, there was even the potential to get some surplus that could be used for the rec center, but that's after 20 years, but we wouldn't be waiting 20 years to build the rec center. And so I don't know if I'm understanding that correctly, but if I am understanding correctly, I think these are misleading numbers to put out there that may influence the survey because people may choose something thinking the cost or one thing or another. So I'm hoping you can explain that. Yeah, absolutely. Those are all really good questions. And I would call that TIFF 2.0. So this would be something I would go into more in a, in a TIFF presentation, but it's a good question. And maybe it's something we should answer in like an FAQ, because we're developing the FAQs right now from the meeting we had on Saturday with the public and the city councilor's questions from last week. So we this may be one that I want to add. So what what you're really hitting upon is an issue of cash flow. And so whether these are realistic or not is is I would say it's possible under the TIFF, how the, how TIFF works, whether or not you can get a state designation or not, I can't, I can't speculate. That's that's a whole process that goes through the state. But essentially what happens is you would, what I said at the beginning is you're looking at all the costs and all of the financing as if this is all built at one time, but it's more likely to be phased and water sewer would be phased road and road and water and sewer would be phased as the development is phased. So what TIFF does in the state of Vermont, and the program is run in a very specific way to prevent risk to minimize risk. So in other parts of the country, TIFF has been done somewhat poorly, very poorly where they run a water sewer line out to an inter interstate interchange and hope that development comes, for example. And then the development ever comes and there's a tax bill for everyone to pay. That's the if you build it, they will come model and Vermont's program is not set up that way. It doesn't allow for it. So the city would be doing this in lockstep with a developer knowing where the revenue is coming from before it does any indebtedness. That's been done now in multiple communities across across the state, Barrie, St. Albans, Killington's doing it right now, Hartford did it very successfully, South Burlington. So it's partnerships that have to prove that there's a revenue source before you can incur the debt. So we would, from a phasing perspective, that's how that would work. What you asked about with the surplus is surplus debt capacity is what I mean by that, not surplus revenue in 20 years, but rather at the beginning at the outset, if you're in a partnership, if in an ideal world you had a developer say, year one, I'm building all 200 units, or I'm committing to paying taxes on 200 units over five to 10 years to be built and come online in five to 10 years. Now I'm going to have, now the city can bank on that when it's developing its rec zone and developing the modeling for how to pay for a rec zone because it knows it has a commitment for those tax dollars. There's a cash flow thing here that you're hitting upon, which is a common, it's a common issue across all TIF districts, which is you have to build the infrastructure first for the development to occur. You don't get the revenue until the development's been built. So there's a way to work your cash flow where you do zero interest only bonds for a few years.  That's really a cash flow issue. It's inherent in every TIF district, but it's been done really successfully because there's a commitment from the land owner that runs with the land. So the property taxes have to be paid on that. Just say it's like a loan and then go into that because that kind of summarizes what it is in a simple, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Yeah, no, I mean, it is sort of the state wouldn't want to hear it necessarily frame that way. So we're careful in framing that. But I think there was another piece I wanted to make sure I pointed out, which is just that again, this will have to be looked at by the under the terms of that particular development deal at the time and based on property values at that time as well. So how much a property, this assumed a flat tax rate of what's the tax rate today for 20 years. So that doesn't even assume any increase in taxes. So there are a lot of fluctuation, a lot of variables that could fluctuate between now and development. So I said we would take three from the room and we'd go online and we have three hands raised. So we'll get through those three and then we'll come back to the audience here. So Ashley's first then Emma and then Kim and we'll go ahead. Sorry, I enter I know that was rude. I'm just I wanted to sort of simplify to make it clear. But I, you know, I don't know the details. So sorry about that. Okay, so I have a few questions here and also some resources that I wanted to share. So, oh, sorry, I'm Ashley starbridge I live in Montpelier Vermont live here Montpelier. So I saw that the unit per cost. I saw that the that the per per unit cost for the different plans goes up with the similar with the smaller the smaller unit amounts with each plan. So does that mean that with like plan C the price to rent each unit would be more than the comparable unit in plan A and B. And that that's probably something to deal with with the developer but that was just