one thing on page two hundred number five airport governance resolution and the first sentence reads bob above a block presented facts on the airport and the relationship with the city of south burlington and i just wonder if  the best word to use that information yes i that's i thought either information or data would be better choices that one wishing to make comments and  in support of the resolution that you have before you regarding the governance structure for the airport i'm not here for any one particular reason except to say that  governor governor the governance system or the governance program or the governance oversight for any entity i think is critically important when it provides public service i think in particular of  solid waste district our regional planning commission our water district our town itself and that having a governance structure that is representative of the  by or in fact in one case the location of the airport because very important this isn't for or against one or another municipality rather i believe that as we all know depends on accountability and is on oversight and having more than one entity overseeing the airport as it as it now is overseen i think is worthy of a discussion i'm not here to say that there should be a new governance structure i am saying from my experience that it should be evaluated and at least looked at and discussed and have a conversation between amongst the municipalities that are affected by by the airport whether it's an economic effect a development a fact  mitigation effect whatever it is some some common understanding of the rules i think are critically important we don't know that things will stay as they are today they could change you know to to seriously consider supporting the resolution and going forward and i know that i have heard from a lot of different folks and one of the comments that i've heard is well let's send it to the legislature please do not send it to the light here without the prior discussion you know that would be more of a problem i think than we could imagine without going into detail so  that's my only comment thank you for giving me the opportunity i have read the resolution when we pass resolutions in the state house the whereas clauses are not the effective clauses the effective clauses are the resolved clauses so those are the ones as you well know that would be important to the town of will of stand there's nothing binding it's simply opening up a a process a little conflict of interest ordinance if a person has a good what they think is a good case that a person has a conflict of interest rather than they should file that with the board of civil know the person agrees that he has a cot to conflict of interest on certain things he has recused himself there was one thing that was mentioned that he did not follow and i think others probably have not followed the ordinance when they say they have a conflict of interest that they have to specify what that conflict of interest is and he agreed that he had it not them that would not would vermont as well as the federal holidays and rick and i after we looked at this but our holidays seemed fair and consistent with what other municipalities are doing and we didn't recommend any changes this time second time through this we had some comments that we made two weeks ago regarding the policy and people finally with the answers that we received and if they are financial report you have a copy there is really much remarkable about their boards it's early in the fiscal year there was one question that came up before the meeting started about the paving costs and i checked our budget for this year our budget is about four hundred me if this is what we're talking about when we have a pavement it's not a policy but a perceived which roads are value way us ranked and selected for paving in the conceptus try to stay ahead as much as we can of letting roads deteriorate to poorly before we have to go in and spend a lot of money to fix no i wasn't suggesting we weren't we just wanted to know that we budgeted the money that we're spending y the first round of interviews scheduled for to mention we have finally a date for the swearing in of our new police chief it's going to be on monday oct sixteenth at ten a m it will be held over at the in the play station yeah i expect actually a good crowd and i'm going to be sending out an invitation and a press release so all the board members here are invited and i'm just sure they'll be family members for the chief with a good representation from our department as well as hopefully some community members as  we're in the process of gearing up for that we're also in the process of hiring a firefighter we had an open position and we should have that fill it within a matter of week or two so we're making good progress on that there is an airport noways compatibility program update of the we've received a letter from gene richards who is asking if the town would like to have a representative on this committee their first meeting sounds not like not a lot but you need to know in what context thirteen gallons per minute is compared to what's the fireflies five hundred thought it was five hundred it was forty seven was what they measured in the and i just thought if you have like a hundred should be mentioned also because in that right so you have a memo and a little bit of cash information for me quest for the select board to adopt a resolution authorizing the town's application for a designated village center center might be oh it's slightly less familiar concept to the board than our growth center which serves gets more of the attention our growth center is the area around taft corners where the town has committed to have most of its new commercial industrial and residential growth happened over the next ten years it was a twenty year commitment when it was originally stablished village center designation is another state designation that comes out of the same office as growth center designation so it's processed through the agency of com commerce q development and approval is gained from the downtown board just like a growth center and what village center does broadly is provides access t v commercial landowners tax incentives for the restoration code upgrade and facade improvement of historic structures within that designated boundary there's also some priority consideration the state gives one citing new facilities to designated village centers there's some priority consideration for state grants related to projects that are in a designated village center and within a quarter mile of the boundary of a designated village center a private party can propose what's called a neighborhood development area in essence gaining a little bit of relief from agency of natural resources project review fees for consideration under act two fifty for development that supports an existing designated killers so the other thing about village centers in williston is at the time that ours was originally established toward the end of two thousand and five the downtown board felt that it was very important under statute that allowed for growth center that a growth center be connected to and in support of a designated village  center so there's this sort of twinning of the to where to have a growth center in willesden by statute you should have it supporting something that's more like a traditional village center there's also some findings when you provide growth center about finding that the expected growth in town would not be accommodated in an existing village center which if you were to compare the two you and see that it that it wouldn't the the other part of that is that  there should be some sort of geographic connection between the two i've sort of updated that conversation with the a c c the staff over the last few days in that our village center boundary which is the dark orange