Council uh today is Wednesday, September 5th, 2026.

It is 6.02 p.m.

And I will call this special meeting of the Barrie City Council to order.

Uh the first item on the agenda is the adjustments to an approval of the agenda.

Any changes, Mr.

Manager?

Uh just a clarification, uh Mayor, because it wasn't in the packet that I did email the council about um item 4F on the consent agenda authorizing the manager to execute contracts, and I'm requesting your approval of the prospect heights redesign contract for 292,410.66 cents to VHB.

Um this was uh competitively bid, it was scored by uh panel of three reviewers, and we would receive two uh two proposals, and we are selecting the um the one that scored highest both technically and on the cost perspective, and this would be funded from the state grant award um for prospect heights.

Thank you very much.

And council, uh I did ask the manager to send all of those documents to council so that you'd you know I figured the review was important, the thoroughness of the review, not that I was questioning the the results of the staff reviewers, but I thought it was important for the council to have all of the information so we could see what they saw.

Uh so we did that and we'll make that part of the minutes as well.

Um other changes to the agenda, council?

Then a motion to approve would be in order.

So moved.

Thank you and seconded.

Thank you.

Moved and seconded.

Any discussion?

Hearing none.

All those in favor of the motion is presented, please signify by saying aye.

Aye.

And those opposed, thank you very much.

Uh and in the minute that we did that, I realize that I did at the end of the meeting.

I'm just gonna give the council a quick briefing in terms of where we uh stand on our SNAP uh program here in the city.

So I will do that at the end of the meeting.

Uh so council will move on to item 4A on the agenda and excuse me, we'll move on to the consent agenda.

We'll be approving the minutes of the meeting of 1028-25.

Do you have any licenses and permits under that section?

There are none.

We'll be authorizing 15 the $15,000 allocation for the adopt adopt a storm drain program.

Uh we will be uh appointing Fred Pond as the Barrie City representative for the regional bike share pilot program steering committee.

We'll be uh we'll be approving a retroactive $5,000 allocation or prospective $5,000 uh allocation from the Bruce Trust to support the SNAP benefits for the children of Barrie, and we'll be authorizing the manager uh to execute contracts as needed.

Yes, sir.

Uh thank you, Mary.

One one other really important point on the contract for prospect heights is uh this was in um my email to you, but it's also important for the minutes that your authorization to me, I'm requesting it to be contingent upon receipt of a CDB D DR award.

Um so we would notify VHB that they've been selected as the as the as the winner of the of the RFP, but we would not execute that contract absent um uh receipt of the CDB GDR application that we made this fall.

So I just wanted to clarify that as well.

Thank you.

Any objection from the mover and seconder?

Okay, then we'll work that in there.

Um just briefly, council, uh, a couple of things.

I mean, authorizing the I did the math on authorizing because everything, all decisions with me are always math based.

So um I looked at the $15,000 authorization for the adopt a storm drain program, and in a constituent had had stopped me and said, well, you know, that's kind of a cute program.

And so I did the math on it.

Um if we consider uh the $15,000 and we consider $30 an hour for labor, which is pretty conservative.

If you add in employee benefits, FICA, I think our average DPW contract rate is probably much higher than that.

Um $15,000 would buy a $500 hour.

There are so then I uh texted Nicholas and I said, How many storm structures are there in the city?

And he said there's a thousand.

So uh if it took 20 minutes for a staff person at DPW person, and believe me, we've got more important work for them to do, but if we had them clearing a storm drains and it took them 20 minutes per drain, that would be 333 staff hours.

Um so it kind of compares favorably with the 500.

However, in the out years, this program is only a thousand dollars.

So if we had to pay our staff um to clear storm drains, we could maybe clear 100 storm during so this is a really cost-effective program.

If people get behind it, I don't expect, well, maybe we'll get every storm drain in the city um adopted, but you know, if we even got half of them adopted and citizens were out there helping out with some of the light lifting, it would be a huge time saving for DPW.

So just wanted to say she's not here yet, but I just want to say thank you again to Councillor Gustin for presenting this program because it's going to be a really cost-effective program for the city.

In terms of the Bruce Trust um money, as I'll tell you later on, we're going to keep that powder dry right now.

Um we've managed to raise some funds through the program.

Uh every single day I'm talking to our food shelves.

Like I said, I'll outline it more thoroughly later.

But at this point, I don't anticipate um this SNAP thing changes daily.

Just as at this point in time, knowing that our original goal was to fill that one week gap when SNAP recipients literally were getting nothing.

We're we think we're okay.

And that comes directly from those operating the food shells, you know, the food bank, uh you know, Dan Millin, the folks at the churches, that's directly from them.

And you know, I'm I'm checking in every afternoon.

So uh with that council, uh motion to approve the consent agenda would be in order.

So moved.

Thank you.

It's moved and seconded.

Any discussion?

I have a yes, of course.

Um, first, just about the VHB um proposal.

Can um you just remind me the this is but you I know you just said that it would be contingent on us receiving the C V DG DR grant money.

Is it this is all just permitting?

That's what this is.

This is the like first phase code.

Yeah, it's basically redesigning it because the because it's an old subdivision, modernizing it to current standards.

It's it's that that part of the work.

And does this have any what like if we pay this, does it give us more information?

Like, okay, you're not going to be able to do this many units, or you could do this many units.

Does it tell us any of that or fine-tune it?

The due diligence really gave us the a really really accurate snapshot of it, which already sort of constricted it a little bit.

Um so it might fine-tune it a little bit more as they get more into the into the field, but um I I wouldn't expect a wild sling from what we what we learned from the due diligence.

Okay, we don't anticipate, counselor, that's going to change, but we'll be able to get we'll have bid ready documents.

Correct.

And we don't have that now.

We we have a a level of detail that that leads us to believe, you know, uh X number of units, and that could change by five percent.

It could change by you know, five or ten.

We don't anticipate that, but it could.

But the most important part of what this will provide us with is documents that we can go to a contractor with and say, here, how much will this cost?

We want to bid this.

Um good question.

My other question, um, I well that I wanted to make a note that I had sent some very minor edits to the clerk about the minutes, um, just a couple of very minor things just for her to update.

Um, I can run through them, but it's not if there's no substantive changes to the the minutes.

Um, and then my other question is actually regarding the contract for the um yeah, the adopt a drain.

And I know Amanda's not here.

Um page 18, it talks about the site licenship license for annual membership, and it talks about year one in multiple multiple years.

Is it really like year one, year two, year three?

Because it talks about year one every time.

But it doesn't I is this for the full is this for the full um three years?

This cost is this the 15,000 is for the for the full uh the full three years, yes.

Okay.

Um and that's what this is showing.

That's what this is showing, yes.

So if you look at the annual fees, there's site license, annual membership year one, and it says 639, and then it says site license two two car or two rows down.

Um site license, annual membership year one, six thirty-nine ten, and then two down, it says the same exact thing.

So I believe this is year one year, two and year three of that.

Yeah, okay, okay.

And then my last question, which really would be an Amanda question.

Um, I love the idea of the key to 12 program materials, but I'm wondering have we contacted the school district or a school district to see if that they would be used?

Like, how are we just gonna be like here?

And then I before we spend the money, it would be great to know that they're going to be used.

I think they could be fit into some curriculum.

Yeah, I don't know the extent that counselor Gustin has spoken to the school district about it.

Um I so we can we can certainly hold on that piece if if the council would like.

Um, I don't know.

I I can't speak with with authority about how much she's she's engaged with them on that.

Yeah, I mean I think it's fantastic, but I don't want to give them something if they're like, what are we gonna do with this?

Right.

Then it would really be you know money that we've spent that may just sit.

Yep.

So um there's no objection from the move and the seconder uh when councillor gustin arrives, we'll get a satisfactory answer to that question.

We'll consider it approved in the meanwhile, council can always pull it back.

Okay, I'm I'm fine with that.

Okay, then we'll do that.

Any other discussion or changes, council hearing none?

All those in favor of the motion is presented, please signify by saying aye.

Aye, and those opposed, consent agenda is approved.

Council will move on to 4A, and we'll be approving the city warrants uh for the week of 11525.

A motion would be in order.

So moved, thank you.

And a second, please.

Second, thank you.

Gotta say the words.

It's moved and seconded.

All those in favor of the motion is presented, please signify by saying aye.

Aye.

And those opposed, are you abstaining?

Okay, we still have four affirmative votes, so the motion carries good.

Yes, I am good.

Um report is basically on the election.

It went very well, I thought 128 um ballots for the um bond votes for Barry City.

Uh both items or articles did pass.

Um DPW was a higher margin than the um the TIFF fund.

Uh everything went very well.

The C V C C ballots are still um awaiting the co-mingling, which will happen tomorrow at alumni hall.

And basically, what that is is the four tabulators that were used during yesterday's election.

It's Waterbury, Montpellier, Barry Town, Barrie City.

We all congregate at alumni hall, and then all the other communities bring their hand counted ballots to be fed through our tabulators for the final results of the day.

And do you compare like they they've hand counted?

They have hand-counted their communities, yes.

Do you like add them and make sure there's no major discrepancy?

In other words, if you have you have hand-counted ballots, you have machine counted ballots.

Do you take those totals, add them up, and then feed everything, take that total and see how it compares?

We what we do is we invite two communities at a time.

So each community will have two tabulators.

We already see the numbers on those tabulators.

So when they feed theirs through, they have to match what they have hand counted to what we already have in there.

What if they don't?

Then we then they are responsible for recounting theirs.

I see.

Okay.

That's right.

Yeah.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but also the ballots are pulled out after each other.

You would be able to pull the ballots out and then recheck.

I've done this with Carol before.

Yes, after every town, they're pulled that app back out because they are going to bring them back to their community.

Yeah.

So there's no way for them to be able to do that.

They're not blended.

No, they're not blended.

Nice and secure.

Yeah.

So you count them, and as far as announcing that's the results, that is a responsibility of school.

School, yes.

Okay, yeah, just want to be clear.

Jody Emerson usually comes around half an hour before everything's done.

Just want to be clear on that.

Yes.

Uh any other questions for the city clerk.

You ran a great election.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And thank you to the voters for the result.

Absolutely.

Uh, like I said, we won't let you down.

We got it up.

We'll keep it up.

We've got one up.

Yes, Byrne Rhodes.

Hi, I just wanted to say thanks, especially, Cheryl, for the great uh sign that you put up at the top of the steps that said vote here.

Thank you.

Well, I'm glad it was helpful.

Okay.

Are you settled, Councilor Gustin?

Uh Councillor Spaulding had a question.

Um if you're if you're settled.

I am settled.

Uh she had a question on the um adopt a storm drain uh contract.

So yeah, my question is about the K-12 program materials.

Have you had a conversation with the schools to make sure that they can use them or will use them?

Not yet.

I just want to be clear that the what was presented is not the contract yet.

What that is is the invoice um to detail the costs of what the potential services would be.

So so obviously we we've authorized the $15,000 allocation we did that and you'll come back to the council with a contract.

Potentially well we usually do even if me you know merely as a courtesy to say to the council hey here's the contract I'm gonna sign it or Nicholas is going to sign it certainly in three days if unless somebody has an objection.

Yep I had held off uh reaching back out to them until we approved the funding tonight but now that I will bring that conversation up I'll bring the manager in and we'll see what they need from there and we'll step and give us yeah 48 hours to review and we're good.

Yeah and then uh so just to clarify if it isn't a contract if it's just then they invoice us and we and we pay for it do you still want to see the next step?

Well the qu the qua yeah I think your question went to um the school materials and and what if we don't what if we don't want those what if we don't need those um what if what if the school says um sure you know we'll go another direction we'll provide our own materials then obviously I think to Counselor Spaulding's point we don't want them in a contract.

Yeah we don't want them in an invoice if we don't think we're gonna be using them.

You've been all over this thing as far as I'm concerned you know I'm out.

Right no uh I I think there are a couple of interim steps we can take to make sure that every kit we paid for is both wanted and needed and I will follow up with them as to the best logistical next steps from their end about billing versus contract versus all of those pieces and I will follow up with Counselor Spaulding directly and bring it back to the council if there is a sort of contract next step instead of an invoice payment next step.

