Okay, well, you know what?

Just for the record, why don't we do this again?

Council.

March 17th Day 2026, and I will call this meeting of the Barrie City Council to order first item on the agenda is the adjustments and approval of the agenda of the no objection from the council.

I'd like to move item uh four C of the consent agenda.

I'd like to move that under F in due business if there's no objection.

I think I think it's gonna warrant a little more discussion than consent, but that's okay.

Um I believe, okay, we do have a real estate executive session as well as going to it into executive session to discuss the court's salary.

Uh any other adjustments to the agenda.

Oh, I'm sorry.

You wanted us to authorize you to uh operate with UFREN group on credit report to ratify that next week.

Anything else from the council?

No.

Okay, motion to approve would be unorptic.

Thank you.

Any discussion.

All those in favor of the motion is presented.

Please signify by saying aye.

Aye.

And those opposed.

Thank you very much.

Council move on to item two A on the agenda.

This is resolution two thousand twenty-six three in recognition of Catherine Dreaming of Service to the City of Barrie.

So if you don't mind, so I ask you to read that into the record.

Whereas Catherine DuGrana began her career as communications dispatcher to the City of Barrie on August 30th, 1982, and will be retired on March 19th, 2026, after more than 43 years of dedication, dedicated service to the city's police and fire and emergency medical services department, as well as many other communities, emergency services organizations, for which she dispatched and whereas throughout her distinguished distinguished career, Kathy Kathy served as the critical link between the public and first responders, ensuring that officers, firefighters, and emergency personnel received timely information during moments of women, calm judgment and professionalism were essential.

And whereas the residents of Ferry and those of the communities for which she dispatched have benefited greatly from the steadfast service, integrity and compassion demonstrated by Kathy during her 43-year career.

Now, therefore, be it resolved that the city, Ferry City Council, wishes Catherine Grenna, the very best in her retirement, and does hereby declare Thursday, March 19th, 2026, to be Catherine Grenna Appreciation Day, to express to our to express to Kathy our most profound appreciation and succinct sincere thank you for her 43 years plus years of service, dedicated and communic commitment to public safety, and wish her the very best in her retirement.

Be a further resolved that a copy of this resolution be placed in permanent records of the city of Beerie and that a copy be transmission, transmitted to Catherine de Grenna by order of the city council the 17th day of March 2026.

Motion to approve would be in order.

So it's moved and seconded.

Don't all rush.

Yeah.

Yeah for here.

You got a copy?

She's got it.

She's got it.

Come right up here.

It's a Kodak moment.

Okay.

You're not kidding out of that position.

I was trying to read it.

I'm getting on the I'm getting out of the way.

Not that good hat.

How are we doing this?

Go to the center.

Okay.

Okay.

Hey, at least one of us knows how to dress.

There's a resolution.

I haven't.

Well, you got home.

Come on, Chief.

I guess you're putting a new channel.

If I ever get in trouble, I'm calling her house.

Yeah, don't put it up so I don't.

Everybody in it.

No pressure.

There we go.

Okay.

Thank you.

I'm doing what now?

We haven't had this many members of law enforcement since we swore Council Ruth here and just want to.

First of all, thank you.

Thank you.

Personally, thank you.

You did your job with so much compassion.

And my mom's going to yell at me because she always launches council meetings.

But I remember when my mom called because she had dropped her phone and she was in the recliner.

And she was afraid she was going to crush the recliner or crush the phone with the recliner.

So she called 911 and got passed through to you.

And you were patient.

It was late at night, and you were patient, and you recognized that she was struggling.

And so you kept her on the phone and you said, Well, I'm going to give Tom a call and have him come down and help you because you couldn't dispatch.

But you were so patient.

And you stayed on the phone with her.

And you know, it was silly.

I mean, she dropped her phone.

But that's my story.

But if I went around the city, we'd get a lot more stories like that.

How kind you were, how you could you could rise to the occasion instantly, you could turn it off, you could turn it on, but when you had to help an elderly neighbor who was just a little confused, then you brought it to BACHO.

And that's a pretty rare quality.

So thank you.

Personally, and thank you on behalf of the city.

Thank you.

So the best day of your career, 43 years, can you do the math quick?

43 times 365.

Best day and worst day of year over.

Yeah.

A 19th, probably.

And two days will be the best.

I think the scariest one would be one half the officers go to a domestic, and all of a sudden they said shots fired.

That was the worst.

Nobody was the officers are fine.

That the other two, unfortunately, was a bad thing.

The ones with the old ladies who drop their phones.

Those are always the good ones, the ones that make you laugh.

Yeah, just a little bit of everything I've always had.

It's always been somebody that I've been able to help and be there for them.

And for the officers.

But everything goes through you, and that's the interesting thing about your job is that you may have three or four officers out there who you have to employ to certain situations, but everything starts with you.

You know, you're the one who sort of triages it and understands maybe you want to send more than one officer.

Um maybe you don't need to send an officer at all, and we're really going to miss you because you just have this wonderful demeanor.

You know, you take your responsibility to the city and the officers that you serve with.

You always took that so seriously, and you did your job so well.

So chief, we're gonna have a tough time.

We're gonna have a tough time replacing you.

And I just want to say again, thank you so much.

Thank you so much.

Well, thank you.

Thank you.

Is that anything they want to say?

We'll not be able to get it.

We'll let you know on the planet.

Geez, not to put you on the spot with that great hat, but anything you want to say?

I would just like to say that I have never seen her without a smile on her face.

She always has a smile.

A lot of the time.

Time and it is she's always smiling.

We will miss you.

Thank you.

Well, run for city council, we'll fix it.

Thank you again.

Thank you guys.

Thank you, Danny.

Thank you, folks.

Okay, council will moves on on to visitors and communications.

Anyone wish to address the council regarding an item that is not on the agenda?

Hearing hearing and saying no one, we'll move on to the consent agenda.

Council will be approving the minutes of uh 210 26.

Do you have any office licenses approved?

Yes, yes, and that is very cry.

They would love 2026 to be held on June 6th.

It's around one day.

