am of the opinion that this should be postponed because there's a large number of questions that deal with the financial component of the project that are unanswered and  requested has been provided and and an analysis has been done released or review of it so that's it's kind of all i have to save you have any questions i'm happy to answer and you may have to the mayor's office mayor at burlington v t council thank you if there are questions that do come from anyone any member of the public including mr flynn i i would i'd like to request that the council be copied on all of those email regarding them especially from you so i will move to adopt the minutes as presented with potentially an amendment that i have a question before that and it says the consensus of the board of finance is the map as shown as acceptable and yet i know there was discussion about the map then and ultimately a determination of a different map so i wasn't quite sure if that was accurate that's the first question and if the second one is along the same  lines it talks about the board of finance supports a nonprofit with the city controlling the annual budget and i do recall at that meeting that there was not agreement on that i believe that councilor know dell who was on the phone but was had raised many concerns regarding the nonprofit so i wasn't sure if those two sentences i didn't feel those two sentences were act accurately reflected the sentiment of the board of finance at that meeting so based on that i would say that i would prefer i would like to a man and the first step in this which deals with the map saying that well consensus doesn't mean agreement i mean it means that the majority agreed with that consensus does not say everyone does so i guess i'll let that stand because i was one of the i'll let that stand but the second second statement council roof summarize the board of finance supports a nonprofit with the city controlling the annual budget assessment rates on an annual basis and having majority control of the approval of the governing board i don't think that that sentence should be there councillor roof is our representative to the d id but if anyone was to summarize the position of the board of finance i think it would have it should have been the mare or a board of finance member so for me i would prefer to strike that i don't think it diminishes less because the conversation continued  i look to the mayor because it is your meeting to determine how you would like to capture that unclear what the ultimate outcome would be of course what happened subsequent there is a matter of public record i think would be fine to just strike that sentence entirely so then i'll move the minutes  thank for saving all of you going through all of the questions because they met with me before this meeting but i do want to just highlight the things that i and they're just a couple of things first of all i think it's i really like the way in involves their employees and decision making and that continues and i just want to compliment you on that  because i think it just makes a healthier department and i think you've been a role model for that and so thank you and i also understand that position tears were were part of union  but also were or something that was contemplated before that was imposed and continues to be a good idea one of the things that i mentioned was that sometimes people really find their niche and do their job well and some entry level positions are assumed to be just that and people move in and move out and yet i think that as far as like the customer care representatives is a key position and i mentioned that the the two graves that provide for the tear the salaries are very close and i just wondered if we would be able to keep someone who was really very good in that job for any length of time and so i would like to in the future explore how we could how we could do that better so that so that you'd have someone there for continuity and maybe to mentor other people who might revolve in and out of that position the other thought that i had was that they talked about overall it seems that so many thoughtful conversations occurred and yet the takeaway is that in some of the positions and so for people watching there was a look at how many direct reports the manager had and whether that made sense or whether fewer voices would make a more effective management team and so there was a desire to do that and i think that works really well in doing that there was some reevaluation of jobs and mr merrill when i looked at that  understood that the hiring range had increased so the salary the hiring salary the low end was higher but the ceiling remains somewhat the same and my question was how quickly would someone move from the hiring range to the ceiling and would we have any long jeopardy for someone in these positions and i still am not sure about that because it was shared with me that oftentimes we hire in at above fifty percent of salary range and i know that you know my limited experience with my previous employer now  was that their goal was to hire at about fifty percent so that you would have some room for growth and some continuity and some commitment beyond just a few years so i still am trying to figure out if that something that we have accomplished in this for the better benefit of the city and the department so those were really my comments and and i think that this is a lot of hard work and will make for a very effective well a more effective you are you were effective department thank you thank you  we have scott and alaina here to speak to the i didn't answer any questions you have and we we manager who helped oversee the execution of our engagement here this afternoon and we've been invited to the seven o'clock city council meeting to brief you here this afternoon and full council tonight on on the results of our audit talk a little bit about some of the numbers in your your financial because i perhaps hadn't in the prior year then perhaps the most important communication weir's your outside auditors can make to the board is to talk to you about how our audit went to mean the numbers are are that what they are there your timely and regular manner and as a result of that we did not need to propose any significant audit entries as a result of our test work with this past fall there's a couple of key numbers in the financial statements that i would like to briefly talk about  this evening as we've pointed out in the past there are really both the long term perspective balance sheet in here in a more short term or current current balance sheet i just like to say one one quick thing with respect to you have to do because you're comprehensive annual financial report in front of you it's page thirty six this page thirty six shows the long term liabilities of the of the city  they're also numbered in what is a p d f you can just tell me which is which which which you're talking about thank you that's why i need to learn to to be more her attentive are what i'm referring to the page number of the  bottom of the page number ok thank you thirty six page thirty six and really again this is the long term perspective balance sheet in this page of potatoes shows the long term liabilities we'll get to the general fund in just a moment  you know as the longer in this to kill a page of your financial statements has been a required presentation for a number of years the key number on this entire page is about a about a half way down you see it in your net pension liability citywide general fund your enterprise funds and burped burlington scale is a point of reference that overall liability across all balance sheets is down about two million dollars which is not our intention to dig into the footnotes tonight but if you were to dive into the footnote you'd see that that drop in that matched pension liability is a result of two key factors one before i talk about those two factors it's important to  to to keep back tears that dealt with the drop in your overall net pension liability where that through june thirtieth seventeen your investment earnings exceeded expectations the second part of that which mitigate some of those positive investment returns  for f y for the period in time of june thirty seventeen the city decreased its discount rate the investment rate of return that it's using going forward the combination of those things exceeding expectations on the investment earnings  mitigated by a drop in your future expectations of those investment earning have led you to that drop in your overall net pension liability of about two million dollars that's all we really wanted to talk about with respect to the long term perspective balance sheet there's a wealth of footnote disclosures in there and we can probably what we would certainly try to answer any questions that the board may have but most of what we wanted to highlight in addition to the results of our audit and how our audit procedures went  place that almost all readers are going to turn to going to look at that first column of numbers in focus on the third number up from the bottom or your unassigned fund balance with the june thirty eight thousand balance of approximately nine point seven million dollars t wo point of reference there that's increased over the prior year by about one point three million dollars more on that in just a minute and then the nine point seven million dollars also represents about sixteen percent of expenditures which where rating agencies three million dollar increase over the prior year yes we would break that that increase in its all in your operating statements in the budget versus actual we would break that increase into two pieces one would be in just so happens that approximately half of the increase becomes from fiscal year eighteen operations in the other half come from addressing some timing issues that existed in the prior year with respect to short term timing differences in capital projects so what does that mean means for you your overall increase in that key account balance was one point three million about six hundred fifty thousand dollars of that comes from operations now if you were to look at your budget versus actual page you see that there were significant unspent appropriations a lot of it done coming from departments but a lot of it also coming from health insurance and worker's comp and those types of expenditures but through the course of closing out fiscal year eighteen the city elected to sort of assign or commit many of those unspent appropriations for future uses so in summary was unspent appropriations through june thirtieth eighteen that we're recommitted to reassign you know that's why you have only approximately a sitting room increase that's added to your unassigned fund results the other half or the other six hundred fifty if you will in prior years you had some deficits in capital project funds that dealt with timing difference in the city was very conservative in setting some money aside in the general fund because to make sure that if money didn't committee cover those deficits within the current period in so what i mean by that is within a twelve month period there were at least a reservation in the general fund well during f y eighteen was necessary to to touch base on the net pension liability more and more than that that the accounting standards that exist with respect to you know pension liabilities been around for about four years but it's only now really starting to take root and generate the accommodations only and i'm just going up focus on the two prior comments that were repeated in the current here management letter comment and one was our recommendations to improve project accounting and the city has retained a consulting firm and is currently working with the firm to limitations of this there could be material weaknesses that may exist that you have not been able to identify could you elaborate on that sure it's a standard it's very standard boilerplate language if you will that comes reasonable what do you what do you call this is it does it within the area that's in prison or it's just in your not to cut off anyway i just want to be aware outside of the works  thank you so the first thing that actually when i looked at the net at the net pension liability probably because it's just easier to read and what's on page thirty six is what's on page twenty nine and it's just a lot easier and it's gives you a change which makes life really easy on the so the question that i had was and i don't know if you even know the answer maybe perhaps others  the answer is the the general fund in the bottom of page twenty nine there's a chart that shows the city and also all the business type activities b d the airport telecom and what they change and that pension liability has been for those who aren't don't have this in front of them and i was just wondering the it appears as though the the change from the city is actually not great news however the enterprise funds are background information but i would want to remind the board of one of the follow up comments that alina made with respect to census data and in the city has put a lot of effort into n the other is just simply a comment when i when i got elected to the city council and looked at the audits years ago the management letter was about seventy pages  long each year it was effectively a cut and paste from the year before we've gone from the last five years starting with about seventy pages and not to say that page is the only is the is the is the only measure of success but we've gone from around seventy two of around twenty to now around eight and of the six items that you have none of which are significant the first word on four of the six is either improve or inhance which means that it's not that we're not doing it it's just that we could do it better and i think that says a lot about not only the the auditing that we're getting and the  the response but the response of this that we have from this is the ca zero and the c e o s office that's pretty impressive and i don't know i i you do many audits i don't mean to put you on the spot and ask you but talked