Does that make sense?

No I'm I'm fine with that is that all right yeah no I'm fine with it I just I just want to make sure we're not no it's a it's a totally it's a totally fair question we started with 10 because that seemed like a good number but we can change it depending on need.

Okay.

And Byrne did you have a question?

Or was your hand just still up?

Sorry I forgot.

Oh no worries no problems and council did I call for comments under visitors and communications or did I blow past that?

Usually I come here really early.

I was over at the good Sam had a briefing over at the library and so I'm usually here I try to be here about 20 25 minutes early so I have a chance to settle myself and go through all the materials of fourth time and I didn't do that.

So I would I felt a little rushed I apologize is there anyone uh under visitors and communications wishing to address the council regarding an item that is not on the agenda.

Okay no one no harm no foul but excuse me anyway.

So council anything under liquor control in cannabis and Mr.

Manager it's all yours.

Thank you mayor um I also want to echo the uh bond vote results from last night uh I just want to thank all the residents who came out to vote um obviously very pleased with the outcomes um and uh sort of echoing what the mayor said we know we we certainly don't take for granted the responsibility that um the voters entrust with us every time they they may take these votes and our responsibility to be wise investors of of public resources.

And at the same token we're really you know these were really good projects for Barry City.

They are good projects for Barry City we're really looking forward to keeping both of them moving and uh and breaking ground I haven't got to use those ceremonial golden shovels downstairs so we're looking forward to uh getting those out next year um on on these two sites and then I I also want to acknowledge Carol uh both as in her role as treasurer and TIFF administrator who um really makes sure that what we do with all these bonds are really complex in terms of the the the legal steps you you know you have to advertise in the paper so many days so many times so many weeks before um and she it's really really good to be able to turn something over to her like that and know that she's got it taken care of and that we don't have to worry about legal challenges.

So um and besides doing a great job on a lot of the uh education materials for the bond she also made sure that legally we were like on really solid ground so she um you know she continues to be a terrific resource um for that uh the second update I have for you council is on FEMA buyouts we had a little lull there um in closings but we have three more uh scheduled uh and the next two are on November 21st and that's for five scam PNE seven Harrington and then a third is scheduled on December 8th uh for 27 River Street uh so once those including those three once they are closed uh we will have 12 of 27 approved uh buyouts uh FEMA buyouts totally done and completed closed um we have three that have yet to be approved by FEMA and those uh approved by the city but not approved by FEMA those were a little bit later in the game so I you know they it's makes sense that they're at that point um hard to say what the shutdown impact of it is or isn't but there's three that are still sort of pending out there uh and then of the ones that haven't closed and and have and and haven't been approved by FEMA the remainder are still in progress uh uh the commercial ones are in uh environmental review and the others are just uh continuing to go through so still making uh good progress on these these are um you know these are uh bittersweet moments they're you know tough to to meet the families that went through this but they're also very happy to

Um hard to say what the shutdown impact of it is or isn't, but there's three that are still sort of pending out there.

Uh and then of the ones that haven't closed and and have and uh and haven't been approved by FEMA, the remainder are still in progress.

Uh uh the commercial ones are in uh environmental review, and the others are just uh continuing to go through.

So still making uh good progress on these.

These are um, you know, these are uh bittersweet moments.

They're you know tough to to meet the families that went through this, but they're also very happy to to have the closure that comes with it.

Uh and then finally, just um real quick that the facilities and rec departments have been very busy up on the hill.

Um the ice season, as I mentioned before, is it's our busiest season up there of all our of all our facilities.

Uh and so just want to remind um you know the the the uh fans of the BOR that uh keep an eye out for stick and puck schedules and additional open skate schedules coming out.

We're trying to uh make sure that um that the ice gets as much use as possible.

Um and uh including uh for for people who might uh you know, maybe elderly folks, retired folks who or or or maybe people who work from home.

Um if you like to do open skate during the day when there's not as many people were opening the BOR 11 to 2 Tuesdays and Thursdays for people who just want to come and skate around and do laps without the crowds, um and those will be free free skates for people to do that.

So keep an eye on those things.

We're trying to make sure inviting people into our facilities uh as much as we can.

So that's all for me.

Thank you.

Questions, folks?

Uh I have one.

Uh on the buyouts.

I noticed that uh there are quite a few demolition permits in the permit list that we received um as part of the packet.

Have we started scheduling demolition or planning that's we have yeah, we've we have broad timelines of uh middle to late to end of this month.

Um so those are they we don't have specific dates yet, but we have those general parameters.

Um and so yes, they're they're moving and they they're working in sequence with you know the ones that were approved first are gonna be on the demo list first.

So um we should start to see some of them hopefully by the end of this month uh being completed.

And a sort of follow-up question on how the site is left um after demolition.

This is not an area of previous knowledge for me.

Do they also pull out the foundation and then fill in the cellar hole?

Yes, yeah, they leave us basically a green site.

They'll they'll do they'll even this as I understand it from looking at the grant agreements, they'll do the landscaping associated with it.

So or at least plant seed.

I don't know if they'll do much more than that, but that's sufficient, I guess.

Thank you.

Yep.

Okay, I I get where you're going here.

I followed the whole blow up the threshold.

Do I get the fire truck?

Uh you you want to know specifically when the demolition is, don't you?

No, I when you when you schedule those, would you mind just shooting an email to the entire council?

I would appreciate it.

Demolition of houses bums.

No, no, no, I know where you you were embarrassed to ask why.

But I was actually well, I was actually worried about a little bit was if they were going to leave us cellar holes ahead of winter.

No, they don't.

So demolition contracts calls for uh they call it site at grade, which means everything's gone.

It's a it's a graded, well, it's not going to be green this time of year, so to Nicholas's point, I I they probably wouldn't hydro seed it now, but they'll probably come back in the spring and have to hide receive it.

Awesome.

But I saw where you're going.

It's okay.

We'll we'll get you noticed.

Not a problem.

Any other questions for the city manager?

Okay, council.

We'll move on to 8A under new business.

So this is the flood resiliency plan, strategic riverbed maintenance.

Counselor Gustin.

Thank you very much.

Uh so Roy, if you could come on up, I uh am extremely happy to welcome Roy Schiff from SLR Consulting, who we've seen many times before here in City Council.

Ryan and I had talked last summer at Middlesex, and he said, I you know, I'm thinking about putting a presentation together about dredging.

And I said, as soon as you've got it ready, um, we will be interested in it.

So as uh as you all know, strategic riverbed maintenance, exploring it, understanding it, um, and fully understanding the opportunities that we have for implementation here in Barry City, where it might help uh our flooding prospects and where it might make them worse uh is part of uh the flood resiliency plan because this has been something I know I've heard in a lot of public forums uh and in talking to a lot of residents about improving our flooding outlook here in Barrie City.

So I am uh thrilled to have an expert here to to tell us more about um what kinds of work we do on that, what kinds of work makes sense to do on that and to answer questions that folks have.

Oh, all yours, thank you.

Thank you very much.

Is this on?

Can you hear me okay?

Yep.

Okay, great.

Well, we we can hear you fine.

That's actually for the recording.

Okay, great.

Yeah.

So you're good.

All right.

Well, thanks.

Thanks for having me.

Great to be back again.

Um, we'll talk a little bit about dredging, riverbed maintenance.

And um like you, uh, counselor, we get this a lot um in all our flood mitigation work.

A lot of people are are tuned into dredging.

And I think the main reason is the state sort of changed this policy on dredging.

We used to, as a state, do a lot of riverbed sediment removal, reuse of gravel, and we don't do as much, but I will say there are spots around the state right now that are actively managing for sediment.

So um I'll give you a couple examples as I go through this.

And I think we said I have about 10 minutes, and then we'll entertain questions.

Okay.

Yeah, we'll go, we'll go.

All right.

So some key points, and I'll and I'll show some graphics to follow up.

Um flood storage, if you look at a river and cross section, flood storage is mostly out on the floodplain.

So if you took every foot of water when a flood comes through the river, some of that water is in the channel where you would dredge and make that deeper, but most of it is actually out on the floodplain.

So, especially the floods we've seen in the last few years, a lot of that storage is out on the floodplain.

Um the main reason the state stopped dredging widespread is that it creates unstable channels.

So if you have a natural river and you dig it down four or six feet, um, those banks get tall, and then when the next flood comes, they get really unstable.

Um a flood comes down a river, rivers move sediment, wood, water, and in our region ice.

When a big flood comes, as we've all seen recently, unfortunately, a lot of sediment comes with that water.

So if you dig a big hole in a river around a bridge, around a stormwater outfall, it typically fills in as that water fill um comes down the river, and then you don't you kind of lose some of that storage.

So if you have to dredge, you're doing it ongoing.

And I'll I'll talk about this a little further in some of the examples.

And then finally, um, local sediment and debris removal um at infrastructure are common parts of flood recovery and are costs, and you can get permits for the to do that.

And just like the Berlin Berlin Street Bridge, there's an outfall there.

It's a location that's prone to aggregation.

And if you don't get the sediment out of there, that storm drain is gonna back up and you're gonna have issues like so.

I know the city's been actively removing sediment um from there as well.

So next slide, please.

So let's dig into it a little deeper.

Here's a cross section.

My mentor Jim made this years ago, and it shows sort of a common dimension of a floodplain.

This could be um uh an active channel, excuse me, this could be Gunnersbrook or Stevens Branch or Winooski River, and then you see these floodplains next to it, and they tend to be a lot wider.

Um next slide.

Um it's a there's a lot of stuff on this slide.

You don't need to look at the the data and all, but the top statement I think is really important.

If you were to look at every river in the humid eastern US, what you would find is that six times the the channel width is where a hundred-year flood, the size of the flood of a 2023 or 24 flood that came through the region, you need six times that width to actively convey that water.

This is the conflict we all live with.

This is probably why I have my job is that you know, we spend our lives living in these floodplains, our houses, our recreation, um, our businesses, our community centers are all in these floodplains.

So again, if you go to the next slide.

So could I ask a question along those?

You can go to the next slide.

Yeah, but along those lines, so think of the Stevens branch.

You know it pretty well by now.

Sure, sorry.

Uh but think about so how that statement you just made, uh, four to six times the width.

How many times deeper would the Stevens branch river need to be to hold all that water?

Um it would have to be we can look on this slide.

It would have to be estimate for me.

Okay, six times the width, let's say bank full width is 20 to 30 feet.

So um you're talking about a hundred, hundred and twenty feet wide.

I mean, it would have to be like 10 to 15 feet deeper.

It's actually impossible to take the hundred-year flood and put it in a river channel that size.

Okay.

I I just thought that was because you know, we get that a lot.

Yeah.

Um, and I think we all understand that some maintenance is necessary because not every flooding event is a hundred-year event.

Exactly.

Uh so we all understand that some maintenance, um, but you know, there are always some folks in town who simply insist that if we would dredge the Stevens branch or deepen the Stevens branch, our problems would be solved.

We we could, you know, declare victory on an aircraft carrier and you know, and and that would be that.

And I but that simply isn't true, unfortunately.

It unfortunately is not true, just based on the sheer volume of water that come down the river in that size of a flood.

And can I if can I just extend that thought experiment a little bit?

If we were to dig an additional 15 feet depth to the Stevens branch, what would that do to the banks and to the upstream and downstream?

Yeah, they would be they would be incredibly unstable.

You would literally have to build walls up and down the river the whole way, the whole way through.

And the cost of that, it would be incredible.

And communities have tried this, and those walls don't last very long when they're under a big flood, like um Hoosick, Massachusetts has flood walls that they are now actively trying to remove because as soon as those walls stop, there's incredible chaos and instability in the river channel that are disrupting the neighborhoods adjacent to those walls.

So it's not really a sustainable way.

Um we have a lot of that kind of situation going on here in Barry City where the walls of the rivers are man-made.

So how does that differ from what we're talking about with our normal kind of river patterns and how dredging and so we're talking about a man-made factor with the natural things?

And I think that's the biggest thing that I hear from constituents is that you know, we're dealing with a river that we moved in the first place to a different spot.

Um that are channeling our river.

Um so it kind of puts things into a quite unique perspective.

