It is Tuesday, December 16th, 2025 at 6 p.m.

I'll call this regular meeting of the very city council to order.

Mr.

Manager or Council, are there adjustments to the agenda?

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

I have one adjustment, uh slight adjustment, which is under contracts for approval.

I emailed the council yesterday uh with an additional contract, uh, which is to purchase a F 150 for the facilities department to replace a 2009 vehicle.

That would be a contract for 42,612 for G Stone.

Thank you very much.

Council, any adjustments to the agenda.

Okay, hearing none, uh an approval of the agenda would be in order.

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 aye.

And those opposed, the motion carries.

Under visitors and communications, Byrne Rose.

Hi, thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Um, I just wanted to share uh with folks what a great time the library light up the library fundraiser was.

And that today I met with um oh gosh.

Uh it's the mentor program, the literacy mentor program.

Uh everybody wins, which is happening at the very city elementary school.

We used to have it all the time.

And now they're starting again, and they're starting with second graders, and they're looking for more adult mentors than it means going to the school and reading with the kids uh once a week.

Uh and it sounds like it's gonna be a lot of fun.

So I encourage any other adults who might have time uh in the week to be able to do that to um look into that program and just say uh what a I'm looking forward to having a good time uh meeting some little kids in our community.

So thank you.

And also thank you for all the sneakers for the kids at school.

And uh there are is a need for men's, especially men's, but women's also winter footwear.

So if people have any that's still usable, uh please donate it to Amy's armoire.

You can just take it down to the storefront itself, unlike clothing.

Uh she's accepting uh winter footwear for people.

Thank you.

Thank you, Byrne.

Is there anyone else wishing to address the council regarding an item that is not in the agenda?

Okay, hearing and seeing no one.

Uh council, we move on to the consent agenda.

We'll be approving the minutes of 12925.

Uh there are no licenses or permits being presented by the city clerk.

We will approve downstreet's request to be placed on the town meeting date ballot for voter approved assistance, approving the snow bees landowner permission form, and authorizing the manager to execute a contract for a trailer and the truck that he just mentioned.

All of those briefing materials were provided in your packet.

Is there any actually excuse me?

A motion would be in order.

So moved.

Thank you.

Second.

Moved and seconded.

Is there Cheryl's gonna have a tough time?

You will you guys are at time?

I'm I'm gonna let her pick.

So uh there is a motion.

There is a second.

Is there any discussion?

Hearing none, all those in favor of the motion is presented.

Please signify by saying aye.

Aye.

And those opposed, the motion carries.

Under item 4A, we'll be approving the city warrants of 1217 25.

A motion would be in order.

So moved.

Thank you.

Second.

Moved and seconded.

Any discussion?

Hearing none, all those in favor of the motion is presented.

Please signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Aye.

And those opposed.

Any abstentions?

Noted.

Thank you very much.

The motion carries.

We will not have a city clerk report this evening.

We have nothing under liquor and cannabis control board.

Mr.

Manager, it's all yours and thank you, Mayor.

Yes.

Thank you.

Um a couple of updates for the council and the public.

Number one is that the budget survey for the upcoming budget is live.

It's on our website.

Uh it was sent out via regroup.

Uh as of uh when I wrote my notes this morning, we had 89 responses in.

Uh last year we had around 300.

So this will be uh the survey will be open through January 28th.

Uh and we will that's a Wednesday.

Uh and what the plan is will be to present the results of the survey the Tuesday at the following Tuesday at the council meeting.

So wanted to give people as much time as possible.

Um, especially since we're sort of overlapping with the holidays to get their um their survey responses in.

Um, I know there was a couple of people indicated that um we've embedded the survey on the phone on the website.

Uh and so if you're apparently if you're working on a laptop, uh it's working just fine, and you get the submit button.

Some people on an iPhone were having an issue getting the submit button, which is I think was a just a website coding issue.

So we have added a specific link if you're on an iPhone or a cell phone smartphone just to click that, and that will get you to the full survey with the submit button.

So that has been uh we did troubleshoot that.

Um but yeah, just encourage uh people to make their voices heard.

Um and uh last year we you know we presented all the results unfiltered uh and so that the council can can uh weigh the results as as uh we develop the budget for the upcoming year.

Um second, uh just FEMA buyout demolitions are continuing uh this week.

Uh today crews were wrapping up on Scampini Vine Street and then uh our understanding from them is that they will be done until the new year.

So we expect them back in January.

Um but they were wrapping up their work now for the calendar year.

Um we have a couple uh several uh properties that are certainly on deck um, but they will not be uh touched until until January.

Uh another note is the winter parking ban is in effect tonight, uh and you may be surprised by that because there's no snow in the forecast, but it is uh we have called it because DPW crews will be doing snow removal tonight.

So uh as the snow banks pile up, we do need to take some nights just to get uh get in there without cars to get the snow out, makes it easier for pedestrian shoppers come into our downtown or or people who just need a little extra help getting to our sidewalk.

So uh please respect the the ban tonight, even though there's not uh it's no in the forecast.

And this is really the nights like tonight are sort of an important metric to see uh compliance with this new parking ban because because there is no forecast, somebody may be tuned out, but it's really important to be tuned in all the time.

Um and so if you have um you know, if if you get your messages through regroup, you would have gotten it.

If you do it through Facebook, you hopefully you went to check, you know, it came up on your Facebook feed.

If you do it through the website, that's another way.

But it's it's important that people um you know keep track of it because on nights like tonight, even when there's no snow in the forecast, we may still occasionally call bans um for things like snow removal.

So uh really we'll see.

Hopefully, tonight, uh fingers crossed we'll have uh reduction in um in towing.

We still uh uh have had relatively higher numbers of toes, and especially was difficult last week.

Uh you know, talking to the police chief because we had a couple back to back nights, uh, and that really made it tough um with the parking situation in the public safety building.

So um the other um note is that uh procedurally we have um changed the process that so that uh residents who come who need to collect their cars after being towed.

If they're coming to get them during regular business hours, that's Monday through Friday, 7 30 to 4 30.

They will need to come to City Hall first to pay.

Um and then any cars being collected after hours, holidays, or weekends, they'll go to the public safety building.

So we want to handle as little money as possible at public safety building.

We'd rather once when the clerk's office is open, um, we will want that to be happening here at City Hall.

Um update from the water department uh is that they uh they did repairs and replacement of three hydrants this week.

Um I know uh you have heard counsel um from residents who have noticed the bag hydrants, and it's it's alarming.

We uh you know certainly understand that, um, but these hydrants were out of service and not functional anyhow, so uh they didn't do any good whether the bags were on them or not.

Um so we have started replacing them.

I I I can get you the comprehensive list of how many uh remain out of service.

I did I didn't have a chance to pull that today.

Um, but we did have three replaced this week, and the crews will continue to do them over the winter as as time permits, as they're not pulled into you know snow removal duties uh and as uh and as parts are are received.

So and um we we do coordinate with the fire department, so the fire department is aware of where the hydrants are out and and they're aware of where they're coming back um online as well.

Um the uh next update uh from the facilities department is that uh we were notified by USDA that the design build option was acceptable.

Uh as you might recall a couple weeks ago, council approved two options for the auditorium uh renovations, and we did that because it was in the midst of the government shutdown.

We asked, but obviously we weren't getting an answer about whether design build was eligible or not.

What we decided to do was do two RFPs and just go with the one that they allowed.

And so uh that didn't burn any of our time while the government was shut down.

So very happy the design build option was was obviously much preferred.

Um it was a con it was with REUCT for 112,000.

So we're we're working with them.

Now I haven't signed the contract yet, but uh Tom's here, he's been working with them and USDA, and we look forward to uh keeping that um moving along.

And then finally, uh last year indulgence uh council.

Um last night we had the opportunity to celebrate uh uh many employees who reached important service milestones with the city.

Um so I will uh take the a moment to read their names and their years of service.

Um uh reaching five years of service, we had Anderson Brown from the fire department, Jamie Herring from the Department of Public Works, and uh Brian Hoare from the police department reaching 10 years of service with the city.

We had Dave Gilbert from Department of Public Works and Brooke Pouillat from the police department.

We had Dave Gilbert from Department of Public Works and Brooke Pool Yat from the police department, reaching 15 years of service were Bill DeMel from the Department of Public Works, uh, Captain Brian Farnum from the fire department, and uh Zachary Tillinghast from the fire department.

Uh and reaching 25 years of service, he's in the in the room today.

We get to celebrate with us tonight.

Uh Deputy Chief Larry Eastman uh from the police department.

Uh 35 years of service, also from the police department, uh Jason Fleury.

Uh and uh four zero, 40 years of service, really remarkable.

Um we took a moment to uh to celebrate Catherine Bramman, who uh many of you may remember retired earlier this year, but she retired after hitting her 40 years of service.

So she was uh she was recognized uh for for having reached that milestone, even though she's no longer uh a city employee.

And uh Debbie Siever from the Department of Public Works uh also reached 40 years of service.

So uh want to congratulate uh all these employees on their remarkable service and uh looking forward to many more years.

Maybe not for Debbie, she's done her service, but we'll have her for as long as she wants to be here.

So thank you.

Thank you.

And uh Catherine Umgratulations on getting Catherine and Debbie to actually attend.

It was very difficult.

That was fabulous.

It was uh it was really a great evening, and as you know, you sit there and look around.

I'm reminded so many of you are here tonight, just how fortunate we are.

I mean, the just the the depth of service, how seriously they take the job.

We really we just have some great people here in Barrie.

Um you know, we really do.

And regardless of whether it's five years, ten years, fifteen years, three years, uh, they're all just really great people.

And how many years are you now?

Three?

Three and a half, three and a half, three and a half and fifteen minutes.

Yeah, so Nicholas is walking around and he comes up to me and he's like, you see, I'm building morale.

You know, they they know I respect them and they all love me.

And I looked at him and I said, Nicholas, you're holding the drink tickets.

It was all good.

It was it really was uh it really was a great evening, so thank you for that.

Thank you.

Okay, council.

Any questions to the manager?

Okay, then we'll move on to new business.

Uh we have volunteer appointments for the uh neighborly Barry Committee.

Up first, Marjorie.

I think uh there you are.

Marjorie, how are you?

I'm doing well.

Lovely to see you.

Why don't you um if you don't mind, why don't you tell us a little bit about you?

I know about you, but why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and why you're interested in the near neighborly Barrie Committee?

Sure.

Um I've been a resident of Barrie City for about for actually 25 years.

This is my 25th year um living on Orange Street.

Um and then I also uh long ago, back in 1993, I worked six years at the Aldridge Public Library.

Um and then I moved to the Vermont Historical Society, which then moved to Barrie.

So I spent the rest of my career there.

Um I am I was not born in Vermont, as all my cousins tell me all the time.

Um however, my great-grandfather lived on uh 19 uh Main Street, my grandfather lived on Nine Abbott Avenue, and now I'm back.

So and that's a little bit about me.

Um but I I did get a lot of the six years at the Aldrich was actually spent in the archives of Barry History, which meant that I spent six quality years just enmeshed in Barry history.

And I can't tell you how exciting it is to look at Barry now and see it it goes up and down as all places do, but I feel like we're on that research of the days when Barry was just an exciting and vibrant and diverse community.

So and I'm interested in the neighborly uh committee just because I feel that's a good place to start.

Fantastic.

Well, thank you, Marjorie.

I've uh I've known you and your family for decades.

So I have no questions for you.

I only have an endorsement.

Council, if you have any questions for Marjorie.

Okay, a motion would be in order.

Second.

It's 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.

The motion carries.

Welcome aboard, Marjorie.

We'll see you soon.

Thanks.

Okay, council.

Up next is Ginger Cloud.

Ginger, how are you?

Hi, good evening.

Okay, how are you doing?

And likewise, why don't you tell us a little bit about your well, we all know you, but you still have to tell us a little bit about yourself and what interests you in the neighborly Barrie Committee.

Yeah, um, so my name is Ginger Cloud, and I live in Barrie City.

And I'm uh mental health clinician and private practice, and then I also work for the state of Vermont on special mental health initiatives.

Yeah, and I'm interested in the neighborly committee to uh participate more in in the city and uh hopefully uh more connection and neighborly energy into our city and neighborhoods.

Thank you.

And I apologize for procedural question.

Do we have staggered terms that we were pointing to?

I was gonna yeah, mention that mayor.

I was I suggested doing one of the candidates through June 30, 27 and the other through June 30, 26.

That way they are staggered.

Okay, and from the mover and the secondary, what was your intention?

I'll put Marjorie in the longer one.

In the 27th?

Yes.

Okay, so any objection from the we could re-vote it, but is there any objection?

Okay, thank you very much.

So the uh motion to a point through June 30th of 26 would be in order.

So moved.

Thank you.

Second.

It's moved and seconded.

Any discussion?

Hearing none, all those in favor of the motion is presented.

Please I'm sorry, council.

Did you have any questions of the applicant?

Just like that.

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

And those opposed, the motion carries.

Uh welcome aboard.

Uh so that uh councillor Hillgartner, that puts you at five, I believe.

That puts us in.

Okay, so that is the minimum.

You can have up to nine, if so if there are others who want to participate.

Um but you certainly have a quorum.

You actually had a quorum at the first meeting.

So just to be clear on that, uh, council, we will move on to item 8B on the agenda.

This is to approve the COCI fund allocation to support cemetery records digitization project.

Welcome, folks, and councils, just as a point of order and transparency.

I think you're all aware that I am the trustee and continue to be the trustee of the UG and Closy Trust.

We haven't quite, even though the city's received, I believe.

Three and three million and change.

Yeah, three point three point six million dollars.

We haven't quite closed that out yet.

There's still a more small balance and some tax issues that are remaining, but I just want to disclose that to the council.

I don't have, once the money is given to the city as trustee.

If I did see that uh I felt the city was spending the money in a way that was contrary to Mr.

Cosey's trust as trustee, I would have uh the obligation to step in.

I I don't see that that's happening.

I don't foresee that happening.

I just wanted to raise that issue so the council was comfortable when we presiding this evening.

Any issue with that?

Okay, thank you.

Folks, go ahead.

Thank you.

Good evening.

Hello.

Um believe it was earlier this summer we came with the uh the SEM sites request to put all the cemetery records online.