sort of a that's a question that I have that could influence votes but per depending on which plan. But another question I had is as a low income disabled local artist, are there any surveys that I can take to be because this this sort of reflects the earliest question but are there any surveys I can take to be counted as someone who needs affordable housing I don't know if I missed one of those surveys. And then the last thing that is sort of a multi part question is it's not really question it's more about resources that I wanted to share and it's I have a degree in environmental sustainability studies for the concentration and policy and took many courses and did many projects in sustainable development. And I want to say first thank you for preserving the old growth trees. And the other thing about that is will those trees be preserved with each plan A, B and C. I saw they were preserved in plan C but that wasn't mentioned in A, B, A or B. So I wanted to see if they were also going to be preserved in A and B. And then the last part of that is I'm on a lot of newsletter email lists from the EPA and other government organizations issuing environmental infrastructure grants. And so I wanted to know sort of who within the city should I send those grant opportunities to that come across my inbox. So that's those that's what I'd like to say. Thank you Ashley. Did everyone in the room hear those questions so okay I'm just making sure. So Ashley the price per unit I think it is a really good point and I want to clarify that in my next Iterial add that note for our presentation on Monday. That is not a price per unit to a purchaser or a user. It is a price per unit for the city's infrastructure. So when the city is thinking about how much it's funding how many units it's funding the price for every unit it is incentivizing that's the perspective and I didn't know that we were collected. Yeah I can add that as a note. I think that's important. The the piece about the it does affect affordability in some ways because the city the larger the investment the city has to make into the infrastructure the more debt service it's going to need covered by the tax revenue. So it puts a larger emphasis on the importance and the buildability the feasibility for the developers. So keeping it affordable is the name of the game. If the city's contribution can be more affordable the units are going to be more affordable if the city can put in more investment into the infrastructure to help keep the costs low the resulting product will be more affordable. So it is it does trickle trickle down a little bit but it but it that's not reflective of a unit price per person. I just want to know. Yeah I mean I knew that but I didn't know if it was reflected. And then the surveys we have had we've had two surveys so far this is our second and the surveys for all community members whether it's in Montpelier or outside Montpelier we asked the question are you a Montpelier resident or not because we'd like to represent to the council when we present these results who was speaking who was represented and who was speaking out. But we think it's really important because there is a large we've heard from a lot of people from not living in Montpelier who want to live here and you know who can't afford to live here and we want to capture those voices in this survey. So we've asked that question and we'll provide those results with the demographic data when we come back to city council. And then the old growth trees yes those he mentioned it at concept C but they were shown on all three plans. So that is the preservation of all those trees is shown on all three plans. Again as the development plans come forward with a developer full transparency that comes out more in the planning and zoning process and when that comes before a review by any conservation board and so forth and in first structure grants it's environmental infrastructure grants it's premature at this stage because we don't have an actionable plan we're not actually developing it yet but when it comes time please do send them to the city that absolutely is going to be we're going to be turning over every rock and stone but right now we're not in a funding mode we're in a planning mode thank you cool oh Emma and then Kimberly Kidney and then we'll come back to the room. Hi I'm Emma Zavez I live in Montpellier Vermont I use she her pronouns. So thank you for the presentation I understand wanting to keep the financing presentation sort of at a high level and so I imagine you'll probably be going to more depth with city council and city staff but I mean I think one thing that really stands out in the three concepts is like you said how similar they are which in some ways makes it easier to compare costs but I think like as a member of the public thinking about the costs and the build out like it would be nice to it would be if the analysis hasn't been done yet it would be nice to have an analysis that's presented to city staff and city council about you know what how the cost would change if if you only built out the first segment of it you know like the when you talk about the cost per unit you're lumping all of the housing types together but by the time you get to the end of the road the single family homes like those single family homes are costing a lot more per unit than the four-story like hundreds of units you've got really close to the connector road so how does