boundary on the map i provided for you folks does not go all the way down the hill to the search highway right of way our village zoning district does and on the other side of that circle a right of way is the growth center there's a few other things about the boundary that may change a little bit from what i'm showing you is my draft boundary right now reason for that is we had a approved village center the village center designation lapsed recently because we didn't  approved town plan so this application is actually to read designate or designate a new village center and my understanding from the staff of the downtown board is they're interested in focusing that village center boundary a little bit and that that goal might be a little bit in tension with the goal of having the boundary as close to the edge of the growth center as it once was so what i'm talking about here is the western boundary especially as it comes out to encompass the catholic church and most most everything sort of from whitney hill road maple road west we'll see how it goes with the downtown board my preliminary conversation with staff for them was yeah given your growth center and given the extension of sidewalk as far out as the church we think it makes some logical sense to keep that but probably for the boundary to be a little more linear and go no more than one lot deep along williston road back to o a road in the federated church on the other and so the boundary i'm showing you is is our proposed boundary it has been recommended we adjust it little a but smaller going forward so is this the boundary that existed yes the boundary i'm showing you right now is the boundary that was approved under our designation renewal in two thousand and eleven and they're suggesting you shrink it a little bit yes review which is in yellow on the map you gave us so if the boundaries the same why is there something called additional review where you don't get that sure of all the parts of town that have boundaries related to our regulatory process the village has the most that overlay one i don't i get what ok i get what that is i'm sorry yes no that's that's related to design review before the development review board i have a couple questions about i don't know if you're going to go over the benefit of the program benefits or not i can i can answer some more specific questions if you have them so as you were talking you were mentioning some of the benefits of being a designated village  mentioned commercial properties are the only ones that get the can get the credits so that we're in the only thing that residents can receive is this neighborhood development area is that yeah i didn't see that in the in the flyer or maybe this is something you put together yourself so the flyer talks about neighborhood development area n d a eligibility down near the bottom that's a that's a relatively new thing it would generally be developer driven so it would be somebody who had a project on the fringe of a designated village who wanted to go to the state say i think my development deserves some some consideration based on its proximity to and support of a village it doesn't give somebody any relief from local zoning ordinances or or having to comply with anything the town has in terms of regulatory and you're correct the tax benefits are all for non residential commercial properties and profit as well or just commercial i'm not sure because i've not watched anybody actually go through the process to access one of these i know for sure that it's it's commercial  nobody's taking advantage of it between the two thousand and six and sixteen and not getting help i'll clarify on the nonprofit thing you have to otoh axes to get some credit against them so that's an excellent point yeah  ok talk a little bit about when we get back to the boundary and i'm just curious there are a little you know it's basically a linear boundary you mentioned the one property one lot off of route to williston road but there are places where there are exceptions to that along maple road down the mountain and sorry north williston road a bit he just talk about why those are there well my short answer is they they were there when the grove the village center was originally applied for in no over five yeah for my time i think there was an attempt to capture a couple of supporting older historic houses in particular you know that this entire zoning district is a mixed use district so under the two major was certain structures that aren't right on most road could be proposed for a non residential use and i think probably the drafters look at a few of those properties and also look at extending out you know when you go up north williston road just taking it one lot deep on north western road to the to the zoning boundary but a key thing is its consistency with what it was previously ok and then just i think the my last question is the the school is not  included in his or any benefit to having it included i believe that it isn't included partially to maintain that sort of one light deep pattern secondarily to exclude a non historic structure centrally you know calling the school more modern structure and thirdly that the school wouldn't likely have access to the tax benefits although i suppose you know that location of a state facility criteria could apply if you had an empty school for example which we have no thoughts of right now rice it would be and the same would the same type of fans would hold true for the community park also correct yeah this is really about  structures and that built environment on the street there are grants to so it's not just tax credits or grants those commercial as well and not the homeowner well so some of the some of the grants are actually also available minas bill planning grant consideration and some of the community development grants vermont bike pad transportation alternative grants those are things that the town or the town in partnership with the major mining commission might i don't you know i think after the conversation i had most recently that suggests we keep that western boundary where it is around the immaculate heart of mary church you might see a couple of single family residential properties to the east come out in other words if you look at those green dots on the eastern end one of the conversations i had with staff was to end that at the federated church property the church and the parson which building that's multifamily it sounds like from their staff that the board has simply looked more favorably on village boundaries that really concentrate on the civic and commercial core of the village and don't include all of your concentration of single family or any reason expect we won't be able to get the designation i haven't been given any by the staff and their preliminary review no thank you for the questions from it just disappointing nobody takes advantage of it so it's if you put the work in to do it it seems like it's maybe we don't advertise it enough i think that's probably true and we do need to do a better job and i think that is something we plan to do it's are changes so the down three i'm showing is our proposed boundary i will show that boundary to the down the current board and i will also show them what i understand the boundary might be based on the conversation with staff but in the end it is up to that it so rick asked me to do some investigation and to ask the conservation commission to make a recommendation on whether the t and and walked the property and so what you have there is a bunch of pictures i took while i was out there corresponding to those points on a map just to give you an idea of what the property looks property so there is potential for some recreational use back there where the town to quire there currently is no access to the property from a public road so that  one of the downsides of this piece of property is that there