Yeah, at least as far as we're, you know, we're concerned here in Barrie, where we don't see a lot of that in Montpelier or in a lot of other places.

Um is the question how does the management or how do you change the management of the river if you have these flood walls or if you or and and stuff in the floodplains?

Is that kind of a little bit of both?

I mean, yeah, how do we manage the walls that we currently have, and how does the system that we're talking about, um, where we've already kind of established our channels, yeah.

Um, you know, does this fit into the mold of the dredging and so there, I mean, that's a lot to un to question and unpack.

So I I think I think the one thing I'd say is that if if you seek to remove sediment to resolve issues, you can do a little bit around the edges, especially with the size of the flooding we are now seeing here.

This side, the flooding we've experienced is a little unique in terms of we're seeing it more frequently and larger floods than we ever saw in the recorded history of flooding in the state.

So when the old timers say we can dredge our way out of that now, well, unless you were here in 27, you really or 38, you probably haven't seen you know, three years of flooding like we all just live through.

Right.

Um, so that's one thing.

And then the the other thing is, and I and I can kind of go back to the comments, Mayor.

We were just saying um that you really couldn't dredge your way out of containing all that water.

And with the size of the flooding, now we're kind of living in this like maybe more immediate conflict zone where people are starting to make big changes, like moving houses like that was just not in sort of the the alternatives toolbox before, and now people are understanding that we all we all a lot of us live in harm in a hazardous place.

So unfortunately, there are there aren't easy answers to this.

Um there are infrastructure issues, there's local sediment management around some infrastructure, and then there's pulling back in certain areas, and and the trick is sort of to find that find that sweet spot where your communities can thrive and exist, but there's not a lot of hard repeat harm to people.

So it's a hard question, you know.

The more the more you manage, the more you pay, the more you maintain, and then at some point we can't afford to do that.

And you know, after living through like flood recoveries in Irene 23 and 24, the future looks like at some point we're gonna run out of money to have some of our highways in their in their location because they keep getting damaged, or some of our community streets are gonna have to change or bridges are having to change, and you're seeing communities make those big decisions.

Dredging is a small part of that, a part of that equation, in my view.

So I don't know if that's a helpful.

No, I think it's a lot of information.

I think the question I ask is has a lot of different facets to it, and it's so unique that there's no really one cookie cutter way.

No, we would have done that a long time ago to keep our people safe for sure.

Um so going back to the slide, I think this gets at um trying to visualize this flood storage piece.

The gray box is that bank full channel, and you can see the six to eight widths at the top, and this is a mock 100-year floodplain, and each one of those is a flood storage unit.

So this is this is sort of your natural channel, it's connected to its floodplain.

And this is actually where the state is going.

The state of Vermont right now has tools that are constantly evolving to seek out areas where there's space to store flood storage.

And you're hearing communities wherever there are opportunities, communities are now looking to open up and remove fill.

And if there are buyouts associated with that, then they move in and lower the floodplain down to store water so everything else around it has less flooding.

And here you can see you have that one great, that one light blue box, and then you have all that flood storage in those boxes.

And if you go to the next slide, here's the dredging scenario.

So we typically dredge, you know, um six feet is kind of you know, five, six feet we're dredging.

You know, when we go a lot, even at that level, you start to destabilize the lower half of the banks, then the banks tip out, and now we have big erosion issues, which erosion issues are probably some of the bigger issues in Vermont.

Um as we come out of our steeper terrain and come into the lowlands, that's where the rivers really get dynamic, a lot of sediment transport changes.

Um and here you can see, so now when you have the flood in the channel, instead of having one unit, if you dredge, you now have four units in the channel.

So it's really the small flood.

It's it's it's the every year, every couple year flood in normal times, unlike we've experienced where you might contract that flood water into the channel if they're dredged.

But again, if the 10, 25 year of these larger floods start to come, you're gonna have water spilling out of the channel.

The bigger issue, and I think it's really important for for places like Barrie City is that the water that flows in that velocity now goes faster.

And that's what creates more erosion issues.

And this is really one of the key issues the state really understood is they pulled all the money they're spending on flood waters, and it was erosion hazards.

So if we dig Stevens Branch way down below below those granite block walls, all of a sudden the water is ripping through Barrie City a lot faster, and those walls start to get destabilized.

Um that's really a big challenge for many communities.

Montpellier has got flood walls all through it.

Um, Waterway has some areas, and and so it's a challenge to sort of if you're going to maintain around a stormwater outfall or bridge.

Can you maintain enough so you're not inducing scour at a bridge, and now we have a big transportation issue, and then you're back in maintaining a structure all the time.

Um, so the flood velocities are a lot higher.

Um, ultimately, um again, those areas tend to fill in, especially when you have a big flood, which moves a lot of sediment and wood.

Next slide.

Brendan Rose has our hand up.

Um, Byrne, did you have a question?

Yes, this time I do.

Thank you.

So uh I I'm stepping back and going uphill from the river to um things uh like we have some wetlands.

And how much do they play a part in preventing the down uh the downhill and the stream flooding?

If uh is I mean, when you're going up to uh the inner state in South Barrie, you see there's big wetlands there.

There's wetlands up above where we live.

And I'm wondering how much of a uh how important are they into preventing uh flooding in the lower realms?

It's a great question.

Um uh wetlands are really essential parts of watershed storage that reduce downstream peak flows.

Um there are these equations that approximate how much flow comes out of a watershed in the state of Vermont, and one of the variables that they found correlates with the amount of outflow is the amount of storage in that basin and wetlands are a piece of that storage component, as well as big connected floodplains.

So wetlands are important, protecting those wetlands, um, but also the cut the land cover.

Um, anything that happens in a watershed around Barrytown, Washington Orange, that all collects water and it eventually comes downhill and gets into a river channel.

So if you go up and clear-cut an incredible forest area that soaks up water, that leads to a higher outflow.

Um, if if you reverse and create wetlands and have an intact forested watershed that stores water and slows the amount of water downstream, and that's common knowledge, it's well known.

Um, and you can see that in modeling as well.

It's a good question.

Um, next slide.

Um I just clipped a the FEMA flood insurance rate map, something we all use to evaluate flood insurance.

Um this would the these are made with hydraulic models of rivers.

Um, this is a very old model that we are actually in the process of updating and with some current data.

And it's a good visual when you look at this, you can kind of see where the channel is, the black line that's the Stevens branch channel winding across the map from bottom right to upper left.

And then if you see all the cross-hatching, that's the mapped floodplain here.

You can see the the six to eight times the width in the floodplain.

This is common in pretty much every floodplain map around the state of Vermont.

In fact, in the region in the northeast.

All our rivers essentially function the same.

They have that wider floodplain.

Um, so I just wanted to show this.

Um, one of the big outputs of a hydraulic model is the floodplain, and then we do things like change bridge sizes, create floodplains, remove floodplains, and you can see how that floodplain and the depth of flooding and the velocity of flooding change.

And that that's an ongoing study we're working on.

We're about wrapping up the data collection.

Could talk about that a little later if you're interested.

Next slide.

Can I ask a good question?

So, in the when you're looking at the Gunner's Brook in that, and then the part where it starts to narrow in the like upper left corner, is that because of um like I like the that part of Gunnersbrook, there's not as wide of a floodplain because it's steeper and it's just it's just heat like really moving so fast it doesn't have a change.

Exactly.

Um so the floodplains, the width of the floodplains tend to relate to the slope of the river, the steepness, as well as where you are in the watershed.

Um when we if you drive down 89, you see the Winooski, it's got really broad floodplains, often on both sides of the highway.

And then clearly Gunnersbrook has way narrower floodplains, but there's way more gunners brooks out there than there are Winooski rivers.

In fact, there's three-quarters of the streams are really small streams.

So there's a really interesting study that says, yeah, you have a lot of flood storage in those big floodplains down in the river valley, but if you added all of them up in the round the mountainous area in the hill areas of Vermont, they actually start to substantially add to floodplain storage.

Um so some of those little filling projects where we've leveled a land, put a home, or have a business or have a road crossing, those collectively take away a lot of that storage, even in the upper watershed.

So that's part of the the functioning floodplains initiative where the state's looking for storage.

It's not only in the big bottom valley lands, like Stevens branch to me is a is a bottom valley river, gets a lot flatter.

But as soon as you get, you know, just outside the city limits, you're up on steeper rivers that are all feeding into the Stevens, as you know.

So it's a combination.

You kind of need both because there's so many more small steep rivers with narrower floodplains coming into the channels.

Next slide.

Okay, so let's talk about where you would dredge undersized bridges, particularly near breaks and valley slopes.

So as rivers are moving sediment, the river sloping down, where the river flattens out, those are natural accumulation areas.

And there's a lot of them.

There are there are there are these are all every different scale in Vermont.

So there's a lot of local ones actually on the edges of the city limits, as you have the hill terrain flattens out, and then we see a lot of sediment buildup or aggregation at rivers.

Um I'm going to show you one of an example where we've been working with the town of Bennington to assess the sediment deposit areas and come up with a plan on how to manage it as well as do some other projects.

Um then there are these things called alluvial fans, they're basically those breaks and slopes, and a lot of us live right around those, and businesses are located in those areas.

Um, and then finally, bridges, culverts, dams, levees, when they become out of design compliance, um, and that means they can't pass the flood they were designed to pass.

That's the time you dredge.

So when you have stormwater outfalls that need to discharge water, else you get flooding in your city.

If those get covered, you're gonna get a permit to clean those out, as you all have.

Next slide.

Just a uh a thought.

So in nature, if we were just in a field somewhere and sediment was building up and we were not interfering by dredging or planning on doing anything else.

What would eventually happen?

Would it build up sediment enough to change the course of the river?

Yeah, so rivers aren't static in the landscape.

And this is fundamentally the concept we all, the issue we all live with is that um when early peoples came to these parts, they had non-permanent trails and pathways and hunting grounds, and then we came looking for mechanical power, and then all of our towns and cities landed in these spots.

So we can't allow the Stevens branch to move in most locations.

Um ideally, there's there's what's called the river corridor.

This is about six times the bankful width.

It's very similar to the to the floodplain of a hundred-year flood.

And protecting that river corridor is essential, really because the river can move back and forth and establish the soap slope it needs to either store or transport sediment naturally.

So we're in the way of that river quarter.

And this is another big strategy by the state.

Wherever there is space and willing parties, the state will often um implement a river quarter easement.

They pay a landowner, and this says that the river has can have the space to like naturally function and move its sediment and be less um be less erosive, essentially.

So the river river corridor protection is another part of it.

So we may be looking at bridges in Barrie City and opening up some pocket floodplains, but also up in Barrie Town and out on the hills, like protecting these river corridors so the river has space to move deposit sediment up there and then jump and move around and kind of have that space is really an important part of part of the conversation.

Next slide.

So here's an alluvial fan.

This is probably our most infamous alluvial fan.

That's Route 100 in Plymouth.

It's called Money Brook.

It's a teeny channel.

Um and there's some incredible historic photos that the landowners who used to all live live in this really dangerous spot out of like old snow plows plowing off Route 100 because there's there's literally feet of sediment um stacked up.

And so there's a lot of work going on.

There's a small bridge there that fills up with sediment whenever a big flood comes through.

Um, next slide.

That's probably the most extreme case in the state, but that happens on a very small scale.

This is the alluvial fan that the town of Bennington sits on, and they were they had some extreme damage in Irene.

And the reason I bring this up is they've done a lot of different flood mitigation alternatives that have been looked at around central Vermont.

Um they've reconnected floodplains, they are actively managing their rivers in certain locations.

And I wanted to explain how that happens and what permitting goes through goes through that process goes through.

But the fundamental issue is what Councillor Gussen just said, that the blue line there shows where the natural river width was.

Like this river, this river is actually domed, so the river channel wants to migrate around through thick areas of sediment.

And what's happened over the history of Bennington is that these neighborhoods have all built up on that alluvial fan.

Um, and then over the years, that river got squeezed down to the yellow lines, and then we just did a project with a molt, not just about the last 10 years to widen that river out to the black line, several hundred feet of reconnecting the floodplains after there were some damages, some buyouts, mostly of an industrial property, and that that gave them more space to reduce um the sediment.

