and it's a little early to go public forum we can't do consent agenda so mr mayor are you prepared to do the appointments now or would you prefer no i'm happy of parking improvements and also taking an in depth look at the current state of our downtown improvement district which involves public works because the funding is designated by charter to fund our free parking program and as part of the agreement that came before council last year with already was given to create a downtown improvement district advisory committee that group is actively operating co roof on it representing the council and we have through a competitive process procured brad siegel and his firm puma to do an investigation and come forward with some suggestions for next for the downtown improved district it's been a pleasure working with brad some of you from the council may remember our trip to denver in two thousand and ten brad at that time was with the denver partnership and ran  downtown denver the sense gone on his own into the consulting world and has worked with a long series of cities to help them solve and address these types of questions and problems some of them include boulder colorado we visited there that they're actively working with santa monica california some of you may remember that their executive director came and met with some of us about a little over a year ago berkeley california over seventy five different cities that they've worked with so let me introduce brad siegel the principal of great thank you and are we struggling to find the presentation back there a ll right anyway council thank you for inviting me here tonight i am going to talk about different trends that are shaping cities and how that's going to relate to our work in burlington a couple revisions were quickly to the bio too i've been involved in downtown a community development work for about thirty years and for twenty five years we've been consulting around the country working in a variety of cities our job in burlington is to to look at the improvement districts that we have year where that church street and the downtown improvement district are both thirty and twenty years old respectively and it's a worthwhile exercise from time to time or  within twenty or thirty years to take a lot and see if we have the best tools for what's moving forward it doesn't look like we have the trends presentation so so i don't know if you're back up the public comment period you're still working on the there we go we go from being go all right this is not a twenty minute presentation we also have a ten minute version for you because that's what's on the agenda tonight so we're going to obey the agenda walk you through this and then would love to have comments and questions from counsel if we trigger it at the appropriate time so  please so what i'm going to talk about is a body of work that our firm manages about different trends that are shaping cities and this body of work came from our work in our hometown in denver ten years ago we were the economists for a downtown plan looking at the next twenty years of our city and to project ahead we looked at ten different trends that are shaping cities actually all over the country next slide please so this this this trends exercise that not only informed our work in denver but we found that it also helped us in cities all over the country and it has since become a bit of a cottage industry for us so we published these results and we'll make that publication as well as the slides available to counsel and to anyone who's actually watching in the community tonight this slide simply shows that these trends have changed over time so the trends that we looked at ten years ago are not necessarily the trends we look at today next slide please so that we're looking at next slide please we start with demographics and there are four generations that are really shaping cities and influencing how downtowns are growing we all know about baby boomers i am a boomer numbers really shaped the country shaped our cities for for many many years for decades until the great recession and then of all these generations shaping cities we were hurt the hardest by this so a lot of us not only lost home values but we also lost retirement savings before that as the picture on the slide that's how it was going to end for us boomers we are all going to be happy on a beach in love you know somewhere but not so much in what's happening as we're aging in place and that's an opportunity for burlington more and more boomers are staying in their cities they're aging in place they're predisposed to be in downtown markets next life please genex are those who are thirty five to fifty and what i do see among council is what i'm seeing increasingly in cities is that more and more genex people are in leadership positions are really taking the reins in different cities are the next generation to lead us forward most genex now have families and this is where most of the disposable income is in the economy so genex is increasingly important for downtown areas as well next slide please millennialism the father of two millennial kids some of you may have kids who are in that twenty to thirty five age range every city in the united states right now including burlington are competing for millennia else this is where the growth in the economy is this is the raw material that's powering the growth segments in the economy and we're lucky in burlington because we have an endless engine of millennial talent coming out of the universities in the community colleges that we have here we'll talk a little bit more about millennial in a minute but they are reshaping society the more optimistic tolerant and multicultural than previous generations next slide please the fourth generation this is our latest trend report gens those who are twenty or younger and the big question is that a lot of us have a lot of understanding of how important are in the economy but what about gen z these younger people are they going to continue a lot of the same patterns and the answer is mostly yes certainly the predisposition to being in downtown and living in urban situations is attractive for gen z as well there are some key differences i think these will have interesting impacts on burlington one they're less oriented to college so a lot of these younger kids have seen their older brothers and sisters move back home str with debt and they're not so incentivized to go to college but they're also highly entrepreneurial so cities need to remain entrepreneurial very friendly to small business and provide environments where younger people want to be  and where they want to thrive next so the second demographic trend that we looked at is education talent and jobs hello can you can we stay in this slide just for a moment i know are strapped for time and twenty they could be half of the workforce some projections say they could be as much as three quarters of the workforce by twenty twenty five this is as boomers start to exit the workforce so a lot of what follows in this presentation is can burlington how can downtown in particular be that magnet that's attractive to this younger demographic that we need for the economy next slide please the third trend this is new this came out of our latest trend report and this is a huge opportunity for burlington rise of the mid tears city what's happening is a lot of younger people are moving to what are called super star cities the bostons the new york's arguably a place like my hometown denver and after four or five years there they're getting fatigued with the experience in these cities the costs the hustle and the bustle and they're either moving back home or they're looking for smaller communities to move to and they're attracted by a more reasonable cost of living they're attracted by a truck by having families in communities that offer high quality of life and also they're attractive at the opportunity to actually get involved in city building and and this is a key thing not only do we want younger people here but do we have pathways for them to get involved in in the city and in downtown revitalization in particular next slide please the next set of trends we look at relate to lifestyles next slide please and i will quickly go through these changing consumer behaviors is about retail and how retail is changing this is critical as you know to downtown and certainly church street which is been a retail attraction for decades retails in total disruption  we know about the impact of amazon we know about how e commerce is affecting retail but the niche for cities the niche for downtowns remains local independent unique concepts that can offer a different experience certainly burlington has a competitive edge with downtown and with church street next shifts in how we get around transportation mobility and the picture on the slide that's that could be my one of my kids one of my millennial kids wondering what that machine or shifting away from cars and in fact today sixty percent of eighteen year olds nationally have driver's licenses that's a low that's a fifty year low of young people actually having driver's license so younger people and remember that twenty to thirty five age group and also the younger ones we are we're competing to bring them to burlington these people are looking for different ways to get around town so whether it's bikes or it's walking or it's ride share their variety of alternatives that we should think about in planning for and looking at the future of downtown in particular next please housing and livability also a new trend in our latest trend  report more and more downtowns like burlington's are evolving they're not just business centers or retail centers anymore but they're becoming neighborhoods so i would argue that over the next five to ten years probably the most immediate market driven play for burlington is more housing in downtown and this is something that is really supported by multiple generations wind to be down here not just the young but also the those boomers those people over fifty also attracted to downtown lifestyles next and then the last lifestyle trend we look at is actually regionalism when we started our trends report ten years ago the u s national debt everyone in here accounted for about twenty nine thousand dollars of today everyone in the room accounts for more than sixty three thousand dollars in national debt and what that means is that the federal government is simply broke and that solutions to infrastructure innovation education solutions are going to be local and regional and that's really what the message is here those cities in those regions that invest in themselves are going to have more opportunity to be competitive moving forward and downtown actually becomes a voice and all of that working with the rest of the community to advance regional investment next slide last slide a set of slides and i'll try to stay true to that ish minute guarantee competition next we're not only looking at trends united states are also looking at what's going on on the other side of the planet how it affects us this slide looks at the world's three largest economies over a two hundred year period and what's fascinating to me is if you go back to eight hundred fifty and if you look ahead to two thousand and fifty it's the same players so china and india the largest players on the planet in terms of economy next slide please so the