but check check check check check ok i would like are you ready to go ok so i would like to call back into session the south burlington city council me to over sixteen twenty seventeen we're back in city hall after visiting in case of emergency we have two doors behind the conference room grass to go out the main entrance and out into the front of the building and around to the parking lot to the side if for some reason we can i get out of those two doors there are two doors here in the same entrance to the parking garage or to the garage or parking lot behind us tom and i will be responsible for making sure that the building is cleared so proceed right away thank you next item is the agenda review are there any additions deletions or changes in order of the agenda items and some of the other business ok just really quickly on our board does so that and have a time certain like forty five minutes and then if something's really pressing and we need to go back into session we could at the end of the meeting but if we have action items then get it over quickly and it might help our staff knowing when and when they think they need to be here to join us for that or and certainly it might be helpful for the public a if there are no other suggestions then item five comments and questions from the public not related to the agenda please come forward thank you yes write to the mike speaking to the mike give us your name please and but also the extension of the south village and i went to the development review board meeting and i was i guess really surprised because i didn't feel like there was any kind of representative government going on they just did whatever magic math they did in and acted like they could do with everything learned so i would just like some i guess some clarification on on what's going on and if i could get at a map of when seder meal the first part was developed and the second part of the map that was then and how it has changed and been approved i grew up in bucks county pennsylvania and recently went back this summer and i don't think you're going to like what your town looks like if you let people build on every square inch and also i don't think that when they're counting however they do the math if it is a wetland it shouldn't count in their calculations so i that our taxes are higher because there are so few people in south growing but they keep building in the taxes really don't decrease i'm not sure why we need to have three family units there and on a narrow street i ride my bike a lot of around those streets and i think it's going to be very dangerous to the plan that they have so if someone could have tried to talk to him but he wasn't available that really the public knowing well i think it has changed a lot we have those maps available they've posted on the website or is that something that is only available to come process we have a comprehensive plan for the whole community which is identified areas for future development in areas for open space and recreation and then the planning commission develops a series of land use regulations which carry out the plan or the design division whether it's city center or a new development  and then the d r b uses those regulations to apply to a project that comes through the process or all the members of the  yes they are and they're all appointed by the council as are the planning commission members so they really kind of work for the council if you will but  they have a body of work and requirements and we work with them this particularly the planning commission about what we expect or hope that they will address going forward they don't get to everything hasn't been addressed yet but i believe it will be potentially something that paul connor and the planning commission will work on is really the cost of development and the cost of open space which i think concerns and i really would like to see the first map that was approved and understand why it keeps getting denser and denser and denser with fewer and fewer amenities sidewalks narrow streets etc because again i ride my bike and i just think that's really dangerous with three feet of families they're going to have a lot of cars parked in the street and where are you supposed to go not to approved the same time back in two thousand and two three four whatever it was you know i wasn't aware that back then was in the d or b and since then right bartlett weaver has sold off cider mill to t was an even larger density right increase in that's the because they bought some more land so they could then add some more houses and i think they proposed using some t d ours so there were a number of residents there from surrounding cider mill maybe some of the issues that were being raised that meeting and i think i got the sense that perhaps the planning and zoning staff were none i'm very amenable to hearing that feedback or we're talking with a developer and i think there have been discussions between bike and pet and the developer since then i don't know when the next agenda item is for this but there were some some real issues that were expressed at that meeting that i thought had merit but then you have this like balance of what was previously approved wh you could should you consider as a second approval of those surveys too and it was pre approved back a long time ago with the phrase why no but it's a totally different development it was a phase one how do you develop how do you assess whether their total unit should be you know describe by the aggregate number of the aggregate face just wanted to or should they be weighed separately i mean these are issues for planning and zoning and probably for the d or b so that's my perception of what's going on with that project as far south village phillis going to have a connector road with middle and upper middle and over to the rotary on phase three and that's all been approved was approved before i got to be and we just went ahead and proved all the little small things they did but they weren't significant changes in density at that point this calculation we can do whatever we like and you know you sort of waste your time coming or as the maps are concerned you can come in there public documents we can track down whatever map it is that you're looking agendas are posted but i think as a public member tell us a little heart and the heart beat with a new concern but i don't they are i feel like my concern then they changed it you know like in the people that were in there they you know we're green to the first map and not to the i don't know how many maps later it is but it keeps getting worse and worse and worse and  and i appreciate that i wasn't i'm just saying i think it's challenging for the public to know when to intercept with their concerns that unless you know is this a done deal or is it was continued you know that's what that was my i'm saying because i had a phone call from a person who attended as well with similar concerns so i think the challenge is how developers even before in the early planning stage now that is a little different than cider mill because that's been planned and carried out for probably ten years they've been working on that i mean when i moved in there they said this is the map and obviously i agreed you know this looks fine but it doesn't look fine and then again i'm from bucks county pennsylvania and if you go there you wouldn't like it when i grew up here in the bike this is a no no i prefer i live behind it and it looks different than what we had anticipated and been told as well so i get that it has changed but we're working on that process and clearly needs to be more clear to the public on how that those end there were quite a few people here so you know i'm not the only one but i know that i've heard it from other people and i think that's important feedback and we need to i guess get a better understanding of could look into what's going on there and make sure they just in whatever stamp whatever the developer is asking for thank you very much are there any other comments and questions from the community med school lyme disease lecture and learned more than i want to know about life is easy and last most is that these ios is published on disease hartman disease and by the way folks it's coming so the deal is check yourself for ticks after you go out on a nature walk maybe you should take a shower within two hours and wash your clothes and dry them on high heat if they're not cotton for an extra long amount of time i also attended the china county center's form of about water quality doing trying to implement clean water plans in the challenges in front of the state in terms of funding and we talked a little bit about the possibility of union when you suppose storm water districts because they were talking about maybe the governor has a door left open perhaps for having a some sort of a charge or landowner to to deal with storm one so that was a very interesting statement in you know it was kind of a gray area sort of speak but i think that if you want to bear the true cost of pollution in the lake you have to have everybody contribute to that so it was very informative and all the senators were there i also have done my down coat because it's that time of the year unfortunately i spent an hour today taking apart my furnace and vacuuming all the my spits out of my intake and exhaust tubes so if you have a high efficiency furnace at home that has exhaust and you haven't started up yet you might want to just check it to make sure that the m showed up on seven different topics and i thought it to be a great time to connect with residents and encourage all councillors if they want to consider or take a or try it some time it was it was really eye opening and i'm glad they did it because over seven coffees with seven different people would it cost me a lot can and i don't have anything to really report i started radiation it's going really well so i'm not tired yet you know side effects so i'm not anticipating any so that's going well for the community outreach model that we've been working on chiefs and and managers our mental health to have for up to four counselors embedded in our police departments to support mental health outreach is in its final form and we're not now going and funding requests to the state and to others and to the various the six communities who may be involved in this and so we're hoping to have the program up and running by the first of the year with with counselors hired trained and working for us if not all four certainly two of them so it's a so i'm sure you've heard from some folks the trees are down and the site work is underway for the thirty nine units of affordable senior housing press conference on the launch is going to be on november first  right now two o'clock in the afternoon also under construction city hall park in an unfortunate event happen one of our two of our very key floyd these were other got stung staff member because she gave birth ashley gave birth she was one that got stung she gave birth on for friday feet pede for that you need to do it immediately because they check at the gate and you have to have a photo id last those of us who went last year there's a really really interesting meeting in the landfill solar  is technically running but the press conference on that to announce it's flipping the switch will probably be next week sometime tom and i are working on see a piece with all the managers it's going well be talking later about some of those numbers and then lastly where tom and i are not here right now we would be at the eagles club celebrating forty six years of service to the community from captain gary rounds so captain gary rounds who many of you know has has retired is his retirement party hosted by a i'm sure fire fighters from across the state is ongoing as we speak and what we want to celebrate forty six forty six years one of the few people who have worked for the city longer than tom harry started off at the department of public works as i recall  and was back in the day my understanding is that everybody it was a volunteer when when when the alarm went off half of public works came over to staff the trucks and of course we have a full time career firefighter because we will do our absolute level best to try to get care he carried to come here to be recognized yes fact well well we'll try to make that happen i think we should have a resolution of some sort  which includes the scientists persimmon considering appointment of marley keene development review planner as our assistant zoning administrator and assistant code enforcement officer approving minutes of september eighteenth approving a grant application for urban nutrient runoff study and approve a grant application for the hadley proctor neighborhood sewer project state revolving loan application for planning moved and seconded are there any discussion is there any discussion seeing none at all in favor please signify by saying and you must create thank you now we get  two counts of the ports from committee assigned to time or so since last day was here the g m t had our annual retreat as a full day long event downtown burlington two topics that came up that i think would be most useful to report out to this group is we spent a good hour and a half on our current funding model and in that conversation he highlighted the inequities possible it's too strong of a term i think it's appropriate to consider there are some free riders of our public transit system in the current funding model that we have rural part of rural townships municipalities that don't contribute anything they contribute when they can that came up in the context of us considering a charter change through this legislature to alter our official name from c transportation authority to green mountain transit so if we're going to go to the legislature to make any charter changes that's where the funding model adjustment would be made as well so that was interesting it got really got into our thinking and i think with the board was leaning towards is we're interested in performing a budgetary analysis of what it would look like with an alternative model without implementing it so that we could show these regional communities what they're getting and what if this was a more fair and equitable model in mandated through a more consistent funding approach across the region that served by public transit what it would translate to so i think we're going to pursue over the next year not in official change in our charter but again we're still working on this these are long conversations but instead to flesh out what that model might change and in both current municipalities that pay into the system could excel pearlington and also what that what the implications could be for some of the outlying municipalities that benefit happy to answer more questions on that but it's still in that same conversation i raise the question of eighty a assessments and whether or not they were could be more fairness achieved if we were to consider the troops based on origination and destination and it would actually be more punitive to communities like south burlington slightly more so so the assurances i was given is that the current model is more so it's currently based only on origination and not necessarily destination so that was a so i don't see much more progress on that funding conversation point i will say that as much as the e t a ridership was increasing purcel pearlington at the beginning