emergency thank you home if we have an emergency tonight and need to leave the in the building up promptly for two doors in the back of the room or the front of the room whichever way you are whining and that leads out into the lobby and take right out into the main entrance to the city hall and please gather in the back in the parking lot there are two doors here that also lead to the parking lot so please move expeditiously out of the room and tom and i w injuries was a great relief the firefighters responded with a rowing and showed great bravery dangerous in addition the valuable collections in the building survived largely intact and amazing cooperation and courage of all involved in this incident the university of vermont is fortunate to be a part of such an extraordinary community and half of the grateful university many many thanks to as as you were aware of number fifteen as it was being removed that came out after the agenda was posted and also number eight the first reading of the land development learned about the program it's just really refreshing to see that kind of work enjoyed by young people to took it to heart because they're out there working in the mosquito infested transportation so they'll be some stakeholders but it's not designed for just the stakeholders i asked how this would be done it was i don't think they have the details so it would be done because as i found but as soon as it is we will be able to participate in that to what level that's open they're ok what but the about i was very specific and i said it doesn't appear as though that there is a noise piece in here and they said that's because they're going to incorporate all of our noise findings as part of that into the master plan and i said ok we want to know that this is going to happen the sound meetings are going to continue and we're encouraged to participate and they will be incorporated into documents  this updates basically it was a question business update the twenty thirty plan yes and it would be an update to that i mentioned the meeting time is changing the airport  gave them copies of and had forwarded to them because the only place we had it was in our draft minutes the wording for the resolution was adopted and i said i am here to tell you that this is our position as a city we support the governing board being expanded and that they originally resolution was dramatically changed and while i did not have my go on that i am here to tell you that i am bringing i resit and that i support this before you as part of the city and i was very clear on that interesting pieces that we looked at with that it was coming back june was open and said that there were some items on the original one that were not some of that was hearsay some of it was whatever and he said i would like to be able to get those resolved cleared and i'm open to doing that and i said ok as we all want the best for the community we'd like to have everyone on the same page and that was agreed to so just so i'm have corrected some of the ones that were out and i said i understand i said i did bring up a couple of pieces myself that are in the draft minutes and i said those were resolved but i said you know we are all pulling for that the same  piece talked about the voters of burlington would have to vote in the legislative changes if there was anything and then that the he mentioned the fact that the f a a would have to approve a change he didn't go into detail on that mr ke has a very broad background in legislative items and so he just made that comment that's when jane give the directors report and talked about how fetch which is one of the ratings agencies  for bonding and all has raised up the airports rating which was great he mentioned the fact that of the population base we have here forty seven percent of the catchable area fly through burlington and when they do that catchable area it's pretty broad because it would include the areas that could reach out as far as manchester new hampshire and whatever and and we're getting that the airport  administrators will be traveling for a couple of months this fall at various times they visit all of the trust i find interesting that this and all of the airlines that are and others that they would like to solicit they visit all of the online for the good p r they're trucking to some and they couldn't tell us exactly which ones but there are three or four nations that they would like to have  discussed so that could possibly be just with the current airlines or maybe a new and that's a possibility it's always out there we were told that the  paul is going to be traveling on at least one if not two of those trips representing burlington as part of the p r to the airlines   our federal administration to cut some subsidies to smaller airports which could be plattsburg we have some that comes in to us i don't know the exact amount but that's something that is possibly on the table and that came from our chair jeff monger who chaired the transportation committee for senator sanders for a lot of years  parking garage has some are of peace to do some repairs and then coming towards the end it was interesting that commissioner  we had some problem getting online but they had done the audio for people to hear and it was just kind of it is an update as to whatever and i said i reminded them that remember that when that was done it was two days before we passed a much abbreviated resolution so i said you had the new resolution there the chair and not the chair the manager from the city manager she commented and she she said you know we're talking a lot about regionalisation for a number of issues stormwater dispatch except and she said if this is something that would she was interested and said that there is a possibility that their city council will take up the resolution and re adopt the new one that has been there and i think the other item of importance to those who are sports fans is that on august twenty eighth from two to seven the boston bruins will be at the airport and everyone is invited just hanging out to a t with trophies or whatever and everything else and you know whatever i think they're doing a tour at different airports i saw a little map that had little dots at manchester in portland so on and bring to the fact was that what happened here and when i did not support the resolution in total my heart is with you to represent you when i go there and i represented and said this is what our it's easier if you go online and look at the whole agenda that is outlined fort because we spent probably five minutes you know on this piece this is talking about who the company will be that will do the plan and i think if you take a look at all the items and if you have some questions on that a big like a good clarification it is very very lengthy and it goes into everything that happens at the airport the travelers the transportation how people get there but if you take a look it's on their agenda for today and it would be easier to try to get answers from them and you when you're talking about the families you mitigation that maybe those are still continuing of them play findings will be incorporated into the master plan i was i was very curious because it was it that said the environmental piece and that looked like it was taken out and i said why is that being removed  said because we're covering up with the other piece and those findings will be brought in and i went ok you know i just want to be sure that we're not missing any pieces thank you any othe and have not received responses so when she's finished that piece and she is to get the word i don't want to say disrespectful but i think you know that was the what i got from that and when she's finished i said well i'd like to add  is here rebecca weaver is here and there are two chiefs are here to participate and would you to like to come up as well as we've discussed and as helen alluded to in very demanding work schedules very demanding situations that they encounter in the community and so tim's request and helen's point are both both appreciated and subject to talk about but you may or may not know that we had three really tragic incidents where i work in the last year we had a particularly very tragic incident in the last two months  i made a request or i work to ensure that every employee has access easy access to this and i know they made efforts but i i requested again through my management chain and i asked kevin to address this because you at least for the city of south burlington i