a little bit about by may offer one more thing on that your consultant has reached out to us and they're actually coming to our offices friday just be with us for a few minutes in get our perspective would like an opportunity not tonight but to talk about the city's responses to the management letter and the one that was just referenced had to do with how we track the complicated funding that goes into capital plan initiatives and all those different sources of revenue and how we monitor and track what's been spent and what remains except so i would like i would request from the mayor to have this on an agenda where we could talk about this and get a better understanding of the city responses and  and when we could expect to see some of these implemented because most of them have to do with how we can better access a status of where we are with funding projects or funding initiatives or there's there are other things too but it's it has to do predominately with a snapshot in time and i think that it would be helpful for everybody especially for the departments to have access have a a better way of of accessing the information across the board so thank you excellent house or bush or and yes i think you're i think the nature question is on to what i was trying to articulate the beginning that we are we have retained this consultant around the project accounting and think when they're a little bit farther along in their work that would be a great time to speak to certainly i could share anything that might be helpful as we go along with the pack ok great conversation and went on for well over an hour and a half actually but yeah there were some really good points made i think points that the c needs to be aware of and i think we'll probably hear them tonight ok i do you think a quick i don't think i ever got to secure some exactly what you're prepared for tonight but i think if there is a way to quickly and it really needs to be just a few minutes sort of summarize for the board  exactly what i want to make sure the board is clear what they will be getting for this five point six four nine million dollar investment i know that was a matter of substantial conversation  pack and any anything else in terms of a quick summary to kick off this conversation then we'll get to the conversations of the actual or i will just say that the presentation that we did to the parks arts and culture committee or the pac is online and i am not sure how to connect it to the projector at this moment so i'm just going to do my best to give you the overview the frame concept it demolishes a portion of the building it activates a derelict site it improves public access it will create a seasonal walk along and tie into the other waterfront activities it will create a new sort of gathering place it will stabilize that site and allows for things to happen there in the future and we believe it delivers significant significantly greater value for roughly the same cost of the full demolition  specifically it really is the first phase of this sort of the base base or basic plan is really demolition and stabilization of the site it allows for other things to happen in the future but those aren't guaranteed and those are mostly superstructure the east west walkway and some of the other lawn areas but we're really not doing extensive plantings or trees in this basic first phase it is really just basically site subsequent meetings i did i didn't go to every one of the pack meetings i went to the large one that you had in contraries and then i went to one right before that that was downstairs and i thought i'd missed the last one  i don't have any questions about the the presentation in terms of what we are hoping to accomplish nor do i personally have any concerns about the fact that we are you know we're we're presented with a situation and we're doing what i think it's like finding a creative alternative as opposed to demolishing the building my concerns are more with what i what i feel are  the questions that have come to light that are that we're now getting a response from i came in here at around five after or ten after five i haven't even looked at the piece of paper that we received and i feel as though for a decision of this magnitude we should at least have the opportunity to see some of the answers to these questions and have the opportunity to read them over more fully before we make a decision about this in the next five minutes or so over i think you'll find most you know i'm sure this board having dealt with fishies many times in the past will find the answers to virtually all the questions very consistent with your knowledge of if statue than we've had to deal with in the past maybe i could it is written up here but let me speak to that one directly and i think it's a fairly straight i think that i think the answer should be reassuring which is that we've of course been aware of that expiration throughout the time that we've been  the expiration of the district and be fully repaid before the expiration of the district and that assumption has been consistent with numerous past projections that we've shown to this source specially just remind people we're doing here we've looked at the at the six million and slightly less now because we spent a little bit of the money but the six million that we had reserved for the new moran project we always assumed would need to be paid down projections continue to show that first of all that that you know consistent with such an instrument will be able to fully service that debt within the district and we will have  about you know one half to two million dollars of additional revenue within the district even once the this five point four million dollar bond plus interest has been has been repaid i do think that we will be coming to this board in the council likely for additional be proud we probably don't want to know that this year expire without considering investing some of that additional two million dollars so it may not in the end b as generously padded as it is the projections are today but you can rest assured that with this action that there's lots of room for that there's a substantial buffer between what you're being asked for pro today and and what and the and the revenues that will be available and have to strict if we do ask you to cut it kind of close or if you will for other projects that will require probably additional public vote before the end of the year so it probably requires special election if we go in that way and it would be the product you know if we do you do that that would be a separate decision and we'll have a lot more analysis on you know if we are right now you can be confident that there's a lot of margin five thank you i don't feel right about that i i don't feel right about us taking a five minute break to read to read to read this you know in years past when i was first elected to the city council and that happened all too often and i don't i don't think that we should be sitting here taking of a recess to look at the answers to these questions i  feel like we should have a little bit of time and in fact if there are questions that we have because of the answers we received i feel like we should have the opportunity to to it to ask those questions and i don't think we can do that in five minutes so i you know i just received these now and i appreciate what's being proposed both by the administration both by council members of the board of finance my question to you is that we have a public hearing on the twenty seventh  would could could action be deferred until that time for this item or not i'm just trying to look at options so that the full council is supposed to it's you know it's supposed to gather at that time at five o'clock and i just didn't know whether that would be another opportunity but not too far off in the future to take action on this i i very much support this project i think that i have won one outstanding question from myself and i can't speak for other people but then i would be ready to move on this but i in fairness i want to give everyone  time they need to digest this to make sure there aren't additional this doesn't spur other questions from the board of finance so mr mayor what what's your thought on that or council bush or the as i understand the meaning of the twenty seventh is not like formally a city council meeting you know very clearly in the past you know i don't know i don't know that we can rely on the the full council being you know the council being planning on being there i guess if we aren't able in the next few minutes to come to a consensus here i guess we could consider that would you know where we have few of our other colleagues here yet maybe i'd be walk i'm hearing your question you have no if and again i think all of these questions which have come in from member of the public i think which was you know i don't believe there are any questions from councillors generally by councillors in advance of the meeting in response to the war and materials that have gone on the answered i think we've done an admirable job responding to a question that has come in from the public you would be quite unusual i think to delay action because one member of the public has come forward with routine questions that we have very straightforward answers to here so i would i would i would are just to continue a conversation least until more of our colleagues arrive before we did decide that we're there we can't take action tonight i think it would be a blow to the project not to take action that we're talking about three weeks potentially in a project that you know can't afford to lose a month unnecessarily so i welcome your your question so my question is really a better explanation for the public as far as question number one which talks about what has been referenced over and over again which is the five point four million dollar limit and now seeing that actually that hat is actually five point six four nine million dollars and i just really feel like that needs to be really clear as to why there is why everything references one dollar amount and yet actually it's a different dollar amount so richard can you can you answer the question  believe that the five point four dollars million dollar figure was quoted based on well i actually have seen what know when we were here through the city council a couple of months ago there had not been a detailed review of the budgets we were trying to make sure that we were projecting or what this project could be accomplished in the partial demolition insights destabilisation could come in at and we were coming with a five point four million dollars figure after we met with we went over all of our arise by the voters for all the pia projects so we have a ca zero scrutinising the books who says the capacity is there to do the project and still last since two thousand and fourteen you know we have put money into the water for an excess north project the marina project the sailing center all of these have been accounted for separately when the five point four million dollars number was created there explanation i think i'm really glad you did that i'm glad we understand really what the the maximum limit is for the bond what i think is unfortunate is that the community and i'll be really clear and you know blunt about this the communication doesn't really allude to that nor do i do the resolutions they all reference five point four million and so i think that that's what people looked at that's what they grabbed onto and i regret the fact that we weren't clearer in the estimation of that with the statement to be finalized right before we acted or whatever and mr mayor i appreciate the fact that you said the you know the original dollar amount the nine point whatever million which i recall we started there and and this is what's left of those funds all of that makes perfect sense to me but i think for the residents who are looking at just finite numbers they're wondering what we're doing when we've said five point four and all of a sudden that that money that dollar amount has shifted and so i appreciate that clarification for me that makes sense i think that the resolutions should be clear in some way to add that language that the residual amount remaining is exceeds the five point four and it actually is whatever the i think that should just be in there these resolutions are so detailed and yet it it i'm also very supportive of the moran frame concept but i also hear cancer polls concerns of the details of the questions that we've gotten the answers to but i would propose is that i'm willing to move this forward to the full council but i would like to be able to spend some time hearing more of the detail answers in from the full council and and then i would reserve my right to if the answers are not adequate or if it raises further questions than i would consider actually delaying i'm not saying i'm going to do that but that i would consider that if i don't feel that if there's questions still hanging out there that are substantial and only answered or it leads to further questions so that's where and we obviously we don't have more time we have an executive session that's another important issue that we need to get into this are you making that motion i would i would move this forward to the full council i would make that motion discussion thank you so i think the i don't recall that there was any any counselor when we first had the presentation who wasn't supportive of the concept that's pretty that's pretty amazing and we've come a long way with moran and i think it was i think it said a lot about the creativity of the project the the questions are really just simply to make sure that we have you know we get we get asked questions by constituents and we need to be able to have a valid is that we have good answers and i do think that you know even though it may very well be one constituent that came forward with questions i think they're good questions and we you know we should get the answers and have the opportunity to have time to read them i will i will after the executive session take the time to read the