consumption on the other side of the planet in places like china and india it impacts our lives in burlington and what it means is that prices for commodities that we rely on for growth and new development things like concrete steel petroleum prices will continue to be high because of what's going on on the other side of the planet that means existing infrastructure makes sense to reinvest in existing infrastructure so downtown business districts become a competitive advantage moving forward next slide please ninth trend that we look at is what's next in technology it's actually these devices that we carry in our pocket these smart phones that have influenced  design of buildings and cities most interestingly over the last ten years by twenty twenty there will be nine billion mobile connections on the planet that means we do a better job getting smart phone technology in people's pockets around the world than we do feeding people the way it's influenced design is office design is more about social space less about individual space we're seeing that in housing design we also see that in a downtown area so the importance of a space like the park behind this building in terms of a community gathering space in a place that's inviting becomes more and more important over time next one the last trend we've looked at it started as sustainability when we were doing this ten years ago there's three pillars to sustainability economic environmental and social equity in these days we're really talking more and more in cities about the notion of social equity i know this is front and center in burlington and particularly with  and the message here is the city and the downtown is a place that provides opportunity for the full spectrum of the community are we providing opportunities not just for high end housing but are we providing affordable price points as well are we providing education opportunities for the full spectrum of folks in the community so i sort of leave you with that thought on social equity the last slide which is the next slide which doesn't have to be the last slide if you want to keep going but conclusions the conclusions of all this trend analysis and again we'll make the slides and will make the publication of vailable to you there are two hundred fifty different sources that go into our transaction or size but the bottom line is this is that these trends are very favorable for vibrant downtowns for downtowns that have a sense of vitality and we summarize this into six big conclusions one the demographics are really in the favor of downtown's in urban areas so we're growing older boomers and younger millennial zinj and z at the same time these generations are predisposed to being and wanting to be in downtown areas secondly increasingly connected in competitive world that that gets into what's going on the other side of the globe  and if we can promote entrepreneurship if we can partner with institutions like the university and even the hospital to create jobs in downtown we've got a competitive advantage be an opportunity city that's what that third bullet is and really take advantage of this reverse migration from the big expensive cities to people who are looking to resettle into smaller more affordable cities global growth making investment in existing infrastructure more attractive  fifth innovation and investment more reliant on regions are we investing as a city in a region are we not relying so much on the federal government moving forward and then lastly planning for economic and cultural diversity so the bottom line of this whole presentation is really never in our lifetimes have all these trends converged to support areas like downtown and like downtown burlington and to tie this up in a tidy little bow back to w was talking about that relates back to our project looking at the best model of how we manage maintain and market downtown burlington and how your existing improvement district should best be configured moving forward so i know that's a lot to digest so thank you for siegel so we're going to take a pause there and i we need to move back and we'll bring you back up ok if there are questions if you have anything further if there are questions so take a pause and i move into the back to the number two public forum so i'm going to open the public forum tonight i only have two people signed up if anyone else wants to sign up sheets or over here into the clerk's office they'll bring it up to me so open it up with margaret mary to be followed by stephen marshall and ms mary are you here ok so let's switch steve marshall will go first and you have three minutes and you have lights that will indicate that you're getting close the light will come on you have about a minute left and the red light means you wrap it up mr marshall welcome thank you very much as everyone here and i think knows  an advocate for the homeless community and i one of my battles is to reduce stigma against homeless people most homeless people are people who want to be members of the community in good standing it's just that they've had bad luck and they're homeless i personally take this very seriously and have been for the last month or so cleaning up the sears lane camp because i want the community to know that the homeless community will take care of itself i would like to ask the city council and the mayor to authorize city departments to help by picking up the trash in the future i'm hoping to recruit other homeless camps to do their cleanup i've had a lot of receptivity to the idea i'm willing to provide plastic bags to them so that they can and if you could if i could count on the city to pick up that trash it would be a big selling point for me someone sent me the cd package on the housing and i have to tell you that i'm absolutely lost in all the alphabet soup so they get used heart is the one i'm most familiar with of course simple but the amount of money that the city receives from all those different sources both at the state level and the federal level to me has become very troubling it is virtually impossible to find out exactly how much money is being spent on what now seato deals with a good number of programs but one of their primary things for money happens to be housing and while i know there's a whole lot of people who have a lot of trouble with housing in a city that's had rents go up thirty five percent in the last two decades i also know that homeowners have had property taxes go up thirty nine percent in the same timeframe so rotten landlords aren't the only problem in burlington the main thing that concerns me though is every time i see the programs that are being activated by all the non profits i see a lot of stuff about tax exempt and tax credits and the amount of money that is not being paid in taxes by people who could easily afford to pay it is very troubling i always remember when the owner first came to town he said that forty two percent of the cost of the mall would eventually be paid fo with tax credits only now really starting to understand how that happens on a daily basis because of the amount of tax credits i recently spoke o me was back in february at a public hearing for a three million dollar rental car turn around at the airport unfortunately i was the only person a hearing from the public but i just got her a draft of the minutes from that meeting on may seventeenth in the letter i was advised along with the copy of the minutes that the city had of course already taken action and decided to go ahead with the project i think a three month delay in minutes maybe not criminal but it's getting there so i had an opportunity to meet with brad c to go that's his name earlier and i hope you will take more time to look through the slides more carefully but i do not want to miss an opportunity here with a lot of changes that are going on i think that spending three million dollars on city hall park you know a lot of people have spoken about it but the fact that we are going to like wipe out what's there and start over is super wasteful the amount of trees to go is really wasteful and then the twenty two million on the streets when they really are going to look the same we're going to keep parking and actually add parking on both sides of the street some places don't have parking on both sides the slide show that we are trying to get away from cars making it more pedestrian friendly the new new age of people growing up and i just i can't see why we would ever spend that kind of money on those streets and not make it more pedestrian friendly and bicycle friendly it's we will have parking garages last two weeks ago d p w person spoke about that we are underutilizing our parking garages so that's just we need to think about that we've invested money in there and streets are really for moving people not parking cars so i really hope that that can get looked at again  i also want to add but the thing about kids moving out my children are thirty one thirty five and thirty eight and two of them have moved away one to new york city one to portland oregon of their friends most of them have also moved i would love to keep them back i kept them in vermont for four years they all each one of them went to middlebury college so they were around after high school but then they fled and we have to make it nice here and really families when you think about what's happening to our schools i don't think we're investing in them i don't know what's happened to the idea of the high school sounds to me like they're talking about putting in a preschool building and not dealing with the high school so families stay here i mean it just seems like we're spending a lot of money and to me it's really for the park my opinion and  just to make the streets be the same and not change not take some opportunity and look forward and try to keep people here anyway thank you thank you ms long that  and if you have any other such you want to share with us at the end of your presentation before going take questions from the council the floor well i know council has got a jam packed agenda as usual so we do have some more thoughts on the slides but i think at this point we would simply defer to your questions related either to the presentation or our work currently in downtown probably the best use of limited time all right great thank you questions for me not only as a city councilor but as a resident and actually i'm still working even though i am a baby boomer and you describe me absolutely correctly that i have to work  recession and all of the impacts financial impacts so but it will help me in my job also i think you gave enough insight into different generations to better understand and better relate to people all of this information is out there but for me to pluck it and bring it together as you did would have taken a tremendous amount of time and it also i think the mare if you pace it if he listens to me will understand that i did not support the downtown development for a number of reasons i've supported some of it i did not agree with the amassing or height but the activities within it seemed appropriate to some degree some disappointments and with your report i am a little more hopeful about how this will there will be some positive to th structure especially with how you discuss the needs of these small downtowns like we are so i want to be wrong about what i think about the downtown development but i don't know if i will be