Having to manage the sediment at one of their one of their costly bridges was the first bridge I showed.

So next slide, I'll walk through that.

So we did some hydraulic modeling.

We built a sediment transport model, and I just wanted to show this because I found this really instructive.

What you're looking at is a graph of the change of the elevation of the river when a flood comes through a riverbed.

So let's start on the left one.

The zero is kind of where the riverbed started.

Plus four means that four feet of sediment accumulated at the area, and then minus four would mean that four feet of sediment removed.

And what you see is when we passed a large flood through the roaring branch in Bennington, a four-foot area clogged up the Park Street Bridge.

The first thing people said was, we're going to clean the bridge out, we're going to dredge it.

And we ended up doing that.

Um in the upper right corner, this isn't this is what happens in the riverbed when you remove that four feet of sediment and put another flood through there.

The four feet of sediment come back in the same location.

And then what we did was we looked at an alternative where we reconnected about 15 acres of flood playing through this buyout process.

It's the bottom right, put the flood back in there.

And now what you see is that the bumps on the river channel are kind of spread out, um, and that's over a mile of river.

They don't all land in one spot.

And this is fundamentally a different approach.

We don't we have our bridges that are either fit or don't fit, and then we have some encroachments, and as we pull back, the sediment can kind of spread out on that floodplain, and and then the river can safely pass the flood under the bridges.

Um, right now, a lot of us are caught in the cycle where the bridges are small and this there aren't floodplains, and the sediment can't get out of the river, so it does land at the bridges, and then we have to go in.

We have debris build up, and we have to kind of clean those out.

And that's kind of the cycle a lot of communities are stuck in.

When opportunities come up to reconnect that floodplain, you can kind of get out of that cycle, and the sediment is out on the floodplain, and your rivers have more capacity.

Um I just wanted to share that.

And if you go to the next slide, um so this is a uh a view looking from the bridge upstream, and you can see on the left, there was historic fill.

There was an old trolley line to move large um quarried stone up and down this this area at the turn of the century.

The trolley line was no longer used, the tracks had been out for ages.

So we did a project where we pulled about 10, 10 to 14 acres of floodplain, all that fill out and then reconnected the floodplain you see where it says restored floodplain.

And that's part of the story is um this bridge was clogging at a really high frequency rate, like every other year they're in there having to dig it out because the bridge literally would fill up.

And now we've knocked the the need for maintenance and the cost of managing this bridge way back.

So you know, every 10-20 years when there's a big flood, they have to go in there and clean out the bridge, but they're not cleaning it out, you know, every year.

If you go to the next slide.

So what we did was we did some survey, we had our hydraulic model, like we're working on for you all, and we set up sediment thresholds.

And so if you go to the next slide, this is a little complicated, but it what it shows this is as if there's a cross-section cut right in front of the bridge.

The top black line is the metal beam at the bottom of the bridge, and the the angled black line are the sediment levels.

And as they go up and to the right, you can see they eventually hit this red zone where it says fail.

And that means that the design flood for this bridge, the 50-year flood, can no longer fit through the bridge, excuse me, the bridge, with um the two feet of freeboard required by design.

That's the VTran standard for this bridge, a 50-year flood with two feet of space, a two feet of spaces.

So when trees come down in the 50-year flood, they can pass under the bridge and not clog up.

This was really common in Barrie City.

All those bridges filled way up, the trees had no chance, and then the river's spilling out and going through the neighborhoods.

So then they know they monitor the bridge when it gets into the red zone.

They the state knows, Army Corps knows that they can apply for those permits, and they've done it, and and then now they know that the reason they're doing it is because the bridge is now out of design compliance, and that's when you can get a permit, and the permits are not hard to get once you have this information in place from the hydraulic modeling.

So I just wanted to show that as one example where there's a town actively dredging in a spot where excessive sediment transport, there's really no way to get around it.

They've restored floodplains, they've done all they're working on all these projects, but there is still some maintenance taking place.

Um, next slide.

I think that was it.

Um, leave it for questions, comment.

I have a question.

Yeah.

Okay, so Berlin Bridge has been discussed.

Um back in the 50s.

That river was three times the size it is now.

So that's one reason why it's clogging up.

Number two, if you go down here, the storm sewage is below the sediment.

Yeah, so basically it hasn't been cleaned out when it should have been.

Yeah.

Um, we dug up some historical photos of that area.

Um, there were some granite sheds in the area still, but they were way further back, and the river was way wider, and now there's buildings all along the river, and the river's kind of been narrowed and narrowed down.

So it's a it's a difficult issue.

Um, I believe there was some sediment management this year um to in fact free that um we were we've been talking with DPW about what's going on in the rivers.

Yeah, if I if I might mayor, we I was just looking up our permit.

We were we got a stream alteration permit um for removal of up to 200 cubic yards of gravel right at that site.

So I guess my point is that dredging does work or can work uncertain, you know.

And I what administration stopped dredging?

Do you remember?

Who was in charge?

Um I think it might have been I I don't know for sure, but I know um in the Douglas administration, they were I think that might have been when one of the one of the early administrations there um when that change started to happen.

Nothing based on wildlife, like frogs or um I think there's a few reasons.

I think there's a few reasons.

Pretty much a lot of the work we do are governed by three things like risk in public safety is probably at the top of the list, water quality downstream in rivers and Lake Champlain and other river systems, and then fisheries in in stream habitat.

So a lot of the decision making I've seen at the state level has kind of been a function of all three of those collectively, with in my view, a le a little bit more of a lean towards the safety and the instability of the river systems that can affect other properties.

I bring all this up because Berlin Bridge is ward three, which is the war dime and last week.

They've been contemplating taking that bridge out.

Now we just put a new police station, fire station down there.

It was 16 minutes to hell traffic up.

So if the police need to get up there, I mean, yeah, I think dredging would be a better alternative.

Yep.

I mean the dredging, you know, I think the charging you've done in that area again gets you a very a little bit of flood storage, but really it's daylighting the the stormwater discharge that sits at that bridge.

I think fundamentally that that's the main reason you're not gonna change the the flood pattern by doing a local dredging project like that.

Um there's just there's not a lot of space space like between those walls to go down enough to really like contract that floodplain.

At least go below the storage sewer system.

Yeah, but now it's below the I mean it's clogged, basically.

Okay, I think it I think it's free now.

Um so there's some storage space that looks down after the Willie Street Bridge.

Uh and I know that earlier, I think maybe earlier in the year we had kind of talked about the potential about what it might look like to kind of open some of that or reconnect it.

Um is there any thought that you might have regarding that?

And is this the the Air's auto site right on the upstream river right side?

Looks like that's the same.

That's the FEMA stuff that we're talking about.

Past the bridge, uh, if you continue to go down, uh there's a lot of wooded area um next, I don't want to say next to the belt line, but it sits the river and sits in between the belt line.

Okay, and there's just a lot of open looks like would be flood storage space.

Uh I know that we had potentially talked about how we could lower that uh to reconnect the floodplain there, a little more storage here.

So, what I guess what I'm really asking is how much of an impact would that have upstream in Barrie City for things like the Willie Street Bridge where we're talking about flooding, where we're talking about the Berlin Street Bridge as well.

You know, that extra flood storage down there, would that alleviate some of the catastrophe?

Yeah, I guess the the answer is I don't know right now.

However, this is the heart of the project.

We're working on building the model where we can test almost anything.

We could take every bridge out and see if a big flood can come through the city, and then not saying we're going to, but I'm saying we can just test it, or we can magically make every bridge 10 feet wider and see what happens, or we could reconnect the floodplain.

So these are the kind of things we'll we'll be evaluating and to get to give you answers.

I just don't have those quite yet.

It's okay.

And that's what excites me most about your work.

Yeah, I mean, I suspect hope you like it here.

I suspect you'd be coming by.

Well, because you know it's important before we look at projects, you know, people are screaming, you know, just dredge.

Okay, so how much should it cost us?

We don't own a long reach excavator.

What did that cost us to rent per hour?

I don't remember, but it's not cheap.

It's 250 bucks, I think, an hour.

I mean, it's not inexpensive.

So you look at for a city like Barrie, we we don't have a blank check, and no one's going to write us a blank check.

So we're using our money, taxpayer money, mostly there are some mitigation grant opportunities, but we're using our money.

And so when you come in, I really pay attention because what's important is if I told Nicholas he had to come up with a million dollars in flood mitigation money, he'd he'd turn green.

Uh, because we I and I know we don't have that kind of money, so we have to be really careful about how we spend it.

So that's why I'm really excited for you to be able to say, okay, if we take this bridge out, um, what happens?

You know, run some water through what happens.

Okay, well, what if we do this instead?

What if we acquire these two properties and open this floodplain up and try to direct the water and the sediment, what happens then?

And we can pick the most cost-effective projects.

So, you know, every time you come in, I learn something.

So thank you.

No, and what I'm learning is that I'm learning that I have to tell people what they don't want to hear.

In a hundred-year flood, all bets are off.

There is no saving Barrie City.

We're in a valley.

Well, exactly.

But but 2011 was not a hundred-year flood.

Uh, I don't believe 2015 was a hundred-year flood.

So there are gonna be other flooding events that where we can say, and when I say save our city, our city's not gonna wash down.

You saw the result in 2023.

That's what it's going to look like.

And that unfortunately is our reality.

But in 2011, 2015, probably even 2024, we and certainly during Irene, we flooded to a much lesser degree.

So if we can increase our storage capacity, help water run through the city, okay.

If a 23 comes around, sorry, all bets are off, it's going to be some pretty severe damage.

But if an 11, 15, 24 come around, we can make things significantly better.

Is that an accurate statement?

That is.

Yeah, and that is the beauty of like having the model is you can just test all these scenarios, different size floods and really see.

And um, you know, one thing I learned in the flood from working and helping people is that every inch, every every inch of flood water is more damages.

That's why the cost of of um compensation for for damages from FEMA is associated with the depth of the flooding.

So like even if you don't completely eliminate the flooding, if you make a big change at a bridge and restore a couple floodplains, and you can contract that floodplain and pull it down, um, it makes a big it makes a big difference.

So going back, I didn't really answer um your question.

Like there are things that affect flooding on the downstream side of an area you're concerned about and on the upstream side.

And you have to make sure water can kind of flow f freely into through and out with some storage to sort of like deal with the rising flood and the leaving flood.

And sometimes on the leaving leaving flood, there's like debris and sediment everywhere, which we know.

Sometimes there's ice depending when that flood comes.

So those are all the kind of things we can test with the modeling and and sort of try to identify alternatives.

I mean, the great thing is you all have an incredible list from that river project of 50 some odd projects, and when we first started looking at them, they all were making a really good improvement.

So now we're gonna really dig deep and to try to come up with a suite of alternatives that can really change the flood patterns through the city.

So thank you.

Something to be optimistic.

Um one last thing.

Um there may be a member of the council who asks you what the effect would be if we blew something up.

So I just want you to be prepared.

Okay.

I I just wanted you to be prepared for that, you know, the next time you come in.

You're welcome.

That's not my next question.

I'm still bummed they removed the trestle under night, is where this comes from.

Um this is a little bit of a thought experience, and I know you and I have been, and uh the manager uh have been to many many of these regional flood conversations and regional forums.

I'm having lunch with people from Montpelier and Waterbury on Monday to continue these conversations.

But one of the things I think I'm taking away tonight is something I've been thinking about a lot, is that I I think we're doing a really good job here in Barrie City.

We're identifying places where we can make improvements, we are taking big leaps forward, we're really working on our understanding.

We we are a relatively small river valley municipality, and that a lot of our uh flood risk is dependent on our neighboring municipalities.

Um and you know, we've been talking about this a lot that the river belongs to a region and not just to one municipality.

Um I guess I'm wondering if if you've been in any rooms where there's like really big thought experiments going on where you looked at the sweep of the Winooski River and all its tributaries, and you said there, there is land proactively identifying that if we could turn that 20 acres, irrespective of any individual municipality, into a large floodplain, we can make the argument it will benefit these five municipalities down the road, and sort of trying to put together that regional, I don't know, somewhere between pressure and incentive for municipalities to to sort of take risk take it's not even taking responsibility for their own thing because another municipality doesn't necessarily owe us not to flood.