responses  i don't think that anyone is interested in a holding up the project i think we just legitimately want to want to know the answers to some questions and i hope that that's not an unreasonable  thirteen six sixteen first item on the agenda well first would you join with me every second pledge allegiance then the first item on the agenda is the agenda anderson no revised version of consent agenda item four point zero nine resolution appointment of acting inspectors of election for wards three four and eight councillors write per councillor bu item four point one one resolution reorganization update to staffing structure re classifications and creation of teared progression program for customer care and  d s technician burlington electric department no management letter for agenda item five point zero one resolution acceptance and approval of the f y twenty eighteen audit no revised version of the management letter and the addition of the c a f r document per c e o andersen no presentation sides for agenda item five point zero two presentation regarding update on the city's first equity report per bryan low no written materials for agenda item five point zero three resolution authorization to proceed ari moran frame project utilizing waterfront district add to that agenda item five point zero five presentation make in total comprehensive plan or r e at it's to drive twenty one thousand update to plan b t v comprehensive plan and second public hearing  adoption on march eleventh twenty nineteen additionally president right i did get a call from bryan whoa who is concerned about item five point  two and i would suggest putting that after the moran frame at five point zero four point one your post we have our agenda at number two is a proposed executive session city attorney blackwo yes the discussion would like to have involves your receiving confidential attorney client communications made for the purpose of providing professional legal services and also to consider a document that is not public the findings please say i i i may post and then is there a motion on the move to go into executive session based on the findings cancer shannon has moved to go into executive session based on the findings second again  opposed so we will go into executive session and clear the room and we'll try to be back as close to seven as possible we we are going to begin shall seventeen we are we are back from executive session councillors i think councils are all in their seats so we are going to call up the auditor scott mcintyre and alina course take to give us a report on the audit and if there are questions from the council the plan here is that i ask questions now i'm not going to make them stick around till after the public forum and we can vote on this until after the public forum so if you would give a give a very brief overview at that at this meeting we met with the board of finance earlier today and our objective tonight is just to give you a very quick overview in general our audit of your june thirty eight hundred financial statements for it went very well what that means is that we found the books and records to be in good working order and as a result of our audit procedures we did not need to propose any significant entries beyond that i'm going to touch base on a couple of numbers and then alina was going to speak about a couple of recommendations  most of what i'm going to speak about tonight is on page thirty nine of the hard copy of the document you have it in a p d f on you on on your tablets it's going to be something different page thirty nine is the general fund balance sheet before i touch base on that  just one other account it's called the city's net pension liability is a bunch of disclosure or wealth disclosures pardon me that the numbers are on page thirty six and there's a wealth of disclosures in there i think it's important for the for the city council to understand that that's a fluctuating liability that again it's the net pension liability in this balance sheet is actually down about two million dollars but it does fluctuate from year to year and it's certainly something that will continue to gather a lot of attention the accounting standards for that are only a couple years the present accounting standards are only a couple of years old and many more readers of your financial statements are starting to pay attention to that net pension liability again it's a long term liability it's not present on your general fund balance sheet as it should not be well again and your general fund balance sheet is on page thirty nine is the first place that almost all readers will turn in a look at the third number up from the bottom of the unassigned fund balance of nine point seven million dollars that is an increase that that account balance is approximately one point three million dollars greater than it was a year ago june thirty seventeen and of that increase about half of it or six hundred fifty thousand dollars comes from year eighteen results of operations in the other half the other six fifty if you will comes from clearing some some timing differences with respect to reimbursements from foreign grants and other capital projects that of that increase related accounts the other large piece of that comes from departmental unspent appropriations and that's fiscal year eighteen but as you were closing out the year the city rededicated are reprogrammed or signed much of those unspent  unspent appropriations when pushed to year eighteen can reprogram them for use in fiscal year nineteen that's why you would take the rather large numbers on the budget versus actual page and boil it down to about a six hundred fifty thousand dollar increase in the  with that i'm going to ask alina this big quickly about some of the follow up recommendations it's not our objective to go through the entire letter just some of the follow up recommendations that are that are in the process of b and could you both pull the first issue just to make sure that you and the others her to do with the capital projects on accounting and just to reiterate make sure it's clear we understand the city is you hired a consultant to help improve the financial reporting associated with those capital projects and quite honestly they reached out to us this week you'd like to ask us a few questions and that's going to actually occur on friday of this week and i think that recommendation is on its way to being clear great thank you  questions from the city council for the auditor i'm all right i guess we are all set we appreciate the presentation both here at the board of finance earlier and we will send our questions will be prepared to vote on this after the after the public forum thank you very department are out plowing bike lanes and in the middle the winner i just find that just a waste of taxpayer dollars and really not good governance i really it's been really frustrating gotten to the point in this city where the common sense approach in public works and our streets and sidewalks have just been way out of whack and it has been so frustrating to watch this and i know there's this gold standard that the city has to get to and they want to and i just i understand that but to spend hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars to get to this standard and i allow our streets and sidewalks to get in condition at their end and putting our priorities i'm not going to say things that are important they are and we want to be able to walk and bike in this city and but we also have to realize what kind of climate that we live in  it's not colorado you don't get you know twenty inches of snow and the next day it's forty five degrees out and the sun melts most of it and you're all set to go i mean you literally have ice throughout the entire city on our sidewalks and streets and to think that we're going to spend time you know clearing bike lanes and the middle of the streets in the middle of february when the temperatures ten degrees out it's just really disappointing to me that we are wasting that much money doing this when we could be effectively out there you know fixing our streets and certainly the potholes throughout the city so i saw it today i've seen it all winter it's just but i mean i think this is just when you take the time to really say thank you to d p w definitely the work that they do every single day i think i did send a tweet out because we sidewalks bike lanes because when we talk about people that sometimes feelings don't i think to you you have that privilege but i know people who live here who use their bikes every single day every single day to go to work and sometimes i'm like this is just saying how weird and yet because sometimes it's very cold but trust me there are people who bike every single day and how would they get to work if these sidewalks were not for them to be able to go back and forth i mean let's fink about those people it's not only people driving cars but they're not people who  sure this will be quick but it's a challenge to all counselors and i believe the mayor has already involved in this effort but it's the spectrum sleep out and i think we should all get our sleeping bags out on march twenty first and do this from sleep i'm going to pose that challenge to other counselors and hope that you can join me if you can actually be there you can at least raise the money for spectrum and their single biggest event and any community that has homeless teenagers it's go and turn it over to the mayor as and nancy kirby these names are put in nomination are there any further nominations saying then we will close the florida nominations and is there any discussion is there only one opening all right so this one opening i just confirmed there are two candidates which is unusual for this particular commission and kirby has been not well for quite a while and she so nancy curvy lives and ward one she lives right next door to a cemetery and she has been a very good steward of that cemetery and has  dedicated really the past i don't know how many years she she's lived next door now but she cares about cemeteries she cares about the historic nature of cemeteries she cares about the maintenance the use the respect for the dad the opportunities that cemeteries offer people for quiet places to reflect and she has made that commitment on her own and has really kept the current cemetery commission and the department that oversees the cemeteries informed of any problems that she's observed she would very much like to be part of the commission now and since there's an opening she's been waiting for that opportunity and i think she's shown real dedication and wants to commit in and now a more formal manner so all those in favor of appointing kirby to the cemetery commission please raise their hands i'd like to nominate rachel dice are excellent are there any further nomination interested in addressing the city council we have interest in hearing from you if you're here and interested ok seen no takers on that we will look to the council is there any any discussion about the sorry we hope you'll stay interested in and consider applying for future positions these are very frequently people are nominated and approved on their second or third attempt finally will go to the public excellent is there are there any further nominees peggy so we will go to vote all those in favor of appointing peggy to the for the term expiring and june thirtieth twenty nine that president right we will adjourn the city council mayor presiding at seven thirty seven pm thank you mr mayor and i will now reconvene the regular city council meeting and open the i don't number three which is the public forum and i at this time do not have anybody signed up to speak in public form so will give it one shot  if if you do want to speak there are forms over here and the table just put your name down and turn into lori and she will we have to we need or we have record for the city clerk's office and it looks like we will have at least one speaker so we'll hold on for just a moment flynn are you speaking or no no you would speak now just did you did you give did you still at the form you need to hand that if somebody just brings it over to me w remarks so with that the floor is yours thank you i'm here to speak tonight with regards to the resolutions that are going to be in front of you for the moran frame concept  basically i've emailed you there's been you know a list of questions with information that wasn't previously provided that i think is very important to have in front is we evaluate this project and with the information that's been provided prior to this afternoon it really hasn't been evident to me and the previous information that's been provided as i said there are more statements and would prefer two weeks because that gives enough time to ask the questions needed and for the administration to provide the answers in a better better format i mean to give you an example you know question was what's the cost of the bond well the answer was four point seven five percent well that's the interest rate of the bomb that's not the cost of the bond you may end up being told that well we don't know what the cost of the bond is until we actually go out and bond it that maybe that may be correct but they will have an idea that for every million dollars that you bond traditionally you have costs associated up to this amount so it gives you an idea it's a little bit more drilling down for the information that's needed it's really it's  it's a city project i think the city in the administration should be responsible to revive those answers so we clearly understand what we're getting ridgeley was five point four million today as is being  it's it's not a clear answer and we receive some amendments to the proposed resolutions i would like basically a financial accounting of how they get there if the money is there it should be pretty easy to find out so again i would hope that you would delay the resolution to a time certain date in the future if you're if you're done if you're the only speaker if you want to take another you know the euro i guess the only thing i would sort of