how does the layout you know like this looks like long and winding as opposed to clustered so like if you were to cluster more or if you were only to build out the first section segment how would that radically shift the costs yeah so I think it's it's one thing to ask people like what kind of housing do you want then they're like we want everything including single family homes and we want to use all the areas it's another thing or like it changes perspective you know it gives you perspective when you start thinking more about like well is it worth it to build out x billion more dollars of road for like only 14 units there's something like that right right no and I hear your point and some of it is what we some of it we can answer now and some of it we can't so and and what I mean by that is that this phase of master planning this kind of level of master planning you don't get down into that nitty gritty detail yet as you're looking at how to how to finance it what that cost is exactly however what you're getting at is an important one which is also probably going to need to be an FAQ which is about phasing that this is very likely to be phased you don't a developer cannot build 200 units 300 units in one year that's not feasible and the city is not going to build all the infrastructure in one year that's not feasible so it would be phased over time and we don't know yet we don't want to presume it's going to be one developer it could be multiple development partners and again I think what's important here to remember too and because something you said reminded me of this is that this is a vision and a target for the goals of this site and this is representative of the goals of this site as has been voiced by the community as has been voiced by the city council and what the council will inevitably adopt and the council will have a say in what those goals are at their next meeting but basically we're targeting increased housing stock multiple price points we're targeting increased indoor and outdoor recreation opportunities minimizing impact on climate minimizing impact to taxpayers and those higher are overarching higher goals is what needs to be the comparison when it comes back to the RFP process if they did what I mean the reason I give that kind of context is that a developer development partner could come forward with a more innovative design that does cluster and put things at a higher density lower on the site and show how that financially is better for the city while still achieving these goals that the city has put out and it doesn't look like the plan we have adopted but it gets at all those goals and now we've achieved something new because a development partner has access to different resources is more innovative than the city is not a developer of housing we don't know exactly how that could come together so we want to leave the door open for that and that's why at this level it's looking at it purely on a gross level of one you know as if it's in this one point in time but the truth is that if it's phased Emma this would come back to a vote on any kind of capital cost and at that time that's your opportunity to look at okay this is phase one supporting this level this makes sense but if phase two comes back and it's a five million dollar infrastructure bond for the resulting 14 units you can say no at that time that's exactly when you'd say no and it makes perfect sense or speak up at city council before they they do any kind of action on it so that's where we are with phasing in the master plan and that's where phasing could happen in the plan and the execution okay we'll go to Kimberley kidney oh sorry Emma did you have a I was just gonna just one more question can you just confirm is the recreation area which I'm guessing mostly will not need like sewer connections and that type of thing it does it have to be the closest to the main road or because of the existing building and like the contours of the landscape and it probably will need sewer and water because it's if there's a facility located here the building itself the rec building and so yes the intention was to keep it cited the reason it was chosen to be cited down at the base of the site at the at the first of the site was based on feedback from the public about access to recreation you don't want to send all the cars that are going for the recreational uses through all of your housing developments along the way to go up to the back of the site and running um that that quantity of yeah cars okay thank you okay yep okay next up online so if that can hear me yeah we can hear you all right this is uh david kidney kim i thought so yeah um kim is here and she did say before i started uh and I agree with her that uh thank you so much for doing this presentation and you guys are really good at it you're really doing an excellent job and I appreciate that um thank you so I wanted to make a comment and then ask a question um with regards to the rec center uh I mean I've lived in Montpelier since 1982 um I have family you know grandkids in Montpelier and I think it's essential that the rec center itself stay in the heart of Montpelier and I just I think that you know I know generations of kids have walked to the rec center they walk there from the middle school after school uh they can come and go as they please um and I think for a lot of kids uh it's been a salvation having it there and it's certainly been healthy and