wanted to ensure that that every employee with be it in the fire and fire department or the police department public works or on your staff has access to this program knows how to get access to it and feels comfortable using it and in knows what it's for you know that mental health is a serious issue right now and kevin's already talked about and we're trying to pull back the covers on mental health and bring it out in the open and show people that it's nothing to be ashamed i just want i want somebody who is feeling bad who is thinking that they might hurt themselves to take a chance and call the number that's on this and i want that message to be sent to every employee of this city that they do have somebody that will listen to and that person will care about their problems and to start that conversation might just save their life that's the most important thing you can think of right to say about this and so that's why i asked kevin to bring you for because i just want to hear what your what the city's actual program is and how it works and how you think it's working ok so i'm just going to give you an overview of what benefits every employee of south burlington has and this is full time part time whether they're a benefit or not anybody who gets a paycheck from self really to me use the services rebecca who you just identify yourself  emissions i'm rebecca weaver with invest a p the employee assistance program and the employer employee assistance program is a free short term counseling program that's provided to all employees of south burlington and not only the employees but the people who live with the employees so we could be roommates partners obviously spouses and children could be aging parents who move back in and the one who lives under their roof on their own they call an e p counselor and get counseling and it's confidential no one here at south burlington will know that people are using the services unless they themselves divulge that information and the people at home on their own may call and say on the plane employees south burlington is that easy that you get an appointment with a counselor it's short term counseling so it's not psychoanalysis it's more you know the employee comes in discusses whatever bothering him or her and with a counsellor creates an action plan to help them to get over whatever bothering them and to move on so it's it's free it's totally free for the employees there are no co pays there's nothing like that also there's two main reasons why they might want to use your services the first one is that we have mental health counseling just like what you would typically think typically think about counseling i'm stressed and anxious i'm afraid my son has a substance abuse problem i live with someone who's depressed i just lost a parent i'm grieving i need some grief counseling i have a coworker i can't get along with i need to call counsellor and get some strategies to help me deal with this difficult coworker it could be a supervisor problem you know it's confidential so they it's a really nice place for them to go to discuss those things it could be relationship issues you name it we have counseling that can help them and our goal is to pair them with a counselor that's going to best suit their needs the second main reason they might want to use our services as we can provide resources for employees we understand that people are so stressed at work there's busy at work they're busy with their home lives that sometimes they just need us to gather information for them and we have a lot of resources at our fingertips so things like i need to talk to an attorney about settling in a state or and a need to talk to attorney about a real estate transaction or whatever your legal issue you can call the p they will put you in touch with a proper attorney and thirty minutes for free they can talk to that attorney and get questions answered so and if you know one attorney gets an hour that's a really nice savings for home place and they also get twenty five percent discount you'd be doing for me to patients college savings for children again that's thirty minutes for you over the phone it could be elder care they have aging parents who live out of state they don't have time to run to that state to find out information we can do all that research and finding facilities in the area of the assisted living skilled nursing or just agencies to help with in transportation we give them the list of those agencies and facilities then they can call and make the best fit for their parents but it's just a real time saver for them things that stress them out they have to spend hours researching maybe on company time you never know we can save them all that time and it could be we could find daycare childcare we can find affordable housing it's just and nothing is trivial to us we actually have someone call and want to find a cattery closes to burlington to buy a persian cat and we help the client do that so it's nothing as silly to us we know that pets reduce stress so so we know that employee assistance programs save employees they save money for employers and we service state workers we service school districts we service private businesses so it and we know that statistically yes this helps save money and to get these employees the help they need that being said i want to tell you that we also support managers and so in that four by six card that you have it's if you look that's the one if you look down on the the dark blue side those are all the services we provide for free so we will come in to south burlington and do employee orientations what i just said to you it was pretty fast we do a little bit more detail but we will say that to all employees so that they hear it from an independent person not their manager so they can actually feel like yes this is truly confidential we can also come in and do supervisor trainings which is when we come in and talk to the town managers or the city managers and explain to them what benefits and services they have how if they have an employee who just is what has happened exhibiting a performance problem how we can be supportive to the manager in how to talk to the employee how to get the employee back on track if we should refer the employee to see a counsellor and we work in partner with the employer and the employee to get this employee back on track and save and save a lot of employees and it's just another tool to help get employees back on track so we do our training that's it's like a thirty or forty minute process where we go in and explain to managers how to go about doing that because they have free phone calls to the a p to help to support them we  with say you two boys and just just aren't getting along as long as those two employees agree to it they can go see the a p counselor together and the counselor will facilitate discussion and you get those employees to try to resolve whatever conflict they have and that's that's another free service we do critical incident stress debriefings where if there is a critical incident in your town we will bring counselors on site to that employees community talk to them is there anything else that's a forget that saves employees it saves it doesn't money does it state funding or federal or you know that's a really good question and there is some state funding there's also health trusts will you know like that the v high it supports us for the for the teachers in the school district so yeah i mean it's kind of tied in to some of the insurances things have changed now that the exchange is in there but it's there's a lot of different paths of you know it just a lot of different organizations and you know supporting this program you were in the last round pill years but me not that i know not that i'm aware and i will tell you also that and one of the new programs that we've just implemented was implemented within the past two years is first which kind of segues into your department we have a counselors who have gone through special training to help with first responders when they see her perfect incidents and so it's called e a p first and that is also available to thank you for your concern that's a concern of mine that i see reflected this morning thirty thirty seven years of baggage and i've seen a lot of changes over the years and i think there's more stresses both internal and external to our young employees stresses in their personal lives to more than they used to be and certainly stressors internally with what we're asking them to do every day and