10 a.m.

Um at City Hall Park and uh portion of Church Street.

Perfect.

Uh council, so we've moved uh item C moving that down to AF.

I think D.

Um in the section where it has the code of ethics, and this is probably an easy question, but um on the code of ethics, it's on page four of the public agreement that we're supposed to sign.

Um officers and employees shall not participate in any decisions concerning matters in which they have financial.

I mean I'm I'm a very popular, I um pay property taxes, I have a house, I might just do that supposed to be as well.

So you have to have a direct financial interest.

So, for example, the question that you were just asking, um most of us pay property taxes here in the city, and we vote on the property tax rate when we vote on the budget.

That's not a direct financial interest.

If we had, for example, uh if we had a contract with a close family member or your husband, obviously you could not participate in that decision because of the direct financial interest.

Okay.

And if I were selling things to the city real estate or other things, that would be a direct well again.

Refresh your memory now.

Uh I sold a $3.9 million building to the city for three million dollars.

I did not participate in those discussion discussions.

That was a very complex.

So there has to be a direct finding, not an indirect finding that.

I appreciate the clarification.

Thank you.

I have a couple of questions.

Um correction in Sherro, I apologize, I meant to send this to you because it's a small thing for the minutes.

Um, under item six, liquor and cannabis control boards, it says motion to approve the city warrants, but it would be to approve the oh applications I think probably just a cut-and-piece issue.

And then um I also had questions about the form NP1 for federal grants.

About if the city, all current and future employees shall be informed of this policy and show the knowledge and writing their understanding and acceptance of this policy.

If you don't have a policy as robust as the following, it hereby establishes that blah blah blah.

So I'm wondering how does that happen?

How do you how do you make that?

We have a conflict in the response policy.

Well, no, there's there's multiple because there's like texting well driving policy, violence against women act.

Um, those are some of the ones that caught my attention.

Yeah, this is the first time we've done an a few once to type in here.

So I think I don't know how the city has had it in the past, but our friend is um with approval to start to send out an all-staff email and attach all these uh materials to staff and staff that doesn't have email.

It'll be um printed and placed in the buildings for the work.

And are there are policies already?

By the way, so you won't expect to receive that.

Okay, but will the um policies if there are policies not already in place, you'll be developing them?

Right.

Okay, yeah, great.

Thank you.

Um I think that's all many questions.

Okay, so the council uh, in addition to item D, which is approved form MP1 for federal brand awards, we'll be authorizing this with hypo there.

We'll be authorizing the mayor or the manager to execute a purchase option for the acquisition of uh prospect heights.

We've been Nicholas and I have been working together on that.

Uh we'll be approving the distribution list of prospect heights, housing developer RFTs, and we'll be authorizing the manager to execute the contract.

That was a late edition of the manager sent to you with the two frame group, uh, and we'll have to ratify that because that does not properly motive on the agenda.

Any discussion?

Motion would be motive.

So discussion.

Hearing none, all those in favor of the motion is presented, please signify by saying aye and those opposed, thank you very much.

Motion carries.

Council will be moving to 4K on the agenda and approving the city warrants of 318 26, and we'll be ratifying the weeks 218-26, 225, 26, 34, 26, and 312.

So thank you.

Moved and seconded discussion.

Is that a record?

Um could be just like to know what I'm making history.

And I have to sign every single one of those or every Wednesday and say shout a door into me.

I'd have to find it.

Shoot it right back.

So, yes, I think that I think four is an official record.

Excellent.

Any other discussion?

Just want to try to hear you.

Aye, those opposed, is there an abstention?

Yes, thank you.

No, um, I think you can just for the record you just appearing.

Yeah, I'm gonna say I know, but I think it's obvious that rather than make it on.

And that brings us to your report.

Yep, okay.

Um, just a few quick things today.

I know we haven't met for a while, but um, right now we're in a slower period at the clerk's office.

Um, one thing I do want to bring to everyone's attention, and I did put it on front porch forum today, is um due to the closure of the auditorium for its much needed upgrades.

We will have to recall uh relocate the polling site.

Um I have contacted the um Department of Elections for the state of Vermont, and they are okay, and they have approved the alternate um location of alumni hall, second floor.

I believe it's called the Washington Room.

Um it's rather a larger room, it is ABA compliant, it does have a heating and cooling system depending on the weather we may need one or the other.

Um, with Michelle Labarge's um assistants, the rec director, we will make sure the signage is over and above what we um we think it should be should be had within the the elevators on the outer exterior of the building inside the the inside uh of the building as well.

Um so I will keep reminding people through Facebook post through front porch form.

Um I hope to have it posted on our website as well.

Um if you have any questions or concerns, just give us a call at the clerk's office.

Secondly, um we are still collecting dog licenses.

We are doing going to do that up until March 31st before you would be charged public fee.

Um just make sure that you have updated Raves certificates when you do come into the office.

Even if you're quite sure you're up to date, it's good to have the copies on hand just in case you know you have multiple dogs, you juggle in different dates just to make sure that they're all uncompliant with the updates.

Yes.

So I had a conversation with a writer this morning who was frustrated with having to license her dog.

And we all understand that.

Because she's frustrated because there are several folks in our community that aren't registering their dogs.

And she wanted to know what we were doing about that.

Like how we rectify or it's really hard to I guess find where these dogs exist if they're have never been registered.

Is to have a complaint filed, and then it could be a research to see if they they were indeed in the past or present licensed within the city.

Oh, it's not very housing.

Oh, it was a different, but that's a whole different thing.

Yeah, okay.

I'm just saying because I know that's mandatory.

Yeah, definitely mandatory for very housing.

Yeah.

Um I I guess that the the best method is to reach out to the city clerk to see if they have ever been licensed, and maybe it's just they've lacked for a few years.

I know COVID through everything in a turmoil and people forgot they or they thought they had they didn't.

So yeah, just call the clerk, see if they have ever been registered.

So I'll uh she can call the clerk.

Yeah.

Cool, I will pass the message along.

And she knows the owners.

I mean, it's hard for us to search it by um location.

