reconvene the city council meeting i could have some quiet please we can be the city council meeting at seven thirty and we are going to the next item on the agenda is a work session but we are going to have to go by that and move to the public forums which is a time certain for seven thirty so we will begin item number for a public forum and the first person up to speak is marianne ward to  followed by joanne hunt and we ask is tell us whatever you want to start respectfully and you have three three minutes to speak there's a light in front lights in front of you that will give you an indication how much time we have left when the red light goes off your time is up and you need to conclude your comments good evening mr ward welcome i attended to the mural task force meetings the report looks good on paper but  from the first very first meeting the makeup of the task force has grated on me how could anyone including the task force itself except that five white people were chosen for a seven member inclusive task force when i brought it up at the meeting it was discounted in favor of patting themselves on the back for having been chosen recommendation number two their recommendation acknowledges that the task force should not have been formed it states if necessary vacancies in the pool of people who comprise the public are to review panels or task force to maintain until representatives having those perspectives can be found meaning different ethnicities ethnicities and people of color what that says to me is if you only have two people that fit the bill for a diverse task force you do not have a task force it was illegitimate for reasons more obvious more more more obvious reasons as well the selection committee got this one wrong one councillor stated that he alone formed the task force if that is true he alone stacked the deck in favor of removing the mural another claims that he refused to allow people of color on i'm told acquiesc ing was the only solution both statements are documented i believe they were chosen for their positions who would and who would not support removing the girl not from their pursuit for their perspect there definitely was a bias for removing the mural in the words of the donor on the taskforce we never really had a prayer that it was going to stay up anymore and i am very troubled that quote that qualified burlington residents home would have made up a more diverse and legitimate task force were rejected while a self burlington white man hell bent on removing the mural was chosen his position was known pretest force he just happens to employ the wife of the marketplace director even before any of the resolutions cited in the recommendations were presented or invited guests were heard some were calling for the murals removal it was definitely a stacked deck my position as force was known to i was told in a convoluted way that i was not chosen because i support saving the mural which has no bearing on what i am speaking out tonight it was an illegitimate unlawful task force this needs to be made right i'm here again because we still don't have a contract and i was on vacation last week so i wasn't here for the presentation of the c e o etc to the green mountain care  board couple of things i encourage all of you and all of you to keep supporting the nurses it's been a long haul we're making progress which is good but it's also really difficult pretty much all the progress we've made has become of our good efforts and pushing hard and strong of our bargaining team so if you know somebody support us thank them i guess i want to talk about another thing which is the high executive see it seems ridiculous if the c e o eileen whalen can get a twenty percent increase and her a is now over one million that we can't afford to get more than we're getting we often  brag about burlington being the number one this the number one that are the top ten that when you figure in cost of living where the forty seventh state you v m c is in nurses wages that has an impact we talk about wanting good health care we talk about wanting to treat the opiate crisis the mental health crisis health and wellness obesity pretty much everything you can talk about nurses are involved and yet it also seems like nobody wants to have anything to do with the negotiations because that's up to the management of m m c the board of directors have said that even though there were a board of directors members at the green mountain care board hearing they haven't been to any of the negotiating sessions so again we're making progress and that's good but i would really ask all of you to keep supporting us we have not gone away we're not going away and we really believe this is can have a huge impact on improving the care and the department of public works for their amazing work on cultist or in the way they've done it also some are and will be continuing to do it in the fall for what they're going to do finally give us pedestrian signal ice and for the way they've done it they've hardly phone carolyn dates i went to high school in whitefish bay which is a suburb just north of milwaukee wisconsin and yes they drink beer but i wanted to tell you that in one thousand nine hundred thirty two during the recession our high school was first built after that they would add grand grand stands for recreation fields auditoriums and over those years never ever did they have to tear any of those buildings down they built them so they lasted and they're just glorious even today and i am totally disgusted with our town for building a high school that won't even last fifty years and i want to be sure anything we choose to build from now on is net zero it has solar and it follows all of the green building rules and we do not go cheap we put things in that we can maintain and we put in a contract that ensures that we always put ma first over anything else for that school so it doesn't fall apart and get disgusting like this one is it's shameful thank you thank you ms bates gilmore i was up next we followed by charles simpson good evening i am gail munro board chair of the high number community senior center and former executive director of this organization for many years sitting next to me is gloria reynolds she's a board members well and a longtime participant i first want to thank the city of bell inten and mayor weinberger for declaring august twenty first as national senior citizens day by recognizing the contributions of our older adult citizens and continuing the efforts of burlington and supporting the resources and programs the city offers to this population i am here tonight to support the resolution that will be presented to you to establish a senior study committee in light of the recent elimination of united way funds to the senior center it became apparent the need to investigate opportunities for financial sustainability of this organization which serves over five hundred older adults on a weekly basis with programs services meals and opportunities for community engagement the city of brilinta and has been the main resource for the center but there is now a need to look further to establish longevity and sustainability this study group for their advice and guidance as well as take a look at a general and general holistically at services and programs provided to all of our older adults in burlington as we look forward to an increased population of over sixty five population thank you very much for this opportunity thank you ms we're all and his rivals here for support it's always good to have support i know charles simpson to be followed by kate stein good evening mr simpson welcome thank you very much councilman a mayor we know that the health of the lake is a key to both the liveability of burlington and to its recreational tourism economy and to our drinking water supply we know our waste water sewage processing capacity does not now meet me and and untreated sewage is regularly dumped directly into the lake from which we drink and in which we swim we are told that the city will be coming to the voters to house right funding funding  to enhance capacity for the system yet we know that well over fifteen hundred new toilets and showers are scheduled to be added upstream to the system that is at present  system that is a present over capacity i urge the city to require the impact be on large developers to pay for the waste water treatment capacity that they will require and not to lay this charge to the general residence i realize that there may be some strong water retention capacity that is part of the the permits for the large of opera's downtown the cambrian rise freshman star on wednesday at burlington high school and son who is going to be a senior this year who has cerebral palsy and uses crutches to get around so i'm coming to the port of supporting burlington high school from been working on this for a while i want to thank those of you who came on to earth and i want to thank you for listening to our school team in will be presenting later today the building as it stands is very discriminatory my son as i said uses crutches to emulate occasionally he's had to use a wheelchair when he broke his foot in the middle of winter and i'll tell you why that's a challenge we're going to take a typical tuesday and i wrote it down so i won't miss any of the transitions he started at seven fifteen in the in the band room for a jazz band he go to school with friends and they go in the bottom of a building which is not the front door they go in the door and go directly to band when band was done he had to go to pre calculus which is housed in the building to do this he had to leave the band room from through opposite door that everybody else leaves he would go to the l a elevator if it was working he would take it to the third floor of a he'd walk the length of the building he'd go into the ramp from a building to be building he take another elevator he go to the first floor see building via a ramp none of these ramps are up to code there are too steep then he would go outside to to take an elevator to the second floor of evolving to take a branch which is actually flat so that one's ok back to sea building to go to english to change the route here three to go to english that took a lot of time then he'd have to go back to be ended because that was the next class and then after that he'd have to go back up to pre calculus is a lot of wasted time the money that could be saved on his pair educator is to help him with transitions like that if if the building were fully accessible barrier free we went need to pay for a human being to be with him that's a lot of money you could save  to close i really truly believe i love the sign all are welcome and i think that's wonderful and i think we really need to go further and really make sure that everybody is welcome everyone to high school thank you e i'm a teacher in local alternative schools and i am a new mother so i will have a student in the school system hopefully in a new high school in fourteen years  have heard a little bit from elected officials that this feels crushed and to me it does not feel rushed although i've only been on this committee for the past year i know that people have talked about this for decades the principal last year said that a lifetime of students have passed through the school has as it is now which is shameful really the fall i mean we have been following a process this committee was formed we elected a school board we've appointed a superintendent we've appointed this committee that we have we have hired designers and people to do their job to put this package together to say this is the best option for our community right now and we feel proud about what we have put forward and we expect for the community members to be able to vote on this i want to talk a little bit about twenty first century learning because that's kind of there's some buzzwords there it basically means that not all learning is done in a lecture style anymore what we're doing right now learning as a community is not lecture style we're discussing things we're breaking out into smaller groups to work on projects to work on projects and what that looks like right now students have to sit in the hallway this past fall i was a peer educator sub at the high school which meant that i hung out with a lot of students that did not fit what you would think about in a high school that would not fit in that lecture style classroom and i spent a lot of times sitting on the floor in the hallway the student didn't fit in the class and the teacher might not have had any work for them to do or they said here are some worksheets to fill forty five minutes that doesn't feel fair at all  every student in high school has a book a lot of classrooms only have two outlets to plug in those books the classrooms do not reflect what white house students are learning these  shelley waterman to be followed by my good evening miss why don't we welcome evening thank you so i want to start out by saying that i'm a mother of two daughters who are students and brunton school district sorry and  i'm no stranger to advocating for accessibility and inclusion in the city i was a member of the mayor's committee for accessibility and inclusion several years ago and i want to talk about the right to dignity in the city and with our schools and how my daughter is more disabled in that school district in the structure as burlington school stands than any of her limitations could ever afford  her the dignity that families have to suffer through undignified situations and i'll give you an example of just what that means my daughter has classes in c building the restroom is in lower city she's a wheelchair user so in order for her to use the bathroom justin see a building again like kate said it's a maze of ramps elevators outdoor exchanges just to get back into the building to use a bathroom that everyone else can use a flight of stairs for i want you to think about that and i want you to put yourself in that situation and how undignified it is for a sixteen year old girl or anyone to have to go through that i want to talk about meaningful inclusion and how when a person has limitations just how incredibly difficult it is when we do not have universal design in our city or in our schools it takes so much time and energy for her to get from one point of the building to the other and it's not just physical structures it's also the attitudes that we have when it comes to people with disabilities so i want to say that my family supports the creation of a new high school we welcome and it's time it should have happened years and years ago and you have an opportunity to make a positive change in this community and to set an example for other schools in the state to say that we support and welcome every student and that we support students with disabilities thank you thank you ms waterm each piece of her skin and she had to go through twenty seven surgeries in her life can you imagine that can you imagine that you or your thirteen year old child and the world for we call it back from the brink of nuclear confrontation i believe i've sent that to all of you together with the little flyer telling about your coming in  september and i'm very grateful to joan shannon who responded and question me about it and ask for more details and so i hope come on the seventeenth of september you may know that the there is a group called mayors for peace and there's also the the  s the united states conference of mayors the conference of mayors has supported and accepted the statement from the mayors for peace which is a very strong statement calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons and a person who could not be here judy are now from ward four left me copies of this statement and wanted me to hand it out to all of you so i haven't here i mean the the president of the united states is implementing a very dangerous policy of low level nuclear weapons as my home has described the impact of a nuclear weapon small or large is devastating on any person you're brought by for the rest of their life to try to survive the impact of radiation sickness and the cancers that follow from that so i hope to we will be in touch with all of you i hope individual you may be and to get your support and hope you will come on the nineteenth to the to the event at uva m and we'll also be in touch with the mayor's office and perhaps that's the way to go to have a mayoral proclamation so thank you thank you ms lloyd frank d this idea about high school back twenty own too so over a decade and a half ago i firmly believe that the city students need a new high school all three of our kids graduated from throughout i went through the entire burlington school system my son is a lawyer my daughter's pediatrician and my younger daughter is has a ph d from yale  so the school system served us very well and we're very pleased with that result what i feel is that the proposal that's on the table seventy million dollars to build the renovation of the existing school building doesn't fully serve the needs of the people and a better solution which i proposed many years ago and have brought back up from time to time sense is that a new school be built in what is called the north forty or the urban reserve and that the school  built into the bank into the steep embankment on the east side of the reserve just to the north of where the railroad goes through the  and that the level area of the urban reserve the playing fields it would be one of the most spectacular high schools in the state if not the country with a few across to the the access to the school would be from north avenue with structured parking either to one side or on top of the existing school i'm an architect but i haven't designed the building because i felt that it would wouldn't all it would be was it would be a source of argument about the design not about the merits of the concept the key the other key aspect of this idea is that we would use the property the existing high school for the development and construction of housing and that housing dense high density at least as high density as the old north and if not higher depending on the political will of you all would be used as a tax incremental financing district to pay for the new high school so there wouldn't be a seventy million dollar bond issue thank you i'm speaking as the board three commissioner expressing my personal views as you know the district will be presenting the project later i know you all believe it the need for a new high school i'm here to ask you to understand there's an urgent need to place it on the november ballot the discussions i'm planning for beatrice redevelopment have been going on for over ten years in march of twenty one thousand the district will have a general education fund request on the ballot and we understand that the city may be planning to place money items on the other as well having a seventy million dollars bond request compete with the school district's budget forces voters to choose between our high quality learning environment and educational programming needs and next march the baseline tax increase for the school budget will be six percent just to make up the difference between the city's gap in the property assessment and the c l a which is now over twenty percent so that will be the baseline it would be reasonable predict that school spending will be at least two percent due to health care increases and we have a teacher's contract negotiations so right out  door we're going with most likely somewhere around eight percent increase without even doing any numbers so second burlington is committed to inclusion and equity but our schools do not allow us to fulfill that promise as you've heard it's unfair to our students and other staff and parents with mobility and barriers to continue excluding them from participating fully in our educational process it's unfair to our students and families to consider the safety and security risks that exists with the current physical configuration it's unfair to english language learners to be isolated in one section of the building when we're working hard to create an inclusive and welcoming climate and the sooner we save money on utilities through energy efficiency the sooner we can reduce our operating expenses and redirect funds to educational services for academic achievement academic achievement is diminished by the lack of natural daylight lack of thermal regulation import indoor quality there  is a number of articles about this most notably a twenty fourteen study of over two thousand classrooms in california washington and colorado showing that when controlling for socio economic status and racial makeup inadequate lighting noise and low air quality and efficient heating and cooling in the classrooms are significantly related to