all right well i'd like to call to order the south burlington city council meeting of monday january fourteenth twenty nineteen and our first order of business is to a moving onto itin to infection on to existing buildings in case of an emergency we have an emergency this evening please proceed immediately out to the side doors and gather in the parking lot to the south if these doors are blocked please go out the main lobby and out the main entrance take a right and go into the parking lot tom hubbard and i will make sure the building is clear and bring your  bargaining in confidential attorney client communications made for the purpose of providing professional legal services at the council we clearly place the council in the city there's substantial disadvantage were they all in favor  you so meeting for monday january fourteenth twenty nineteen and we will take up item four which is the agenda review are there any additions deletions or changes in the order of agenda items item five is comments and questions from the public not related to the agenda is there anyone who wishes to make a comment saying no and move on to item six they consented genda we have one item approving know that passes items seven consider and possibly approve the f y twenty twenty self rolling to an enterprise fund budgets and we'll hear from just in good evening justin robert who with the public works department with me are jim fayed general manager of champagne water district and john to mickey who is the retail superintendent of the chimp and water district which makes him year so jim has been with the district for quite some time has been his general manager for as long as i've been aware and he started and rose through the ranks forty plus years ago so and the district's all great partner for the city so just want to briefly take this moment to acknowledge jim for his service to the district  yet so thank you tonight we're here to talk about our enterprise from budgets and suffer owing to and which are three divisions within the public works department that are non property tax funded those are one or more i provided you with a cover memo that detailed seven various attachments i can like we did last week i can just go through the budgets and highlight and there's not much to highlight but any many may answer any questions or we can dive a bit deeper into any of the information provided to us whatever the council's pleasure i decided to set up this is the first time i think that i saw the breakdown for the water meters in the service charges and i found it minutes of the system as you can see from through three pick three pages of various charge and all the little things they do on behalf of the city for our residential and commercial customers and those all those costs are simply our cost of conducting business as you notice one of the costs of the meter is actually down the actual penny that it costs us to purchase a meter so we're we're just kind of acting as a pass through and the council in hopefully adopting a budget also use is the reason why the water rates going up is because the the bulk priced water is is what we are primarily the the operational side the city side of the budget as you noticed in the budget is it's essentially level funded some items go up so i don't go is salaries everything in the actual purchase purchase line items whether it's hydrants or linear feet of pipe all of those items are relatively the same so it's just the cost of living increases which is which also constitutes a decent chunk of the wholesale rate increase as well to be exact the average family is going to see a six point six dollars sixty eight cents for each year department line sixty five point six eight professional services and there's essentially an equal increase in the administrative services which is a few winds below sixty six seventy three there are again we because of various retiring personnel there are c w d likes to have a healthy overlap in incoming and outgoing employees so under one line item which would be the administrative services would be paying a couple salaries for the same position for a few months so as a way to offset that in professional services above we have deferred the purchase of a pickup truck again it's not exactly dollars for dollar but to to keep the impact of this kind of one time expense minimal on the budget we defer the purchase of a pickup truck and while we're in the water budget therefore there are no capital projects of note except for the continuation of the water meter purchase program which in the cover m o bullet six you'll notice as you read it that we have dropped our water loss by four percent of the past two years four percent of six hundred twenty five million gallons roughly means it's a thousand dollars in recaptured revenue to the system so by spending about a thousand dollars a year replacing water meters and putting in newer water meters that are much less subject to water loss we are increasing revenue we're capturing more water through the meter so that's good in water because obviously it's one hundred thousand dollars in revenue but if you recall our sewer bills are also based off water consumption so there's a similar impact so we're spending about one hundred thousand dollars a year on new meters sewer is more expensive than water so there were probably gaining us what two hundred thirty thousand dollars a year next year revenues of a few years left of that program there's about twenty five hundred metres left to swap out in the city that will continue and that will certainly just drive the water loss and i believe a boy seven actually showed you the charts where we have we did two things as a water customer we purchased water from the district and then we sell water to our citizens to purchase as you can see are fairly consistent it's the water sales that are starting to come back down with the our system lost from twelve percent to about eight percent and john a pretty one should inform the council of really well run water systems and experience what percent of water loss of the american want to works association goal revised lately is ten percent so we're we're doing quite well in that respect having a positive impact on the water system sort of when you were going to do that for a few more years it's reasonable to expect our water or water loss to start creeping down the five or six six percent range which would be a really tight system you know the rate of residential versus yeah the sewer usage charge the sewer connection charge so i'm sorry it's a needed water usage charge that there are about three percent as correct which are our population hasn't increased in the year three fee increases so it's a two point nine percent increase in the sewer usage sewer fee it's a three percent increase in the connection so that we have which i didn't provide you with that so we are we are over expecting a one percent growth in water sales i will note that water sales are extremely dependent on summer weather if it's a dry summer people are watering lawns more we're selling more water so we we just based the base or information off of history we don't take into account even though we're growing at about one hundred twenty single family homes a year we just kind of go by history and try to be conservative a budget so those numbers represent the rate increase property talk tom hubbard provided you the average cost increase based on a single family in a condo in south burlington if you combine the average propose increase for stormwater water and sewer without a you know what all the calculator seventeen dollars and change for the three utilities that's for average an average home self pearlington based on normal water consumption of about two hundred gallons a day to be about a seventeen dollar increase annually in all three of your utility bills combined on continuing down of the water as i just discussed are only capital projects as it will be the next couple of years of the continuation of the needed replacement project the next budget detailed is stormwater and in stormwater of we're showing a one point seven five percent increase which is a dollar forty four a year it's  twelve twelve cents a month a dollar forty four year for the south burlington single family home owner and in the stormwater budget really the biggest change if you look at the dollar change from  twenty is we're just delivering more capital projects in two thousand and twenty than the current two thousand one thousand year two thousand one thousand has been more of a design impermanent year for us spending less money in two thousand twenty we're going to be building all the things we're designing impermanent now those all have corresponding revenues below so that line item which is eighty one point zero zero stormwater capital projects for the most part is essentially a pass through so while it kind of rollercoasters a bit and it might jump out at us alarm and there's corresponding revenue that always comes with that on the other side of the budget and lastly within the wastewater budget really the only project of the only big difference of note is were continuing our conceptual design of our bartlett bay wastewater facility upgrade it was last refurbished in one nine hundred ninety nine these facilities have roughly a twenty five twenty to twenty five year shelf life so we're looking at some point in the next three to six years at another i don't upgrade to the bartley bay facility what exactly that in that includes beyond just making the technology modern whether includes additional hydraulic capacity that all remains to be seen but we're spending one hundred thousand dollars this year as opposed to forty thousand dollars last year so you see that sixty thousand jump and that will be increasing as we go forward eventually will be getting a loan just like the last time we built part of a lake in two thousand and twelve when we did our part parkway you also notice that the payment to burlington wastewater is twenty down from two hundred forty and you notice that the bond repayment of that note is now in the budget two and a quarter so represents a first year savings of well not a first rate a first an ongoing savings of fifteen thousand dollars and then also whatever burlington's rate would increasingly three to five percent so fifteen thousand dollars and that gap would grow over time so i wanted to highlight that important project at the council the public on the you know the revenues again the revenues are pretty self explanatory nothing that we haven't seen before or haven't talked about no big jumps or no big decreases in revenues my little note on the stock market revenue  conservative where we're assuming anywhere from one hundred fifty two hundred thousand dollars that's all we're going to receive in grams and then we're covering the rest of it with a fun balance with them still more fun will this year you notice we're proposing nine hundred thirty five thousand dollars in grants because we were able to get that amount of rain so what that does is if we can keep doing that year after year it will eventually her tail some of the back and higher increases in the stormwater rate because as you know we're on the hook for thirty to fifty million for a must for permit and a lot of these projects are kind of down the line big dollar ones but if we can continue to be successful if the storm art of group can keep writing good grant applications then you then are of billing to rely on that money will go away and like it but this year