what they're being exposed to on a regular basis so we see a lot of struggle so we're certainly aware of and appreciate and never had some great feedback from you i recall back a few years ago with an officer who completely unexpected was served with divorce papers and didn't even know it was coming in a complete panic didn't know what to do phone was connected up with a counselor with a finance person with an attorney within minutes and said that really helped him get refocused and grounded and not in such a panic state made it made it much more bearable  one of the things that we've done at the police department as an add on it came as a throwback to the years of accreditation recommend that as police best practices as we have an additional contract time to time increased actually to increase on line items for current year to show the actual expenses we've been seeing but sunny's available similarly to e a p on call on demand but we also see from sunny as he has office space in our building and what i've asked him to do and what he does for other agencies is he spends an unscheduled time in the building so he shows up at roll calls he shows up at lunchtime he shows up at dinner time and just becomes a known friendly face and known into the unknown quantity and so he's has a lot of casual conversation gets to know the employees well and is available in a hallway hey sunny you have a minute i'd like to talk to you so some of this spontaneous conversation he's my go to guy call them in the middle the night when i get a call at home hey there's been a recent officers up to the highway to the five young people that burned to death in the car with officers there who were hearing them did not get down they were dealing with the little further away but were exposed to that so i was able to call sonny and just say hey sonny get some officers up on the highway i don't know the status he's like i'll just show up have a coffee and he'll just come to the office and be available we do do some critical stress debriefing with him chris a critical incident the briefing another thing we have with sunny is that if even from a supervisory level if we detect something if  come to work and i'm normally upbeat very chipper and i've got two days where i'm just really not myself i'm acting differently is perky maybe a little irritable frequently i make a call to sonny and sonny will come in and jump in the car with that officer for a couple hours and just do a check and we'll invite the officer to come and have a coffee with him that's the type of thing sonny has been he is designed he has pretty existing curricula  on he's doing roll call trainings for us so he's coming in and doing a thirty to sixty minute training with our officers as they're doing shift briefings so that he's talking to them about stress management he's talking to them about a balance of power and work he's talking to them he's a strong believer in mindfulness does a lot of discussion with officers about ways to relax ways to even in the heat of the moment ways to you know deep breathing he's very involved in yoga meditation  and recommends yoga studios recommends yoga practitioners to officers who may want to get involved with that to help them to deal with stress another thing that we've done is that we have started on a peer support program so that we have embedded on our agency now to officers who've been trained as a peer support so that the other officers in the building know that if they need somebody just to vent to somebody to talk to somebody that has a higher level of knowledge that these two officers are available in our midst that they can have a conversation with them they can go grab a coffee with down and and and talk about that and we will continue to train more and lastly you know we really  with kevin's support certainly and tom have been very mindful of you know the needs of officers and the high level of needs and you know we're not immune from things like happen in your workplace we hope they don't get to that degree but we have employees who have struggles from time to time and we've recently done some work with the uniform services program retreat it's an in patient high level program for folks that are really having a tough time  and that's been made available to us and has been very helpful so i think that not a day goes by counselor that you know the mental health of our staff is not foremost in my mind and really try to have you know two so we have we don't have any proactive opportunities like trevor has a police department just something that we haven't approached yet we have had some very successful even as a guest speaker said tonight is supposed to remain anonymous i have individuals who have taken part in take me aside and said thank you for giving me that card or thank you for suggesting to me my results really worked out well i've never team and they've been very helpful on particular incidents and since he's retired we haven't had an incident come along we used to use ken kelly quite frequently ken was a  public safety specialist in mental health issues and so forth and i've gotten exposed to ken prior to coming to south brandon and used him several times here as well and he was a great guy he was only a phone call away and helped me and my team out in several several situations so it's something we take very seriously we make sure that our command staff is trained on this and they bring anything to my attention that's going on that people like trevor said the phone rings in the middle of the night by the way the guys are just involved in such and such and such and such so i don't know about it to make sure that those guys are offered whatever assistance they may need and there are several times they've been involved in situations where we say you're off the line we'll get somebody to take your place until the time comes that we feel you're ready to go back like trevor i'm forty four years and this i was was your community within the past six months that really made you begin to wonder and this is trevor spoken of the situations that take you completely by surprise the things that happened like right out of  of both can be exposed to the same situations however they can be exposed to different situations and we usually were reactive because something has already happened they may be the initiators of it when it comes to you know using a firearm or deadly force or something like that so we are a little different in that respect but we all have the the exposure stuff when we get called to emergency scenes generally together  d so we have that situation you know i i don't think it would certainly hurt i like the idea of having somebody just drops by and so people are familiar with that person  think about this and i have a very very close friend who used to be on two different occasions once do divorce and one due to different situation and he said so you know we didn't get into the weeds about it but he told me that it was the best thing that he ever did certainly anything that was available would help  i guess you know trevor has some of that is there frequently and i think it's very important that if you are going to have a program like that to people that the employees that you're here providing the service for are comfortable with that person  is very very important because if they're not comfortable then then they're not going to open up and that was i was a good thing about ken kelly can was just one of those people that could walk into a room and and you're comfortable with them right from the very start and where this i believe in this instance is that i've dealt with it's kind of the luck of the draw and they kind of cater to basically based on what the problem is it's being requested so i don't think it would hurt and i would i would like to maybe if we had an opportunity certainly spend some time to try and find the right person right person to do  and i'm just like to add ninety five percent of the people who come to c a p counselor do so because they self refer to themselves they come on their own so to your point trying to get the message out there to all employees over fifty percent of people come because they've heard an orientation like you've heard tonight so it is really important to get in front of the employees and just as you have been what's the situation with the doesn't mean some of our other employees don't come upon those things too often times dog team in particular traverse to is accompanied by the plow guys are the guys from public works got