And uh and his crew are gonna be going through our paper records and getting everything organized to input into that system.

Uh now let Scott explain.

Go for it.

So the cemetery office uh of Near Hope Cemetery on the second floor, there's uh piles of material about two feet deep uh that cover the rooms, uh which is about the area that you're sitting in today.

Uh and uh these records go all the way back to 1890s.

Uh and they're a mess.

Uh and as Jeff can attest to, uh, the information has not been boiled down and turned into spreadsheets with accuracy.

Uh so one of the tasks that uh the Vermont Granite Museum uh is uh willing to undertake uh is digitization of all those historical records which uh relate to Hope, uh Elmwood and St.

Monica's cemeteries.

Uh and uh then uh take those records, digest it down to information about individual burials.

And there's roughly 17,600 burials uh within the three cemeteries.

Uh and so on the spreadsheet there'll be a single line uh row uh for each burial, and it consists of about 30 different aligned items uh or columns of information that need to be collected from those records.

Uh there's roughly between 100 and 136,000 documents that will be uh digitized and uh someone will have to look at in order to extract the information that's needed.

Uh what's great about the records is they kept everything, at least for hope.

Uh fortunately, the same case is not true of St.

Monica's or Elmwood.

Uh so there's about 16 different record sets or types of records for Hope Cemetery.

Not all of them are necessarily going to be important to the project, but they're a good record to have as a historical document.

And so having those digitized and organized will allow anyone who's interested in finding details about it will be able to do so in the uh searchable PDF files or the transcripts that are created by the museum.

And those will be referenced within the STEM site records.

The material that we'll be putting on those line items within the Excel spreadsheets will be loaded up by SEM sites onto their site that they're creating for the city for its management of the three cemeteries.

They'll be able to identify all the information that's related to the burial itself and the current ownership of the property, which will be very important for the management of the cemeteries moving from here forward.

So we'll be going through the deeds that are here in City Hall, digitizing all that content, as well as everything that's at the cemetery office.

I think we can get through it by May 1st.

Oh 26?

Yes.

You go, girl.

I'll see.

I'm impressed.

It's gonna uh we've gonna have an army of folks scanning.

We'll uh have to get some new equipment in order to speed up that process.

Uh and uh I think that uh thanks to the fact that the city uh since the 1920s spent a great deal of money managing at least Hope Cemetery, uh most of it's typescript.

So I can give it to a high school kid uh has to do community service hours for Spaulding High School, and they'll be able to come in and read it.

There is some that's handwritten that's from the 1890s through the 1920s, and that'll give to my senior volunteers.

They'll be able to read that with no problem.

And the scribes that were hired in order to run the cemeteries uh for those early decades, they have got beautiful handwriting.

It is relatively easy to read.

Uh, and the preservation of the records was remarkable when I went up there with Tom.

Uh the piles were deep, but they were in good shape.

Uh there's only one window in that building upstairs, so uh, and it was so dirty that it didn't allow much sun into the rooms.

Uh and so there's not sun fading on the documents.

We found armfuls of maps uh in great shape.

Uh so digitizing it's not going to be difficult.

It's the reading and transcribing that's going to be time consuming, but I think it's going to be relatively easily done because it is TypeScript.

So it should go fast.

So relatively fast.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mary.

I would just add the um the urgency and importance of this work that Scott's gonna do.

Um and you know, we we came to you this summer um with a pretty urgent request for that some site software because we are worried about, genuinely worried about the quality of the records, and um, you know, we have a uh a real pending uh retirement at the cemetery where we're gonna lose the institutional knowledge that is basically piecing together all those records that Scott says with where people are located now and buried.

And so that was our urgency this summer when we came to you, and then when we really got our hands around what the process was going to look like to be able to transition to that software, it wasn't gonna be able to be done by it, just was way beyond the capacity of our volunteers.

Like it is it is too many records, it is too detailed, it is too challenging.

Uh and so honestly, it's too important.

It is, it is.

Um I mean, no offense, Scott, but with compensation comes responsibility.

It's so uh, you know, honestly, I was thrilled uh to hear that you took this on, that the granite museum took this on because uh we all know the respect that you and the organization have for our cemeteries.

Uh so I was thrilled in that respect, but but also that you know you're being compensated.

So there's a certain level of service that the city expects, and I know I I know you're going to deliver.

Uh so yeah, I I was absolutely thrilled uh with that.

So the so how do we take, you know, I've seen the records.

Jeff gave me a tour a million years ago, and it was um it looked like my office in 20 years.

You know, I I'd have to take a while.

I mean, how do we get those records to ensure, you know, like right now, they're literally in piles.

Right.

So how do we how do we get like like where are they going to be as this project?

Um, each of the record sets will be organized in boxes.

I talked to Cheryl about making sure that we follow the same exact standards that is being done here in City Hall with all of its records.

Uh there'll be inventories, there'll be finding aids that'll be created for each of them, finding uh the same practices that she uses here.

Uh and uh so uh at the end of the day, um they should be put someplace.

And Cheryl's recommendation and Tom said it made sense to put them back where they belong upstairs, but also it's gonna need some cleaning and some possible painting and some shelving, but all the records should be back there, organized.

So if someone does want to see the originals, they'll be able to find them with no problem.

And then uh the digital records will be put on hard drives, Cheryl will have a copy, cemetery office will have a copy of the originals, there's searchable PDFs for those that are TypeScript for the handwritten records, there may be transcripts for some things but not everything.

Uh and so they will be accessible online potentially if you want to share all the records.

Um but for SEM sites, it's simply the line entries of all the raw data that's been typed into the spreadsheets, uh, and that's what the public will have access to.

Uh it's what we have typed in.

And we're verifying the information within that row for each burial based upon the multiple record sets uh that are available uh for each of the cemeteries.

Uh we know, and uh Donnie, who's managing the cemetery now, mentioned that he knows for a fact that there are people who unfortunately made mistakes uh in the past.

Uh and so we're going to have to assess which of the records we're going to trust the most.

And obviously, the first uh earliest records uh for a particular plot uh is probably going to be the most accurate, and then as things get copied, uh it's gonna incorporate errors over time.

So but we'll have to record all of the record sets, scan them all, and then compare them all because a record set would disappear in use because a new person would be managing the cemetery, they come up with their own system and I didn't like that, and I'm gonna do my work instead.

So we'll have to tease all that out, and it'll be important to us to do interviews as Nicholas pointed out.

We've got people leaving, we want to talk to Jeff, we want to talk to Donnie, and anyone else in the community that's been responsible for managing of the cemeteries, so we can collect some of that oral history and understanding of how those records are created, how they were managed, uh, and what value each of them has.

How many cemetery directors over the years?

You know?

No.

No, I I mean I remember obviously I remember Dwight.

Yep.

Uh remember Jeff.

Dickie Fontana.

I re I've heard of Vicky, I don't know that.

Oh, Dick Fontana.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He was before Dwight.

Oh, yeah.

He took it seriously.

Yes.

No, he was great.

Um, when you've done this project, do you physically verify?

Because I know one of the cool things about this software is that you can literally stand somewhere in the cemetery and identify where you are, you know, what grave site you're at, and it should and it will tell you who rests there.

Are you going to physically we're not going to do that physically?

Uh that could be done afterwards.

First, we need to work with the records, but we do have um.

So Mike Gilbert, uh, a uh teacher at Spaulding High School, he and his wife went around the entire cemetery of Hope.

Uh and uh they uh took photographs uh of individual graves, uh, and he created these uh large aerial photographs with the numbers of every one of the plots.

His plot numbers don't match the city's plot numbers, but that doesn't matter.

We can figure out the system and how it works.

But he can be used as uh a means to verify the data that we're putting into the spreadsheets because he has uh a spreadsheet of his own uh with all the information from the headstone.

Uh and I've got to talk to him about the photographs he has of headstones as well.

Um but uh he only has a probably select headstones he took photographs of, but he has all his spreadsheets and his maps, and so that will be used uh as part of our process of making sure that the records line up with what's actually out there on the cemetery.

We won't be trekking around the cemetery uh this winter.

We won't have to, because we've got his records.

We also have um you know findagrave.com can help with verification uh as well.

And so we may use that.

It's been largely done by Vermonters who've gone up there and taken photographs of each of the headstones.

And it's as far as I know, pretty accurate.

But there'll be a searchable database, so we can even depend on members of the we can release the database and say we'll take a look.

And if you see an error, let us let us know.

Because there are, I mean, let's face it.

Since the 1800s, we've kept handwritten records.

Most all, I'm not aware of any uh CAD maps.

They're all hand-drawn.

All hand-drawn maps, but they were done by surveyors.

Right.

And we went up in the cemetery office of overhead.

Uh we found a bundle of maps this big around that was in the roll top desk, which Donnie didn't know about.

Uh I don't know if you did.

No, because it was buried under all those.

Exactly.

We climbed over boxes to get into it, and it's like there are some amazing maps in there, which are early versions of the ones that Donnie's still using now.

Uh and so uh that it's a great base map.

And we have to share those first thing in January with SEMSIT so they can begin the process of laying out uh their maps over top of the aerial photographs of uh the cemeteries and try to get them to line up so that the boundaries are right and the plot numbers are correct.

Uh and so that'll be their job in January.

We'll digitize all the content.

Uh and they're all in great shape.

That was the amazing part.

Because they were in that roll top desk and probably have been in there since the 1970s.

Uh and no one touched them.

And what do we do with the maps when we're done?

So they'll all be put into uh archival boxes and they'll be put on the shelf back up in the cemetery office upstairs.

Or maybe the history center.

Probably not.

No, I mean there are some things that you can't, you know, that you can't replace.

Um they'll be digitized.

Um accurately, you know, even though they're three foot wide, we've got a scanner that'll be able to scan those at high resolution, so uh they'll they'll be available.

Um back to the originals may not be necessary, um, but only in the case of something strange that's happened in the scan.

So I do have a sort of relevant question to that, um, which is that the space they're going back into in the cemetery office, uh, I understand there's only one window, so light's not as much of a concern, but climate control security access.

So security definitely has to be a padlock and a key hanging on the wall.

Yeah.

So not secure anymore now.

Because there's also an inner room.

As you go upstairs, there's a an inner room, and then there's the outer room facing the street with the window in it.

So we can put them in the in that inner room.

There's no light coming in there at all.

It's a very dry space.

And uh it gets a modest amount of warmth from the heat coming up from the lower floor.

Okay, so 100%.

No.

Okay.

Yeah, that's fine.

And it's in the shade, so it doesn't get hot in that building, which is good.

So literally, I don't think we don't have anywhere else where we could possibly strike.

And although I mentioned Cheryl, she's like, no.

No, yeah, that's and and realistically, it's um, you know, we do have so individual deeds are recorded.

So we do have individual deeds in the land records here in City Hall.

Um it's really neat to see the original documents, the original maps, but in terms of their other than history, and I value history, I think we all do.

They really, once they are digitized and the work is done, they really serve no purpose other than interesting history.

Well, sometimes those digital records become corrupted.

Uh and so if you need to go back, plus higher resolution uh imagery may be necessary in the future uh for scanning it uh usable uh format today.

Right.

But the computer records don't.

Will not they don't corrupt the records themselves.

Open and close every computer record, especially if they're JPEG files, um, they will become data.

No, I mean the the database itself, which is the most important thing, which will tell you who rests there, who purchased it, what the what the number is, you know, those are permanent.

And the so once those records are established and we've scrubbed them of all the errors, um, they're really you know the JPEG files themselves, the digital records really don't serve a purpose because the legal records are already in City Hall.

And I'm saying I'm not saying a purpose for purposes of the city, which is you know, our purpose is who has rightful ownership of that plot.

Not uh believe me, I I love the maps, I love the history.

I love looking at old documents.

Um, but that's not really the purpose of this exercise.

Yes.

So just some additional follow-up questions while we're on the sort of subject of preserving historic records and and um the original things.

I would be interested if if in the course of this sort of reviewing all of these records, there may be some sort of records that actually maybe belong in the clerk's vaults that are not necessarily legal records, but are sort of early documentation of the cemetery deeds and things like that.

So it would be there are definitely cemetery deeds that are up there that shouldn't be up there.

Yeah.

And in addition, early, I don't know, it sounds like there's quite a lot in there, like correspondence related to the founding of the cemetery.

There may be some additional materials that are not cemetery records.

Association committees, uh, we found some of those, a stack of volumes that are all handwritten from the early 1900s.

Uh, and so each of these record sets will be placed in different boxes, organized, inventoried, uh, and so then city council can decide these documents need to be here within City Hall, or they're fine up at the uh cemetery office.

There's also records that are uh probably going to have to be dealt with um by uh Cheryl.

Uh in that we found payroll records.

What, 1950s?

Yeah, we found payroll records from employees who are now residents of the and we found uh records for uh topsoil and other deliveries of materials going back to the 70s.

That's gonna be separated.

Someone else can make a decision as to what they want to do with it.

That will not be digitized.

The things that will be digitized of those records that relate to what's necessary for SEM sites to do their job.

Yes.

Sorry, I have so many questions.

Uh are you gonna create finding aids for the non-SEM site material?

No.

Okay.

I'm gonna create well, basic inventory.

These are payroll records.

Got it.

Got it.

Someone can make a decision about them.

These are invoices for things that were done at the cemetery.

We will make piles of those.

Um, out of the piles that are on the floor.

You're gonna find something really neat.

Well, isn't it?

I don't know if it's going to be a sketch from one of the artists from one of the memorials, a sketch from an artist that that we all read about uh, you know, in in our local history.

We found the original drawings for the gate.

For the gates.

Yeah.

For cemetery.

So there's, you know, and things like that, those can't go.

So those are going to the Vermont History Center.

Okay.

Sorry.

No, I mean, because there's some things that you that you you just can't replace.

And so I think you're going to find, I mean, obviously, this is a huge benefit to the city uh to finally get these records digitized and memorialized.

Um, but you're going to find some really neat stuff.

Uh so when you do, it'll be a lot of fun to look at it.

Any, yes.

So ahead.

You're nerding out.

I I get it.

Scott's Scott's worked with me for years.

Uh this is not news to him.

Um, does SEMS sites serve as a digital digital asset management system?

And if not, are you good what digital asset management system are you going to use to sort of manage the the scans and the files that are created?

So we're not coming up with the system to manage those files.