good for all the all the children in Montpelier and so I really think it's a huge mistake to kind of put it out there in that kind of suburban location um and one of the things I think you could do in the past when people have talked about building the rec center down at the rec field by the pool it's always been well we can't sacrifice those fields and you could sacrifice those fields if the new fields are at the Elks Club because people do drive their kids to soccer and frisbee and lacrosse and and literally that's something that parents or typically or the coach or parents combine and get their kids to those practices and events very different than free play at the rec so you could open up that space and build a rec center at the rec field and I I know a lot of 30 and 40 year olds uh just because I have a daughter who's that age and lives in this town with kids and I and I've talked to a lot of them and I think there's a strong support and sentiment to keep the rec center downtown or in the city's proper so the question I have is on your survey it says it basically asks do you support the rec recreation being out there so what if you're like me I support rec fields out there I support a sled riding hill out there I support you know nature trails out there as well as all the housing you're proposing but I don't support the rec center out there and I think I'm not alone in that sentiment I think it's a pretty popular and in fact I think if you put it to a vote it's a majority position in my appeal here obviously you guys but I did and even on the last survey I felt like the only way I could answer that was to kind of write stuff in that that so how do I answer your question I want the rec fields out there but not the rec center and that's where this might be a nomenclature issue because the question asks if the facility should be located there and by facility we mean building okay so I should vote no then I mean that's the people who don't want the rec center there correct rec fields there should vote no thank you yep yeah facility meaning a building meaning a center all right I misunderstood the question thank you that's okay but I you know I worry you're not alone in that and how you know we made if we're able to like tweak the survey I don't know if we're allowed to do that at that point no you can't once you make it live you can't okay no I think you've clarified I appreciate it I don't know if people tell your friends tell your friends that if they're voting on it that that facility what a facility means is a building and so that they know how to answer the question thank you okay we're going to come back to the room for any remaining questions in the room before we then go back online so you've been waiting patiently thank you come on up say your name and where you're from I'm Malcolm Fitzpatrick living in Montpellier I hardly agree with the goals Montpellier needs our housing so especially affordable housing and recreation is certainly been here a long time but we don't need them both on this property they're not the more I hear about this property especially the cost of development it is unsuitable for housing you see these 47 or 56 by tiff or extra fees that's a cost that affordable housing is going to have to bear no matter who pays it whether it comes out of the city by subsidy or by the people living there you do not pick a parcel for affordable housing that needs serious serious site development you pick the largest flat piece of land you can find as an alternative forget housing on this site make it recreation it's a nice site but it's not suitable why isn't it suitable the distance of bedrock is minimal on many parts of it we have not seen the map that they have the shows just in other words look at standing and look at that side of the hill it's bare rock outcropping that rock extends back what do you think makes those steep slopes that's the rock having been formed and covered some areas deeper than others the deeper areas of the flat areas saw the positive on those holes carved there the steep areas of bedrock now imagine trying to put a road in there on those steep areas you have to get grade because you can't have steep grades in housing you have to build up land but you got to go down six feet to put the pipes in sewer and water it takes money and who's going to pay for that money it takes to build the roads to fill in and so on it's the housing that is developed on that site you can't do that and have affordable housing someone's got to pay for it the best way to have affordable housing is to have a site that costs the lease to develop for that housing you don't pick a site that is steep rocky poor accessibility and it costs money to build and develop you're right that people say we want housing and afford and recreation but there's no alternative for if people had another site they wouldn't pick this for housing there is also an article that I think we're following too closely from online the title is cities build luxury housing the mode across the country is to let developers build whatever they want do away with zoning and then build is a they build better affordable housing rich will move into that and they'll move into those apartments it's a trickle down story but gets left at the bottom is for the poor we don't want that we want housing that is affordable and is quickly produced so let's find another site for housing in my opinion that's the real objective