of the year it has leveled off a bit so i am expecting a slightly larger municipal assessment this year last year we present to us both on the budget speak as well as all the public transportation conversations that we want to have with them and that's traditionally been usually in november so i don't know when mark's use is going to come in but i know he's ready and i've been keeping them informed of some of the conversations and points you guys have raised us make sure he gets on the list thank you and the other one and i'll try to be quick is next gen so the reports were great allies each route looking for out improvements and they're still trickling in through until late november nothing's to change once the reports are in and that's when we have a some mission of all the routes being analyzed from all the different factors that are considered we as a board are going to spend the next six months of all staff of course to really processing the recommendations from these consultants and what those would imply to current service but those those conversations those meetings those public forums are occurring they've also encouraged each board member to submit to their local newspapers and outline or article summarizing what the next gen project looks like the timeline and how community members can get involved so i'm planning to reach out to judy at the other paper to see if in my c c t a representative that might be able to publish something on this next gen topic thank you alternative programs with possible action on the reallocation as well as a discussion of requested funding for twenty one thousand we like to come up together and and you may present in any order that you wish to be cut and some information counties but we have twelve regions for economic development so we have twelve regional land use planning commissions and we have twelve nonprofit economic development corporations and the land use planning commissions work with the municipalities to help their land use planning and transportation planning and the result of all my corporation's work with  textile mills were going out of business in burley new skete and the region had well the state had one economic development corporation which was in rutland and  funded by five cents on the property tax in every municipality and county and what we were created to do was to seek to create high value added they that they were looking at so they really worked industrial parks per se but it was our mission to try to work with the municipalities to try to create an industrial i was serving governor dean was twenty five percent of the labor force was in manufacturing today in china counties about eleven percent in we still lead the state in the state is ahead of a good product or service and export that good product or service outside of the state of vermont then you are basically a target employer for us tom runs the chamber of commerce we are not a tube or commerce we're not a business organization we're an economic development organization so we focus  to have a profile of employing about forty one thousand vermonters our labor force here engine account is about one hundred eleven thousand we in migrates about twenty seven thousand transportation planning we do the economic development planning portions of every five years there's a new land use plan there's a new transportation plan and we work with them to write a new economic plan for the region those plans are important because they inform the federal entities they were compliant with statistical standards enable misspellings to apply for federal money for transportation infrastructure funding and you have to have an economic plan as well to qualify for that funding we also created a foreign trade zone at the airport and though it hasn't been utilize because the nafta and other governing federal trade policies smile because you never know what policies are right now but what we do have that foreign trade zone it is activity if it is meaningful there's one company right now which is a georgia vermont that's using it but that license is there and it is an active we also work on  other legislative things are important to me  on storm water wind storm water really became an issue due to the lake and receiving a body of water and we funded the first three other things that we were influential on is we i personally worked with bill serrano and a few others to write the first tax increment financing law in the state and i have been on every other rating of it since then so those are kind of some of the things we do behind the scenes of wrapped up in the report i gave you are actively in south bronx in the past year we have worked with over seventeen key employers we're working with some others that were under confidential confidentiality agreements on that that it won't discuss but we've given the names of some of the to these that we're working  worked with we've brought in four hundred twenty five thousand dollars in for much reading program money into the region and we've assisted vidoe in making sixteen million dollars in loans to businesses incentive lastly our top priority this year is workforce and g p s is basically volunteered me and one of our staff people is state workforce development board workforce is probably the number one issue if not pretty close to the number one issue in vermont and we are working devot twenty five percent of my time one of our staff members time to look at the whole spectrum of workforce education development training which is basically starts in high school and goes through life  every now and again you can just tell he will ask us to come in i think it's just a good practice to review what it is that we do and why you support us with your with your taxpayer dollars and for us to explain really what's in it for the community what benefits the community so i'm going to speak for both the chamber in the convention bureau the both the convention bureau is a division of the chamber it's a it's own organization it has its own board it has its own governing principles as does the chamber but they kind of roll up into one organization both our membership based organizations we have two distinct membership some there is some overlap  we're both in nonprofit organizations chamber has a number of c sixes and c three organizations that are part of the chamber both organizations are nonpartisan we do not get involved in partis politics we do involve ourselves in policy matters the chamber has approximately two thousand members vast majority of which are in ne ne ne northwestern vermont although we do have membership that eighty south burlington businesses south burlington city is a member of the chamber has been a member of the chamber for well over twenty years i believe and at one point had a seat on the chamber board  the person of your and your former city managers the chamber is mission is to advocate for a thriving private sector economy that benefits its members its member employees and the communities in which the organization bronson businesses have traditionally been very very active with the chamber across a number of our programs i just want to touch on those been involved in our charitable activities or kicks for a cure or silent auction that goes to a  scholarship program or use programs we run now a high school program that does in turn ship some mentoring for one hundred fifty high school students in the region so one thing is not part of that just to be clear it's burlington culturists from when you see at this point we would love to expand it's a matter of staffing and frankly financing and money we used to run a leadership program for youth and that was folded into what we call the tips  completed on saturday twenty four hour hackathon and other types of programs and leadership in talent development franken and mention workforce we run the leadership champlain program which is  its twenty seventh year having graduated over nine hundred graduates many of whom come from south burlington businesses and we're partnering with every month business roundtable on the top talent pipeline management have taken responsibility for our legislative breakfast series and have also been through the legislative network event which is coming up in november which gives an opportunity for local businesses and elected miscible leaders to engage with our elected officials in montpelier probably where we have the biggest impact on the chamber side and i'll talk about the convention bureau in a second with susan who knows a lot more than i do about that chime in where i think we touch you the city  were behind the first time homebuyer program that went through v h f a that actually came out of a group called the burlington young professionals and we've been very active with g b i see our clever partner in downtown legislation focusing efforts on creating a simple centers village centers and i sit on the state downtown board and part of the  every year there is an act to fifty or land use issue that we weigh in on along with g b i see and others i don't think there has been a municipality that hasn't come forward for tiff where we have not weighed in on tissues  legislation which is as important to the emerging technology sector as it is to the construction center center i mention tiffs and most recently in the last three years the quebec initiative th launched began with a small state grant we have continued that from our quebec enterprise initiative making vermont the location of choice for quebec businesses looking for a u s presence  that has been actually successful we're starting to see the fruits of that of the two years of of labor that we have put in there so that's the chamber side of what we do  and again happy to answer questions about that and then there is the convention bureau side which has its own mission its own staff that work for the chamber but really are guided by the board and by the members businesses or property in self brewington you have been a member along with two other municipalities in the area town of essex and the city of burlington are both members of the convention bureau so and one if you will goof you know for the good of the order the tangible one is as a member you receive all of the leads that we send out to member properties that designate this area this region that's not something that the city would might necessarily have an interest in but whether it's the extremes or an amateur hockey comic con nordic soccer those or city wide events the great race that we're still in the go shooting with bringing to the response the governor's office is really no pun intended driving that to occur that's something where it really takes the city saying to other properties you can handle this by yourself why don't we come together have a local organizing group and put this together the best example of that was the end of the regional nature of when they had the usa triathlon series here interest to be a member is that we can promote your individual venues in the town to people who are looking for a place so carnes arena lives downstream of your membership and all of your for your field or any any facility that you have that's somehow associated with the city we promote when someone says hey we're looking at doing a soccer tournament or a hockey tournament because we're a membership organization it's we serve our members you know we don't although there are municipalities who are currently looking at joining but if you for instance if you are not a member we would not send any leads out to meet us appellee that's that's not a member nor would we promote the benefit of membership we can't if you're a membership organization and you're promoting you know what you do to people who are not members and sooner or later no one will be your member of the other reason i said it's purely for the good of the order and it's very hard to say there's a direct benefit to the city of south burlington for it but if we bring in norms amount of economic impact to the region ninety one percent of the business that the convention bureau does think that's the right number is within the greater lake champlain region the other nine percent is in woodstock or southern vermont up in the northeast thing so by funding us here funding the three people who work for susan two in burlington one in the boston office and so four people bring in a bell and then a year twelve to thirteen million dollars in economic activity to the state ninety one percent of that is generally in the lake champlain region so you are you contributing to the cause that is really hard to put a number on and say you should do it because you know you could say well i'm going to look at that business anyway it's going to go to the sheraton the double through the windjammer any of the other properties why should we have to put in it kind of a fair share of you know i can't you can't dress it up any more than that you only have three municipalities in this region or state line to this region and you can figure which three communities  both is going to be soon it's where those properties are and where we can really promote events perhaps along the lake or the mountains or in the venues that they have in this particular  the years we've been very fortunate to have a lot of large groups continue to come back to our area and one large group that i want to play now because of they have a heavy concentration and for the south burlington hospitality industry is the street riders they're in their twenty seventh i think year this year they have a choice to to come to to burlington they have a choice to come to vermont they have a choice to come to south burlington downtown burlington properties don't get a lot of business from them because a lot of their properties have garages and those folks want to be able to see their cars so the back and hospitality industry and hotels and benefits  belong brings in one point two million in that one week alone that they're here so this area gets a huge concentration of business from just that one event the important piece to note is that one event does not have to come here we work very hard every year to retain that business for this area and that's true with nordic soccer is another example for the last few years they've been looking at other venues if it wasn't for the efforts of the convention bureau we would lose one point two million dollars in one week time to the street rides and the same with with dark soccer so it's important to realize that we c these groups so that they will continue to choose experience they feel they can very easily go anywhere so we have to come together collectively we have to come together as as a group as a municipality and all supporting each other in order to continue to have these large groups wanting to come to our state or coming so i certainly hope and tom i was struck with the items that you identified as being really important that you worked on and when you got to the transportation you never talked about the airport and yet i know when the f thirty five issue in the airport was here you were a strong voice as was to be icy in fact you joined a lawsuit that he did that we had joined with winooski to support the f thirty five yet that such a critical lever is council believes it is such a critical component of economic development workforce development yet it's we have passed a resolution that is requesting  look again at the governance of the airport that years ago i understand you did support a study