What we're going to do is uh simply have folders for each of the record sets, uh, and following what Cheryl's request, uh, you know, how we label those in terms of file names uh and that information will be set up based upon her desires.

Uh and then uh someone in the future could take those digital files and do something with them to make them accessible outside of someone coming and um getting access to the hard drives, which I'm putting all the data on.

The city's already got two hard drives uh that are large enough to store all that information.

And as we are collecting it on a regular basis um every few days, uh we'll be backing everything up.

So we'll be scanning tens of thousands of pages a day.

And will that be so will that be online?

So if someone literally wanted to go online and take a look at it, someone else could decide we could.

I mean, I think upload it.

You know, I think that would be cool.

I think to have multiple copies, maybe sorry, keep employing the history center, but to have a you know files accessible at the maybe on the history center webpage.

So that's why yeah, I was asking about a digital asset management system.

That's that's beyond the scope of what the would manage would help manage that.

Uh where you could click on plots, determine who's buried there.

You could also do uh research uh on the website, type in someone's name, it'll tell you exactly where they're buried.

Uh it will show you within the map uh the locations which don't have burials that are currently available for purchase.

Does SEM sites provide an ability to add a file to uh an entry?

They can, but that's not been requested of it at this point.

We'll be able to, as new plots are purchased, we're gonna be able to add all that information in.

I guess what I'm saying is is if you scanned records related to a certain plot, could you then knock them down to a low res PDF and attach them to that record so someone searching the some sites could then see the historic record that's related to that?

It can be done.

Same with photographs of the uh memorials uh on each plot.

Um at this time though, what the museum is doing is we're providing a reference that tells you exactly which record set we got the information from, but not relative to one piece of data within the long record.

Um, but it's just gonna say um that within the notes.

Oh, by the way, you can find uh information about this particular individual in these record sets.

Yeah, and I think it's as Tom mentioned, we're gonna I think moving forward, that's gonna be the practice, which is when there's new burials or new purchases or whatever, we'll we'll start using those capabilities.

And then that's something Scott will give us the tools to be able to perhaps on on you know, in the future go back and add those to the the records that we already created in some site.

That's something that a you know cemetery committee volunteers could do because they would be, you know, we would be maybe getting one specific document attaching it to one specific record.

Oh, this SEM sites has a module where you could upload the photographs of each of the we didn't purchase that one at that the initial purchase, but it has that module.

So I'm I'm just gonna make an educated guess that there are other modules where you could look up the actual records themselves.

Yes.

Um so with the question with the comment about um as you move forward, like where's the point in time where you stop and you say this is where Scott stops and this is where we start?

Like what is that point in time?

My estimation probably be when we make the site live.

Okay, so then it like okay, Scott will keep working on it.

The Green Museum will keep working on it until okay, now we go live yours.

Okay.

Then from that that point, any new purchases will go directly into the site.

And by the city employees, by city employees.

Okay.

Okay.

The plan is to go live July 1st.

Yes.

Sometime right in that next summer or something.

They're hoping to have all the current historical records on digitized and uh have the master spreadsheet for SEM sites for all three cemeteries to be loaded up by May 1st, May 15th, but the latest, uh, so they can do their job.

Fantastic.

Uh sir, Eileen, is there anything you'd like to add?

Well, I just think we were very lucky that we found them.

The first time you started talking about it, we were like, oh, this is so.

Well, we're fortunate in a lot of respects.

We're fortunate that Mr.

Cozy blessed the city with his tremendous gift because I don't, I mean, honestly, in terms of you know, the city's priorities, um, you know, to allocate a hundred plus thousand dollars to um to computerized document, digitize the records of the cemetery.

I mean, I wouldn't have seen that happening in my lifetime.

Um there's a lot of other priorities, not that we don't honor the folks at hope, not that we don't value hope, but there's a lot of other priorities in the city.

So this is exciting.

You're gonna find some cool stuff, mark my words.

Call me when you do, because I want to see it.

Um council.

So if there's no other questions or questions from anyone in the audience, a uh motion to approve the COSI fund allocation to support cemetery records digitization project would be in order.

So moved seconds moved and seconded.

Is there any discussion?

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

Aye.

And those opposed, thank you.

The motion carries.

Thanks very much, gentlemen.

Thank you, ladies.

I appreciate it.

Okay, council.

We will move on to uh the second reading.

This is actually warrant for 6 30.

We're a little bit late, but no one has come or gone during that period.

Uh this is the second reading uh warned for 6 30 p.m.

ordinance 2025-03 nuisance properties.

Gentlemen, anybody want to come up and touch this one with a 10-foot pole?

And I can start sort of summarizing the mayor from the first reading.

Um we um we had our first reading on this, the council had held the first reading on November 18th, 2025.

Um, and I the packet included the marked up um ordinance language um and all the changes um that were made between the first reading and the second reading were indicated in uh in red text and red strikeout.

Um I I provided the council with a high-level summary of what those changes were.

So besides, you know, besides the typographical or technical uh edits that we put in, um the the more substantial changes were in section 26-2 of the ordinance, um, which was to uh include a clause that the ordinance shall not violate sh shall not be interpreted to violate the Fair Housing Act, Vermont Fair Housing Act.

Uh uh Vermont Fair Housing and Public Accommodations Act, uh the Violence Against Women Act, or the American with Disabilities Act.

And that was a suggestion of Councillor Spaulding.

Um section 26-3 um had some definitional changes.

One uh which came up um at the council discussion at the first reading was to clarify that for buildings with four or more units, citations uh would be counted at the dwelling unit.

So, as you know, the structure of the ordinances uh number of citations triggers a potential uh classification as a nuisance property.

And the question came up what happens if you know it's it's one particular unit in a building, and and so this is a definitional change we made to address that.

Um also in that set in the definition section, uh uh there's clarifications that acts or calls for service related to sexual assault or medical emergencies are not counted uh in the number of citations that would trigger a designation.

That was also uh a change uh suggested by Councillor Spaulding.

Um we redefined the enforcement uh mechanism for this ordinance um for from the code enforcement team, which is defined elsewhere in ordinance to the nuisance property enforcement team.

Um and the difference here was that the code enforcement team is the manager and the code enforcement officer and the chief code enforcement officer, which is actually the fire chief.

Um the enforcement team we've suggested for the ordinance in this draft is the nuisance property enforcement team, which includes manager, fire chief, and the police chief, just because there was there's sort of a it's sort of a three-pronged approach to this ordinance, so we thought that this was a more appropriate uh team to be uh enforcing the ordinance.

Um and then in section 26-5.

Um we uh as as suggested, uh this was a staff change.

Um we clarified the methods for delivering notices um under the this ordinance to be consistent with the minimum housing ordinance, which allows for um you know the a lot of the the people that are landlords or owners we know, and and uh either Nick knows or or or um police department may know, and so we we included things like email communication, it's which is something that allowed is allowed under the minimum housing um ordinance uh uh as well.

Uh we also um I did check with the city attorney uh and we included language that provides that a hearing may be held in executive session um to the extent permitted by the state's open meeting laws, but the uh city attorney has opined that in their opinion most of these hearings would be held in open session.

Um so we do allow the we permit it.

Um and this was something that Mayor you had brought up, so it's permitted, but only to the extent that it's allowed under uh under the state's open meetings law.

Um we eliminated also in this section references to specific remedies that the council could take.

This was also suggestion by Mayor Lozon, which I think was uh made sense as well.

This this gives the council more latitude to uh make informed uh decisions and appropriate uh actions um or corrective actions uh in response to a hearing.

Um and also um I believe this was also the last uh change was I think just as a product of the discussion broadly was to allow the council to consider uh property owners' reasonable efforts to take corrective action when they when the council makes its decisions following a hearing.

So um those are the substantive changes um that we've uh brought forward.

Um I think pretty reflective of the conversation and comments we received um and the the team is here uh and I am here as well to to answer any questions.

I think um, you know a really good way to explain.

I think uh I can't take credit for this was actually Chief Cushman's explanation, but we've we've talked a lot about the situation table recently, and one of the ways that we think we would do this, implement this ordinance is as a situation table for properties, right?

And one of the ways that we think we would do this, implement this ordinance is as a situation table for properties, right?

So the situation tables for individuals who need assistance interventions maybe have become troubled.

Um and so this is a similar approach for a property that may have fallen into similar circumstances.

So one way we envision implementing this is uh every other week, um, you know, myself and the team here in the room would would meet just you know, just like they do at the situation table and say, okay, police, where have you been in the last week?

Um fire, where have you been for you know, EMT calls that are you know concerning, you know, if there's anything in Nick's world that's relevant as well, we would take that into account and we would start to see patterns and we would sort of take um action in that regard.

So I think one really important thing um in the ordinance that um not sure how much we talked about at the first reading, um, but I I think it's it's certainly the intent is that um you know it it wouldn't a three citations doesn't automatically trigger a nuisance property designation, right?

So there may be mitigating factors, there may be um there may be landlords that are working towards corrective actions.

Um frankly they may be just minimal enough that it doesn't sort of trigger the whole process, right?

So I think the I just want to be very clear that um this doesn't mean if a property gets three calls in the next three months that they're automatically going to fall into this um purview and that you're gonna be holding hearings, because frankly, if we did that, that might be the only thing you do uh and that we do.

So um that's why I think the chief's explanation of you know, sort of talking about it as a situation table for properties was really a um really a good way to think about it.

Um this is really about um you know figuring out the biggest problems, the places where the most service calls are going, we're having the greatest issues, where frankly you might be hearing from your constituents the most about, right?

That's what this is intended to target.

Um and uh we think the the language really tries to uh really it does that, and that's certainly our intent with it.

Yes.

I have a few questions.

Um can you help me understand where when you switched it for um a building with more than four dwelling units, um what was the four?

Like what was the reasoning with four?

Um no no specific science behind it, just sort of trying to figure out a right size.

I mean, it could really be it could be two, it could be three.

If there was no um no particular science.

Because because if you let's say you're in a duplex and you if it's just one side of the duplex, yeah, or even just a triplex, and there's only one unit that's being problematic, it's it's really just that unit that's the problem, right?

Yeah.

You're not going to revoke the certificate of occupancy for the whole entire well, and and we certainly wouldn't revoke it.

Um that would be that would come at a hearing level.

Um we we would we would probably focus a cra a nuisance abatement plan specifically on that unit, certainly, if that if that was the case, yeah.

But just to be clear, could they?

Yes.

Right.

But I'm saying if the if the entire property is a nuisance property, sure.

But if it's just one unit that is the problem, then you're really just going to have a hearing with maybe the landlord and those or maybe those tenants, whatever it might be.

I I think that would be the the yes, that would be the intent.

Okay.

Um I think the the issue more is Councilor Spaulding is if if we get, for example, you know, you say you have a a four unit uh or a th a three unit, you start to get multiple calls for different parts of those units.

You you may you may want to trigger it even if it was a different unit each time, right?

Because you're you're starting to get a critical mass of problems at this site.

Right.

Um so it's a balance.

Um I think I I I wish there was a science to it, but it was sort of just uh uh a number that we thought would work and would give us some some room to operate.

Well that makes sense.

I appreciate that.

Um it depends largely on how the landlord engages, right?

You know, I mean I've dealt with this chief, I've dealt with this chief, I've dealt with Mr.

Copping uh, you know, in in my other career as a property owner.

Uh and the bar really isn't high.

As long as you engage on some level and say, yes, I will respond to that, um, you know, they're happy.

But to landlords who won't engage, yeah.

I mean, there could be a time where we look at that landlord and say, perhaps it's time to apply a little more pressure and actually revoke your certificate of occupancy on every unit.

Even though these two are not necessarily a problem, that wouldn't be to put pressure on the tenants to put them into crisis, but to simply engage the landlord and make sure the landlord understands you need to plan.

Well, that that was what my concern was, because if there are if there are you know uh tenants who are not a nuisance or they're not the reason, I wouldn't want to have them be out on the street because the landlord is.

And I don't think the manager or Mr.

Copping would want to do that either, and you wouldn't, and I wouldn't, but but you unfortunately with some property owners, you sometimes need a bigger stick.

Yeah, I I get that.

I get that.

Um my question, my second question is about um under 26-4, um, under I, it says if a mutually agreeable plan is agreed to, the performance of the plan shall become part of the enforcement record for the property, so on and so on.

If after the the um enforcement team has determined that the owner has complied with the abatement plan, then do they basically have a clean slate, like yeah, they would sort of start a new clock.

Reset.

They would reset, yeah.

They would start a new clock.

Okay.

Um and then um so under the part for 26.5 where it talks about if the property or I, if the property um is a rental unit or commercial property, it says order the property owner to cause the property to cease being a public nuisance property, and to that end order the property owner to perform necessary building or property repairs, maintenance, andor upgrades responsive to the nuisance activity.

So I'm confused because in my head I have an idea of what these nuisance activities are, but I don't understand how that would necessarily fix the nuisance that I'm thinking of.

So can you help me with that?

Repairs and maintenance or is that is that the specific question?

Yeah, like that you're basically saying to the property owner you have to perform necessary building or property repairs and maintenance or upgrades responsive to the nuisance activity.

Yeah, so that that could be it, and it's sort of referenced in that next section that was struck out as not as not as perhaps being too prescriptive, right?

So it could be um it could be uh security cameras could be a response to that, right?

So to make sure if there's if there's uh activities that are potentially illegal that a security can we might say you you should have security cameras here because we're we've been here for drug calls, right?

Something like that.

And so um the the other one is possibly the lighting as well.

So I I think a lot of those things council would be um similar to what was struck out.

I think it was wise to strike it out not to be too prescriptive and to tie the the council's hands.

Um, but that would be um part of what what what would be helping to abate the nuisances.

It may be part of it, maybe um to not allow certain guests to visit that property, right?

So if if if it's a guest of a tenant that's constantly being the problem, it's not somebody who actually lives there, it may be trespassing them.

Right.

And so I just was thinking, like, is this this isn't code enforcement?

That's a different thing.

But the way that I was reading it, I was like, that's not what we're asking for.

Correct, correct.

It would be it would be is it and it and it's it's confusing because a lot of what it might be is what was struck out, but that was only to not be prescriptive, but it might be you need to put some lighting here because this is dark and and you know, activities are happening here that are problematic, and it's and we think that the lighting will help it, right?