would need to be some investigation into you know getting potential access the conservation commission looked at this proposal and were in support of it they recommended that the town except the donation of land however they would like to investigate  further access potential access to the property as well as they're recommending that the town have a phase one environmental assessment conducted just as is due diligence before the property is getting to the town they ask is their motivation for the property to be donated is it unusable in any other way just curious why my understanding is because of the lack of access to the property  makes developing it quite challenging i mean there would need to be some access in order for it to get developed in any way so you know they've tried to get any kind of  given i mean one of the reasons i mean you mention the wildlife habitat and that it's a corridor and that's a reason to protect the land but there's also the concept of having public access to it you know and it sounds like there's some pretty nice trails already on it that somebody has has has has put in but the latter piece ounds like it's going to be very problematic in terms of getting public access to this land so i guess my question is along the lines of how much of a deal breaker is that in my opinion  and i think the conservation commission shares this opinion i mean although recreational access would be desirable it is i think worth protecting that piece of land because you know it is right alongside the river although it's not in the floodplain so it you know it doesn't have the regulatory constraints that would protect it from the bill and even though right now it seem s difficult to develop we don't do we lose any tax revenue hundred four dollars thirty four dollars and  was about eighty acres and we at the time did not have access to that and we still have access but we're working on it and i think we eventually will gain access to the parcel land and so the town is going to be around a lot longer than most of us so i think eventually the tower will be able to work those things out but so we don't lose anything we might not gain anything immediately but eventually it's still conservative and it's not going to be  future trails so while the trail that's on the property isn't aligned with those desired feature trails it is in an area of town that is currently not really served with printed halves that are public was used to help us organize our thoughts on this but that was never passed by the south religion city council what was passed is this one page short concise document short concise document which calls for three it resolves which asks the city of burlington city council to just explore the conversation take action on the recommendation from their airport strategic planning committee from two thousand and thirteen and if they don't do so it just asks for the legislature i believe to be the governor led by encourage you to consider the shore and resolution of this church and mentioned the city council has adopted that resolution one of the things we really want to emphasize in this conversation broadly is that we see the airport as an amazing community asset it is a strong asset it is and critically important to the future not only of the new scheme but of the region and the state as a whole we as communities are having lots of conversations about governance structures and regionalization and how we best support one another whether it's around solid waste or water or right now public safety dispatch we believe that it's very important to always think about how we best support one another  its success you know when you are currently completing an economic development strategic plan and we hear over and over again what an asset the airport is to us having said that we are neighbors are very impacted by the airport and currently have no  in decisions made about the airport their port strength comes from all of the users all of the federal tax payers we are all part of that success and we would like our neighbors to be represented in decision making as it comes for having said that what we're asking for right now is a conversation to bring thought leaders together to have a conversation about what a few future governance structure could look like and how we strengthen it as an asset that is all we're asking for and happy to answer  my primary question isn't the same question i mean we we tossed around last time i was having a seat at the table you know and it is one of those things that everybody wants to have maybe until they get there so but in this particular in this particular situation what do you think it will affect or change for the airport from amusement perspective from an asset perspective just i'm just curious when you when you talked about this with  the counselors what kinds of ideas digitals around because we couldn't come up with a nice solid items when we talked about it last time we just don't know enough about it  expect so again from what we're asking for right now is solely a conversation to bring the minds to the table to have a conversation about what a future governance structure looks like certainly in the adoption of this resolution doesn't put anyone's thumb on the scale of what that should be it's simply there are models of municipal and regional airports across the country and shouldn't we look at some of those and think about best but making the assumption that our community will advocate for a regional governance model i think one of the primary benefits of that  that the council of new sees is that currently we are very impacted by the airport we get in my office we get several complaints questions suggestions about the airport regularly right now i have no one to point to  say this is your elected or appointed rez representative who is who participates in that decision making process right now centrally the sole decision maker up on the airport on the airport is the mare burlington who is doing a fantastic job running the airport our residents are very affected they have no representation and we believe that as important decisions are made about this assets are our community should be represented in that decision making process so can noise on the positive side the airport is seen as a huge community community asset as i mentioned from an economic development standpoint we see businesses come to town because they can be at the airport in five minutes and that seen as an asset i think there are also ways to strengthen the connection between our community and the airport so you go to other regional airports across the country and you might see promotions about communities of many communities and i think there's ways that we can better support all of the communities in the region of course they do an excellent job supporting the ski industry as they should continue to do rather recreation and in vermont i think there are lots of positive ways we could have an influence as well as helping our residents feel like the i think jesse mentioned a lot of the current impacts but we also don't know what could come down the future changes for changes to the airport that could impact any of our communities and that's why i think this conversation is so important  and i think one of the things that center alliance who spoke during public comment one of the things she said that really resonated with me is the general concept that governance should be representative of the people who are impacted  i think like jesse mentioned for all of our communities there is an impact that the airport has which includes the positive quality of life impact of being located close to a successful airport and i think that the airport  is sick has significant economic importance for our communities locally as well as state wide and so ensuring long term viability and sustainability of the airport is really crucial to our