Unless unless you're overbuilding your municipality and using up floodplain that does affect another municipality, then there is a level, in my opinion, there is a level of culpability there.

Yeah.

Now if it's just more municipal sitting there and someone else can use it, well, my opinion would probably more be more along the lines of that municipality should allow us to buy it, and it it unfortunately would be exempt because it would go straight to the purpose of a municipality, which number one in my mind is public safety.

So there could be a model for a municipality purchasing land outside its own borders to ensure its own flood safety.

Yeah, I think that's well, I mean, what incentive?

Let's think about the world we live in, and it doesn't mean people are mean, but let's just let's let's use Berlin as an example.

What motivation is there within the taxpayers of Berlin to stop flooding in Barrie City or mitigate flooding in Barrie City, other than hey, I want to be a good human being.

And everyone wants to be a good human being until they have to pull their wallet out.

And then it's like eh, maybe not.

No, and it doesn't mean they're bad.

That's that's how all we all behave.

So yeah, I do think a municipality should be able to purchase land in another municipality, not pay taxes on it if they through science can show that this will reduce damage, which look, we send the bill on some level to the state of Vermont.

We certainly send it to the federal government, and we pick it up locally.

So if we can show an overall public benefit, yeah, I do I do believe that.

This also feels like an argument for county government to me.

Well, I believe in county form of government too, but that's a whole that's a whole different deal in Vermont.

Right.

Uh yes.

But no, this is great.

I mean, I like I said, I uh I always learn someone something when you come in.

So, you know, so thank you.

Anything else, counsel?

Appreciate you.

Huge thank you.

Thank you again for good work for working with us.

And uh we'll look forward to the next time.

Chief, are you ready?

Uh thank you for your patience, Chief.

Uh we'll be counseling will be moving on to 8B and uh getting an update on the implementation of the public conduct or ordinance.

Mine is not as uh travagant as the uh flooding that was pretty impressive.

Uh but I'd say the work is just as or more important.

So thank you and thank you to thank you to all of the officers who serve with you.

Appreciate that.

Um so I pulled some stats out of our system um for the city owned properties that we've had responses to and drilled down to what specifically related to what was what would fall into the ordinance.

Um for instance, we had we had 28 responses to City Hall Park, but only 17 of those were ordinance related.

That's fire.

Yeah, I know.

I do this I do the same thing.

That's fire.

I'm good.

Uh can you repeat that again?

I'm sorry.

So 28 to we we had 28 responses to City Hall Park since the ordinance went into effect on July 17th.

However, only 17 of those were ordinance related uh under the the public conduct ordinance.

Out of those directly at City Hall Park, um 12 incidents resulted in verbal warnings.

If you remember in the uh ordinance, there was a specific um language that said we we have to give a verbal warning first.

Um of those uh 17 five incidents resulted in the issuance of a one-day trespass notice being provided.

We've had um up at the auditorium and the BOR, we've had 17 responses up there, and out of those, 14 um would have fallen under the ordinance um stipulations.

Thirteen of those resulted in verbal warnings being provided.

One incident um and the only incident in all of the city that resulted in a 180-day trespass notice being issued.

This individual was um exhibiting violent behavior and um smashing items on the ground and causing an unsafe um place, if you would, uh, around his vehicle.

Um so he got a 180-day trespass notice.

We've had two um at Dente Park, and three at Courier, three at the Rotary and Playground 2000, and then one at Matheson.

And all of those resulted in uh verbal warnings being issued.

So out of the ordinance, there's only been um five one-day trespass notices given and one 180-day trespass notices being given.

This is in uh we've worked in concert with other efforts that we've been uh looking at, such as you you've heard and seen about the parking changes we did over by City Hall Park.

Um we've had enhanced the facilities folks have been doing an enhanced refuse pickup.

We've had tree trimming done over there for better visibility, increased foot and directed patrols in the area.

And since all of that, the reports of the quality of life issues have decreased greatly, um, specifically in City Hall Park.

We are um cognizant of the fact that this could have like pushed some of the stuff out to other areas, for instance, like Rotary Park, we did see an uptick in uh folks hanging around down there.

It's it's hard to discern um if they're just parked there, or obviously if they're partaking in activity.

Like I said, we did have three of those uh calls down there that resulted in activity related to the ordinance.

Um that's this question.

How many are repeat offenders out of all these none so far?

Really?

Right.

The the verbal warnings, um honestly, I was actually surprised.

Um the the verbal warnings, they you know, the officers have been explaining the ordinance and indicating that they could be trespassed.

Um so there's not anyone that I found that was uh repeat offenders.

So um I guess my question is simply having enacted the ordinance, uh was in favor of the ordinance, as were you.

Um worth it or not worth it in your opinion, in terms of improving the quality of life in our city and providing your officers with the tools they need to try to dehur deter or change behavior.

I think it was worth it.

Um again, it it came in towards the tail end of the season, right?

And we are entering uh a cooler weather stage.

Um I'd be interested to see, you know, as hot weather comes back next year, like in May, June, how how things play out, but I I think it was worth it.

Um I think it it gives a tool for accountability to um hold those individuals accountable accountable because if they do violate the trespass notice, then they could be introduced into the criminal justice system.

Um fortunately we didn't we didn't have any of that this year.

Good.

Council, questions?

Yes.

Um thank you for coming back with numbers.

I know I that was one of the things I had asked for um when we discussed this first time.

Uh so I these feel like generally positive um results that you are seeing sort of a decrease in some of the challenges that we had seen.

I would be um really interested in in another six months in in sort of numbers, especially as you say we start to change seasons.

Um I'd be really interested in in numbers.

You mentioned a decrease in city hall um quality of life sort of citations and complaints.

I'd be interested to see what that looks like going forward, and of course we're looking at sort of uh years long bending the curve um going on here.

And I think I would also be remiss in uh and saying that I'm deeply appreciative of the work the officers are doing, and I do think this is a useful tool for us.

Um, but I feel like in the last couple of months we've also hit a pretty good stride in coordinating um services to folks with the situation table of the suit and I was gonna mention that as well with the situation table in there.

That's that's designed to um kind of identify something before it happens and results in these types of behaviors.

Do you see the situation table working in sort of concert with this uh this ordinance?

Yeah, to to an extent.

Um you know, it's the situation table is bringing the wraparound supports uh and a lot of it.

Um I know Tess was in here, I don't know if she hit on the elevated risk factors.

Usually mental health is always identified as one of those risk factors.

I had a discussion with uh Gary Gordon from Washington County Mental Health today about that.

Um and I asked him, I said, you know, every time we go to the situation table, it seems like you're Johnny on the spot.

You're always the one that has to deal with this, which is not necessarily a bad thing because you know the the tables identified those risk factors and somebody has to deal with them.

Um and it's with the mental health component, they're the ones that that have to deal with that.

Um so it it it will work in concert with that.

Um to what extent, I'm not sure.

Yeah.

Do you is it prevalent that the officers feel that now they're making people accountable?

I mean, before being an officer out there and not be able to do anything, even though I mean there is a lot of it's well balanced as far as what you can do, but I would I'm just curious if you can really see the officers feel like, hey, I'm glad now that we have a little more you know ability to make them accountable because morale is a big thing.

We're we're we're also working with the the state's attorney's office.

Um we had we had a meeting recently about about certain things um because I opened my mouth in public.

Um so it's it's it's multifaceted, it's not just this specific ordinance, but it um you know, with Governor Scott coming forward with his public safety plans um in and continuing down that path, I think it'll it'll keep increasing if that answers the question.

Yes.

So would you say that based on your just your last couple of words that we're making progress in the fight of making sure that people can have a good quality of life here in Barrie City?

I think so.

Um there's there's still work to be done.

Certainly.

Um, you know, there's always room for improvement.

Um we're making an effort.

We're we're we're we're making an effort, we're we're ringing the bells and and folks are listening.

Thanks, sir.

Connie, did you have a question?

Yes, I just wanted to say that uh I saw uh officer walking the beat the other night, and that was good.

I'd like to see it more because there are still lots of bicycles on the sidewalk.

Okay, thank you.

Bye.

I know how you can fix it.

It's uh no, I mean, first of all, Chief, uh I think we all appreciated um the letter that the op-ed that you wrote regarding accountability.

Uh it was something that we all took to heart.

Um I really pay attention to what is going on in Chitting County, what is going on uh with the special prosecutor and the special court to try to streamline all of that.

And uh I can tell the tell the council I've already put in a bid with the governor that we're next.

That once once they work the bugs out in Chittenden County, we'd love to get that prosecutor back here to Barry uh where he's from.

And listen, I'm proud of the work that he's doing up in Chippenden County.

Um, but yeah, you talked about ringing a bell, that really rang my bell in terms of accountability on all sides, and it's something that we don't see enough of right now.

And regarding that, I I haven't seen any statistics from and I know we just recently started up there, but I'd be interested to see like what the what cases have have gone through there, and I I haven't been able to find things.

They just barely, I think uh it no more than 10 days ago, uh, even uh announced the presiding judge.

So I think they just started.

They literally just started moving cases through, and I don't know that they've even started moving cases through, other than get setting up the docket, as you know, you know, even when they're trying to streamline them, you've got to give defense attorneys notice in terms of you know when they're to appear.

So I think when you talk to people about it, it's it's gonna take everyone getting used to.

We're we're so used to this process where we kind of turtle along.

It's gonna get it's gonna take everyone a little bit of time to get used to the jackrabbit.

Absolutely.

Yes.

I have two questions.

One is um regarding the I still see people who are you know on social media complaining about you know, people breaking into cars, people coming on their porch.

Is there more of that or less of that, or is it about the same?

Because I'm wondering, like if we're pushing more people out into neighborhoods, and it's sort of if you follow the social media Facebook group, I try not to, but I I have to only because I want to keep my thumb on the pulse.

Yeah, um it it it's it seems like it's more prevalent.

Yeah, um, but when you look at the calls, I mean, somebody went on there, for instance, somebody went on there, I I think it was this morning and said I was walking my dog and somebody came out from behind a dumpster and chased me.

And so I instantly went through all our records and I'm like, I can't find anything.

So I don't know if it was even Barry Town or Barrie City or where it was.

Um so it has that pylon effect, and and then people just get all yeah, you know, riled up about it.

So I I try to drill down and say, Oh, I uh I'm gonna look into this, and it's hard to tell.

Yeah, yeah.

The other the other question I had was um I was I share this story because um I'm thinking about the mental health issue, but I wonder if part of the issue that we're having is I think about the people who and I don't know if the people that you're you know, trespassing are unhoused, if they have homes, if they're crashing on someone's couch.

I I don't know what their situations are.

Maybe you do, maybe you don't.

But um, I think about someone who might be um trying to survive without a home and how that would just impact their mental health, and I'm hoping that if we can get them to a place where they'd have a safe place to keep their stuff and fall asleep, that that might impact their mental health.

And I don't know how those things I you know, I'd love to have a conversation with whoever it is that sits at your situation table.

I would imagine that you know, facing some of those issues can have uh uh a play on someone's mental health.

Yeah.

Um I just imagine what it would be like if I was trying to like take care of myself and protect myself all day long, you know, every day.

It would just yeah, I could see how that would really impact your your life.

So thank you.

I think there's a whole different level of activity, and I'll give you an example.

So I get a call from someone who has a property next to my business that they had some tires ripped off the other night because I look at my cameras.

So I went in there and looked at my cameras.

It was Saturday night, 12:30, and I see four guys walk across my parking lot, all dressed in dark clothes and with masks.

We had a car that we had just reconned a Volvo.

And they came up to it and they split two and two.

They knew what they were doing.

They couldn't get into it.

So then they went over to that property and took those tires.

And they didn't leave in a car.

They walked right back across my parking lot.

So I think the people that this ordinance is for are not these hardened criminals at night.

I mean, they were prepared.

They know what they were doing, you know, and that's a whole different level that hopefully we're gonna have to discuss at some point.

Anything else?

Yes.

I would just add to um sort of the brief conversation there about sort of reports on social media and how representative they are of what you're seeing as statistical trends and so on.