we're proposing one point seven five percent rate increase that's lower than we had to speed in years past and so we hope to kind of have that same story every year for you implementation of the water meter program and that's i know it's tough to kind of sum up what twelve million dollars so in a nutshell but usually not a lot of headlines in these funds and they're operating very well i think tom can attest to their fiscal health don't don't be dissuaded by the fact that we have low rates we do we don't have a patchwork cheap system if we want stuff we go ahead and we get and we get it we have a very healthy system we just happen to run in a way that is a less expensive than others for whatever reason but we by no means is this is this is our lower rate reflective of the quality of our system it's  and and also them the quality of what we get about the clear impression my four years in council that we just do water right we've been doing storm water we've been investing in it we're leaders and experts in the area so i think this is just reflecting that depends the type of meter center every three months and some are about every year two years how many meters are there that the biggest meters because you're the first system served out of the enough of those those big ventura type differential flow leaders are the ones that are done quarterly and most of the ones that go out of the city for the next town for the most part are also the kind of the highest technology you can buy this type of injury meter it's not really a mechanical meter so those those would also be every three months but the whole meters in business meters there's you know sixty two hundred sixty two hundred sixty two there how many different versions are out there right now so how do we want i mean different versions of water meters are there in south burlington homes and businesses there are there's only one manufacture that they're certified from the factory and i'm just curious like you know after meters been running for let's say ten years how do you ever know with the meter still accurate you know if we have an opportunity to pull a meter because of the problem we've only have a test don't then they're your replaced for you charge because you have this disparity between how much our meter so that we sold and how much you purchase from there some of it could be lost elsewhere in the system not necessarily buy used your water loss  i would we would keep track of if we are we would try to identify the cause of if our water sales lost art of jumping up really high if you remember few years ago rolling cannot find where they were losing six hundred thousand gallons a day of water months later they found it you know so when you're faced with that situation yes you become proactive but otherwise one system performing like this nothing jumps to nothing is cause for concern you just wonder you know who's checking the you know the measurements but if you are there any other comments you want to share any other questions i would thank you very much it was good information it was easy to read and thank you so i would entertain a motion to approve the f moving on to item nine receive and discuss recommend oh i'm sorry i consider impossibly a proof are the twenty twenty south burlington general fund budget we had a motion  a second and it was seconded last meeting but we continued it for today pending some getting some information about our contract negotiations which we got in executive session so we have a motion on the floor on the table or on the floor are there any other emotion was to prove yes to any questions or comments just a comment of mine i think and i think we made this last time but we have more people in the audience no it was really a very easy productive and thoughtful presentation of all the budgets with all of the different departments and it was really i think they all supported the budget and understood some of the  bill in full well we could always do more but people seem to be satisfied with what we were able to come up with and we did keep increas doris for the hard work on the budget all the department managers put the budget together but it was tom and sue that really really did the hard work of pulling the budget together and and combining them all in staying within the council's guidelines so the first one is construction of an indoor recreation facility at the memorial park and we'll hear from the repeated new parks committee on the agenda suggest your fifteen the charter committe statement that i wanted to read to you tonight i gave you paper copies and holly and i are here to advocate for creation of an indoor recreation facility our recreation parks committee whom you appoint to advise you have recommended creation of an indoor recreation facility for the twelve years that i have been on this committee every member of this committee past and present has said that building an indoor recreation facility is essential to the health and community of residents of south burlington we have stated this goal on numerous occasions at city council planning  commission and in public every director of recreation parks department tom harbor todd goodman betsy terry maggie lugar's and holly reese has said that creation of an indoor recreation facility is essential to providing recreation program opportunities to the residents of south burlington every director has said that attempts to find adequate space for recreation and programming ha been frustrating securing space and other facilities does not serve us well the lack of indoor recreation facilities means that we do not have facilities to meet the needs of our community the city has proposed various scenarios for developing this space dating back to one nine hundred ninety eight and the list is long in august the twenty eight hundred city council approved a resolution for recreation a parks committee to build an indoor recreation facility we recreational parks committee and recreation of parks department believe that the plan now under consideration is the very best plan for creating recreation space this is a location with proximity to the most intensive outdoor recreation programming it is adjacent to the cares arena and will be in synchrony with the karens arena project a development and this will create great synergy it is in close proximity to the wheeler nature park gardens and walking trails will be located on city land and will not therefore be depriving the city of revenue possibilities in city center no trees will be cut down and no wetlands will be affected there will be adequate parking the design makes sense it addresses the priority needs of our resident the recreation parks foundation has made the creation of this facility the number one priority for raising funding for recreation and parks this plan is affordable given the demographics of our community and the economic benefits of building this structure we urge the city council to recognize the importance of this proposal and to make every effort to see this enterprise to through to the ripping cutting ceremony we especially wan city managers kevin dorn and tom hubbard and councillor dave kauffman for their work in bringing this proposal forward and we thank you very much for your attention to this matter reese director of recreation and parks and i get the fun part of showing pictures and some numbers if they come up crossing our so it's interactive fun i don't know what's going on with that but we'll try to i did we paid the electric bill right getting some hard numbers and design mean it could be a connection to the alley i was really expecting that tonight she said if you look at the third page we divided out our needs and our wants and the pool is definitely in a want based on the kinds of requests that we have had over the years we feel that this meets our our number one priorit but in fact somebody a person came to our committee tonight saying can you add a pool to this so it's it's i've heard other comments about that too so it's in people's minds to have  and therapy pool for seniors you know warm water therapy pool with the river the river where you walk upstream was that called oh i don't know that that would be fun wouldn't  past week since we present ted we've had a lot of interest from the community everything from coaching staff at the high school trying to figure out indoor space for track and winter track to pools to private groups that are looking for space to run their businesses so definitely a lot of interest in the community which has been exciting which that's what we what we heard tonight was that it is the whole county and all to the county it's hard to find him space and you know  back with us on the left would be the elevated track kind of just visual and then locker rooms and and then kind of what besides your traditional thought about basketball might be able to go on in a facility like this so this is just an introduction  and as requested you can go on to the next slide we were looking at three options so hard a building a semi rigid a structure and then option c which would be the inflatable dome or air supported dome all three of those as we presented before would have the heart scape or the hard building fronting piece which would house the offices upstairs and downstairs  registration space some office space a program space in that connection over to the rinks as well so yep so making rings are on the left so this would be the visual for option and a and that is the hard building yet you'll see the front doesn't change at all but you'll see the peak of what's behind there the gym space change with the options so that's the first one and then you can go to option b so option b would be that  fabric structure and you'll see nothing else changes it does have a higher peak and then for option c is the inflatable so just to give us a sense and then the next slide is going to show some projected numbers so option a remember we're going from the top down in terms of the hard build as option and a and b and c and so we're looking at the projected costs for the first few to be a little you know between nineteen and twenty million and that's a fifty plus life span building and then we go to option c and looking at the margin between b and c not the recommendation of the architects to go with c just because of the price difference and the limitations that it brings that's also the recommendation of the committee because you couldn't have the track on the second floor with option c you can only do it in option a or b and we it's impossible to put the track down on the first floor because and people would have to run through you know to get to the basketball court you have to go through where people would you can have a track on option b with this on option b in the middle yes you can have a track in the second story that's what they know some of the options that are only afforded to us with option a would be solar so the structure for having solar on the on the roof would only exist an option  i know that spend a concern about the rinks that are next door that that's not a potential with the structure that they have so it feels like a little bit of lost space obviously with the designs we would be looking to you know coordinate with the rink as much as we could right to keep it was yes well i don't know that we built out those costs in the us i don't believe that we have come in no so i mean that's a consideration too for for those and you know the energy efficiency that we wouldn't be able to capture with an option c but