say is that if there is a reason for me to stay when this agenda item comes up please let me know i will i just don't i don't know if i'm can participate in the discussion of i'm just sitting listening and i'm just sitting listening i think i've told you everything that  i'd like you to entertain and so i appreciate the opportunity and really this is this is not a back and forth just to explain mr flynn that this is your opportunity to speak and once it comes to the council that it's really president right i move to adopt the consent agenda as amended and to take the actions as indicated seconded by counsel rufe all those in favor of passing the consent of janet and taking the actions in the case of police a post we have passed the consent of general we will now move back to the audit resolution and i am going to we we heard from the  just make a resolution and hope it will be unanimous all right thank you cancer paul and so the resolution of that is acceptance and approval of the f y eighteen audit which the board of finance approved unanimously all those in and that is the first resolution authorization to proceed on the moran frame project councillor councillor hartman would you like to move that as chair of the pack with moran and i think we're at a place now where it might not be perfect right and there are still some questions out there but for me personally i'm at the point where it is time to act and it's time to move and for me at the end of the day if it's going to cost to me as much to tear it down is to do phase one and phase one is not a lot it's a starting point and there is no concrete financing in place for phase two three and four and i understand that but it there's also opportunities i think down the road for things to happen i i think if we level the  building we take a lot of opportunities off the table and i'm not sure i'm ready to do that given the cost is equal to get to phase one and the fact is i was speaking to someone earlier tonight  and i know it sounds crazy but for all the good things that are going down to waterfront and for the skate park which i sat here a few years ago said no way should we spend four million dollars on a skate park i could have been more wrong right for the activity in the use and what it's done to our waterfront to see the families down there and and so when you're wrong you stand up and say you know it was shot that i would i would do it differently and thank god there was more people that were right and i was wrong in that skate park happened you know but to to be able to at least star a new edition down there that could possibly attract you know families and visitors and we've talked for years about how we we need to enhance the waterfront and how we need to get more people down there i hope this is the star do i know one hundred percent it is no but i hope it is and the fact that just from the very base of plan one that will possibly have you know maybe a couple vendors down there and phase one some public bathrooms for sure so when you're going down there and these kids have a place th ey can actually go to the bathroom and families which they don't now and so and a lot of them don't use the poor let's say you can just imagine where they're going down there at the waterfront and i just i know it sounds crazy but i just think it's there's a possibility of a huge beginning here right at the same amount of time dollars it would take to tear it down i just think it would be a waste to do it at that point right and and i hope that we do our due diligence going forward and i hope you know that we have better numbers financially because i along with other people at the package did pose quite a few questions and there is a little bit of uncertainty moving forward right there's no question about that and i think that's the risk in this project but given the fact that there's closure here with miranda after all these years and it's something i think that we can all embrace might not be perfect  would hope that this council would take the first step in moving forward and do our due diligence as we go on with this process as i said i will not be here you know starting april first but this is one of the projects that i has presented a number of questions to us that we discussed at the board of finance answers came forth from the administration as mr flynn noted cancer paul raised concerns about that that we had received the answers just as we start the board of finance what we settled on was that we were moving this forward to the full city council but that the administration would spend some time to go through these questions and have because we did not have time to actually deliberate on them they came up toward the end of the board of fine assuming so at some point after city after council bush or talks and if councillors want to speak first or or we can decide if we want to go right to some of those questions but i do want to hear from cancer bush or first or thank you president right i was actually going to reference the list of questions that were presented and were referenced or in public form and i wanted to speak to the resolution that has been moved and to bring attention to the amendments that were put forward as they relate to question number one which was the question was in throughout the information shared with us  references always been five point four million dollars and yet the reality is as as was identified that the dollar amount is greater than that and so it's five point six four nine million dollars so the amendment speaks to changing in two places one to add a whereas clause after line forty six that references that the actual available funds are five point six four nine million and that the bond capacity is available for an amount not to exceed three point five five nine million and then to substitute fifty to the once again the revised dollar amount of five point six four nine million as opposed to five point four million i thought it was important to link that to the question raised and i really think it would be if if president right agrees i think it would be important for kiersten and richard hasler to come forward and explain  why there is that difference they did a very sustained answer for the board of finance and i think it would be beneficial for the public to hear that also and they are at the table now as you say that think it would be important for them to state this and i think what if i could just make one other comment i think it was unfortunate that in the communications to the council and that the public's on  that there wasn't a a statement saying that the five point four million wasn't an approximation and that it would be refined us that have ok great let's hear from the team and i am going to hope counsel to have several counselors in the queue but i think i would like to hear from the administration to go through some of these answers first i think it makes more sense to then have questions after we hear from the administration so first hear from the team in front of us o i think it's important to come up with a finite number we're doing that now based on the numbers that we have but at the time we knew that we had five point four  using five point four it became apparent that we needed to run the final numbers and we did and and we got them into the resolution at the change to just a final amount it's actually more money we said and we decided to avail in talking to bond council make every last dollar that you change thank you can present the first of all one other thing that came up at the finance tonight that is relevant to this refinement here is project accounting is a challenge the city is had as noted in our audit which is going to be accepted later on it's one of the areas that we are still aspired to be even better at we actually have consultants that are on staff right now and we all look forward to the day when the city is much more able to quickly printout and know exactly where it stands on all of its projects today remains a cumbersome effort and one that contributed to the confusion around this exact number here  t again this was not an uncomplicated exercise to say the voters off arise nine point six million dollars of total spending exactly how much of that is left a good substantial amount of effort has gone into this and it is good news that there is a little bit more than the prior conservative approximations the fundamental question i think kind of frame then frame in the public forum was is this project on sound financial footing and i fundamentally yes this project is on sound financial footing there is five point six four nine million that has been reserved for this project it cannot be spent  essentially on just about anything else if we do not invested in this project by the end of the year commit to investing in this project by the end a year we will return we will be need to return about seventy percent of those dollars  state the will we be able to afford that investment always the right key question whenever tiffin vestments come up the answer that we have consistently given to this council for years is that the waterfront to district is healthy and has more than enough capability to make that five point six million dollar investment in fact we continue to project  we projected for you as recently as last spring last march that there would be approximately two million dollars of excess capacity in the waterfront test district to make this investment as well as all the other commitments at the waterfront to district has made we will have a further discussion before the end of the year in all likelihood about that two million dollars and whether there are opportunities opportunities to invest more of it but right now you can act in a very confident that there is substantially more capacity possibly two million dollars of additional capacity projected to pay for this project as well as all the others a one thing that is i know on some councils mind with this project that is you know different than when we've looked at bonding decisions for the waterfront to district in the past is that the life of this district is gets shorter and shorter with each passing day and the expiration of the tiff district is now you know much closer at hand then it has been it past times the city has made commitments it is in two thousand and twenty five june twenty twenty five when the district will expire the revised and this is changed in recent years there used to be very rigid rules about how the city could finance these to investments and there are requirements about you know specific requirements around bonding has been loosened dramatically with a revision to the tiff legislation made several years ago in the time that you know i've been working with you and that was one of things we pushed for and the city has a great deal of flexibility to ensure we that we can find a financial instrument that so we have the legal flexibility to find a financial instrument that so that this investment can be made with maturity date consistent with the twenty five twenty five expiration and there's plenty of money available to ensure that will be a payoff that instrument we are in the process of updating those those numbers as it has been about a year those projections do always shift a little bit there haven't been dramatic changes in the last year there been modest changes we will by the end of the fiscal year we said to the board of finance we could do it faster if people wanted it for some reason we will update those projections and of course the council the finance if there's something in those projections that causes some concern can always reopen this discussion if there's a reason to once those updates are given but hopefully that point is clear and then the last point that i was going to make is just you know this project is unusual this five point six four nine cap on what can be invested here is a is a hard cap would be complicated and challenging to expand that  be on budget is there and there is always a risk that things are going to cost more than we expected to with this project there's actually an unusual degree of flexibility because of the nature of this project to if if if if things come in over budget when you start a project you really have to complete the building or you've got a big problem here you know we're doing talking about something somewhat different so if somehow we are unable we have made a good faith effort with you to lay out where we expect  be able to get based on the vailable projects at this still somewhat preliminary stage of the project if that changes over the time you in the public will be kept well abreast of that there is not a scenario where to achieve phase  one we anticipate coming back to you and asking for further funds to do that so hopefully have addressed the big picture financial questions here and with that instead of going through every item of the memo i mean i know it's particularly raised  we cannot tell you exactly tonight how much the bonding or transaction costs are going to be we have defined the upper limit of that in the in in that the cost of issuance that is being capped by this resolution include the total annual interest cost would include cost of issue issuance if there is a desire you know really we will not be able to give specific answers to exactly transaction costs until substantially  later i don't see why that should hold us back from moving forward with this resolution tonight but maybe there's something there will we should consider with that instead of going through each specific question since there are a number of them that are in writing before you may we pause there and see what additional questions or concerns the council has thank you mr mayor and so every city council now should have the sheet of paper with the administration's responses to mr flynn's questions and the mayor has verbalized some of these and his statement he just made and with that i'll turn it over counterpoint thank you so the the project i think enjoys really broad support in the community for really positive things about this council seems to be united on the project i think we're the