So we want you to install that, and we think that'll abate the nuisance activity in this particular spot.

I see, I see.

Okay, that's helpful.

And then what does the can you just walk me through what does it look like when you revoke the certificate of occupancy for a unit or property?

Like what's the time frame?

How does that work?

Does it give the tenants a chance to find another place to go?

Nick, you want to speak to that?

Because there's you got to come up here, sorry.

Because there are different ways to do it, and it depends on the severity of the offense.

So Nick, I'm sure you can speak to that.

So revoking occupancy is the highest level of severity of anything that we can do.

Um generally, depending on what's going on in the building, we'll predict what the timeline may be.

Uh in the fact of we had a building that a structural engineer told us was best suited for demolition, you had 30 days to get out.

Um, and I was doing my best to give someone a roof over their head while still taking into consideration what's my liability on my back if something's to cave in on them.

Um if it's smaller items, it's gonna be harder and there's gonna be more of a snowball effect to get to that point.

Um I could foresee us being able to extend that as long as as the mayor has said, we're being engaged, we're fine trying to find a place.

Who are you talking with?

How are we gonna get to this point?

Um, which most of the other entities that would help folks find housing are reaching out to us saying, Well, why are these folks looking for housing?

Can you confirm this for us?

Okay.

But so there would be enough time for them to find another place, hopefully.

Yeah, depending on the severity.

I mean, to be clear, maybe not.

But if you have, I mean, think about this.

You have and Mr.

Copping has seen this.

You have a landlord who doesn't have adequate, he doesn't have any smoke or fire detection, you know, measures.

In other words, it it just a life safety nightmare.

I wouldn't want your job.

Because you gotta sit there and say, okay, I have people at risk.

If the building catches on fire uh in the middle of the night, there is no detection.

Nobody's gonna get a warning.

Um the building is cold.

So what's worse, taking someone out of a dangerous situation or leaving them without a roof over their heads.

It's it's a lot of times these are exactly the choices that Mr.

Copping has to confront.

Right.

You know, it it's a dangerous situation that you don't want to that if Mr.

Copping was on the front end saying Officer Copping, excuse me.

Uh was on the front end saying, okay, this person is gonna move in there.

He'd be saying no, you can't move in there, but they're there.

Uh and and we all know how tight housing is, you know.

It it's hard.

Yeah, I just I'm I don't want to exacerbate our housing.

You don't, you're not.

You know the issue that we are already struggling with.

So that's that was my only question.

And then my last question, and thank you for entertaining all of my questions.

Um what are the it says on um 26 uh five under H.

The property owner or any person aggrieved by a city council decision finding your property to be a nuisance property may appeal that decision within 30 days of the date of the decision pursuant to the Vermont rules of civil procedure.

What does that mean?

They can send it to um uh they can send it, they can go to a court.

Um they can appeal to a court and and forget I'm just I don't the civil court, yeah.

The the city attorney spelled it out for me, but basically this is uh an appeal procedure through the judicial system.

Okay, they would go to superior through superior court.

Okay, I just want I just wanted to like understand what that actually meant.

Perfect.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Anything you'd like to add?

Um you're good, you're good with this as written, you've reviewed it, and you're you're good, Chief?

Good.

Chief, yeah, good.

Both chiefs, good.

Deputy chief, good.

Okay, council motion would be in order uh to consider this having been read twice and uh to adopt.

I think we need 30 days from application to adopt it.

So moved.

Thank you.

Is a second please 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, the motion carries.

And this has been read uh second time, and we'll move to adoption.

Uh council will move on to item 8D on the agenda.

This is the fiscal year 26 budget year-to-date update.

Mr.

Manager, it's all your and Christina.

And Christina.

How are you?

Come right up, please.

Welcome, Christina.

Her first uh her first chance here, our meeting with the city council.

You'll be spending a lot of time with her in the weeks and months ahead.

So sorry.

So I just want to say um, you know, we've been Christina's been what?

Three months.

August.

It was August.

So it's been great having Christine on board.

She's done doing a great job.

She um not only has had to learn a new job, um, which I think from what I understand has come with a lot of pleasant surprises and and and cool things.

Um, but she had to onboard somebody new in the office, uh a senior accounting clerk.

So um she's had her hands full and she's done a terrific job so far.

So um very happy that she can be here with us tonight and um very happy you'll get to know her more um that you'll get to know her more in the in the weeks ahead as we work on the budget.

So I'm gonna run through the presentation and Christina's here to um to add context and help me with um with any questions that come up um that I can't uh handle and and answer.

Um so the recap of the 20 FY26 budget, uh it was a 14.8 million dollar total expense budget, um, which was less spending than the previous year, which was pr pretty remarkable.

Um and we had of the 14.8 million dollars, uh about 10.7 uh of it was to be uh supported by uh property taxes.

And we, as we've done in in uh in the prior uh couple budgets, we came up with a lot of uh property tax relief, 396,000, and that's in the form of both savings, which is um anything from uh reductions and cuts and re-estimate.

So for example, last year we eliminated the bulky waste event, um, which was painful.

I know that that's one that many residents really like.

We eliminated funding for a position in Janet's office.

Um we also, you know, fuel savings, that's sort of a re-estimate.

We we look at the prior year's data um and if if we're spending less um then we budget less, which is which is great.

Um and then we also had some some uh $75,000 in new non-tax revenue, uh, which helps as well.

So together those things um helped us reduce the amount we needed to raise um via taxes.

So I think it was a it was a great budget, and uh and the voters thankfully supported it.

Um these slides you've seen so many times.

So I I still think it's so important to look at them because they they are quite telling.

Um most of our budget is fixed, uh right.

So that's if you can look here at the the big blue part of the chart um is our wages and benefits for our staff, which is uh about 70 percent, um, and then our discretionary spending, uh so our fixed costs.

There's another the the a 15 percent wedge of that are things we called fixed costs, which they're not necessarily mandated, but they're we pretty much have we have to have them.

Like it's we need phones, we need emails, we have to put fuel in vehicles, um, we have to buy sand and salt, right?

So they're not we don't no one's requiring us to do them, but like we kind of have to.

Um and then what's left is that uh discretionary wedge, which is the smallest wedge, uh well, equ equal to the fixed cost wedge, 15% of the budget.

Um that's where things like the bulky waste event lived, right?

And and so when when we do have to come up with savings, um we have that part really to work with.

You know, we can make some changes around the margins on the fixed costs, our wages and benefits are pretty, you know, they're they're what they are.

We you know, most of our our labor force is unionized with defined benefits, right?

So we can't really reduce them.

Um is that other municipalities in that area?

Very similar.

Very if you looked at this chart, if you looked at this chart for probably every government, local government, it probably looked just about the same.

Yeah.

Um then this chart sort of mirrors that, which is the, you know, it's it's also um tells a big story of of what we're working with, which is that uh most of our revenue is from local property taxes, right?

So um you look at that the biggest part of this chart again, um, and that's taxes and pilot payments, and that's 72%.

Um and then uh we have city generated revenue, which is the next biggest chunk, um, which is uh 22 percent.

Uh and that's things like the all the all the activities at the BOR, if anybody comes to comes to pay for permits or if they have a fine, anything of that nature, that's considered city uh generated revenue um or the cemetery deeds that we were just talking about.

That's also city generated revenue.

And that smallest wedge, we get very uh very small amount of our money comes from federal and state assistance.

So um, you know, so really fixed budget, um, you know, about 85% is pretty much a given anytime we start the process.

Um, and then most of that is being funded locally here by our taxpayers.

Um the FY26 budget conditions, um, red is a bad color.

So uh those were the conditions.

They were all red.

Um and some of the some of them because costs were going up, but other, you know, they were the arrows are moving in different directions, but red is bad.

Um 5% contractual wage increases.

So, you know, those are those are things that I know we negotiate and it's it comes with a cost, right?

It comes with an increased cost, but it's also we have to pay our people living wages and we have to be competitive.

And so that is a you know, we we accept it and we support it, right?

These are these are contracts that we agreed to um that I bring to you for approval, um, and they're both important to um make sure our employees can continue to afford to live here and that we can continue and they they they want to keep working here, right?

So um those are those are uh sort of self-inflicted but necessary costs.

Um the 18% increase in health care uh costs is just really unsustainable.

I think the year before that was in the 20s.

Um I we're looking I I know Christina started doing some work on the baseline budget.

Things are looking better this year, so we're hoping that it won't be nearly as as problematic to budget that in.

But the last two years have really really hurt us on the the healthcare side.

So um that that is really um needs to start sort of slowing down because it has taken up a big part of our spending.

Um in the 26th budget, we lost um we had the one-time uh one million dollars in assistance from the state that we lost last year.

Um and that's gonna be a theme throughout the the that million dollars is gonna explain a lot in the next couple of slides.

So there's some some funky numbers from the FY26 budget, but a lot of it comes down to that um one point million dollars, which was one time made from the state.

Um we have you know, our fund balance has been depleted due to flood expenses.

We're hopeful as we get FEMA reimbursements, we'll sort of rebuild that because we had a really healthy fund balance before the flood, but we had to prepay for all the we had to sort of pay up front for all the FEMA expenses.

Um and then we've you know we're in the course, it's it hasn't quite hit us yet, but we you know we are losing grand list value due to buyouts, which means that um the property tax burden gets uh spread around fewer property taxpayers.

Um so the uh final budget math last year um looked like this.

Um we had 396,000 in tax relief, uh which was through savings and new revenues, uh, and then we had a flat expense budget.

As I mentioned, we actually slightly slightly spent slightly less money this year than we did the year before.

That still resulted in a 6.3 increase in municipal taxes.

And the reason is that $1 million I mentioned.

We had to make that up because the year before that money was in our budget from the state.

When that goes away, the expenses don't go away, right?

Even though we cut spending by a couple by $70,000 or so, we still had to make up that one million dollars.

And that's why, even though we had basically a flat expense budget, um, we had an increase in taxes last year.

Um so the year to date um is is looking fine and healthy, nothing alarming here from the numbers that we've been running on the revenue side.

Um we've collected um $10 million, which is about 68% of the uh revenue budget, and on the expenses side, expenses we've spent about $5.7 million or about 38.6% of the budget.

Um and um we've spent about um you can see sort of the numbers between personnel, which is uh our people budget and our non-personnel budget, which is everything except the people.

Um so these are um you know, we're about 40 percent through the year, right?

So these numbers are tracking about right.

We you know the revenue number is high because we collect some revenues up front, and and that's what it accounts for.

And then on the expense side, you can see that the non-personnel services um that's a little bit higher than the 40 percent.

That's because we prepay some things at the beginning of the year, um, and so that's why it's reflected a little bit higher.

But um nothing, nothing really alarming here from these numbers as as we've been tracking it, and um and as we hit the 40 percent uh 40 percent mark of the of the fiscal year.

Um challenges on the horizon.

Um as I mentioned, the health care rates looking much better so far, four to six percent.

We're gonna sort of hold our breath on that.

It's much better than 18 and way better than 21.

Um again, we're roughly at five percent uh projected increase in the payroll cost, and that's driven by the contracts for negotiating.

Um, the grand list um grandless growth is is both I think challenge and opportunity.

Um, you know, we we're certainly gonna start to, you know, as as buyouts are completed, um that's gonna start that's gonna start hitting us more.

Um but there's also some exciting things um that will offset it as well, like the seminary street, um the Stevens branch apartments will help.

Um maybe not immediately, but that's also on the horizon and will will be uh helpful.

Certainly uh we'll talk about later today.

Prospect types will be a huge boon to property taxes again, not immediately but but on the horizon.

Um and then we we just we have continued and worsening accumulated maintenance needs.

You know we we spend we have to spend a lot of money to um to upkeep things and um you know things uh when we have to fix things um you know for our next our next big thing coming up is as I mentioned the rooftop units at the public safety building.

Uh we bought three of them, you know, in the 40s, thousands of dollars worth of costs.

Those aren't gonna get cheaper, right?

So we have to do them because it's not gonna get cheaper to wait a year to do them.

They're gonna only get more expensive, and in the years that we don't do it, we're gonna spend more money calling in service providers to come fix them because they're not working.

And so when you add it all up, it just it's it's not it's not wise to not fix the problems that we see and and we can address.

So you know, it's not unusual.

We're you know, this is it's an old city, it's an old city with old infrastructure and and buildings that are old and and need love, and so um those things will continue to to be expenses for us.

We've you know we've we've uh taken on a lot of them.

Um but as as we finish one, another one, you know, is is is sort of lurking right behind it.

So uh those things uh will not go away.

But again, it's not just challenges, there's a lot of exciting things that that are on the horizon.

You know, we we I mentioned that the managers report that we're you know, we're this close to signing rearch for the odd improvement.

That's gonna help us, right?

That's grant money that's gonna take a huge chunk of accumulated maintenance needs off the table with federal money.

So um it's not all gloom and doom.

There's there's certainly we know what the challenges are, but um there's also pathways to to address them.

Nicholas, yeah.

Uh where are we right now with labor contracts?

We are currently um in negotiations with AFSME, which is which expires in on December 31st.

Uh, and then the next contract that is uh expiring is the fire department contract, which expires in June.

We have not we won't begin negotiating with them until sometime in the spring.

Yeah, thanks.

Um and then uh on the budget development process.

So uh as I mentioned, you're gonna get to see a lot of Christina.

These are all the dates you'll be able to see Christina uh in the next few months.

So we've we've laid out a budget, uh, uh a time frame here in January at our next scheduled meeting, January 6th.

Christina will be back and we'll present sort of our baseline budget.

And this is this is sort of I hate to call it bare bones, but it's sort of um our basic information budget.

It's Christina taking all the things we know are um are gonna happen, like the the scheduled increases in wages, our projected health care increases, um, some sort of some givens that we we know are coming down the pipeline that we really think need to be done.

And we'll present that to you and we'll we'll sort of tell you what that means numbers wise and um and what we'll be looking for the council there is sort of broad direction on what would you like to see uh as as the staff sort of digs into the numbers um and what do you want us to bring back to you?

So it would be good to have ideas on targets, ideas on priorities, ideas on services, those types of things is what we'll be looking for on the sixth, because on the week of the 13th, um we'll be going into the staff budget congress.

And so I've mentioned this before.

What we do is I lot and Council Bergeron had the pleasure of two or three of these.