of let's stop being washed here and there by the cost or by the roads or by accessibility on this site let it be developed for recreation let's find another site I have one terristry you know where terristry is go up terristry and on the left as you go up there's been in my time recent development there's two rows of housing streets but back of that is a well laid out subdivision that was bought out why not take that for us to develop land it's got the roads laid out it's develop oh yes we may have to take the power of inventory made by the city use it it's for a noble purpose affordable housing we want that affordable housing at the least cost someone's got to pay that tif and the fees that she was showing associated with this development it's either going to be paid by the residents and they can't afford it would be affordable we want housing that is affordable and the people who live in it can feel they're paying their fair share they don't shouldn't have to beg for housing it should be at that cost and the only way to get it at a cost is to minimize the construction of that housing you don't not pick as I say on this site you do not pick a site that costs a lot to develop if someone's going to pay for that cost it's either the poor people you're going to nickel and dime them or you're expecting the tax rates to go up to pay for it so I ask let's let's stop the the hand holding worrying about what is housing here how much and when let's get find a site for affordable housing that we can implement and get it built in the next several years there's a lot of money in the state for affordable housing we just need the site in my career that can easily be built and quickly at affordable prices thank you okay fine me I don't have a question I have a comment is that okay there was a remark earlier that led me to believe that I need to make this comment my yeah I'm Richard Brock I actually live in Eastmont Piliar but my southern property line is the Montpelier Eastmont Piliar boundaries so I hope that helps but more to the point I'm here because my wife's family control owns 20 acres just north of this property it's an ideal place for housing it has a southern exposure it's very near route to it has access from the uphill hackamore road but it's a long access so we have asked that if and when the country club road property is developed we can have access to the infrastructure and uh Ms Clark and Mr Jerome have not seen fit to show that on their plans but we'll keep asking and maybe we will make it or maybe we won't but uh in any event the comment that I think I heard was will the city be paying for access to adjoiners I can't speak for other adjoiners but we absolutely will not expect the city to pay for any connection we make to any roads or infrastructure that will be our expense thank you I hope I don't know if I needed to clear that point up but I will I will speak to that which is to say and we talked about this a little bit on Saturday which is to say that the potential for the connections are not just road connections that we would be assuming there's infrastructure connections of likely water and sewer that's the best practice in a planning in the planning world is to connect those and that's a city goal especially and so you know and again it's all about the partnership and so when that comes forward to look at the city needing access to provide infrastructure at that time and how do you connect that that's all part of that conversation so absolutely we're gonna go to Linda who's had their hand raised for a while and then come back into the audience hi my name is Linda Young I live in Montpelier and I just have a couple questions the first is I wasn't sure whether there's ability to add something like a local store in the plan like we've got here for housing and I'm just thinking of ways that people are living out there that they don't have to always get in their car if they need to get a bottle of milk or whatever right and then my other thought was I don't I was trying to think of what are some similar projects not exactly the same but what have we done before that we've actually succeeded at and it might be useful on the website to have links to reference material if it's available for how the lane shop project came about for example that was before my time in Montpelier but I'm kind of curious and Mary Hill and are there some other developments that have occurred that had some townhouses and a mix of housing and how that worked out would be it I think it would be useful context for those of us who want to read it thank you for that suggestion you're the first person to raise this question and I thought it would come up a lot a lot actually but about the commercial and retail use so thank you for mentioning it and it was such an important piece of the winter conversation that there's not be a commercial use site however an accessory use such as something to serve the users but by what I mean by that is not making this a destination commercial use but commercial to support the residents because you're creating a community anything from 180 to 292 units you're now in a new neighborhood and a new community and of course like how can you make it the most can there be some jobs on site that would be great you know there could be people who work for the rec center who live on site community center which would include likely the senior center and things like that maybe they can live