released some of you d at least to us about the importance or maybe the value of looking at the airport as in a different light just to look at it not necessarily this is a structure but to have that real due diligence and review of what really my work the best in this community so i would appreciate your commenting on that so i think one of the reasons i left real out was a just assume sooner or later someone was going to ask the question so i mean thank you for when there are many issues that come before us where we take positions there are times when those positions are not exactly aligned with all the membership and we have set people and we lose members because of that whether or not that's marriage equality health care reform tiffs stormwater per parcel fees when you have a membership is diverse as ours sooner or later you're going to find people who are not happy with your position many years ago believe it was seven years ago funded by g b i see another as we were part of a group that was that looked at governance of the airport and i think it's fair to say that there are many models that you can look at for governance there are missile the only airports there are state own airports there are regional entities that govern airports and there is a defensible argument for each one we have a model that has worked here are there other models sure but this there is a disconnect between say minas a pallet he's yours perhaps in particular the city of burlington the airport and how that's governed that seems to be more of a local political issue then economic development issue and i say that understanding that we may honestly disagree about that and knowing full well that just like other issues that have been very contentious people will choose to either stay with us or not he lost a lot of members over marriage equality i don't make any excuses for taking the position that we did on that issue and likewise my belief in belief and my executive committee was that this was more akin to a discussion a debate in a resolution that needs to happen between  municipalities one where it lives into the person who owns it or the city that owns the airport do i think that the airport is a key driver for this area i think we would agree it certainly is and that's why we have for years supported the puerto air coming down here in the expansion of that service and we have these who fought for whether it was jet blue timing  the other one whose name i now forget yes without the airport we become a very much a backwater region for economic development frankly the airport needs to grow it needs to expand it needs to become more rob we hear often that we need service to boston we hear often that we need to be able to get to vermont to burlington with fewer than two or three stops you know if you go into a hub you're fine but if you come in the guy did a month ago from montana i took four flights to get home that's not you know that but is it better then what it was yes are their finances better then where they were yes i'm not here in any way to disparage the airport in kind of how it's being managed so we affirmatively chose and w in point to position i am as president of the chamber appointed by a board we don't get paid to have personal opinions we get paid to represent the best interests of either the administrations we work for or the body of our resource for this region and for the state of vermont i'm a member of the even board of trustees when you look at the the university the hospital that we have here and the airport that we have here those resources we punch way above our weight level having those key resources here in this region for region the basing of the f thirty five to us an economic case that dealt with jobs and also with the infrastructure in the support of the airport we have infrastructure at that airport that would not be here if not for the b's army and air national guard there are improvements there that would not be here if they weren't there there are jobs there because of their mission  would be very different if their mission was different and they paid for about two point five million dollars in operating costs that the airport would have to absorb if they weren't there never mind the capital improvements so if the guard the air guard wasn't there the airport would have to build a fire and rescue structure and they'd have to buy their equipment and they'd have to pay the two point five million dollars a year to operate e m t fire and rescue so my personal political opinions and sort everything don't matter here it was it was economics and it was very uncomfortable for us to to have to engage in our issue with this is a brilliant it was not your opinion it was when you registered your opinion in the disagree that's it is that is what it is and we're not going to have we're not going to let me clarify though the resolution in the governance issue i think is totally separate from the f thi live around here are poor and their quality of life so we'd love to were work and sound education investments and other things we didn't choose the bio program or whatever program they're having would love to work with the city to try to bring in investment on mitigation for all of the residents that live there in him when you ski as well so getting to the airport regionalization topic we were asked along with a couple of other parties when the airport was not doing well financially by members of the city burlington to look at the exploration of other concepts for airport ownership governance whatever we supplied some funding and participated together with the chamber in an analysis and it didn't go anywhere we did it and you have you've got the template of our report it's dated it's older i don't know much value but as tom said it is not up to us to step in the middle of potentially enter municipal disagreement when we work for you and we work for the city of burlington as well and the city in burlington owns the airport and until they decide they don't want to own the airport or they want to different governance structure and they invite us to come in and participate then we're going to step back until we're invited into that process they own the airport and all i can say is is  so much the the town was paying for the majority of the water and sewer and the town wanted to have a say in the allocations of the sewer and they're still fighting over that for years and years and years so there's no wind for us to get in in the middle of this if we can help in communication in any way we want to help that airport is a huge us and we hear you we appreciate what you're saying we want to help in a positive way but what we can't jump in the middle of and are minuscule just let me just follow up because you did make what i thought was very generous  offer and that is that you really would be interested in working with this sound mitigation but then to send this later it was but a lonely step in if were invited by that we we fully believe that we have probably per capita the best congressional delegation in this country and we have a senior united states senator who is number one is seniority in the united states senate and his vice chair of the appropriations committee the united states we have senator sanders is on the budget committee the united states senate we have congressman walsh and we don't personally understand why you can't do it on medication program while you're doing a buyout program the same way i don't think you understand it either and to us we here are the people the residents of this area we hear this board we hear the city council in when you ski as well and we would like to do whatever we can do to attract the kind of federal resources that are going to improve the quality of life of the people who live around here around the airport life is certainly an issue but there's also a school board who's been seeking for years information that they have no information received up to now they're waiting to still receive that information they want to know with this should be closed we've lost up to two hundred affordable workforce houses and that is as an economic impacts not only on our city but on the region  we stand to lose more if that noise envelope expands so it's again it's not only a quality of life issue it does hit us economically also we're looking at  our expenses and where they have levon thousand dollars now because of the p f away infiltration in or in our groundwater that we as a city are responsible for even though we don't own the airport so there are economic issues that i think that are important i just also i think we read the c i s a little bit differently economically this base was the least economically viable option and actually  supper the f thirty five conversation from the regionalization and governance issue i really want to just draw from a statement you made g s he took a position on the f thirty five to make the airport stronger the two point five million dollars and what's paying for infrastructure that's needed for opportunity to strengthen that airport as your report concluded which i do think actually went somewhere it would improve the bond rating by separating it from the city of burlington which is a triple b minus it would also improve their contracting flexibility they would have to be tied to burlin police officers a broader board with more perspectives would also bring in more industry influence and better decision making them and they would understand the importance of municipal relations of the host community i just i would really ask you all to not look at this is a municipal fight this is a valid conversation that i think is a regional importance for eka for our entire economy to consider other ways to reduce friction for that airport with it so for the same reason that you just took a statement on the f thirty five i think there's reason to look at governance as a way to strengthen and improve that airports functioning respect really respect their opinion th years seventy years and you used our population to get a grant to expand your server system so i believe me i sat on a board just like you i know where you're coming from i respect your opinion  it's a public good i just i would be honest you know this is just not going to go away this issue isn't going to resolve by you not taking a position so i just hope you keep an open mind as we go forward in the decades to come that this really is an opportunity to strengthen this economy in this area  report better i don't disagree that we need to maintain have an open mind of where this can go but i think it's one that i think there is somewhat of a distinction between where we were at in the process with the f thirty five and where we were at the process with regionalization with thirty five as we stood the real possibility of losing the a thirty five and all the things that frank described that went along with that at least that was how we saw it we may disagree but that's how we saw with the airport seven years removed from that study that was done in the input that was gathered the airport is doing better than it was it is making improvements even its bond rating has been improved it's  moving up nothing is you know nothing dramatic happens especially in the world of finance and the bonding agencies but it is doing better i guess what i would say in some defense of our position is that we don't see the immediacy of the crisis like we did with the f thirty five and that's why i say i think this is a reasonable discussion that reasonable folks can have you are correct in pointing out the state has a large interest in this and you know the state agency of transportation i think also should be involved in these conversations are many ways to start a conversation some of them or public and some of them are quiet and you know i my senses i've always tried it and let's really push to be more like james baker and less like airport to get it i'm sorry but i just find it ironic that your your logo says your slogan is good jobs in a clean environment right and part of the problem i have with it is that ok so the airport and around it you could conceive of it as a clean environment  clean can also mean noise free right so you have all these homes have been knocked down because of a noise problem at the airport because it's an industrial facility that doesn't have any mitigation and so by knocking down all those houses what have you done you removed we two hundred houses right you've eliminated all this workforce housing you have the lowest unemployment rate in probably in one of those in an employer it's in this in the in the country right now we're finding it hard for businesses to get people and retain people who are finding it hard to bring people here because look at the housing costs right it is a chicken and egg problem that keeps going around and around and around so the the what i'm trying to say is that if you want good jobs and clean environment one way to clean up your environment is not to knock down houses in the vicinity of an airport that's got a ton of noise right how do you do that don't bring the f thirty five it during the fighter jet mission altogether bring in the tanker planes right bring in some it's quieter the point is that you don't have to knock down homes you have workforce housing you can bring those people and you can grow the business because you'll have the jobs because you'll have the housing so i just want to point that out that's all there are other planes you know and but i totally respect your position that you you know you see the every five as a continuing mission for privy tang and to support the two point five million for the airport i understand but there is another story that goes with it and that is loss of housing loss of low of lower cost housing that promotes those families moving in there that promotes those people available for those jobs so i guess he had to pick a position in you pick the other one that's fine the other was for susan so you have these groups like the they want to come back anyway they love it here don't they i mean this is the most beautiful spot in the whole country to to bring your hot rod or your your teenager to pla cities throughout the country are funded differently than the vermaak of engineers so they're funded we have a state tax there are some sort of taxes levied on hospitality or or any kind of city or local taxes so we're membership dues based on these so dues are very important to us in order for us to do our job we other cities can court these groups and have and have them come to their cities by throwing around a lot more things that they can the local municipalities and in there in the area put on a parade so that the street rides can go around and the businesses can see them and and that type of thing they put on dinners they pay for you know dinners for them to come in a night or two in advance of the actual show therefore increasing the occupancy to the hotels people are here spending money a day or two in advance of the actual show we have all we can do we raised seven thousand dollars for a speak at a dinner for the very important to us we don't have the money to these people to come to vermont as beautiful as we are they will hold parades they will hold barbecues they will hold it is not uncommon we're working with  a race right now where just to bring them into the state to look at us is fifteen thousand dollars there's big fees bass fishing was one of the biggest one of the great