It's easier if you have the um owner's name.

Right, okay.

Yep.

Thank you.

Yes.

Can you still register online?

Can you still get online?

Yes.

Register your dog?

Yes.

You get a license for your phone.

Yep.

Um, you pay online, and then it's uh, you know, just scan your readings and email it.

And then so you never have to leave the comfort of your home.

Exactly.

Right.

I love that.

Is it up?

Right.

Call someone uh call them up and ask them for someone else's gallant dog across some personal property line.

You know, it's public information once the dog is registered.

Really?

Yeah, a dog is personal property.

It's kind of important though.

I mean, you know, the real issue is how we would definitely know if the dog became aggressive and bit someone and it wasn't registered.

Oh, I've not now we don't know.

Yeah, so no, it's not.

I mean, it's a neighborly, you know, people forget, like the clerk said, and we're pretty forgiving when they do a mayor call club, and maybe they're a little late, we're okay with that.

But you know, it it's important as a public safety issue and a public health issue.

Anything else?

What's the policy on bringing my dog to get her own license?

How do you help a bit?

We love dogs.

Does she have her own credit card?

Could do that.

But she would like a field trip.

Yes, we have treats in the office with a excellent plan.

All right.

Okay, I do.

Sorry, I I can't top that.

I have a much more mundane question.

So with changing the voting, you know, I discussed someone location.

Um, you know, I discuss having a really large, like four by eight sheet of plywood type sign so that we could really direct people with an arrow.

I'm just concerned.

You know, some folks do get confused and they think they most folks don't even realize that the elevator access because not everyone in the city Michelle and I were talking about that, and I was contemplating having a human being in the vestibule to greet everyone coming in and you know, offering the elevator.

Okay, yeah, or the stairs.

Yeah.

One or the other.

Well we'll call it as well, maybe put the sign out front.

Maybe you can take a picture of the sign, take a picture of the case.

I mean, the entrance that you can do.

No, seriously, put it on the city web page.

The entrance you have to use is you know, like 200 or not too, maybe 20 feet to the right if you're facing a building.

Okay, and you can you know we could easily have a large sign at that without blocking the actual sidewalk to it.

Yeah, block the stairs to take on uh rents.

Yeah, that's a good idea.

I and who knows, maybe that's their plan anyway, just to deter people from trying, you know, because they will be trying to report.

Yeah, I'm sure you'll do another job.

How do you feel about flashing neon?

Flashing or just it's just a question.

All right, now we're getting we're getting silly, and we have more discount.

Council, uh I would call the liquor and canvas control board to order.

Uh today uh or this evening, council will be approving it's very smoke because that's in that very smoke shop.

Very smoke shop.

Uh, and that is a new one.

This is a new application, and I received a call today that that person would be zooming in, but I do not see Mr.

Patel on my he told me he would log in at six o'clock.

Okay, well, you know, we can always we can approve, so we also have uh for approval councils and these floor, and I'm sorry, M's Lease Floor and M Lee's floor.

Sorry about that.

So we can approve those three and we can hold up on where's the the where's the very smoke shop?

Oh I didn't I didn't see that.

Yeah, okay.

Motion to approve the mutant uh MT and MT uses being ordered.

So we've thank you.

Moved and seconded.

Any discussion?

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

Please junify by saying aye.

And those proposed still don't see Mr.

Potel, so micro control is adjourned.

Mr.

Manager.

Uh thank you, Mayor.

Welcome back.

Thank you.

How was it?

That was wonderful.

Oh, we are going to talk about that.

Awesome.

Yeah, great trip.

Thank you.

Um, a couple updates.

Um the at the auditorium green tournament season uh ended for the VPA uh uh boys and girls high school championships.

We had several sellouts in the building.

Um, and now we are getting ready now that the tournament season's over, getting ready to shut the building down through November, as we've talked about.

Um and so uh very exciting last uh last era there for the for the activity there for this uh this season and really excited about the upgrades that are coming uh to that building.

Um on the CDBGDR front, um, as you know, while I was away, um the team submitted two applications under round two.

Um that was for uh the the North End project, which was split into two pieces.

Uh one was for the buyouts uh and elevations, and the other was for the acquisitions and redevelopment.

So uh both those were submitted on time.

Um we are now waiting.

I I don't have the date with me, but I think the state uh board meets to review these uh sometime in mid-April, and uh if the pattern follows from last round, we should hear about um 10 days or so after that happens uh if anything is awarded.

We did also on the first round of awards, we had the three awards.

Uh one was for the uh stormwater assistant planning grant, uh Harrington Avenue, which I've talked to Roy about also, uh, with the rereck there.

Um Prospect Heights, we had a deadline of yesterday uh to meet the grant conditions um for the first sort of first step in that process.

We did that.

We met all the we met the conditions, the ones we couldn't meet.

Um we've asked for extensions, uh, and those were granted as well.

Um so for example, um, as one of the conditions that we had to ask for an extension for um on Harrington Avenue since Roy's here, um we don't have all the bio, right?

So we we could not demonstrate that we have site control for that project yet because not all the biops have been executed.

So we said we cannot meet this condition because biops haven't closed, that FEMA hasn't moved on them or hasn't processed them, so we request an extension for I forget however long we asked, and um that was practiced.

So that's just an example of the types of conditions we could not meet, many others we were able to meet.

Um, and so uh the bottom line is all those projects.

We've met the deadline, the 16th deadline, everything's still moving forward.

Um, and uh one other piece on that we will be issuing an RFP uh by the end of the month uh to contract or project management for this for the grants.

These are huge, huge grants with a lot of workload.

Um I've uh I've already heard from two organizations that do this type of project management work, and because it's federal money and because it's best practice, we're gonna issue an RFP and we'll we'll bring to you an award to hopefully uh hire one of those firms to do the project management.

We did budget for project management under the application, so that's what we'll pay for those services.

Um then buyouts are continuing.

Um we had one buyout um uh last week on River Street.

Um we have three more that are getting in the queue, including um you have to give Roy all this good news.

572, which is the site of the Willie Street project.