in terms of energy efficiency is it safe to surmise that a hard building option a has the potential to be more energy efficient and closer to zero then b or c but that is that is the assumption yes and that you you'd have you know more control when you're thinking about he just so when we think about some of the long term costs if if the hard construction last fifty years and you get and the be the next one only last twenty five years you have an extra twenty five years of energy savings but i don't know what that we don't know what that is but that would be a good number to estimate i think in terms of trying to make a decision about what's most cost effective i think another consideration that we heard from cabin to night was that with heat and humidity control you have if we have wooden floors for the basketball courts they would not have as much of a tendency to buckle i've seen what happens when you have wood floors in a high can't i don't know these rules correct me if i'm wrong can't generate revenues through charging for their services because they're public library i monitor the impression that we do charge in some cases use of our space facilities and so on so some of this cost could be  with some revenue streams that we started to work out any of those financial models as to what we might be able to cover and cost of the facility in fees for the recreation for the use of the space i think the likelihood is that we could cover a lot of the operational costs i doubt that we could cover the capital cost or even a component there of i think you in facilities like this you have to be able to build it and then with the fees you can operate it probably not the capital c big picture thinking so we have gone through that immediate need lest with the architects then and they've taken that into account so storage and bleachers and netting and we do have to do the fine fit and finish like any project would do choosing you know exact flooring and those types of things but they have accommodated for that and there is a program space in addition to the the larger space that feel there's a program space that would be used for yoga and we were thinking we could also put a tarp down and it could be used for some messy kinds of projects that you know some of the facilities in the community center are more nicely fitted out and this would allow for the maker kind of space it would be a flexible usable space and we don't have anything like that at this point either so it serves that would serve a real need to and the other part of that that is just so wonderful is having it connected to the carrots that would all be one one long building in front of the carrots where the building is going to go between the two rinks and they are proposing having a weightlifting ruhlman and  coffee shop and maybe a place to gather for even having drinks and beer and wine we wouldn't be doing that but we've heard from the pickle ball people that they like to do their pick a ball and then they like to gather and have some sociability so it works really really well with the planning that's going around the carrots arena we're getting you know the again some is bigger than on the whole is bigger than the sum of the parts so this is the early stages can do you have like a an idea of what and average programming day would be like in winter versus summer there and and and what percentage of the space would be actively used i mean i know that you've learned some issues with the schools sort of superseding some of your programming in the summertime right because you've had diminished you know perseveration right by school kids because and i know that there are some other school programs that are also kind of like infiltrating rec space right so i'm just curious what what would be the rectum in for this space on a given you know day either after school or during the summertime how do you anticipate that the allocation of that building to be two to work on a given day sure well i mean to just speak off the cuff to it i certainly don't different league play whether that spassky whether that's volleyball adult youth teen tween as well as for you know maybe some yoga jazzercise tight she mean the possibilities for programming at are and less and i think designed with the flexibility to be opening up to a really expansive space or to isolate courts you know it certainly might be an option that we might run a couple of camps out of there in the summertime but would also be filled with other programs that would service adults throughout the day so we just afford us the opportunity to offer what we currently can offer to our community as well as pick up some of what we're currently offering it's picked so it's for possible courts and they're configurable or ones definitely basketball what they would have flexible lines right so yeah so at least three hard surface basketball courts but those would be lined to separately with different colors and different arrangements for a variety of net sports so that you might you might have a basketball tournament that's going on and on all three courts are used for five or six hours or you may have you know two courts that are being used for basketball and one that's being used for volleyball i think there are a million permutations for that but one when court was special i remember one of the four  right and artificial turf and and i think that's you know something that would be a specialized instruction or you know skills and drills kind of union certainly not big enough to accommodate you know large field sports but that wouldn't be the intent thing that you want that fourth quarter to be a synthetic turf war i think it's you know it's everything at this point is up for consideration and conversation and debate for sure you know i think it allows for some flexibility but there's also options where  you know perhaps we build for a basketball court and then have the flexibility of rolling out some turf so we certainly don't want to pigeonhole ourselves into not having that flexibility but i remember about a year and a half ago glen yeah we're actually working through those numbers right now for for this year's and our pay annual report so jennifer can forward you what we've done and then this scene is the committee's summer work with the next one will for that as well traditionally we present that in the march april timeframe i'm noting that the current design does not include bleachers for the audience and courts that seems to be disappointing it does include bleachers for audience with kevin earlier too about you know the school doing their master plan as well and you know and what kind of shared experience we might be able to be thinking about providing for example their middle school basketball program right now they have zero space for audiences so is that something that if this first facility were to be built that we might be able to accommodate pieces and parts of their schedule so definitely looking to serve the community and and work through those options when i look through your second priorities i do see things that i would consider essential to a recreation program have you thought about how these needs could be met class i think if we went with the number one priorities that are right in front of us that we think the community could afford that we could bring to you at this time  after some you know discussion with the city and how these things might be but i think would have to be for the future i think for one thing if and when the library community center with the senior center is built and there's an auditorium and a lot of space there and this gets bill if those two things happen then i think we would be in a real good position to see you know to go through our priority list again and say you know what what do we really need after these two facilities are now serving some of the unmet needs and how do we get there i guess the question to come at it from a different angle is much of the summer an afterschool program has shifted to the schools and is this working within kind of the status quo as it is right now or is this looking at building program that is more recreational within the city operating i think that's the intent so this would be aiming to meet the goals and the needs of the active recreation indoor person the intent of this facility is not to encompass all of those so it's really just you know intended to meet the critical need  that we hear on a daily basis from folks that we can offer programs because we don't have the space so my third maybe final but never say final question is do you see that this facility could provide a service to the county or is this something when you look at how the day would be program from five am to eleven pm at night is that specifically south burlington i think a lot of the only good things you know even pickle ball you know it's certainly not one hundred percent of those participants are from south burlington we put together adult leagues for volleyball and basketball and certainly not all of those participants are from south burlington but you know the majority are so in terms of reaching beyond our boundaries our borders that's that would address that as well but there are little communities within themselves because if we're we're considering a tax on rooms and meals  and as well as our sales tax we should think about what what population will being taxed and what population will be benefiting i think we have to think about those questions this like y be a replacement put polling location would we end up doing elections at the space that was built and that's that's what will happen in the use of the rinks by people outside of south bronx and is huge it will street pool charges a less for the essex residents the nonnes six residents so we probably have an s p resident in that and on stuff you know from my perspective because i've been talking with with you folks about this and since the beginning early on that this is something that we very badly need in south burlington and i'm hopeful that most residents recognize that we need indoor recreation facilities exactly how that's going to come about in a final design that remains to be seen as everybody weighs in on the design his tweet and the fact is it's going to cost a fairly good bundle of money which i could have seen coming from from the beginning that was good because when we first started talking about it we were talking about a bubble it was going to cost a few million bucks right and that was only three months ago and here we are so from a rink perspective and for those of the folks that don't know i've been on the board of of the arenas since since we started to raise money to build rink one we'd be ecstatic to have this as part of the overall complex partly because our proposed addition to the arenas and we're we've got about  last i looked i think our last estimate was we got about a six hundred thousand dollars gap that we have to fill i think our projected auction is about three million bucks and we projected about two point three two point four so we have a little bit of a gap on fairly confident we will fill that gap and move ahead with our project before too long but that does indeed include an expanded food service probably with a food service manager and and that would work so much better if we had other people using the recreation facility that could then feed into that really literally right you know overall make a great make a great complex so to me the question is not should we do it or exactly going to be