city way we could get them here why we needed a hundred thousand dollars just to get here so big fees are very common in my world these big fees so for us our dues is our livelihood and we do the best that we can do with this livelihood and we did started pretty last year was our first parade with thanks to south burlington and we had it again this year and it's growing every year and we're doing more and more things are doing things for the lady riders that wants to encourage them to continue to have that attendance here they can say they're going to come to burlington and they can or separately to they can come to south burlington but they still have to get the attendance here and they have to have things that are go drive those people to want to come to our area is beautiful elizabeth and we did have great weather this year your your points about housing are really good the city was charte sixty's if if you go back in time and look at all the aerial photos of the support the airport was there before the city actually grew up and we do land use planning much different helen and helen in her work in the state in our senate her involvement in the legislature has been very involved and so is her husband and his planning we have back to fifty now in the state to do to help with proper land use planning so you know if you had to do it all over again you would never locate go anywhere else in the country that has ladies planning that was carefully planned and what is located around an airport industrial and distribution primarily we don't have that luxury i have family members who lived in the airport neighborhood right around the airport because they were the most affordable homes at the time and now you have people either at the beginning of their real estate life or at the end of the real estate life or in those residences so their quality of life is very important but the airport isn't going anywhere and they're not going anywhere either we've got to deal with the art of what you know what we have the art of reality here so you know i talked to tom and he said you know hypothetically if we were to move the airport what do you think it would cost a sort of billion dollars in your grandchildren's grandchildren who want to be alive long enough to see permits anywhere to put in europe or anywhere with it's there it's you know we're also going to put it it's it's there so we we have to deal with the art of what we have to deal with and that's the present situation and workforce housing and workforce are two the most huge issues right now in the state we're not growing in population and where our taxes are very significant and our services are great the services in this city earth fabulous we've got the best school system in the state i think in the city so it's tough we want to continue to work with the got a great city manager who i've known since he came to vermont and you've got good leadership and good participation in  all your city boards and commissions want to try to help in any way that we possibly can where the economic planning and economic development entity in the region and that's what we do most recently were funded we receive the state grant to study that it is one of the biggest problems that we have in attracting larger even this year you know our sweet that three to five hundred person event for a meeting for that would be at the sharon or something like that but there are many that we can't go after there are many events in the winter where if we had an indoor facility close to the downtown or in the downtown whether it's you usa archery war or basketball gymnastics those things that happen in the winter we can't go after those because we don't have a interesting battle to see where it wound up in a wind up back of the university you know that's not my world but we need one when we do need an event center in downtown i started going to concerts and memorial oratory in one thousand nine hundred seventy two it was decrypted and falling down seventy two the bathrooms didn't work then i doubt they work now and it so the city is had is engage the public process to talk about what's the art of the possible with that building it has some historic features to it that i think many people would like to preserve you know that the corner facade or some of the facade of that building it is historic i think they will do something that involves the parking lot the hotel memorial oratory and that area it's ri for development but like south burlington with many things that you have on your docket brought in has a lot of things on its docket right now tonight they're dealing with burlington telecom in the three finalists there talk about our support of a relatively small amount of funds each year that goes a long way to helping them towards the goals that they set for membership to the chamber belong to t v as she and what have you there is nothing more that channels a business how supportive you are then you see what they support and when our community support the and in becoming involved with the community with those trips important but that we stand behind them as well you know we sit here without a separate economic development director like the city appalling to others m look to those that have been dealing in the business community for fun many years and i have as far as your drawing resources and you know i guess i was quite surprised to find out that we had sixty plus percent of the rental units on a daily basis were on a child following tips on it's not important for us than to keep the at is that the conversation that i had hoped we were going to have to bite was on the value of the spending in the range of nine thousand dollars a year to continue our good relationship with these organizations and it more just from there because we can we can go round and round on the m twenty five until one haven't but we have a circumstance rate now where i'm looking at a broader picture of what we are trying to bring to our community and i think we have organizations here represented tonight the small amount of money and it takes to maintain our membership but them i think it is it is a travesty that we would even think we would and explain to us what they do or shall want is to say i think their value to our finity is far greater than what i've been unfortunately what i've heard from some time and i guess i'll end it there with the fact that i would not do anything but support the continuation of our strong relationship but and and hopefully and glad to hear that working together that we will do the best for the greater airport area of course because some of us actually remember when we had a  i did have something to follow up and i guess i i don't know that it's clear from what you're saying pat that this was just a consideration of a one year you know  redirection of the funds it was not you know ceasing a relationship so i think i want to make that clear and i also think it's is important and it does behoove us when we have representatives in front of us who do go to  advocate for us that they get feedback from us and we are in need of workforce housing in order to bring business to our industrial park our business hartman people ave we need businesses to locat we just want to make one clarification the chamber is a business membership organization we are not so we're not representing business we are we are around to years that formality has changed but we do get support annually from just about every one of the municipalities so i'm not saying the membership organization is different but sometimes people look at g b said so you represent business do you not represent business where an economic development corporation i don't think that we i think it's so important to have into the council i mean i've been on the council from the secures and we've never had any here to share with us what what you do for self burlington and sort of your  why you took the positions or lack of which i don't think is a wine but that was an issue for south burlington you pay you money to help us with different things and i think that's a valid question and i don't think that when the airport maybe the tone will or how it how the conversation proceeds and maybe we can agree on things like a clean clean water authority instead you know in handsome storm or utilities  in the state as a way to reduce the impact on the municipal burden by raising a perp ourself the state will either go to a state wide storm where utility that would augment the work that frankly south common ground that's in a membership organization different than frankly the four hundred sixty five dollars a year that that that are your dues to the chamber you're going to have we're going to have that we're go disagree on certain issues and we're going to agree on the others as i started there are times when people feel so strongly about a particular issue that i feel say i'm sorry i feel strongly about it i'm leaving the chamber  pay three hundred fifty dollars a year to become to be a member of the united states chamber of commerce we don't see the world the same at all as the u s chamber in fact standards have a down to senate leadership meeting a few years ago to have the the other chambers view on health care reform from the u s chamber but we pay because we get benefits in terms of information and what's going on in washington from them i had members quit the chamber because we paid three hundred fifty thousand joins the chamber and my feeling is if there is one single issue that you feel that strongly about that i can accept it i might not like it but i can accept it so if if you in the end of the day say you know you really didn't represent us on the airport and we feel really strongly about that then i really would accept that you walk away from me from the chamber  think there's more common ground than that and i think in this world of what we see coming out of our politicians in washington you either right or you're wrong you're with me for you're there you're against me you're against me you're no good that we maybe in vermont can still find a place where so i just like to emphasize how awful what i heard pat say i too think we would benefit from more regional lenses on issues in vermont so i fully support staying here in the g b i see and the lake chamber of commerce and the convention bureau i think if you want to see what organization what an organization cares about see where they put their dollars and i think this is very important for all the reasons you articulated that we stay in it but i also agree i would disagree a little bit with you pat there that the airport it consumes a ton of our attention is it is what we what we stress about what i stress about i've lost a lot of nights of sleep on the airport and what i'm saying is that there's a better way that could achieve regional harmony that could improve the economy of this state and that governance model that's come up over forty years we can look back to the eighty's and what was recommended then i just don't think it's going to go away and what i would say on the agree to disagree with you there but just because we agree to disagree doesn't mean we need to stop talking about it and i think it's going to keep coming up and it's a conversation o probably were on opposite ends of the political spectrum will be on thursday will bill say and i will probably really disagree on the issues but we continue with dialogue and frankly the members who come find that there is common ground because we continue to talk we need to talk about the airport we need to talk about if they need to talk about stormwater when you talk about housing we need to talk about how we stop the out migration of youth and keep people in vermont and i think we have good stories to tell about that but those stories don't become stories unless people kind of look to the middle i mean solutions a few words in the middle and you on your  you stay on one side then you have the dysfunction that we have in washington and effective councils that you serve on and i've served on that frankness are gone you see them in my people here when people come to the middle that's where the solutions are and to get to you got to keep talking so i could of frank is the economic development arm what we were asked to do two years ago by the state that we've kept up is marking it out of reach so we are very clear that our job is to make vermont that location of choice because to the counselors point why doesn't everybody want to have their convention in vermont because if you don't continue to fertilize the ground other people will be in for years i was sick and tired of hearing plattsburgh eat our lunch in terms of all the businesses that were in quebec that were looking for us presence they were going to plattsburgh and they even branded themselves plattsburgh montreal southern most suburb and we we had if you go back to the eighty's and frankly members these days quebec companies came to for a month we thought well they will come here they love her mom for months beautiful well someone said to me we want those companies to choose for mine because once they choose vermont and they start building a workforce once we start training people for the jobs that they have it will tell the story of vermont so that's what those businesses and getting them in my training partnership grants and getting in the veggie applications you know not to be glib about it but i'm a fly fisherman so it's one thing that put the fly on the water and make it attractive to the other thing to  companies that have chosen this region we have two large companies that have larger companies a federal delegation on the fence is able to stay here explains why we're working so much on workforce their eleven thousand vermonters between the ages of nineteen and twenty five years old that have fallen out of the employment statistics they're not in employment they're not in unemployment they're out the opiate crazes and other things are part of the cause so we're trying to get into correcting the symptom we graduate seventy four hundred young people from our high schools in vermont twenty six hundred of them go on to nothing when they graduate from high school and then the next three semesters we lose another four hundred fifty so out of seventy four hundred students graduating from the high schools in vermont three thousand of them go on to nothing and twenty percent of them have had any meaningful career vocational or technical experience and what do they do they stay here they're not the ones that lead so what well why are we devoting like twenty five to forty percent of our staff time on this because we've got to turn this around as a state pretty quickly because if you don't that number scales within a six to ten year period to thirty thousand between the ages of nineteen and thirty years old and then that's ten percent of the state's workforce so we do have low unemployment which is around three percent but the actual unemployment is another six percent to the three percent because those are the you six when you when you get into the day and there are six percent that are chronically unemployed or underemployed so the unemployed rate is in this country you have to add another six percent so where we've devoted eighteen months to this this past summer fifty percent of our time has been devoted to  career vocational technical education opened up to ninth through twelfth graders and today's only open to twelve years so that's one of the