to clear the road make sure that they're there trucks can get to the scene of what can be of the ways and then i can deliver them actually going to school districts mars i can just drop some drop off what i have and then we can replenish needed and we'd also like to schedule you in for the briefing to managers you talk us as managers right with our team leaders to make sure everybody understands the service and is using it when appropriate that's great because i think it's really i mean i think we all recognize that it's a horrific fire car accident and you're a suicide attempt but there are other things but there's so many other things in our lives that i mean just like the place of work that was those issues came from somewhere else but we know that you know we have other staff members who are going through some difficulties and i know one certainly has been in touch so we've got to get the word out park recently they had started a program called hope happens here and it's risky and it's to deal with mental illness that they are and i think there are twelve different sports teams that originally got involved in that and it spread out it's going to other campuses now but it's basically to say it's ok to not be ok and that there is someone here that to talk to you they have a wonderful we'll be glad to share that with you but i'm so proud of these kids most of our hard twenty six years of having internes they have been from st mike's and this is a program that they are hoping will go national and there's so much support for one young man said he wanted it started because there was mental illness in his family and he had seen the effects of that and what getting help could do and we were just recently made aware that one of our grandchildren who had started school college last year one of his close friends who went to another school had a serious breakdown and had to leave school and another took her own life and these are things that when you say it affects you but somebody has to feel comfortable to talk to someone these athletes i think it's wonderful because they know each other they're with each other every day locker room on the ice on the basketball court or whatever so i think it's wonderful that it's working its way down into the college level and i'm sure our schools  on the lookout for it but certainly what you folks go through and what your teams and the wonderful work that you do is just fabulous to have somebody there how they are basically their own nine one one line to call them thank you for everything y g as well so the best case scenario in the worst case scenario in my mind is that the the the worst case or or the the least best case scenario for employer is oh it's time for your annual health benefits review pick your program by the way you know the silence the other three hundred sixty four days a year later it's time to pick your health benefits right did you know there's and it's you know my desire for the best case is that maybe on a quarterly basis department managers hand these out word discuss this you know briefly at the beginning of a meeting with all employees and remind them because people are sometimes thick head right and you have to keep reminding them call this number call this number you know it it's just a simple thing is the reminder there is this thing that you can use if i haven't told you in the last ten minutes imma tell you again and so that there's no way they could say i didn't know you know so that's what i want to impress upon everybody here if we can help that process so that there can't be a single employee that wasn't told at least four times a year if not more there's this thing you can get the card from that little packet on the wall over there you know and no one will know that you took it or you can go online and it's at you know it's off of our h r website and it's  in the top of it right because the worst other worst case is somebody doesn't have this and then they have to go digging through a bunch of h r websites and that is the worst thing is like oh is it on this one is it there is where you know and really the responsibility the employer is to make that thing is easily available as possible put the one hundred over the top of the page where you think you are yourself call this number right now you know so that's the extreme situation but to be honest i mean we're at work we've had three extreme situations and i know we're not the only employer in the country that hasn't had these types of extreme situations so anything we can do to improve or to get people lifeline please let's do it so i appreciate your comments and the program so those goods thank you i like the idea it's so broad i mean the information that you give is not just the wellness piece i mean it's financial wellness all the other businesses that's why when i saw that wheel i thought wow that is exactly what you have that's fantastic i guess it's my salesmanship that i've been in sales for too many years and it's like you sell the benefits of something well this is just an amazing thing that can help you in ok fantastic ok so i'm quietly home i'm the public information officer here for the city and i'm here to talk about the new website which is not what you're seeing in front of you but before that did everybody  there is to get more information out of hence why there's more stories there than just what we used to have with the recreation brochure so we're trying to share more about the major issues that you guys have but and the team has been working on so new website so i think you're all familiar with our one nine hundred ninety s website and so we're going to move into the twenty first century here and on what tool that you use so if you are looking at it on your mobile phone it will shrink down and make things fit it was to work on mac devices as well as droid are in the process of going live we revise has us in the queue and so what we're working out now are any final bugs like some images won't load for me or  folks are still updating information which will be ongoing after we go live anyway because it's dynamic and information changes every day and and so i just want to give you an overview of what's there and what we'll have for communication capabilities so you have the slider at the top you can click on any of these things we can have as many as we'd like we can also have a video here if we wanted to we don't have one of the city but that would be something nice for us to work on in the future here at the moment we have four items that are that are hot buttons the wrecked apartment is asked to be there so we're having an icon created to go on there  for the rec department i imagine once that happens the library probably ask for the same thing because those are two major areas but what's nice is these are short cuts for us to go right to some of the most useful things that citizens are looking for so they want to make a payment right you want to pay online in person sunday and here are the four ways that you and you can do that so and and if you click on line it takes you directly to here you go pay your bill so super select two clicks and someone can pay their taxes or licens can always go back to the home or you can go to any of these makes it very easy for people you can also hit back any of those work so then we move into city news and i will tell you this is a place there's been so much happening i have not populated all the different things that we have but that's you know on the workflow of all the news that's been happening this summer so basically what happens is you have an image and you have a story some of these are from the from the magazine so you just click on it and the image finally comes up and then here's all here's the story from the magazine so again you can just go back or go back to the home super easy to get anywhere one of the thoughts we had was a suggestion of the next story to read down at the bottom so we're talking up about potentially putting that at the bottom of each story something else that lead someone to read something else about public safety or you know city clerk or elections upcoming events so the upcoming events will list the the three next events that are on the calendar so sometimes we have days where there's five or six things happening and it only lists the three so that's an improvement i've requested of them but it's not that's not how the software works at the moment however you can go to any day and click and it i know it's probably hard to read here but each one you