communities as well so like both senator lyons and jesse you mentioned really this resolution is opening the door to figure out how do we get the appropriate people to the table so i strongly urge passage of the resolution and thanks so much for your time tonight and putting thought into th committee or let's say did they just the resolution passes they decide not to and the governor decides to form a committee what would what would you view as the charge of that committee that committee so we would welcome burlington establishing this committee and that you know it's the ultimate positive outcome for us the charge of that group in our minds is to convene thought leaders from across the communities as well as the business business sector and other interested parties and look at what other governance governance models exist in the nation there are lots of different examples of municipal airports that have financed boards where each community is representative represented there are examples of true regional airports i'm sure we can all think of them to explore those options and explore what it would mean for burlington for the burlington international airport what it would mean in terms of operations and assets and equipment and then to bring back a recommendation to the relevant communities the rebel the decision makers to move forward or not it's very similar to what rick and i are currently participating  the joint survey committee regarding public safety dispatch so there's the governance but there's also i don't think or can you i'm asking the question because i don't know the answer can you separate from that the ownership of the airport and you separate the governance from the ownership right if you if you change the governments does it mean you have to change the ownership is it possible to change the governance without changing the ownership i believe it is there are examples as i mentioned of meanness a poll airports whose decision making body has represent has the decision making body has representatives from other interested parties  questions that's actually one of the key issues that i keep struggling with this as we look at this is that one of the whereas portions of the proposed resolution says whereas the city of burlington holds a quote title unquote to the cia but it does not quote own unquote b i in a classic sense of having paid for it through taxpayer investments and it goes on this is this is the thing i struggle with if i have a family member who marries somebody and they say i have a brother and he marries he marries a woman and the deeply in love and they're very happy and then she comes into money from her side of the family through an inheritance she now owns title to it but in the classic sense she didn't pay for that she just has it can i take that from was is that the burlington taxpayers have the ability to international airport is an enterprise fund of the city special revenue fund of the city of burlington so burlington taxpayers don't pay for the airport the fees associated with operating the airport pays for the airport as well as significant subs significant funding from the f a a f a a so any and that's been in place for decades so they don't pay for it spares of burlington have not paid for the airport and that's that's significant that is very significant to me because what that means is that my residents who fly in and out of burlington airport and pay their fees associate with that ticket are paying for the airport and my residents who are paying federal taxes that go to the a are paying for the airport the city the taxpayers of burlington my understanding is since the late forty's early fifty's have not contributed property tax dollars to the airport therefore the success of that airport and  the great asset it currently is has been paid for on the backs of all of our residents we all share in that success and therefore we should all share in the representation as decisions are made about it but you're not following   i think i think you want me to say no and i'm not saying that our regional governance model would take any asset i think part of this conversation would be if we decide that a regional governance model is preferable to the majority of the one hundred fifty hundred sixty thousand people that live in our region what would that transition structure look like is there some is there a transfer of assets what about the land what about the equipment what about any existing debt what about contracts what about agreements there are many many questions that would have to be answered as part of that i'm certainly not suggesting nor was there ever a conversation at our council level that just transference would happen it would be done in the region would only asset there would be a transition plan associate and that's reassuring to me however the language that i'm confronted with here does talk about and these are in quotes and that has meaning when something's put in quotes i mean you don't want to put quotes on the wrong thing because it changes the meaning if i am selling fresh meat store i'm not going to say this meat is fresh in quotes because it's going to mean it's going to mean a different thing ok so quotes mean something so whereas the city of bromley can hold its holds quote the speaking for my council our belief in that why that whereas section is important is again the the people one could argue that the people who have contributed to the cost of operating the airport are are are all the use that rest of the airport over the last decades and therefore ownership by paying your rent or your mortgage for a period of fifty years do i have a case to say i have ownership in frustration on our council side that those voices are not heard at the table and i know you're right about that this is a very specific point the global issue is is bigger than this one point i fully acknowledge that  but it does it does give me pause that that's in there i think for me and considering this resolution that points to the clear need of a larger discussion around  representation i do also think there is an economic commission work to examine a new governance model and that work to include some form of transition of ownership in the future and understanding that the cost of the airport is an enterprise fund and is self sustaining would be really important for lots of communities as they look towards what that would look like financially for those communities i follow up a little bit in this should be a question for both the folks from south burlington if and i'm only hypothetically saying but if we were to decide to move ahead with the resolution but either when i whatever your support comfortable with is the resolution it should be considered i think you know we had a conversation and at the when you speak council about word smithing our resolution and changing the words in the council made the act of decision not to do that because we felt like we needed to send a strong message and that to the extent that there was word smithing a story might become one of the differences between the communities and communities might be pitted against one another that's why our council made that been may know more about this than i and so show byrne colchester children colchester have both considered it at select board meetings my understanding is neither have adopted it yet  am jeff monger and i'm sure the airport commission but as you can hear i'm about to lose my voice so bill keogh is here and we have others and they have with us as well if they want to say anything we'll welcome take up the resolution they feel that this is they have a dog in this fight and so they did not want to consider that was the consensus i think of three or four of the city councillors a yet another city counc colchester said wait a bit i'm concerned about the financial impact this might have on the town of colchester so i think that's