initiatives in the other is basically more programs for seniors who are going to be retiring from one career but are going to have to continue to work or want to continue to work and then more targeting of career opportunities making works has created a very good career development program over the past five years it's located right in the davis center in the heart of our students center played college runs the best program in the state universities are different our mission is different we're liberal arts school not a business school but this is but but we have a very good business becoming really great med school but but but but the focus is we need to try to retain more of the forty thousand young people who graduate from the institutions fire education and keep them here in vermont so talk about quebec programs the programs we're doing with high school students around mentorships and internships the work we're doing trying to get young people involved in coding we know this past weekend we had the hack we had two high school teens young i mean they look twelve years old they're probably sixteen years old with their teachers doing back kind of coding work and building apps you know staying up twenty four hours and it was great to watch high school kids do that happy to come back just informationally not take it an hour or two of your time or anybody individually who wants to reach out to money will introduce you to the staff you know we have two staff working on workforce and talent we have our fourth year that we fund in america or student to work with high school kids i think sometimes it's the best kept secret around so any time folks want to commit even if we're going to disagree on something from well i would like to support the inability officers work this year and that's the question it's not just to take money away from these organizations it was for a specific purpose that i think is also of interest and deserves i think funding goes right off the bat front porch forum i have can squash and concerns with and we're spending four thousand dollars a year on that organization i'd love to have the organizers michael scott lewis come in and talk about their editorial privileges and if we're really to talk about money savings see click fix i'm also hearing we're not really using up to its full potential so i've heard justin tell me in a meeting which kevin knew about that if he was going to cut anything from his budget that's five thousand dollars so i'm not this way saying we should start scrapping the budget but i'm just saying i think these are regional organizations that focus on economic development opportunities for the city and the entire county i didn't notice that we have a reserve i think if you like let us go back and look at that sit with paul figure out what can be funded this year through through a source that will look  kinds of conversations while they're sometimes difficult are really important and i suspect that tom and susan and i'm blanking frank i'm sorry  it's age have come along we'll leave with a better understanding of some of the locals and concerns that we hold very dear and passionately and i think those so why don't we move then to i am twelve which is interviewing frank davis or so would you come forward because i understand it you are interested in either that and you have stated them in order if there's to be a priority and you tell us maybe a little bit more about yourself you've been here for three plus years yes i moved my family up from florida july first twenty four to i've been an educator for over thirty years keisha means everything to me particularly in light of the fact that i married late and i have as we speak now a fourteen year old daughter and the florida public school system is pretty bad ranks forty seventh out of forty nine myself moving my family to vermont by most metrics remount comes out on top public schools and and what made the determination where we were going to land and i'd have accept a little doggie was here in south burlington and so here we are for three plus years and i wouldn't do it any differently my daughter's thriving she is now a freshman  week so yeah i certainly make arrangements absolutely look you know i was just listening to the two gentlemen and the lady that were sitting here and talking about how horton workforce is and and and i'm hearing tim talking about you know we've got these we don't want to we don't want to lose talent and all this i was a professor for ten years i've got a doctorate i'm a produce clerk  shaw's right now i can't get in a dull job up here to save my life in the first two and a half years and i stopped counting after this when the first two and a half years that i was living here in south burlington i put out over seven hundred applications i can't even get an interview i've been a conference proof presenter i'm widely published both academically literature etc you know i kind of the ideal kind of a candidate that most any college or university would want but it's apparently who you know and i just got here i don't know anybody so guess what it's ok and things aren't as dire as they may seem i was interviewed today at chavez for a lower management position and so we'll see you know i'm willing to pay my dues it's amazing the things that one does for one's kid and so again i don't regret it and i absolutely am totally in love with from i just it's completely happening in every way shape except for the economy i think we would reprint the state's motto which is please feel free to enjoy yes but don't even think about moving here unless you have a ton of money thank you in fact i just designed a course for the business school but it's it's it's meeting with no funding it probably be calling this home for the rest of my life so time to jump in and see where i can help ok well thank you i'm sorry you have to listen to  thank you very much and unfortunately i'm going to have to get off and i think you're probably going to take a break for a minute right now for roche to that piece and then it was brought to my attention that there was some concern that it's a business first so we'll go to eleven and then the moment and moving on to eleven a report on recent activities in issues from the pike and pedestrian committee thank you so much for hanging around every time i think the meeting for only going to be sure it's not to try to aid in that because we sent out our materials ahead of time so we won't need them to you we're going to do a quick overview just so that everybody who hasn't had a chance to see them will kind of know a little bit about who we are we're going to go into some action items and some questions that we've already let you know what they will be and first i'll start by presenting the committee this is thank you so much for this is the south really didn't buy content committe off of what we said we were planning to do last year so that dovetails nicely we develop into dip into a trip to sillett ease guidelines we also saw a lot of community input so we could figure out what the community thought were the needs and the weaknesses and things that were good about the existing system we also increased improved our coordination with council and also with other city departments what do we want to do the next year what is our current work plan we want to create citywide math we also want to review new development projects for integration a bicycle and a desperate improvements we want to work with the planning commission on coordinating street type ologies and especially two things that i want to highlight here we want to explore an advocate for funding options for bicycle and pedestrian projects and we want to coordinate bicycle and pedestrian improvements with energy transportation and his initiatives including working closely with the energy committee and shared are issues that we think require imminent action rather than way off in the future and there are three issues one is to improve safety on our our pedestrian path the other is to improve the maintenance are to improve and then meet and maintain the path on a regular basis and the last is to close the gaps that exist and i'm going to go through these one a time but hopefully  that name but we were early adopters of these and at the time they came with just operating on in one direction and so if you were driving down the street you would see on your right the yellow guy and the light flashing of somebody push the button but on the left side of the street you don't see anything because there's nothing there in burlington they have functioning ones on both sides and it's much easier for drivers to see that  and it's not so easy for our drive first to see it and i think our our rate of compliance is not what it should be you never really know whether someone's going to stop for you and sometimes someone will stop in one direction not the other and then you don't know what to do so we would we think if these could be expanded to function on both sides it would improve safety enormously another safety issue involves having right on red for pedestrians and cyclists have to cross and the bike path there's always someone who can turn right on red even though in their direction it's a green light for them to go in and it's a tradeoff here be tween the efficiency of getting cars to go along go through and not back up and the safety of people trying to cross is pedestrians and that's dorset and swiss street and that's our park on that side so there's a lot of traffic there and and it's it's a tough one isn't the only intersection that has that problem but just in an example of it another another problem we see is the lines the fog lines the crosswalk lines the lines it's a stop fade over time and they fade rapidly on roads that have a lot of traffic and those those five lines the ones on the side are crucial to identifying bike lanes when they're just lanes and no path and so if they don't you can't see those it just makes it a little more dangerous for the people using those so we think that those lines are particularly in heavy especially commuters so those are three examples of safety issues sure are top five safety policy recommendations involved number one dangerous intersection of swift and spears streets in it's bad enough for cars it's even worse for pedestrians and cyclists and that has to do with again the right on red  and on switch street there's that little light that tells you you can't go right on red when it's lit so that the cars that are going the other direction it's with can make that left hand turn but it's only the cars that can see that little light that says no left unturned that no to stop there and if you're really interested in turning right in red you have to pull ahead to see the cars coming down spear street from the north and then you no longer can see the little thing that says don't turn right in red right now also if you know after you turn right on red or if you make that turn whether it's at the green or red light then you immediately are confronted with the pedestrian crossing which has one of those flashing lights on it but your line of vision isn't drawn to it into you make that turn for the most part so it's very dangerous for people that are trying to cross on the bike path a bike pedestrian path to get across there the one  street further east has more of a line of vision and it's usually not quite as bad but this whole intersection is just crying for a better design and it's probably an expensive repair but you know we i think we have to think in terms of both long and short term solutions to the problem so the second one is the r f p polls we really think if they could apologize lane markings and they are right well you know what lane marking is out is correct yeah yeah i probably have one too many enters and it started remembering i apologize so lane markings again are important and they go a long way to improve the safety pedestrians and cyclists and cars also on my dad and then the right turn on red not not every intersection needs to not have them and there are ways to allow a little time for  cyclists to get across but i think we really need to look at that and judiciously figure out how we can make it safer by maybe allowing a time when just pedestrians and cyclists can cross without backing up traffic for you know if there are any different requirements state dreads that would override what immunise polity want i don't i don't know if there is i don't know in regard to that there are some requirements in regards to other things you can do like putting in crosswalks the state has some requirements that municipalities when the work that the committee did on  there could be some time in which the city is working on in the last number one is to see click fix program and i heard some rumblings before saving money by eliminating that  is a good outlet for people who observe something to report it and it gets transmitted quickly so i think there has to it's that but i didn't just to have a way for everyday citizens can to report there's a problem here there's a big pothole in the middle of the sidewalk or whatever would you agree that we could be using it better yes in the sense that if if it's cleared before it the work is done and other people don't know it's an issue and they report it as well so they don't get it potentially i mean i wish that the city's new website had a page that listed all the c click fixes and what their priority was how long they think it'll be till it's fixed why it can't be fixed how many people report the same darn thing right so that they know that it's well represented right so but i've i've submitted things they get clear they're not done and it's frustrating and i you know sympathize with people that use it and feel like it doesn't have an effect other times it has been used the state responds very quickly and then always with the best job but they give it you know they give a try at least so you know in them days but it's a tool in nobody has more eyes on the road than the people that are on it every single day like i reported that there was a piece of wood debris at the corner right at the airport mobil station blocking access on the little cement ramp that goes down across the road it's still there for all i know i reported that a week ago you just pick up the debris and throw it away it's blocking a sidewalk it probably fell off of a truck you know but these are the kinds of issues that that we need to address and i agree you know don't clear a sea click fix alyse that doesn't exists or you know if it's is not done or or have another alternative don't have resources we don't have paid we don't have whatever it is and then we could look at that once a month ago when we should have i thought i'd love to see you i think you know how much we're using it like how many residents report to it i'd love to get an idea of how how much ok so moving on to maintenance that the plan i don't think the budget is very large for maintaining the path and yet it like the rest of our infrastructure  needs repairs from time to time there are routes that have pushed up the path and make ridges and then you know sometimes they're hard to see the path has to be cleared on a regular basis or your head hits a tree branch as you go along the picture with the red stop sign on it is up by the golf course and it says stop you're entering a hazardous area due to flying golf balls but you can't read it as you go by it and most people don't stop to read it because