And I guess I'd encourage folks who are reporting things on social media to also report them to our police department so that they can do the work they're very good at and correlate trends and investigate challenges and problems because a report on so a post on Facebook is not an actual police report of a of a problem, and that we can't account for them and solve them unless we get an actual report of a problem.

So just wanted to I don't even report words in your mouth, but that felt like a useful.

Uh anything else, council?

Chief, thank you.

Uh once again, like you said, um, we have more work to do, we know that.

But uh, you're willing to do uh the hard work.

The officers under your command are certainly willing to do the hard work and let them know uh we appreciate them every day.

All right.

Are we keeping you?

Stick around for the other.

If if you don't if you don't want to entertain the value if you want, but maybe just for what I don't think it'll be too long.

Okay, you get to start.

Okay, thank you.

Have a good evening.

Uh council, uh, we're going to move to HC on the agenda.

This is the to discuss the creation of a uh nuisance property or ordinance.

I believe this is yours.

Yes, Nicholas.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um so, council, in your packet, I included the ordinance that was adopted this December in St.

Albans.

Uh it's a public nuisance properties ordinance.

Um, we had looked at this um when we did the whole public conduct ordinance here in Barrie this summer.

Uh, as you might recall, our first model that we looked at was Brattleboro and Brattleboro had done sort of a a really comprehensive ordinance of both public conduct plus nuisance properties.

Um I think we we scaled back to focus really on the public conduct in in July, and we said we've come back to you with a nuisance property proposal later in the year.

Um we've done some research into this.

Um Chief had an opportunity to talk to his counterparts in uh St.

Albans.

Um, and we looked at um at what they did, and we we really liked it.

Um and I know that this is um I've heard from many of you about um these types of challenging properties across the city.

Um and so what today's agenda item is intended to be is to show you show you what we saw that we liked.

Um we can walk through it if you'd like.

Uh it's a pretty it's a pretty simple ordinance, really.

Um and um what I really was hoping to get is is your initial feedback so that I come back I can come back to you with a first reading that is reflective of you know your thoughts uh and so we can get closer on a first reading to a finished product uh after getting your feedback.

So um happy mayor, if you think it's helpful.

I can just I mean it's like I said, it's really simple.

I can walk through it, which is uh I think we all you provided it in the packet.

I'm sure the council had an opportunity to read it.

Uh I guess you know, my question for Nicholas for the chief is where does tenant accountability come into this?

Um you know, we can so as I read the ordinance, it says, okay, so if uh a rental unit that has received three or more uh criminal citations within um this is uh within the ordinance.

Um if someone owns a rental property, someone who lives on that property receives three criminal citations, that property is deemed to be a public nuisance property.

So you got a case where a landlord wants that tenant out of there, the tenant doesn't want to leave.

This is Vermont.

If a tenant doesn't want to leave and they've got enough legal aid help, see in a year.

So how does that I just want to make sure that if we're saying to a landlord who wants a drug dealer on their property who isn't paying rent, um how do we go about saying to that drug dealer, we want your drug dealing ass in council chambers, and we want to talk to you.

Right.

Um so obviously they're depending on what that citation would be for, there is accountability, um, introducing them into the criminal justice system on that.

The the gist of the ordinance is for those uh landlords that aren't doing their part and not getting the process started to evict those individuals or hold those individuals accountable.

Um and that's what the gist of the ordinance is.

There and I do understand there would be some some of those challenges with when you have an eviction process, it it can take some time.

And how does that affect any determination or hearing if the landlord doesn't want them there anymore if they unfortunately screened that tenant or maybe didn't screen that tenant uh properly and just didn't understand that they were dealing with or renting to a drug dealer.

I I would hope going towards the screening process, I would hope that um if this is an enact enacted that um landlords would be doing more of a due diligence to screen their tenants and not just have random folks um coming in there and they would uphold their their part of the bargain.

We see a lot of individuals um that aren't on the leases that are that are in these apartments um causing some havoc, and the landlords aren't doing their diligence to say, hey, you know, you can't have these individuals here, they gotta leave or or whatnot.

So hopefully um that that would help with that.

Um but again, I do recognize some of those challenges with the eviction process.

Yeah, and and and that's a tough one because um listen, tenants have rights, landlords have rights.

Um, thankfully, in 35 years of someone who has rented residential and commercial property, we've had one eviction in 35 years.

Uh and it had nothing to do with drugs, it was just someone who decided they didn't want to pay rent anymore.

Um but I but tenants have certain rights.

And if a tenant wants to have guests in their home, just like you and I can have guests in our home, um, that's a right that they enjoy, and it's a right they should enjoy.

So, like I said, uh I mean, for nothing more than entertainment value, I'd love to see in this ordinance a council's ability to say to the tenant, you come in here with the landlord because we want to have a conversation with you about what you're doing to your neighbors and about what you're doing to the neighborhood.

So I I just want to make sure we talked about accountability earlier in the meeting.

I want to make sure there's equal accountability.

Now we can't, we're not a court of law.

We cannot subpoena a tenant to be here.

Like I said, it would probably be for entertainment value only because we don't have any real authority as a Barrie City Council.

But I want to make sure that that the landlords here understand that we are going to be sympathetic to folks who are trying to do the right thing but are unable to evict a problem tenant.

Yeah, sounds yeah, that and I think that's uh a very valid point.

Um and I think the the way St.

Albans seems to have addressed this is that their threshold is ordering initiation of a proceeding, it's not successful completion within a certain period, it's not a a specific time frame.

But I think if we're in a situation where there is a problematic tenant, uh part of this uh nuisance abatement plant might include the initiation of the eviction proceeding.

So even so, what what we would hold a landlord accountable for is not initiating it, not necessarily how long it takes or how it's adjudicated.

Is that is that fair?

Yeah.

But if the officer finds that or the building inspector finds that it's really not a landlord, it's it's a tenant issue.

It's this guy with three pending with three pending charges.

Um can we I just want to be able to cite that person and doesn't hear it?

Absolutely.

Because hey, equal time.

Yeah.

Any good lease, I've owned several apartment houses.

Any good lease would be give you the ability to get rid of that.

Try and do it.

I have try and do it in the corporate.

Try and do it in under six months with someone who doesn't want to go.

I'm just saying there is some laws that you could utilize if they don't.

Oh, yeah.

I end up having at the end having to share literally physically move out, but I'm just saying there are leases all the time, and I thank you, Mayor, Mr.

Fair for giving me one of those leases.

So I have a few questions.

Um, I did go to look this up in the uh for the city of St.

Albans or town or whatever it is.

And this is listed under their fire, whatever ordinances.

And so this has the fire chief or fire marshal will serve as the city's enforcement officer.

Would that be the same for us?

Um it it it might, I mean it it it could be cross-jurisdictional.

Um it likely fits there the best.

Um and certainly with a police uh police component on the the um the calls to the property.

Well, because I I'm thinking like, you know, if a fire person shows up at my house and is trying to like tell me what to do, like I would kind of be like, why are you here telling me what to do?

Like, why aren't the police coming here to tell me what to do?

It just would be odd to me.

I understand, but I I don't know, that should be a little bit more clear.

And then the one thing I was thinking about about um property owners, um, especially when we have um larger properties like the Barrie Housing Authority, how is that going to be taken into consideration?

Good.

Yeah.

Yeah, and and the manager and I discussed when we were batting this idea around um that the Barry Housing Authority would would obviously fall under this and and we would have to discuss how to go about that.

Yeah.

Um, because those would probably be your largest calls of going back to those individual apartments over and over again, um, depending on what the issues were.

Well, and then I guess I the other question I would have for the Barry Housing Authority is uh are they feeling like their hands are tied?

Like how what is what is the reason for I don't know we don't have to get into that.

I'm just saying I'm curious like why those people who are causing so many problems aren't I think they feel the same frustrations as my understanding and talking with Jamie.

Um so uh something like this might you know might interestingly be refreshing to them to have to have you know a nuisance abatement plan that they can sort of enforce may be helpful to to have in their hands.

So some landlords may find it helpful to have the the you know sort of the force of a city abatement plan um behind them when they ask their tenants to change behaviors.

Now I know that they they also are a it's a HUD, you know, it's a federal uh if federal connected entity, probably even harder eviction rules than than we have in the state of Vermont.

So um we have to, I think, temper our expectations with that.

I know St.

Albans, and that's a specific question I can ask my counterpart, because they have a I believe they have a St.

Albans Housing Authority as well, if I recall.

I'll I'll check on that.

Um but um you know, I I think in in some ways they may, you know, they may benefit from having sort of the force of of having to do it, you know, because of this ordinance to have something to go to tennis with test for changes in behavior.

Yeah.

So I have just a few more things.

I'm so sorry.

I'm I just um I want I'm concerned about the um the types of calls and how it could be subjective.

Like if you have a neighbor who's just like hates you and wants you to move and they just keep calling, how do you like make sure that it's not being really subjective?

Like, oh, this neighbor's just trying to get these people kicked out, you know, because they don't like them.

And we we can usually identify those.

For instance, we we have we have a particular place that we go to for noise disturbances.

Okay, um quite frequently, and I think there's there's more of a mental health component there because it's not really a noise complaint, if you will.

So it won't fall under this necessarily.

So okay, so we can usually identify those those places quite quick quickly based on what what we see when we get there and the frequency of like non-action that like we really can't do anything because it's paper thin walls and this or that, and okay.

Well, that was I was concerned about that.

I have two more things.

One, I just am concerned that I don't want this to um push landlords away from renting, you know, like I'm really concerned about that because obviously we have a lack of housing, and I don't want people to just say, well, then I just won't rent.

I just won't do it because I don't, you know, it's too difficult to try to get people out.

It's try to difficult to you know go through that process of of um the background checks or whatever.

So that's a concern of mine.

And then the last one is why is it only for rentals?

Because what if you have a property owner who is just the bad apple and you they're the ones that need to be not evicted, but like held accountable.

Are you saying like they own the property?

So they live there, they own the property.

And they're the problem.

Yeah.

As written, this doesn't cover that.

Oh boy, this doesn't cover that.

Oh no, but I'm just saying, like you're you've got like we have we have homes that we've talked about where people are really a problem and they own those homes.

I when it so how do I when it when it reaches a certain level where it becomes like an asset seizure, but usually that's going down the drug realm of that.

There is a mechanism in the state where you you can do that.

Okay.

Um it's I haven't really seen it used.

I've seen it threatened down where I came from.

It was actually on a hotel um where they were just gonna seize the hotel and and force the person to clean everything up.

And it it worked well.

Um but that same statute would be able to be used for uh owned home.

And I'm not saying like, but I feel like there are, I'm sure you go to nuisance properties and the the homeowner, it's they own the home.

Absolutely.

So how do we also get them to be accountable to their neighbors?

You know, that's their neighborhood.

If it crosses the realm into the the other community, you know.

I counselor, I agree.

I mean, so many of the problems that we have now are simply a lack of accountability.

You know, you even if you allow your property to just fall into disrepair and it affects your neighbors.

Well, you should be accountable, you know.

Yes, property ownership is a right, but it's also a privilege for some people.

Yeah, you know, a lot of people don't have a home and would love to have a home and would take good care of it.

So it bothers me when you go around neighborhoods and you see someone who just literally won't pick up their garbage.

It's like I'm not asking you to paint your, you know, I I'm not making a statement here asking you to paint your house and and fix everything.

Maybe you can't afford to, but you can pick up garbage, you can mow your lawn, you know.

So, okay, I won't we we won't go down that road.

But as far as so I listen, I'm all for this.

If it holds uh bad landlords accountable, I'm all for it.

Um you know, I I trust the city.

Uh I and I I certainly trust Nick Copping.

I trust Joe Aldsworth, I trust folks in the city, I trust your officers.

I trust folks in the city to work with landlords and I trust them to know the difference between a landlord is really engaged in best practices and just has a tenant that they want out.

They are trying to evict.

And this tenant, as you know, chief.

Uh sometimes when an eviction notice is served, things actually get worse for a while.

Tenant engages, that they're not happy, they engage in some retaliatory behavior, and for a period of time it can actually get worse.