ultimately but this offered me some greater insight as to the value of doing it that way and development that way so i really don't have questions for  you except that i look forward to i did download what was in the packet but if there's more information i'd very much appreciate that that there is there's a full transfer port and we'll make sure that that's available to you all so there's the slides and then a more thorough report that where you could take the time and really understand how these different forces are shaping downtown i do think this is a lot of common information but we have packaged it purposely to relate to cities and so that leaders of cities can can have be better informed about citizens particular about town to can i ask one other question certainly so kelly can you just tell me what you what your group plans to do with this information so brad has and his team is really really primarily focused on looking at the current models that exist for the business improvement district that's the one that helps underwrite the cost to our free parking as well as the what might be next would cover really two main things one the scope of services they could deliver as well as three proposed governance models with a preferred one so we wanted to bring brad before you to give you an opportunity to see this global trends information also to introduce you to brad and and his group and our next step will be his primary goal which will be a recommendation delivered to the city and to the council specifically about what we should could maybe consider doing next with our downtown improvement district which is the larger one that covers the boundaries or actually the street pearl the waterfront main street and then there's a little leg that goes down battery to where the mcandrew offices are and trucks columns so they'll be coming back with a report with some recommendations for he he thinks would take those types of organizations next and how the city could benefit from a more r i think that that's an important conversation i know that you've been doing a good a good job as well in reaching out and engaging with berlin tony and stakeholders for your work there's a survey as i understand could you maybe share a little bit about their survey and and how it's still the network thanks yes councilman thank you so much for bringing that up we we've been talking to a lot of different burlington stakeholders about priorities where people would like to see improvements in downtown and through our three visits now to town we have probably met with one hundred fifty different downtown stakeholders but we also have a survey that is up online in a moment kelly is going to tell the world where that survey is it's for anyone in the region to really tell us what their priorities are as of today we have a little more than five hundred responses to the online survey we would like to double that by our deadline which is june fifteenth yes so our working group on the downtown improvement district is the b v a the church marketplace sido and so we've got that survey linked in on websites for all of those organizations and we have been working to push it out actually just this week jillian that helped us get it out on front porch form and in the neighborhood buzz ron and i have been sharing it with our constituencies we've been doing some social media push on it but if any we can provide the link if any  wants to share it with their constituencies we've actually talked to just by dell about you sharing with downtown employers so the main place is located is the website for those four organizations but i'm happy to share a link it's relatively short we try to keep it i z we're at the end of the alphabet what do we do you know that's a great question i i don't i don't know the other more serious question it is around other communities  or smaller cities that you mentioned are there benchmark cities in the united states that we should be looking at either as examples of success or examples or cautionary examples of cities that have not moved forward with initiatives like this i think that's a really good question and i think overall in a case like burlington we're downtown is relatively healthy where i happened to get here yesterday so i got my two hours of summer yesterday and and downtown was great i mean people were down here the jazz festival was involved people were enjoying themselves and on the surface it's a wonderful vital downtown and for any of you who are involved in the church street make over thirty thirty five years ago you were visionaries you're visionaries on a national scale however all assets need to be continually maintained and marketed and polished and to the trained eye like mine i start looking at all the details i start looking at the bricks i start looking at that how the grass is kept in the parks and i start looking at the trees and all these different things and i do think that burlington is probably due for some polish to really help make sure that the downtown asset is as strong as it can be so that's sort of a long intro to say that i do think there are some cautionary tales from other communities across the country that maybe grew somewhat complacent with their downtown revitalization one that i've worked in that i'll throw out there just because it has a pedestrian mall and it  may be comparable it's also very progressive community but santa monica california which we initially did a similar thing you did with church street and in the eighty's and then up until the about two thousand was had fantastic results but then they start to get complacent the infrastructure went into disrepair and people started to leave the downtown now in about two thousand and eight they went through a process similar to what we're doing here they they reinvented their downtown management structure and they have since come back but my caution is this is if we want to be at an a grade and we're at a b grade we're good but we're not great myself in trouble but i would say burlington is sort of in that the range right now it's a good downtown and people are enjoying themselves down here but it's showing signs of age and showing the need for some new energy and some polish to really make it that a downtown the last thing i'll say is you are competing with with every other experience not only cities now but you're you're competing with online and you're competing with all sorts of different things so the competitive pressures  maybe more intense than they've been since since you remade church street thirty thirty five years ago thank you thank you  presentation certainly appreciate it one of the things that we're going to be hearing about a little bit later this evening is our housing action plan and talking about how we're choosing to use some of our community development block grant resources as a city unfortunately those resources have continued to decline at the federal level and subsidy for housing similarly so such that we find ourselves in a very challenging position much like many other communities around the country and so what i'm wondering is if through your work you found ways to are different models that other cities are using to address that funding issue because that's really seemingly a huge barrier to the affordable housing generation and maintenance within cities and what specifically those models are that we might be able to look at such that we be able to really see a greater development of affordable housing across the spectrum not just sort of at a certain kind of one point of median income but sort of across that economic spectrum yeah let me i in a can follow up with you after this because there's there's a lot of information a lot of cities are responding but but where i've learned most about affordable housing is in my hometown as in denver denver is now the most expensive non coastal housing market the united states we're playing catch up and we waited too late but what we have done is we're creating a number of different funding sources denver has created a dedicated fund locally to support affordable housing so our city leadership has has approved a mileva increase on property tax that's devoted to affordable housing we have created very modest linkage fees a new development to go into the pool for affordable  housing i've been involved with as maybe tell you too much but i've been involved with an activist group in denver that has been pushing our city actually to do more and we're now going to double we're going to double the dedicated fund we initially had found fifteen million dollars a year and now we're going to double up to thirty three general fund and through a funding source that i don't believe is tangible here we're actually going to increase our marijuana tax by two percent which is going to create another eight million dollars a year we're going to bond with the property tax to create one hundred five million dollar infusion there are great models nationally land trusts extremely effective on a neighborhood level accessory dwelling units are great way these are mother in law units they're called somewhere where you can you can build a unit maybe in your garage or by an alley if you've got an alley network there's a whole variety of options but but cities particularly in the west coast expensive markets like denver a re are all over this coming up with locally based solutions because we waited too long and perhaps burlington can benefit from our knowledge before your market here starts to to get too pricey and to inflate i would just end by saying there's a lot of hope for local and regional action in creating locally based sources for housing thank you very much thank you cancer tracy councillor paul and then cancer heart and thank you president right so again thank you as well from for me for being here i i did read the report i'd love to be able to get a copy of all of the things that you have a there is a little too quick to absorb even though i had read the report it was still a lot to absorb  d it was a group of very courageous very small actually band of people that you know thirty forty years ago who created what we have down here and they they were it was it was i  think it was pretty brave what they did there were a lot of people who were not in favor of it and look at what we have now that being said it has been a long time you all you have to do is walk down on the you know walk down church street and you can see that there's there is disrepair it's a precious asset like many of our assets that we have but it is one that i know ron redmond has said many times we cannot rest on what we did forty years ago we have to keep on improving it so my question is about the the slide that you had about the mid tier city and whether or not burlington can be a mature city and there's there were just a couple of things that you had on there that i just didn't understand what you mean by strategies to become an eighteen hour city and then when you talk about being engaged in city building meaning city building what that means and then the only other question i had was i'm just curious to know when it comes to the generations e which are people that are under the age of twenty how do you know what they are thinking if we're talking about about this stuff than we do are doing and this is research primarily on teenagers and those who are a little little little older so how it will pan out when they become full