can have any text you want in there you can also have an image so see like on labor day offices are closed so we say happy labor day there's a little bit information about why we have labor day and you can share as much or as little as you want you can also go to an event page for each of that so this stuff will be there again this is all about getting people where they need to go as quickly as possible so as few clicks as possible so here's an area where i'm having a few problems with the images that they actually just sent me an e mail said they're working on it so you see city center this is just you know a hot topic and if you click on it you can go learn more stormwater here's one i can't get the picture to load so they're working on you know fireworks and stormwater public works so there's something going on right here  planning same deal so these can change it just depends on what's you know the hot topics for the city at the moment so for example here's one on parks my problem at the moment is the images are a little pi these are minor tweaks but this is what we're working out this week in the kinks before we go live when you click on learn more it might take you to that section like parks and facilities that might take you to the to their main page  you where everything is so if you're one of those people who's like just show me everything very go and if you like to click around and you have the option as well you do have social media down here that connects to all of our social media with kevin about that so there is a form component and so we are going to add that i have added it to the city council but we're going to add that on the front page as well so i think you're absolutely right it should be we could have a button that says contact us every probably be on every page possibly in the footer so this is a topic that we talked about right after i first joined the council two and a half years ago and the fence of the public i don't think they quite understand the difference between the wreck in parks committee versus the right in parks department or department public works versus the city manager structure of a council does so that's what i would love point us to tom middlebury which we stuck to them when they were a big fan of what they have which is a web form which asks what's the nature of your inquiry and that sort of gets them to to the web form routes them to the right area right department heads so we don't need to lie on the public to know how to navigate the departments and figure out what their inquiry where the best fits so we can have a web forum as their point of contact as they first interact with the was just going to comment that yes so that's the part that we're working on in the departments so two things one it's nice for the citizens to know who the people are who work in the different apartments so we're working it'll take us a little time but working out faces but also the email address in the phone numbers and each department and then if there's a general so what you're talking about tom there's actually i've been looking at this there are several services that are like r c click fix or three one one where you can just plug something in that says you know it's a tax problem and it automatically routes so there's no person who asked to do that it's just an add on to your website so that's something that we're looking at but i don't have a suggestion yet as to who should provide that really isn't that complicated too and we can have everything you just described and also just another form that would just not even be a separate service account it can just forward to the appropriate person so right into  boxes of the relevant to visuals so they can also look at directly the names but also for the individual it doesn't know who to talk to when there are streetlights out there if they don't understand how elections work they just go to the web form of they they throw it over the fence and it gets to the right person so it's doable a little very does planning and zoning in those are monitored they also use one general number that rings to all their phones so somebody should always be picking up and so much to always be monitoring that e mail address but we're also looking at software that would coordinate with our g i s that would give us a lot more information on the website as well as being able to put in any permit questions so that's where and also move in a digital direction for permits to be done digitally so that's like the next phase of that but the initial pieces that i think the planning department has a function of how they want to deal with things so they can all access that information or the phone calls or school district that i know is a former chair of the school district w but the school district has a similar form which is not that yeah and on that particular form it says you know is your issue this this this it's so it's more like a what i would say a survey is where you have several options you click on it and you fill and sort of  a blank field to say what your issue is and then that goes into the que v t dot gov that will we will then forward anything to you unless it's you know for china or you know some sort of spam stuff that comes through and also there will be a form attached and that may be something that  i create that if there are certain things that you feel should be on that form happy to take any feedback they are but that is one place if people are looking to go to city council and they don't want to e mail one of you or each e mail address there are two other options for them to want so and then city council work plan so this does have last year's work plan on there i know that you guys are probably in the last details or i don't have the final copy so i know that's coming so that can go no not all of these are fully designed but you can see on agendas the minutes want to see what's on the docket then you can click here to go to agendas and minutes it tells you that we use clerk base that takes you over to clerk base so trying to be more user friendly so that if someone's on the page and they're trying to figure out where do i go that it makes sense this may take some fine tuning as we move forward just as we learn what people where people click so you'll see also that there's a popular search as none of this is populated yet because we're not live once we go live then that will automatically calculate and say things like oh people are looking to pay their tax bill or looking at you know fire safety or what what that that maybe the same thing with city committees and boards so you'll just see that throughout we're trying to get more images make it more engaging and as we have video that will also be included so let me tell you that direct apartment has been working on their they still have some work to do but you'll see as i go through this that they have some different images really showcasing the city again they have their own of bents page so it doesn't have all the city meetings on there but it has events related to that and i guess here we are with our green screen and folks want to know about parks so if i go to community par this is one area we just  started to get fixed on friday so you'll see each one and then if you click on one of these parks you can go here there's pictures what are the amenities here and i believe this will grow as you know a website and i will at this point say to you in two weeks right after labor day i'm headed out to a conference that's focused on city and county government and the whole premise of it is communications so there are sessions that are about how do you keep your citizens engaged what tools do you use how you use social media to engage as a city council how to have the best website what tools to use and things like that so i hope that when i come back we'll have even more options i'm also pretty close on a software that would we have no news letter with so we have no way to get out to all of our get information in a timely fashion we have to put something in the paper or maybe the rec department can send something out so what we're what the plan is is that we would have an e mail list that we would then be able to an you know at the drop of a hat but also on a regular basis so this particular software i'm looking at would have an overlay which would be like a little box that would be on our front page and it would ask people to sign up for the newsletter  and that could also be tailored if you just wanted the rec newsletter or you just one of the