I don't know.

Yeah, three three.

Not that you're counting.

I was really excited.

So Councilor Bergeron knows this, but uh we lock everyone at alumni hall for a day, and we go line by line.

And I know that line by line is a is a cliche that everyone uses when they talk about budgets, but we go line by line.

Um and everyone's in the room, and um, and the reason is because that way we we get feedback from a broad set of of people, we get ideas from everybody, um, and and if we have questions, they're right there to help us sort of navigate it.

So we go there um and and that's why the meeting on the sixth is so important to get your feedback because we go in there, we lock everybody in, and where we start off is where is what we hear from you um in terms of priorities and targets.

Um the week of the 27th, um, or the meeting of the 27th, uh, we would plan to bring the um partners in.

So that includes um the the Barrie Partnership, Aldrich Library, and Barrie area development.

They would come in and talk about their budget requests for the coming years, and then we would do maybe one or two department head presentations.

Um on the meeting of February 3rd, we would uh finish up the department head presentations and then we would talk about the budget survey results.

Um and then the following week, this uh February 10th, we would come with sort of a you know proposed budget, which uh really is a document that incorporates um you know works off of that baseline, incorporates all that feedback we've gotten uh in all those previous meetings, meetings, and sort of present it to you and and and how we reached either a target or how we try to address service priorities or or um general priorities.

Um and then um as I've told the council, but I guess it'll announce now I'm gonna be gone for several weeks to Australia.

So we have a little bit of a gap um in the schedule here where we would come back to you at my first meeting back, which would be March 17th, March 24th, March 31st, um, and we would just focus on the budget, right?

So we would pick up where we were, we would take your feedback from that meeting on February 10th and sort of build it into the next budget and and just sort of cascade it down, right?

We until we refine the product.

Um and then the final budget has to be warned on April 7th for to go on the ballot for town meeting day, which uh this year is May 12th.

So that's our um process, that's our year to date.

Um Christina, is there anything you want to add?

I'm just flipping back to the year-to-date numbers, anything in particular.

I know we're we're not alarmed, we're we're okay with with how things are looking.

Um and Christina, you know, we've also had the the benefit of um having Carol back in the building, which is such a huge help because Carol's been um was a huge player, and when we develop budget, she knows um she knows the movement of all these things, and I know she's been a big help um to me and Christina as as we've transitioned um from from Don, who also knew this stuff inside and out.

So anything you would add, Christina, that I left out or great job, thank you.

Council, questions?

Yes.

Uh so last year we had projected a number of a new discussed it briefly in this presentation.

New revenue opportunities, and those were I remember some of them being a little experimental, a little bit hoped for.

Do you happen to know how any of those have panned out?

Um the the biggest one that well, one of the one of the ones we were hopeful for was the passport processing fee, which didn't happen.

Um we contacted the um the State Department had been looking for additional passport processing sites, and we applied and Cheryl went forward and did the um paperwork, but it apparently we were too close to Northfield.

So they were not interested in us, unfortunately.

So I know that was the one that I know didn't pan out.

I think everything else um, you know, it's some there they're always pretty um we're always pretty certain about those because we need to count on them.

So I know one of them was um we we were trying to take uh earnings from the uh the opioid settlements and we're applying those to general fund because our fire department responds to opioid induced um medical emergencies.

So we think that's an appropriate use of those funds.

Um so those that that works out because we have the funding.

Um part of it was um the co the interest gained from the COSI trust um to help support some of the maintenance at the summit at Hope Cemetery, um, because that is specific to Hope.

And so that we know is certain because that's in the bank and we can count on it and it's using just the interest, which is great because then that generates more.

And then we that will be in this year's.

We plan to include that, yeah.

We would plan to do that.

So that'll be give or take.

I mean, that'll be a little bit of a bump because that should be around, you know.

Well, three.

I mean, we haven't spent much of the 3.4.

So that could be, you know, depending on what's our current rate of interest on defensive.

I think it's gotta be four-ish.

I would have to get back to the yeah, and I think Caroline.

No, no, no, no, no.

You don't need to, no, you don't need to.

I mean, it's probably four-ish.

And and Carol Carol gave me the number because it was um for the for um the the item for Scott.

She said the fund has earned about 300,000 in interest since it was created.

Cosy fund?

The COSI fund.

And we we just allocated 121 for um the digitization project.

Right.

So there's still but that's principal.

Yeah, not interesting.

Well, we were gonna do interest.

We're gonna do interest.

Oh, you were gonna do the interest.

Yeah.

But we do have a choice.

I mean, we could take the interest.

Yeah, I mean, in broad terms, the only thing I'm passionate about at this point is minimum 150,000 increase in paving.

Yep.

You know.

And anything more than five percent in terms of overall property tax increase, I'm gonna get weak in the knees.

Uh 3%, we're done.

Let's go home.

We're good.

So you know, and I know these are challenges.

Easier to speak in broad terms.

It will be a lot easier once we, you know, once we can see uh all of the numbers, and obviously, you know, the deferred maintenance is important as well.

But from what you know, I think we're all hearing from folks.

Um, you know, when they start looking at uh when they see that December 1st letter from the state, and I know our school district does not translate into that, um, they get more than a little concerned.

So yeah.

So I think our target would be five, and then we'd have to possibly make some hard choices from there.

Absolutely.

Yes.

Um thank you for this presentation.

It was really helpful.

I have a question, um, or I have a request.

When you you come back to talk about that um next year's budget, FY27, um, and you talk about discretionary spending.

You talk, I mean, wages and benefits, that's easy to understand.

You talk about fixed costs.

Can you talk, can you spell out what is in discretionary spending?

You don't have to point out.

Yeah, I can come up with a list, yeah.

Just so that people understand what that is and what we have to pay.

It's really important.

So one really big one, which is um which uh I think has been a really great success so far is recreation.

Yes.

Right.

And that's um, I think if you look at um, do we have to have a recreation department?

No, we didn't, and we didn't for several months, and I think that we I heard it, you know, and I think people felt it.

Um there's great things.

Right.

Um, yeah.

Um I think just so people can understand what the things are that we have and we sort of take for granted that is discretionary.

And and and one thing we took away last year from discretionary, which which is you know has what is painful, is gonna be painful for people who didn't realize it at the time is the bulky waste event, which was so popular that we every year had to get more dumpsters for.

Um and and that's one that you know that's why I and I I think that was one that I added to the survey this year because I've heard from people about it, and it'll be interesting to see what the feedback is on that.

Um but yes, the discretionary spending oftentimes are the things people love most about the city.

Right, right.

Right.

And so um I I'll be happy to bring that list.

Yeah.

Um, my other question is when talking about the FY27 budget development process, I think it will be really important for us.

Um difficult but important for us to also incorporate where and when we are getting notification about our reappraisal.

Because I think people are going to have a lot of they're they're going to feel very much in the dark until they get some kind of um idea of what their property is now been reappraised at.

And I went through this with Barry Town when I was sitting on the school board, and basically people were saying, we don't want you, we don't want any increase because we don't know what our tax rate's gonna be yet.

We don't want we don't know what our reappraisal is gonna be yet.

And they were just pushing back on everything.

So I just say that just so that we can understand that and maybe plan for it in some way.

So, you know, if your house is currently assessed at this, but then it gets assessed at this, and the tax rate drops to this, then it's it's a very complicated and or not complicated, but there's a lot of moving parts to it, so we have to just be careful.

Agreed.

Thank you.

That's a good point.

Are we gonna have that?

I remember I'm thinking back to the uh to their plan.

Are we going, you know, recall that we were going to have I think we're gonna have preliminary results by May of 26, but I don't remember that we were gonna have them by April.

Which is challenging because we vote on it.

We have to vote.

Yeah, it'll be on the ballot before we may know the definitive, but yeah.

Right, and that's that could be challenging for us.

And you know, in virtually every appraisal, even the partial appraisal that we did the last time, you know, most people didn't see it.

It was sort of like, okay, everybody's value went up by 30%, and on average, everybody was right in there at 25 to 35 percent.

So there were very few properties that could say, well, the average was 30 percent, but mine went up 50 percent, unless you really made improvements to your property.

Um so no, it's a good point.

I mean, we'll do the best we can, but I think we have to find a way to explain to people because I kept trying to explain it when I was sitting on the school board, that just because your the value of your home was going up doesn't mean we're it could be that your tax our tax rate will go down, like just trying to under how have people understand that it doesn't mean you're gonna have this, this is the property tax rate we're paying right now, and your appraisal is gonna go up, and so take that number and multiply it by that, and that's what you're gonna owe.

That's not how it works.

So, how can we explain that to people so that they understand the possibility of what may happen to their tax bill?

It's a good point.

Yeah, we'll do our best to recall when it was I'll I'll get that for you.

I'll send it out to the council.

I'll look it up tomorrow.

But boy, I'm thinking it was like it was like May.

It was you know, okay, it's Murphy's Law.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay, they're gonna send it out on the 11th of May.

Okay.

Yeah.

That's when it's going out.

So uh any other comments, questions, council?

A little bit, you know.

I mean, if you were like I said, infrastructure for me uh is important to get that.

Um, you know, I remember a time when we had that fund upwards, and this is 10 years ago, we had that fund upwards of 750,000, which adjusted for inflation today would probably be close to a million.

I'd like to see the council make a commitment to get it back up in the next two or three years to that $750,000 level.

And I think we're at six and six and six, six mid-600s, I think.

Yeah, so we're 650, so another 150 would put us at eight.

And when I say 750, that's kind of adjusted for inflation.

So we should really be closer to 900,000 to a million dollars.

So if we could do if we could, you know, do that, if you could just plug that into your numbers.

Absolutely.

And um, and then obviously we'll have the um, you know, we don't know exactly who will be on uh voter assistance, but we got a pretty good idea.

Yeah, that that won't change.

So that's not gonna change things much either.

Yes.

This is kind of in the pure brainstorming vein of things.

Sure.

But we have talked uh in some previous years about putting an amount in that is just for flood resiliency projects, whether it's it could be part of our infrastructure budget that is specific to implementing some of the stormwater system suggestions we're getting or ordering more studies and things like that.

We've pretty much effectively burned through the ARPA funding and other things like that that we've been using to fund those.

So it would be just pure brainstorming curiosity what that would look like in the budget, and it may push us more than we want to go.

Um, but I would like to get us there eventually, and just knowing what it looks like would start.

Yep.

And then we'll we'll also see the effects of uh the legislature did pass some relief for flood-affected municipality who lost grandless value.

So we'll we haven't seen that money yet.

No, no, yeah.

So we will.

Um, so fortunately not all of the group, but that even that sunsets.

It yeah, it sort of phases out over time.

Yeah.

I think it's 10 years, I believe, yeah.

Yeah.

Any other questions, council?

Next year.

Yeah.

You'll get I mean, it's really not necessary for you to react this evening.

You'll get, as you can see from the timeline, you're gonna get plenty of bites at the apple.

Um, thank you.

Thanks for watching.

Thank you, Christine.

Nice seeing you again.

Thank you.

Uh Council, we will move on to item eight E on the agenda.

This is the flood resiliency plan update.

So in the managers bringing the PowerPoint up.

Um, but this is uh to remind folks this had come out of some conversations that we had very early before the flood resiliency plan even existed, about um how we might create additional capacity in the city's staff that could be used to sort of help us uh navigate the flood resiliency challenges specifically, and it has become in the next iteration of the plan.

How do we think about creating additional capacity across um all of city staff to make sure that residents are getting the services they need, and also that we continue to build a resilient staff because we know that when we flood again, our staff will be on the front lines of it.

Um so make sure that we are appreciating them and adequately resourcing them.

So the managers talk through that tonight.

Thank you, Councillor Gustin.

And yeah, first slide uh gets you the text from the the plan itself, um, which which was summarized by Counselor Gustin.

So I'll move on to um the next slide, which is I think another really important thing to do on this is yes, there are challenges, but there's also really a lot of progress to celebrate.

Um we have a really improved HR function in the city um with Jean Galliano, and um we've we're doing much more aggressive recruitment, which has resulted in really much shorter vacancies.

So just to give you an idea, Christina who was just here, um we had uh zero day vacancy between Don's departure and Christina's start.

Like they dawn ended on a Friday and Christina started on a Monday.

That was terrific.

Um and our permit administrator, um, it's it was uh vacant for 30 business days.

Um so not counting weekends, right when they wouldn't be here, but just 30, 30 days where we didn't have a permit permit administrator, um, which some of you might recall that position um was vacant for a long time before we got, you know, Michelle it was vacant because Michelle went to be the record uh and we hired Robin.

Um but between Heather and Michelle, it was over a year.

I think it was over a couple years even.

Um and so that's you know, that went down to 30.

That was terrific.

Um and our assessing clerk after Catherine retired, Catherine um, you know, 40 years in the city, retired, and her replacement was um was in his seat in 18 business days.

It would have been even shorter.

Um, but I think Janet was out of town for Thanksgiving, so we didn't want to start them until the the next week, right?

So it would have it would have been that one was even longer than it it could have been, right?

Um so these are great successes.

These are long-term vacancy, and and that that's the next bullet, which is our you know, filled our long-term vacancies with the assessor, um, which was vacant for many years as well.

Um, and they Carly and Larry have been doing a great job.

You got to see them at the last meeting.

Um we're also uh we found some really good people that were promoting um and and were cross-training staff were applicable.

Um and and the promoting of these rising stars, um, for example, I think you've you've all had the chance to meet um many of you had the chance to meet Jake at the water plants and the wastewater plant.

Um, you know, rising stars now superintendent of the plants, and that's built y that's growing a bench here, right?

That's that's developing people who can do these jobs long term, who can learn in the jobs and grow in the jobs.

Um and they're you know, the the plant is also a great example of where we're cross-training staff to be both at the water plant and the wastewater plant.

Um so those are great things that are happening as well.

And we're we're getting we're seeing more applications being submitted for our jobs.

I mean, there was a time here where we wouldn't get any applications for positions.

We would they would be sit they would sit uh idle and and we wouldn't get candidates or they wouldn't be you know good enough candidates, or they didn't have um you know, they didn't have the right certifications and and now um I think the positions are becoming more attractive.

Um we are you know we're we're we've part of that has been us, and and I I thank the council for for approving this.