it looks like a faded sign and i'm sure the developer was asked to put that up and that was a long time ago so it's not it's not really cautioning people to watch out for flying golf balls there's another picture a pothole these are just samples of things you find as you go along parts of the path are wonderful but then there are these little things you come upon when you're least expecting it the we had to tear up part of it on the at the north end of the golf course as it as it swings around and down towards dorset street and i don't know whether that was done last fall or very early this spring the other maybe you know the last fall and so there's a sign warning about it and scrabble but it hasn't been repaved yet so and that's kind of a bad spot without having to counter gravel around the corner so those are just examples we really don't know how much money is available in but i don't know what application triggered it because i don't think this one out there that needed it right away ok so next is closing the gaps most of the development on the bike path by pedestrian path has been done when we require developers on their property to put the path through what will be a normal extension of the current path but that's created that's created some segments of bike path that aren't connected and there are these these areas that really someone maybe isn't going to develop it or you have a developer creating something on the left hand side of the road when the main path goes on the right hand side of the road and then you have to figure out you don't really want to build a path on both sides of the road how do you get the cross there there gap development and we think of gaps as intersections or crossings of routes that are almost impossible to do safely so there are lots of these and and we're not going to we're not talking about all of them we just want to give you a little bit of a sampling of the one that you're probably familiar with isn't dorset street that goes between the old cross road and the the picture on the the right the blue is my path in the red is where there isn't one you just have to use  r street on the left and dorset street on the right again the blue is the multiuse path and the red is where we are lacking it and there may be sure biplanes on the road but they are inconsistent with on an inconsistency in just being marked at all and there are three major intersections that are difficult these are both major transportation routes from the south to the north and for anybody working and you begin over at the medical center or in that part of town i went to a conference once and there was a couple sitting at my table where we were talking and they actually lived somewhere off the spears street but they would go is really dangerous for cyclists and the problem is even if you make it through the red area you want to be able then cross over to where there is a path but there's no safe way to cross that street and there's been a couple bad accidents there so that's and that scares you it's a hard problem because we have the interstate bridges but that is a major gap that needs help we talked about this with sue a spear crossing that's part of that gap it's just hard for everybody to get across there likewise at dorset and swift with people going into the park especially kids same problem with the crossing it's not it's not  and then we have songbird which very nicely has the little to use path going across it but once you get to that tourist street people want to be able to get across and then get onto the path and go north and they can't do it because there's no didn't do it but there is not a crossing and there are so people feel that there shouldn't be a crossing there because of the the line of sight lines particularly to the north because you're going up a hill and so the cars wouldn't necessarily see you but it's a real problem because people kind of cross there and then they just scoot across when they can so that's another example of ga and then the last one i want to point out is we have a very nice recreation path on the north side of kennedy drive we have a sidewalk coming down from west when oaks in the fitness center we have a bus stop on the south side but you get there and you have in less you want to take the bus which is great you have no way of getting across to the recreation path because there's not a crosswalk there and again what you see is people trying to get across and standing in the middle because they get halfway and likewise if you walk down the recreation path you want to get to the bus stop you can't cross over there safely another example of a gap in the path which isn't really long but it's kind of like the bike ferry had to overcome on the causeway you know it's two hundred feet but you can't fight your cross it without some sort of boat and that the smaller picture just shows where may in fact walk to the nearest crosswalk you can see how far that you have to go to get to the other side of history so those are just three examples of some of the many things that need to be done to kind of bring  our our path together and it's it's been a long time so we kind of have two questions and and suggestions one is that the past ages it needs increase maintenance and and we urge that the council perhaps would consider increasing the funding for both the human resources and material needs to adequately maintain the bike pedestrian path systems part of our transportation infrastructure as part of their it here budget process for that period and the other suggestion we would like to make were urged you to consider is that aside from developers being required to build a recreation path through the area they're developing a network that ties neighborhoods to one another to schools parks shopping areas has not been expanded in at least over ten to fifteen years and how do we get the funds to do that and we would we would ask you to per pack we're not looking for the council to react to it or anything tonight but we would like to work with you on you know and talk to the members of the council and just get your input on you know  tax payers and i think that it could be used for potentially a revenue bond so that we could fill some of these gaps right away maybe by floating a revenue fund that would be funded by this hears on how much it would cost and there's some of the studies are pretty inflated and we think working with the t w in the city we could figure out a way to close a lot of the hundred years yeah yeah i mean it just gives that i think one of the things you were looking for is more consistent funding yet the bonded the bond would be similar to what we did with the open space f they didn't maintain so you know it's kind of like carrying a hole in your roof truly you have some damage just doesn't make sense so i appreciate you were thinking about this i think it would be this and then the public clearly we need to be convinced  on starting early next week and so by this time next year will have its actions my guess based on what we saw in the first four is that that funding will is weird we're doing a kind of looking at earth the city map with the proposed past but we also have to do it in conjunction with the city getting mapping capacity so that we can put what we the best reasons and we've addressed a couple of issues that can help fulfill the goals of and i mean completely serious my question is does the city really want to so as a mother reference document there is lots of good information about what complete streets means and i think the city has accomplished some really significant things one we have  more like paths than any per per capita than any other city i think in the state so it has that has happened and we are working well toward that goal but obviously we pointed out that committee has pointed out in this documentation some areas where we could do better and maybe want to do better taking into consideration the demographics of the community when we have them all we have a large older population and that means good sidewalks are for to this group and good so fulfilling the goals of safety of complete streets and also safe safes safe safe ways to school off some of the gaps that we pointed out could take really impact on people who want to want to bike like to their school complex so i would like i think we as a committee should do a little bit better job of marketing the better others of improving sidewalks cycles to the community and i think i would hope that the council will help in that regard to and we see a little bit more marketing from the city on improvements in that area course one of the big ones or it should already have done is city center and that has great potential for federal and a lot of these broader goals thank you any questions or comments last week the paperwork which has been distributed in person today this grant is it's been a few years since we qualified for it it's a justice is system grant and it's automatically awarded to communities based upon their population size and their part one crime rate so just because we got it doesn't mean we have a really bad crime rate it just means that we've based upon everyone else in vermont around the nation risen to a level and there's a formula they use and they simply notify you you've been awarded this grant now you just have to tell us how you're going to spend it one of the things that they require is an opportunity for the governing body to approve accepting it as well as an opportunity for any members of the public who may wish to weigh in on the proposed use of the money we are a small department are awarded this year eleven thousand six hundred sixty nine dollars so it's not a not a huge grant there's no no strings to it other than we have to tell them how we intend to spend it and then do it that way there's no match required it's very simple to receive there's an online form you just fill in the finance and submit it so my proposal is that with that eleven thousand six hundred sixty nine it can't be used to supplant it must supplement the budget in looking at the station and our future needs is that we have our security system our video monitoring and recording system which we frequently use not only to monitor the building visually but to record what takes place particularly in the prisoner handling and processing areas is in need of upgrade which runs twenty four hours a day seven days a week it's been in the building since we moved in in two thousand and ten so this was a perfect opportunity in the vendor that's all this the original system is willing to do the upgrade at a fifty percent cost if you can take the old equipment back to refurbish so that was sixty and i did give you the breakdown i apologize but that's sixty eight hundred dollars to replace our three digital digital video recorders that record the building so that's sixty eight hundred then my proposal is as we've worked hard with kevin in looking at the future here  at succession planning in the agency we're looking at a number of retirements continual retirements both in the upper echelon in the management as well as in the rank and file is that we want to make sure that we have poked folks well prepared well positioned to move forward in the agency so i've proposed thirty six hundred seventy dollars for leadership training that will take someone that's at the sergeant or a lieutenant level in advance them to our next series in our training regimen that we  put upper level managers through and then lastly to round out the dollar figure is and i think it goes over by twenty eight dollars twenty eight dollars from elsewhere in my budget is one thousand two hundred  twenty seven dollars for three forty caliber firearm side arms we have seen officers either smaller in frame or officers who are having issues because of the weight on the gun belt needing to either reposition or reduce the weight load on their gun belt and although i can't tell you how much i do know that the forty caliber is lighter in weight both in emission and weapon size than the forty five caliber most are ours which carry the forty five but we're seeing more of a desire a need to assign the forty caliber to the officers so we currently have none in the armory they've all been assigned so looking at just purchasing three of those to give us additional flexibility in the agency for now and in the future so  that runs us out to i think of eleven thousand six hundred and ninety seven dollars and the grant will cover the eleven thousand six hundred sixty nine so that's my proposal that's my request to use those funds  persons yours do they are the currently high def upgrades will be they are not the ones we have today are not high def or are able but not to do the cameras are not able to do cameras in decent now this is just the says so what this will mean is we will now have the capacity as we do replace cameras as they wear out and we have already spec'd out that there is two cameras in need of replacement in critical areas so those will be upgraded to which frankly i think are even less of a cost for the high def cameras than we paid for the original ones back in two thousand and ten group exists it gives us additional capability ok any other questions so we need a motion to prove this correct there's no members of the public wishing to comment just in case i just want to make sure i don't say ok all right thank you we put you off to the end and don't tell the government that this is the pit in the pan handling conversation i think all of us received a memorandum from andrew bolt do this afternoon  you really need to have the data that says evidence of financial harm right well right first you have to make it i think make it very clear what you what issue you're trying to solve and then that issue needs to have data behind it so you can measure it not just we don't like the looks of it but that it is hurting business or it's unsafe or whatever in my research what i've found is across the nation not just for mot but there'd been incredible litigation over panhandling ordinances with not a significant amount of success a lot of cost without much success but courts have been very vocal in that panhandling is a right of expression it's a first amendment right and absent as you said madam chair some extenuating circumstances or specific issues we can point to the general issue of panhandling is not one that's well managed by laws or ordinances so if you want i can kind of free speak some of my thoughts and when i pulled up for data this afternoon is that  panhandling off of it's an issue for us i don't know if i want to say it's a problem in that we get called about it often and just to look at statistics over the last three years in calendar year and fifteen we responded to one hundred thirty two complaints about panhandlers calendar year two thousand and sixteen there was a one hundred sixteen and then calendar year seventeen so we've still got one two and a half months here one to two and a half months where at one hundred forty five already so the highest year so far a majority of those are new since type calls there's somebody on the side of the road you know asking for money there's somebody standing outside shahs asking for money  some do go into more of a threat or a concern for safety many of them are just a concern for the behavior somebody is panhandling somebody is asking for money some of those the response is simply and that's their right to do so we're sorry you don't like them