fledged adults you know there's always a little bit of  t and not so much science when you're looking at a group like that however there is real hard evidence on this this notion that it's going to be more difficult for a conventional four year universities to recruit and maybe one example is you can go to coding school now go to computer coding school for a week's and you can come out of there and you can be eligible for sixty seventy eighty thousand dollars a year job and whether it's tech or some of these newer industries the four year degree just doesn't have the same power as some of these others also these younger people they're growing up with technology in the crib i mean for boomers for those of us over fifty  computers came at work and they were not part of leisure you know they're a different thing for for people under twenty they're wired essentially from day one so that that makes them ext versatile and tech savvy and entrepreneurial moving forward so to answer question it's really there's art and there's science and we're extracting psychographics from those who know best to get a good sense of what could be ahead for them and there is some guess work eighteen hour cities in terms of second tier cities if we want to appeal to people who have either moved out of burlington or maybe they're in a large expensive city and looking for options they're go move to burlington and they're going to be seeking some of the same amenities that they enjoyed in the boston the new york or the denver or whatever and that doesn't mean we are going to become a place like the but do we have do we have a music scene do we have cultural amenities do we have entertainment options for them so when we talk about an eighteen hour city it's instead of shutting down at six or seven you know do we stay open till ten or eleven and  do we have some of those options fortunately downtown burlington's pretty lively and i think there are many of those options so that eighteen hour city is just a way to measure the vitality of the smaller city and then last city building really important and i think this is important not only for elected officials but for kelly at the b v a and ron the church street younger people particularly the twenty to thirty five age range they really are looking for meaningful civic involvement and you're seeing this nationally this is nationally there's an awakening now only people twenty thirty five but now in awakening people who are younger and meaningful city  meaningful avenues of involvement is not just about politics it's about influencing where we live and making our city a better place so are there avenues that we can get younger people involved to help make things happen downtown for example i met i did meet with a livable city scroope today and i asked them about a playground is there a downtown playground and and they said no you know is that a civic project that we could get a group of younger volunteers who would use a playground you know younger mothers and fathers organized to help make something like that happen are there different volunteer activities different special events variety of ways to plug people in so the city building refers to do we have ways to get younger people involved in civic affairs but in a meaningful way we did they just don't want to go to a committee meeting and be talked at they want to roll up their sleeves and they want to be involved and in your cross the country and you work with different cities and in towns on their downtown and marketplaces in are you from here on how we are governed here and how how it all kind of works i have become educated you are unique do things well here i think there are adequate they are not considered best practice from a national scale and what i'm talking about is how we do the maintenance the management of the capital  reinvestment the polishing of downtown you are unique in having a city department manage church street that's a very unique model you are unique to have a downtown improvement district that is by charter restricted to subsidizing parking with the ability to do nothing else so we are looking at best practices from other other cities and we're not looking at big cities or looking at cities or size or looking at college towns or looking at cities with pedestrian malls we are hoping to bring back some best practices we're also hoping to give you some options that if are there some ways that we can adjust our current districts to do better or is there an option through charter change through voter approval to actually look at revisiting how we do all this stuff and we'll come back with a continuum from sort of minor adjustments on one end to really bringing this to a two thousand and eighteen business plan not in nineteen eighty two or in one nine hundred ninety nine business thanks off the top your head you know about around the country how many are are kind of govern the way we are if by any chance handful hampel there are a thousand improvement districts across the united states and there may be a handful copy of brad's report to the member of members of council as well as the link for the service thank you very much for your time thank you appreciate was right so with that we will move back apologized to the council for bouncing around on the agenda a little bit tonight we'll move to the consent and a motion from cancer bush or yes i'd like to move to adopt the taking the actions indicated please say aye he opposed thank you we have passed the consent agenda unanimously and now we will back to item number forty four point zero one a communication from the mayor on may oral appointments mr mayor thank you president right i am excited to come forward per our charter and traditions to submit to you the council and i four point reappointment a substantial list of department heads and select other positions to lead our city for the next year  the the individuals i'm putting forward many of them whom are here with us in the room we have eileen blackwood who asked in return a city attorney in her office for assistant city white parks recreation and waterfront director as well as cemetery commissioner and as harbor master the we are also asking for a two year appointment  director and that appointment is made every three years by the planning commission there will be they can see in the general manager position and as well as a words about them as a group from my perspective this is an incredibly committed group of the partment heads and officials they are hardworking they're very talented they're outstanding collaborators and communicators i am very proud of this group and very grateful for their partnership and the day to day management of the city and i believe the people brunton them a great deal as well congratulations going forward so thank you very much that concludes the merrill points item four point zero two we'll move to item four point zero three which is a presentation from marcy system director of seato regarding the five year consolidated plan for housing and community development action plan assistant director as for welcome evening and i i'll start talking again and we'll catch up all right so this evening or next lie so just to brief those who have not heard this before c d e v g community development block grant is  was started in one thousand nine hundred four from with the housing and community development act burlington is one of twelve hundred communities around the country that gets a direct allocation we are the only directory sybian in vermont and the main goals of the community development block grant is to provide a decent safe and affordable housing expand economic opportunities and to provide for suitable living environment and we go through the needs assessment what we do is rank those in order of priority for our city and those are in the order of priority for our city based on our needs there are three national objectives g and ninety nine point nine percent of the time the objective that we fulfill here are active eighty's that benefit low and moderate income persons and whenever we talk about low and moderate income persons or l m i we're talking about people who earn eighty percent or less of the area median income next slide so this is part of a process and i'd like to just talk about the roles of different groups in people c d o is the would be considered the lead applicant we're the ones who administer community development block grant we've formulated the five year consolidated plan in the action g projects actually in house there are some projects that we actually do ourselves we report to hut and we report also to the mayor and obviously to city council as we get into the action plan in a few slides i'm very proud to say that this is another area where earlier ten is unique that we do have a citizen advisory board that reviews all of our applications and makes the funding decisions and brings it to you for for your approval and i am affiliated with the national community development group and i speak often on our process and we are very unique and  when you talk about people that want to get involved and roll up their sleeves this is just a really great opportunity for them to do so so citizen advisory board the mayor is our certifying official for hud programs and he also reviews the committee's recommendations and forwards them to you and your job is to vote or change the recommendations and send those in the form of a resolution and an action plan to to hide when we ask for different agencies to submit programs or projects for selections  basically we do our rating on federal regulations but also on the needs of the community and they have to meet those goals and the national objectives and they have to be able to actually report on the beneficiaries so they can just say we're doing good work in the world if it's not written down it didn't happen so they have to report on i always say that cd funding comes with heavy strings attached to it so what you have before you today is the consolidated plan it has the following sections it has starts with a needs assessment then goes on with a market analysis for housing economic development and also non housing and community development then that information is simulated into a strategic plan and then a one year action plan if you're a visual person look at an upside down triangle it starts off very broad coming down to a point of the actual items of how we're going to spend the money that we get so what i did through the plan and what i'd like to do for you tonight is really just hit on some highlights lot of information one hundred eighty nine pages wondering who's going to say they read the whole plan probably none of you but so i'm just going to highlight it in through the needs assessment shekh council or bush or d i was counting on you so as we go through these assessment what i often did was compared it to five years ago because i think it's really interesting to see our trends and to see what's going on so as you can see  our population has gone up the number of households has gone up the median income has gone up and amount of the number of low and moderate income households has good gone down those are all good things we went where we should go up but we went down where we should go down some other interesting facts if you go back to that time interesting there has been a seven percent increase in the number of households at less than fifty percent