So that's another really important buyout for they're all important in their own way, but 572 is especially uh compelling to us because it's associated with the Willie Street project.

Um and that had a lot of environmental issues because of because of its prior use.

Um so we are very excited that that one is coming really close to the um to the finish line.

Uh not scheduled yet, but but moving forward uh in this the last week or so.

Uh and then just finally just an update on from the fire department.

Um the council approved purchase of a new SCBA um self-contained breathing apparatus system uh used under the capital approvement plan.

This was a huge up uh need.

This replaced a 20-year-old system, and Chief Cushman uh asked me to report that it has been purchased and it's in service.

So a nice uh you know the fruits of the of the labor and the approvals that you give us uh coming into fruition at the fire department.

So uh thank you for that.

Uh and that's it.

Any questions, come briefly?

Yep.

Uh where are we on the overall layouts?

Are we half done through the probably uh just over the halfway point of this at this at this point?

Yeah, and and um the ones that are left tend to be um really compelling ones for us because they're associated with projects.

So as I mentioned, 572 is was a really really good one to get good news on.

Um, and I believe that another Harrington Avenue one is right on the cusp as well, which is associated with um with our CPBG project.

So um, those are the ones that um you know really important ones still left to go.

Uh we're I can do an update for the council next week, but we're probably right over the halfway part of this point.

Thank you.

Sure.

Any other questions?

Okay, very interesting done.

We'll move on to item 88 on the agenda.

This is our volunteer appointment appointments for the justice, equity, diversity, inclusion and belonging committee and the DRB.

And so, first up is Aurora Flynn.

Aurora, how are you?

May I call you Aurora?

Sorry.

Yeah, thank you very much.

How are you?

I'm well, how are you?

Oh very good.

So why don't we just turn it over to you if you don't mind?

Tell us a little bit about yourself and and what interested you've uh great application, by the way.

But if we could just hear from you, that would be super.

Yeah, totally.

Um, so I just moved to Barrie like a year and a half ago.

Um and have been trying really hard to get involved with the community.

Uh, and then I work at the Orange County Restorative Justice Center in Chelsea with Rick Pereira, who's on the DEI committee, and he recruited me.

That's okay.

And uh this is a question I ask all of our volunteers.

Uh I assume you've gotten to know some members of the committee, you understand the time commitments, and you're prepared to meet those commitments.

Yes, totally.

Thank you very much.

Councillor, are there any other questions from the council?

If not, a motion to approve would be in order.

So second.

It's moved in seconded.

Is there any discussion?

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

Aye, and those motion carries.

Aurora, welcome aboard.

Yay, thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, council.

Next up, Philip back.

Uh, how are you?

May I call you, Philip?

Yeah.

Okay.

Sure.

Just checking.

Yeah.

Hi, again.

Dress rehearsal, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Um, sure.

I'm applying to be on the development review board.

Uh, I'm a lawyer, I've worked for the state as a lawyer for 18 years.

Uh, I have a master's degree in political science, so uh, you know, I have a good understanding of of how government institutions operate.

I was a judicial law clerk for four years, so I understand that the development review board is sort of a quasi uh judicial uh uh board, although I'm not familiar with uh our land use laws or land development laws.

Uh I'm I'm certainly able to learn them and I'm generally familiar with the rules of procedure, which in some ways are even more important than that.

The substantive laws, uh but um I just wanted to serve my city, and uh I'm happy to help fantastic.

And same question, you understand?

It sounds like you do understand, and and with it's especially important because uh we have a short building season, and if so, if we fail to get a quorum at the DRV, it often means that we're holding a contractor up by 30 days, and what is a really short you know, building season.

So you understand the importance of you know participation, attending the meeting, you understand the time requirements, and you prepare to meet those.

Yes, I am.

Thank you very much.

Council, any other questions?

Okay.

Hearing none.

Motion to approval.

It's moved in second.

Hearing none, all of those are David Motion is presented.

Motion carries fill up well.

Thank you for the first time.

Thank you for serving.

Okay, counselor Guskin.

We'll move on to the flood resiliency plan.

Nice to see you folks again.

Hi, why don't you come on up?

All right, so this evening we are getting progress update on the hydraulics, hydrology, and stormwater studies that we have commissioned from SLR consulting.

This falls under the portion of the plan that calls for us to receive as much data and information about the conditions of flooding in Barry City as possible.

Just purely editorial mode.

I'm really proud that Barry City took the steps so early on because we've been talking to you folks for quite a while about doing this work to commission these studies because I think it underscores our commitment to making sure we have all the information before we make really good choices about our flood resiliency future.

So with that, have I got to go?

All right.

Thank you.

I'll turn it over to the folks from SLR consulting to get around our project as well.

All right, thank you very much.

Um great to be here.

And we requested to come in because it's been a couple months since we've met and we've been working on the projects.

Um we're probably a little behind that where we'd want to be, and we're kind of now hitting these projects full on.

Um and so we give you a progress update.

And um, this the kind of snowy winter has slowed a little bit of the data collection, and um so just give you an update.

So again, we're here to talk about some of the data collection that has taken place.

Um we have some models set up that we're and we're still working on refining those.

We'll be testing alternatives, and then we have a stormwater study, and there'll be some surveyors poking around some stormwater manholes moving forward.

And so we have actually a team of four of us um that are working on the project now.

Two of them are here virtually, and we're gonna kick it off with Alex to talk about the um data collection, the green LIDAR and the hydraulics.

Thank you.

Hi everyone, nice to see you all again.

Um Alex Marcushi with SLR Consulting.

Um, yeah, I'll start by discussing the hydraulic model piece of kind of this whole study and the hydraulic model focuses really on the rivers and floodplains and kind of looking at flood patterns, how water is moving kind of through Barrie across the floodplain through the whole river valley of the Stevens branch and some of the tributaries.

Um that's kind of the model that we'll also be using to test out some flood mitigation alternatives as Ray had mentioned.

So a lot of the projects that we've spoken with you about before, you know, some of the floodplain restoration projects, infrastructure projects, and kind of other things that we've discussed in the past as well.