questions that mr flynn posed to us were questions that independently some of us have anyway so i think it's really important to to err those and get those out there  d what i what i struggle with figuring out is and maybe you can just explain the phonies structure here in a six year period how we retire that large amount of principal and are we essentially using exactly as you surmise there i mean we are right now in a situation where there are substantial amounts of reserves that have accrued to the to the district and so we will we will settle on a final amortization table that has you know when we know exactly the time period we have to work with and we're working with a specific wonder we will set a position table that has a debt fully being paid off over over that period of undoubtedly rely on some money that is already being collected as well as some some dollars in the future we you know we are at a point now where you know there's a significant net positive on an annual basis we will likely be well below that and this gives the resolution is as described as written gives us conservatively way to ensure that we come in that but we do hope and intend to do better  counts are chang so question and then a comment so can you please speak to the the the relationship between general fund money and the bonding process and how and when if and any money is taken from the also outside thank you for that definitely another comment is basically my only concern about this project was just the assessment as of today i don't think that one did that aspect will not hold my vote to move this forward because a community needs closure this has been going on for years and in front of us he's a  wonderful a wonderful project and i think it's a doable but the or the question that i really have are we what we have that the people who will do the work will give us  a bill that's more than five point six million more than this and i was just i think i ask you this question was how about we tried now ask for a get the sense of how much it's going to cost because we over the years we had examples of things that we've thinking about putting it on paper but actually when we get to the real work way more than that right and i think by side who is part of the new moran group and campbell from p c construction and lincoln brown we're looking at something similar and the city was also looking at something and we had a team with freeman french freeman and alex is here tonight if you have any details about the architecture and construction and engineering ventures were on that team as well as the city and so we became aware that both complete our work separately and looked at them together so that we were doing apples to apples and the budgets came in in the same area and that's five point five point four million that we've presented so we feel it's achievable and we feel we have to qualify sort of firms and teams of professionals looked at that so that was our starting point but you have a good point how do we continue to make sure that we are on budget well as the mayor said it's a hard top so we can go up so we  need to manage that and we're looking at using construction management and bringing that on approve this extra consultants and that's in the memo and as we move forward we'll work with them to make sure that what gets put into the demolition bid documents is within our price point and they'll be several estimates as we proceed to the final bidding so once we complete our planning and zoning permits we'll have another round of and i mean mr flint also thank you but i was just wondering if we delay this is only shown tonight do you think we will be able to steal meet that deadline making sure that we access t if the time frame is very short i'm not i don't want to sugarcoat that i have i try to have a can do attitude in the city but it is a very short time and december will be here before we know it and we have to bond and we have to get through permitting and getting those consultants on board so that we can begin the permitting process later this spring is really important and so every week sort of counts from my perspective i would hope that we could move forward tonight but of course will defer to the council's desires thank you one technical question before i go any further city attorney blackwood at the world of finance we made the motion on both five point zero three and five point four together with five point zero three basically being proceeding moving forward and five point zero four being the issuance of to funds can we do both of those together as we did the board of finance yes thank you president thank you for the presentation i haven't heard and i appreciate i wasn't at the pac meetings that may have been discussed there but our last presentation that was really a discussion of there was a i will say neal was committing to look into given the current uses sort of the impact on our operating budget i mean i don't appreciate we've got the funds to pay for the project but what's the impact sort of going forward we have and i appreciate the uses are in flux but i don't know if you've looked at that so we worked with the parks department to actually look at that in terms of the first year of option operation and it was in the previous presentation i'm sorry in price to put it in the memo i apologize  so that is their estimate considering that would be year round so about thirty two weeks of the year they would contract out but in the summer season they have a lot of staff down on the waterfront and they really felt it was very important and as a follow up i know we were projecting that there was projecting there would be some revenue generated from the use of a space is that no longer and i'm trying to find out what's it's going to cost i mean parks parks sees lots of opportunities in the could say more complex projects we've had a sources in uses and a very detailed document that gave that information and i'm wondering if that is something that i don't mean to say that you need to do it today but is that something that you would be able to produce a you know within the near term so that it could be posted online so that people have you know if they want to look it up they can look it up and see what the sources and uses are yes i can do that i can take the the same budget that was in the presentation basically that has the large categories  was a little bit disconcerting to be told all along what the maximum bonding was or at least that's what i mean i know i thought that i was told that it was three point four or five point four depending on if you're talking about the entire project and to then find out that there actually is more capacity now that's not bad news it's just disconcerting when you know when that number has been floated out for quite some time so i was hoping that you know that there would be some way of adding the explanation richard that you gave us at the board of finance if that could be added in some way to board dock so that if people or if people do want to know why i just in the interest of transparency why that number is now higher so that's it's just it's not it's just a question can is that something that can be done  i'm not i'm not sure how city with me i think i've just created a public record of the fact that we together and we could also put this there that that would be great the other thing also is that the analysis that was done in march of two thousand and eighteen you know i think most people are not going to go to looking for it  if it could be post posted in a way i realize and with the caviar that it is not current figures obviously people need to know that but i would imagine it's fairly close enough so that people do understand that there is capacity in the t thank you president right just continuing on the waterfront about the condition of the waterfront if i actually have that marsh memo right here and it it does indicate the positive balance of two point two five million is their stated and it said that assumes that the debt includes voter approved but not yet bonded so does that refer to bonding for moran yes great thank you and within the waterfront if district what are the other projects where we have active spending that are you know within that district currently we have eco project that was part of the point six  north bikepath waterfront park echo burlington harbor marina and so that's and then we can understand the complexity of accounting for the what's been done to date in all these various projects thank you  f there is a decision to have bond insurance will that be rolled into the debt or how is that how do you i don't know what the cost is that's part of that resolution it would kind of wrapped into the ultimate lee we traditionally in recent years have not found it at all worthwhile to us to buy so i don't know that i would anticipate it being an issue but it would be wrapped into that that cost the four point seven five percent  thank you and president right just so that i can end this line thirty three and both resolutions need to be amended to the five point six four nine million i notice that it wasn't picked ready for comment so go to conservation and then cancer tracy thank you president right i wanted to thank mr flynn for his diligence in in asking these questions and bringing some issues to our attention that i think are very important but i also want to thank the many people who who turned out for the pac meetings when this was originally presented and i have to say i can't think of a project that has garnered as as much enthusiasm as this has right out of the gate some from a really broad spectrum of the community people are really excited about this and but also that you know we have been we've been presented with a lot of illustrations and what we're putting forward right now is the bare bones that can be built off of and i just want to make sure that everybody understands that because i know there were i was a lot more excited about the more advanced stages but that's not where we are now but i really and i know it's been a whirlwind to get it to this point today and we're really under the gun to get this done and it's very exciting that we're going to be able to use those shift dollars and not have to send them back to  a big benefit for burlington thank you thank you cancer shannon cancer tracy thank you president right i would also echo counter shannons words of thanks for especially cures than your work has been tremendous on this i remember meeting you right when i first got on the council and when you got up early on a morning and took me in dimmer and your belief in the project then was evident it's continued through several other iterations and i want to thank you for your willingness to just kind of bear with all these changes and really continue to believe in the possibility of that site speaking of believing in the possibility the site i think that my belief in this particular concept was actually further confirmed when i went when i had the opportunity to actually factory stripped it down to the studs and created a public park very similar to what we're trying to do here i will say that it was gorgeous it was absolutely beautiful sight it was a sight that even though it was winter was still getting use and some it was also  very interesting because i had the words of other counts are sort of echoing in my mind as i was going through the site meaning and i remember specifically counter jing talking about wanting to see nature and natural aspects being brought to the site well that particular site has vines growing all over and it creates this beautiful scent sort of sense of a room that's preserved so i thought that was really cool aspect something i hope is continue to be kept alive in that there were also a lot of emphasis on place making and keeping you know and having all these different little areas for people to kind of go in and gather in it that however also was awe also kind of show to a question that counselor dean raised which was that of you know maintenance of the site and having a good site plan specifically with regards to graffiti and tagging several areas of wood banisters and things were calm i heard in permanent marker and things like that so thinking about these things as we roll it out i think will also be crucial another thing that i thought they did really well was in incorporating public art in the space and having you know not overwhelming but having subtlety and having lots of public art and design really brought into it not just allowing the building itself to to beat up but really bring in other elements so that was particularly helpful one thing that i think that we really do need to have an eye towards and maybe they do there and i just wasn't there on that particular day but it didn't really feel like there was a whole lot of programming or other things or evidence that there was programming to take place in in winter months i would say that if we are going to move forward with this which i certainly hope that we do that we really have an eye towards not just programming it in the warmer months but that we try and arch continually trying to think of uses for that space in a year round setting and that that doesn't people are just going to use it year round you have to really bring them there as well so those are some reflections just based off of visiting a similar concept but in so doing i felt very confident in bringing something similar to burlington and that that could be a real asset to our waterfront moving enthusiasm and i think part of it is though that we're there we're tired right they're tired of hearing about it and this is something they can all grass onto and i think that's great but the reality is here is that you know we do two three and four right and where's the money going to come from i want to be candid with the taxpayers right that there is no answer for that there's just not to fits right where where is that money coming from and so i just wan clear i think this is a great project i think it's a it's a star it gives us many of opportunities to concentration just talk about ok and at the expense of