of the median income fifty percent increase in the number of large families that we have here and that is most likely due to the number refugee families and i thirty three percent increase in the number of households with at least one person over the age of sixty two which just emphasizes that our population is aging thanks live interesting slide i actually put to get together this side for a c d o exercise and i said if you just had this information at all this is the only information but i said based on this information how would you allocate money and you could see that our biggest population that's that has low and moderate income persons is children under six which is shows that are investment into early childhood initiatives and things like that really match the need the really were not looking at a big issue with substandard housing it increased a little bit but it's still not significant the issue here in burlington is cost for how how much people spend on housing i know it's a node but  it needs to be emphasized over and over again so they're the amount of households that are burdened by fifty percent or more of that's increased and and the most severely cost burden are those renters that the last and those are at thirty percent of the area median income there are the ones that are most severely cost burden number elderly renter and owner households have increased their cost burden has increased and and cost ratio between owners and rent renters as one to five so there's more than there are owners and so in the next slide we there's a big section in the plan that talks about disproportionate housing needs and and we talked about this also when when i came and brought you the assessment of fair housing because not only do we look at cost burden but then we also look at it is are there ethnic or racial groups that are experiencing more housing costs than the population as a whole or the white population and and we have gone to so those are those are populations that experience more than ten percent of what is the the average and so so in the next two slides is what are the different groups that do you experience a disproportionate housing need in cost burden here black african american how in thirty to fifty percent and fifty to eighty and eighty to one hundred experience an american indian and alaskan fifty to eighty next in severe cost burden again fifty percent or more asian households in every aspect of that and then what i did was i also added this is a slide that map that we had with the assessment of fair housing and so you also see that  you see where people of different ethnicities and races settle so you not only see housing cost burden but what appears to be somewhat of a segregated  of housing where people are settling in the market analysis when we start looking at housing you know we're looking at how much house how much housing costs how old it is and how available it is so let's look at just a few of those things we're looking at sixty two percent are multifamily units and sixty forty split and the greatest need is for those earning thirty percent of the median  income the average annual increase for rent in chittenden county is three percent and that's down from twenty thirteen and that chart is the chart that we usually keep a record of for housing vacancy and what you can see is that the housing vacancy in chittenden county is is getting better four percent is the norm and we're coming close to that  condition of housing our housing stock is older that was quick and and and so one of the things like if you could go back to that one our housing stock is older and one of the things is that it's important to help low income homeowners to make repairs allowing them to stay and retain their housing and also helping make homes accessible for low income tenants and homeowners and reducing lead house  three things that we could be involved in in spending our money economic development section is after the housing will go to the next slide burlington holds twenty six percent of counties workforce we have a very educated workforce with fifty one percent attaining a bachelor's degree and cheap and should hold his ears but fifty three percent of burlington's workers drive to work alone  so the biggest area is education and health care comprising forty forty percent share of jobs so in the last section we go right into the strategic plan and what we've done in the we did we miss a couple of slides going back a couple more there should be one that's a strategic plan incorporated our goals from the assessment of fair housing and added in goals that were not in the assessment of fair housing to make it more comprehensive and then in the action plan we have the proposed activities which i'm sorry that you don't have here and i do want to mention the proposed activities the action plan proposed activities  there are actually two changes that the committee did not know about until after they happened so i wanted to bring those to your attention and and they were as a result of  the latest information from hud so the first one under our proposed activities was the the group had offered to give a grant to resource for their youth build program and we actually had a finding from had and they would not allow us to fund them anymore through that this activity this manner so we could not give them the money unless we wanted to pay the money back which is what they were talking about so we repurposed that money to some of the other programs fully funding all the other programs that ask for funding and also reserv some money for seed owed to do direct service work to low income homeowners and then under our under our public service activities which you all know to be the most competitive we both cases we had gotten a little bit of extra money from hud and so we had a little over ten thousand dollars extra there and so what we proposed is to fund a resource as a job training program in a public service activity which is what the had told us that had to be so even though they're not getting as much money as they had hoped they are getting some money and that they're very grateful for that is the change from the committee's recommendation we also have in there are going to spend a home funding we got about five hundred thousand dollars in home money and as i said this is our timeline i do not expect that when we come back on june twenty fifth that's usually consent so this would be the time to really ask any questions and make any changes all right thank you i just want to know the those slides that you were missing here we do have the so you do ok good thank you yes and i have a question about the homeownership versus renters he said sixty percent pearlington residents are run ter forty percent are homeowners and that the most i don't want to say tax because that's not the ro we have so many families living in burlington that are in this very unstable situation if they could buy a home that stabilizes their rent it stops going up three percent a year it could possibly go down even the taxes are income sensitised and it's a far more stable situation to be in and that's something that i don't really see in our plan is an effort to increase homeownership in burlington and i wonder if that something that can be considered if it has been considered and you've decided not to do that for some reason and if that's something you think we should consider in the future so i actually brought that out from the assessment of fair housing and that is one of the goals in the assessment of fair housing and we have brought it into this too as a goal to increase homeownership opportunities so we do partner with burlington housing authority and champlain housing for us we don't put money to it but we do support their homeownership programs but i think that  will also be looking at the next within the next year a better analysis of what can be done to increase homeownership among low income families because the benefits are more than even income it's it's their opportunity for wealth wealth building children who are in stable housing and vironment are better do better in school perform better it really it's one of those benefits that it's very long lasting so it is something that we're looking at and it is something that we want to put into the plan so where you have strategies support fair housing that's the book in which ownership it's actually housing resources for residents and homeowners so the number three would be under the strategic plan that's where we would be looking at resources to increase home owners p and what they're there if we have do we have something doing that now so again burlington housing authority has a section eight homeownership program champlain has has a program we've done homeownership programs in the past we've done helping people to fund duplexes we haven't done it recently but i think what we want to do is have a overall strategy and look at what areas we want to increase homeownership also i go back to the assessment of fair housing where we looked at by ward  or census track the number of homes versus renters and there were some districts that were really out of balance and again it could create much more of a stable neighborhood environment to do that as well so i think it for putting this together i think this is a tremendous amount of work and i think you do an excellent job of the one hundred eighty some odd page and then distilling it down to a manageable kind of overview for the council and for others and including the memo so this is no small task and i want to acknowledge all the work that goes into it behind the scenes so thank you very much the question i had projected to among other things and you've got a bunch of bullets and so one of them was provide emergency or accessible repairs to five low income owner occupied residence what amount of what are we talking about here are we talking very slow is it is it under what's that under what category could i find that under that is that would be under the same category that i just shared the resources housing resources to homeowners and helps to assess their emergency needs and how we could help them and we oftentimes leverage resources with other programs for example we work with the center of independent living and recently we've probably in the coming year to do a whole group being furnace repaired or furnace replacements there so so that's what i wondered i have a laundry list of things that the senior center in the community i grew up in massachusetts offered and i'm going to talk to the mayor when i have time i've got a laundry list for the mayor about things that i think we should explore so anyway so i  i can help anyways but the second bullet was provide screening and matching services to one hundred persons who need support to age at home is that just through home share or is that a combination of domestic violence emergency deliver emergency shelter and case management and housing placement services and provide nine the chronically homeless individuals with housing for support services to move into permanent housing is that what you hope to accomplish in one year it would be both of those the first one is with steps ten domestic violence and the second one is with without a decent home and a decent job really we don't have much of a hope for folks to have a decent life and for kids to grow up in a strong family and i would say that many of the things