Uh our last contract with USW, we increased benefits for for early in the career.

And one of the problems was that um, you know, many of our labor contracts um the benefits at the early stages of the positions were quite low and the benefits for the very tenured employees were quite high.

And I understand that those benefits grow over time.

Um but frankly, what been happening a lot of times is there was very little incentive for the people on negotiating teams to negotiate higher benefits for entry-level positions because they didn't get that, right?

And so that became the city's priority to increase benefits, which was a strange position to be in, but we got more vacations, more pay time, and and even those though those are benefits that we end up paying for, they're valuable because people want to work here.

A lot of people didn't want to come start to work here because they, for example, didn't get vacation for a year, right?

That no one wants to do that.

So there is a lot of progress to celebrate sort of up and down the organization in terms of our capacity.

So despite those recent uh successes, you know, the challenges haven't gone away, right?

So one of our biggest challenges is that our recruitment is really limited to candidates who are within commuting distance of Barrie.

We can't, you know, we're not in a position to recruit from out of state, um, from out of the region.

You know, even Chittenden County gets a little concerning because you don't know the commitment level.

Um so because of the housing challenge, because it's so difficult to move these days, you can't just pick up and move.

Um we are we're limited to our sort of central Vermont community to find people that can do the jobs that we offer.

Um we are competing with wages offered by other municipalities in the private sector, so that's that's an ongoing challenge.

So for example, um anyone with a CDL is you know, can work wherever they want.

Uh and and private companies have the ability oftentimes to either offer more money, offer bonuses, offer things that we can't do because we're we're bound by by union contracts.

And so um we are frequently um you know competing with with that and and other communities that can, you know, neighboring communities that can afford to pay more sometimes.

Um we also you know, we're challenged by the fact that a lot of the jobs uh that for the people that we employ requires you know, they're very specific, they require certifications, uh licenses.

So you can't, you know, if you want to work at the wastewater plant, um you're gonna need to get past tests.

Yeah.

Our police force they seem to we pay on a higher side, though, in this area.

Um they they have been, yeah.

I mean, we we we just negotiated that contract last year, and they got um they got it a healthy increase.

Um we're still below, for example, Montpelier, which which is I look at the overtime and they're making bucks, but that's short, but yeah.

Yeah, I think we we we made efforts to bring them up and a lot of the you know, on the police contract as well, a lot of the increase also went earlier on in the in the steps because again, it was a situation where um we were having trouble recruiting at the bottom, not at the at the top of those ranges.

Yeah.

Um then uh so yeah, so licenses, you know, you you can't you you have to be able to pass state certification exams, licenses to um to be able to continue to work at our plants, for example.

Um and and I think the other challenge uh is that we're we're pretty minimally staffed, right?

We we don't have there's there's there is no fat in the organization.

Um so we're often unfortunately in a reactionary versus proactive mode, right?

So there's a lot of things that we want to do that we'd like to do that would be good practice to do, um, that we just don't have the time for so because we're we're too often we're reacting to what's in front of us that day, right?

So that I think that's a situation where services suffer because we you know we have a lot of creative talented people who have great ideas for the things they'd like to do, um, but we we just we don't have the bodies to do it, and and and part of it is uh on the next slide, we don't have the time to do it.

And and when we last discussed the the staffing issues, and I think was really the the nexus for putting this in the in the flood resiliency plan was you know, talking mostly about the staff capacities sort of in in the city hall sector, right?

The the leadership sector of the city, um, you know, myself and the department heads.

Um and I talked then um you know that our capacity challenges is not that we don't have the right people, it's just that the right people don't have the time to do all the things we want them to do and that they should be doing.

And and a lot of that um there's a couple reasons for it that I've noticed, and one of it is that we we don't have middle management, right?

So when I just as a personal example, when I worked at the New York City budget office um as a deputy director, I had four assistant deputy directors below me, and they had unit heads and they had analysts, and you know, so I could focus on bigger picture things, and even my assistant deputies were focusing on bigger picture things.

You know, I've mentioned to you I'm recruiting lifeguards via text message, right?

Like that's that's that's what I do a lot of times, right?

In the summer.

Um, and so and and that happens not just to me, but uh, you know, Brian Baker in public works is is you know, verifying timesheets, right?

That in in an and maybe in a bigger organization, somebody would do for him, right?

And so when Brian's doing timesheets, he can't do engineering related work or or project related work, right?

Uh Chief Vail and you know does uh downtown patrols, right?

Which means he's not doing chief work, right?

So that's that's the that's where the the sort of the middle management comes in, is that um you know myself and the department heads end up doing, you know, not that any task is beneath anyone, but it's it's you know I don't think you're necessarily paying me to recruit lifeguards, right?

But that's what I end up having to do.

Um and then you know, this is reflective of staffing levels which have decreased in all but two departments.

The only department they've gone up is manager's office, and that's because we hired uh Chris to do IT and tests on the grant, right?

So that's the only that's the anomaly there.

Um but everyone else, you know, um again, talking about public works, there's an engineering tech position that became vacant shortly before I started that we've never been able to fill, right?

And that was that was somebody who did engineering tech work in-house that we don't have, we have to contract out if we need to.

Um but that's an example of a position that that um sort of uh was lost.

Um and and these minimal staffing levels, these bare bone staffing levels, they result in backlogs.

I think the best example of this, you you know, you we've seen is Janet, who you know had for many years wore several hats until you know I mentioned earlier we finally got her an assessor, um, but for many years she was the assessor of the planner and the permit administrator, right?

And so that naturally results in a in a backlog of work that takes time to climb out of, and then you have floods on top of it, which sort of push everything further back.

Um so those are you know, those are that's the real I think when we talked about this as in the context of the flood resiliency plan, it was how do we address sort of these issues here that are sort of city hall adjacent.

Um but the reality is that you know all of our departments um you know, this these staffing impacts are you know felt across across the city, right?

So in the police department, um what ends up happening um due to the staffing is there's there's scope creep.

So we're we're asking officers to do um work that is you know sort of outside their traditional roles sometimes.

Um there's insufficient staff to do things um like um a community service officer, which the chief has been really passionate about, or you know, downtown foot patrols or bike patrols, which I've heard they they were ended before I started, but I know we're very popular here as well.

Um fire and emergency services, emergency medical services is our only um fully staffed department.

Um but they have increased call volume, right?

The the calls go up, um you have overlapping calls, and that results in in excessive overtime and and and the uh you know reliance on mutual aid, for example, right?

So um so that's an impact there as well, even though they are uh technically fully staffed.

Um public works, you know, we have um we have smaller crews, we have smaller number of crews that can be deployed.

That means we get to fewer construction projects that that in the construction season, which is already pretty short, and that that sort of contributes to the deferred maintenance, right?

That's why you know if we had two more people in public works, that's another crew that can be out doing hydrants, for example.

Is the bare bones because you can't find the people or because we can't find the money to pay people?

Uh it's it's a little bit of both.

So we are so public works has three or four vacancies right now.

So they have three or four funded positions that that we struggle to find people for.

Now, even when they are fully staffed, um, I think we're still smaller than, for example, Montpelier's public works, which is comparable size and comparable need, right?

So you could you could do more, right?

So another crew just lets you do more more maintenance projects.

But it's both.

The reason I ask is that in little churches you often see this, you know, what you were calling the um creep of um scope.

And one of the things that I I often found myself saying when I was doing consulting work was you're paying your priest to do secretary work, you're paying a professional level salary to do this.

It would be cheaper to hire somebody to do that and correct.

And that's if if you could hire them.

If you can hire some of the things that they don't agree, I mean that is in my real life, that is the clients that I have don't say I pay too much in income taxes.

Uh they don't say the regulations are killing me.

Everyone is saying I can't find help.

And it doesn't matter what the industry, whether it's auto service, whether it's uh an accountant, whether it's folks at the history center.

I don't know of any employer, sizable employers right now who don't have open positions.

We are everyone is competing.

I mean, anybody want to be a bookkeeper?

Uh I have seven clients looking for a full-time bookkeeper right now.

In the exactly in the facilities department, you know, what the staffing means is we have to constrict scheduling, right?

And I think we all heard about that.

We we had to sort of shrink the hours at the BOR to make it work.

Um and what that means is they're less hours, right?

And that that upsets people who who are used to different hours at the rink.

Um and then planning, permitting, and assessing, I think you you know, you've heard about Janet's, you know, we she just she was drowning in work, and and I we've gotten her help.

Um, but again, there's you know the the lot the minimal staffing here means you know, sort of the opportunity cost of grants that we don't apply to, right?

Just because we we don't think we can manage them because we don't think we can write them.

Um and and you know, it it results in in in um in loss of customer service, right?

We we are just delayed in in getting to people who need permits um or or what have you.

So I think the you know I'm I'm I'm very realistic.

I'm not telling you that we should hire staff in every department, but what I'm saying is that um there would be sort of there would be benefits to not being at sort of this minimal staffing level.

Um and at every department there would be improvements in service to to the residents of of Barrie, right?

And I think one really important thing that as we talk about, we talked earlier about the budget.

Um one of the things that that at the staff level we'd like to do, and and I've started talking about the departments heads is creating and evaluating proposals for the council to consider in the context of this budget, right?

So if there are priorities of where we can add positions, and I'm very, very realistic.

Um I want to be very clear.

I'm not saying we add department or people in every department, that's not sustainable.

Um but if there are places where um the council believes that additional staff would help, that's we can bring you proposals that would do that and we can prioritize them based on where we think there's the biggest impact.

So for example, um, one area where I think it's really important is the planning department, where we eliminated a position last year um where we could probably um support an additional um person who's doing both permitting and zoning enforcement, right?

Which we we which we struggled to do because of the lack of capacity.

And so that might be an area where there's value in reevaluating and saying, do we put some money back in here to find someone who can do that kind of work, right?

Um another question that was on the budget survey that's out live is is and and I put it there because I hear a lot about it from from not just people up here but in the community is do we want some officers to do some downtown foot patrols, right?

Some some dedicated people who that is their job to be doing sort of some downtown community service um policing, right?

And that's something that the chief has been very passionate about and that we tried to do um, you know this this last summer and the summer before that with we had to do with overtime, right?

Which again we're at the um we're at the whim of officers who want to take those shifts and we have to pay extra for it.

But is there value, for example, in adding some staffing that would help us improve and provide that service that people like, right?

So those are the kinds of things we can talk about.

Um the department heads are working on it, um, and and we look forward to sort of chatting about um are there ways and and areas where we can prioritize.

Could it be in City Hall too?

You know, right?

Could it be a uh a more permanent um grant person, right?

We we had a great experience with Jim Levinsky went with the C D B GDR grants.

Um we saw what that can mean.

Um and that's another you know bullet too here is do we do we do it through contracted help, right?

Jim was a great example of something that worked out really well.

Um he did a great job writing those applications.

Um and you know that that you know is as much work as it took all of us, um having Jim on board really made it possible because I don't think otherwise we would have been able to do what we were doing to sort of do the the legwork on the grants and what Jim was doing was to turn it into beautiful words, right?

So um that's another way that we can we can sort of mitigate uh sort of the city hall level aspect of it.

Um and and one big piece which I've mentioned a couple times is um you know looking forward to advocating at the legislature for the extension of the grant that funds tests.

Um, you know, I think if if we're not successful, um we certainly think that it's important to continue that role in some capacity.

Um so that would become a cost if it doesn't get extended, but that's another way, that's a really good way for the state to sort of help us with our capacity issues by extending a grant that's just has a record, a proven record of of working and doing great things.

So there are ways to you know go about it and we we look forward to sort of a a good discussion on it as we uh get into the the budget cycle.

So thank you.

Questions?

Yes.

I wonder uh as you were talking about um Tess's position, um, I wonder if and the when we had the legislative priorities meeting last week, um is there a way for us to work with other communities that you know, like maybe we don't need a full-time you know, this kind of position, but we could work with Montpelier or Barry Town or Field or whatever.

Tess actually talked about that.

She's yeah that that if they were a little squishy on just you know, Tess could work with Barry and Montpelier.

Yeah, and I think both Tess and the manager had talked about that last week.

Yeah, no, but I was thinking that position but also are there other positions that may also allow for that kind of where we could share something that might be helpful.

There could, I mean, our our our our uh restriction would be it'd have to be non-unionized positions.

So if we shared um, for example uh a city hall level position or a grants coordinator position, um that that could be an option.

It would it would limit us to where it could happen, but it certainly would be an option.

And I I think that sharing services is a is a great thing to do in government.

I love doing it.

Um it's also the hardest thing to do though, um, because of the you know the differing expectations.

Um, but when we can make it work, it's it's terrific.

Okay.

Cool.

Thanks.

Yes.

Well, I might be so building on what Counselor Spaulding said, it might be super interesting.

This runs in the union stuff, but to share a position with Montpelier and Plainfield that is responsible for working on engineering and implementation of flood related projects.

Yeah.

Um because as you said, the it's the engineering and it's the finicky stuff that sometimes prevents us from getting projects and from moving forward with projects and understanding the full costs of them.

And both of those communities certainly have scoping, or for that matter, someone that we hired just straight up ourselves, but for lack of a better word, rent it out to other communities, and said we will give you, you know, we will allocate some of our staff time if you want to pay us for it.

That might get around some of the sharing um challenges.

Yeah.

And I think you know, it's it's a obviously I don't want to uh hornet's nest, but you know, county level services.

I've you know, states where I've lived that had counties service, county government, and you know, love Carly and Larry, they're only here part-time, right?

And and um, you know, so I think eventually having assessing services at the county level would be something that's you know that that could work.

Um there there are there are functions that we can certainly share um with with other communities and not impact um the the service levels that we provide residents.

Um so yeah, there's there's there's a lot of opportunities.

It's it's also you know, it's about finding the right um the right partners to do it with.

Um, and uh, you know, I know when we were looking at the recreation position, that's something I I talked to a neighboring community about because I I also think we we share kids, right?

Our kids share schools and they share sports leagues, and that was a great, you know, we we we share a market, so I think there are things like that that um um we can hopefully uh capitalize on because it it it saves it helps all of us.

Not in our lifetimes.

No, yeah, I mean we you know I mean I've been having those discussions in the state house for decades.

Yeah.

From a pure efficiency point of view, if you think about smaller towns, I'm not picking anyone, picking on anyone, it's just fact.