tearing the building down it's the same right and so why would we and i agree but just to be clear we talk about bonding in teflon you know we should be concerned about that number you know should should match what we said but at the end of the day what we really should be talking about is funding going forward right for phase two three and four and where is that going to come from and be honest with the taxpayers about that you know and we don't have that answer right now and that's fair to say and i think we should be upfront about that and we should tell the people that we don't know where that's coming from but we do know this to tear down would cost as much if not more than they do phase one it would be crazy not to do phase one and go from there and i think we all need to understand the expectations right that this is not going to look great on phase one is completed right it's not they're going to say you spent all that money this is what we got i think we need to see the whole picture here from this night forward so i just want to be clear to everybody so we're or on the same page thanks thank you actually jumbled the words up and thought we call we call the new renaissance factor but i would i would just say that the constituent response so far has been a little bit of confusion or bewilderment about what we're going to get in the end because it's not a year round facility it's not really a true facility in that sense and i think it's really important that we as elected officials in this and see when others engage the community more on what it's going to be because it's not so i'm sorry that chris flynn left but i did want to thank him as well he's been reached out to me several weeks ago and had a lot of questions he has a he has a habit of writing all of his emails and about a nine font and they go on like this and he's been doing it that way for years but there's a lot of questions says are usually very long emails the finances do matter and i think he brought to the forefront some important important points this isn't about the success of the press this isn't about the the project is the concept it's just getting clarity on what the on what the finances are behind it so for that i appreciate what he did and thank him i don't know if curious to know remembers because it was so long ago it was a really really cold day and there was ice inside moran and i found out something about care since she has absolutely no fear of heights and didn't realize that she was walking up all the way up to the top with someone who has a huge fear of heights and it was pretty scary up there but she kept on saying to me you got to keep going you gotta keep going because the view is great and it is great but god it scared its scared the living daylights out of me i was so glad to get back miranda is an interesting building and i'm glad that we're going to at least have a part of a part of a part of it in a part of our history and i you know i think it is important what both counselor shannon said and counselor hartnett said that you know it is very easy to get drawn into the pictures about what it can be you know in some ways it's a work in progress this gets us to point one think about how long we've been talking about moran well if it takes us half that amount of time to get to two three and four then we'll probably be doing great so thanks so much and curious and i've i've told you this many times but maybe not enough publicly you are absolutely one of the unsung heroes in city hall you do your work tirelessly for the for projects that you care about and we all appreciate it want to share since kelso prime brought up and councilor shannon brought up and thank you all you you all have been very lovely tonight thank you and very kind but you ask about what's in and what's out there were two slides in the presentation that i gave to the pac which goes into some detail and so if you have a chance to look at that if you have any questions don't hesitate to reach out to me i'll be happy to answer questions about what's in and what's out to show you where to find that it for me thank you so i just want to say running the meeting i sometimes missed something and i just want to be clear mr mayor you mentioned a special election what would what would trigger a special special  election my point is if simply about the additional revenues that we have not currently committed to any voter approved project proselyte two million two and a quarter million like we said last spring if we are currently reviewing options that  involve a variety of different projects that could involve additional investments of that of that money if projections do hold and we continue to think as the year unfolds here that there is excess capacity there and something i really think it's a conversation largely for another night but if we wanted to commit some of that two million dollars to rather it's this or the relocation of the bike path from east side of the train tracks to the west side of the train  tracks that we may have if we wanted to try to avail ourselves of that opportunity would require special action because that is coming up by the end of the year so that was that was the point there can i just speak briefly you like a certain the agree with the notions have been expressed that people should be clear that not and we've tried to be clear in the way we've talked about this frame concept of both talking about it potential for evolution in the future wow at the same time being clear we can't afford all of that tonight we try to make that clear in the original original presentations and be even clear about that in the last pack number stations we're not i have to say from my perspective there is a real chance that we never get beyond this first phase and if we only do that i think will be that combined with the other changes that are in process right now and which have not been yet unveiled but the burlington harbor marina new park on the west side of the of the water plant if all we do is that which is what tonight's vote is about it will be a vast vast improvement over what we have there today and so while i agree with the notion that it is what they actually are taking tonight in no way guarantees that we will achieve all of the most exciting elements of some of the images them put out there is certainly with some i have considerable excitement about the action the council is taking tonight and i hope the council in the public does too i think it sets us on a course for a major step in the right direction i will also say and you know i i do think there is real potential was for non taxpayer sources of additional funds that could allow some of those future phases to take place but that's a conversation for another day thank you mr baer the career ready for the vote so all those in favor of passage of the five point three and five point zero four which is advancing them around concept as well as issu the to funds please say i write a post that passes unanimously and i personally think that we've just taken thank you i think we've just taken a big step forward and  advancing the moran plan framed concept and potentially moving this forward after many years and decades really so thank you thank you castor mason for reminding me i really should have done this earlier so my apologies but i i will now mr mayor where are you going to come back here mr mayor sorry we'll talk to you in a  minute i need to recess the regular meeting of the city council to for the mayor to convene the board of tax abatement so ali will recess the regular city council meeting at nine forty two because i am i am going to reconvene the regular city council meeting but i'm actually reconvening it just to recess again at eight forty five so that we can go to the board of civil authority and  other item is the consent agenda personal right move to pass the consent of general take the actions indicated excellent seconded discussion of the consent agenda all those in favor of the motion please say i  regular meeting of the city council and now we are ready for magen total comprehensive plan for the city to give us an update on plan b t v we know that we have a public hearing scheduled for the second public hearing scheduled for march eleventh and so this is a reasonably short day and with any questions from the council president right and i know that you did send out a pretty comprehensive communication communication to us oh yes so thank you for having us on your agenda this evening we wanted to just be here tonight to follow up i know that our discussion of this item at our last meeting was a little bit confusing in terms of the timeframe we did take in action at that last meeting where you did take an action at that last meeting to warn second public hearing on the update to plan b t v for you meeting on march eleventh we know that that could tentative be the date of adoption but we also know that if you would like more time to discuss it we can defer that to the second meeting in march so we will actually be posting an updated draft of the plan and that notice of the second public hearing later this week so we wanted to return after you've had a little bit of time with the communication about the comments we've received on the plan and how we anticipate addressing them before that plan update is posted to just be here and be available if you have any questions or further comments before we actually make those changes and put it online thank you questions for meghan or david from the but i just have a clarification from the communication the plan b t v self and master plan draft draft is the intent to incorporate that into the master plan and have i don't feel like the cow has the council given feedback to you regarding the so the plan process for pla south and was primarily primarily took place in twenty fourteen and twenty fifteen right in late twenty fifteen the council passed a resolution regarding the draft of a plan that asked  department to in the planning commission to revisit the draft of that plan to specifically remove references to housing in the enterprise zone so over the course of two thousand and fifteen in two thousand and sixteen the planning commission worked through every section of that document and completely rewrote plan b t v s out then and that draft has then been available as part of this plan b t v comprehensive plan update process as well i don't know that we have specifically been here to have a conversation with you since that resolution but it's been part of the update process for plan b t v i must admit that i kind of lost track of that process and knew we had sort of left off but i never remember really coming back to the full council and that's why i asked the question so if others are ready i will pay  attention to that section and i trust i'm sure that the councillors from that section of the city have paid a lot of attention to that and i know the residents are very engaged so i'll trust that  hoping that they're satisfied with this and feel like it reflects what they want to see happen in the self and so i wanted to just just talk about a couple of things there was a there's this is a huge amount of commentary that you have provided to us and then recommend recommendations resulting from those comments one of the things that was referenced was talking about the environment and i just wanted to make sure i'd like you your critical eyeballs to look at  now and actually not having enough hives to pollinate fruits and vegetables and moving across country i just didn't know if we  our plan had really looked at that and really wanted to make sure i mean i think that that doesn't have to be specific in here but i do think that we as a community and as a state pride ourselves  being environmentally aware and i'm not sure we have done enough to really try to protect the bee habitat and it i mean as far as the interview i mean if we don't have bees to pollinate we can't be a sustainable community and so i think this is no light matter and i think that that should be addressed in some way in this plan and i just wanted to bring that up apparently mice do a real number on b habitats and so i mean on hives so i think we've got to be very aware and i'm hoping that we have have had good feedback regarding th think you said i it is something that draws a smirk but it is a really important issue and we do not talk about the decline of the bee population on the whole directly in this report but one of the comments that we did receive last week  from a resident talked about the fact that we could strengthen the language in the section of the document that talks about conservation and to specifically know that in our open spaces in our along our corridors and trails that we can significantly increase the the vegetation that supports pollinators in order to help us to do just that so that is something that we anticipate incorporating in this next draft of the plan update is far at the creation of a citywide historic preservation plan in order to really address that issue to be very clear about what our burlington's priorities for historic preservation not relying as much as we have in our attention to that has come in during the last meeting that you feel has resulted in a significant or a substantial change to the draft that's a great question i think  thing that i would just note we've received a lot of great feedback i think i shared at the last meeting that people's comments have drawn us to you know were were making a significant transformation in terms of how this plan is organized and presented not necessarily in how its policies are but the feedback that we've received has been really helpful in helping us kind of tie up loose ends and make sure that all of the pieces are connecting to one another and particularly are connecting to those adopted and incorporated plans and studies that we're relying on more heavily one thing that i would know is we've received some feedback about how the future land use framework is presented along our major thoroughfares in burlington and and we've received a lot of feedback from some residents about that issue we will make that change and