worst student achievement and test scores every day that goes by without a substandard high school exposes our city the economic risk we have a healthy economy now with  construction boom that's creating hundreds of units when millenniums begin forming families school district questions will be a major consideration delaying the project sends a message to these young adults that sow the seeds of doubt in our education facilities and the and thank you for having us here tonight i've been a member of the burlington high school renovation committee since two thousand and thirteen so i i am a resident of burlington i'm a parent of a graduate of the high school and i also have worked in the system for thirty years as an occupational therapist my initial involvement with the renovation committee was because of accessibility students using crutches or wheelchairs or students just needing a little more time to get from point a to point b i just want to give you some specifics with breakdowns we hear about the infrastructure at burlington high school we hear about the problems with electrical plumbing furnace hallways that are really cold or really hot but there have been times recently that students could not get to class because sewage was erupting in building e why five blips would happen and students would lose their entire term paper because the i pad they were using had a blip we have had students who could not use the elevator in a building that we heard about coming from the chorus up into or the band room up into the rest of the building because a building elevator has had significant problems we've also had building elevator problems indeed building building  as well as needing a replacement and be building so we've waited many years and i remember hearing the discussion about putting the high school down on the waterfront and i believe betsy's here tonight i heard betsy talking about that at least ten years ago and i appreciate the gentleman who gave the specifics on that but i also remember us talking about the traffic issue and just getting school buses down to the waterfront so there were issues with that the longer we bigger our students are not getting quality education so i hope you will put the band on the on the ballot in november and we can get started with our renovation for the new building thank you thank you mr downey sandy barrett is up next to be followed by the final speaker thank charlotte bennett good evening mr barrett and welcome thank you i'm sandy bear and i'm from ward one and i'm here tonight to talk a little bit about the peace initiative and the ban on nuclear weapons that robin lloyd spoke about before me and i would remind the city council and the mare that we are part of mayors for peace i believe that's correct and i think the mayor for doing that or for continuing that resolution which was passed by bernie sanders i believe back in one thousand nine hundred six i would also remind us all we have sister cities and very troubled parts of the world right now our sister city in nicaragua we have a sister city in israel and palestine and we have a sister city in russia all of those cities are under various kinds of attacks and chaos has ensued and all of those cities one of those sister cities has nuclear weapons and since recently there has been a real chance of confrontation with nuclear power by the united states so i would urge city council and the mayor to take seriously the idea that cities should be forming peace with our neighbors and i would ask that you seriously consider supporting a ban on nuclear weapons that robert spoke about just recently thank you ms baird final speaker tonight charlotte benn concerning the banning of nuclear weapons i'm also coming as a former reporter in the middle east and i'm currently working on a book about the endless wars in the middle east and if you i would urge you to read this statement by the conference of mayors specifically this paragraph who are as tensions between the u s and russia have risen to levels not seen since the cold war and the two nuclear giants confronting each other in ukraine eastern europe and syria and an accelerated tempo of military exercises and war games both conventional and nuclear and risky encounters between russia and us nato forces increases dramatically in the baltic region and syria and as i speak i believe there is a warship heading to the eastern mediterranean a u s warship towards syria  right now i cannot emphasize how serious the situation is there but at the same time i've been grappling with how how to break through what seems to be a certain psychic numbness to quote the great dr about the threat of nuclear weapons and in a conversation recently with some other concerned people this x sort of thought experiment came up and i'd like you to really think about it suppos are sitting here now and we suddenly get news that a nuclear weapon has been launched towards the united states it may have been an accident or may have been deliberate what's our response if we have the responsibility what would our response be i can guess what the kneejerk response would be retaliate or what would retaliation mean think about it think about the dangers to the planet this is very serious anyway i do urge you to consider the proclamation and also to attend the events on september nineteenth to hear th you thank you ms dennett and with that concludes tonight's public forum and we just so everybody knows on the council in public we are going to be diverting a little bit on the agenda the the  work session on the proposed waste water storm water grades and bonding will come after the schools we are first going to go to item number five which is the consent agenda and i will recognize cancer no doubt present right i move that we i any opposed and we have passed the consent agenda before going to the school presentation i'm going to dispose of business that we have to do but they are really quick items so first i am going to recess the regular city council meeting and convene the local control commission meeting at seven at eight eight  eleven first item on the agenda is the agenda chairman thank you commissioner right i will move adoption of the agenda janet has been moved and seconded by commissioner roof all those in favor of the agenda  have any opposed have the agenda item number two as the consent agenda commissioner gene commissioner right i will move to adopt the consent agenda taking the actions as indicated and sec commissioner dean second my commission all those in favor say aye he opposed we have completed the liquor control commission now we have two meetings that the mayor will preside over and so i will recess the local control commission meeting and turn over at at eight thirteen and allow the mayor to convene the next two meetings which are board of civil authority and then city council mayor crean i believe it is majority unanimous majority and mr crean congratulations thank you for your interest in serving on this board and with that at age sixteen and move back to the genda and item number six is a presentation from the school board and school administration and that will be share clearwell superintendent good evening good evening welcome and just so we would be clear that there was no vote i think most through understand that no vote tonight but september eleventh is a special city council meeting where we will be taking up requests for ballot items so with that you have the floor thank you president right and city council once again we want to show our appreciation for the opportunity to share the work that we put into delivery you what we think is an excellent package around bronson high school and i thank all of councils for sending the questions along the last few months and also of course the mayor's letter in terms of indicating some specific questions school for just one minute and just remind everybody again please pull the microphones in very close so that everybody can speak directly into the microphone so that we everybody can hear you thank you perfect let me start over no no no you're good i know you did see receiver our package with the specific question so we're going to try to go through the presentation this expeditious as possible considering the time frames in the time for any questions that may come later on so so if you look at the graphics here i wanted to kind of just start off with getting sort of a national perspective one of the challenges nationally across many districts if not almost all is the challenge of capital and for years and decades many school boards have had to make the hard choice between either deferred maintenance repairs or putting money into students or staffing and usually they did decision is to put into the people and then it creates a challenge down the road look at these graphics here i just happened to be involved more about a month ago with a group of ten students and the picture on the left there i took between in a hallway through a gate gated off fence so this particular school had such severe deferred maintenance that they had to the city had closed down the hallway which meant that all the classrooms in that side were off limits and they're in the process now looking at rebuilding and tires because of the challenges they have and the graphics on the other side are other schools in the in the east that have the sort of same kind of the first means and this is very similar to some of the hot spots we have in our schools but i wanted to reassure that this is not just a burlington challenge this is a real real herculean feat for many districts across the country in terms of trying to make the balance and when's the right time to do these upgrades i'm not sure that we have the have with the current building structure so here's an aerial view of the high school and as you'll see it's very spread out built with a number of different separate buildings what you can see in that aerial view eyes the bottom floor of our a building is actually seven stories below the top story of our building so it's makes for a very very long travel pass for anybody to navigate across that very spread out campus which in it also doesn't meet current exists ability standards we have aging and outdated learning spaces as well as very sufficient building envelope with the insulation in the exterior walls as well as the the windows and roof six because the building is so spread out there's lots of exit doors to all of the buildings which which also affect our safety and security to keep this campus secure from having people access those those secure entry point slide so some needs identified by staff in the community are additional  space for gym classes as well as our after school athletic programs additional space for our theater programs so creating our classrooms to be more collaborative creating classrooms that have more temperate temperature control with air conditioning creating a high performance design obviously reducing travel pass is a major priority of this more about that later in the presentation as well as additional conference room space and large cafeteria spaces with natural lighting etc so slide project design eight accessibility consolidation of classrooms and student support spaces as well as department spaces to create this collaboration create a major space address  as well as lighting and storm water management and hance building security install a new sprinkler system and one of the design criteria is that we're trying to meet with this project is is becoming a collaborative high performance school this is chips model chips is very similar to lead where there is a point structure where the building would design to meet a high performance model that specific to schools so unlike lead word lead is a little bit more specific to energy efficiency chips is focused on all aspects of so just a quick overview of the project slide look of concept of a new front entrance of the high school from north avenue slide so we're proposing to construct one hundred fifteen square feet of new construction that would wrap around our existing a building and then we would be renovating one hundred sixty five square feet of our existing a building's f buildings and b building total square footage of the school would be two hundred eighty thousand square feet the buildings currently two hundred forty five thousand square feet we would do this construction where we would propose doing the the new construction on around the current a building all students are going to continue to use building c d and e once the new construction is completed we would then eventually demolish building c and d and possibly however there is some discussion about efore for other future programming unrelated to burlington high school the proposed project cost for this renovation would be roughly seventy million dollars i'm now go introduce our protects from black river design john how modern to talk about some of the design details good evening again my name is john have all gone and i'm a partner with black river design architects we put together what we think is a pretty nice plan here the key pieces of the site plan that you're looking at as marty mentioned is getting rid of those cd an e buildings and actually putting the heart on top of the hill there where those buildings are freeing up open space at the where the current parking lot is which allows us to separate the bus traffic from the vehicular traffic in the drop off as well as creating space at the bottom end of the site for our storm water treatment you can see that that then opens up the view from north avenue and institute road of the building so that it's not across the parking lot it's open space the new building gives you a clean new facade instead of those large expanses of flank brick building that are there now i think those are the highlights of the of the site plan so we can move on so while this isn't perhaps the most important floor we're going to start at the bottom and move up and i'll try to give you a quick overview of what's contained in this building on the lowest level on the left are the tech center programs one's existing one is the new aviation lab in the lower left the purple in the center is the on top program which because it's on the bottom have its own separate entrance which was an important factor there and finally the yellow areas you see on the right are the additional p e space that is was identified as a program and a need of this project it also allows community use this is it is down near the road it also provides some support space for the athletic fields across the street which are not available currently next to the next floor up really highlights this is the level of the stages on in the building and we've put the band in music programs there is that we really have a performing arts center on this level in addition on the right and at the lower part of the of the plan you can see our printed materials those are light blue they're kind of gray here those are our clusters of classrooms and we try to cap keep the classroom so that we don't have individuals of groups of classrooms that are maybe only one or two but at least four or five that are near to each other to promote the collaborative teaching that this building really wants to achieve next so this is the main entrance level more laos where you come into the building currently up in the upper right you can see there's a rectangular block that would be the new administrative area and guidance departments where you can have a secure entrance where people can come into the vestibule be greeted by someone in the office sign in to the building this way everyone knows who's in the building and we're trying to get it so that everyone is actually coming into this entrance including not only the high school population but the tech center population as well we've relocated the tech center administration to this level down towards where the kitchen is on the left you also see there there's a courtyard and i'll show you an image of that here in a few minutes but this gets you to the main entrance the access to the auditorium the access to the gymnasium the access to the cafeteria so these are all the major public spaces in the building and in addition you can see how the classrooms wrap around the outside of the building there i think that's good for that floor in addition the you'll see this new entrance atrium will then have connections that we're going to build up at this next level up that connect across to the be building because of the building as marty said steps up the hill so in addition you can see that the orange spaces there in the upper right and just next to the gym these are faculty work areas that are designed to create some collaborative areas for faculty to meet and to work together also to be very accessible to the students in addition on the last those are the art rooms which are currently on the upper level of a building which is where actually that's where the on top program has right now be isolated currently but with this plan we connect through over to be building it really becomes a very integral part of the building actually i'd like to go back one slide i know that's going backwards here for a time but the really a key component here that you see is where the cafeteria is in the upper left that connector over to the s building that you see in the in the very upper class is very important this allows us to expand the cafeteria expand the kitchen and create an internal handicap accessible route from the front door over to the tech center that is something that now has a nother very circuitous route much as you heard from the other speaking about  earlier to get access or the students really they just go outside and up the hill in the snow in the eyes so this is going to really integrate the tech center with the with the high school  next and finally then this is the be building this is the last part we want to talk about is in the existing the building we're going to locate the ninth grade academies so these guys with these new walkways and connectors over to a building are going to be very connected but again have a little bit of an autonomous area within the building for the ninth graders i think that's i think that's it so  the video should be on here is that right click on so this is an image of as you come in the building at the new entrance kind of walking through that central gathering space the commons or the atrium  as you would like to call it the other thing you'll notice as we get towards the end of the back right when we get to the near the front entrance is there's a new elevator there that gets to access to the three main floors of this building as you come here in at the front door that get you to all those main public spaces in the building that predates the schedule we have on the calendar here so i won't go through all the history but just a few highlights just to indicate in twenty thirteen when after some conversations the black river design was awarded to redesign the v h s and beach e c in two thousand and fifteen there were the facility conditions assessments and you have all this in your pocket so you can peruse that your own leisure twenty sixteen to building project options rose so there are a number of conversations about different options build a new school not build new school renovate do partial accessibility pieces but we got to the partial demolition renovation expansion and then the reinvention ing committee which came on a tours lots of communication and brochures around the project itself and then finally on august twenty first the board made a motion to approve the option c which was the option that had most of the benefits and  sort of the added value features for seventy million bond question to bring forward to  so on that date we did receive a letter from the mayor which i believe was a consolidation of questions from counseling concerns and we greatly appreciate that because that gave us an option the focus information that we should share with counsel to get your support in moving this forward so the next phase of our presentation is we're going to address the questions specifically and you are a pleasure let us know if you have further questions at this time or you want to hold them off to another time but we'll try to get through there for the initial presentation of that proposing this particular plan in this particular option and what other options were looked at so so we'll back up a little bit we did do a study on all of our buildings to identify the deferred maintenance needs which include looking at that those needs for the high school one option was to address just the bare minimum deferred and manus needs of the high school which was identified to be to be to be roughly thirty million dollars  a requirement challenges of the facility this was not a