on site too so there's some absolutely important pieces there we are absolutely not precluding small-scale commercial with this I think the zoning will support some sort of mixed use for that supports the actual housing that's there but again keeping a very small scale not a destination is going to be the name of the game in terms of the goals that answer your question okay yeah okay you're up hi Nat Winthrop I'm a 40 year Montpelier resident and I have kids and grandkids who are also living here in Montpelier I'm also on the board of the hub and partly in response to my neighbor Dave Kidney's comments I want to clarify that the hub for those of you who are unaware have been in talks with the city since six months before the bond was passed we were actually the ones that brought the property to the city's attention and we have always said and continue to say that we would like to have a presence up on this property in partnership with the city and ideally in partnership with the rec department but not necessarily if the rec building ends up being elsewhere we would still love to provide recreation up on that site and we're prepared to do so in the short term starting in the short term like within the next year and what we've always said to the city and the city has agreed conceptually to is that they would we would provide complementary recreational facilities not duplicative or competitive facilities our main focus has been on a variety of racquet sports but also virtual golf and other facilities and by the way three penny tap room is very interested in in potentially also citing a sort of satellite restaurant bar up there and their outlook is the long term when all of the housing is there and so forth but we're the ones who open the door to them and the city is aware that we've been in discussions I also want to clarify that we have even though we've been talking to the city consistently for a year and a half we have zero commitment from the city because the city has been very clear from the get go that they need to get meaningful public input before they are prepared to enter into uh any sort of long term agreement with the hub so that's my long comment I have a quick question which is a couple weeks maybe four weeks ago or more the city council authorized twenty thousand dollars for a rec department study of what they would like to ideally provide city residents up on that site and Arnie McMullen told me that that process should only take six to eight weeks which brings us I think to later this month so what is the status of that thank you yeah so that was a continuation of a feasibility study that was actually started in 2019 around the same time when the question was being asked what to do about the existing berry recreation the recreation center on berry street right and I think at that time you know there were some cost estimates about fixing up the that rec center and I think based on community engagement at that time people indicated that they didn't want to invest in fixing that up they would rather use that capital to invest in a new facility and so because of our process we thought it would be beneficial to conclude that feasibility feasibility study so ballerin king the consultant who was working on it I yeah they should be done I think sometime in May is the hope end of May beginning of June we're not quite sure but in that time frame so we'll that study will sort of identify the possibilities in Montpelier for a new facility and some programming needs we'll have some more information in probably or 46 weeks we have one more question online so we're going to take that from Peter and then we'll see if there's any other remaining comments being mindful of time but we did start late so we're happy to stay a little longer but trying to be respectful of everyone's time Peter you're up if you just Peter Kalman Montpelier I just want to clarify a couple of points Malcolm Fitzpatrick's very long and involved exhortations not to the contrary that land is not for sale on Territory the owner has been talked to many times by the city an eminent domain is not really the Montpelier way or really the Vermont way I think that we really ought to put that one to bed secondly I'm glad that the issue the last two last speaker raised the issue of the rec department study if David Kidney is interested in having the a rec center built out by the rec fields which by the way is hardly downtown it's not in fact very much closer than this this site but if you're interested that would be the group to talk to this process is mainly about looking at the housing options you'll notice that whole section for the rec the rec area is not being addressed by this process that's being addressed by the the study that Josh just alluded to thank you thanks Peter everyone seems to be packing it in I think our stomachs are speaking maybe so Malcolm did you have a follow-up if you come up speak to the microphone or you can tell me I can repeat it into the microphone that's it's just for the microphone needing to be online yeah thank you thank you okay that's fine there's one more including comment yeah I meant to ask a question of the tips and fees that you yes are they additional to the fees or taxes that would be paid by those homeowners gotcha yep it's a good question and no um it is the it is the same tax rate applied to those parcels as would be applied to any other parcel in town so it's the normal taxes that