it doesn't have a major impact on what the plan says in terms of potential areas that could accommodate growth in the future but it is something that's really important to residents particularly in the hill section in terms of understanding what it means for their neighborhood and making sure that the plan reads in a way that it intends to be presented and that that residents of that neighborhood have comfort with so we've been communicating about a lot of edits that we can make so that section of the plan to change some of the language to provide that comfort and one thing i can tell you it's not over the just i think it was more megan who had difficulty thank you katherine bush or and i'm not making light of the b issue because i can assure you that every counselor here tonight will go to the mattress for the bees so let me with with  that thank you very much and we will have the second public talk about the equity reports just join us in october so be t v staff began approximately two and a half years ago this is this effort that carolyn is the really the only staff member of which involves monthly department had meetings and has given the city the ability to for really every department to develop and over time analyze and and expand upon a set of  metrics and the city has benefited from that new capacity a number of ways including you know just a one in one example a council may recall is when we added a three firefighters in the f this at this at the state of the city address last april i committed that we would turn a significant part of this capacity towards equity issues and equity metrics within each department this year for the first time we committed to completing and the first annual equity report to be part of the town meeting day materials that are available to voters some the highlights of this year's report thank you aaron thank you council president we are definitely excited to be here and i think we're really grateful have carolyn on the city team and i thought will be helpful to ask her to introduce herself just briefly to the council slaves and her background  about myself from my background although i've only worked for the city for about four months i've been a resident of burlington for almost six years the past ten plus years of my career have really been focused on international development where i america africa south asia and throughout my career one of the most exciting things is always coming home to burlington to my home to my family where we're also the caretakers at the ethan allen homestead  things off by saying that i'm very excited to be working here with the city doing what i love to do with his kind of performance management and metrics but focused on on my community my city were where i live and now where i work  it's been a pleasure to kind of engage with the t v stuff as a process and working on this equity report has been a great introduction for me to to the city and it's been great working with brian and you'll see in this presentation some of the challenges and kind of great insights that we've seen kind of going through this process as well i'll speak a little bit and turn back over to carolyn and wrap it up i'm conscious of where the last item on the agenda thank you and where you do in the next next live even be on this one so how we define equity in the report is the just and fair inclusion into a society in which all people can participate prosper and reach their full potential this definition was developed after we did a review of other cities that have done equity reports and looked at a couple different national organizations the the definition actually comes from a group called policy link which i learned c d n are is actually the group that helped the city with metrics across five domains and that kind of structure is typical of health assessment reporting and how other cities have begun to evaluate equity within their own communities so we're not making up out of whole cloth methodology that we're using for this we then try to connect what the departments are doing at that apartment level with what is happening citywide in terms of broad trends and indicators of citywide health citywide safety citywide environment etc we know that the city and the city's individual departments can't necessarily change the direction of those trends but there's two assumptions one we think we can influence sometimes those trends and we think we should consciously make assessments about how the city is applying its resources through this equity l ne how we worked with a number of stakeholders for this kind of first report and i think their feedback was quite helpful represented from the stakeholders relisted here and we also did a literature view including the cities of oakland pittsburgh austin santa fe new york city and the state of vermont has a couple reports that had bearings on some elements of this next slide please so again we're looking at these five different domains economic stability housing education workforce development public safety in community health and community natural resources and we're looking at citywide indicators across those five domains and then how department work filters up into those trends that we're seeing city wide one thing that we took from the vermont the twenty eighteen vermont state health assessment report is a focus on a couple different sub pop elations the state report focuses on the first four groups listed here we added women to that methodology the reason we're doing this is that using data to examine the kind of unique experiences of these groups is an important part in understanding something equities that are being faced and beginning to address in equities so it's not it was comparable in the reports of things that we're finding and we thought was an important thing to do the one that i think is critical to make sure councils understand and here is that brings in a small and some of the data that we have access to particularly federal data census data doesn't allow easy desegregation and so we don't report when we don't have  since you've all had the report and we'll have time to engage with it in more detail if you haven't is to give you a snapshot of two sections so first we'll be looking at the housing section and this first domain that we're looking at here as you know housing costs can be a substantial driver of an equity and has the seventh oldest housing stock in the nation with forty percent of home forty seven percent of homes in burlington built before  fifty that however does not translate necessarily to a low value market the median value of owner occupied homes is two hundred sixty seven thousand dollars that's thirty one percent higher than the national median of one ninety three and home prices continue to trend upward another really clear differentiator in burlington is that as most of you know this is a renters market essentially with sixty one percent of residents in burlington being renters that's nearly double the national and state rates of thirty one percent and so knowing that most residents are renters this next statistic on the next slide please is actually very telling when we look at the most recent u s census data from the american community survey five year estimates data released just this past december we can see that as a percentage of household income when we look at this data it's important to understand that moderately burdened households are those that spend thirty to fifty percent of their household income on rent  and while severely burned households are those that spend more than fifty percent of their household income on rent research demonstrates that rent burden households have higher vixen rates increased financial f ty and wider use of social safety net programs compared with other renters and homeowners so in burlington this we have an estimated nearly sixty percent of all renter households in the city burdened and that's nearly ten percent higher than state and national rates and so it's an important metric for us to look at especially when we kind of think about what this means from an equity perspective and this is one of those data points that you know and as brian had mentioned we wanted to be able to look at this across a few different demographics this data is available by the from the census broken out by race however the margins of error stream lehi and so we didn't have a the confidence to report that data broken down by by race for the for these kind of measures so you know now quickly we can take a look at the next slide and the next domain wanted to give you a snapshot of education and workforce development so according to the latest census estimates burlington actually fares very well in terms of educational attainment with just over seventy percent having some college or high but when we looked at the data there again were disparities by race and again the high margin of error on some of these populations made it difficult for us to report this information broken up by race  however the a recent report from burlington high school also shows disparities in educational performance among certain groups primarily students who qualify for free or reduced lunch and students of color and so if you haven't seen that report i would encourage you all to look at that as well it's referenced here in our report and then kind of looking at the next slide we wanted to demonstrate showing how throughout the report what we're doing for each of these domains is then accompanying that information that population level data and information that we have available to us with some of the city  an indicators that we are tracking through bt stat to show how we are addressing some of those larger issues throughout the various domains and so here on the education domain  we are taking a quick look we can see that there's a fifteen percent increase in the amount of scholarships that have been awarded this year there's a growing internship program that some more than one hundred fifty  one hundred fifty thousand dollars in kaufman grants went to support women entrepreneurs additionally a new workforce development program initiated by sado in collaboration with the firm a department of labor and resource place twenty of the city's most vulnerable residents such as woman and new americans facing economic hardship and to highly skilled trade jobs and so these are some of the things that we want to highlight in the report as city initiatives that  can be used to kind of counter or support some of the population level data that we're seeing and a lot of this data and information throughout the report helped inform some of the recommendations and findings that the brain i'll talk about next i please so it probably doesn't come as a surprise to counselors that there is you know a real problem when it comes to housing in the city and it is a kind of source of inequity within the so the report calls for some near term st could take to help create more housing opportunities in the sea policies around zoning changes that would allow different types of new types of units like excess retailing accessory dwelling units to be considered in a different we also found  that within city programming there's real disparities in how programs are used when they're paid or unpaid and from our perspective that really puts a premium on scholarships like if you want to talk about equity of access when we looked at parts programming by take you up on this to give some feedback in writing about what else could be done you are challenging us to look and provide our thoughts on on each of these initiatives but one thing that i one thing i wasn't clear about is when you say better coordinate cities youth program goals and outreach strategies am i assume that that this already incorporates work with outside agencies like the y and the boys and girls club or is this just city and not because you talk about outreach strategies so i wasn't quite clear what that now and it's a great question i need to two answers to that are related one internally we think there's opportunities for some of the city's programming departments like p c a parks in the library to increase their collaboration that could relate closely to what's happening with some these outside partners as well a specific example would be i know the library has been looking library particular has been looking at when in the community is there a drop off on summer programming and realize that kind of late august tends to be a very challenging time for a number of organizations around town like king street shuts down for a while because it draws closer it's down for a while what can the library be doing to supplement existing programming during that approach to see that not i don't think the city can address every issue and that's why i wondered about the outreach to other agencies who are trying to address similar issues but one thing i did you recommendations for strengthening future equity reports and i support your obviously you know better really be advisory committee but the first thing i would think you would want to do and you reference that somewhere is to need a diverse group of people to review this report and give their feedback to you before you decide next steps as far as format and information and what things to monitor  or i really feel like the council is you know one level but i'm talking about a far more diverse group of citizens who would utilize this and understand this and and so i'm hoping that that would be the next step before you actually even undertake the advisory committee as as a and have them finance the next report because i this is some amazing data and as council president wright said some of it's pretty sobering as well i think what comes up for me is that the city in vermont municipalities don't have a human service really and so a lot of the data in here seems to be pointing out that our social safety net is got a lot more holes in it and that's because the federal government retreated and states tried to bring up the rear if you will but haven't done a fantastic job and so i don't know really where i'm going except to say that there's that third sector