So I think we can next slide.

So first up, we did want to talk about the green wiar data that was collected.

So this is collected last year via helicopter and whiteout solutions.

Uh, we worked with them on collecting this data.

So this is like a really awesome data source and really really cool specifically for river mapping.

Um, so lidar data is collected from the sensor that's mounted on a helicopter or an airplane or even a drone, um, and it uses laser beams to essentially they hit the earth's surface and then bounce back, and it's able to really really accurately map the surface of the earth.

And the the unique thing about green lidar is that it penetrates water, whereas traditional LIDAR does not.

So we have statewide traditional LIDAR available where you know you can map the Earth's surface, but not the bottom of our rivers, lakes, etc.

But the green LIDAR data is able to penetrate the water and and capture kind of stream beds.

So this was collected last year by Whiteout, as I mentioned, and we had kind of a number of data products that are listed there that came from the data collection effort.

And if you go to the next slide, we'll look at a little bit what they look like.

So one thing that we're able to generate with this data is what's known as a three-dimensional point cloud.

So this is kind of um looking up valley on the Stevens branch in the vicinity of the Berlin Street Bridge.

And you can see that the data collection spanned the river, which is shown kind of in blue, and then the channel banks and like the immediate overbank area.

So you can see really clearly mapped the houses on Scampini Square.

You can even see you know, some cars that were parked along the river.

It's that fine scale on the day that data collection happened, and it's able to classify the different types of features.

So you can see that water represented in blue, and then the bottom of the stream channel is kind of that brown color, and then buildings, roads, bridges, even power lines, etc.

So it's just a really um really high resolution type of data.

So next slide.

And we just wanted to show a couple examples of the data from projects that we've been, you know, sites we've been talking with you all about.

So this is the Harrington Avenue site and looking kind of upstream on Gunnersbrook.

You can see how fine detailed it is, um, kind of in the middle of the slide there.

You can see the bollards of that trash rack, um, especially on the right side of the channel there.

Um, so that's kind of really fine scale data.

Next slide.

And um another unique thing is that you're able to take kind of that three-dimensional point cloud and then look in cross section view.

So if you imagine you're in a canoe in the river, kind of pointing downstream, you can see um the three-dimensional point cloud, but on the right side, you're able to see really well defined kind of where the water surface is, where the bottom of the river is, and then the shape of the channel banks, as well as looking at different vegetation and other features on the channel banks.

Next slide.

So how does this help us with kind of our river mapping and modeling?

So again, here we're looking at cross section view.

So this is the Stevens branch in the vicinity of upstream of Berlin Street.

So imagine again you're in that canoe facing downstream.

Um, so the traditional LiDAR, which is a statewide lidar that's available, is kind of that lighter green line on the cross section, and then you can see the darker blue line is several feet deeper.

Um, so that just shows that the the green lidar sensor is able to capture the stream bed and able to more accurately define the shape of that river channel, which makes a really big difference when you're looking at kind of how floodwaters are moving through the channel and and over the banks and to the floodplain.

Um, having that several feet, you know, more accurately mapped creates a better model in the end.

Next slide.

So just to talk a little bit about kind of the model setup and the model components for the hydraulic model, the river model portion of things.

Um this map you can see the extent of the hydraulic model.

So we're working with a two-dimensional um hydraulic model.

I'll talk a little bit more on the next slide about what that means.

But basically, the extent you have the Stevens branch kind of on the left side there, so encompassing the Stevens branch throughout the entirety of Barrie City, there's like a brown line on there that shows the town boundary, and then Gunnersbrook is also included within the city and a little bit into the town.

Uh, we've got Edgemont and Paw Ashbrook tributaries as well as the jail branch included in the model.

And the green lidar collection encompassed kind of the river channels as well as a corridor, um either 40, 30 or 20 meter corridor width, and then the rest of it for the kind of farther out flipping areas is the statewide lidar.

Next slide.

So we're building a two-dimensional hydrog model, as I mentioned, in a software called Hack RAS, and what this model kind of is comprised of is a mesh of these cells, and the cells compute kind of water depth, water velocity, and the direction of flow for floodwaters moving through the whole model.

So, what you end up with is kind of a map that shows the extent of flooding as well as the depth of flooding, how fast the water is moving, and even you can kind of watch the flood move through the system kind of in an animated fashion in the model.

So the base cell size that we're working with is 50 feet, and that's kind of out on the floodplain, but we do have refinements within the river channels, stream channels around infrastructure, um, roads, embankments, things like that.

So having things kind of more finely mapped in the areas of concern.

And then we're taking the model mesh and we're putting flow in at four different locations upstream.

So, as I mentioned before, the Stevens branch, so water is flowing into the Stevens branch in the model, into the jail branch, into the Edgemont tributary, and into Gunnersbrook, as well as some locations within the model itself.

So that's where we kind of add the water into the framework of the model.

Next slide.

So just to discuss a few of the components of what go into the hydraulic model.

Um, we were talking a little bit before about the traditional statewide lidar versus the green ladder that was collected, and I think this visual shows really well.

So this is kind of right on the Barry City Town line.

And you can see on the left hand side the traditional ladder, it doesn't penetrate the water surface, and you have kind of this like wonky looking interpolated surface of the river, whereas on the right side you can see even around the bends, those scour pools and areas where there might be sediment in the channel, so you can see that the riverbed is really um really finely mapped in that.

So as I mentioned before, we're using kind of a combination of those two data sources.

Excuse me, so that's a two-year comparison right there from 23 to 25.

Um, well, yeah, so the the statewide LIDAR, uh, the most recent data is from 2023, and then the green lidar, that kind of river channel and bank area is from 2025.

I just may I just follow up on that to make sure that we're clarifying correctly, but it's not an apples to apples comparison because it's measuring with a different tool.

Yes, it's um LIDAR, so it's it's using kind of the laser, the laser sensor in both applications, but it's a different type of laser that was used that's able to penetrate the water surface.

But the data are similar enough that you're able to just kind of stitch them together and kind of use both data sources and have that be like an accurate terrain as a base for the model.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Next slide.