option that was roast of the to the top of the list so then we the options that did rise of the top of the list was to do a renovation which was going to cost roughly between sixty and seventy million dollars or a new building and then the vision in committee was formed to go out to gauge the community of their appetite to do either one of those two options either renovate the current building or propose a new building after lots of community input the re invision in committee made a recommendation to the superintendent to move forward with the renovation versus  new it was overwhelming support to renovate the building versus build a new facility for many factors and then then we drilled down looking at three different options it would go to the next slide three different options that range between seventy sixty and sixty eight point five million dollars most of those options included the same scope of work however we were focusing a little less attention on the tech center and the number of improvements that would be doing to the tech center as well a little less focus on the back upgrades specifically on air conditioning to do school for sixty eight point five the board also felt that we wanted to provide air conditioning to the entire facility so that we actually the board voted to approve seventy million dollars to  cover the expense of making sure that we're air conditioning the entire facility as well slide we also looked at options for an eighty million dollars project and what that entailed as well as  like i mentioned a building a new brand new high school which would cost roughly one hundred million dollars i'm wondering if for pacing if you'd like to have questions for for question one for marty while he's on this section and million base based on air conditioning you know i mean that seems a little excessive i just want to make sure that i get those numbers raise that we're talking that is what we're talking we receive estimates from our  mechanical engineers in order to provide air conditioning to the entire facility would cost an additional roughly one point five million one point five ok i just want to make sure thanks any other questions on this one  mason thank you marty i guess i'm confused because if i look at the sixty eight and a half million dollar option it says ac offices in common area is correct so i don't understand why we bumped up another million and a half if air conditioning was in the sixty eight point five airconditioning was in the sixty eight point five to do common error is and offices but not classrooms we are proposing to do do you mitigate dehumidification only in the classrooms but but the board felt strongly that we wanted to provide that level of of comfort programming and most of the buildings that are used are the ones that are currently airconditioning is the those are the ones that are the that the first choice i should say the high school also has tons of summer programming already happening in the building and there could could be more we currently run summer programs in the high school now this will just give us an opportunity to increase that capacity this summer schools and othe partnership programs that happen throughout the summer great me i think that it's really important to utilize this space if we're going to air condition absolute i think yes or no doubt counts or bush or i'm going to wait till number two counts or bush or passes counts or paul and then like for example the meet requirements of the chip certification at sixty five million putting that into the chips or it put it doing that and only that in terms instead of higher performance greater energy efficiency into the sixty eight and a half million so in other words that there could be some sort of middle ground that perhaps it didn't need to be sixty eight and a half million but you could somehow or other that these are at all interchangeable you know what i mean everything is definitely energy changeable i'm not quite sure i understand the question but the the difference between option b the sixty five and the difference in compared to the option c of the sixty eight point five i can just give you an example wood chips chips is based on a point structure that ranges from a minimum of eighty five to a maximum of two hundred fifty the assumption of the sixty five million would would meet the the minimum to receive the certification somewhere in the eighty five point range and we were proposing to increase that point structure in the sixty eight point five you know somewhere details about that specific area so you can hold that when respond to that first thing when we get to that section you have and what is the name of these project actually the actual name that this school district is calling it what is the name  investments and energy efficiency both in terms of the exterior of the building and the systems that are servicing the building can you talk to us a little bit about the differences in operational costs between investing less versus investing more in the project definitely one of the next step is to do some energy modeling on the project one of the things that we wanted to do before we invested in doing energy modeling to five different options was to narrow down one specific option that endor energy modeling is going to be based on you know the the the performance of the building envelope windows etc as well as the mechanical system other factors are going to be included in those operating costs such as you know for full air conditioned or partially air conditioned we anticipate that the energy costs will be reduced significantly the building also going to be you know forty five thousand square feet larger than what it currently is so there's going to be additional space that needs to be part of that equation but we definitely envision a reduced energy cost because of the upgrades that will be going to this facility so if i could just do a quick follow up so to make sure that i understand so the net operational costs for the facility may not go down even though we've added all of these additional energy efficiency measures because we've  much square footage we're adding square footage and we're also at an air conditioning to a bill that the current operational costs on a per square foot basis will likely be decreased based on those these investments that is that is true thank y was asking referring to it's helpful to have a scenario under which you know we have options around how much additional load energy use is result of the air conditioning versus perhaps not air conditioning entire facility i think would be helpful to see some options there because if we invest heavily in energy efficiency and make a really tight envelope and we have you know great indoor air quality all those great things but we've increased the load so much that there's no savings to really offset some of the bond cost and that's we're hoping to see is the ability to use some of the savings to cover debt service and not have to rely on the taxpayer rather use the savings inherent in the project to cover some of that so that's a really important piece vote on this for the eleventh would be well not a full accounting line by line of what the project would look like but a general accounting for what the make up of the project spend will look like that now is this is a proper question for you i mean this is a big project and a project of descale and we also know as a director of the property services so you have so many go the work are you the one who will also manage and control the specific project for the district no but what do we hold on to that that question as well because that also be addressed and one of the questions here thank you and this is actually  mr pyne just asked when the construction is taking place is happening where are the students going to be so that's a good question so because of how we're proposing to do this construction by building new construction wrapped around our current a building will be able to simultaneously do the work while students are still using a building and then clearly they will also be able to continue using buildings b c e this was you know a thought process that had to be considered in order to phase this this this project that this work of this project that's go be phased over possibly to two and a half years so we had to figure out how to make that work happen while kids are still going to school in the building and try to reduce the number of let's say modular classrooms to be thank you and thank you for the presentation as many know i am a parent of a current high schooler and the need for a new high school does not escape me in any  way and i like what i've seen here from the architect to understand how the new building would work at the same time i am concerned it's it's a very big decision for our community it's a lot of money that is concerning for a lot of taxpayers and we need to get it right because this is a decision for a generation or maybe three or four generations i was concerned about you know as as somebody said in public forum you know this is a process that has gone on for a very long time but i am concerned that the latest group that was charged with looking at this might not have benefited from the work that had been done by all the previous groups and i'm not sure how much of work that had been done previously and ideas that had you know worked their way up for a while and then administrations change and interest was lost if if they were able to capture some of the good work that has been done by by previous groups both in the recent past and not so recent past and in one of the documents we have a lot of documents to look through here and i can't say that i have thoroughly studied everything but there's a document i think was called o p p r draft and in it there's table one stakeholder input sessions and it says that on may seventeenth spoke with educators and the number was ten students and parents apparently nobody showed up the meeting was cancelled there was one parent who showed up in the meeting was cancelled in a miss administration there was input from twelve people and the community reem visioning group there was input from seven people presumably those are the people on the committee and i'm hoping you're going to explain to me how that was not the only input that was received in creating this current plan because i think just like we heard here a public forum there are a lot of interesting ideas in the community and i don't know if you know if the idea of a tiff districts to pay for this is a real possibility if it was question that's a really good question terms of we didn't start by reinventing the wheel when i was here in twenty fifteen twenty sixteen we did gather all the information from previous groups that had worked on the  high school project and started out with a staff level in terms of looking at what was providing what the options were and there were options at that point hundred million two hundred million and at that point even there was an analysis around ninety million project and that's when we took the next step in terms of we were not ready at that point to bring it forward and the continue analysis and then we started reengaging some of the former community members who were part and staff the who were part of the original proposals and they sort of integrate into the new groups and then they started a new process based on the information that they had previously wanted to slide there that you saw that had the initial nuggets around by staff and community that was from the initial assessment that was done a really robust assessment that went through all stuff in view thousand and thirteen two thousand and thirteen and gathered information terms of what the needs in the hot spots around the high school and then so we've taken that we've kind of sprinted from there is how do we how do we make  better and i'll let marty talk to you about the opi are perth process that you mentioned so as you mentioned that that list from those lies that said needs identified from south that the the same design directives that that we've been working off since two thousand and thirteen what we wanted to do with our o p our process is validate that we're still working off the same parameters that were identified in two thousand and thirteen because  be a guideline for the project design as well as be used throughout the whole entire construction process right into the commissioning of the project you had mentioned the number of staff that were that participated those were all department heads so they had they had received feedback from their you know the this this is teachers within their departments before participating in that so though there wasn't a vast number of people that were in the room there representing a you know a number of teachers what we clearly identified through that process is we validated that the design directives that we were working off from two thousand thirteen are very similar almost the same owner project requirements that we're currently working off now so i appreciate the explanation about the participation from the educators the administrators and the reimaging group and it seems like everybody there was remain on the same page but it does appear that there was not any input in that process from students and parents correct yes we did try to hold a student session it was you know late in this late in the end of the year no unfortunately no students chose to come it was a voluntary option to participate students did did did end up coming to any of the events we can certainly replicate that what the start of the school year and what about the ideas that were brought forward tonight which was an idea from a decade ago or more that you could create a tax increment financing district that would help support which i think would require building on a different site where in this process were things considered that were a little more out of the box i think we were looking at all options out of the box through this process i don't i wasn't here at the time that we proposed to build on the north forty it's not obviously not land that the school district currently owns i believe at the time that that was presented it didn't create a whole lot of momentum to move to the next level where obviously the options are you know and many of them were on the previous sort of advocacy groups around that so well marty didn't share with you is that we did have an opportunity with that group with the previous spec specifications with architects and engineers to have conversations with that group as well too in terms of giving guidance moving forward and at that point i don't think anyone went back to two thousand and eight the said that's the plan that we should go through i know there's conversations about it or been lots of conversations but marty and i both were not here during that period of time and that never seem to have caught on any of the conversation we've had that these two revisit that plan that was presented then or other financing ideas yeah we think pressure right just while we're on the slide do you think would be helpful clarification you know i think it pretty clearly a pretty significant decision in the moments leading up to now is deciding to move away from this thirty million dollar action towards the sixty seventy million range and i think that slide is suggesting that the smaller option would not have address addressed i think there may just be some confusion over that the two thousand and sixteen report recommending a renovation plan seem to and maybe maybe it's confusion within the report but it does seem to suggest that this lower plan would address eighty issues so can you speak to that and i can speak to that so that plan so as you know that we have six different buildings actually eight buildings on  part of the make up of the campus of the high school we currently have four elevators in order to make those buildings more eighty eight compliant we would need to have an elevator in each one of those buildings to re ce the travel pass to allow you to go from floor to floor in those separate buildings in order to add those elevators you would have to either build on the exterior of the building or take interior space away from that particular building other areas that would need to be addressed in order to bring the buildings up to eighty a would be to add restrooms make them more eighty eight compliant again similar issue if you're let's say we're talking about c building if we currently have one bathroom and see building on one floor and we want to add another bathroom on the second floor as well as well and as an elevator we would have to take away existing building footprint to add an elevator on the second floor which would take away from existant this thing classroom space we have to do the same by adding an elevator take away exist build a building footprint so in order to recapture that the additional square footage needed needed for classroom space we would then have to add on additional square footage to to the building so it really isn't just a factor of popping in an elevator an extra bathroom without also impacting other additional square footage cost someone somewhere around the building but could you make the building more eighty eight compliant based on the current configuration yes by adding more bathrooms and more elevators as well as you know other features to make it more a deacon plan but that's not going to address the the very very long travel pass that we currently have by going from the bottom first floor of a building seven stories up to the third floor of the building that adding additional elevators is not going to address that ok we're going to have to take a little break changing process here because that one question took a long time and this is a huge issue no doubt but we can take that long and each and every question right so what i'm going to ask you to do is run through the mayor's questions spend just a brief amount of time on them now and then we're going to have to come back and ask questions separately but i want to spend a more significant amount of time on the tax impact question right it's got to be a the other the other issue that i wanted to raise for council was the two years ago we had an assessment from the new england association's a public schools commission that does accreditation of new england and their report indicated significant flaws in our physical building and not being able to resource some plan for programming and they gave us a time frame to sort of report back and so currently right now i have to report back on october first the plan to meet those  needs in order to comply with the program resource needs so that's another challenge for us so another outside entity has identified that this is a barrier for our for our staff and our students  building does not allow us to fully implement that at the lightning speed we'd like to get to part of the challenge around this is being able to congregate teachers and students into spaces and changing the learning model you know traditional model has been subject to pacific english math science and you're trying to teach and now we're looking at certain terms of expectations outcomes and and skills that have to be achieved and they could be they could come across curricular over a number of different  subject areas and you have to be to proficiency level so the plans that we have integrate that with the physical plant enable to for us to achieve those schools more efficiently and be able to provide for our students we are behind in that plan because of restraints that we have and we know the plan we have with the added changes will help us reach those goals i'm going to have no green our principal just talked briefly a little bit about the welcoming learning environment piece that sort of addresses part of the as a high school principal obviously i'm quite excited about renovations to the high school one thing that's important to know that the challenge that we currently face is that our building dictates our curriculum the limits within our building dictate some of our curriculum our teachers should dictate our curriculum having classrooms that have the capacity to be flexible to have a socratic seminar to have a group assignment in order to achieve proficient proficiency based learning attributes which require that students have multiple opportunities and a variety of opportunities access and our current facilities does not allow that a teacher should be able to come in each day and say i'm going to try this approach but currently that is not the case and the way our building is currently configured there's no rhyme or reason to it there's no pattern to it because we have to use space based on what can fit in certain areas we need a space that's designed it has a logical