included because i think that's going to be fairly easily figured out how we're going to pay for it and therein lies the big challenge you have any other comments you want to share with us you know just other questions templemore question so what i don't think i've seen in here is is is reference to the whole space indoors being used as like a venue like so if there had to be something that you like it by the whole space right for either presentation icicle graduation yet more concert or so or or a rain site for some name of the game so good thoughts rise or so is there any concern about this computing with any command commercially available recreational spaces i mean does anybody have a conversation about that or is it worth a discussion or we just i think there's a need of track record said it is great facility but for a family to join there it's fifteen hundred dollars a year and i just see this as filling a void of indoor recreation space in a really cold climate so i just think there is more than abundant need without cutting into any of their current business that's my impression of somebody that is looked at joining one of those gyms and constantly as kids that are trying to get energy out in the wintertime i think too that there is still a void beyond you know some of the local fitness facilities especially those that you know do do tournaments there's just not enough space so i think that they would even say to their as booked as they can me and can service a lot of their request get some exercise i think substantially if there's no other questions thank you very much oh sure  any idea i think it's anticipated that you'll hear later from the charter committee on this but it's anticipated that an actual vote on incurring debt where we would have to have all that information would not come until likely the fall at the earliest so that gives us the spring and summer to continue working on all that before we would present anything to the council we would want to have those numbers tied down pretty well i think there's the other opportunity to work with the school district as they do their visioning and design of whatever it is they believe needs to be built to or fit d up in the school district this might be an opportunity for space that they would not have to build new and could be used by the school so i think those are other financial aspects that would be important to know if we can at a time i don't know exactly what the time frame is but that's another area i see where the city should coordinate those efforts so we're not building more than we really down to play in the program then they come down they have dinner before a game around to mean a lot of my adult recreational programming they like the social aspect of it interesting well that information those statistics if we go forward with a local options tax would be helpful to have shared with but thank you that's helpful any other comments or questions ok let's move on that's who was next the creative arts center in the city center projects that's been out there for a while and i wanted to talk about that we were contacted in twenty fifteen by tim barton who owns a local arts business in the south burlington  it was he had a really big idea and and he brought it to both to us at the staff level but also to the council and he also brought many professionals within the creative arts millions specifically performing arts into discussions with him and over the next year or so he put together a board of directors he contracted with community and through that period i spent a lot of time meeting with that group and so i wanted to i tell you that not only was i meeting with that group but i was also scheduling artist meet ups in south burlington we were undergrowth undergoing a community identity project so talking more about you know what is how throwing ten what does it mean to residents what does it mean to the business community i worked with theresa and robert davis to secure a grant to develop the davis studio that's over  children road i worked with the public our selection committee and throughout this time i became more and more aware of artists that live in south rolling to and also that have children who have careers in the arts whether it's broadcasting or film on the stage that more and more success stories and how the ability of their children to participate in creative creative activities had really allowed to go off and it develops  and and i had always known that arts was a proven economic development strategy but it really drove home how places like boston are using this and also smaller places like proud of or oh that and that even the state of vermont is really getting into the creative arts as an economic development driver and in fact we have been participating with the state in the creative zone meetings that they've been holding so every county now has a creative zone to work on cordoning arts activities and building on the tremendous energy that's in our region and different regions throughout her mind and developing that aspect of  identity and i just really wanted to emphasize that this is a great committee and they have a lot of exciting ideas i recently listened to a talk by peter k y and he wrote love where you live creating emotional engagement with places and so he says citizens why to do positive things for the community urbin to the community and this group has really drawn a diverse and talented group of professionals with a depth of experience in performing arts so it's really exciting to see what they recognize in south rolling to in that they see south burlington as a pivotal location within for a moment and a great place for their ideas so and project so i think tom tom dan spoke with you a few weeks ago and i'm not sure created great and i'm giddy dekker i'm also of a board member of the south burlington city center for the arts i've also worked in south burlington for the last seventeen years as the director of center point school so i've been connected to education in the state in that particular way i'm also the executive director of ballet vermont and we produced two ballets completely produced them out of south burlington the farm project is probably the one you may have heard of and so might my interests lie in performing arts in that particular way and then also education is a passion of mine so thank you for having us i wanted to give you a quick update since you last saw us at the last meeting first of all i want to let you know that there is a detailed memo forthcoming to address the questions that you had in follow up to and response to the feasibility study i believe you also got an updated one recently with some adjusted numbers connected to that you know since the sense that previous meeting a month ago there's just been a flurry of activity primarily a living in the realm of conversations with potential collaborators and partnerships and so along with some board we've been speaking to about this and wondering if that crew can just stand value in this project along with our board there if all of them explore them a little bit more i want to give you an update about some of the partnership and collaborative conversations that we've been having and give you a chance to hear from a few of our partners and then just talk to a little bit about what we're thinking about associate with next steps ok  so in terms of what is being proposed and we would our goal is to partner with local regional arts organizations the school district in the business community so that the city of south going to and would create a world class creative arts facility  we believe that this this space that we're thinking about is directly in line with the city center is focused on creating connection and creating place which have been identified as priorities by the city specifically in relation to the development of city center  you know i don't think there's any question that there's a lot of thoughts and concerns about how arts are being funded especially with the political landscape in the way that it is and american for the arts did a national survey just in two thousand and eighteen and the results that came back about that many of the questions were associated with attitudes and beliefs and the results that came back connected to one of the questions with which i thought is very relevant to this conversation is that ninety percent of the adults that were surveyed believe that having an arts and cultural facility in your town increases your quality of life and eighty six percent of those people believe that it has a positive impact of the on the local economics in the in the local business community and so that's that's an  you know the original idea for the size theater did come from tim burton but also a group of people that are in the arts locally that have decades of combined experience and are you know looking at surveying the scene regionally and identifying a need we had that further reaffirmed in the different conversations that we've had with partners around yes we've seen a need for that we've thought of different ways to about building that we're not you know that that is sort of an identified need in the community it builds a fills a niche that niche that doesn't exist i think that it's an appropriate size for local groups local dance theater music groups that can't necessarily fill larger  spaces but can quickly fill some of the smaller smaller spaces besides the local groups it allows unique presenting opportunities again because it fits a particular size group it's also a great fit for communities in terms of dance recital shows authors lectures on coming in and so that's a little bit of what what that space could be used for we're going to talk more about it and opportunities as we move through we're also looking at a black box theater one hundred fifty two hundred seat studio theater so a black box is much more flexible there's different arrangement options on that you can use it in terms of its uniqueness it's larger than any of the ones regionally it's two stories tall so flexibility in terms of setting up the space i think the unique features to this and also the space we're talking about previously and that we think that it's necessary in terms of progress technological progress t the spaces are set up to be able to stream and to be able to record and so that that creates a unique opportunity even for those who may use other black box theaters to be able to record or stream their performances which these things being in the same place just creates more opportunities for different groups so related to the additional components of the art education facility the spaces that we think are important to  space scene costume and prop workshops in addition to the box office and ministry of spaces so that's what really makes this facility unique is that it creates the opportunity to be a producing theater meaning that you can from soup to nuts create a brand new production then you have all the things that you need there to be able to do that in so that's one of the unique features of it that co location besides just somebody who wants to produce creates different opportunities for festivals camps intensives that really in the arts that really look at having access to multiple spaces at any given time which really increases in terms of  renting really intensive rent opportunities which is excellent another great example is if you're bringing in a dance group to you know off five hundred six hundred seat theater and they want to do a master class