my report from that meeting and for what its worth i don't feel any question on that but there's that what is going to be jurisdictions we're going through that now we've gone through that we've with solid waste district we've got to have a regional planning commission there will be weeded voting it would not be weighted voting and then you all of a sudden decide ok we want to take over in the airport commission as a charter change has to go to the legislature etc etc you know that process so that's what faces that's what if we go down this whole road and we end up there what incentive yourself we're like that too and i'm i'm here mostly because of the fact that unfortunately due to the fact that the director of aviation and director of planning and development for the airport richardson nick longo are both in our i think actually on their way home from dallas and they are meeting with with one of the air carriers in the hopes of being able to expand our air service on so i i am here not only as a city councilor and a burlington resident but also because i was one of the people that co chaired the strategic planning committee in two thousand and thirteen myself along with the who was then the interim c l for the city process and and we we had a lot of charges to that committee most of them were about the long term financial strength of the of the of the airport and about maintaining air service expanding air service and air travel which clearly benefits all of chittenden counting on at the time when we had that we had this committee this was back in two thousand and thirteen there was representation  from the person who was then the mayor of new ski mike o'brien the city manager of south burlington was also there there were two then city south burlington city councillors who attended the the vast majority of meetings over the nine months that we met and we did discuss regionalizing the airport in the context of the greater structure of governance that was one of the charges of the committee and when it was agreed at the time when we had that conversation on that there was a pretty clear understanding that regional governance also meant that the parties would have to be willing to participate not only with a seat at the table but also actively participating financially and that there didn't appear to be any appetite for that at the time  now as you probably have read from the letter that came from our mayor meyera weinberger you know municipal airports are not at all a rarity and thirty five percent of airports nationwide are municipal yawned and there are many that are regional authorities the vast majority of them are oftentimes transportation authorities like for the city of like the port authority or for the city of boston you know larger usually larger municipalities not necessarily always but in many cases that's what it is this is you know that the airport has  a long history of participating and listening to communities and we understand very very much that the t v is one of the greatest economic development tools we have and in shouldn't  county you know for the record this is the burlington international airport is owned by the city of burlington we understand that it's an asset that we all enjoy and we work hard  airport the people that are that that work at the airport we're very hard to do the best that they can to make sure that because we know that it's a tremendous responsibility and we did the best we can to make the airport as good as it possibly can be  one of the things i did want to mention is that one of the members of the strategic planning committee back in two thousand and thirteen was a man u you may have heard of him his name was edwin  up in the old north end of burlington he went to college paid his way through college went to law school worked his way up to become the c e o of u s airways and he was one of the members of the committee and so he has seen a lot in his forty plus years working in the aviation industry and in his opinion burlington international airport is exceptionally well run the governance structure is a good one and it's more financially sound more creatively run than many that he has seen in his career and the are the letter that you got from the mayor also pointed out to many of the things that are going on in the airport financially speaking in terms of the moodies upgrade that we've received several of the new lease agreement that we have with the airlines which is a very big deal on new destinations and new hubs such as charlotte  atlanta and they are adding additional flights to those hubs because the ones that they started with have been so successful and what i what i would try what i would caution you about is reading too much into arguments that you've been supplied with in favor of regionalization the state some facts that really aren't really facts and you know i one of the you know one of the one of the one of let's see i'm trying to think what probably the most when it comes to mind is that you know the city of burlington has supported the airport i don't think it's correct to say that the city of burlington hasn't supported the airport financially and i would encourage you to speak to the professionals that work at the airport that really mean that know and deal with this on a daily basis and if you haven't been invited i consider this your personal invitation to come to the airport take a tour meet the people that work there and understand you know because it is that it is an asset for chittenden county understand what goes on there every and i think the you know the important thing i think to take away from this is that the city of burlington has managed the airport extremely well and it has done so on behalf of everyone in the region and would like to continue to do that we do support the airport and feel that the governance structure that we have well certainly there is always room for improvement the governance structure that we have is a good one thank you question so keep on coming up and we've had a you know a couple of meetings already am when we talked to i think the last couple of people we were told that as an enterprise there is no financial contribution direct financial contribution from the taxpayers in fact this is i think this came from gene to writing we're bored already operations of the airport end in financial terms i know it's our responsibility so if there were it i mean if there were any reason to on if there was any concern about the airport financially that would fall on us that does not fall on anyone but the city of burlington but has there i mean has there been this far as i can tell there has been no need for that for the last maybe as long as you've been don't pay on it because i think there are these ladies are usually revenue bonds but again i mean if if there were to be a situation where something were to happen and and in fact you know that i mean obviously we hope that never will on but the city of burlington is ultimately responsible for the financial well being of the airport and that is a responsibility that we don't take lightly though obviously i mean i think by the way i think the airport i use it a lot i have traveled a lot over the years for work and i think it sounds better than just about any airport i go to most of which are much bigger and have many more late for eights and problems of big city and no issues so i have no issues with how it's managed how it's run  from our operational point of view you know i think it works great you can park right next door it walk right in for it so the thing that's disappointing is you know we hear it's kind of a a rhetoric from both sides and one of the slipper members and i after the last meeting talk that we were disappointed that it was so you know hostile both parties towards the other and it's hard to tell separate the facts from the fiction i find it hard because you both come in