pattern where we can say this fits here for a particular reason and that's why the freshman academies make sense something that we cannot accommodate in our current facilities studies show that the the most opportune time to work with our students in a holistic way is in the ninth grade that's where loss occurs if we provide a nurturing and strong education for students in our ninth grade it is less likely that we'll lose them in later grades so having them be in a specific area where the teachers can collaborate and worse when working across curricular way that is the best approach for us and our current facility does not allow that to happen our buildings are siloed right now teachers can go months without seeing each other the new space would be designed so that teachers would have that ability to collaborate and work together academies and sort of the research around where we're going with that but i do want to end this question off around addressing the issue around safety and security we've had a number of studies analysis around our building in terms of the inadequacy of the safety and there was a report in twenty fifteen it's imbedded in the package that you have from mark from margolis and healy that clearly demonstrates that our our our building is not suitable for the current safety patterns that we have if you look at that that the plan alone you know it's not safe and students are going outside to go inside multiple doors opportunities for individuals to come in and out and it does not meet with the requirements of the current plan is to keep our students safe and that is one of the most most first priority for an administration or schools in terms of ensuring safety for our schools and so this new sort of plan would give us the opportunity to be able to ensure that students are secure as best as the high school does not even allow us to do a nine one one call and for them to then a fire exactly where the spot of the school is coming from and you can imagine them match a large campus like that that is you know tragedy waiting to happen so we're open to be able to be prepared and have the facilities in the way that we can keep to safety and security students and hopefully never have to exercise those challenges this particular area you want to slide to i want the slides in a moment i suppose so i'll just brief introduction here we're going to cover a few of the high points that came out of the letter that the merrow but we're also just going to provide variety of tax information that will be familiar to those of you who've attended some of the school board meetings but may be new to some of the folks who haven't had the opportunity to view it so specifically if we can go to the next slide please we envision borrowing the money probably over three fiscal years these are estimated quantities and there is certainly going to be v these numbers in terms of how it will phase in but we expect to have a small amount of borrowing needed in the first year where that will be mostly for paying for design and that sort of thing and you can see the bulk of the borrowing occur in the second year and then we envision a third kind of phase of borrowing so you'll see this reflected when we get to some of the estimates about how the tax rate ramps up i want to also point out you can see the note in the right that we estimated these impacts on the basis of borrowing over thirty years four percent that is the product of conversations that i had with richard goodwin about what would make sense in terms of both interest rates and maturity so want to point out we've had the opportunity to collaborate with with rich in this discussion i think i'm for that for that's work on next live please i won't spend a lot of time on this unless the council wants to get into it i'm sure councillor wright would be happy to give you all a tutorial as well but the state system for calculating education tax rates includes a variety of variables the variables that we focus on and we manipulate so to speak as we look at tax impacts here is the education spending the other variables are all held constant in this analysis we know that over time those numbers will change and they can move in ways that put upward or downward pressure on the tax rate i know that the council for milieu with the common level of appraisal for example but the for the purpose of our analysis tonight those other variables are held constant so you can really see the impact of the result of the borrowing associated with b h s project so linger on this slide for a moment we wanted to provide some examples in dollar terms of what we're talking about we will move on so you can see some percentage impacts and and get a sense of how these things ramp up but we felt like it was important to give people a flavor for what the tax impact would be the marginal cost that is the additional cost to taxpayers one being an estimated property tax impact on  a someone whose taxable property is two hundred fifty thousand dollars and the other is the income tax cap on someone whose income is fifty thousand is fifty thousand dollars and pays on the basis of income you'll see that we have shown the impact by year here so that as the borrowing ramps up so does the tax impact and that five toes for a period of that's twenty eight years and that is associated with the fact that at that point your fully paying back all of the borrowing you've done over three years and then as you pay off the various phases of that borrowing toward the end of the bottom of the chart there you can see that the tax rate or rather the tax actually comes down you get to a point where you've completely repaid all of the borrowing so again it's important to see and just to understand that that we're talking about something that ramps up then pl and then of course is you paid off the bill it phases back out this reflects the same information on the previous screen only we've turned it into percentage terms for the property tax payer so that you can see once again the ramp up and then the phase out here you can see that at its peak the result of the borrowing would increase the education tax rate for property payer by take over six and a half percent from the f y nineteen r slide please we also thought it was important to understand the impact of what's being proposed for b h f in conjunction with the other debt the school district either has currently or plans to take on as part of our thirty nine million dollars capital plan so we've added a second column to the chart called other debt that factors in those other pieces and a third c well as the repayment of the borrowing associated with the thirty nine million dollars capital plan and other debt we currently carry  and debt and then we've layered over top of it another line that reflects the addition of the b h f project into the tax rate you can see that towards the right hand portion of the graph those lines below zero percent year that is that absent any other borrowing as we pay off debt will eventually get to a point where in fact all else being equal the tax rate would be lower than today because the current budget incorporates  about three point seven million dollars of debt service and so when all of that is paid off we will actually would be in a situation where holding all the variables constant you have a lower tax rate in you know thirty forty years whatever that is their next slide please ok so that was the tax rate i'll move a little quicker the next set of slides is the debt service that the budget impact of the school which is probably have some interest to do you folks it was a lot of interest to the school board as you can imagine so once again we show the same scenario here you can see the impact of phasing in the borrowing plateau ing at a point where the b h f projects added about four dollars annual cost of the budget to service the debt and then it phases out next what we've given the question of the debt service the same treatment by adding in the impact of the other borrowing so you can see when the b h s project fully phases in which is in fiscal year two thousand and twenty two you can see where the kind of looks like almost a black line here peaks are right spikes up there in fiscal twenty twenty two one of the things that can be a little confusing when you look at a graph like this is to figure out which of the lines is actually changing so for example there are some times when like in fiscal year twelve or between fiscal twenty twenty six and twenty twenty seven where the graph peaks and then takes a significant drop that's really the blue that's going down substantially it's not the darker line so sometimes it's confusing is to which of those two sources of debt is is changing but in that case it's the  existing capital debt ok so we move quickly through that service now we will get to the total amount of the debt this is relevant to the council and to the mayor because you folks have been discussing a  policy and so we wanted to make sure that we covered this particular item once again you can see the kind of phase in phase out impact here i think the most important thing at least as i've understood it with respect to your conversations about the debt policy is to see slide please here's a graphic illustration of that you can see once again the impact of the significant borrowing associated with the high school causing a real spike in the grass and then you steadily pay that down over the following years next slide is the end of question three and the beginning of question for this question is a little broader so this question was a kind of about the state financing system and so to the best we could interpret it we wanted to both talk a little bit about the state financing system and also what the future of that system may look like so in this case we wanted to first talk about the fact that all of the analysis you've seen here assumes that the school budget and ultimately that the state education fund bears one hundred percent of the burden of the project costs later in our program chair wools going to speak to some of the other options that could be out there to reduce that impact but just so folks know you're looking at like the assumptions based on everything being paid for with  with ultimately tax imported debt folks also have asked about the how the system and particularly income sensitivity impacts this where you saw a slide earlier that showed that those who pay on the basis of their income that the dollar impact on them it's all in those hypothetical cases is lower than someone who's paying on the basis of property that's the way the system is is designed generally it's worth noting that a little over seventy percent of burlington households pay their education taxes with their income sensitised and that's were just a little bit ahead of the state average in that regard but it's very very similar to state as a whole so another question that came up was what will changes in the system the education financing system mean for all of this analysis and the answer is we don't know what those changes will be and so we can't say with any confidence this is how the system's going to change and this is what it's going to mean what we do know is that it's been the subject of a lot of debate recently by state policymakers there have been talks about shifting from a model that is based largely on property value to a model that's based more on an income again without any type of concrete proposal it's not something that we can analysis on and say this is what it would look like but one other option that's out there that has been explored and discussed in the past is and that people have brought it up before is state aid for school construction so for those who are not familiar with this the state used to support through cap state that paying schools portion of their construction costs and that's not something that is existed in about a decade since a moratorium moratorium went in at the state level on that some of our legislative delegation have talked about and i believe even proposed reinstating the state aid for school construction but at this time that doesn't appear to be on the horizon so it's something that's out there it would obviously help burlington going through this project and one of the things that we're committed to doing is making sure that even though the it's kind of complicated but even though the state for school construction has a moratorium there's still a process you can actually go through to apply to exclude your your debt from the excess spending threshold and other things so we plan to kind of pursue the avenues that exist in current law just on the chance that state aid for school construction comes back or that otherwise that we want to put it position ourselves so that we would be able to take advantage of that if possible the good news the states pay down its obligation in that respect so there's no one in line so to speak but we want to make sure that even if we start to move forward this project and something does change legislatively that we can work with our delegation to ensure that we can access those funds and question for you  got to we've got a really short in this of now going forward because we have to come back to the council for a limited number of questions at this point and i'm going to there will be some time it's going to be limited at this point because we have other big items still to come and to suggest a cow cers get some questions out but that you can meet with the school board or the superintendent over these next couple of weeks call them and get some other answers and you should also be prepared that on september eleventh there may be additional questions we did just get the letter today with the answers to the mayor's questions so we have a chance to really fully digest the answers so i don't want to you know we're we've got another big presentation coming up so we've got to make this brief we're here to  around what is the plan to really get the message out about this so we heard tonight about the work that went in during two thousand and thirteen through two thousand and seventeen which was really engaging the community and spreading the word about what we were doing and i want to talk i just want to reiterate that that has been a key piece of what we have been doing for the last five years and it's a plan that we continue we want to continue to do that so if you go to the next slide you'll see just in the sense from april until now you'll see that we have really been hammering public engagement and and information sharing about the project so we've had this project covered in nine different media outlets from i guess at april until now and then an additional four just in the last week as we geared up for tonight's meeting we did three tours of the building we did taping at city market on vermont primary day we posted on all of our social media accounts had the o p o our sessions in addition that we talked about in the last thing that we did you can go to the next slide as we did a survey for our community so we spread a survey out to everybody that you have seen on this message we had four hundred one responses to the survey  support in march that's usually around three fifty three seventy five this was in sixty eight hours and if you go to the next slide you can see that our preliminary results showed that about seventy percent of the people who took the survey supported a bond of this nature so i'm going to go quickly as you asked if you go to the next slide i don't want to spend a lot of time on a survey i know you don't i only added one slide for you counselor in case you would be interested you can go to the next slide please and the next slide and just wanted to break this out for you it was about twenty percent of the people who took the survey were residents that did not have children in the system and the people that supported any sort of bond on the ballot it was about sixty percent of the people who took the survey so i want to reiterate with getting the survey out in sixty eight hours to four hundred people with the work that we did leading up to you can go to the next slide please from april and till now i feel strongly that that really lays the groundwork for what we're able to continue to do so our plan going forward from now to november is to continue we're going to reinstate the tours we had great success spreading the word about those we're going to present at each end we're going to continue to tabling at city market they have offered they said how many more dates do you want and so we're going to do additional locations around the city taking  the volunteer efforts of our reinvention in committee that will be led by me so it will be district led but it will be supported by a group of community volunteers we will continue we will launch a traditional and social media campaign informational campaign really spreading the word what this project is what does it mean for your taxes how long as it gets take we're going to have a complete abated web site and we're going to hold more community and forums and engage the business community we've had initial conversations with see who's talking about having board meetings in the building so they can show the business community what this looks like and how a new high school could be a benefit to the economy and to the business owners in the community going beyond november that is when we really hit the ground running with the design work again so i want to tell people that the ob the opportunity for people to really help us get this plan detailed is not over but once a bond passes and we knew that we had money in the bank that's what we can really start to hone in on the details of this project will have more meetings will continue to work with the media and will continue to really keep everyone abreast of the situation so i hope that answers your question thank you and i think with that we need to go the counsel for question and again the council got the answer to the mayor's questions just this afternoon fact late this afternoon and i have a lot of time chance to digest the answers so there could be additional questions come september eleventh but let me go to cancer busher and again we're going to try to wrap this up in the next fifteen minutes so we can have a series of questions from everybody else or bush so i i have a couple of questions and a couple of comments one is one of the comments has to do with how this bond if if we move forward and it passes how it's paid down and when you look at it the financial impact is on really on the first twenty years i mean it's really high and i'm concerned about people on fixed incomes and people including those that are already retired and that they're going to take the biggest hit i just didn't know whether there was another way to look at how you pay this back i really would like to understand if there's another way to do this this is traditional what you presented i'm looking for alternatives that's one question that i have one statement that i have now question the thing that i wanted to share with you is that when i looked at your little video the first thing i saw was that staircase to heaven i thought that doesn't speak to excess ability i'm sorry did you ever think of an escalator i just wanted to throw that out and then with the merest question the really serious about that though the explanation of how proposed plans will improve the education of our high school students i really didn't he i'm a detail person and the only way i'm going to be able to sell this to the people i represent is to have some answers to these kinds of questions you know today's world there stem programs you know i didn't hear anything about this i didn't see any detail about improved lab space i read i actually read that report that was done in two thousand and fifty and i printed it out and read it all and i have lots of comments about that not tonight but but the were things about different size classrooms little areas for individuals to study groups of people to study i haven't seen that and i thought that went to the question that the mayor was asking he felt he would address safety  da but he was looking at how you're going to improve teaching how are you going to do that i heard you talk about teachers but i didn't hear about the amenities for students and i'd like to know those details you know with english being a primary language are you going to have labs for people to be able to learn english and practice their english i really think that if there's a place for me to find that in a reader's digest version i think that's really important for people to understand what their students will actually get from this new high school besides accessibility now i have a thirty nine year old daughter she's my youngest when i went back to school night i