fire or you know anybody who wanted to do that so it will also give us a lot of more communication tools that we don't have at the moment so that's another piece that will layer on  there so we've got some money now and i think i think what i'm hearing at least from coralie's that will be doing here with other providers not through the company but with in other ways you yet because i think that we will be out our capacity for that what this particular company provides so anything additional and some of the things that we see on other sites there are companies out there that provide that  you know a relatively low cost but also that they service bigger it bigger communities so that we will get that benefit that you know maybe sacramento california gets because they're much larger las that so whoever wants to have access can do that so we do have a guide a style guide us to this is how pager should luck so that would take a little bit of training but we'll set up a template but other than that yeah absolutely if they have information that they want to share that could go up so it's just a matter of how much  you so if it's open space report then that would be under that appropriate committee but it could also been its own section on open space and i have seen in other communities where they have a documents section and it sort of has  similar to what we've done in the leadership training for the committees where you can say here's all the reports that have been out and so it's it's a bit of an index line what it is at the moment and you can there is a form function to this website i will or to this tool i will say that it's not the most robust form builder but it's pretty generic but we do right now we've been moving in the direction of fillable forms that folks can then just save and send in so that is a place that can be improved but again that may be a place that we have you know chronological milestone for everything that's done reports that come out of committee budgets votes right decisions by the developer review board a lot that happens in the city to try and log complicate things but just of this yeah but i think there may be a way for us to determine what things we want to logon and how to make that easy for people to find robust at the moment however kevin and i have talked about economic development and how we create a micro site that will help bring business here or help folks start business that type of thing so that as and then to tim tim with him when you were just saying if you want to look at all the stuff you know the city clerk's office i prevented from the seventies interesting to see some of that so i don't know anticipate by monday we will be going with this site and on the front page of the it will it will direct people here i'm not shutting that site completely down in case  something that didn't come over but for the most part if you go to that front page it will direct you here and we'll start using there so we do have a short u r l which is just s p v dot gov and that won't affect any of your e mail or anything at the moment but it's it's really south burlington vermont dot gov and so we've got this really short u r l that we can use for marketing so then we'll start to push that out to the public in a strong way so people will know if there's a council or not withstanding the great smiles in everybody's face this kind of book and do you want to have a no i'm officially a city council photo at our your second meeting in september  pac we're lucky enough to have oliver here tonight he's been a member of pack for many years he'll talk about that and he's served on our advisory board for the last several years i'm starting out tonight to just two words  gratitude for the city and the city council you support our work we're very grateful for that and the update the very brief update i have is to just let our community and the members of the city council know that our work continues and we will have our traditional events once a month in the two thousand and seventeen two thousand and eighteen school year all events are free and open to the public and are led by our teenagers and the second item i wanted to mention before i pass it to steve is that we have those anchor events and over time what's evolved is that we find our students are desiring to be more engaged in topics that really matter to them and they've been very generous with us as pact and have invited us to partner with them because we have the structure already in place that they are welcome to use and with our high school student advisory members board members the word gets out that they are welcome to use the structure we have which is system of communicating and event that's being held and setting up reserving the room and the and me having food provided these kinds of things and so we had an event last year that i want to mention that was especially compelling called mental health stigma and we had a panel of teenagers leave the event and they shared information about mental illness and then after they did that which is very powerful they followed best practice and had experts from the community in the mental health field come in and offer guidance and next steps that all of us could take to  for for your help and i wanted to take a moment to have us all reflect as a community the the outcomes that we're starting to see from the efforts of all of us where we're we have to take on and i think that's a good thing that we're able to do that so i'm continually grateful to all of you folks for your participation showing up matters when you're there it's unbelievable  was just eight years old when i went to my the only people i knew there were mrs merrick my parents and my brothers and i felt so welcome and i just enjoyed eating and talking to people this was just the beginning of my years that packed throughout the rest of elementary school and then middle school i went to many dinners learning more and more about why a pact was so special then the golden opportunity arose when i was just a freshman in high school this offered me the opportunity to become one of the team leaders who helped host the dinners and events i proudly accepted this offer so i've learned a lot from my experiences hosting dinners and dialogue and it's it was meaningful to meet community members i might not otherwise have connected with to showcase the town and special events happening at our high school and to facilitate dialogue about difficult topics hosting packed dinners improved my public speaking skills and also helped me become more self confident i also learned a lot about how to be present with others and also to simply listen and to have empathy for those who have different experiences and viewpoints these are all skills i will bring with me to college on friday and beyond pact has helped me to become the person i am today and i am committed to continuing similar activity and gain similar community engagement activities in my next steps th you were able to have grant funding in the year fifteen sixteen but it was not there for this year was that an impediment for you and what can we do to help you with that or whatever i think when i looked at expenses compared to income yeah it kind of gave me a little bit of a choking feeling there for a moment and said we certainly i know when you say that there are other sources you know and things like that we certainly want it to not have to be coming from your personal side because you're doing something so extraordinary for our community so when i see this that first thing was sure everything gets paid but at whose expense and i'm not asking you know that personal question but i just want to know that you know we don't want to be sure changing your life that's appreciated i think we evolve we look at what's working with teaching english so we've had a lot of talk about our bookish shared interests and jen asked me if i could help by joining the the library board as far as what i believe in the function of  library is extremely exciting and i would like to do whatever i can to help i'm going to ask a list of every app look at have you attended a library board meeting and do you know when they generally meet is that time convenient for your personal schedule stars you know i have not i do and it is we have three openings for the supporters across yes and are you which one are you applying for just so we know that three year term you are one year when in whatever way i can be most helpful to the city is how i could have i honestly don't know much