And the only time it actually gets better is when probably a year or so down the road where they realize, okay, I'm going.

I might as well.

But sometimes it even gets worse then.

So I just want to make sure that there's that that level of discretion where like you were just saying, counselor, we're we're not discouraging some, we're not labeling someone, you know, it's not the scarlet letter, and we're not label labeling a oh, this is a problem property.

Best landlord in the world, uh, best property in the world, but they have a crappy tenant, therefore I'm gonna make it reflect only on the landlord.

That's what I'm really concerned about.

I don't want, I talk to our landlords often.

Most of our landlords are good people working hard, engaged in best practices.

We have some bad landlords, most of them who don't live here.

Because when you live here, I have to look you and you and you in the eye, and if I'm not maintaining my property, it's embarrassing if I live here.

So uh yeah, I'll get off my soapbox now and we'll finish up.

Counselor certainly uh just a couple of questions.

I had the same question as Counselor Spaulding, which is that as written this currently only applies to rental properties.

Um and that's certainly this is a problem we see it at uh owner occupied or however you want to describe it as well.

So I would be interested.

I uh you know, I understand that there are different challenges around holding a property owner accountable than there are uh mechanisms to hold a tenant accountable, but I would be sort of interested in what options we could have.

Um there are some of the um the very end there, the city council's decision made to provide for combination of the following.

There is order property owner to perform necessary building or maintenance um uh and things like that.

So there might be some mechanisms like any other code enforcement where the city has the ability to find or ask for for things to be done.

I don't know what that looks like, but I would be interested in as the counselor said, something to hold them um accountable.

Uh and then in that discretion piece of the uh make sure that this isn't just a sort of nuisance complaint on the part of the person making the complaint.

Um I did like that the threshold is actual citations and not just complaints.

That felt like a good useful safeguard um to me, because you could go out to a property a million times, but there's nothing to cite there.

Um so they there that can't actually be a problem there.

Um just last, I don't know if this is like actionable in a future draft or what, but what the mayor was just saying about uh property owners and landlords who are not here in the city who are not um doing their due diligence to their properties, that's the kind of landlord that might not even show up at these hearings.

Uh and so there's nothing here about if they don't show up to the hearing.

I guess I assume in that case it would just be that their side is not heard at the hearing.

Right.

And that comes in.

If you don't show up, then basically one side you you still have the hearing.

You're just looking at an empty chair saying, do you have anything to say, ma'am, or sir?

Yeah.

And who are you gonna rule to?

That's what happens to me.

Okay, well, I have no chance.

Okay, let's oh, it's court four times for one tenant.

And on a larger scale, what do you do?

Because I know for a fact you're getting calls from the Tilden House in North Barry Manor that were set up for elderly.

And they're not eligible living in there.

And I know the owner of ladder one, the complaints that she has of what's going on.

So how do you gonna how you gonna um deal with an actual housing authority?

And some of that goes back to um it's my understanding that you know, because of the federal stipulations that you had to allow other than elderly individuals in there.

Um yeah, that's that's it is a problem.

It is a problem, and and you know, that's what we deal with quite frequently when we go to those complaints there, it's it's not the elderly folks causing the problem.

Well, there's the gentleman in Northbury Manor who doesn't dare leave his apartment only for drug to get his medication and groceries, and he's you know, he said that to me.

Counselor Gaston?

I just wanted to finish my uh questions from a moment ago, uh, which is that with understanding that there may be situations where there's an absentee landlord or a landlord who's not doing their due diligence, um, and I don't know that this needs to be captured in the policy, but just so that we're thinking about it, if we get to the 800 days per incident day of a bad actor landlord has a property that's falling apart, and it's clearly not the tenants' fault.

Do we have the ability to really go after this?

Are we prepared to sort of use court proceedings to take that on?

That's all the expense.

Yeah, maybe I'll just share um like uh the chief talked to his counterpart in St.

Albans, and um I think the feedback we got was really positive, which is why we went this route.

Um this is where I had gone that they do have Champlain Housing Authority, which I'm not sure if it's an equivalent to Barry Housing, but they they did mention they do have that.

Um they have 35 unit complexes there.

They said Champlain Housing is not as quick to evict due to the rules, but they have stepped it up is what um we heard.

Um and that other landlords in their experience have been making big changes, moving people out who need to be moved out, um, and their biggest problems have greatly diminished, that the the biggest problem properties have reduced in in scope and calls.

Um the city has been aggressive with the fines.

Um and and the city will also he mentions or he or she, the chief there mentions that um the city will also drop them if they are work if the landlord is making progress, right?

So this is the sort of the give and take.

We talked about that the this is not the purpose of an ordinance like this, the purpose of the ordinance like the public conduct ordinance wasn't to get rich by fingers or or issuing citations, it's to change behaviors, right?

So if if the landlord is working and making good faith efforts to make progress, the city is recognizing that um as well.

So um so, anyways, I think our are you know we they've been they've been at this for almost a year now.

They have a year's worth of experience under their belts.

They seem to have made some good progress with it.

Um I got some really good feedback today, I think about adding the tenants to sort of the hearing component if if they are identified as the the issue, um, the FD versus PD uh component of enforcement.

Um how this applies to Barry Housing, I think we'll have to figure out that this ordinance obviously doesn't.

We may have to do something different.

Um then I'm happy to talk to uh with the city attorneys about how to make this applicable to property owners also in addition to to rental property.

So um I I think those are all great points.

And it sounds like St.

Albans has dealt with many of them, but um, we're certainly happy to tweak this to to accommodate these these uh comments.

Any other questions, counsel?

Uh let me just say, and I I have spoken at length with some of the board members.

I mean, I think as most of you know, I appoint the board members to Barrie Housing Authority, and I can recall the board of directors of the Barry Housing Authority.

Um no one at times is more frustrated with the current situation than their staff and and the board.

Uh in many respects, and and I hate I hate this answer when you say, Oh, their hands are tied.

Absent legislation, their hands are literally tied.

They can go through.

There was one recent case, Chief.

You're familiar with this, where they they were hoping that uh an individual would get charged with a crime because they knew there was suspected drug activity at that residence.

Police had been reporting that intel to them, and they were hoping that somebody would get charged, and unfortunately something went down, but the person didn't get charged.

So we're right back to square zero.

So, you know, I I think including them, it's all in how you include people in the conversation.

Um, and if we include them in the conversation respectfully saying like we did with the SNAP program this week, we're not being confrontational about our challenges.

We're here to partner with you and we want to get this stuff done.

Um so I think as long as that's our approach, and that's what I think our approach is going to be.

You know, if you're working with us, we're gonna work with you.

If you have a problem tenant, heck, we'll do, you know, city council will sign a letter saying this is a nuisance property because this tenant has been charged three times in the last six months with dealing drugs, and send it along to the court and say, Your Honor, help them get out.

Um, you know, the there's things we can do to work people, to work with people, and uh so I think that's what our intention is going to be.

I appreciate the two of you bringing this forward.

Um, like the uh conduct ordinance.

You know, like I said, six months from now, my question is going to be, Chief, worth it or not.

So all good.

All right, Chief, thank you very much.

Safe travels.

Okay, uh council.

We're at item 8D on the agenda.

This is the creation of the neighborhood uh neighborhood neighborly berry committee.

Counselor Spaulding and Hillgartner.

I think we got your briefing last week, so this is just the formal approval that thank you for putting that back on the agenda.

So uh I spoke with counselor uh Hillgartner um before the meeting, and my suggestion is, and I think we can do this with advisory committees, that we say no less than a five, no more than nine, and a quorum.

So the motion, the appropriate motion would be that we create the neighborly Barry Committee as outlined uh earlier with uh minimum membership of five, maximum membership of nine, and a quorum would be a majority of the appointed members.

So yes.

So moved.

What's the cost of second for discussion?

That's second discussion.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Cost.

No cost.

Uh zero.

Zero.

Yep.

No cost.

So once it's becomes part of this, it goes on every year, or or does be re-dupped.

I'm not against it.

No, it's uh once a committee is created, until you know, at times, I think, for example, our uh yeah, we did.

We cleaned up our committees not that long ago.

You know, we had a tree committee that was dormant for holy cow, yeah, a dozen years or more.

I mean, there's just no one on it, and no one so as long as a committee, you know, on occasion we have committees that actually want to function, and they might have one or two members when they need four or five to to create a full committee and or to meet a quorum.

So, you know, this will be the same as any other committee, and I'm sorry, as part of the motion should be that the council liaison to this particular committee would be uh councillor Billgartner.

Okay.

So that we're good with the mover and secondary.

Friendly amendment.

Friendly amendment.

Um if I may, the tree committee.

I we were talking, we were actually talking about that there I don't I didn't remember that there was a tree committee, but I did remember there was something about trees, people who took care of our trees, and I thought, well, they're not here anymore, and maybe that could become part of this.

If someone wanted to adopt a tree, you know, we're gonna adopt a storm drain, they could adopt a tree, and you could grow those trees on Main Street, you know.

Yeah, and then you got people putting a ladder against a tree and they're falling out, and Nicholas is getting a call.

Fertilizing watering, like adopt the bottom two feet of the tree.

Yes, that kind of thing.

I mean, they hey they could adopt sometimes the trees get a little unsightly.

They're they're they got a lot of weeds growing around the little yeah.

No, there's a lot of things that this committee, this committee could do, and there's nothing wrong with being neighborly.

Yeah.

So if there's no other questions, all those in favor of the motion questions.

Oh, I'm sorry, sure.

Go ahead.

Um when are we going to put out um a request for appointments for this to get people to I plan to uh issue it uh tomorrow.

We'll post on our website on social media, and um we'll start receiving applications and as we get them, we'll we'll bring people forward for consideration for the council.

I just wanted to make sure that was what we were doing.

Yep.

I see some names in here.

Um and I know that those were the folks that had kind of decided to step up and kind of be a steering committee.

I'll I'll respond to that.

Um the the people who spoke up and said they, you know, counselor spaulding and I felt that it was really important that we show that to you guys that this wasn't just gonna be another committee like the tree committee where we couldn't get anybody to serve.

So I think all the people who are who have said they they're willing to serve has have said they're willing to serve, not that they expect to be appointed.

So of course the of course the appointments are open, sure.

And that's also we have to do that.

So we could um so this is a new committee.

The only thing it's a little I I don't want to say we're I mean normal, you know, we do the appointments.

We generally just in terms of managing the meetings.

We might do two a meeting.

We usually don't do more than that.

If you want to stand, I mean the the uh the names are familiar to me, uh and it's up to the council.

But if you obviously we'll wait until people start submitting, but we could actually stand this committee up without the required uh interviews for the position, it might speed things along.

Otherwise, I'm looking at our schedule, and it could take you until January to fully stand this committee out.

So would the mechanism that be, then they would still submit the application.

We would review the application and maybe stay tuned.

Just stay tuned.

Just in the interest of standing it up quickly, because if we do nine, that's four meetings, two months.

The other the other thing about if we stand the committee up quickly is that we could add, you know, if there was more interest, we could add the nine longer further out.

Well, we'll have other um so you know the the notice goes out, so we could conceivably get nine people to apply.

The five who have who plan on applying already, and then there could be four more.

So I mean I'm just saying if we've got an interview and appoint nine people, we usually do two a meeting, it's gonna take a little while.

So just stay tuned.

So I may just present that to the council and say, look, here's you know, here's six, or here's seven.

Can we just waive the formal, you know, interview and just get this committee appointed?

And we could even, you know, if you want to come back, we can come back throughout the year if you want to, or we can hear from the people throughout the year.

Might just speed things up along.

I know Nicholas really loves the whole you know interview process, but we don't want to take them from feel like sacrifice for us.

I'll take one for the sound okay?

That's also fine.

Any other questions, folks?

Okay, hearing none, all those in favor of the motion is presented, please signify by saying aye.

Aye.

And those opposed, thank you very much.

Council word item nine, upcoming business.

Uh councillor Gustin, the first meeting we are gonna have.

I don't know if you know if you did it.

The first meeting we're gonna do.

We wanted to talk about doing one in November with our business community.

We're November state.

You know, Thanksgiving's Thanksgiving is late this year.

It's the last it's the 27th is like way down on the calendar.