almost killed myself going up one of those little ramps or walkways so think about it you know that's a long time ago where accessibility was already an issue so i'm really rushing and i know councilor right i mean president writes go not offended by being on the bottom i'm not making funny about that but i'm concerned about really how they feel about themselves and i want that's really important you know if you're in the basement or on the bottom sometimes that impacts how you how you see yourself so i just i'm throwing that out freshman academics last thing i'm going to say has you know the freshman building where they bring people in together i like the idea but if you've got somebody who's really bright i hope you're not going to hold them back and keep them with a core of people that maybe they need to branch out so lots of things that are thrown at you but i think some of those details are really essential for people the people that i represent to support say yes thank you tremendous amount of great analysis because those are all questions that we don't have time to go into so that but i would say if first of all i think the on top is a particular program we specifically are looking to accommodate better and there would welcome one of the things i've been talking about is to have new modular spaces and makers spaces and also to take the technology someone made a testimony this today about only avenue like one plug and we don't have the designs in our classrooms to integrate new technologies when i was in china a few months ago i got to visit a brand new school and you should see what's in that those classrooms in terms of the ability for kids to connect with students outside of their country through technology and we want to provide those pieces as well to make a good point maybe we should do a little primer specifically around the pedagogical nature of this of the schools in more detail than when i have time tonight but certain something we can work on too to give people what don't feel prepared to do that and i want to get there and i was one of kind of where where i'm at with what i'm looking for the project budget i did not see it in the attachments and you don't need to bring it up if it is there i just couldn't maybe i just couldn't find it and i understand that given in this stage of the design it won't be exact so that to the best of your ability demonstrating what what those dollar amounts are and compared to the program  c program in the in the new building the second this actually might be a partnership or for the administration in the district the combined debt chart for the district is really helpful to see going with that yeah i've already calculated i'm not going to be paying some of this but no to much to my point being move on but the like to see a combined debt analysis projection of both the city and the district we have other bonds on the horizon we have water we have the morial we should be looking at we have a budget increases we should be looking at what the collective impact on the checkbook is going to be so we can make that decision that everyone can make the decision well knowing what those impacts will be and get your follow up on smaller items ok thank you we will certainly make sure to forward you those documents that you are looking for we have had talked about alternative strategies to to meet our debt service one of the things that we are well aware of and our director finances in the last three years we've had surplus of one point five million and we sure the first is actually just to address cancer bush or concern which i share but i think the way i understand this that the payments that are made by residents will still be treated as if it's the same as payments that are made in taxes toward the operations of our schools in other words the the portion of the payment the taxpayer makes to retire the debt will be incomes treated as income sensitize i want need to confirm this because that's my understanding of how this financing will work yeah that's correct the tax payers just going to get one bill it's going to have the education tax it would just be higher if part of what we were using the education fund revenues to pay back was an additional seventy million dollars worth of debt ok so if your income sensitize though you will still continue to benefit from that income sensitivity you will continue to benefit from the provision absolutely but folks should understand that  when a school district increases its spending prequels people the tax rates go up for both property payers and income payers so sometimes i hear people suggest that if their income sensitised it's a free ride and that we can spend two hundred million dollars on a new high school and they'll pay nothing that's simply not true so better that people understand that there will be an impact on all payers thank you the other thing is really a clarification and i don't like to be the the the garden party but the notion that tiff will be used on a new high school should just be clear that is not feasible whatsoever so i just want to be clear about that i worked many years at sea though in the one thing i did do is get us the downtown to find they know how the waterfront of a and just want the public to know that that there is a great many of you here at least a majority i think and thank you for coming i think it shows the dedication that you have to this issue and to doing best to encourage us to do what you'd like us to do which is a good thing and i don't think that i don't i mean let's just speak for myself you don't need to convince me that there's a  need you know when i walk into burlington high school for the tour that that i was at week and a half ago you know and i walk up those stairs of the same stairs that i was walked up years and years ago many years ago and  know the school hasn't changed a whole lot since i went to school so i don't think we need to be convinced of the need i don't think we need to be convinced of the need for accessibility i and my daughter and a number about a dozen other parents and teacher and parents and children worked very hard to get an elevator in edmond's middle school so that that school was accessible it still isn't completely accessible so the need is at burlington high school the need is really at every school for me the issue and i also think that you know this is a collaborative effort i mean we see the bonding capacity of the city and the need that you're asking for have to go hand in hand we're all here together and a separate entity from us and you know i think that to me is is a critical piece of this you mentioned about the deck the debt policy the debt capacity this this city council this administration every voter has worked pretty hard over the last several years to bring up our bond rating to where it was back in two thousand and eight in two thousand and nine and what we fought hard for that we want to make sure that we continue on the trajectory that we're on and so my concern and it really isn't so to all of you but my concern is that we've only got another week and a half or so that we're going to be voting on this we need to know what those ratios are where we are with our financial advisor where we are with projections towards our the trajectory that we're on with moody's and that to me is the overriding issue after that there's lots of other questions about the tax impact and i will only ask one question but that is my one question and i know we need to know those answers first and then i think you know i think i guess what i'm trying to say is that i'm trying to look at your a way to get to yes and the eleventh is two weeks out we haven't heard from our advisors we don't have a policy you know when i am not comfortable moving forward with the seventy million dollars project knowing that there are lots of others in the queue without having that in place so that sort of gets to my appreciating all of the efforts that you're doing to get this to us as quickly as possible i've heard two reasons it has to be november you know i had not yet convinced so i mean maybe you could speak to why it what's the importance i have heard you know the superintendent speak to you know there are there's an accessibility issue now and it's not fair i appreciate that and i hear that but i'm still not convinced that a four month delay is you know going to move the needle in the other i heard articulated work by one board member was a concern about putting out on the ballot at the same time as an eight percent projected eight percent increase if there are other reasons it has to be in november i guess you know either now or over the next two weeks if you could articulate them i think that would be helpful so you don't see that my second question sort of is to nate i guess i'm still struggling i don't understand you know the state school financing system but i'm having a hard time wrapping my head around you know do we need a we are someone to say yes because this is a big ticket item that it sounds like we don't pay for all of it so if the answer is no that's great but if the answer is yes i guess have we started those conversations or do we have the consensus we need the answer's no in effect what this would do is increase the school's budget which means that we would require more money from the education fund the system is such a set up such that whatever schools choose to spend from the education fund they get that money but they pay for it through higher income or story higher property taxes even if you are income sensitised again you  pay for it through higher taxes so it's not a question of whether or not the agency of education would give us the money it's just a question again of what is the tax impact going to be on the people who are are paying paying the bill estimation i think the council shannon but how does the isn't there a penalty for excess spending and how does that fit in it's great question there is a penalty for excess spending in fiscal year nineteen it was somewhat over seventeen thousand dollars per equalise people even if tomorrow we all snap their fingers and we borrowed the full amount of the seventy million dollars that we're in visioning right now burlington would still be below that penalty threshold obviously we're not borrowing it tomorrow it would be a number of years before it's fully phased in but we would still be below the excess spending threshold even under those assumptions and there are places by the way in vermont that exceed the th reshold however more importantly the law allows for construction debt of this nature to be exempted from the penalty calculation so we would as i mentioned earlier plan to go through the process to make sure that if that spending threshold is changed for example legislatively in the future we still can take advantage of that exemption thank you conservation i think that we're cancer thank you president i will i don't want to get out here without saying this and i think right now in this city we don't have an issue that's as important as what he envisioning that the name of burlington high school because when i hear a constitution who been to private school who never been to any of the public schools who grow up here in burlington don't have any children calling me to let me know you need to vote on this i should highlight that because we should not compare what's not comparable there isn't an issue here in this community that's not as important as this because all of us what we want is for the children to come coming to school to leave the school safely to go home and we all know what is going on around this nation safety it's not something that we need to take lightly and this aspect i'm not even talking about the education of the children but just the fact that kids are coming to us leaving safe and would want to come back and also we can even use the building for all of the community uses we talked about here just quite know how burlington has become a community school how field can be of use for the specific for the community this need to be clear in our head as elected officials we should take this a priority anything else we can wait but my question to you is this i would like to know what are the assets of the bullington school district are there any chance that i can get  thank you very much for your presentation say we are an anomaly in the state of vermont there are other just due to act forty six other districts are consolidating this council has approved incredible in the next two years we will see city place we will see rise we have approved housing and we are there are many things in the queue for sure and we understand that as a full board we come here tonight sharing your concerns and absolutely looking for collaboration on this when is the time to address our high school in fifty five years we would look to the city and the community for that support we would look at the federal level we look at senator leahy's son who is a graduate bernie sanders a huge champion of the american disabilities act this is a priority and we stand here tonight unified as a board to present it we will work with you we have proposed november because of the what commissioner curry spoke to as well the timing the inevitable challenges we face as a state in public education funding that will be presented in march so thank you for your time we appreciate the opportunity to share and i think it's imperative that we as a school board meet with you to have some more information sessions and and again to the council i know there are additional questions certainly contact any of the people here calls or meetings and edition be back on september eleventh there may be further questions before the votes help for  sure with that now we are going to move back to the work session for a nother actually very important to the citizens of burlington and the region and the state which is the  fate of lake champlain in our water so while high school is indeed very important i think this one may be equally and i and i and i do apologize and thank you for for being willing to wait until that link the item but so my sincere apologies use your mikes please pull them in close and speak right into them we've been having problems with that so thank you problem that all the presentation we have front of you tonight is the result of a lot of diligent effort on the part of our staff and our consultant team  it is an ambitious yet pragmatic proposal to reinvest thirty million dollars into our waste water and storm water systems this is next not a sprint a marathon our commitment stewarding the clean water of our community is one of the core responsibilities of public works and together with the public we have made significant progress over the generations so you'll see in this slide here which shows the combined sewer discharge is pre one thousand nine hundred four which is again a fight in this red bar here i was prior twenty four years ago prior to our last upgrade of our wastewater treatment plants we were on average discharging one hundred seventy million gallons of untreated disinfected combined sewer combined sewer in our main plant sewer shed is a combination of storm water and waste water the three bars on the left here is the combines the performance of this year at our plant we have processed and this is wet weather flow during storm events seventy five million gallons of wet weather flow we have processed treated and had partially disinfected another eight point nine million gallons and then you'll see here four million gallons of untreated so you compare that number to one hundred seventy million gallon we have made significant progress but we have far to go you'll see at the bottom to save time we are not going to go through a lot of the detail that we've discussed before but for members of the public or others who are interested in the detail the link at the bottom of the screen will give a lot of background here is a quick summary of what will go over tonight and we are going to do it quickly next we have made significant progress in our tenure here over the last five years in increasing our capital funding in our water utility what you're seeing at the very bottom here by year a fly thirteen up to forty one thousand is a continual growth in our capital expenditures significant growth in blue and purple relates to our water utility and the support that the voters have made through our sustainable infrastructure plan but even the waste water and storm water investments have trended up due to some careful management and  and renewed focus on reinvesting in our critical core system this was a presentation slide provided to the council as part of our f one one thousand budget presentation and if we go to the next slide you'll see another  screen shot from our budget presentation which for told the investments that are needed in our wastewater and stormwater utilities at that budget presentation we talked about the need to upgrade our existing treatment systems our collection system reinvestments and our storm water falls and collection system and we showed down here a chart by fiscal year of what we were projecting for upcoming investments and we talked that we would likely need a bond in the upcoming years what has transpired of the last few months has expedited our work and brought us to today  we have made significant success together as a community on the sustainable infrastructure plan the council and the administration have made it through a partnership effort a remarkable gain in attacking our deferred maintenance across asset classes the streets the sidewalks the water mains have gotten tremendous attention over the last two or three years with projects surrounding this building underway as we speak  with the drinking water we brought that into the first phase of the sustainable infrastructure plan for a number of reasons one is to renovate those pipes requires us to disturb the surface of the roadway it made no sense to repave a road and then have to disrupt the pavement to upgrade the water lines second we had come out of frost apocalypse are the amount of breaks that we struggled through in two thousand and fourteen and twenty fifteen that significantly basis of the proposal that we're presenting tonight so in red you can see places where we've had wastewater permit violations and beach closures caused specifically by infrastructure failure simply things not working such as valves our p l c computerized control system and unfortunately on friday we had a nother failure this time at north plant in which a chemical feed line was blocked and we had a disinfection failure and discharge seventy five thousand gallons of an disinfected  wastewater on the well looks yellow here but it's supposed to be very bold green on the right you have what it is we need to do in order to fix the stuff that's on the red so specifically when we get into the proposal there's a specific line item for the disinfection systems but basically all of the waste water capital improvements for high risk assets need to be invested in we've also had as you're aware wastewater violations and permit beach closures caused by the impact of high strength waste on our biological system and in order to address that we really need to accelerate and expand the development of our industrial wastewater program which would require high strength users not just breweries but also high strength users to divert their high strength waste away from the system next slide just a couple of examples and it's hard to get a really salient picture but you know it ranges from disinfection systems which have had multiple repairs which you can see by the different colored pipes two disinfection system control plan is where only one of those switches actually works and a lot of the parts are obsolete we can't even replace them the entire system has to be replaced we have  have not failed this year those are also a critical piece of our wet weather disinfection system we've had failures on the hypochlorite side hypochlorite works in conjunction with bromine and so if we had a failure of these bromine pumps we would be in a similar situation as we already ha again none of these systems have been upgraded since the last upgrade in one thousand nine hundred four we have at the head works automatic gates that are no longer automatic and actually require somebody to have to operate them which can be very challenging when you're trying to manage a storm event we have corroded metal components that have band aids literally on them and are not easily repairable largely because once metal starts to get corroding you can't keep welding too bad metal you eventually have to replace the entire system next slide  this is a graph we showed in the past about the trends of increasing b o d biological oxygen and oxygen demand this is not due to our added residential