standing on the side of the road but as long as they're on public property and they haven't interfered with traffic then that's something they're allowed to do so i don't have a breakdown for you without opening each call which i didn't do today to find out which ones actually dove deeper and as you said if this is something where were the council wants to consider an ordinance then i think we obviously need to spend the time to look into each of those one hundred forty five calls and say what was the granular detail to it but generally from from my panhandling and what communities needed to think about and one of the majority of the discussion was about creating legislation or laws or ordinances and really a discussion or  suggestion that that should be kind of the last ditch effort unless you have significant issues where it's affecting commerce affecting business that the fact that you have panhandlers in your community you should look at other resources first  particularly the existing laws we have and we use frequently we have existing laws that say if you own the property and you don't want someone in your property we don't really care what they're doing you can ask them to leave so when we get the calls from shahs that someone standing under the awning outside the door asking people for money as they come out of shot says we don't want them on our property they own the property they can ask them to leave if the person refuses to leave we can then become an agent of and tell the person to leave if they don't leave after being told then they can be arrested for trespassing we use this regulation and a different flavor of it at the end of one eighty nine when eighty nine is a federal interstate part of the federal interstate highway system there's a blanket regulation that on federal interstate highways you can't have pedestrians horses bicycles so be it so when someone is standing on the exit ramp from one eighty nine that's part of the federal interstate highway system so there's already a regulation in place that says you can't do that that include the sidewalk though that would include the sidewalk is out on shelburne road it's not on when eighty nine so if there are a sidewalk they now have entered on to public property so that motor vehicle traffic so if someone is stepping out into the roadway to receive a donation and they're blocking traffic the traffic if the traffic is stopped and it's not on the interstate highway it's on the regular city or stay highway th if the traffic is stopped probably not a violation for them to step out and receive a donation if traffic is flowing they stop out in traffic stops just to interface with this person asking for money that would be a violation if they're on the sidewalk and someone is bicycling or walking by and they can't get by because they've set up their donation booth that's a violation you can't block pedestrian traffic so many times we dislocate people we occasionally we arrest people arrest is difficult because with the criminal justice system we currently have and the struggles we have in the system when we bring someone in because they were receiving a donation on the side of the road and they caused traffic to slow down it doesn't get top priority there are more serious things taking place in our criminal justice system right now so we try by moving people from property that is public we tried by you know encouraging businesses to call us or encouraging these folks to find a safe place to ask for their donations but there's also other things that i think we need to look at we have not done public campaign it's recommended although the outcomes have been not stellar and that is to educate the public that giving money is a problem from a couple different directions one if you're driving down the road and you put the brakes on the hand somebody money could cause a crash you could interfere with the free and safe movement of traffic but also many times not to pass judgment but we don't know what these folks are using the money for is it really to their benefit to give them cash if they're struggling with an addiction problem and they're using that cash to further their substance of choice i'm not sure that that's necessarily benefiting them in many ways that people might think they are and so this person is hungry they need food when if you and not the broad brush folks but we know that we do have some folks in our community that their goal is to save enough money to get their next quarter beer it's not providing sustenance for their living it's not providing food for them or proper nutrition so you know there is the opportunity potential to try to educate the public that if you want to help these folks then you should interface with some of our social services entities that provide support and assistance for people that need housing for people that need addiction treatment for people that need help with food of food shelf or something you know burlington has tried that with i don't know if they're still there but for a period of time they had that one of them look like a serpent but they had a donation box on church street if you want to help the homeless or you want to help the people that are hungry give you donations here and then they can go to these agencies to get some help so that's that's a little bit more effort there some communities have actually encouraged people to actually buy vouchers and give them to folks to say ok i'm not going to give you cash that might be used for who knows what i'm going to give you five dollars gift card to shah's but somehow there's going to be an indicator on the gift card that it can't be used for  back or alcohol can only be used for food but then some communities have seen folks that barter those for cash so that they can get whatever their need happens to be so you know that's there is some opportunity to  do a better job of educating the public to say if you want to help here's the more advantageous way to help certainly i think one thing to think about for the future and i think about cities and i think about a lot of things less than good but as we think about city center in others that brings challenges that brings challenges to a community that we don't have now parking is an issue but certainly this type of behavior is what does it mean to someone who may wish to panhandle and you know what i hope and we have good planners here we have good visionary folks is that as we design and as we look forward to the layout of a city center is to design it such that it minimizes opportunity for this type of activity or behavior you know there's a program it's  our planners know all about it cept had crime prevention through environmental design so that we design things in such a way so that there aren't easy places to sit or to hang out or to you know to have this opportunity transpire it's more mobile it's more people moving it's you know one community talked about how they designed it such that in these areas that might be prime for pin handling they're also prime for street performers so they encourage street performers to set up shop in these areas where lawyers were and it really kind of chased them out and it was an advantageous for them to be here cause people are coming to watch the street performers and not thinking about giving them money so that was helpful and then lastly and kind of my  rambling here is that to also focus upon what we are doing in under kevin's guidance and encouragement as we as a community are focusing on some of the behind the scenes issues that some behind the scenes really look that are putting people in a position to panhandle some of them addiction some of them through do we have the appropriate resources engagement to help people or to help people to understand where they can go for help when we look at the  exciting and i think it's a reality it's not if it's when and i think very soon land that we will have mental health providers embedded in the police department who can go out and interface with some of these folks and talk to them about if you need help whatever that help might be it might be truly for food or it might be you've got an addiction that you're having to feed is that here's where we can go and here's how we can help facilitate you getting that help so that maybe you don't have to stand on the corner and beg for money for whatever and i think you know we've seen some good benefit through beacon place when we talk about you know many folks down there who are homeless who are living in the woods who were our folks that were on the side of the road looking for money to buy food or to buy whatever their addiction need was now their house now they have on site help a beacon to help them to figure out how do i get food if i'm struggling with addiction how do i get help and i think the more we do to propel provide in facilitate that type of support the fewer folks that will have on the side of the road looking for money so there's a whole multi faceted approach to this but really and then entered did share with me the memo and i would encourage the consul to really think of you know creating something new as an foresman mechanism is to really put some deep thought into that you know and to look at do we have the data to show that it's an economic impediment to have this i'm not sure that we can show that right now i don't think we have the data to support that  and frankly if we did create a new ordinance and we talked about this as i was arriving in south burlington in two thousand and six the council was just formalizing what we have now is our  nuisance ordinance and there was a clause included in that for panhandling was quickly removed because the issues are the exact same today that they were in two thousand and six it was discussed and for many of the reasons we've talked about today it was under then chuck after it was pushed aside to say we just don't think this is the right thing to do right now and the challenges still exist the challenges are as much as they were and then there's no more movement to say we should use the courts to criminal panhandling the courts have continued to say across the nation that we don't support panhandling ordinances unless there's very specific reasons specific things that we're trying to target as far as how it impacts the you know the economy individual businesses or public safety and i think that when we have those panhandlers that are directly impacting public safety we do have some current legal tools at our disposal to help us with that yes and yes cyclical and it moves the more attention we place it in one spot and we get more calls and we spend our officers spend more time in gauging their they move and they move over here i don't know if they want to say it on public t v but as of the last month there's a new hot spot in town and i don't know if it was recently identified by some of the panhandlers that the folks that go there seem to be more generous than other areas of town and we've actually had some interaction where there's a little jockeying for space over there right now it's been lucrative to them so but you know a sign in that area and i suppose we could even move sounds move them as we need them and i think that because some of it is public education to say you know just buy in your heart you might think oh this person the sign says i need money and  know a disabled veteran or something you're going to give them five dollars to some that may help them get food to some it doesn't it just continues the cycle of trouble that they're in so it is something to consider any other comments or thoughts like that donation i think we think about actually the city center that yeah yeah yeah so if you had to give advice to the citizens of the city now who might be upset or concerned should they just call the four six one one number and register their complaint and give the location and time and if this is a safety concern if there's a secret history we can't address simply someone panhandling period it's not against a lot of panhandle now if they're on your property right call us if they're creating a safety hazard now and i did not discuss and we don't often have these complaints but occasionally the aggressive panhandling the somebody who tries to intimidate someone we don't have the literature calls it squeegee men but we don't have the people that run out and clean your windshield and then demand you pay them for it yet hopefully hopefully we won't have but but yes certainly folks folks should call for that but also folks should be aware and anyone that is watching this recording should be aware that by giving to folks who are panhandling you are continuing the problem and not the fault people have good intentions but if people didn't give money then there would be no benefit to pay and i would encourage anyone who wishes to help the homeless to help those in need to go to our social services directory to you know to google to simply look for social service agencies intending county who are helping people who are homeless or helping people who are hungry and make a donation to them because then we know that that money is being used appropriately to help someone in a questions one have you found a lot of safety issues that you need to respond to me out of the one hundred forty five complaint this year give money or else i don't think anybody's jumping out in front of fifty mile an hour traffic but yes generally at all at a lower level of safety the fact that it's a distraction the fact that traffic is moving in now there's they're stopping or slowing traffic to get usually they ask us to do it on their behalf many times a property owner isn't cultural to go out and say hey i want you to leave they'll call us and say hey i want him to leave and that's that's fine they do we're happy to facilitate yes i'm not sure that we've ever had a property owner that has said no no no just leave him alone i want them to be here and i don't think we've found anyone like that there are some who haven't called but if we see an issue where a person may be on private property and whatever they're doing is making people uncomfortable or they're obstructing traffic or pedestrian flow then we can go to that we do this with homeless encampments many times would go to the property owner and say hey we've had a complaint from a citizen that this person is here do you want them here or would you like us suggested that we need ordinance to make it illegal no because if it's a property owner and they're on their property it is illegal we can move them we can use the trespass statute to say you're on private property the property want you here leave or we'll take it with us this is one of the right ways of speaking the owners is not correct the city cannot be the property owner because that is public property that's open to the use of the general public unless it causes a safety hazard or we can make a case that the because of those pin handlers people aren't going into the university mall too and that's affecting jobs and are rea education campaign yeah yeah yeah any other questions for trevor thank you very much and nine i'm with you tom i read andrus and i thought well this is be opening and of worms a couple lawsuits and why they did it if i thought it would help i would be the first one to say no please give us a new ordinance but when i look at the struggles burlington has had with some of their local ordinances these are fine bass tickets you know the civil system is a fine based ticket