tell us this is a fact and the other one comes and says oh no that's not a fact this is a fact so it's hard to separate those too since it runs well it seems around the i can't talk about its financial grading system aaa or whatever the moody's thinks i'm not that is as familiar with those things and the implications of that it seems like that the primary issue is your various town residents besides burlington of course no issues with no noise or where the planes are flying maybe and their inability to get any  any answers or any attention or that seems to be a fundamental problem and it's hard to understand in willis and we we hear the planes too but i don't think we're ever going to build a berm to reduce the noise for the f sixteen like overwhelms that that's just not going to happen we're going to hear it and i guess we have to deal with it i don't think even if we put it committee together we have any do we have any say over whether the f sixteen supplier the f thirty five why right so that's kind of what i thought so that we don't control that either so i i struggle to to based on false facts or real facts i struggle to understand how we would you know how we would make a difference in the governance of the airport in moscow and that's what i'm not smart of i'm having a hard time figuring out what could what could come up in the future so provides ninety percent of our funding write two questions in a comment if you don't mind and i just want to be sure i understand this i think the number was thirty five percent of regional that owns the airport is quite a ways away from where the airports actually located would you happen i mean because for me that's a very unique it is the circumstances and i know there's a history why that happened frank but the fact is that it's  there i don't know chicago detroit comes to mind quickly so there are others that probably few if you've ever flown into chicago you're an hour from the loop in chicago owns the chicago is i have pieces of the strategic airports are two declining committee recommendations and you probably already know where i'm going with this one of the recommendations is that the city look at i soon it's a city because who else could do it look at governance and particularly regional governance but yet i think i hear you tonight saying you don't want to do that so i'm just trying to i'm just trying to understand why does this document recommend it but you don't think it's a good idea or if i got that correct i may not have well you have it in front of you so you'll be able to read it i i don't know it verbatim but the there were several things that we talked about in terms of governance we talked about the fact and you know and i still think this is something that may at some point be talked about and you've got to airport at three actually airport commissioners that are here on a pad no across south burlington who's also a member of the cell at the airport commission is here on we did talk about the fact that there was concern that the airport commission did not have and did was was to advisory that it that perhaps we should have the airport commission have more authority because the reality is that you know i'm i'm here this evening and there are three meetings going on in the city of burlington that i could be at you can't be everywhere and you know so there's a lot of things that we deal with there's a limit to how many things we can deal with and deal well with and perhaps it would be better for the commission to have more authority  and the idea of governance was discussed it was discussed at that committee and what was what the common thread with that is that was that whereas you there there could be where some people might feel and that governance can be separated from having a financial stake in the entity it was there was very little appetite at that at the me at the at the nine months of meetings that we had for that kind of conversation you know the the majority of people that were there felt that if you're going to have a seat at the table that there should be something else that comes along with it and i think the again i can't really speak for every city councilor and i don't want to really speak for the mayor but i believe that that is probably a widely held  theme my comment is i think you made what i wrote down is and you know the resolution is in favor regionalization i just want to add my comment is i don't view it that way at all i view it as the resolution is more about understanding what are the benefits and liabilities of a regional approach or different approaches to governance including regional or state of vermont because i don't know what i don't know and this would be a mechanism to find that out for your questions or comments there are other people that i could certainly ask questions of a few like there are happy to speak as well so it seems like that i have one question just on this all this financial stuff the financial responsibility to the for the residents of burlington now is the thirty five million dollar bond the guarantee basically the guarantee so if you would if there were some real regional zation scheme theoretically that would be shared then amongst the region instead of just the city of burlington that's that's kind of your point about sitting at the table because there is no other there's no tax the residents don't pay for anything good thank you thank you very much for your time or other members of the audience who wish to make a brief comments to me on the subject just this is a tough issue i look around the room here and all these folks are my friends and i've known bill for twenty five years bob for equal amount of time know and so this is hard for us because we all know each other but at the end of the day we have to speak up about the core issue here there is one issue here and that's it and it's called governance it's governance pure and simple you are a board for your community your elected to watch over your community and the impacts on your community there is no board that looks over exclusively over the burlington international airport jesse described that it is the residents of the whole region and indeed the state who contribute to the success of the airport and i would still argue ownership lies with them and with the f a a but the fact of the matter is one individual runs the airport with very little oversight even though they're good people they have no authority and so they're making decisions on behalf of this massively important regional piece of infrastructure so at the end of the day this is all about governance we've addressed the issues about the financial matters i understand that gene was in here before you a couple weeks ago and said if this went forward as reported in the observer this would cost you  million dollars a year that's just ridiculous karen talked about the performance of the airport i have a different opinion if you look at the numbers the numbers have been in decline since two thousand and eight but we're told it's being well we're being told that the workers are happy we're being told that the bond rating is great even though it's junk bond status still how do you know how do you know there's there's no board there's no oversight you have no role you can't ask for information and and and get it and be assured that it is accurate information because they have there's no  responsibility to you a member of this community a member of essex a member of south park or anybody so we'd all like to think the airport is doing great and i think it's a wonderful airport i really truly do i mean i'm looking at bamma cueing who pretty much built the facade and remodeled the entire in order made it very very nice but how do we know how it is performing we don't because none of us have a seat on the board and the board itself is advisory so this is about governance we're asking for this community to support