So Thanksgiving is about as late as it can possibly be.

Um so you know, obviously we want to do it before then, and we're kind of closing in on the 15th, or so I don't know.

You wanna you want to set that up?

Are we still Tracy?

We could call Tracy, we could John.

And I had actually been talking to a couple of um couple of folks as well, just floating the idea past them.

So just uh to clarify if we're a hundred percent committed to November.

Are we looking at a regular Tuesday council meeting slots?

Not necessarily.

No, I I I'd actually rather stay away from that and do it in an off week.

That's why it was because I know it limits our choices.

We could always move our council meeting around too.

I mean, I wanna I'd like to figure out a place where we could do it where it would be you know, pretty well attended place time um where it would be pretty well attended.

I just have some ideas.

Let me uh okay, let me give Tracy and just yeah, give me a shout.

I will land something by the end of this week and reach out to council with the tentative uh plans and we can discuss them at a future actual council meeting.

That is awesome.

And second round C D B G DR.

Um are we submitting on 143?

We see your plan.

We would hope to we just we still don't have any time frame timeline schedule from the state.

So yeah, we're still I thought they said they'd have that out.

Yeah, I thought it was by the 10th, right?

Okay, I'm not sure.

I'm not criticizing.

They got a lot of applications are going through up.

I'm no, I'm just surprised.

Yeah, and we're still waiting for the invitation to go to the hearing and the board meeting and to present.

So that's that's on the 20th.

Makes me happy that we didn't wave off until the second round.

Yeah, which may not well, whatever.

Okay.

Council, anything else any of you would want to.

So that's what's up coming in the short term.

In the long term, yes.

Are you gonna give us an update on the snap?

Or is that during round T.

Oh, yeah, I was gonna do that after we do this.

Okay.

That's a curious about that.

Okay, okay.

I'll I'll do if there's nothing else, I'll do that now.

So uh where we stand today, council, is we managed to raise um $18,000 in uh private donate when I say private donations.

5,000 of that came and thank you, Councillor Spaulding, came from the Barry Um Community Um the Barrie Community Relief Program.

So that 5,000 was from that program.

Um folks on that program on that board are myself, Kathy Morse, um Jonathan Williams, and Councillor Spaulding.

I did not participate because I presented it to the relief fund.

I didn't think it was appropriate, even though there's no obviously no direct financial gain.

I didn't think it was appropriate to participate in the vote.

So thank you to the remaining board members who voted for that appropriation.

So you know, do the bath at at $25.

That bought quite a few gift cards.

Um, so as I said, the remaining $13,000 was a pro was private donations.

Um, you know, we pushed it hard on social media.

That was yesterday, we were at 18,000.

I think that money is still coming in.

We're using that money to buy $25 gift cards, and we've been handing those out at capstone and um enough ministries, uh, Dan Mullins Place.

Uh in addition, Dan, um, because you know, this is Barrie City residence only in terms of the gift cards.

Uh, Dan was able to secure $5,000 from an organization, and that's being used to folks who live outside of Barrie who are coming to enough ministries.

Uh, and then obviously our uh food shelves, uh working with Vermont Food Bank, who is the primary you know, distributor, um enough ministries and heading Methodist Church are open seven days a week.

In in addition to others, the other food banks, Salvation Army, um, there's many, many others.

I think you all got a copy of our flyer.

Uh so there's many others.

Um, those are operating their normal hours, but we wanted to make sure that there's literally seven-day a week coverage, and our period of concern was through this Friday.

On this Friday, the 50% allocation that was voted by the e-board will hit the cards of all SNAP um recipients.

So you I hesitate to say, oh, it's been what we're hearing is that we're not seeing any panic, that um people are able to visit the food shelf.

We are uh Dan is rationing protein meat package.

It used to be if he had five meat packages and you were needed, you could take five.

He's limiting that.

Uh Dan has been a rock star.

Um, but we're meeting the need.

People no one is panicking, no one is going without.

Um when people visit the food shelf, whether they're from Barrie City or area, when they visit the food shelf, they're being served.

There are no wait times, there's no panic.

So as I started to say earlier, you when I know every day that some people are hungry, you always hesitate to call it a success.

But I'm I'm very, very proud of the work that and most importantly, we talk every day.

Every day I get a briefing, you know, we have an email chain, and I shoot that briefing out, and I just say you're all busy, one or two words.

What do you need?

Uh what's going right, you know, what's not going right, you know, how are you feeling?

And I get a short, you know, paragraph long message back from everyone and consistently it's been yes, there's a heightened need, but we don't have wait times, we don't have any pain anyone panicking, and we're able to serve everyone who walks into the food shelf.

So uh very proud of our team here.

We are the only municipality in Vermont who reacted this quickly and this strongly.

Uh and um looks like for today we're getting it done.

So we feel good about that.

And uh just to speak about the program, the the overall snap program, broad impacts of the program.

So uh as you all know, uh courts ruled against uh the US government against the USDA.

They said you must fund the SNAP program.

Um they didn't necessarily specify to what limit.

So what uh the USDA has come back with is they've said, well, we have enough contingency funds to fund the fund the program to a 50% level.

So if we think about how we're doing in Vermont during the month of November, um thank you to the people who have donated to the food banks or stepped up with the cash donations, but looking at it really simply 50% is coming from the state government.

That will hit the EBT cards on Friday.

50% uh will come from the USDA, and we honestly don't know when the USDA, the USDA has said there's going to be a delay because it's a reduced benefit.

Horse hockey.

Yeah, right.

I mean, quite frankly.

It it took the state of Vermont about a week.

This is a federal program, so it took the state programmers about a week to figure out how to get the EBT cards programmed, and that's understandable.

It's a it's not an uncomplex, it's a very secure mechanism.

I'm not buying the USDA's answer.

I I'm hopeful that they come to their senses, that they that they you know develop a little compassion, and I'm hopeful that it takes the USDA no more than one week.

If all of that falls into place, then folks in Vermont, when I say fine, folks in Vermont will receive their normal benefit for the month of November.

So this is a situation, and I don't put it outside the realm of possibilities that the states will sue the USDA saying you have even more contingency funds, but you say they've expired, we don't agree with you.

So this thing is far from over.

I mean, literally every day something is happening, but in Barrie City, Vermont, great things are happening because people are just stepping up and getting the job done.

So that's yes, Byrne Rose.

Hi, thank you.

I just want to say thank you.

This is really um been wonderful to see how people in Barrie came together.

Um I have SNAP benefits, and I just wanted to let you know that this afternoon I received a phone call and a text from uh public services, uh giving uh everybody who they're able to contact the information about um the seventh being time for them to look at their um to look at their um benefit card, uh the number to call to find out what's on their card, which is also on the card.

Uh and it gave also uh websites.

So the state has just done an amazing job reaching out to inform everybody about what is going on, and um I didn't know if anybody else on council would have seen or heard about that, so I wanted to let you know.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, so uh council, we do uh sorry.

Well, after round table, we are gonna need an executive session.

Who do we start with?

Let's we'll pick on Council Ruth here this week.

You want to start round table?

Um just very happy that my Vikings won this weekend council's following.

Um I got to work at the BCA table yesterday, it was my first time and at the election, and um wow, it was really I worked with Councillor Hillgartner, it was a lot of fun.

Um I I counselor Killgartner actually commented, you know a lot of people, but it was funny how many people I've never seen before in my whole life, and they live here, and I've just am astounded, and it was really great.

And it just was um pleased to be a part of it.

So it was so easy and well run, and thank you to our clerk.

Were you surprised with the turnout?

Yes, I was I was really surprised considering what we were voting on.

I was really surprised there were that many people.

Yeah, it was great.

Councilor Deering.

Uh got to hang out with the coyotes this weekend on Sunday night.

That was a nice basketball game.

Uh they won, they were rebounding after a loss on Saturday night, uh, which I was not able to attend.

Uh I was at the end uh northern uh Northern Vermont Youth Football League Championships uh in which Barry did not win.

Um, but I was fortunate enough to have the capabilities to broadcast that for them.

So I went out of my way and just broadcast both the D1 and the D2 games.

So you can check that out on CVT Sport dot net.

It's on YouTube as well.

It's all free.

It's all the stuff that we broadcast for all our local sports.

So we just try to bring that to the kiddos.

Fortunately, they did not win.

But they made it to the title game.

So that's a huge accomplishment in itself.

So we got a lot of really great things going on here in Barrie.

Counselor.

I was going to say the thing about BCA and doing doing my civic duty and how interesting and fun it was.

And it was really neat to, you know, that we the BCA table deals with the people who run into problems.

And it was just so nice to be able to register people and get them their ballots and let them experience the joy participating in their responsibility and honor and voting.

Thank you.

Councilor Gustin.

It feels like it's been a really, really good week in Barrie City.

It feels like I'm thinking back to the Halloween skating and costumes that we were able to pull off because the ice got in early.

The way every the community has come together to help our most vulnerable members who are uh so that they do not go hungry so that we're taking care of each other.

That has felt really phenomenally good.

Uh and our new DPW garage and new housing in downtown.

It's just it's felt like we've been able to put together really good things in our community.

So and we're just getting started.

We are so that's that's the best part.

Hold on to your hats.

You know, you you get these little things that pop up on Facebook like your memories.

Uh so no one popped up and it had interestingly, it had the same signs that I was putting up.

I recycled the signs.

Uh they were in my they were in my loft in my barn.

If Brian Duby ever decides to run for governor again, I got them covered.

Literally, I have a I have a barn loft full of old political.

Like I was flipping I was cleaning them off.

It's fall, so I was you know putting stuff away, and I was putting stuff in the loft, and so I start flipping from and I come through up this whole box of you know, vote yes, you know, vote today, yes, move Barry forward.

And um, so I put them up and I took them down.

I didn't leave them hanging around.

And thank you, voters, thank you for the vote of confidence, thank you for your faith in us.

We're gonna work really hard to continue to earn your trust and to keep your trust.

Um, but up on Facebook pops that same damn sign, and from 12 years ago, and it was 12 years ago when I was mayor, and we passed the original TIF district.

So uh so that just that just felt that felt kind of cool.

Uh Ditto with the coyotes, it's folks, it's real basketball.

I mean, they're there it's high level, you know, division one basketball.

Um lastly, uh thank you to the Beauver family.

75 years is a long long time to serve your community and between Ernie and Carl and their entire family and and Carl's daughter, they really did serve Barry for 25 for 75 years.

You'd walk in there, um, you know, uh I guess I'll have to stop wearing my cowboy boots because Carl would always put the heels, you know, on the boots and and sew them up and and make them new again.

So Karen will be happy.

Uh but however, um, but you know, you'd go in there and you bought a lot more than a service you bought kindness.

Um they were always so patient, and and you really you you you always came out of there with a smile on your face, having talked to Ernie or Carl or their daughter or or Carl's wife.

It was just uh it was just wonderful.

And so we will be doing something, council.

I don't know what yet.

Um maybe it'll be a big granite boot.

I don't know.

But but you know, we have to do something.

75 years is a long, you know, long, long time to serve a community and to serve a community so well.

So to the Beauvair family who's uh unfortunate going out of business sales starts today.

Thank you.

Thank you, thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

And with that, counsel, uh, we will need I'll need a motion for findings, please, and uh a motion to go into executive disc uh session to discuss real estate.

Findings for findings, thank you.

Moved and seconded.

All those in favor of the motion is presented, please signify by saying aye.

Aye and those opposed, and a motion to go into executive session.

The manager will be joining us.

So moved.

Thank you.

Moved and seconded.

Any discussion?

Hearing none, all those in favor of the motion is presented, please signify by saying aye.

Aye.

And those opposed.

And those opposed the one we're on recording.

Okay, thank you, Councillor Spalding, for your motion to exit executive session.

Thank you, Councilor Ruthier, for your second.

All those in favor the motion is presented, please say signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Aye.

And those opposed, uh motion to adjourn would be in order.

Moved.

Thank you, Councillor Gustin.

Thank you for your second.

Counselor Hedgartner.

All those in favor of the motion is presented, please signify by saying aye.

Aye.

And those opposed.

Council adjourned at 837.

I have a question for you.