then you have an opportunity to have a full maybe some default performing arts but we really see it as a space that can be pretty expansive besides just theater dance music lectures political speakers authors this live live streaming opportunity the opportunity to do film and video comedy to bring in comedy in a particular size that doesn't exist and then the educational opportunities which we're going to go into in much more detail thank you so in terms of opportunities one area that we just want to focus on here is creating space for regional and national companies to produce art which could include new works in general in theater in ballet in dance and in music so what this looks like is a space that can do it all as i referenced earlier so it's going to give you an example of something that actually happened in south burlington so the images that you're looking at here are from young dr jekyll is a script that was written in new york and then it was brought up to vermont and it was workshopped and then performed initially with the vermont musical theater academy out of spotlight vermont and then it was then later performed in schenectady at proctor's and so that's an example of ways that this space could be used not just locally  also regionally and can be a place that appeals to others you know the berkshires is there's a lot of spaces like this in the berkshires where artists from new york who can't afford space like this in new york sort of excuse to to be able to be in an immersive experience for a week or two weeks to produce and south burlington has the opportunity to be a similar space  costs up here would be much more reasonable than it costs in new york city and so there's an opportunity for south burlington to be a place that companies can come to to spend a period of time not just  using the space but using all the facilities as south burlington hotels eating out all those types of things as well i think i mentioned this briefly but we're really in visioning all the spaces that to be set up to support twenty is first or twenty first century emerging production distribution models would make no sense to construct to construct something new and have it be short sighted and so there's opportunities here to be unique in this rich region but also to be a destination place for groups who need a recording of the work that they're doing or would like to have a live stream of the work that they're doing so the capacity for me recording is treating streaming capabilities would allow us to reach new audiences and learners and potentially additional revenue likely additional revenue in terms of some going to spend a little bit of time on here because this is something that i'm particularly passionate about pathways personalized learning and workforce development so i'm not going to assume that you know what those things are i'm just going to tell you a little bit about them so by two thousand and twenty employers are saying that there's three characteristics that the top three characteristics that they're looking for in terms of their workforce are creativity being able to solve complex problems in critical thinking and we really do believe that the arts provide the opportunity to practice all of those things and to develop those skills flexible pathways which is accept any seven personalised learning is sort of a component under flexible pathways it basically is saying to schools we want to give you the creative flexibility to be able to develop programming for students that allows them to explore things that they're interested in and develop the skills that they need to be successful in the twenty first century  so there's a bunch of different places there's a bunch of different initiatives that are connected to that personalized learning is really about students being able to say hey i'm passionate about this i'm interested in this and i want a path to be able to explore the way that that might play out might be around work based learning internships shadowing job shadows having the opportunity to learn what it would take to prove to proceed in a particular business there's a general lack of ability to do that around the arts in terms of the opportunities around here this this gives us an opportunity to create well to to make that be possible that there's an opportunity to do that there's a place to go do that be to be able to do work side by side with professionals  and i think you know i really do believe that that students need a place to be able to do that and that south burlington could be that place not just for south burlington for but regionally to promoting economic development in vermont a lot of work is a work group that came out of that was looking at workforce development and one of their initiatives or one of their strong recommendations on their key recommendations out of that was  supporting the creation of apprenticeship programs apprenticeship programs paid internships job specific training industry recognize certificates and training and so this is an opportunity and there's some overlap with that with what the schools are trying to do but there's opportunities there for us to be creating programming we're meeting with c c d has a work development a whole entire work development sort of area and we're meeting with that crew in the next two weeks to talk about opportunities there but one of the challenges at school districts are having is how to use the systems that they have to be able to address these initiatives and with with things that currently exist and here's an opportunity to build something from the ground up that it includes those things ye any was going to take a while on that one economic benefit so you know similar to the conversation we're having previously i think that this is a by default not by default but an art center is a place that brings people not just from south burlington into the area jobs retail development tourism has an impact a positive impact on the hospitality industry northern stage down white river junction has just spoken to us quite a bit about how much of an impact that it's had locally for them and there's there's differences in our community of course but i think that that is one local example of what an economic engine a space like this can be in a town so we've been in collaborative collaborative conversations with this crew this this list of people among more  you know i think it's important to know that we're not if we're not at all in a stage where we're we have a commitment from anybody about how they would use this space it's just not the stage that were in we've been meeting with them because we are not a presenting organization this time we are we are intending to facilitate collaborative conversations and so we've been meeting with these groups to hear about their experience and to take that experience seriously here about their concerns around the limitations of space that they the spaces that they have access to or have had access to if a new space were to be created what would it be important to them that it had and where could they see themselves using this space and you know in the initial twenty five organizations the seventy five percent of those indicate that they would use the facility and the more that we meet with them the more groups they were meeting with the more that we're hearing yes we could see ourselves in that space in some form or another we do have some folks who we wanted to partners that we want to make its case to just say a quick statement is that is that ok mike stern new york stage originals i think katie has basically hit on everything a lot of things some things that are well first of all you mentioned young a tech program there school tech program so we were able to involve the community of kids who helped actually build the sets paint do some painting so i feel that what you're talking about in your educational program i feel that's relevant to this so yeah and i think that's really that's really i mean for us yet the other component is we talked about technology and one of the things that my company is doing is  we are attempting to film our productions with multi camera angles and i think so incorporating this technology  it's really an incentive for us to you know to want to be able to come in user space so i think for example right now we're looking at doing one of our shows called scrooge and we are you know  again a creative space in i think i mean shows have to begin somewhere and so creating an environment that you know can nurture composers can involve the community education involving students in the creative process building sets i think is an important component that can really assist in a production company like ours developing new works so thank you thank you very much space i mean we were talking about a block box a black box is a very attractive space for creating new work i mean basically it can be a very economical way to you know to have smaller audience have audience talk backs and about the creative process and that's one of the things we did at procter it's an eighty was an eighty seats space but after each show  director and i would sit down in front of the the audience and talk about the show and imagine involving you know the community in south burlington in burlington in the actual creative process and a partnership they actually paid us a guarantee to come in and bring our show in in exchange we worked with their students actually tom done the set or or and so yeah so what was the question again you picked out of pocket for the use of so i guess there is it was kind of a for us it was a win win kind of situation  we vested some money which taken the shows off broadway and so we needed a place where we could you know kind of flesh it out and so we came collaboration where we would be working with our tech students we bring in our show and form this collaboration where we paid for some of the materials pretty ems who brought in the new york cast we brought in a scenic designer a lighting designer from new york and collaborated with their students and we put on two weekends of show shows to you know some excellent reviews and that that is now the stepping stone for us to go to take it to new york city so right now we're in the process of working with new executive producers in new york and hopefully this will be an off show that was first don spotlight theater spotlight in vermont and i could see that could be you know something that if it's attractive to other creatives they might want to come up here and you know develop new years and i can speak to the need for rehearsal space and concert space from the from the musical perspective here  have you know it's a it's a challenge to raise enough money to pay for operating costs of of a musical group and where personal space is at a premium  the options for theatres and performance spaces proposed in this proposal are exciting and i think we'll find groups that would really use them and the recording and technical feasibility as that would be available i think would also serve  musical community really well a couple years ago the amount symphony did a triple concerto album and we recorded it down in rutland at the paramount theatre we had to pay a tremendous amount to have the sound engineer come in and engineer the space and it made the recording a challenge to do and i think that for months  particular is a very unique orchestra where the oldest state aided i think is the language you're using now state orchestra in the country and we'd really like to see that