a come into a conversation to explore this opportunity that we have nothing more there's no there's no pre defined outcome it's let's join together as a region just like we did for chip in and solve waste district champlain water district c c r p c green mountain transit and others have a discussion about regional governance of this incredible asset it is unique because it does reside in the city of south burlington and it's owned by another community that's a complication i understand but at the end this is all about governance and having a seat at the table and talking about this and that's all we're asking for we're asking for a discussion could this be and i'm speaking only as a citizen of williston i'm a business owner here i had not planned to speak i don't have a dog in this fight i'm just a citizen here i'm a relatively new citizen here i wanted to answer your question mr kenny about the inheritance i think the answer is it depends how good your divorce lawyers think that a lot of the folks here many of whom i've worked with as a consultant have asked you to look back and i think some people are asking you to look forward and what i would ask you to do is look at today and what's in front of you and all you are being asked to do is consider a learning opportunity to explore what a commission would look like to identify the pros and cons to understand the current governance structure and alternatives that you could consider and then to make an educated decision that's all i read in the resolution i would encourage you not to go too far down the road not to let fear influence you not to look back at what it's been and not to look forward to what it could be your only asked to look at one thing what what could the governance model be comparing it i would imagine to what it is today what are alternatives that you could consider and then you decide if you want to make a different choice that's it thank you planning and design so i've got a career in aviation i just like to correct a couple things were said here your port does not have junk bond status you can look it up moody's our coverage this year for example is one point six five for debt coverage that's great coverage when you're really required to have one point two five they commit in the analyze but they have to look at a couple of things one is what is our overall economy in the region yes passengers dropped after the depressionary effects of wall street back in two thousand and ten eleven twelve a big reason that it dropped was the value of the canadian dollar when the dollars on par we have passed are streaming across the board we had as many as thirty five percent of our past news that flew out of burlington came down from quebec with the dollar now as one well the canadian dollars like suffices belt that to the american dollar they stopped coming down to the value isn't there anymore so instead of having thirty five percent of our passengers it's done around twenty percent in about eight percent of it comes from northern new york state that can down here so this airport doesn't just serve chicken in county in the airports or in the communities around it it s northern part of the state of vermont a significant part of southern ca back south of the st lawrence river in northern new york state is far over is almost o passengers that fly out of here and fly in here and if you want to say ok the people that fly and use their money to fly in and out of the airport should have a say in it they do they can fly out of here they can fly out of someplace else if you just if you wanted to take a look at the percentages i guess we'd have to give at least a quarter of the percentage of the people that govern the airport we have to give that to  because that's where the people are coming from or seen almost a month earlier so you've got to be careful on what the reasons are that we're trying to study the airport we have had numerous committees not just the ones we're talking about here but every time we did something significant whether it was developing new noise exposure maps whether it's developing noise compatibility studies whether was developing master plans for the airport we can do those the vacuum we had technical advisory committees with members from the community involved in that to the extent that they wanted to they gave recommendations and we've included some of those recommendations in the studies but the airport is governed very closely by the federal government we have to the airport has to establish reaching charges in charge and charges and it has to make sure that revenues that come to the airport stay at the airport they can't go out to the communities now what's the basic rule of the airport tenants we establish rates and charges for the for the airlines we have service contracts you know it's a fifteen million dollars budget every year but a lot of that has to do with the contracts in the services in the parking right providing revenue things of that nature so we don't establish noise levels establish flight patterns what we do is we govern the property at the airport and we have to accept a lot of the things that go on around us whether it's the aircraft flying from the military side of the field or the airlines that fly into the airport that want to come in after midnight things of that nature and the f a a tells us what to do if we follow the rules and i know that i know that because i used to be in that position where i was doing that on the other side of the street that's about all i got to s  i personally like to hear from the other towns are still considering this and see what their thoughts are you know that anybody's rejected it horribly only say tonight that we  although i may read the free press and learn  of the motion my thoughts are first i want to turn to a comment that gene richards made during his presentation at the board meeting it's one of the it's one of the many notes i wrote down and where he noted it he said he knows it's a defunct relationship with south burlington and tonight i've heard twice people say i don't want to get into that fight you know the concept of that flight both of those are red flags to me that says something is wrong and you know ideally needs to be fixed the second point i have or might justification if you will in my mind is if we were to create a regional airport knew there wasn't one before we possibly would steer away from the concept of just not what we would it's just not how we would do it i realize there's a long history to why the airport is the way it is but my feeling about that is you know it's never the wrong time to make it better  and then i had one last point which i don't look at the resolution as being any sort of a i don't look at the resolution as being a that i shall move towards regional governance to me it's more about learning about understanding what's going on and if i could use an analogy it be my first bike which i loved it was a great bike it was a robin hood it was made an england and i love that bike until i learned that there were better bikes out there and the point being is i feel the same way about this is i'm sure it is a viable it works governance going on right now but i just don't know if there's a better one out there and this seems to me to be the best way to try for maybe not the best way a way and probably the best way to figure figure that out i do think some of the wording needs some modification maybe even some deletions but i think we can come up with a resolution that makes sense to us and essentially makes this same or similar request thank you i'd like tack on a lot of jeff's conference announcing make it clear that i also am not a green t that there are tremendous number of things that have economic impact on wilson that we have absolutely no control over and i can't make a valid argument for why we would i said in the last meeting the interstate we don't own