You know, in Callus, in in you you think of other communities um much much smaller, one tenth the size of Barry, and they have a full-time clerk.

Now we have a full-time clerk, and Cheryl works hard, but she gets everything done.

So, how is it that we have a full-time clerk who gets everything done in a city that is 10 times larger than another town, and they need a full-time clerk?

Um why?

Because no one will take the job part-time because they can't feed their family on a part-time job.

So honestly, the county model would serve Vermont so well across everything.

You talk we just talked about digitizing records.

There are attorneys I've talked to, and I've said if you if you could have if you could literally do a title search at your desk because all the records were digitized, but you had to pay five thousand dollars a year to subscribe to the service, would you do it?

And they're like, hell yeah.

Yep.

But we have to get folks in Barrie and Montpelier in Berlin and Williamstown to give up their vaults and put them all in one central location and digitize them.

It's just never unfortunately, we all, you know, we all love our own little communities in our own little kingdoms, but and we're just not willing to give it up.

Uh along the lines of, I mean, you know, we may have it would be interesting to see if we have additional capacity.

You know, Josh Jerome has an incredible skill set.

He was invaluable during the CDBG DR application process, as was Jim Levinsky.

Yep.

Um so you know, sometimes the answers are right in front of you when you when you look to uh folks who might be able to assist us with grants.

Um Jim was great, Josh was great, and and we never could have done that work without them.

So, you know, perhaps we might be able to continue to engage them in some capacity to do some of the grant writing.

I mean, what I love to see is when we make an investment, we can show a return.

Yeah, we're not gonna get every grant application we apply for, but we don't have to, when you think about the size of the grants, we don't have to get too many to really you know to pay even for a six-figure position.

Right.

So and I'm I'm that's a great thought, Mary.

And I'm I'm I talked to Jim today um because uh because of the update on the next agenda item.

But Jim is uh eager to get back on board for CDBGDR, which is fantastic news.

And and I talked to him, I said I'd I you know I'd I'd love to talk to him about taking on some more really specific targeted projects that um you know with his talents he can sort of help us move forward.

So um doing that on a contracted basis, I think is one of the best ways we can um sort of uh skip things along.

So perfect.

Okay, council.

Anything else?

Any other questions, comments?

Okay, then uh if there's no objection, we will move on to our final item under due business, which is the discussion of the CDBGDR awards and next steps.

All right, thank you.

Um this is uh just uh this is the uh slide and reference just reminder what this was all about, which was a lot of uh a lot of flood recovery money coming to uh central Vermont and a lot of it focused here in Washington County.

Um this is a summary of uh what ended up being our final uh grant applications uh on the housing side.

We requested um uh 23 million uh dollars on the infrastructure side, about 3.7 million dollars, and about $336,000 in uh planning grants for a grand total of $27.5 million in requests.

And those were broken out as follows.

On the housing side, uh our biggest uh request was $10 million for the 300 uh the 355 North Main Street project, um which was proposing a 48 plus unit building on the Lenny's Plaza parking lot.

Um and this was this included demolition of the the wing of that uh building that includes sort of the the old soups and greens, um bringing the building right up to Main Street, putting some commercial on the first floor and uh housing on the uh upper floors.

Um the second uh the second biggest pot of money in this category was for the North End Gateway project.

Uh and this included uh nine buyouts to create permanent floodplain, um, nine elevations to protect housing that uh to protect housing from future flooding, uh, and then four clustered acquisitions.

And and this was uh just a term of art.

The acquisitions um allow us to uh acquire a property, tear it down, and then redevelop uh where it once stood.

And so these are called acquisitions, not buyouts for that reason.

And we picked clusters so that we could have um larger parcel sizes to to work with.

Um and I'll have a map of this on the next slide because I know this was sort of the most uh visually uh the interesting one.

Um and then prospect heights was our uh our smallest grant application under housing, which was was for 5.4 million dollars.

Um this would be to support the infrastructure to develop a subdivision of approximately 91 new units, uh, which would be um single multifamily units.

Um the 5.4 million was to uh balance out the 2.8 uh $5 million that we've already received from the Northern Border Regional Commission and $750,000 from uh the state last year.

So this was our um housing uh proposals.

The big yellow star there means uh prospect heights was funded.

Uh the other two were not.

And this is just for reference, again, this is the map uh associated with uh the North End Gateway project.

The red uh outline properties were permanent floodplain acquisitions, the blues were the elevations, and the yellows were the acquisitions uh for redevelopment.

The infrastructure projects um were familiar to all of us.

Uh these had come out of the river project that we worked on with Roy and his team uh uh in the last year.

Um the biggest pot was for the biggest request was for the Willie Street Bridge, um, which is to widen the bridge uh crossing, create an adjacent floodplain on 572 North Main Street.

That was for about 2.8 million dollars.

And then we also applied for funding for the Harrington Avenue floodplain and debris racks, um, which is to expand the current floodplain there by acquiring uh four properties through FEMA, uh creating a bigger floodplain in that area, and then redesigning the debris rack uh to be more staggered uh to allow um to to allow it to both capture debris uh but also keep the water in the channel.

And that one was funded.

Uh so that's very exciting.

Um that's a that's a great project.

And then our two uh planning grants, uh one was for stormwater upgrades.

Um this is to um take the hydrology study that Roy uh and his team at SLR are doing for us uh and take the results of that hydrology study and take the you know the highest priority projects that come from that or the highest problem areas that come from that uh and turn them into uh shovel ready projects.

So we we wanted to do the planning to turn you know to get some some plans ready that we could then uh look for funding for to to actually construct and build.

Uh that was for 268,000.

Uh and then our other planning grant was for the Potash Brook Courier Park area uh to design and engineer more floodplain culverts uh there and uh install and look at installing some debris catchers.

This was for $68,000.

We had to, just as a reminder, we had to scale this down um just to do the right math uh to fit within the caps that we were allowed to apply for.

So obviously the $68,000 is not indicative of how important it is, it's just indicative of we had to make some tough choices and and this grant this planning grant was reduced as a as a result.

So this is the summary of the funded projects, um, which totaled $6.5 million in all.

Um Prospect Heights, as I mentioned, was funded at its at a requested level.

Um Harrington Avenue was funded at the requested level.

And the stormwater upgrades was funded at just below the requested level.

Um we requested 268, we got 250 um from the state for for these grants.

We we had a chance to meet with the state team that reviewed uh these grants uh yesterday.

Um and this is feedback um from the team.

Um first on the prospect heights uh application.

This includes the grant agreement includes a binding condition that we must secure a developer by March of 26 to build at uh 42 units and 32 of which must be affordable.

So there's the I I I inserted the language here uh directly from the grant agreement um so you can see the the text there of that.

Um that's you know I'm not gonna sugarcoat it.

That's a challenge.

That's gonna be real tough.

And um uh we we're gonna do our our best to meet it.

Uh we're gonna uh we've met with the had our last discussion about that condition.

So we'll just put it that way.

Yeah.

So uh we're we're game planning with Josh and Pat and Janet and Jim.

Um but yeah, that's that's a tough one.

Um on the North End Gateway project.

Um, you know, we we heard that the acquisitions were were an issue because there's no developer identified for the parcels for the parcels that we would acquire.

Um we heard that the buyouts and the elevations were were fine.

Um you know, I think um that that's tough.

Uh, you know, it's it's really um, as I mentioned a couple times, I think through this process that it's really a chicken and egg problem.

Um it's hard to convince people to build uh and make commitments to build on land you don't own and may not own, and um and they don't know when it might happen.

And so that's just a real tough sell for really anyone.

Uh and so uh we we you know talked through this one at length.

Um candidly, I'm not sure there's a way to make this application successful with the acquisitions if that's gonna be a requirement um for the um for an award, although I did point out to the state team that they did fund prospect heights without a developer, um, although they didn't see it my way.

Um so you know, I I I think that um I I don't think we can give up on that grant.

I think we may have to shed some elements of it, uh, which is difficult because I know that of the the people who signed up for acquisitions are you know really eager to get out of that neighborhood uh and it's gonna be really difficult to sort of leave them behind.

But I don't know if we'll be successful um otherwise.

Yeah.

It just seems that a lot's been promised to the North End that's not been coming through in Ward 3, you know, council person.

That's just my personal opinion.

Yep.

Um and then 355 North Main Street.

Um the state didn't feel confident on the budget.

And this is, you know, I I can understand.

I mean, this is a big project, this is a 20 million plus dollar project.

Uh and this one came together as we all remember pretty quick.

Um and I I don't know that any budgetary information will make them more comfortable on this.

Um I think I'm certainly you know want to hear the council's discussion on this, but my um, well, we'll get to it on the next slide about sort of what to do moving forward.

But this one, this one was sort of on the budget side, they weren't they didn't have a comfort level uh moving forward on.

And then Willie Street and Potash, um the state's feedback was these were really strong applications, they just ran out of money.

Uh and they were oversubscribed by 160 million, I think.

So I think uh you know it's at least it's good to know we didn't sort of leave anything on the table that these were these were strong, they just wasn't enough to fund them.

We have one more question.

So what happened with the building on Main Street that they were offered a bid besides a downtown place?

Uh I'm having things of the name.

They bought it last year and now they want to sell it back right near GARS building.

Oh the Wheel of Building.

Yeah, what whatever came about.

It's it's still um it's it's still owned by Foxy's.

They they don't they haven't triggered anything that would remain.

So-called not yet.

No, no.

Um the next steps uh is a round two, uh, which is coming up.

Uh this is the first uh section of text here is from the governor's press release.

There's 14.4 million dollars remaining that will be um only considered for housing projects, right?

So the mitigation is out, the planning grants out, only housing projects are going to be looked at with this $14 million that's left.

Um the pre-application deadline is January 12th, um, with the submission date for the formal application, February 27th.

We obviously have a lot of interim steps as we did last time with public hearings and notifications in the paper, etc.

etc.

But January 12th for the pre-application and February 27th for the submission date are the the big dates to circle.

Um and yeah, I think um, you know, I'd love to hear the council's feedback.

I think the team is really um uh wanting to know what direction we're heading.

We obviously had the two housing projects that were left on the table.

Um I think you know, my my my thought was it's hard to leave the North End Gateway piece behind.

It may just have to look different for those people on the acquisition side.

Um 355 North Main, I think is um, you know, I don't know.

I I'm curious to hear the council's feedback.

I also am realistic that there's 14 million dollars left, and there's uh that's a 10 million dollar ask.

Um I don't know how realistic it is, and I know that um it certainly doesn't work for less than 10.

Um so um I hate to leave that on the table, but I I also think we should be realistic.

Um but yeah, I were curious about the feedback in the team, like I said earlier.

Jim is uh ready to re-up with us, which is uh really fantastic.

Um and we're we're ready to get to work um based on on you know what we discussed today, and certainly doesn't have to be the last discussion, but we're we're eager to to get going.

Amy, did you have a question?

Yeah, I was just wondering um I think on the previous slide that you talked about a review team, and I was just curious which parts of state government did the review if you can share that.

I'm a little stunned about the Willie Street bridge because that you know, literally we had someone from Agency of Natural Resources come and give us a talk about how important that was and how it represented a natural damn.

And even if you're focused on housing rather than the natural resources projects, like that's literally endangering all endangering all the housing upstream.

So I'm just curious which agencies weighed up on us.

I don't know.

I and I I can only tell you the agency we spoke to, which is the office with an ACCD that sort of manages C D C D B G on an annual basis.

Um I I don't know what their internal process looked like, whether other agencies um reviewed applications or not, Amy.

So I I can't say definitively one way or the other.

All I can say is that that the team we spoke to was the sort of usual C D BG normal team at ACCD.

Yeah, and I just I find it disappointing because the round two is only housing, right?

Yes, correct.

So that's really unfortunate for the Willie Street project.

Yeah.

Councilor Gustin.

Um I have a lot of thoughts and feelings, but I want to wholeheartedly echo what Councillor Ruthier said earlier, which is that we were given a lot of assurances and I don't know, uh theoretical support for support for the North End, and none of that has come through in any of the grants that we have been submitting um for some time now.

And that is uh I've been thinking a lot about my language.

I'll go with bitterly disappointing.

Um that said, um we have I'm really proud of the team that put these grants forward.

I think we went forward with good faith.

Uh the understanding that Barry had been more impacted than any other municipality.

Uh that we had a long list of needs, that we badly needed support for our residents, and that we um we put out a lot of really good projects.

So I'm really proud of um the work everyone did on that.

Looking forward, um to me, it feels like we should absolutely continue with the North End Gateway project for the second round of housing.

I am, however, I'm worried on a couple of counts.

One is that they the the reviewers certainly could have simply funded the elevation and floodplain portions of that project and cut off the acquisition portion of that project if that was actually what they were concerned about.

That is that is always an option on the table.

They put another condition on us for the prospect heights funding, so they certainly could have negotiated or discussed that.

And without the acquisition, elevation and floodplain feels to me more like a mitigation project.

So I don't know if it's a strong application for the housing bucket.

And I so I worry about that.

I think that would require more conversation with uh with the agency, but uh that would be a hundred percent my my choice to to discuss moving forward on.

So thank you.

Mr.

Anthony, did you have a question?

Uh yes.

Um echo um Amy Gilmore's observation.

I am appalled, I guess.

I I don't know how else to say this, that there was no interagency, if you will, truth telling or conversation about Willie Street.

I just um since it was so emphatic that that was a real problem for all of the North End, regardless of what you wanted to spend money um to restrict uh reconstitute it to prevent further things from bad things from happening to uh turn away from uh any kind of investment in Willie Street seems to be uh representative of a sort of interagency dysfunction, and I'm appalled.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Well I'm not gonna be bitterly disappointed yet.

I'm not gonna be appalled, uh, but what I am gonna be is a street fighter.

Um every indication uh that we received was that the administration was anxious to help the North End.

Um every indication we received relative to the Willie Street Bridge was that they loved the application, and then it wasn't funded.

So we'll ask uh our team will ask the right questions.

Uh and in the first round, I was loath to make a lot of phone calls to folks.

I'm gonna be making those phone calls three times in the next uh one month.

I mean, that's what we have to do.

As I look at this, I think that uh the 355 project, I'm not sure where they thought the budget was weak.

I mean, it was it was there.