that are in here around stabilizing housing and helping people retain their housing and providing accessibility funding allow people to a hold on to what they have and i'm afraid many people have a tenuous grasp or grip on that home and so i was asking about new homeowners which is incredibly important that's extremely difficult to crack that nut but to retain the homeowners we have i think is critical and i really appreciate the efforts you're placing on that as concert tracy said the resources available to cities shrink and continue to shrink and the need grows and so this past march the voters made a pretty clear statement that they'd like to see more support for affordable housing through the housing trust fund so i'm hopeful that we'll be looking at something in the near future as a whole council with sidoti to really years and it's amazing the work that we do and i think when the questions i had that i still have i mean how do people realize that these resources are there for them like how do how do we get the word out to t he seniors that might need help with home projects and how does that all work and so and i wonder if if if it's being utilized to its maximum there are people really are we really taking advantage of it whether off schools do we have here i'm going to honor that or kind of preventing us from you know getting that number up there where people could be homeowners what do you think the biggest obstacles there are besides the actual cost of housing you know so you're either going to have a better job to afford a house or the house is going to be less expensive and so that comes to affordability one way or the other and then the other thing that i would say is having housing that people want and that means that it it really has to be varied and you know i heard some of the presentation but i know that i've done some work with the urban land institute and so  so we live in the new north and we have a small eight hundred fifty square foot ranch house which is fine for my husband and i there are young people that are happy to have like a townhouse but they want a little green behind them you know so so they don't want to tall story they want like a house that you know they're fine with the size but they want to make sure they have a little yard so i think that the best thing that we could do is make sure that we have a variety of housing to meet different needs in different locations and just just to touch on you know some of the great things that we do and some of the that we reach out to you know keeping people in their homes you know whether it's ramps for people in wheelchairs whether it's fixing their bathrooms and kind of can you tell us how that's kind of like how would somebody be able to those resources like if they were in need of that d certainly from the senior centers and places like that and we use our own you know we have our website we have our our buzz we have the ways that we communicate so so the word is out there and  and you know for us it's a matter of not only the finances but the resources we have one person to do to do those jobs and they take quite a bit of time so i think we're ready to now move to the next item the public forum and marcy we then this comes back to the council twenty twenty five ok thank you so with that item four point zero four is the public hearing on the five year plan so open the public hearing is there anyone who would like to speak to the council on the five year plan hearing none will close that public hearing and we will hear back from you on the twenty fifth thank you with that i will i'm going to move to the next at a four point five and i'm going to pass the mason so you know this is the champlain parkway necessity resolution and we had a site examination as we know on may twenty first where many of us went on a bus tour a site examination had questions answered the public was included we came back here and we had a necessity public hearing we then heard from a couple of members of the public and we closed that public hearing out and we directed the city to come up with findings of fact and come back to us at this meeting so we have a number of links here on the city website board docs that have many items but including the fact findings of fact and so that's what this resolution passage of this resolution is today is a passage of those findings of fact and finding that there is a necessity to move forward with the condemnation proceedings and on a number of properties which we were not able to settle with we did settle with many others correct and this will be one more i think significant step forward in the long running champlain parkway saga that even predates counter bush or you know it's been around a long time then so so culture bush is not paying any attention less so with that i will that's my comments on moving passage of this resolution any other counselor was to speak at this time thank you acting president mason for certainly appreciate and appreciate all the work that staff did in getting us down there to look at the different sites and the clear explanation that the different folks walked us through i personally want to thank  for the explanations struggling to explain which each parcel was because that was very very helpful in terms of understanding what exactly we're voting on so very unique thing to go through so certainly appreciate that  one thing that that helped me to gain contacts where was that a lot of these properties that were seizing are needed in order to construct the shared use path that we decided that is part of the current design for the plan and when i look at the when i think about the shared use path and when i look at where that comes out it really feels like a missed opportunity well it's better than nothing in terms of by professor ian infrastructure in this particular area of the city  it's certainly not ideal and when i say it's really not ideal i mean that it's not ideal to have fast moving bikes alongside slower moving pedestrians moving through what are numerous curb cuts and driveways along the  way throughout that path that then end up in an intersection that i think will end up being very convoluted and so i feel that in order to that to take the properties in order to facilitate what is what we know will be an obsolete  inadequate and less than gold standard pedestrian and bike upgrade will be i think is not necessary is not necessary and i would like to see us really have  a design that was much more in keeping with the broader plan for the city which is to have separate facilities for different modes of transportation throughout the city rather than building one thing knowing that it's not going to work and then having to go back and say oh we fix it later on so while there are certain properties that in certain elements that are just pure upgrades overall the majority of these feel like they're for in order to enable a shared use path  sort of i think in many ways replicate some of the patchwork effect that we have going on now and so for those reasons i do not think that it merits taking people's property in addition to that i'll note that there was also a member of the public  said that they were still in that they felt that they were close to negotiation and that they just needed a little bit more so that led me to wonder if that was the case another with with other particular with other properties in question here  though there was that one so i don't feel that we should force that here and when someone is willing to come to the table and continue to talk so for those reasons i will not be supporting this resolution thank you pretty any other council thank you my understanding is that while we are taking properties many of the properties are taking our do things like put up a fence during construction to improve safety and while technically it's a taking in many cases these are not being contested by the property owners it's more a case of the property owners failing to respond to notices in signing documents and things like that i was hoping city attorney blackwood might be able to answer how many of these property owners are actively contesting the taking of the property all allow that city attorney blackwater's or mr rose is there someone that recollection is that it was somebody from cumberland farms who spoke before us about that particular shaking saying that they were hoping to work something out is that the one you were referencing i think i'm not sure  excuse me i'm not the most knowledgeable person about this i think the trans is handling most of the negotiations with property owners but i believe that cumberland farms had a concern about access to their property during construction that they were so miss rose or nor sort of waving behind you mr baldwin might be able the state in terms of financial compensation but they were having concern about access to their facility to deliver fuel and based on my comments i think the least virtually that expressed to me comfort were it's going thank you mr baldwin i was there and i can confirm that it's an accurate recollection of the conversation that went on a week ago or two weeks ago and so sorry mr rose and then i'll go back to  ank you bob sorry what do you say at the end but what but he didn't have a specific basis for contesting necessity it was just to preserve his rights while they were negotiating going forward ok so there there are two that are contesting this and do they have any i don't remember specifically what those were do they have anything to do with the shared use path those neither had to do with the shared use path as far as i know so so really these these taking are just about being unable to get signatures and putting up fences mostly with a few that are outside of that so whether we vote i mean yes or no it doesn't really affect this shared use path issue does it these properties aren't being taken for a shared use path there are there are permanent takings for the  expressed some concern about children crossing the shared use path to their building and we had since offered some signage and some design improvements to make it a higher degree of comfort we've not been directly involved in those process and i believe the takings already occurred for howard's owner so let me let me just go to city attorney blackwood who seems to want to i think just to clarify there's sort of there are two issues one is is there necessity to take the property and then there's how much money people get for the condemnation and so there's how much money they get is the people are contesting the necessity for the most part is my understanding from what we've heard from correct ok so just so the council is clear we're not making a decision on money you know what the way the way the condemnation works is it's a two step process act first you all have to make a finding that there is a necessity for the taking and then when you go to take the taking of court if you haven't already settled with people a court can determine how much money you have to pay people for that for the taking thank you so if we vote to if we vote on the necessity there will be another stage at which we make determinations about value yes so there will be probably more  there is no dispute about the necessity we're not hearing any formal dispute other than what you heard eunice has the hearing two weeks ago ok thank you so thank you very much i think you just answered my question