the interstate massive impact on shit and county in the state of vermont as a whole i'm not about to go to you v m and say you know you know how much impact you have on the town of williston i mean we got to do something about this guys come on i mean some of your students even live here  i don't i don't see that the same thing with state colleges and you can go on and on down down the road i am i am concerned about the tenor of the resolution that was provided both i don't i don't live in burlington i don't have a whole lot of a dog in this fight either way but i am very concerned when a whole bunch of municipalities say you know we want to talk about your asset it's not like you actually own it because you know when's the last time you put any money into it well you can say that about people of wealth you can say that about anything it's a it's you know and it's i'm i'm really concerned about that and that that is a tenor of what we are discussing the other thing is jeff i agree with you completely that these these neighborhood issues sound extremely legitimate you pointed out the burlington and south burlington that it's a dysfunctional relationship and  that there's a lot of heat and anger between the two i agree with it i don't know who's right and i don't know who's wrong but i know that it's not willesden and i'm i'm also not going to get involved in richmond comes knocking and says you know those people live down by the water treatment plant down by the baton by the old round church are really getting out of hand can you we're have a resolution for you to talk about regionalizing this because it's a water thing after all and everybody has clean water issues i don't i don't see a dog in this fight i i lastly i'm concerned if the argument is that we're not really looking to take over the airport with a regional  have a significant problem with ownership versus authority is like having responsibility without power like wise it's like having power without responsibility i see this and see this in the judicial system in a really nuts and bolts way the judges actually do not in vermont the judges have no control over firing or hiring or reprimanding or anything to do with the court clerks court clerk and schedule something i scheduled nine cases for that one hour block you are i wish you hadn't done that well that's cool did it anyway because to me that just files that i see that i just don't see this so much anymore by the way that's got a lot better but that was an issue  ten fifteen years ago and the reason was that the people who are responsible for the substance of what those files represented weren't the same people who had the power over the nuts and bolts of it and if there's going to be a a regional authority that all we're talking about is controlling the airport but with our actually owning it because after all the burlington has his title i'm i don't i don't think that's going to work i do want to say though i think  you know i tried to be a little flip and some of the things i've said and i don't mean to offend anybody here i think that everybody here is very legitimate i think they all have real concerns and real points of view that are deeply held but i i don't see that this is something that will stand should expand its energy motion so i would say that to your face i would agree a lot with what ted said in terms of the tenor of the language i think i made those comments that it was disappointing that both sides it's kind of a it's a little bit of a battle between so for it and clearly to do it in the real issue doesn't seem to be coming out in terms of what the what the problems are so it's not coming out in this and i don't i don't support the way the resolutions did it it's it's i think i would be more supportive of seeing making a resolution that suggests the affected parties of all the problems like to ski and and so room to burlington create some kind of an advisory council or get involved in an advisory council so we do have a representative from  we have your application before us for it was a typo on it but just tell us a little bit about what you plan on doing and especially just in not read anything into this but this is the first time i think anybody's come to us with a liquor application were it the focus is on a higher alcohol content beverage i and our average customer is having one maybe two drinks because it's a better quality drink it's better quality ingredients they're not coming in there like i said to drink you know six or seven buck a tox it's not what doing so yeah the focus is on the higher alcohol content beverages but the amount they're consuming it's not they're not consuming it to get drugs and i didn't mean  this is the first time i'd sue and i've been on the sucker for a long time where there's a focus like this i did not know that grazers and then my standard questions are what will you do know our d l c certifications everyone's done all of our managers are trained everyone start to look at every id you know we tom less than fifty we you know you've got to it's better safe than sorry right you're going to get proof there right i have a another restaurant in burlington and the d l c is actually down there way more so the training that we usually implement is is above and beyond a lot of places i think most places are really good about it i've never seen stats from the d l c but you know we've passed every time they come through we have i would say monthly bring minders slash trainings with our staff we were mine them to check i d s of your mind them you know what to look for when people come in before and after movies in this area we try to go above and beyond because we know the significance of it we know how important it is you know our insurance goes up it's a big deal in restaurants especially when you're selling a lot of  we're going to be i would say ninety percent of our meats are going to be local you know there's one for martha kale which is kind of cool that's going to be there it'll be a little higher and we're looking for you know how to put a demographic out like thirty that you know thirty plus is what we're looking for your it's not going to be two dollars tacos you're going to be paying for quality and then return same with the with the with the killer drink so we're going to have the beer in the wine and things like that but yes it'll be a little higher i guess leap the only question i member of the what are we a liquor control board technically when we talk to these folks so i just i just want you to be you know i just want to say that i i think it's a you know it's a fine thing and there shouldn't be you know a negative vote based on you know you selling a lawful regulated drink that i may have had before but i do want to say that you know that i can see this i can see over serving happening just because of a confluence of events that's not your intent so i'd say you know just please be careful yes i appreciate that and we do take that extremely seriously so when you when  for discussion just one quick thing hopefully it's quick on the main outdoor patio yes and it talks about chain link barriers could talk about that a little bit yeah we're just anywhere that we've been approved by mabel to replace we will have you know just basically a chain link barrier around any table that's going to be outside in the d l c usually requires that as the area we're where alcohol can be cons yeah ok yeah i just think that by the way it was described this is a better or plastic single story exactly yeah yeah so what it does is it delineates the place you can have a have a drink yes it's not a barrier in terms of people coming in or leaving that much cell because it's ok and two questions for rick sorry i'm staff as any comments like second remind me what is meant by a in this case it's a first class place and you're going for yes what is meant by first class license does that mean