are that would go with the land and those taxes are sometimes paid by the developer then pass through to but it's the same rate as everybody else and that's just taxes normal taxes it's the distribution of where the taxes go yep fine in that case they're paying the same as the rest of and it's not an extra burden on on the homeowner that's interesting yeah I have to think about that in terms of my suggestion for eminent domain we wouldn't have no business in this country we could not have connected them all of properties to run roads through this nation we would not be using any state if we not had each state have eminent domains it's not a bad thing it's not a bad thing it's a good thing when used wisely and you use it wisely when there is a common need and it will serve the common good you should not have one person holding up what is logically the development of Montpellier the west side of Montpellier walking distance to downtown good area just because he doesn't I only does not want to negotiate you take it by eminent domain you work things out it is the Vermont way it's been done for years again that's the way the interstate was built we could only a single owner could not hold it up so I strongly suggest if we're going to live have affordable housing make housing that is affordable not through subsidy but have it available at the cost we use our eminent domain and have a Montpellier that is not developed on the east side where it is very difficult to develop because of rock and soil but on the west side walkable distance to all the facilities of downtown Montpellier thank you seeing no further questions we're going to wrap up and I'll just say again please take the survey please feel free to tell your friends Monday is a remote session it's all online from noon to two on Monday which is an accessible time for some folks who can take time in the middle of the day thank you for your time and really appreciate it all the materials are online we look forward to hearing from you thank you


Welcome to the Global Symposium for Regulators 2019 here in Port Vila, Vanuatu. We're very pleased to be joining the studio today by Ivan Brown, who is the Chairman of the Board of Commissioners for the Liberian Telecommunication Authority. Ivan, welcome to the studio. Thank you so much and I'm happy to be here. I'd like to start off by talking to you a little bit about the theme for this year's Global Symposium for Regulators, Inclusive Connectivity for the Future of Regulation. What, in your opinion, how can we achieve inclusive connectivity? First of all, let me say thanks to the ITU and the host country, Vanuatu, for the warm reception that we've gotten so far. It's very hospitable. On your question, we all as a global community have come to realize similar experiences, and what we do from our end in Liberia is yet to come to fruition, but it's a working process. We have identified areas to be inclusive in the world community in terms of our universal access program and through our licensing regime and the acquisition of a national backbone. Those are the three most important areas we've come to identify for inclusiveness. Also, regionally, we've been working with our close neighbors, that's Sierra Leone, Guinea, Cote d'Ivoire, and Liberia through the Manor River Union arrangement to collaborate in finding some harmonization on how we can better off our various communities. In terms of your own country, what particular challenges are you facing? Challenges are enormous. Actually, the first is the concept of affordability. We think that if we have a national backbone in our country, we'll be able to reach to the remote and unserved areas. But at the moment we don't, and so it makes connectivity a little difficult for us. We have the opportunity in 2011 to have the ACE project coming to the country that after that deployment was done, it's only serving the metro area, strictly the capital, and so people in the rural areas and the unserved areas have not been affected. We have not done the divestiture in a way that we'll be able to get it. So I consider all of that as our challenges. And we are working towards that though. As I said, the national backbone project will be the way to go to reach out to those unserved areas. And then another challenge is with the universal assets. But again, we've got some light at the end of the tunnel. We're given some support by the World Bank, a minimum support that was able to make us start that program off the ground. And currently we've got the fund and the program itself started with the stakeholders, mainly the operators and some service providers chunking into that fund as half percent of the annual revenue to that fund so that we can be able to accomplish some of these connectivity issues that we've had. Finally, you've taken the time to be here. I know you made a concerted effort that you were three days in terms of your travel arrangements. I wanted to find out, has it been worth it and what do you hope to take away with you going back to Liberia after this conference? The first and foremost is that you come to these conferences, your network, you meet people that you haven't met before. And some of the problems that you've had, you surely get to know that others have had it, if not solve it 100 percent, at least to some extent. And so I'm going back to Liberia with a lot of solutions in my hand, knowing who to contact in terms of what. And the spectrum side, on the connectivity side, I've spoken with a lot of people. And I think it's worth my while coming. And now we look forward to these kind of conferences organised by the ITU. Well, thank you very much for joining us here at GSR and of course here in the studio. And I wish you the very best and hopefully we'll catch up with you again at another Global Symposium for Regulators.