Um, another important component that goes into the model is land cover.

So we're working with 2022 data, which is the most up-to-date data mapping that UVM did, and then we kind of supplement that um based on aerial photographs, based on field data collection, and um just make sure that we're really accurately defining the land cover that's out there because that feeds into the model um what we call roughness values that kind of determines how the calculations are applied to the cells within the model.

Next slide.

And then the last thing that I'll talk about before I pass it on is the model geometry.

So as I mentioned before, it's a cell-based model, uh, whereas where within each cell, the the model is computing water depth velocity and kind of flow direction.

Um, so you can see on the left-hand side that 50-foot base cell kind of out farther on the floodplain away from the river.

This is the gel branch here, and then you can see your refinement region applied within the channel, those smaller cells of about 10 foot size.

Um, and then another really important thing that goes into the model geometry is all of the bridges.

So we have lots of bridges and culverts within our model extent.

Um, so we just need to make sure that you know all of those are really accurately defined within the model geometry so that when the water is moving through the model, uh, there's kind of accurate computations for what's happening at each of these structures because you know we we know that we have a lot of problematic structures around, and these are kind of really important areas to be looking at and um looking at potential projects for infrastructure improvements as well.

And then the last component that that goes into the model will be the hydrology or kind of the amount and the timing of the water that is fed into the model, and so um my coworker Leah, I believe is going to talk about hydrology next.

Next slide.

Yeah, if I could just jump in for one second.

So just so you know, this kind of model setup is the current state of the art.

Um, you're starting to see some communities around Vermont do green LIDAR collection and build this kind of model.

So you all are right on the front edge of this technology.

Um the next step is we're going to be validating this model, and we unfortunately have a lot of recent flood data.

Fortunately for our work, unfortunately, obviously can say, but we have flood data, so we'll validate that, and then we'll start retesting all those alternatives with this way more detailed tool to really know like how changes at Willie Street and Harrington app will really change the size the size of the shape of the floodplain in the city.

So we'll be able to ask a lot of really um good questions moving forward.

That's kind of where we're at at the dock.

Yeah, we're excited to bring results next time we see you.

Yeah.

So how much can you use the modeling to predict?

In other words, can it match with weather?

And you know, having lived here, we all know we're going to get five to six inches of rain in a four-hour period where we've got to be on high order.

Can you can this modeling if you if you can you present different weather scenarios?

Five to six inches of rain in four hours, two inches of rain in one hour.

Can you can you work that into the model and then can you can you get on the mind and say, okay, well, what if this bridge for Lynn Street all of a sudden it only has 75% of its capacity because we're plugging it with debris?

So you can do that.

Absolutely.

That is I can see why you're so excited.

Yeah, no, and honestly, I'm excited to see because one of the one of the most important things is for us to I mean, obviously, we can predict we can predict weather with a fair degree of accuracy.

But when we see a storm, you know, two or three days out that's going to drop five or six inches of rain in a two-hour period, it would be really helpful to be able to contact your team and say, okay, what is this model?

What is this look like in Barry City?

Yeah.

So this is kind of a perfect segue to the next step.

So the model Alex told you about again is you put the water in, whatever amount it is, high rain, medium rain, low rain, and see how it moves through all the structures in the city and the channels and the floodplains.

But the question you're asking is well, the intensity of the rainfall is different, or the land use changes over time.

How does the flow into the rivers change and then translate down the river in a different way?

And that's really what Leah's been focused on, who's online.

So maybe we'll turn it over to her to hear kind of our initial hydrology side of the model.

And the model is only a model in the end.

Of course, you know, we can calibrate and validate the model as much as possible.

But um yeah, no model is perfect and it's gonna be able to exactly predict what happens on the ground, but we have you know a lot of really good data to go into it.

So we're confident we'll be able to have a well-functioning model.

Hi all.

My name is Leah Cromer.

I'm a water resources engineer with SLR, and I'm gonna run through the hydrologic model that we've been working on so far.

Um, so like Rory was saying, the purpose of a hydrologic model is to tell us how much runoff we might accept expect to see during different flood events.

So, what are the peak flow rates and what are the timing of those flow rates?

So typically we look at like the 50 year or the 100 year, but we can look at different intensity events of like you're saying, like five inches and and four hours.

So we start by delineating our subwatershed in the project area to the right is a figure of our subwatershed delineation.

That bright green line is the extent of the hydraulic model that Alex was showing, and then the red lines are the boundaries of the subwatershed, just to give you kind of a sense of scale of the overall contributing watershed to the area that we're actually looking at and modeling in our hydraulic model.

So the total drainage area is approximately 96 square miles, and as you can see, that incorporates five or six five or six different towns around Barrie City.

And we also use a couple of different parameters to set up and run the hydrologic model.

We typically pull rainfall data from NOAA, and then we use land cover data and soil data to generate something called curved numbers, which determine the runoff potential for the watershed.

So a forested area with loamy sand is going to generate less runoff than a heavily urbanized area or an undeveloped area that has predominantly clay soils.

And then we also calculate a lag time using those blue hydrography lines you can see in the figure, and that tells us how quickly a watershed responds to a rainfall event.

So a steep watershed is going to have a much shorter lag time, and water is going to reach the rivers and streams much more quickly than a flatter watershed where water is moving much more slowly through the slowly through the landscape.

And all of those factors really influence those peak flow rates that we're looking at in the model and also the timing of those flow rates in the model as well.

Um you can go to the next slide.

So we do have some preliminary results.

I think it's pretty important to note that the standard methodology for hydrology is inherently pretty conservative.

So, like Alex said, it's really important that we validate these results, and we've already done quite a bit of work to compare our results from our model to peak flow rates from USGS gauges and similar watersheds or USGS regression equations or other statistical analysis looking at peak flow rates, and we've worked to bring our results generally in line with those other sources of information.

But we really still need to compare our flow rates to the high water marks that have been observed during the major flood events in the past couple years.

So the hydrology and the hydraulics model will really work hand in hand to dial in these results.