remain and grow and we don't have beings from such a small state we just don't have the kind of outreach that we could have i think if we could record it and get our name out there and in a lot of other ways you know if there's anything else there was something else just a plug for arts education and the opportunities for the development of mind and creativity that i think is going to be vital in the workforce coming up i'd really love to see south burlington go forward with this project hi my name is mike toweling and i'm president of the south bronx and community chorus and we rehearse across the street over in the high school right now although even that space is getting cramped forests and  so it's sponsored through the rec department of holly and actually south burlington was kind of forward thinking the course is almost fifty years old and so we were one of the first  courses in the country so there are more now certainly but but not fifty years ago anyway so our forefathers had some put some thought into that as as a recreation opportunity for adults to be able to do in addition to sports activities and things like that our problem has become that we don't have a venue to perform in south burlington so we have to do our concerts somewhere out of south burlington which kind of bugs us because we are sponsored by the city itself and can in there really isn't a good performance space for us on we have we sometimes get into the high  school but often the high school auditorium is just booked with high school activities you know either music activities or their own or theater activities and frankly the acoustics are not particularly good there at the high school either and we performed one time at the old sheraton but again there's no real acoustics over there and we had to pay a lot of money to perform at the sheraton so we've been hard pressed to really find a good location here in south burlington reform and so we are typically performing lately over at st mike's sometimes we find local churches so anyplace that we can we can  afford to perform we we do in it's also a little more limiting on some of our options in terms of being able to collaborate with other groups or if we wanted to do a bigger piece that called for an orchestra or something like that and really don't have a location especially in south burlington but much in the area i mean we we we don't have the budget  afford the flynn and we have i think right around sixty five singers right now and certainly more than half from south burlington we do open it up to the community were non audition and one of the few non audition choruses in the area so it's just a bunch of kind of working people who get together once a week and rehearse and then we do a couple of concerts a year and we usually do get several hundred people come to hear us perform so you know so we get decent crowds and would just be fantastic to have a venue in south burlington again because feel like it's important for you to know that we have met with the flan they could not be here tonight but i do want to read this statement that they put together the flynn center for the performing arts administration agrees that there is a strong need in the region for performance space in the four hundred to six hundred seat range they could see ways that they might use a facility like that in several programming areas in particular around their educational activities and then finally we've also been meeting with higher ground with alex crothers from higher ground who also cannot be here tonight but did want to read this statement that in discussions with both the city of south burlington in the south burlington city center for the arts organization higher ground has reviewed ongoing planning for a new art center with the six hundred seat theater they've indicated that they see a need for a need for a medium sized theater engine county and would be interested in using it this would fill a gap that they see now and in the future of a sit down type of performance space with a traditional stage they're very interested in staying involved as a project develops so not to belabor the point in terms of what's next on the council should receive an updated feasibility study this past week like i said there's a detailed memo addressing your questions forthcoming we are going to continue  meeting with our partners and our potential partners and collaborators continue those conversations we do expect that as these conversations continue continued the pro forma can move from less of a hypothetical place in a projective place into more of an actual place and we would like invite the council to tour northern stayed with us sometime in the spring whenever there's less snow on the road so late spring i suppose that would be and we would love to have a chance to come back and in july or august  sons were in schools and one of them was in music that it was it was in the gymnasium there the end and i mean they clearly have a need to enhance you know the experience of these young people living music so yeah so i'm glad you've been in touch with them you know that question so have you engage with the school district about ruling into their master plan for the high school a performing arts space you know we met with we met with the superintendent a principal from the high school last week friday maybe and there is an interest in collaboration there in their master areas of twelve hundred well we can accommodate that and they can't build that other than a gym and so they're looking i think at the gymnasium that they'll have as that gathering space for their twelve hundred plus or minus student  could be yeah and so they they're very interested in a collaboration for the various arts at the school and they don't want to and clearly they don't have to duplicate that in what they're building so we see a lot of ongoing discussions with them it makes a lot of sense to me push with the school district by the board to martin and i had two meetings over the last year with david young  d most of it focused on some of the same things that other partners potentially are interested in a full on and others are interested in how we can do this learning component and they would really could see how we could leverage our arts center as a professional location where they could place students and that in turn ship kind of activity as a as a real partnership there and in terms of collaboration on a facility of i am actually part of both mine theater experience were our colleges where we had where reintegrated a community arts center with a college not a high school but with a college and and it made the whole facility much more logical to be able to extend beyond the education and serve the community but also the educational needs i'd love to find a way you know for this to be integrated with the schools like i would just note my past life i was sort of involved in terms of the health care field was working on some of the ak seventy seven requirements to really have pathways for experiences and different areas and i see this as having incredible potential for students who might be interested in sound systems for the filming or you know what is it really like to be backstage and help with the performance and those kinds of things that you know they may be able to have that opportunity at the flame but this would be another opportunity to offer students in south burlington that would be you know kind of right down the street maybe so i think it has that  but what you will mark if you study here is how to collaborate because what we all have to learn is that friday at eight o'clock we all have to be done and we all have to be done together your comments on that there's an enormous amount of work to do on this or not even close to being ready to talk to the council about moving this forward that that discussion the the research and addressing the issues that you've raised that are are real issues will continue throughout this year i wouldn't anticipate even asking the council to put something before the voters until better than a year from now when there's that much work that needs to be done but i credit the committee for getting this far and the hard work that they've done more deeds to be done and those questions need to be answered prior to going to the to the voters but it will take some time i mean if i might add to that just for a second and it you know thinking back to the rinks that took several years of hard work before again the traction and then we came up with park skating association had defaulted on the loan could a creator problem but it didn't i mean and that's twenty three years ago so so public private partnerships are fantastic  in the case of the rings work best when the entire financial burden was was not none of it was on the city for the construction and we gave it to the city that's the best scenario are there other ways to do it probably but as kevin said we got a long ways to go on this one before we get to a point like that because what you've stated is one hundred percent accurate wanted to clarify that i may have misspoken my in my introduction i said committee because i think of it as a committee of people working together but they are a nonprofit and south burlington city center for the arts they've been around now for at least two years working towards this goal and this vision and they do accept a nation mind in this conversation is where this thing would go and what i like about the recreation centers we have veterans memorial it's a perfect spot we own the land the ranks right there so it's clear to see that it's there i just have residence in my kids go to central school i have other parents i talk because unlike they're not talking about this on the right market property so i just i think it's very important would be transparent to the community that this notion is being put forward i still as a as a sat city council here not as a as a parent would want to know which location are we really talking about because i haven't been presented any of that and land is expensive downtown south burlington city center so that parking can serve the royal mile or isn't necessarily going to go away so those are my big concerns with this notion is where this thing would be and i'm glad that we recognize a lot more work needs to be done before moving this thing forward but that being said in all the challenges and the work that they've done i think you have to admit that the this is one of two investments we're listening to proposals for tonight that are really key for ensuring the long term i tally of this the city of south burlington right and they compliment not only the city but the comp and the whole region so and it's really good to hear plans like this being laid because i think the they give us a bigger role than we've had before so with there's not one missing speace or property that could be self sustaining right and then attract a and hear from the jury i am getting furious texts from my wife that my pipes are frozen so i'm actually going to leave so that i can get the hair dryer out but i will watch on youtube whatever i miss of this meeting so my apologies and i have a yeah it's dealing with increasing the local option by one percent to finance debt on certain certain capital projects we heard from two potentially to be considered for approval later date so take it away and good evening enter bolduc city attorney i was charged with working with the charter committee on drafting some charter change amendment language that would accomplish