units this is due to the awesome success of industries throughout burlington each one of which that touches organic waste does have a disproportionate impact on our system this trend line can be we believe can be significantly knocked down by an effective and comprehensive industrial wastewater program in the past we mostly were looking only a bird but again anything that handled organ organic material is contributing more than a domestic waste water system and there are numerous examples throughout the nation and we have a consultant on board who's helping us evaluate how we may be able to come up with a tiered program and how what sort of long term maintenance that's going to require investment and staffing and so on next  aware of the impact of both combined sewer plant flow on main plant as well as our collection system combined sewer overflows you know while i think folks have been conflating this as a new issue because we have had these other new issues at the plant this is not new this is something that we've been working on since the one nine hundred ninety s and more recently with the integrated planning project where we're trying to go city wide and develop a comprehensive plan the comprehensive plan is not going to be ready until twenty twenty but that being said we do know there's opportunities that we need to keep ensuring continued progress on implementation because that is a big piece of our eventual success is to dial back on the frequency of the u is on the right is green we know there's lots of other things we can walk through and that's largely what we did with this plan of high risk assets sewer pump stations that are close to water bodies sanitary combined and storm water pipes that are failing we've with your support we did a sewer assessment and we were able to film about twenty percent of our combined sewer lines and the number that i'm bringing forward it represents the pipes that have enough deterioration that they need to be addressed in the next five years otherwise we're going to be looking at more sinkholes potentially more surface surfacing of sewage or people not being able to use their sewer system because there's a significant blockage so we have to make sure that there adequate funding not to just to address the things that have failed but to try to stave off additional failures in the future i know everybody has been you know the summer has not been great it is not been great for me and i would like to have a good summer in the future where we are not beecher's beaches due to things that technically are in our control lastly we need to keep in mind that there's a whole suite of additional regulatory obligations that are into subpoenaed particularly on the separate storm sewer side and so while we're not putting forward a lot of money towards that we can be sure that we can maintain progress and not sort of have a whole new suite of things that comes without having having done some additional planning next slide this is where we start to get into the  numbers for over for the wastewater system that top line you can see is our specific investments on the disinfection and those computerized control systems which failed and we're not just doing it main plant we are going to be doing it east and north  so that's one point four million there's a leavened point four million dollars number and that's broken out in your appendix is a lot of the other systems ranging from pumps to our screening system to clarifiers that have  significant deterioration of the metal works inside these all are critical treatment processes and if they go down we're going to be in trouble there's a little bit of money in there for some planning studies that we need to do to really set ourselves up for success for potentially future borrowing in particular east plants has long been discussed whether or not because of the nature of the collection system if the entire approach for treatment should change there if that's the case we need to know that and then we need to not obviously be repairing things as it is right we need to know that early and then change your approach at a future date and only make investments that are necessary to get us to the next five years we've got about two point five million that we need to spend on the ten highest risk pump stations these are the pumping stations in the lower is of the city that pump the water back up to the gravity system on the collection system side we need to realign about six point seven miles of sanitarium combined sewer pipe valued at three point three million we have i think been has spoken with you all and certainly with the mayor about the need for a comprehensive  management system one of the reasons that we are in this situation and probably a lot of the other infrastructure deficit conversation you're having is that we weren't and haven't been doing the maintenance when we should have been doing it we haven't had the money for it we haven't had the system that would tell us you need to be investing x y and z and this is the types of maintenance that you need to do we are doing preventative maintenance but not in the sort of comprehensive way that an asset management system would be able to model that for you so you'd have these really tight numbers to plug into your budget i don't think anybody in the city you know as of yet is necessarily taking a model of what maintenance needs to happen and using that to build their budget i will say that we usually build our repair and maintenance budget number but much more flexible way the industrial waste water so as i mentioned we need where we're at now we've sort of created in house we really need to expand that program to make sure that we're not unfairly targeting only a narrow group of customers when there are many customers that are impacting our b o d we're also exploring with the state the ability to potentially have pass through loans for capital so if we actually do raise the bar a great deal and require significant capital investment at some of these businesses there is a possibility that we could actually offer them low interest two percent loans in order to help them get going faster and then another piece that you'll see you know getting thirty million dollars is one thing implementing it is a whole other and one of the challenges with water resources is that we haven't always had sufficient staffing in order to get all of the things on the ground we're very busy often dealing with unplanned things and some of these planned things can fall by the wayside because we're constantly dealing with emergencies and so this proposal specifically over waste water and storm water would have about one point two five being on the new ski river so i'm not even sure how we're going to access them other than excavators on barges but they do become very costly very quickly we on the collection system side w not doing we're not doing the full or i'm not proposing the full amount of what needs to happen in the next five years we did pare that back a little bit to focus specifically on roads that have been paved roads that are about to be paved and the roads that we know have a significant history of breakage ones that are completely corrugated metal pipe and we've seen collapse in recent years one of the challenges with the storm water system as i explained the mayor is that some of these pipes the corrugated metal is so rotten out from the salt that we can't even film them in order to really say which one is worse than the other we are mostly making these determinations based on the consequence of failure so a really large pipe on an arterial is going to rank higher than a smaller pipe on a residential street just because the impacts of failure are typically less on a small street the next piece actually stay on that side please the next chunk of money  is addressing storm water and the combined sewer system we've gone through so with our integrated planning project we've actually started to identify specific opportunities locations where we think are we know that water needs to be taken off and when we  priority trying to mitigate that one because that's the one that goes off the most frequently but anything that we do in the main plant sewer shot is going to help main plant a new well not only new concept but something that we are focusing on exploring is the concept of a so satellite disinfection station at barge so to the extent that we know that it's going to be difficult because of the soils and the conditions in the south and to manage storm water we are exploring the possibility that when those storm events where we can't manage it and we do have a c s o if we can mitigate the human health risk by basically disinfecting it before it gets to the pine barge and before it gets to the lake we don't know if it's going to happen at our consultants generally say that they are a lot more problematic as far as o and m but we think it's something that we need to explore for the public because of the close proximity to the beaches there's a small nugget in there for potential funding for the great streets and city hall paul park projects those projects are going to have amazing benefits in storm water reduction in the main plant sewer should and so we want to make sure that there is sufficient funding that storm water elements don't start to get value engineered out when project costs may be larger than than anticipated the last piece being a separate storm water management is not a lot of money only three hundred thousand dollars or three hundred fifteen thousand dollars but again we want to make sure that we're making steady progress on that there's the rest of the cost share for the asset management and the rest of the cost for the city project management stuff with storm water about ten million and a total for waste water and storm water of approximately thirty so when we started looking at what the debt service is on that thirty million there were two main ways in which we mitigated the impact on rate payers the first is our commitment to use clean water revolving fund loans those have a two percent admin fee and stead of the typical three point nine percent bond interest that we're seeing and also has the benefit of deferred payback on planning and design money until after construction and you do not have to pay back the construction or start paying back until one year after you've completed the construction so it's not doesn't hit you all at once you don't have to start paying interest on the money even before you've spent it you actually wait until after you've spent it you are eligible for a thirty year payback on certain longer term over the life of loan and it would represent approximately almost twenty dollars a year savings to the top of the other piece was to use existing pay go capital to offset some debt service costs as as been mentioned we have been increasing our capital line  and we'd like to make that capital line go further by obviously using it for debt service we did need and we planned to maintain a sufficient amount for unplanned or smaller capital needs as well as potentially to repurpose for improve work can happen without boots on the ground and we are valuating whether or not we need more boots using the paygo capital represent significant savings on the principal as well as the total debt service costs and the grants and loan forgiveness subsidy as possible that money is often kept and it changes every year so we can't necessarily predict what we're going to be able to target to to be awarded but we are going to go after  that there's also some upcoming we're aware of some upcoming green infrastructure combined sewer system grants we know there's at least one point two five million that's coming up this fall it is across five c s o communities and there may be another one point two five in the years to come there's also pollution control grants those can be up to thirty five percent of the project but it depends on where you rank in the priority list and we will be doing everything we can to improve our priority ranking including there's a new program to if you sponsor natural resource projects with you or your great infrastructure project that wasim off and bump you up we are working with the mayor to determine on the great streets project side whether or not it is appropriate for the enterprise funds to be contributing to those projects or if to be paying more of that but again we want to keep it in there to make sure that those projects happen next the other side is to find just additional money to cover the remaining debt service we have been working with the administration on whether or not there's alternative strategies to the current pilot program wastewater currently pays one point one million dollars to the general fund in a pilot and it would be great if some of that money could be repurposed or at least the program changed given that it's linked to the asset value of our infrastructure and as we improve our assets  pilot actually goes up we also as we've committed previously are looking to develop additional potential fees for service for users of service such as folks who have fire services they don't get charged anything extra project review fees connection fees lastly really for the residential users in the low income users is making sure that there isn't a better alternative rate structure out there that might reduce the impact on residential folks as well as  fordability programs for seniors and other low income  so as far as our commitments we're going to commit to that we're going to find at least another one million dollars worth of grants loan forgiveness or some other offsets we're committing to finding additional annual funding to offset that  service we will be committing to minimize impact to single family residential repairs and low income repairs and remind you as with most borrowing that just because we get the bond vote we're still going to have to come back to you for the little nuggets that we're borrowing as we borrow them that as our referee choir's your approval for us to both apply for the loan as well as execute any loans so they'll be ample opportunity for you to check in on these commitments before you actually let us spend the money so with the use of pay go funds so you can see here this is the annual cumulative debt service that's incurred it's an approximate schedule at this point with our focus initially in f y nineteen as planned currently on the disinfection systems and then just kind of splitting out the remainder of the cost over the next four years this is our cumulative debt service this column is with the two thirty seven sort of reappropriated or repurposed capital and funds applied and so with that you wouldn't actually see a bond a rate increase due to the bond until f y twenty one and we're looking at a  total twelve point two interests sorry twelve point two increase over the f one thousand bill which when all is said and done would be about an additional fifty one dollars a year for this this needed  investment on the stormwater side because of the bond the debt service is lower given the amount is lower and we have a little bit more pay go money to work with we actually wouldn't be incurring or in a rate increase due to this until f y twenty three and you'd be looking at a total sixteen point seven percent increase over the one thousand bill which is approximately thirteen dollars and twenty cents a year increase  we didn't want to being transparent we wanted to make sure that you were aware that we probably were going to be coming back to you with some other requests in the near term not necessarily as significant as the one we just spoke about we anticipate requesting or at least board a finance approval for a contract amendment to have our third party consultant help evaluate our staffing resiliency plan we have some ideas about the staff staffing plan that we need but we want to make sure that that's vetted by somebody with deep and national level expert expertise who can benchmark our organization against other similarly sized organizations we also are likely to be coming back in about in november of this year for some amendments to our integrated planning studies scope and planning alone for a number of reasons there are going to be some additional planning funds that are going to be necessary we wanted to make sure that folks were reminded that drinking water is not included in this bond proposal it is possible that there will be additional money that's needed and beyond twenty twenty twenty twenty one we need to remember that this is really to for lack of a better phrase keep the wheels on the bus and in twenty twenty and twenty twenty one is when we're really going to start talking about the better bus that will be reducing more and more phosphorous that still has to happen and right now we're talking about being able to maintain maybe slightly increase the level of service that we're able to provide next slide back to cheapen so we're finishing up here and you'll see here this slide speaks for itself there's no bond driven rate impact  f y twenty with what we've shown you the cumulative impact for the bond that we've proposed after the two rate medications tragedies we've already committed to would be about sixty four dollars a year per average rate payer and additional may geishas strategies will lower that further you can see the benefits there fewer permit violations and beach closures and a much more upgraded plan infrastructure that will be reliable during our stressful wet weather events and lastly there's a number of green infrastructure investments that will not only improve lake quality but improve the quality of our public realm more rain gardens water quality on the seventeenth and offer tours of our main wastewater treatment plant so the residents can take a tour of our main plant going to give you commission doing the n p a tours in advance of november should the thank you for that presentation to intervene and fix something the other piece is we don't have as much resiliency and redundancy there could very easily and with the upgrades that we're looking at be more back up so that things turn on a magically and there's a separate pump that if this one's not working the system knows it's not working it automatically switches it so that when people who live thirty minutes away or forty five minutes away have have time to get in the other piece is that we're looking at air our earlier notification methods right now folks get paged when there is a wet weather event only when sort of the water starts to hit the plants and we think that there may be smarter ways of knowing that it's raining and notifying our operators so that maybe they have to check the radar and can see is there a giant you know that's coming towards the plant and go ahead and leave and not wait until the rain starts i just i don't i would like to understand so do you only staff it for eight hours a day without it for eight hours a day and then there's somebody on call so with knowing the how these events create such negativity from the community and surrounding communities have we calculated the cost of going back to staffing it more frequently or having people take call better and closer proximity i just i guess i feel like you know i i know what we've done i kind of do because i was on the commission i'm not going to say that too loud but it was but i would like to i'm trying to figure out what we can do as an interim measure  so that's number one in the second question really is if indeed we move forward with your plan what time what kind of timeline are would we anticipate the improvements to be done by so that we would see relief or desired out so we would largely issues that have happened the failures that have occurred this year we would be looking to implement those in the very near term possibly certainly within twelve months if not sooner those are the focuses on the disinfection systems which are the main driver the failure of that has been the main driver with the issues we've had this summer as well as the p l c and the skate a system which would provide that additional intelligence that i was talking about so from my perspective we would be in a far better position just after spending that initial one point four million the other  expenditures are to prevent future failures not that things have not had hiccups and problems they are just slightly less problematic than the disinfection system failures so for the director then  have you have you calculated the additional cost to having staffing present more often especially when i mean the forecast is so unpredictable as far as actually becoming a reality but i'm really feeling like i would like to know that cost and i would like to figure i would like to know if we can actually accomplish some of that because i think some of the some of this could