which is a counselor bush you just mentioned is the nonprofit sector that is the key player in a lot of these services and moving the needle on a lot of the metrics that give us pause and make us you know wonder what we could be doing more i mean we have such limited ability as a mishap palette we're not looking to raise taxes  and start new departments to address a lot of these needs but i guess so there's i think a lot of potential for sharing this with policymakers at the state level as well so they can see maybe how this data can help inform what they're  doing our congressional delegation should get you know some ups who should understand what this data is revealing about our community and and i think the coalition of the willing in the nonprofits that are out there is often referred to by a friend of mine  one of the aspects of the data i noticed was the issue of representation boards and commissions and also in city departments and i'm just wondering if there was sort of some language about next steps needing to be taken with that is one of the next steps that either you or the administration have looked at as the implementation of the rooney rule that it that being that in the hiring process that a person of color would need to be interviewed as part of that process is that something that you're willing to consider that you would look at in order to deal with this because you can't really rectify those kinds of solutions unless you really have people of color are part of that process  and i think it's an interesting suggestion and i think those demographic figures revealed a lot of different challenges beyond just race too so i think it's you know i think that could be one one element of a response but i know if something is the right info graphic  cancer tracy two of the sobering statistics that jumped out at me the counterpart was talking about was that twenty four percent below the poverty level which is double the double the national average and the other one that jumped out of me was that a median family household income is forty seven thousand one forty which is up five percent five percent but twenty three percent below the national average and  so i thought those were sobering statistics and also i note that afterwards you said that one of the things that we can do is to help people is try to keep taxes and the cost of services under control why lo clarify that the poverty data is skewed because of households non family family households student households are in there so there's a lot of data confusion i think for us to use that as our poverty benchmark i think there's some there's some skew in that data and i think i want to be really careful as i think in one of the footnotes and the text is small in this report so i just i want to acknowledge and work we have a version online that  we so we can book the text quite easily but the one of the info graphics we are careful to try and screen out college students there's a methodology that's been approved that's been kind of worked on a number of college towns that face the same challenge that we do and so it's possible that  poverty rate is a little bit lower and i'm not sure if you yeah if you adjust the university student population both undergraduate and graduate it puts burlington at an adjusted poverty rate of closer to sixteen percent  the report is this different so the city has a diversity an equity plan and the council was getting annual reports which it more has to do with city employment trends and so forth i think is this now a substitute for that or are we also going to be getting annual reports on that progress towards within those the framework of that specific plan and you know a different format progress over the course of the year you know as we get farther and farther away from when that diversity equity report was written i think we probably need to come up with some mechanism for modifying that process  of thank you i think would be great to have a kind of larger conversation in the community about the report i think it's a there's a lot of great data and really impressive  i also would love to kind of think of ways how does that how does the council is the council's role in addressing some of the and then i have i don't know if there's a committee the consumer detail time with that maybe that's for the next council but i would like to see the council really engage this report in a meaningful way and i just have a very specific question about the public safety data and specifically the percentage of police searches yielding contraband so there's a lot of data that's been collected about traffic stops is one measure of kind of disparate treatment by choose this metric he talk a bit more about why this metric this this comes from work the police department's done over the past i think probably really three and a half years some of it with  community input that looks at how traffic stops in burlington are occurring and what the outcomes of those traffic stops are and uses as its kind of driving methodology the outcomes of trash jobs and the reason it chooses that  understand in in a complex world where you have different rates of stopping whether there's bias inherent in those different rates of stopping is looking at the outcomes of the searches when the and so we thought th also want to underline the point that mr lowe made in the parks and rec data that when the program is free there is very high participation of people of color and when there is a charge that goes away right so race is closely correlated with being lower  income unfortunately and so i just think when we think about participation inclusion scholarships is as you noted a very important and just ways to to price or serve our program so that everyone who wants to participate is well and thank you for that you know that i actually think maybe the most significant thing to come out of this exercise that this last point that you focus on cancer no doubt you know really was not it we did not know the answer to that  when this effort started there just had not really been attention to who exactly was participating in these programs the simple act of measuring and looking into it flushed out and it also exciting organically caused the departments of the library you know the three department to really do use programming to start meeting on their own and trying to coordinate their services differently it's resulted in you know small changes like i think next week we have an annual event that's always an exciting event where burlington city arts fills this room up with you know fourth dozens and dozens of fourth graders and their families it's always one of the fun events of the year never in the past have we made it easy for all those assembled fourth graders to get into parks programs and to get into library programs but there are going to be tabling efforts set up as well as information about scholarship availability as a result of this kind of change in the way we're thinking about it so i appreciate the response of the council and you know again we're hopeful this affordability and housing and when i think about what a life change that could be if we could improve that for so many families in burlington i think it would be extraordinary i just see i just take a small clips of what we did a new north and with the farrington right park there and the sense of ownership that those people have taken and those families our friends our neighbors people we shop with right and viking us into their community wanting us to come in and see the difference is having a farmer's market they are having food trucks there i ran for their children just like we want just like everybody very it's a it's a basic fairness approach and i think we overlook it every day because we're busy and we're not routine lives and we you and there's so many families out there that we haven't reached and i hope we will and and in the coming year so i appreciate the work brian and and what you guys have done and i think it's needs to be brought to attention more it's something that's a kind of a sleeping giant and we don't really want to see it day and i think we do see it so i appreciate the work that's been done this and i hope we move forward and put a commission together like that this specific point there i don't know what is this to tell user to get deeply inside me i don't know if this can be called equity report from the c d o because to me when we say equity we need to look internally our departments and look we have people of color that's how it starts and also being recommendation around how we can get and there are some groups here that are not even mention it because when you think about it ninety seven percent of the population growth in this state is composed of americans they come with their with their fav they come with their culture they come with so many things the city and they trying by themselves to you know try to have a life a decent life here we need to look at we look at the sea incredible job and i think i told him a by the great work he has been doing hiding woman who are  department head since the beginning it's something that i noticed and i told him this is great this is wonderful we need to go out each department the police you cannot see anybody who speaks who speak swahili people who leave you we have not and we say we are trying to diversify we bring in women yes we bring in people also who are sri lankan who don't have language who don't have community groups i think when we talk it that's where we need to be that's what we need to look at and there is also this sense of belonging people appreciate we have this night we have highlights you know but people celebrate or the feelings what are those feelings and how the city can help them celebrate how do we celebrate everybody you know to me when when when you talk about equity there are figures here that any city can do to do this to people who do so much work in projects in you know data collection in all of this but at the same time i do i could not find anything here that these  together in bringing what's really amazing for everyone to be able to dignity and to finally i think we did have an opportunity to show the rest of the nation to create a vibrant  briefly just reminding everybody that there is a public information hearing next week february twenty seventh at five o'clock right here in contra so hopefully many of you action two weeks from today this is tuesday it's two weeks from today so i courage everybody to get out and vote and good luck to all the city councilors here tonight that are running for reelection and we know that at least eight of us will still be here and up to potentially eleven counselors that are here now may still be here i just want to say just indulge me for just ten seconds here right that i had said at one point that i was not going to seek another term as council president i want to i've told many councillors that i have changed on that and a request of some councillors i am going to seek another term as council president and i want to make good on the record before it's regardless of how any races turn out items that both represent years of work by the city in one form or another and what you've had some positive news substantially positive news on in recent days  prior year and it was a significant decline it was a fifty percent decline and when looked at in a broader environment in which throughout the rest of the state the overdose deaths continue to rise  d it does suggest that the huge effort that has been undertaken by a wide number of you know literally dozens and dozens of different agencies and partners within the county is starting to take hold if you were to boil down and and i will say here were for the public in the council if you were to boil down the essence of what i think is starting to make a difference i think a lot of it really just comes down to increasing the availability and speeding the access impact and really turned around these operate these opioid crises and we're hopeful that that in the numbers is what we're starting to see here it reinvigorates gives us new energy to continue forward you will see in the weeks ahead the sebring to leading the way were some additional strategies that try to essentially double down on this effort and find a way to make sure that as many of our community members that are suffering from this terrible addiction have access to this lifesaving medicine and then full stop on that i would encourage people are interested in watching home interested in hearing more we alliance website where you can find substantial additional information about these efforts online the other topic i want to address is just news that broke today in which maybe not even all councillors have had an what we were hoping to achieve in this effort and also preserve substantial so you know two important things on this i just shared council one of them a prelude to future work we'll get to do in the future it something that was very much uncertain until today is whether or not the p c would approve the reinvestment of the sales proceeds that will be coming to the city the six million dollars in excess of six million dollars that will come to the city as a result of  do that and how much we would like to invest and then secondly what is the significance i mean i think it's we've been churning away at this for so long i am from my perspective what we set out to do seven years ago many of us were here seven years ago together some of us have joined along the way the most of us have been here since since the start when we had this very large challenge in front of us from my perspective we were s protect the taxpayers from further financial liability we were seeking to recover as much of the funds as we as we could that had been lost prior to two thousand and ten we were seeking to ensure that we did not go back to the what i think of as the bad old days when adelphia or comcast had a monopoly in terms of telecommunications services in this community and we were seeking to ensure the fiber optic resources that bt has built remain available for us and future generations abroad tony and i