So these are just preliminary and they might change as we move forward with the project and as we get more into the hydraulic modeling.

So on the right, we have some hydrograph figures for the 100-year storm event.

And this assumes I don't remember the exact amount of rainfall, five or six inches over a 24-hour period.

Um, these hydrographs are not the really intense storm events where you're getting like five or six inches of rain in four hours.

Um like the smallest hydrograph is at the furthest upstream point as is further upstream in the watershed.

So the smallest hydrograph is jail branch, and that's right below East Berry Dam, which as you might expect attenuates a pretty significant amount of water from that part of the watershed.

And then the next hydrograph is Stevens Branch above the confluence with jail branch, and this is at Bridge Street in Barrytown.

So that's producing about 10,000 CFS for the 100 year just from the uh yeah, Stevens Branch subwatershed.

And then our next hydrograph shows the peak flow for the confluence of JL Branch and Stevens Branch.

So that's about 14,000 CFS.

And then the largest hydrograph is on the main stem of Stevens Branch.

Um that's downstream of the confluence with Gunners Brook.

It's right at that big meander in the river that's right next to West 2nd Street.

It's towards the downstream end of the hydraulic model limits.

So that's about 18,000 CFS.

So you can see how much water that heavily urbanized downtown core of Barrie really contributes to the mainstream Stevens branch.

It's about 4,000 CFS and a couple miles of river.

Is that all you all set, Leah?

Okay, thank you very much.

So again, like those two models are going to work together.

And we'll share initial results and have a validated model, and then you can ask a range of questions, and we'll come back with different like if we want to look at a range of different intensity storms or try to simulate exactly what happened in 25 and then change all the bridges.

We can't even take every bridge out just as an exercise to see how you can mitigate flooding around the city.

So that's the beauty of the model is we can really do whatever it takes to try to drive the flooding down.

Um and then I guess we wanted to wrap up one of the more interesting apply pieces of this model, and we're gonna have this very detailed model is we're evaluating the drainage network, the um storm sewer drains on that discharge at the Berlin Street.

And our colleague Brian Cody who's here um has been kind of leading that effort.

And we're in the middle of the data collection.

We just wanted to show you what we've been up to on that front.

Yeah, thanks, Roy.

Uh hi everyone.

My name is Brian Cody, and um water resource engineer with SLR and have been working with uh Roy, Leah, and Alex on this project.

Um, and wanted to just kind of finish up here tonight with a quick update on the drainage analysis that we're working on, which is maybe more a little bit more of a micro scale type project, um, focusing on a problem area um where there's been flooded flood impacts due to the flooding on the on the Stevens branch, um, and uh how we might be able to try and mitigate that.

Um so on this slide you can see there's a yellow dashed line that kind of outlines the drainage system that we're studying.

Um the um the drainage system collects along North Main Street, uh First Street, Second Street, uh Buckley or sorry, Beckley, uh Pleasant and Seminary Street.

Uh all that drainage kind of collects and discharges just downstream of the Burlington Street Bridge.

You can see there's a little bit of a yellow star there, and that's where the outfall is from the system.

Um, and also wanted to point out that there is quite a large contributing uh area from the from the north.

Um that's the yellow arrow that um also uh collects about a 170 acres of of area that flows down towards this system.

Um so where we are now, um, we've done some data collection, including uh collecting GIS data uh that's available and also the city's drainage mapping.

Um we've used that to cross-reference against our uh GIS data and started building some of our base maps that we'll use for building our models and also um you know illustrating and showing some of the alternatives that we that we analyze.

Um then also you know, one of the keys on this part of the project will be um really trying to incorporate the flooding on the Stevens branch and how it impacts this drainage system.

So as a team, we've been working on sort of planning out how our approach will incorporate that that uh those impacts.

And uh we can switch to the next slide, please.

Um so Roy kind of mentioned a little bit some of the winter weather has delayed a little bit of our survey.

Um and this shows a portion of the areas that have been collected so far.

It's a little difficult to see on this slide, but the the black lines are the drainage system pipes and catch basins that have been surveyed so far in this area is along First Street uh and and Beckley and a little bit near North Main Street route uh 302 there.

You can switch to the next slide.

And here we have another area on 2nd Street and more and more along uh Route 302.

Um and really this data is pretty important um for building the model.

Um we're collecting elevation data on the inverts of the pipes and also the rims of the catch basin structures and all of that helps us build um a model of this drainage system that we can analyze first existing to see how well it's um how well it simulates what's actually happening out there, and then also to model some of the uh improvements to try and mitigate some of those those floods.

Um so now that spring is somewhat starting to settle in, we are um going to wrap up this survey.

We're working with a uh subconsultant on the survey part of it.

Um and then also we'll do some field work to cross-reference that survey and and just make sure that we fully understand drainage patterns that are out there today.

Um, and then we'll build continue.

Well, we've started building our existing conditions model.

Um, however, this survey data is is pretty critical to that.

Um, and then start thinking about alternatives.

So that's a quick overview on the uh on the storm drainage.

Um and also it did want to point out as well that uh along with the drainage system survey, we are also collecting survey at each of the bridge uh crossings along Stevens Branch that will be used in the hydraulic model that Alex um described.

So that's a quick update on the on the drainage system analysis and uh yeah, welcome any questions.

That's fine.

Um quick question, uh Brian.

If um so when you survey the storm system, will you be able to tell us areas that are not functioning as well as they should yeah?

So the existing the existing conditions model will give us you know that information and we'll be able to kind of identify issues that um maybe there's a pipe that's undersized and and not really able to pass how much water is getting to that part of the system.

Um so yeah, we'll be able to kind of show that in our in our modeling.

And and how the storm system interacts with the river.

I mean, we have you know, there are outlets that are well below you know the river bank, ground level at the river bank, and we've all seen you know the backflowing on Main Street because the Steven's branch is full, and obviously the outlet is below the water line, so it's not water's just not flowing.

So can we make your model and your model sort of talk to each other?

Yeah, we definitely that's the idea.

I can see why you guys are really no, you might be new attaches, it's okay.

It's a really nice opportunity.