be prevented or reduced the impact would be reduced and so we have increased f ing and there's a greater than thirty percent chance of an intense storm we are bringing a staff member proactively in to me weather forecast change quickly but we are monitoring that we are bringing people in during off peak when a major storm of our estimate right now on what we're staffing is it's an extra thirty thousand dollars a year which is not much in the grand scheme of the waste water budget of eight million dollars but we also only have a limited staff and when we're bringing people in off hours we're having them come in two to four am and then they're back in at seven am to work and it can be very taxing on our small staff that said we are going to continue high level higher level staffing through this interim period in addition we have changed our notification protocol about getting people to the plan as quickly as we can and they can talked about dr spencer i'm sorry i got to pull that microphone and elsewhere again this interactor more talked about our our work on forecasting but we've also changed how are alarmed system notifies our on call staff so we are trying to take the incremental interim steps that we can before we do this heavy capital investment it is important again that with many of the events even with staff there it would not have changed the outcome i heard that thank you thank you approve the collective bargaining i am tonight yes it is so i move to suspend our rules to continue our work and to complete the deliberative agenda  that is through six point zero six and then also i did eleven the executive session opposed that passes and we have spent a rolls will continue acting on this and the other items of the one or two may be postponed i now have cancer tray she who is in an undisclosed location great to quickly answer those given the time of the evening there is a cost for waiting i think the public is looking to us at least to deal with some of these short term disinfection upgrades we have projected in our budget you will see that there is a inflation calculation for projects that we're not going to get to until the year four five but it is ultimately the council's choice of when when we come to the voters there is a very robust stormwater component for council tracy about ten million dollars of stormwater upgrades including some of the green infrastructure that he was referencing in the rain gardens and the detention ponds and so of the cells for trees in the like the third one with other strategies yes we didn't talk about the sea evening because time is short but in our previous presentation we've talked about other strategies for managing storm water including in chapter twenty six we have fairly robust development policies in place that make sure that new development gives us a better stormwater outcome than the existing condition before the development have to talk about and teams that they're here representing for working very hard for stan period of time to bring this plan to the council so it's imposition for us at least consider acting on the november ballot and  this was not if councillors will recall thinking back to the budget presentations you've heard the last two years really nothing in the presentation tonight is a surprise virtually nothing that was mentioned here night is is new  there was a there was anticipation of needing to make these investments but there was a belief that we had some more time that the plan was to be coming back in the future future budget season events of this summer certainly left me and i think many others like there was a greater urgency than when we were talking about this from the spring it was extremely frustrating i know for the public to see the multiple breakage is that happened this themselves to perform these water services at a high level and they were hit with a series of different challenges over the course of the summer there were these breakage is there were the c s o advance and then there was this third  significant issue that really blossomed this summer around the high street waste and it was just very difficult for this team to respond to it all with these different types of things going wrong and i think they've really it from my perspective risen to the occasion while dealing with all of these those urgent items accelerating these plans coming together putting forward a comprehensive plan that would to address the current system to try to avoid the breakage is and defects in our existing system that we experience the summer from being repeated at least the same rate in future years and we're certainly not in position to promise we pass despond we never have a discharge again that's not what we're saying but this will allow the department the resources to move forward with fixing systems that have not had investment with the case of the main plants in one thousand nine hundred four and with the case of these other pumps you know something i've learned the process of this summer twenty five critical pumps around around the city many of them have not been invested in for more than twenty five years and are really held together with very insufficient means this would give the department the resources to address that and keep these kind of critical break is from happening in the future while coming for this comprehensive plan i hope it's appreciated and appreciated understood by a members i mean they're still with us tonight that the work this team is projecting  strategies that were committed to the impact would have been about forty percent higher right around one hundred dollars for the average rate use or water use or person or the strategies they put together here the better the better interest rates the repurchasing of existing resources bring that total big ticket price down considerably effectively it's about a forty percent less than it would be without those total amount when fully phased in that i think is reasonable for us at least talk about here where the council's council stands at so i i just want to hit those two points i'm appreciative of this team working many of them working seven days a week throughout the summer chairman thank you and thank you both for your commitment to the city and clean water and i know it has been a very rough summer and frustrating for everybody and i really appreciate the long hours that you have put into this for the benefit city and this weekend so that we can have a clear understanding of what's needed to take the next step to achieve what i think are really our community goals  and i think there's no disagreement on that i learned recently that an issue that you touched on very briefly that corrugated pipe that is there is how we ended up with a city truck in a sinkhole and that an issue that you said we would address but i wanted to understand if you know where all the corrugated early enough we can realign it so it creates the similar to the water creates a whole new pipe on the inside that's essentially a plastic pipe if they go too far then we do have to dig them up because you there's nothing to realign inside you have to have enough of an outside of a pipe in order to realign so with the benefit of realigning storm water and wastewater prices we do not need to dig up the street we have existing manholes and so on like water mains when we realign this can happen on a street that's actually just been paved and we're still good so we have a little more flexibility about when we do the realigning if we catch it early enough if the pipes deteriorated we've got a full they're going to replace that's a relief  supporting we've been doing so much repaving are we anticipating any digging up of what we just paved to do this i mean not not at this time though the number that we developed is based on the streets that have been paved and the ones that are still on the paving list to get in there and realign them and we believe that we should be able to get a real bind them it's why waste water and storm water roadway infrastructure was postponed compared to the water infrastructure because we knew we can that have drainage problems prior to paving because we're doing a lot of re pavement around the city and when we repaved but there's an underlying issue with drainage on the street are we able to address those drainage problems before repaving without the bond and if not will the bond help that i mean the these numbers are not specifically tar targeted towards drainage drainage is a key feature of a roadway system these are these are targeted towards infrastructure keeping things on a larger level draining and water quality investments  with drainage improvements any time we do pave the road we are working with the street paving program in places where puddles have been reported we actually have a puddle priority list because not all puddles are the same not all drainage issues are the same overly large one that goes into the roadway is different than one that is happens to be in front of somebody's house and unfortunately i don't know if we'll ever have enough money to fix all puddles but when and where through grading or potentially addition of a storm the more lower priority but still important investments we were able to make when we have less capital money we are focused entirely on the major streets in the high consequence of failure how we didn't know about that we went through all of the e p a process with the superfund site and somehow didn't know about this drainage out fall but in the it was a significant line item in the cost of this and i understand excavation is required for a lot of this work that's an area where excavation is prohibited as far as i knew and that's been taken into consideration so a couple things we knew there was a storm water outfall so we can see the storm water outfall what we didn't know was that there was a pipe connecting higher up in the watershed a manhole on the combined sewer system to a manhole on the storm sewer system so it was kind of hidden so i let you know less you happen to be standing at the outfall when it was going off and seeing toilet paper or the occasional product you wouldn't know that it was there and that's happened so until they didn't know what was coming out of it you knew it was we know there was a storm water outfall we didn't realize that sometimes it had combined sewer and it on the other piece the the num bers that we've developed are for projects not in the superfund site the disinfection system would probably be in pine street outside of what i believe at least to be the primary on blowup of the superfund site and then all the other projects would actually be higher up in the watershed so projects that would benefit the pine barge canal are up on south prospects south south street way up there in like the south east corner of the city those are the ones that we would be tackling ok thank you thank you cancer c n n i just want to ask one question though is it did you say sixty four dollars at the full phase in that's what it cost her average residential repair that was like five or six bucks a month on the water bill can you give me i don't know fairly sure you know what will this of the thirty million dollars bond approximately thirty million dollars what the impact on commercial business how much of that will come from commercial versus residential since we had somebody who actually asked he asked us to put it all on commercial i think you just said that can bring i think are flows by flow which is a surrogate for the proportion i think only twenty five percent comes from commercial folks and the rest is residential when you break it out by class we can take a look at it and get you the answer we don't have i want to start getting back to here it's just frustrating you know out there the beaches and we talked about storm water and around the beaches and possibly you know looking into special ways that we could treat that and i just hope that when we put this plan together that we put a high priority on that like i really think it's i think it's the risk is worth the reward you know i mean it's there and you know to have our beaches closed and you know i mean particularly this summer but there's no other summers as well i mean if we can reduce that number i'm not saying we're never not going to close a beach but if we could get that number down where it was once or twice a year instead of  you know fifteen twenty times a year in the summer i think it would be well worth the extra money to go in and take a look at that so i hope we take that approach and that particular area thank you thank you plan for the final question sure i think the one distinction that is always important remember is that taxpayers and rate payers aren't the same some people don't always think of it that way but it's really important remember this  happened when the city was debating a franchise fee in the ninety's whether it was fair or not so are institutions that don't pay much by way of payment or property tax payments are tax exempt institutions they are probably some pretty large users i would think in this correct things including block rates would get us there to at least capture of more of the payment towards our debt service on the bond from larger institutions who ability to absorb those costs i think are much greater than average homeowners renters so i really think it's worth spending some time looking at the bigger user is paying a higher rate basically so they can contribute more to solving this problem then focus on fixing think calcifying with that i think that we are ready to conclude this item thank you very much for the presentation we'll hear from you back on september eleventh when we will be deciding whether to put this on the ballot in november i'll just conclude by saying this is an incredibly important issue no question about it we've heard about it's been the news we've heard about it repeatedly and i will just say that while i've heard  a mix of opinions about whether to put the high school forth in november every single person has told me to move forward with this one so thank you thank you and with that we will go back to the agenda for item number thank you president right we put this on the agenda because the charter change committee acknowledged that you know there are three of us on this subcommittee and we have our ideas about how the council rules should work but ultimately it's going to come to this body and we wanted to avoid kind of some sausage making on the floor give the council an opportunity to weigh in on you know what's going right what's going wrong with the direction that we are headed here and then would take it back to committee to wordsmith so it didn't need to be done on the council floor and we would still like you to weigh in but but due to the late hour we're not going to have that conversation tonight  there are two things that we talked about in our work session but we have not added them into these rules and regulations yet and those are  policy on calling in circumstances under which calling in is appropriate and works and when it doesn't and also if you want to have consequences for not following these rules  don't have anything in there at this time and we would like to hear your input on all of these matters so contact your committee members i was going to make a motion to postpone but i think we're going to do is make a motion to table our charter change we have to charter change committee meetings coming up september twelfth and september twentieth i don't think we want this on the eleventh agenda so we will take it up in our charter change upcoming charter change committee meetings and we would appreciate any input you have so i hope you reviewed it for this meeting him and can weigh in outside of the meeting so i will make a motion remember six point zero three is a resolution establishing a really really should have sent a high number of community senior center it really is a senior center really for a get into the resolution a little bit just say that i think the city's really stepped up when it's come to seniors particularly over this last year but even over the last five or six years and so this resolution is really not a reflection on really i think some of the areas that we've really been approved with our seniors but i think it's really kind of looking forward about the best ways best best practices you know sharing costs going forward and as a city how can we address these issues and  i think you know some of the people that work on this resolution and you want me to make sure you know i relayed that message here tonight this is not a critical this isn't being critical of the city that we want to work together in junction with the  city for all the seniors across the city so i hope we can do that we we had a resolution like this maybe a couple years ago kind of spawn its wheels a little bit didn't go anywhere but i think now the fact that united way has you know cut the funds and in so many people are fighting for the same same money that we have to work smarter together for seniors and it's a growing population in our city in our state i think it would be well hearing then we're ready for about all those in favor of passage of this resolution which creates a senior center study committee which will meet a number of people will be appointed as says in the resolution and they'll meet over a period of months or report back to us last three items which are dealing with a talent the first one is item six point zero four it's a communication regarding the side letter to clarify development agreement for city place of order  i'll share for those who are not already aware that this side letter is in essence an amendment to the development agreement that was signed in october of two thousand and seventeen by the city and the developer of the former town center property now known as city place this letter as we'll hear details deals with the changing of the sequence of events related to the release of the foundation permit by the city as well as adjusting the share of responsibility for much of the design of the public improvement aspects of the project thank you and so we have the attorneys here and if you go ahead and give us some further elaboration on this issue  just looking for an overview of what side letter accomplishes so this side letter does two things one is it reassigns the responsibility for designing the street improvements for a bank in cherry street under the development agreement the developer is designing the two new street segments of cherry st paul and pine street and after the city  deliver concept designs for bank in cherry street the developers team was then to take those kinds of designs through one hundred percent in order for the city to manage the design process itself which the city prefers because it can control the outcome of the cost better if it's doing it itself this letter agreement reallocates the designer sponsibility for bank in cherry to the city and more narrowly defines what the developer is going to design for st paul and pine most of the developers designs for st paul and pine are there something like seventy or seventy five percent complete already so it made sense for them to complete that work and then the city would take on the rest it also restricts what the developers doing so that it's not inclusive of intersections so the city handles the intersections and the city believes it will result in a better product the other thing this does is it establishes internal miles on dates for when each party is going to deliver seventy five percent drawings and a hundred percent drawings and specs and if it is tell which is requirements for what those drawings will include what items will be addressed in those plans and it also requires both parties when they deliver their plans to also deliver originally engineers estimates for the cost of construction and then as the work progress is  to report on actual soft cost expended and then to update the estimates as the as the designs are refined many each case there is an opportunity for the party receiving the plans to have a chance to review them to value engineer is necessary because ultimately the requirement is to devise a budget for all of this work and the goal for the city is to get as much done as possible and deliver the best possible streets using the money that's available in the to fudge it the other thing accomplished by this side letter is to permit so right in th permit the release of a building permit for the foundation work in a way that differs from what the development agreement would otherwise require so the development agreement as written wouldn't permit the release of a building permit for the foundation work until there's a guarantee maximum price contract in place for public improvements which are which is defined in the development agreement to