my concern was that if we acted tonight we would halt negotiations but i'm hearing that's not the case because you know there were when i and the site visit was very insightful for me very informative there were three properties that stood out for me but the howard center was one that i thought i was hoping that there could be some resolution to their concern so the negotiations will continue but you're telling me they're only financial and not substantive so let me to direct  a city attorney's office can answer that i think there's some confusion about the financial piece and maybe you could sure i think part of it is because we're not in on the negotiations with the state it's hard for us to say exactly what they're doing but but in order to have contested in the sesame they had to come to the hearing the public hearing and say i contest you don't have a necessity to take my property and i don't think we heard any of that that's you know but but you all were here and that's really a little bit your decision to make did you hear anybody come to the hearing and say i contest in the sense i don't think it's necessary for you to take my property if not then i think what we're advising you is if you didn't hear that then nobody was contesting the ceci that means that if assuming you find this as city tonight then you move to the second phase which is how much money do they get the state has been the go sheeting with many people already and has these properties left and we don't know exactly what what is their concern with each of those properties because we're not in on that negotiation at this point in time  mason i it's sort of clear as mud for me i feel that i appreciate what the city attorney said and that was very clear but since we don't know what the state's doing i as far as what the overall extent of the negotiation is whether it's just financial or whether it's more than that but but i'm getting advice that those negotiations will be ongoing even if we do this action i'll be that there is no fighting recess the city council has decided not to do the first step in the condemnation process which president mason would where would that leave us i would ask my understanding as i would kill the project that's that's correct much appreciate that and with that we will move to item number four point zero six and that is a presentation from siri was general manager of china's solid waste district regarding the fiscal year nineteen budget proposal and we have you slotted in for a ten minute presentation ok i can go fast i don't even need to breathe ever again thank you very much i appreciate your time my name is sarah hughes and the general manager thousand people and about over six thousand businesses we have five main departments administration finance facilities unregulated hazardous waste and communication outreach and we either operate or manage five  facilities drop off centers environmental depot the rover the materials or curry facility and remount compost now going to do a very high level thirty thousand foot review and then i'll come down to maybe five thousand on one or two  items we are budgeting in our general fund revenues in the amount of eleven million one hundred thirty one thousand five hundred sixty one dollars we are budgeting expenses and the amount of ten million five hundred ninety seven thousand six hundred thirteen dollars and we're looking at a very heavy capital intensive year so we are budgeting one million seven hundred fifty five thousand dollars in capital expenses we are not proposing any increases to the solid waste management feed that will stay at twenty seven dollars a ton we are not proposing any increases to the trash fees at our drop off centers nor are we proposing any municipal assessments or per capita fees we are also not proposing any increases to the fees at the mountain compost be increased those fees last year and they will remain at fifty to fifty two dollars a ton we did just increase the tipping fee at the materially covered with material recovery facility on may first that went from twenty one dollars a ton to twenty five dollars a ton far in district numbers and fifty dollars a ton for out of district members we anticipate that fee going up again sometime this summer and again part of that is that we are significantly below the market real market average of seventy five to one hundred dollars a ton we do not anticipate getting anywhere near that high of a tipping fee we just need to cover our costs and cover our capital expenses the administrative fee for a biosolids program also increase this year due to again ninety to spend more money on capital investments and as a result of the change in how we allocate our expenses across all of our budgets and finally we are going to begin to charge for blue bins the sixteen gallon recycling bins that we've been giving away for free forever we are no longer able to get away for free so we charging five dollars a day and they cost us about five dollars and sixty cents and really the goal is to move more folks towards carts and we think that having more capacity than sixteen gallons thousand dollars we're also investing in our centers we have several that need refurbishment in the very least in a couple they need to be built as i think this council is well aware so we are focusing on that in fiscal nineteen heading into  twenty we're also seeing a few weeks on a strategic retreat with our board and our staff centers to take a look at the next generation of the docs they have surfaced fairly well for the past twenty twenty five years and we need to look ahead to the future and how they can best serve our population as the population has changed where they live has changed the consumption habits have changed the materials we need to manage has changed so we may need to change so our board and our staff is looking at that in the next couple of weeks  with that i would love to open it up for any questions you may have thank you very much stayed within the time that we will turn over the coun law was amended this past session and the deadline for food scrap the band has not changed so by july one two thousand and twenty everyone who generates food scraps will need to s you can hire a hall or to pick up a few scraps so that deadline has remained in place so right now we are in the midst of taking a hard look at the amount compost efficiency and capacity we think that we are currently at capacity we're actually taking in about we will probably end up at about fifty eight hundred tons of food scraps this year so that's pretty much what we feel we can a focused review of that site and what that site will need to look like in two years so the board has his charged with with us with the question being may not be relevant at this point so it actually is very relevant and it's a very good question and you're right it's not a problem that is only in vermont it is around the world and it's i think it's interesting when i give presentations and talks of people don't necessarily realize just how globally connected from want is particularly the recycling world we are fortunate in that the only way stream or recycling stream that has been affected has been mixed paper the rest of the materials that we sort at our material sell of the are sold domestically whether here in the u s or engine in canada so we're very fortunate in that regard the mix paper unfortunately for us is thirty seven percent of the process at the m taking a look at that particular material stream and trying to tease out the better high quality material which is essentially office grade paper that still has excellent value so we want to be able to see if you can pull that material out will still leave us with a family of junk mail but less of it and the high quality on the paper ledger paper can buffer the losses on the next paper we can wait that out that doesn't solve the problem of what to do with the mix paper  the real solution is waste reduction we need to stop producing and throwing out as much as we do of the mix paper are we going to be able solve that problem one hundred percent no we're not one of the things that we can do is consumers is to opt out of as many things that are coming into our mailboxes that are post office boxes that we don't want is possible some of it's not possible but we need to try to do as much as we can where you can get things online get them online and if you don't need that catalog please don't take that catalog so what we're doing is again looking at the infrastructure looking at our starting capabilities looking at what that cost will be and wrapping that into again a strategic conversation about infrastructure with the district so we started with g m c would be among compost we're looking now at the top of centers and next will be the or so those three big components will look very different within the next four years guarantee so the paper how we were receiving seventy five dollars a tonne for it last year we're now paying about fifty seven dollars a tonne to move it it is still being moved to secondary markets china has really drastically changed their acceptance rate to where it's essentially a ban on a lot of products they have also between may third and june third so just yesterday stop taking anything any of our recycling at all so there was a complete ban on any imports we have been moving material to vietnam and to korea vietnam has now closed the doors for about the next four months they're going to come back in the fall there's capability in india not as much there's some indonesia so we're looking into our markets but they will probably fill some programs particular on the west coast our land filling recycling they are shutting down the programs they relied on china much more heavily for all of their products we did get into the law this here into actually the clean water bill the ability for the secretary of an arch to waive the landfill disposal ban on paper if necessary we asked for that as a relief valve should we need it we're hoping to not need it we continue to work with our broker to move material but if we was going to cost us one hundred fifty dollars to move material to a broker and it's one hundred  twenty dollars to put it in coventry i have to make that choice to move to coventry so we have that ability i hope to never have to use it thank you for the thorough but sobering yes yes ok that's important to me i always ask for it so i think that burlington has some work to do regarding composting because backyard composting if not done correctly brings animals and so i think the board of health may need to get an early start and some legislation about how to deal with this how to do it right and i think we as a city need to be smart about it so i'm a gardener and i go to gardener supply and take classes and i thought i would do my own composting not so much because of how to break it down and really make it useful so anyways just  a nominal charge ok i know just satisfier and because it's not mandated that you keep your compost out of the garbage is that when you started charging people who just went to your drop off centers for composting people are now i mean the people i talk to are not doing that anymore and putting it in their garbage which really bothers me and i spoke against that last year so i'm just letting you know i still think it's in the world of what we're trying to accomplish i i don't know how much money that