Um, but again, I have to be realistic with 14 million dollars remaining.

Um, you know, and I'm doing math in my head, plainfield received two million dollars, a project in Plainfield, good project.

Um Barry is roughly seven times the population of Plainfield, so I guess if they get two by default, we get 14, we've received six, we need nine more.

So that's the math I'm doing in my head.

Um North End is eight.

Uh North End.

I I understand.

North End is eight, and even a partial funding.

I think the Willie Street Bridge, even a partial funding, although they're doing housing.

Well, if you're talking about the North End and you're not doing some mitigation, like you know, with the buyouts and with the creation of the floodplain, you might as well not be doing anything on the North End.

So I don't know if there's a way for us to incorporate the Willie Street um project into the North End.

For me, the North End is going to be a high priority.

Um if we look at that remaining funding and the fact that we are in control of 143 North Main, we could put in something for 143 North Main, and we could win this for partial funding there.

And that may be just uh you know, demolition, remediation, and creation of um creation of green space.

The prospect heights one that that requirement troubles me a little bit.

It's just not enough time.

We're not even uh I I don't have uh I have don't have any concerns about our ability to find a developer for you know there's gonna be roughly a hundred and twenty, hundred and ten hundred and twenty dwelling units created when that's fully built out.

Um but we're not gonna do it by March because we won't even have a site plan by March.

I mean, we've actually signed that contract.

Uh council approved that a number a couple of weeks ago, but we don't even have a plan to prevent to present to a developer.

So honestly, that one felt like a little bit of a sucker punch, to be honest with you.

So we need to have a serious conversation about um you know March 31st.

I just don't think June 30th, I would likely be okay with that, but not March 31st.

There are three year grants.

Like what's the first one?

Yeah, so that's the part where you know, do they think we're we're incapable?

Did they think we're incompetent?

What do we need to show you um this is what we wanted?

This is a neighborhood we want to create in our city.

What do we need to what level of assurance do we need to give you to show you that we're serious?

Um Mr.

Anthony?

Yeah, very uh very quickly and uh pungently.

Uh this smells to me like why don't you just shrink, depopulate the city of Barrie.

Why don't you definitely solve a lot of problems?

That will solve a lot of problems.

Move away from the river, and instead of 9,000 people, why don't you become seven?

And that for me is offensive.

Well and now that we've all vented a little bit, in fairness, I I wouldn't want have I wouldn't have wanted to be that team who had to there were a lot of good projects that weren't funded, you know, and that's the one thing about you know competitive grants.

I'm I'm grateful to get them.

And and when I first heard about Prospect Heights prior to you know, hearing the condition, I was thrilled.

But what I quickly default to is it's an honor for them to choose the city of Barrie, and and I have absolute faith in our team's ability to make ACCD and the administration proud.

You know, and that's our responsibility because some folks didn't get anything, some good projects didn't get anything at all.

And you know, we got five and a half million dollars for prospect heights.

But we we need something for the North End.

That's gonna be the big push.

They don't take us seriously with with North Barry.

And I do like Councilwoman Gusham, what you said, even elevate it.

I mean, for that matter, bring it up.

You know, it's just like you can't just leave it like it is.

And then it's like they're thinking, well, and I don't I shouldn't say it's okay.

We're gonna give them money for these other things and we'll sweep North Barry under the rug.

Well, we'll all listen.

We'll all yes, Counselor.

Um with you know, sometimes there's a reframing that can happen um with these grants and the Willie Street Bridge, if we talk not so much about it as being um flood remediation, but rather being housing protection, could would that be a way to re frame or are they too smart for the it's it's possible?

I just I would I would hate to um jeopardize it with the same issue with the acquisitions, right?

So if they if they then latch on to that to not fund it, yeah.

Um that's that I mean it these are questions I these are great, got some great questions uh going around my head after hearing the discussion, but that's possibly a way to try to see if it would be if it could be framed that way.

Um but I I wouldn't want to um let that be a a reason to not fund it on the back end as well.

It's it's kind of ironic because way back when we first came up with Willie Street, I remember being here and saying, Willie Street, it's never flooded, and then you said, yeah, but our water treatment plants there, and I did a complete 360 about how I feel about Willie Street.

So I hear what you're saying, turn it to a different, okay.

Yeah, we never had an issue, but our main water plant and you know treatment plants there, we need to protect it.

So I guess I did a 360 after I realized that, you know, protection.

Oh I saw Amy had her hand up and go for it.

She did too.

I guess not.

I was gonna make the same point about the one way into the wastewater treatment plant, right?

That's part of why you guys ranked it as one of the top projects.

It's because it's the only way into the wastewater treatment plant.

Well, over two on that one.

You know, I mean, I I I think they were all uh good plans, like I said, the you know, I was excited about more housing downtown, but you know, we all knew that 10 million dollars was a big ask.

So I think to spend a lot more time.

If if I had to say, well, what do I really want for Barrie?

I want the North End project.

I would, and I would like to see somehow, even if it's partial funding, and we have to do some flood mitigation on our own, I'd like to see something for I'd like to see the Willie Street Bidge incorporated into that project and perhaps push it, push the total amount up a little bit, or the state could present uh an alternative funding source.

I'm not sure what the legislature is going to do in this legislative session with the flood resiliency grants.

So counselor?

Um I realize the timeline is really tight, so you're you're basically looking at just sort of reworking what we already have like you're not gonna come up with something new.

I think the the only it's a short time.

Yeah, I think the only one that might be possible is 143 uh North Main, because now we're we're we will own it, uh we will have signed the purchase and sales by the time that this application is due.

Um so there may be I don't know if anything can come together quickly enough for that.

Um I certainly think that, yeah, I I think the idea would be to put most of our eggs in the North End Gateway project basket, and then maybe if there's something else ancillary, we can add there as well.

Well, I just I keep thinking about how we could um you know, we've talked uh a lot about infill development and ADUs and things like that.

And is there a way, which isn't a specific plan, but is there a way for us to get some money to help homeowners to you know turn their basement into an apartment or turn that space over the garage or split their large house into a duplex.

I don't you know what I mean?

Like how could we how could we finesse it to say these are people that are already living here and maybe have space and could we incentivize them to do that work?

I I love those ideas, and uh the only challenge I'm seeing having gone through this and then having had this follow-up with them, is the level of detail they're gonna want and the level of commitment on the front end, they're gonna want the house the property owners to have made the commitment to know how many bedrooms they're gonna get and then make the commitments to the low the affordability component.

Um counselor, I I don't want to come off as I'm no no no, that's why I'm asking they would say, okay, give us a list of the homeowners who want to do it, yeah, and show us that they have the funding, and that they have a contract.

Show us their plan and show us the quote.

Yeah.

Um they would not, if if we said, well, here's what we want to do, we want to provide 40% grants.

So if someone has a hundred thousand dollar project, that's gonna create two dwelling units, we're gonna give them 40,000, they pay, they wouldn't accept that.

They they need that level of certainty.

They need the specificity exactly.

I mean, you know, the specificity was in 355.

I mean, it was there.

I saw I mean, I looked at the budget.

And it's like, okay, this is sound, this is solid.

They didn't have a commitment letter from a bank, but neither do most of the projects that were funded.

To give you an idea, they didn't like that in our buyouts for the north end, even though the buyouts generally were fine, they didn't like that the buy-out applications didn't include the seeds for the grass to replant it.

In the budget?

Yes.

Oh yeah.

So just to give you an idea of the specificity.

Wow.

So they said, you know, overall the applications were sound.

The bio, the bio component of the application was sound.

We had the paperwork, we had the information, we had the options, we had the, you know, we had the big item check.

They said, but you didn't have a budget.

Like, are you gonna plant grass there?

Yes, that wasn't your budget.

So that's that's that's how just to give you a sense of the.

We'll borrow down to Nelson's and we will sort that out for you.

Um brief follow-up question on that, since you talked specifically to them about that grant.

The concern I had raised earlier about the remaining pieces of that grant, the elevation and floodplain buyout pieces being in the housing bucket.

Was that a concern that they had?

So we were we were, you know, we not not we didn't want to get ahead of the council, of course, but we were pretty confident that people would be interested in moving forward.

So we asked questions about and talked about when we resubmit this grant, and there was no hesitation on that.

I think what saves it is the elevation piece, which has preservation of housing um, which counts towards the housing bucket.

The buyouts by themselves, I think wouldn't do it, but because the elevations are involved, um, that that has preservation of nine units, plus we would make an argument about preservation of larger swath of units with the bio.

So um that that lets us get our toe in the water on the housing bucket.

Any chance we can turn around some of the acquisitions with a small developer in time?

Um it's we could certainly talk to some.

Uh I I don't know the I don't know how how much people would buy.

It's it's also it's not a it's not the easiest sell of a project because they would end up owning it.

They're in it's a it's they're not huge parcels.

Um and they're they're still in a floodplain.

Um and so they're not, for example, as the mayor mentioned, I don't think anyone has doubts that we can sell these really highly desirable lots on prospect heights, which are elevated and and and you know, I don't think anyone's worried about that, but you know, these are these might be a tougher sell.

Uh and so getting people to do it this early in the pro.

I think we're confident we can get somebody to do it within the six years once we have a plot of land we can show them.

I think at this point it might be perhaps too big of a of a of a leap for some people to sort of commit in writing to it.

And it's um, you know, it is interesting times.

I don't know that you won't see a proposal from me saying if we can't find a developer, why don't we do it ourselves?

I mean, we're developing the lots, and generally we have expertise in the city, we have consultants that we've worked with.

And if there are folks who are reluctant, I mean, the wonderful thing about municipalities and the reason why I don't do more at my age is I have a limited shelf life.

And and while it's sometimes difficult for me to accept that, um, I do.

So when it really comes right down to okay, do I want to buy this property?

Do I want to develop this property?

I've got to think about my shelf life and how many good years I have left.

I mean, municipality is in perpetuity.

That's the wonderful thing about it.

And everyone in the city, so you know, everyone looks at property, not everyone, but some people look at what developers do and they're fascinated by it.

But the risk isn't acceptable to them.

So they don't do it.

And once you've done it for long enough, then you become you you have enough financial strength to where the risk is acceptable.

But I'm willing to bet you there are a lot of taxpayers in Barrie City.

If we went to them and said, well, how would you like to be part of this in terms of the city owns it?

And if you live here, you're part of it too.

And we're looking if we can't get a developer to do a project in Barrie, then we'll do it ourselves.

We'll get our own development team together.

And that may very well um, you know.

Are you talking about prospect heights?

Are you talking about Northland?

Are you talking about prospect heights?

Are you talking about the North?

Talking about either.

Okay.

Talking about either.

I mean, a lot of times people say, you know, oh, all the developers make money.

We do.

Um, okay, if that's the case, why doesn't the city do it and the city can make the money?

So, you know, um, so we're gonna have to get a little creative.

We're gonna have to work a little harder in the next two months.

But like I said, I'm gonna make the phone calls that I feel have to be made, and I'm gonna advocate for the city, and I I encourage all of you to do the same.

You know, this is um it's it's game day.

So okay, anything else, counsel?

If you come up with anything, just email Nicholas.

Uh upcoming business, it's gonna be C D B G D R and budget.

Yeah, and that is about that.

That is where our focus is.

Uh unless there's but like I said, if there's ever anything that the council would like to come up on the agenda, just email me, yes, sir.

So the parks and rec committee has finalized the microgrant application.

Uh we'd like to bring that to council for approval.

Nice.

Thank you.

Uh if there's nothing else, round table.

Who wants to go?

Councilor Deering, you good?

Yeah, I'll start.

Uh so speaking of the parks and rec committee, we met last week.

Uh and we are going to have a sledding party, weather permitting, January 10th, uh, tentatively 10 to 12.

Um still a couple of small things to work out, but uh that's the plan with that.

Um also tomorrow evening, Barrie City Middle School will be having a band uh playing.

Oh it's uh sixth grade, seventh grade, eighth grade, all things from concert band to modern rock band.

Uh the chorus will also be playing.

Uh and you can come and watch me play tuba with the kiddos.

Where's this like 10, isn't it?

Uh Elmwood Cemetery is the sledding party, and 6.30 is a concert tomorrow.

We have uh also a couple other staff members that will be joining us uh as ringers will call it.

Haven't played in 25 years, so it's been interesting uh over the last week practicing, getting ready for that.

We had rehearsals yesterday and today, and tomorrow's gonna be a blast.

So 6 30 at Barrie City School tomorrow night.

All right.

Excellent.

Councilor Gardner?

I'm gonna pass.

Councillor Gustin.

Pass.

I have nothing.

You have nothing.

We only just met last week.

I know your family.

You are blessed.

You you you you don't have nothing.

Oh, I mean, I have nothing to um yes, I can't.

Thank you.

Councilor Ruthier.

Nothing really just I know we're all on the same team, but I do appreciate the feedback tonight for the North End.

You all.

Fantastic.

So once again, uh I really appreciate the holiday party that uh we had over at Ladder One.

It was just uh like I said, it would it was just nice to be able to thank, because I think it's important to thank people, and it was nice to be able to just thank uh our staff people and and and thank their spouses, uh, you know, who uh I got to thank Nicholas's lovely wife because you know, listen, I I know I've been doing this for two decades, and you get the calls late at night, you get the calls during dinner, you all know that.

And um, but it's the job you sign up for, so you have to pick up the phone, no matter who is on the other end.

Um you got you know, you gotta pick up the phone and you gotta take that call.

And so a lot of times it's your family um, you know, who misses out.

So it was nice to be able to thank uh their spouses.

And lastly, um, in case you didn't get the memo, uh Christmas is coming, so it'll be Christmas soon.

I I love the holiday.

I love spending time with my family and friends.

I love the way the world feels.

Like maybe we all can get along, maybe we all maybe we can all you know be a little bit better, uh, like the TV shows.

So really looking forward to that.

And I am once again so grateful because there are going to be a lot of people in Barrie uh in in central Vermont who are a little bit happier on Christmas Day.

So I really appreciate everyone who gave and and for those who helped us raise money, it's uh it's a good feeling to give back.

And with that counsel, I do not believe we need an executive session.

That would ruin Christmas.

So a motion to adjourn would be in order.

Oh boo.

Second.

And a second.

All those in favor, aye, and those opposed, we are adjourned.

Thank you.

Good night.

Oh.