about this beyond i would be helping taking notes and and possibly publicizing their new library was extremely exciting to me so that's an important piece is to help reviews in burlington ever written for the senate up on the hill i have worked in publishing and printing so i'm i feel that i'm qualified to keep those functions all right i don't so if you know the reappointed then we'll still have five so we have the opportunity to appoint six additional people if we want to go to eleven for what terms because we do have someone else that is and this which turns doesn't matter we have or doesn't matter to me whatever there is there's a three year term and a one year term so i met with a staff member recently and they said what the most important things a council can do during these interviews is just ask the candidates if they have attended the meetings and if they know when they meet so that you're familiar with the meeting pattern i pretended i don't know three four five of them and they w a library we had to be those parents that were not paying our children a dollar for every book they read we actually had to go and take them to the library because that it was so expensive to to our   in joining the board i also have almost twenty years of fund raising experience i have worked her only at the u b s medical center with academic health sciences which is the medical center college of medicine college nursing and health sciences as well as the cancer center i do more behind the scenes work but in very familiar annual appeals looking for appropriate people to be able to help with the cause and i also feel it's really important to get a community library outside of the high school building just seeing the senior as well as the younger children type trying to use that space while the teenagers are trying to do what they need to do sometimes it's it's very difficult have you ever have you done other volunteer work yes i have done things i do a lot with the children's hospital because that's a part of what i do for work i also work with the kids a collaborative on a regular basis and so with winds i worked at the howard center for a few years i think i don't have free hundred eighty seven and i enjoyed our exercise and choosing the geese for the market street public place and i've enjoyed serving on that committee yes wallace recreation parks so the public selection is see how many years it's a are you signing up for the three know when they be pardoned you obvious since you serve on the committee now you know when they meet and the time commitment yes and it's been fine and i i just enjoy looking at public places looking at public art and building sawin and art in general so it fits i and i noted that you have posted a lot of your findings you there for almost three years now grew up in burlington and lived in the area all my life i haven't been to any of the committee meetings i just saw the committee openings on the website and was interested i'm a biker in the area i bike commute regularly out to globalfoundries actually work with them and yeah interested in being considered for the committee i do know the time commitment i've reviewed some of the meeting minutes from the from the meetings and i'm definitely available and would love to be considered right to the when i think it's work for the disclose that like i don't know if there is a bike and committee member who actually is a commuter anyway no but that would certainly be a wonderful first affective that i think could be helpful and we are doing you know they're working on the plans to go over the interstates your committee will be part of that y know that's great and i think it's great the actually read the ad and said hey i'll sign up that's great to encourage you to actually know like you discourage m they encourage community service and they provide ample opportunity to you to volunteer within the community and regularly a few times a year we volunteer through work i've never done anything  extend you know an extended service like this in the community but it's always been something i've been interested in i have a lot of you know free time outside of work biking is a big part of my life and so i  we're transforming our roads and it's exciting time and we're transforming them to be multi use and so you have to take into consideration different perspectives and it doesn't have to be a zero sum thing where you know if you're going to give some space to a biker it and it negatively impacts on the cars or the pedestrian say i feel like there's a lot of great solutions out there from cities around the country and around the world that you know cities have come you know at this before so there's a there's a lot of solutions out there right now that  what i think there's been in the past a lot of you know we're building specific bike paths recreational pass those types of things in those are nice if we want to try to alleviate traffic on our roads or open up or roa safety is a is a huge consideration but you know taking input you know as a life long engineer you know a big part for me is always understanding the problem before you try to solve it from multiple perspectives and trying to take that input in order to use i'm a biker and so naturally as i bike down these roads i am very much seeing things from a specific perspective that i over hear people on that drive and hear about their frustrations with bikers and i see how that how those conflicts can come about and when you're approaching it from a single perspective so for me i think the exciting part is is to make the roads safer and easier for multi use and i think that it can be transformative if it's done right where we actually  improve the experience for everyone who's using the roadways not just a single you know if you're adding bikers obviously you would be improving bikers but you could actually have through that experience for the cars as well there's less traffic  there's designated lanes the bikers know what to do the cars know what to do everybody's predictable and everybody's happy would think i've noticed over the last year and a half is one of the compared members jamison goodwin as well as others regularly if not always attends t v meeting some just always look for projects where the bike and bed can influence it so development review board so that's another important meeting that occurs twice a month but i don't know that just to keep in the back your mind if you have the flexibility to attend those as well i'm sure that would be we also are very familiar with your six years so far but committee and thinking yeah it's pretty exciting that we have recreation and parks committee to actually in the sense of when i six years ago i retired from my college teaching career and i volunteered to join whatever i actually applied for the but by committee i think but they were full so i was shunted onto the recreation committee which was led by tom at the time and he was gently nudging our committee to become active in certain arenas such is advocating for decent recreation space in new developments and advocating for some kind of indoor recreation facility in the city i mean there was a we had a committee but it wasn't particularly active and when i made noise to that effect amid midway in my first year somehow amazingly i got elected chair later that and the other with jennifer cock i mean look what's happened now jennifer was my really my co chair vice chair officially but my co chair and and we did a lot to transform that community and it's been messy and sometimes confusing but also exciting we're in a period of tremendous ferment in the city and what might develop in the next dozen years in city center and a real recreation center it's really exciting but also demanding you know when the committee meets actually shifted i think it was on my account that we shifted the meetings to monday so that i could attend them and not have to run away to a rehearsal that i lead my experience in volunteering that's the recreation committee is my only direct city volunteer experience but there are a lot of others i am now the senior warden in my church and there are meetings that and responsibilities that i have there that are usually in scale but overwhelming but there are significant and a few months after i joined the recreation committee i started because of this sort of proliferation of things that i felt called to do i realized a year or two ago i needed to back off a little bit and i told jennifer and maggie that i needed to step down from the