Hey guys, welcome back to my YouTube channel. This is Daniel Rosel here. I'm here in a playground in Jerusalem at one in the morning. This is not my typical Saturday night pursuit, but I'm here to test out a wireless audio system. Excellent wireless audio. I picked up from Aliexpress, which for those who haven't had the pleasure of becoming acquainted with Aliexpress, it is a Chinese website. It's kind of the B2C or business to consumer equivalent of Alibaba. And because I live in Israel, it is useful if you don't have great Amazon service in your part of the world. They sell stuff straight from China to where you're living. And something else about this whole video project is I buy a lot of stuff from there. A, because it's kind of more accessible. B, because I'm definitely working on a budget. And my kind of modus operandi today has been to buy a lot of different gear, different connect different connectivities, et cetera, et cetera. Find something that works. And then when I'm out of Israel in the US, et cetera, I'll buy something decent quality. It's probably horrible for the environment, but it's what's worked for me and my budget up to this point. So for the sake of comparison, I got this sure microphone from Amazon last week. It was something I could get here. And I have it currently wired into my camcorder, the Canon XA40 using XLR cable. So I'm currently wired. And as I move away from the camera, we shouldn't really be seeing any, you know, there might be a bit of handling noise because the XLR cabling is dragging along the ground here. There's definitely substantial handling noise on the microphone. If I just pass it hand to hand, you know, it's a $40 reporter's mic. So you can expect a ton. In any event, this is going to be the control. This is the kind of baseline performance of the microphone. What I'm going to do now is pop in my $50 AliExpress wireless XLR system. And we'll see how that sounds by comparison. Okay, so I've gone ahead and swapped over to wireless. As you guys can see, what on earth is this wireless system for about $50? Great question. It is, it says on the product, MTU002. When you buy stuff in AliExpress, especially on the cheaper range, you typically don't buy from a brand. So it's not clear exactly who makes this, what the brand name is. What I can tell you guys is that I'm currently using the wireless system as 654.750 megahertz. Now, unlike a decent wireless pairing system, this one doesn't have a automatic frequency adjustment functionality. In other words, if I change frequency on the transmitter by hitting the button here, the receiver is not going to automatically pick up on the change of frequency. So you have to have them dialed in at the same frequency. So that's something, if you spend decent money, you'll get. But I mean, at $60, this guy's coming in at a few hundred dollars cheaper than, you know, what a decent XLR wireless system will set you back. Now it does have some basic functionalities. It takes a USB type C charge. So there's a little port for both. And it came with a USB type C cable with two heads. So you can just stick one into your charger and charge receiver and transmitter at the same time. There is a little notch here on the side for changing between your vocal transmission and music transmission mode. The performance of the microphone shouldn't be any different.  So this is why I'm doing it at one in the morning when people aren't kind of staring at me. I'm about one meter away from my camcorder, the Canon XA40. What I'm going to do is move back in this direction and we're going to see how things change. So I'd say I'm about probably five meters from the camcorder now and let's go back further, further, further, further, further, further, further. I'm about 10 meters here, maybe even 15. In any event, once it gets to 10 or 15 meters, I'm not really concerned because I'm probably not going to be using, you know, for something like this, like a reporter or interviewing a microphone. I'm probably going to be at maximum about this far from the camcorder maybe interviewing somebody. So if it even kind of holds somewhat steady up to that kind of five, seven meter range, I'm going to be pretty happy. I have done my own test anytime I buy a new microphone from the internet. The first thing I do is go and record a test footage and that's why my YouTube channel says it has hundreds of video uploads. There's only about 100 public videos because it's full of all these videos of me testing at my gear that are set to private. So I've done my own testing so far. I have to say it's been pretty disappointing but you never know. Maybe I did something wrong with the frequencies and this will somehow turn out better. In any event, this is roughly the performance you can expect from a $50 white label or off label wireless XLR system purchased from AliExpress. I hope this video is useful. If you want to get more videos from me about video Linux, Israel, whole potpourri of topics, please feel free to hit that subscribe button and thank you guys very much for watching.