two things one is a an additional one percent local options tax on sales meals rooms and alcoholic beverages and as well as a some about what they would want what they would bring forward and how what this would look like and that's what's in front of you today and there are two options can i interrupt at this point might save some time for you peter peter is going to describe the options one option keeps one hundred percent of the money and stop borrowing to another option which i'll let him talk about is seventy percent under the current way it's done in vermont seventy percent i talked to made a townsend today and she strongly urged going with the seventy percent option and so i think lucky stars start with their heater and so and you understand the difference that was explained to you the hundred is off the table now so which is what we're going to recommend i think o so forgive me because i'm talking about options one and two in here but you know just applied option to first of all section thirteen fifteen zero seven relates to the sales tax one percent  section a allows the city to collect the tax section b states how the tax will be collected by the state and the feet paid the state based on the number of returns the rest of this paragraph was talking about the difference and one hundred percent are retaining seventy five percent so i'll skip that we considered including specific reference to specific buildings and infrastructure that the tax would use exclusively and many expressed concern that the voters would be misread this as a vote for or against any one of these  projects the staff expressed that the outreach before the vote would clarify that this vote would allow the city to impose the tax following city vote to approve one or more of the projects following our additional discussion the committee recommends modeling the charter amendment and call chester's charter language which does not specify any one project but refers to future voter approved projects that the tax shall be cleft in use for only projects approved within a ten year period of the time starting with the first project approval so what what we were thinking is that this would give a a limit to what this is about the tax availability so it's not indefinite so the public has a sense there's a beginning and however any project proved in that ten year period following the first approved project you could use this tax revenue for and the tax would continue until section and then you go under section thirteen fifteen zero eight and that kills with the short term car rental tax the original discussion had the state collecting this tax as in the first section we just talked about but the committee recommends that city collect the tax city staff said this was possible and not difficult or time consuming so we would say by south by passed the state's collection of the tax and just do it all in house section a also sets a rate of five percent committee disgust one percent or more and concluded that it could be more than one percent you have five that's for the committee that is for the council to decide what level of tax you might want to put on that and then section c define short term car rental and two is the capital reserve fund so all of tax revenue that comes from the the local options tax and that's seventy percent after the thirty percent cut that the state maintains  would be to fund voter approved city projects and then in an amount not to exceed ten percent of the total debt on the project and that that was a set aside for as it says a capital reserve fun d for ongoing maintenance or and i'm going maintenance that's improvements and and other sort of structural components that might have that might need so what that means is whatever money we accumulate with this tax only not more than ten percent can be used to so ninety percent of it ok so this allows this allows a capital reserve to be built up over time so that when the debt is completed we still have a reserve for needed capital improvements new roof new track system it's self funded that way rather than placing that back on the property tax payers immediately ok but then we only fund that for the period of the debt so  it's a fifteen year note we collect this fifteen years and then we stop right there is no sense of closure here you know that they say a sunset would be once the debt has been paid off and plus ten percent for a couple reserve so for a project to start it say if we start a project two thousand and nineteen first first vote goes out for ten years the city can go forth under this option to do window to approve the projects approved and broadens projects and generate the debt and then the the tax sunsets if you will when all the debt has paid for all of the projects which would be probably and yeah yeah because you might approve one in year eight in the committee want to be really specific in the sense that for two options about not listing the projects one was because we thought voters might think they're voting on it and the other option was just a fact that who knows in eight years was going to happen could our fire department outgrow its its use to a new new fire department w fit list in the charter is one of those things we could raise the money for it causes a whole new problem so we decided to take out the language about what projects could be brought forth to the voters i went searching plats for manchester albany portland and i mean they all have some degree they all charge state tax they some of them charge like an energy conservation thing and they all have this one feet call because of the  they all charges like eleven percent eighty percent of facilities charge year end up in a facility charge and that seems to be pretty much how it is broken down and kevin did a little google search on it and basically the term just means it's their facility charge whatever they want to charge for renting and typically is was about eight to twelve percent with a range use for a car that's not even at the facility during the time of the rental so you rent  a south burlington so a current at the airport we get nothing as a four dollar charge on it that goes to burlington and nine percent to the state in terms of tax nothing to us right now  the airport and i think that legislate that's legislative authority that allows them to charge this fee so if you're not at the airport in you go to majestic on sherburne road near the rotary do you know with the urge which customers are charged there in burlington for  i don't know i don't know you know i didn't search i looked at airport in the be confident that that if we passed this that you wouldn't be challenged by burlington in some way well this is this is for all rental cars not just the have any municipal eat own entities with another municipality contributions here or conflicts in statute that would then give brings in the possibly of saying you're going to give us half that five percent i just a minute i'm not aware of any you know that i asked earlier where the hell did this come from the short term car i don't remember hearing about this and any time i missed one meeting it was do you have a good idea it's if you look farther along no you know you want to know where this really came from it came from drive an airport parkway and the problems we're having with potholes after a thousand trucks it went on airport parkway for the last eighteen months and have pretty much destroyed it and so while the airport does pay taxes that go maintenance the rental car agencies do not and so since probably ninety percent of the cars are rented  in vermont are in our community they're on our roads our police officers and our our emergency responders respond to the accidents here we're saying  you know we're at the end of the food chain again with all things airport and commerce from there and it's time to get some compensation to to fix the impacts and this is making this is for highway and this is in taxes traditionally aren't i mean a fee would if the structure would be what this currently used is phrased as a tax i think initially the concept concept was you know sales sales tax does not extend to rental cars if it's just on you rent the car and it's three hundred dollars for the week rather than four dollars a day that's what the state does there is a nine percent so interesting i've so if we decide on what to do here and we go with this option all we're doing is getting approval from the from the charter committee to go to the legislature and ask for the changes you're getting a recommendation project is approved the taxes never trigger right so what i still don't see that there's a sunset it may reduce and retire any debt incurred so you're implying that if there was a twenty year note and you did it within ten years that you would do it for the full note the hope for the so however many projects you you you know approve for at the moment potentially two projects that i think lend themselves to a broader community use an attribute i think the rec center would be used largely by south burlington but other communities as we are and i think a performing arts center would really be a regional draw  i wouldn't vote for this thinking oh yeah and then we might want to do something else that a local option tax years and we can sort support supporting all sorts of you know capital construction all over the city i think it really needs to be related to at least the first one to things that really do support the county and our community i have i have two concerns one is that if months before the voters many ok but that was that was fairly clear and this is this is a little fuzzier so i'm concerned about that and i'm a bigger concern as you get into legislature and you've got the entire you know the entire general assemblies ultimately got a vote they will about understand that the rooms the meals tax is already going to be under pressure because it hasn't changed since i think two thousand and three i think may have been his two thousand and three two thousand and four somewhere back there has been fifteen eighteen years before but since it was last there's tremendous pressure on that and you know legislature is going to look at this and say well we're going to raise rooms or meals tax or they say i think i mentioned this to a couple of you they split the rooms the meals tax because the overwhelming bulk of the meals tax is paid by vermonters ninety percent of  rooms taxes paid by out of staters and legislature says we're going to leave the rooms to the meals tax at nine percent because most of those papers by vermonters by a long shot but we're going to raise the hotel tax to eleven percent and then all of a sudden we're sitting on a  thirteen percent hotel tax and that is that is a big enough tax to be a major problem because we've got a lot of large meeting facilities you know we've got to double trillion and the new delta and  there i mean i was concerned about the precedent setting and then in our five to fifteen minute break there you know we spoke to a legislator john kalac who who knows that there are other communities market really driving this and i agree with helen that caution and vision combined are required for this and and we're investing in a city center that is seen as an economic driver not only for south burlington but for the region for the state and i do believe that this cultural center will contribute would contribute to that economic development i believe the recreation center would contribute to the polity of life of the people in addition