hold them to it so i'm from happy to answer any questions you may have happy to be here it's a great city live appreciate your leadership coming to council meetings as chair and you know keeping us up to date with the goals and mission hopes and dreams of parks and recreation and i think you've been pretty supportive actions by the appreciate the consistent support that i felt from the council for our work on the committee and for me personally i think we work with people like you that's right ok any other questions or comments on the other thing things on the schedule from what i had said the next thing on the list was a small park that is going to be over by al's french fries because the road direction is changing we we have touched on just a little bit there might be some public art in that little park or whatever else yeah a little park all right well thank you for your service to the community thank you for wanting determine what he's really interested in ok and then the last one is larry come from and and we him because he's been but do you want to come up and when i went on it i believe i was questioned by your finance person about the formulas that we use for generating funds at the park district and we took a hard look at them  and continued that and have researched reignited that look because of some of the concerns that have been so expressed mainly by one news i'm sorry mainly by wilson and that is very much something that's going on now and will continue and i'm very hopeful of being able to contribute some more ideas dick who is present here has stimulated us to take a more comprehensive look at that formula and already is drafting several alternatives we will be hopefully presenting those alternatives as part of the budget not for adoption but for getting input from you people choices it really comes down to if you change the formula one way somebody wins you change it another way somebody wins and there's losers all way round if we keep shifting around ideas but that doesn't mean we should be looking at them and we are very hard so that's  interested in continuing with and also would like to encourage the council to take a survey that is on the website when she got i would say  to were interested in getting input from the public we're in for an interest in getting input from each of our member communities is to again look reexamination and looking at some alternatives with some funding mechanism the second part of the funding mechanism was the contracted services agreement which we reached was the city and that we think as a way that we're hopefully going to be encouraging maybe to expand to other c also going on through my letter actually here just highlighting things the upgrade of our accounting system is something that is treasurer and very interested and supportive of i would say a bit passionately just it was one of the things of time common nick has really gotten that going in good shape we're also analyzing several park expansion projects and that  involves the city and various communities where we have a pretty good matrix of just how the committee how the district looks at the acquisition of properties and we're looking at a couple different plans now and we've had some expansions to so i covers that ford natural resources commission really felt very good about being appointed to that committee working with the goals and priorities that you folks asked us to do and that was a i think a very interesting time for the committee the spirited discussion that that stimulated was very positive we learned to get along with each other and really present some dramatically different ideas but it was it's been a good good experience and finally you know putting my name in for the detroit machine just because of my background and i couldn't help myself or a masochist i don't know which if you don't know you you didn't get his resume you were the town manager for essex for how that keeps me going and gives me some money that i can spend away i want to do wrestle with charters in your previous roles did you wrestle the city charters in your previous roles several times several times middlebury i was the first manager of bedford new hampshire having to implement a new charter so that and then making some suggested changes to it so i had considerable experience with charters and none of them are perfect and you're officially applying for all three of these committees yes you said that we could do that's right one priority order but clearly  probably in the next couple years but so that's of interest but that's i can't help myself do you think we need seven councillors but the council has a right to be wrong i firmly believe that it's a principle that i've manager survived through several difficult times in the past just telling myself they are the council they have the right to be wrong i'll be quiet  got i'm simply saying that they council's always right when you're in the council meeting when you're getting home and you talk to your wife and have a martini i'm not sure about that  viewpoints and really appreciate them let's make for a great committee that's right well thank you for your service so far and for your interest and willingness to continue so we just i president's meeting of monday august twenty first twenty seventeen and our next item almost the last item is considered convenience the south burlington liquor control board to business is other business and we have two items and the one of them was an issue that the pap brought up about kind of what's our city somebody in the middle of the road panhandling and or soliciting whatever and we see that with some regularity coming off the interstate yesterday and to well listen there was and there's a i think there was recently a court case you said that it's freedom which is your first amendment cranston rhode island where we recently had to rewrite their rule about that so it's only if road standing on a two foot wide strip i think we have a responsibility not only to that person if you know if there was a problem but also for traffic that you know i don't know  have any accidents people where ending somebody else you know with this thing and i certainly understand that people have the right to you know under our amendments you know to do this however but that's something that we don't want to bring up i mean that's fine trevor about safety issues i think is we don't have our i mean the thing that that i find actually less that's right ok if they're doing that we ought to know about it yeah exactly on whose time alright  well why don't we at least get an update from andrew and i think that would be important because maybe other people are wondering about that as well yeah i think he was concerned i vo was concerned also about market street is this going to become a problem on market street and i think you know to the point that has been made if there is an aggressive approach to people like they have in some major cities i mean that would be different than always makes me feel like i'm so fortunate and whether it's a scam or not i don't know but i suspect that some of them it isn't that they really are there's a grandmother and so on sunday morning in bad weather and things like that and the weather is good i sometimes skip but it's interesting that there are a couple of couples that we meet up with for breakfast and they become moments like friends her and she know she separate that's her job she goes there every day i think we all feel for them ok i'm so we'll find out what the legal issues are the other item that i brought up again i don't know if i'd like to have at some point you know just a sense of do we would we like to have some kind of resolution really articulate so yes i would definitely support something to but i would just be cautious to develop ourselves a new zealanders time i'd be more interested if there's a set of language that's being adopted by other municipalities that we can show support for only to be cautious resolution or do you want to just a statement that we you know i read and we all sign and this is sort of the sentiment of this city council and that we're attached to it's additional information as it says in documentation establishing why we thought to have a resolution about governance and and i know you had never entertained but i'm not opposed to it i'm happy with where we are but i'm not opposed also considering that when you say doesn't want to endorse ours but i mean that's a whole other conversation i'm just trying to put this notion forward think oh