mean pine in st paul street and also those blocks of cherry and bank that are immediately adjacent those half blocks that are mediately adjacent to the project m b because the design for those streets isn't yet complete it's really premature for there to p contract for that work and it's really not exactly possible for that condition to be met for a little while because the design works not on the other thing that the development agreement requires right now is for the developer to have in place guarantee a maximum price contract for the entire private improvements meaning for the entire rest of the project and also to have it bonds in place for a construction lender at this time the construction financing isn't yet in place and there isn't yet a contract in place for all the private improvements so at this time the demolition work is done the developers ready to begin foundation work and he won't be in a position to satisfy those other conditions you know i have contract for the balance of the private improvements for a few months rather than a while the site  idle for many months while the rest of the progresses this allows the work to continue and in a way that is not the terminal to the city because the foundation work will continue to be benefited the point in time that we issued the permit for the foundation that all of the construction financing would be in place for the in all the in private improvements in the foundation on so we are weird that's not the situation we're in and so we have to think about what kind of a worst case scenario might not be a probable scenario not necessary i think it is probable but we have to think about what could go wrong and what if you had a scenario in which the developer was unable to get the construction financing would we still be better off the city still be better off with his mission the foundation for this net you know is it can you help us understand the factors that would that that drive a judgment that is it's pretty flexible or not what are the limits of the flexibility can you help us understand that place sure so the question specifically is what might be the value of a foundation in place anticipating a worst case scenario in which the developers an able to proceed with the balance of the project because that's the question yes or correct so the foundation is based on a lot line a lot line development of this particular parcel the perimeter of the parcel will be developed foundation will take up that entire perimeter and that is a condition both of the zoning and the outcome that the city see for the entire block to be developed so it's unlikely in a scenario in which there might need to be a program matic change to the building that the perimeter of a foundation would change from a technical perspective the point loading associated with  foundation where columns come down and those loads are carried down to footings could potentially change based on a different program of use for example hallways and how those are laid out and those come down could potentially change however the uses that are assumed for this development residential office and retail are the predominant uses that can occur in this were there a scenario in which industrial uses could be introduced then loading could potentially be different but at this point the building is designed to maximize height and in turn maximize loading so it's not as though the design that is completed is one in which it leaves potential for development on the table it's already maximizing the amount of load that can occur on that site and all of that loading is based on the facts and circumstances as discovered by the geotechnical work what the soils bedrock can withstand how deep we have to go to carry some of those loads on those on those footings so in summary there's value to that foundation from a building perspective the risk that you're identifying is one in which perhaps development has stopped and we'd be looking for a new party to come in and try to pick up the project and proceed and realistically in that scenario there's either a lender or the current owner who are trying to recover that value and someone walking into that situation would see a negotiating advantage and would likely end their analysis indicate diminished value for that foundation but from a physical perspective the range of potential changes to that foundation are relatively small the uses that are likely to occur there are the uses that are program what could occur is there could be more office or more residential or more retail than might be expected but none of those are big drivers of loading unloading is just that an example would be if that became a storage facility you'd be increasing the loading because you'd have dead weight sitting in a at all times the types of uses that are going to occur there are interchangeable  thank you as i've tried to kind of understand this is you're on the foundation this has been very helpful i come to the conclusion that the risk associated with committing to this foundation is less the risk of this slight potentially sitting sitting idle for the next few months potentially if we would just say no to this and i think it's significant that that that the debt we are requiring the developer to have a guaranteed maximum price contract for the foundation and all of the financing behind that work so we have we know that the foundation will be completed i also think that the the equity we have a very in gauged equity partner that gives us i think a fair bit of confidence that that we're going to get to the end end of this a bit of a of this project so i'm prepared to support this president right thank you cancer no doubt  i'm certainly in favor of the city having taken greater design control over the streets and having making sure that that will be exactly to our standards so i don't have a problem with that however if you have a significant problem speaking partly in response to cancer tracy's remarks but i want to also just add one myself the just to be clear the side letter is a package deal i believe the way understand it it is the design work  and it has the foundation piece as a package so it's not as though we can pick one and say we like it and we don't care for the other and necessarily get what we want out of that so i think it's to be clear we're voting on this side letter that's what we have in front of us i think it's hopefully becoming clear to councillors who are being gauged in this process for longer than i have that the chances for this project to succeed are increased by allowing it to move ahead despite the fact that that was not the original intent and that was not the original wording of of the development agreement the project viability is improved and is increased by allowing the developer to move ahead and put fifty six million the remaining portion of the fifty six million dollars of equity into the property there's no doubt that the property will have more value and is more likely to result in the outcome that we all i hope are on the same page about and so i think as the council we need to letter and i think that there are relative risks and i think what we're trying to do is evaluate those risks and we've heard from an attorney giving us guidance as to the pros and cons of having a foundation in the ground in place and the ability to a foundation what a foundation can and can't do as far as the flexibility of a building that's put on top of it i am satisfied with the fact that there can be some flexibility if indeed it is not the building that we believe is going to be built and so i i do feel like i think it is in the city's better best interest or better interest to have something in that spot as opposed to just leave it vacant for a prolonged period of time i think that you know we heard statements around delays that have put the developer in the situation and that that he is confident that he will have full funding  so i feel that this side agreement is something that i believe protects the city and brings us to the next step in the process and i want to be really clear as most everyone knows but  maybe the interim c e o director doesn't know is that you know i didn't support the project to begin with it's not my favorite project in the world but i it is the project that the city supports and i want to move us forward so that we have retail and office space and and living accommodations for people downtown and so this step seems to be the right next step so and because i've kind of lost confidence in our street here i'm going to as well so i'm not confident that we are in the best position to have great streets from what i've seen over the last couple of years and i think we're headed so i'm not convinced were on the right course there as well but as far as this project is concerned i'll start by saying i'm really been disappointed in mr cynics his lack of communication with the coun forthcoming his timing i think is really been sub par not to the brenton standard and i've been really disappointed in that and i hope going forward that he can work on a partnership i think that we've entered into in the next year in the city and i feel i certainly have entered into a partnership with him because i support this project i still have you know i believe in this project and i want to succeed but i think mr cynics has to realize is that he's in a partnership with us in the city and the city of burlington as a whole and that's contractors and that's whoever he does business with and there's a way that we do things in burlington and quite honestly i don't think he's he's really done it the right way so far and so i hope we see a difference in his approach as far as first far as that is concerned in any he looks at the foundation and he's like oh this isn't going to work for me and and so i think you said at that point they would enter into negotiations to figure out you know i guess who would be responsible for either removing the foundation or changing the i mean where are we on the hook as a city for this foundation once it goes in is fires you're shaking your head that we're not you know so if a if a new developer came in and said this foundation doesn't work for me and it has to be removed it would be part of the developers cost of developers project ok and so their cost we wouldn't have anything ok all right well that does make me feel better but still i don't want to be in that position and so i don't support this and quite honestly have been i'm disappointed as in it's in front of us here tonight as well i i didn't expect this i didn't see it  talking about a lot of money and millions and millions of dollars that we're investing in our downtown and is seven months really going to make a big difference i don't think it will so  clarification going all the way back to counselor tracy my understanding of this letter is it does not address the requirement that the developer demonstrate financial capacity in fact that was satisfied as a condition precedent prior to the issuance of the demolition permit so the developer has the requirements of the development agreement with respect to documenting financial capacity what the side letter is addressing is an extension of the period of time during which the developer has to achieve a guaranteed maximum price contract for construction of the entire project those are two distinct issues so i don't see in this side letter unless i'm missing something anything which addresses demonstrating financial i just wanted to share share a few thoughts my thoughts on where we are and clarify because i think that can be confusing in the conversations i've the development agreement when we negotiated it and together set down this path about a year ago nine months ago we were very aware we were taking on a  sizable project project that was in some sense a public private collaboration and we sought to protect the city in that effort in every way that we could  and as a result because we were entering into an agreement which the city was taking certain steps and there were you know elements of this being again a collaboration we asked for and received from the developer  agreements that amount to very high standards that this project is being held to that go well beyond what a typical project to a construction project in burlington or really most any city would be expected to meet and i think you see those that high standard being and that trying to attempt to protect the city really succeeding here in the conversation that we're having to city's what the situation the status was of is of their financing and their ability to complete at the kind of protect their construct contracting that they have in place none of that is is it is something that the city normally involves itself with in this case because again because the city is pursuing certain elements is making certain investments in because we are aware of the sizable impact of this project on the downtown we were very careful and place at this point the project when they are seeking when he is seeking to go forward with the foundation contract the foundation construction and if you didn't have it it required him to come and get special approvals from us and have a conversation with us and bring us in to that project that's what's been happening here it's what's allowed the conversation to happen and eight to really explore whether they're saving problematic about moving forward as it's being suggested to an additional condition here we are saying because of the analysis provided by mr glasper and mr farkas we are comfortable moving forward with this foundation permit which will is in the city's interest to get built it will add value literally be millions tens of millions of dollars new dollars invested in this community when it's built that will be of value that there is really no downside that we've been able to identify to being built but it doesn't let the element off the hook it says to go beyond that point all of the additional conditions for building the full project remain in place and he's going to have to come back to us again and secure that additional additional permit that would not normally be required before going beyond the foundation stage another element of the city's ability to really protect itself here they just want to make sure is clear to everyone is what is being contemplated here what what i support and i'm hopeful that councils know support is allowing the developer to go forward with the investment of tens of millions of dollars of additional capital of theirs in this foundation the basic financial agreement of this development agreement is the city is responsible for some costs we are responsible for the public improvements the streets the sidewalks the trees the storm water provisions but we do not pay for them in till the end of the project in till they are completed in their bill to our standards and in fact until the private improvements are there and complete to a level that they are generating new property taxes that allow us to be able to pay for those these reasons and more i am i'm strongly support of moving moving forward and hopefully councils as well and this continues to be a project that i think ultimately we will all be very glad to have seen built for the benefits creates cancer with that thank you very much i think we're ready for a vote and i mean my only comment without talking about how i'm going to vote is just say that the mall has been demolished it's gone and the success of the city going forward and thank you city council president right yes i'll move to approve the creation of a design budget for f one one thousand of one million dollars for the great streets bank in cherry street project in approve an overall design budget of one million four hundred fifty four adopted a second motion to go along with this with which had to do with authorizing director spencer to execute a contract amendment and this was in the memo it appears it did not get on board  unfortunately but it was adopted by the board of finance earlier tonight it was in the amendments read by cancer no doubt it was ok it wasn't when he just read  the motion rightly but it was in the actual amendments that was that was read into the record by katherine old our earlier yes i believe counsel roof just made a kind of shortened version but his intent as i understood it was the full language as adopted in our so your call i think that's fine as long as you've clarified the record to that extent so you should not suggest we need another vote you're saying as long as as long as both move into the second or understand that was the motion they were making he just approved and we've been talking about is with regards to this change to have separate from the second issue the issue of the city taking contracting expanding the contract the design contracts the city has this in our fund loan for sixty six thousand dollars would be part of how that additional contracting is paid for  basis and there was again there's hours late there is extensive discussion about this and the inner fun how how we do these in our fun loans at the board of finance and i and this was unanimously recommended by the board fights any discussion by the city council concerned odell just a point of clarification so we were going to be paying for this at the end if this design work had been done by the developer we were still going to be paying but at the end it's great this is unlike the construction costs in the design cost which again we are doing not because of any of he takes the city takes on this responsibility and more of this responsibility we're doing some of the design this has us take on more of the design and because we are taking on more of the design we will pay for that design over the next six to nine months as opposed to a couple years from now when we would have previously and that that is essentially the change here it's a modest acceleration of some yes i costs and if i may so there are still i think some modest interest cost that we will be taken on that we wouldn't have taken on but in my judgment there overriding benefits but i think we just need to be clear that we will be borrowing up for short term period of time and repaying out kind of closing out that debt when we issue the tiff debt cost that we don't reimburse for until the end of the project we are responsible for some financing on think about this whole project and how we sold it to the public and how we talked about the screech street and the best part about it was more on how to pay for until after the projects over and you know that's that was the selling point of this and i just see is you know being so inconsistent here tonight really on this project and it really strikes a chord with me right that we use it when we have to sell it to something but then when we want more of our way we we can justify it by saying well we're go control now so you know we're going to pay for it or we're going to think we can get control and how we get to where we want and i just i just think it sends the wrong message to the voters i think it's inconsistent and i think it's unfortunate that we're here doing this tonight they can't hurt any other city council or councillor stand in thank you i just want to say that this is extraordinarily large project the largest probably ever taken on in the state of vermont and i think that while we are making some adjustments we did the best that we could with all of the things that we knew at the time that we entered into the development agreement and each step along the way as we go through the construction process we're going to learn more and we're probably going to make adjustments all along the way so while i will support this one i also am not supporting it expecting it will be the last thing to come to the city council and i think it's prudent for us to make modifications when we have more information and we will be continually getting more don't passes i have out of nine to one that concludes our work except for a number eleven which is an executive session and before we take that motion is going to executive session i want to take presidential prerogative to say one quick thing our next meeting is september eleventh this is a special meeting called by the mayor to deal with items that may well be voted on potentially to go on the ballot we know that there will be two i don't know if there's any others but i will not be entertaining other things going on that meeting that is going to be primarily for dealing with potential balance for november with the committee no those are all i mean they they were they were all we are moving into exact your session but to make clear we are expecting you to come out and take action and we will be coming out to take action when we come out thank you so channel seventeen will take a break and come back to cover our action when we come