to the quality of life coming from performing an investigation center and then of course the cycling across the bridge and walking so that's where the we need caution vision what we're saying is i think we're all on the same page and we're saying caution and vision you get to the legislature right and they're going to say we need money for what we want to do and seven almost three point eight million eight million extra or total with the two that's our share so the state that's like a letter to the current share yes so i'm guessing another one percent would be about the same a lot of money three three and the development and you mall development will this extra one percent have a negative impact on the interest of businesses and the comment i heard back  as well these additional facilities will make this attractive to those businesses wanting to come here so you know it's just something you have to consider as you're trying to expand  does this become a negative or more attractive because we're more things for people to do when they get here i think he wants more restaurants and i think a performing arts center will be helpful would be you know the bank think that's part of the conversation and maybe we can put in the three things we think we might want to use this for in the charter amendment but clearly that's the conversation both with the legislature because this is economic development one  one selling points to collectors and to be business is in our community who are saying wait a minute what is this for he had to make that case and then also to the public that convince them  that or let them understand that our intentions are which i know can change nothing to them in concrete or whatever but but our intent is for these these kinds of projects and not just a piggy bank and ok and then i'll go to the public yeah so based upon when we first inactive the one percent which was seven years ago has been ten project and this project alone then i might say yes but if you put it as this is a ten years that you can decide other projects that you want to do and keep it going on i'm not saying if the voter decides though i'm the projects i just know when you guys have that extra ten years say ok well now five years now i want to do this project and that's going to take another ten years pay that loan off and then you know because you still have that ten years yeah i think that in nine years though which is there are there is a there is a debt there is a limitation on what we can finance and if you look at the two projects that have been spoken about tonight it's going to take up most of that and so maybe the decision for the council i understand what you're saying but these projects will probably be financed to either twenty or thirty years and if they take all of the debt capacity that does the charter committee want to me work on anything else for the charter for the city as i said it's always been my understanding that we were a subcommittee of council in other words you point us and that we worked off of your direction as opposed to the chair of the charter committee saying hey let's have a charter committee being what we want to change so that question came up and i guess may be good not right now but whenever you want to just to clarify how you see the charter committee functioning i guess well ok i mean just that's pretty much that's kind how i see it functioning although i think if the charter committee identified something or someone on the charter committee or someone in the public said you know i've been reading through the charter and this seems a little crazy you could come to us and say do you want us to look into it and we could open it up would you your way it would go as you are somebody coming in the chair of the charter committee and say would you get the committee together and look at that it has to go through is that which you're thinking i th have but i'm perfectly ok with people coming to the cheer with ideas about how to improve the charter and then you come to the council and say these are we work on this like yeah yeah i think that is a good process take the other issue is let me know if you want to go because i'm going to let them know probably tomorrow or wednesday or some the other question is we've gotten a request from a from at least one early childhood education provider in the city as it relates to impact transportation impact fees and she has requested a meeting to talk about as a public policy issue should we be promoting or otherwise in a neighboring more early childhood education daycare type centers here and fees are so difficult oppressive that it's difficult to start a new center we discussed this when you did time and you reduce you reduce their feeling based upon a different formula we'd have to see the numbers i'd have to see the numbers i think what we're asking for is whether or e we could just have the discussion so i think i've kind of put the facts you know through multiple times but at the end of the day this property there we were in the middle the town was hand in hand knew exactly what was going on with this and part of the delay was the city of south burlington not having approval on money to release f to close originally in june and it was pushed off to august and then the actual closing happened in october everything is hand in hand every contract that went along with this sale   there seemed to be a lot of confusion as to that piece so i guess it comes down to it you know if it is the boards you know if the council is saying bad they agree that the do not believe the property should be examined i guess we will be kind of looking for an explanation just as to why it doesn't seem clear to me to just say no we we meant for it to be exempt i think we're looking for a little more information on that yeah i'll talk about the motion i made and i believe that  the contract we saw that night listed the auclair lands and that was something that was brought to my attention during the meeting as we were all sitting here discussing so when i made the motion i made reference to the auclair lands from the language in the contract and that that language i think was specified in the contract and forgive me i don't know the contract by heart and i'm trying to recall but there were three parcels persons a b and c and forgive me if i'm not remembering correctly and so when on the minutes that it said auclair land i wanted it to be clear that it was zero clear lands because that as was in the contract i mean that was the issue as i understand that you brought forward that evening was that this contract be held hope you know what held toll and be respected and that was my definitely my concern as well since i voted to have city funds put toward the conservation of the problem is that the way that it is right now it's not left to be conserved you know that the what it does in terms owning a loan causes issues with the fact that you know you don't when you sell a property and i feel like south i understand that the conservation piece is very difficult and lengthy and i just interrupt ye because if first time reason and south burlington couldn't come up with the money in the deal right now no way it had to go to i had to go back to the sixteen acres was fifteen or sixteen was if it's like fifteen people and if you owed it all right you couldn't subdivide before the deal was done anyway if it was in the language it was so is attached to the original hundred seventeen acres that you guys own so we broke that off to make the deal go through that's them because to keep the concert in contribution the money wasn't write about or could put up their money that needed to be put up so the fifteen acres the eclairs took that money back are on had it subdivided for the cost that it cost to subdivide but the deal could go through until you had your check and bread and butter purchased the property four and seventy so essentially the south burlington sale on october fifth had to occur before even if it was subdivided through dear had to we had to be able to have the option to put that land who had been very it would have had to go towards a developer at that point it would have had to stay whole for them to be able to say ok here's the entire property so it was all in a hold status until south burlington could close on october fifth which then made the transfer everything else october eleventh the other piece being that this other small property all of these were tied together so that others on property we keep talking about heather's the in order for the land trust the parcel c person a has to be subdivided because she that's where her sewer and her water are is on the other property that all comes together so it's part of the agreement but the city's south burlington karner couldn't have subdivide and so i know that this is all decision rests with us yes because that's what we did the last time there were three projects that came forward even though they were under i know like for us we were very clear from like what we were going to do from the beginning and there was we are we're not i mean our wastewater permits for sixteen bedrooms we're not talking about a development here we're not selling the property saying as a whole it's a family  bunch of money tied up on this currently again we closed october eleventh and october fifteenth that's occurred there's a whole bunch of confusion whole bunch of money that's been placed into it and everyone's kind of and i just feel very unfair we worked hand in hand with the city on this from day one and i don't feel i understand that we can continue with our putting more money into true dowels and then come to you and say can we do so again and i'm sure it is a matter of lots of parts of people involved in that so i understand you guys have a lot going on but you know i think when we left the meeting there seemed to even be confusion from how we read things how kevin read things how paul read things and then that clarification idea so i guess no one was really quite understanding why we weren't exempt when it with when the original thing you know it was for this contract in this contract was the reason for the exemption was for this contract and this contract involved all of these pieces so why works we accept and i already had the contract with them ahead of time you know i have a contract mostly interest in it already had the confirmation from paul in front of ten more years right there was going to be no issues to come from south burlington and then a couple days later to find out that there's all these issues it's like well that was already presented well that let's try to get it resolved monday or at least until the tuesday is news to least have the first conversation with the facts and the people before us and we will was you know and it does kind of make sense because i know i was here at the meeting in the end of august september where it was actually being brought here to the council for everyone to finalize that had gone through other committees prior so i know odds of having gone to the vote for the city council for everyone else until late august early september timeframe so we were supposed to close in june and august before that and so you know just that does that sound like that's yeah and if i could just and i'm happy to bring whatever information is helpful i guess that's where i'm at you know when we come in next time whatever it's helpful for me to bring it would be and i can certainly do so  think we've asked a few questions you were talking about the plans for