and when you're talking with someone who doesn't and means already to quote my good friend brand in the puzzle we're going to give a bad credit report and frankly the folks standing on the side of the rather than asking for money don't really care about their credit report and then i kind of they're not going to pay a fine so carrying a sign that says help me pay off my previous fines right yeah  them are similar to what we've had in the past and i always start with the biggest one and it's the c i p projects and as we look at the c i p as it exists right now  kevin noted earlier we're still in the process of review with the different department managers for the c h p we're at a four hundred thirty eight thousand dollar increase as it's currently proposed and we know we're not going to be able to find all those and department managers know that all of them are going to get funded but anyway that that's in the review process right now they're all good projects they're all good things it's just that we're not going to be able to more all at once and that's a significant increase that's an increase in the general fund over last year in terms of what was in the c o p the next item is the stewardship plan this is something that we have been putting seventy five thousand dollars in i know justin has advocated for an increase in it and and this is the care and maintenance of our facilities and  we've we've kind of set a goal to be at one hundred twenty five thousand dollars maybe we can't jump all that distance in one year but we're going to be looking to try to increase that a little bit if we can the same thing with our sick bank dollars this is long term liability that we have in our books is ron talks about each year when he's here with the odd it and we're currently putting one hundred twenty five thousand to  really maintaining that fund it's not decreasing the amount of the long term but it's not making it worse where at one twenty five he's recommended two hundred thousand dollars again maybe it's something that we could incrementally get to a health insurance increase this year we're looking at a twelve percent increase in health care insurance that's two hundred seventy five thousand  pretty significant increase there and then for a contractual agreement between stepping crease in the cola probably two hundred eighty eight thousand dollars  so we're up just over a million dollars talking about these kinds of things right now the approximate increase in the grand list is anticipated to be about one and a quarter percent that would generate three hundred  seventy five thousand dollars for us we're only retiring about twenty one thousand dollars in long term debt we don't have a big bond that's dropping off this year but some of the debts going down so we're just under hundred thousand dollars in terms of additional revenue sources so we've got just over seven hundred thousand dollars of proposed increase that we know kind of exists on the book and that's without going into the general fund budget itself and you know are we looking at a bike unpaid coordinator you know is is just going to bring that forward if we are we looking at any other positions and we know there's going to be some movement within the general fund of just some things they're going to go out some things are going to come down but overall there probably be a slight increase in operational costs as well so just with what i've outlined here  that's that's about a three point seven seven percent increase in the tax rate over last year if everything i just spoke to you about got funded at the higher level friend he talked about in his r i p plan with the chief where we've been working with him on some secession planning i've have to see where that's actually the case because long term dollars i have a hard time understanding that that would be beneficial the judge just in terms of what we're faced with with benefits and the pension program and i think that would be difficult to be able to accommodate so we remain open having those conversations that the chief actually comes in tomorrow to discuss his see ip with us and perhaps we'll have some h r a p recommendations as well few years as i'm sure you remember spent pretty steady at five seventy five and we've tried to show it it could go to six hundred in fact in your c a p from last year it shows twenty five thousand dollar increment out the next ten years and we'd recommend that we start with that because it will give justin some additional money that that some of the things you saw tonight would give him some additional paving money that his guys could do or he could add to a contract for roads that would allow him to keep up a little bit better on the maintenance of pass as well i mean the bombs dropping off in the next three years not significant you know we have twenty one thousand of savings that we're go year but that's just because the in the amount as gone down so there's less we're paying in the interest we graduated six fundamental is the one twenty five from the previous year and now it's that's kind of stayed steady for the last couple years as well so we would like to write right we like to try to up that bit so you know of this seven hundred thirty thousand dollar difference i know we can't make that full  and i think what you'll see from us here you'll actually see the c i p presentation from department managers at your next meeting on the six and at that point it will include the reductions that kevin and i propose and that's also an opportunity for them to again address that with you if they'd like to see something added back in which we encourage them to do so we're trying to get that to you is as much whatever so how do you plan for a budget for it why nineteen if you don't know what the contracts are going to be so we know that the staff is in the classification plan so we know that's a part of it the  is always the negotiated part of it tim and we don't know where we're actually given the a pretty conservative number here and that's you know depending on what we can fit into it's it's yeah where are you looking for i think we're looking for a general sense of the council just in terms of what you feel the appetite of the community is whereas cognisant as you are of a couple of school board votes going being defeated we we've been at a little under a barely under three percent for the last two years though it  worrisome part of that for me is that we came out thirty five thousand to the good that's mean exact that is as close close as i've ever like to see it and the fact that we're not putting anything back on our balance sheet you know it's the first thing you're going to hear from ron this year is you know you might have finished the year ok but you know you're still eight hundred ninety seven thousand dollars towards one point seven million of having thirty days of fully operational expenses set aside for a catastrophe so we still need some kind of a stabilization fund i would love to see us be able to put that into the operating budget in the general fund this year at least something that's designated that if we have a balance at the end of the year that's great but the stabilization fund would get added to that and help us get there and years this is the third time i think we've had this conversation that i've been on this morning and you come into round two of three and we give you guidance to try to get along that three percent i don't remember where you came in this initial conversation the previous two years but one thing that i thought was helpful in previous years was if we needed to get below three percent at this tentative outset what does point seven seven percent represent dollar wise well that's that's just the increase in these big items here as it has nothing to do with the operational costs in the general fund get for any additional positions that might be proposed to give so three percent thinking how much do we need to tighten our belts because that three hundred thousand  us that close you know the three percent increase and i think that i think not only is that a guy for us i think that we can speak that to the public that that that was as close as we could probably make it work in three point something might be able to give us a stabilization fund or might be able to get us a little bit more in the paving budget and then until we to we work out the whole general fund then we add in all  and we switched our property liability and workers comp insurance last year that was a significant savings to us and fortunately that helped us a lot to help  some of the other increases that we have for a washer but anyway just going to identify some of the cost drivers there similar to what we cut in the past i think we can make some headway i know we can do jumps like going from one twenty five to two hundred thousand in the six banks but we might be able to go to one fifty we might be able to go to one hundred thousand in the stewardship plan but probably not to one twenty five and  four thirty eight in the in the c i p is is definitely higher than i know we can be we're probably going to be somewhere around three hundred thousand in that in that c r p project find to be able to be i'm preparing an options paper for you guys with multiple different variations i mean that's that's the other side of balancing act i guess and we have this one you know no well they have a two year contract right across the street across three you know i think i don't know what increase if any they will be that it's probably not going to be much less than that and we'll try to keep it as close to that as we can ultimately you have the say in the adoption of the budget in terms of what that final numbers are going to be and i think that's the guidance that we're really looking for i'm hoping that you're not thinking that it needs to be less than three percent because i think that's a challenge that would be really difficult for us to meet i personally  reasonable to me ok this leads to fourteen which is you know what do we want to do around our service social service funding i mean it's not going to balance the budget that's for sure but you know one of the conversations or one of the thoughts was should we committee where they can dive into all the applicants and come forward with a recommendation as to what was the most deserving of our very finite and limited resources with the amount that we set i think that's how high i don't know i called town managers in years past i think that's how always viewed this as your as as however you want to do this is totally up to you we don't we don't really care that way there's a block of money for you to decide what we want to raise this year with you is is do you would you prefer to try to concentrate on fewer organizations that have a desirable direct impact right in south rowing to and particularly with issues that are critical and stop borrowing today not that all the rest of them aren't dealing with probably glean from the list pretty quickly which ones we think are probably not directly influencing you know issues that affect the city that would not be hard to do i think i mean because because we have certain crises  i mean and we i mean we could consider for this year at least you know we'll do a one year review of that of that list retain the list for the next year in review again but i mean i'm i'm not opposed to reviewing the recipients and i mean all right i think that maybe centrist and just because the hose got filled for ten years as i mean it's always filled you know to each individual  amount as the amount for social services every year and that sort of puts in place the no dollar figure for them to appropriate out in the community is that aware of how much is charitable so to speak of their tax dollars to the what the general fund taxes are based on do you take it off what the whole general fund is so if you get your percentage of a lot of different ways i mean do you take all our accumulated funds and take a percentage of that so i think it's a matter of coming up with a dollar value that you're comfortable with and i think i'm i think that would be easier and then we've sent the recipient list out  why don't the little homework my before each of us to look through this and see if there's a way we want to winnow it down and  identify i mean i think last time we talked about programs that really affect our shoulder in and then mental health and opi diction services and then the other i think hundred drive the planning commission looked at it looked at comparable uses that are already allowed in that area offices light industry etc they felt that something like this would be  essentially induced indistinguishable from that they look to see how is it different in terms of something like the satellite dishes satellite dishes would be considered accessories structures and so would need to be placed behind the buildings  they confirmed with those who've expressed interest that that would be that that that would work because we don't want to go through a then when then have them say oh that doesn't work and they said that's just fine for their site lines over two months feel so commission had  no heartache with it and has recommended to accept it and staff is accepted for public hearing staff is recommending that to warn a public hearing for monday november twentieth at a time of your choosing seven o'clock or whenever you want to do  they're going to do you know can we said that later than seven cuz any time you want proposals i would like is to have executive session first you know before so i don't want to be ten minutes away from oh make a motion oh i'm sorry i move that we want a public hearing on proposed land development regulations concerning t v stations and studios in the media radio stations in the region which one expenditures are at twenty six we're tracking while i i focused more in terms of what i sent you with the narratives for the end of the fiscal year and hope that you found those helpful and you continue to be open unable to fully accomplish that but that was part of what we had set out to do hoping that that was it going to be a balance money in money you know type of thing so that's why it's hit the city for us line then we all of them must including the dogs and the stormwater miscellaneous now i can't remember how time response we i think it all was the grants come in and then allows them to do more projects and as you as you saw in the storm water expenses were forty six percent spent just in three months you know were there were really busy they got a lot of big things going on but and why do we get it for the p f away why does that not become a federal government reimbursement  i don't know if you have the answer to that kevin i i'm not sure why it's assigned to seventy thousand dollars more we have to do for water testing now might be at the plant the lan said it was because of the p f away so they want us to do more testing elsewhere to make sure there's no infiltration or no find one get an answer to that question and i want to speculate on what that might be my taking it a negotiating or securing a real estate purchase or lease options and then we going that we have another one for appointments to city boards committees and commissions for people be involved or the executive session is what i would ask so they can make the motion you have to list them that we have as if they need to be in the executive session but before we do that i'm just wondering