generates for you but i would prefer that that not happen because i want to encourage people to separate their compost from trash so that's just my cents on the budget and i see it still there so there was one other thing you talked about upgrading the drop off centers so the one in burlington that's on pine street is that got a future and is that going to be upgraded i don't even dare go there i feel i'm going to lose my car there it's awful to avoid have i don't know if any of you  gone there but i mean it's hard to avoid the dips and oh my goodness so is that a future for not at that location no we have a memorandum of understanding with the city where in  that three year m o you now we have land on flint avenue and that is where we intend to build the new drop of santa for burlington and when we let you go to when this road is done correct ok incentive to get the road  quick question regarding what we're seeing is the possibility of actually having to landfill mixed paper is there any possibility that that could serve this mix you space paper could serve as a energy source for mcneil  rather than ending up in a landfill that's a good question i would have to talk with them about their specifications as far as what they want as feedstock we do still have the lead up area there  pine thank you very substantial part of the budget increase is this new baylor and i wondered if you could speak a little bit about what that is it replacing something does it give you new capacity what does that do for us so the the baler is it's a very very large machine and it's at the end of the process at the mature recovered facility so after everything is sorted out we'll sort into seven or eight different materials they go into a holding area called a bunker and when we have enough in that bunker is released into the baler and they make cubes so that baylor essentially making a nice compacted cube that goes on to a truck and then that goes on to market we are contractually required to replace certain capital equipment on a regular basis on a schedule that contract with our vendor who operates the murf so we own the building we own the land we have to buy the equipment and then the vendor operates that for us so we have to replace a variety all of the equipment on a regular basis this baylor has i want to say a least eighteen and i'm getting the i was wrong and i want to make a mistake here but it has many many more hours than it should they have maintained it very well for a very long time and it is now to the point where it is not generating enough compaction power to get the density that we need on the bales and that's dangerous so well you don't want to have is to have your bills explode in a truck or on the floor in front of someone and and have cause problems so it's just replacement of existing capacity and correct just needs to be done it needs to be done and unfortunately we have delayed it i think for two years now as have we delayed the floor looking at things and can we defer certain came up with this thing called the blue bin system one hundred five so it goes back quite a ways for me the idea would be to take a look at what it would take for the waste district to set aside a reserve fund or a sinking fund or some way to make that so it's not just driven by the price all the time i know we need to be cost effective but this is just our only planet so i think we have to kind of keep that in mind as well i hope absolutely and landfill in the paper is the absolute last resort and  it is you know and again we don't need to make a profit we're not a profit driven entity to cover those costs we do have the ability to subsidize those costs so you know that's something that we did look at we did before we raised that if in may we had been subsidizing the losses out of the operating reserves so we didn't want to do that anymore because we knew we had these pretty major expenses that we needed to cover in the very near term and we didn't leave ourselves too shor in case of an emergency but what came from those conversations was exactly what you said was we need to also have an operating reserve so that is something that did come out of those conversations will be establishing over the next year to help to buffer and you know that that idea was so we can not landfill we also don't want to have to be fluctuating the tipping fee to irregularly we want to maintain a steady if is we can for as long as we can we are not a private entity the private murph down around land is raising their fee every month now lowering their fee every month raising their fee every month we don't want to do that to our our member communities want to maintain a nice steady fee so that is the hope to set up that operating reserve fund and look for every other option other than landfilling it is the absolute last resort great thanks and since we have a former city manager here i want to see if anything she'd tell us as as elected officials  hundred thousand dollars because we've been paying attention to that indication that we've been we've been planning and we will continue to see the difference between the revenue in the expenses that you see going into the capital reserve fund so we can stay on top of that because when we take if we were to incur debt you incur debt that's how it works and we'd like to avoid all of that by simply planning ahead so we'll be part of my job would be to extensively plan to make sure we're putting enough money this came up in between the last meeting so i apologize for the last minute notice there is going to be an h r committee meeting tomorrow night at six pm to discuss  revisions so again my apologies for the last minute notice thank you counterpart any other committee chair accounts or roof and then cancer team i have to the public safety committee will be meeting tomorrow here at city hall at five thirty in room twelve will be discussing several items related to the homeless and homelessness initiative that's been going on in that committee also on behalf of counselor no del who politic give us a little more thank you president right i just i forgot to mention the meeting on the meeting tomorrow night at six pm is in the h r resource the human resources conference room that's a two hundred church street on the first floor following evening the ordinance committee will be meeting at five thirty also room twelve to continue its discussion of proposed amendments to the suspension and revocation of certificate thank you thank you charge change committee will be meeting on wednesday the thirteenth at seven o'clock in conference room twelve and we will be discussing the capital improvements on how they're allocated as well action committee will meet this thursday the seventh five thirty conference from twelve on the agenda is a presentation on the consolidated plan that marci presented tonight we also have a update on the early learning  i conscious of the late hour but i just wanted to call every one's attention to the report that's coming back to the city council regarding our national lands and connected initiative that initiated here with a re about a year ago i want to call particular attention to a new name for our initiative which is called burlington the wild ways which is a little bit easier to pronounce and also color one's attention to a slate of items that we have planned for the year ahead two thousand and eighteen two thousand one thousand and our intent to come back to the city council for a little bit of is just an additional financial assistance in moving those initiatives forward just a couple quick things the ad hoc committee on city hall park and trees meet wednesday june sixth at seven o'clock in the room twelve and we will hope to conclude our work of that a d hoc committee wednesday evening if possible so that this wednesday at seven in room twelve lastly just a friendly reminder on a couple of fronts one is on deadlines and the first one is is the city council is doing a pretty good job on deadlines and we just need to and i think generally everybody is but we just need to make sure that any and whether it's executive session and i know things happen but that it's important for the city clerk's office thing think move things forward in the most efficient way possible that we maintain those deadlines so especially if hopefully when there's time sensitive actions we can get those in in a timely fashion and also just a friendly reminder out and enjoy this year's festival its thirty fifth year in which the discovery of jazz and happening here in bryant and i think this year's lineup is as good as it has ever been it's really not to be missed the community sailing center had its grand opening this past friday and saturday if you have not had an opportunity get down and see the new facility yet i encourage you to do so it is truly one of the finest facilities of its type in the country and to me it's just a really exciting to think what this organization that has worked at a makeshift spaces on the waterfront for more than twenty years what it will now be able to do in this state of the art facility already this organization manages to touch just about every child that goes through the public school system and profound ways and inspire and understanding of the lake this new facility will i'm sure allow them to do even more and graduations to everyone involved in the many y ceremonies for the special olympics summer games that took place up on the campus and it was really quite remarkable event of that brings together really incredibly well organized effort from across the state and a demonstration of sportsmanship breaking down stereotypes about the mental disability that the athletes in that  behold and again i encourage anyone that this isn't become an annual event here in burlington and look for future opportunities to participate in that and also ansari nay was the silver jubilee anniversary for the tibetan american community here in burlington burlington is one of about approximately thirty communities in america where about americans have cell and substantial numbers the first of those communit form as i understand it a local association was here in burlington and this was the twenty fifth anniversary of that milestone and involved a representative from  reminder of the close connection the municipal government has had with the tibet and american community throughout that time we have a significant number of outstanding public employees working for the city that participated in that event  last item i want to know looking ahead is a vet that will take place here next wednesday and june thirteenth at three pm this is our first annual city hall blood drive it in this way and we're hoping that there'll be strong participation and the public and certainly city officials are invited to attend to be part of that thank you president right thank you mr mayor and council should thank you for reminding  me that that executive recess executive session was four point seven i think what i really should have said was if there's no objection from the council i'm going to move forward with the agenda items and come back to this i want to complete the agenda items i have you so with that city attorney blackwood i can just now reconvene the executive session what's the yes ok so we will do we need to adjourn the regular city council meeting first  all right so with that we will we will go back into the recess and recessed executive session