Yeah, to value.

It really is fascinating because we've all suspected.

I mean, there are simply areas uh, for example, going uh you know, from Metro Way towards Main Street, uh, where the edge would close down there's a very large cover.

I mean, we all suspect that that culvert has, I don't want to say failed, but it's compromised on some level somewhere.

Um, but we can't even get a person in there because of the conditions.

We can't get a person in there to assess it.

So I think this information that you're going to provide us is really going to be valuable as we move forward so that we can wave well, you know, what stormwater might you feel with setup.

And only you know, flow we can get a 50% capacity.

One of the things to mention is we did we did coordinate with Brian Baker at DP Public Works.

He kind of got us rolling with this city sewer maps and told us where the data gaps were.

So we kind of crafted our data collection around that data gap.

So at the first cut, you're gonna have a really detailed map of the Berlin discharge drainage that's gonna be valuable for any work you do on that system.

Then we're gonna end up with a host of recommendations to either change pipe sizes or slopes or clean the outlet out or whatever, whatever those recommendations will become.

Yeah.

So yeah.

Um surge of pretty much like yours there.

Um I'm not sure if this is a question or statement, but for we've been talking about this since I became a L's wind.

It seems like there's three main things.

Number one is the bad term dredging.

Two is pipe size and cleaning out all the storm drains and getting them to debris.

A lot of the a lot of the main flood in the DN was because it was huge between a truck or uh uh you know a power's garbage thin.

So this is all great.

I mean, it's you know, above my for sure.

But uh it seems like it's basic.

Drinking clean all the drains, clean.

I don't believe all the drains there's like 100 and something, 150.

I think it's like the one that he's talking about.

I heard that too that that was polymice.

So I guess I'm not saying this is great, but I think there's three main reasons why.

And nobody wants to use the word dredge or drudge anymore.

You change the terminology.

But uh I guess that's my statement.

Rose, did you all get you in that Amy?

Rose, do you have a question?

I knew, thank you.

Bernadette's okay, Rose is fine.

It's been a month.

I apologize, but hey, I know who I am.

Um I really appreciate Mayor that you asked a question that I had originally raised my hand for.

So um that was good to hear.

Um, and I I heard the person speaking and answering you to say something about the Berlin uh drainage.

So are we looking at the entire city doing this?

Or are we just looking at one piece of the city for this at this time?

Thank you.

Thank you, Amy.

Should we should we answer that?

Is it okay to answer okay?

Should we be back?

No, can you answer?

Any anybody else have any questions?

Yeah, so I mean, just to address Burns question, um, we did do a scoping exercise with DPW about where are the problem areas and what you know, what is their budget to collect the data and to set up a model and evaluate the drainage system and Berlin area rose to the top.

Um there's a culvert project taking place uh in the north end under the railroad.

So that piece is seems to be like it's getting addressed.

And then there's another drainage network that's sort of a big black box um at the edge edge wood um area.

So that was kind of a maybe a future project that kind of needed a little more focus individually.

So this piece is the focus of this study um for now.

Um that said, other future projects could use the outlet information that will provide you and the other modeling to to inform those projects as well when they take place.

So again, our the storm pipe focus for us is the Berlin Street network that Brian explained.

Thank you.

Amy, did you have a question?

Yeah, mine was kind of related um for Berlin Street.

It's great that you're looking at what's going in there from the northeast side of Main Street.

I wonder about the um southwest side also, because I think there's another outfall that comes um upstream of the Berlin Street Bridge.

So that's draining all the granite shed areas.

Um of like Route 62 and just all that water that can come down.

I'm assuming it goes in culverts under Route 62, the belt line when it's coming down the steep part of Berlin Street.

So I'm just curious about that, and particularly with some of the larger buildings there and lots of impervious surface.

I wonder if there's something we can actually do in terms of artificial detention just to slow down some of the rate that's coming in there because I think there's not much infiltration.

And I think in particular, that one is draining upstream of the bridge, which is just even worse in terms of debris on the on the upstream side of that.

Um the other thing I'm curious about with Berlin Street is so I saw that right now the um waterline replacement under the belt line um for Berlin Street um is gonna be happening.

I'm kind of hoping selfishly that the lower part of Berlin Street might get paved this summer or have some other work that's in pretty bad shape.

Um so while they're working on potentially um paving and um it's gonna be I think underground drilling below the belt line.

But while there's gonna be some road closures and you know, temporarily or um working on paving and the road surface as that gets connected, it seems like a good opportunity if that project is out to bid now.

I'm assuming it's aiming for the summer, that would be a good timing to figure out what could be done about the storm drains on Berlin Street.

Because like I've complained about before, there are parts of Berlin Street where the storm drains are lower than the bridge, um the low point on Berlin Street and in front of certain people's houses where the storm drains are.

So those are really critical for keeping that um neighborhood well drained.

So if we have another if you can do more following up on Byrne's question, you know, if you can do more, like hop on the other side of Berlin Street Bridge and see what you can figure out when it might be um get timing.

I had a question for Leah about the um the hydrographs with the peaks at the different points.

Um does the does the modeling show like whether there's a time lag between those four points.

I think that's really interesting seeing how the volume increases you go downstream.

And I didn't know if it was just like for the sake of comparing the volumes that they're all lined up, you know, on the same point in time.

But I'm just curious, do they all actually peak at the same point in time, or just the is it kind of like a wave moving through city?

There's a little bit of a lag.

Yeah, if you look closely, the peaks are a little offset from each other.

Um, once those hydrographs go into the hydraulic model, that'll really see how that'll really show us how flow is attenuated when water spills out into the floodplains and how those peaks get attenuated as it moves downstream.

Okay, and I'm just thinking as a practical matter, it'll be interesting to know, like and and maybe the city manager and others have experience from when we flooded, like did it all happen just all at once.

You know, the 23 flood was so bad it was kind of everywhere all at once, but um, you wouldn't have probably even seen that raise, but that would be interesting.

Um, and then I'm just curious um whether um the data goes to like the state GIS atlas, because it seems like that's a lot of really cool data and the extent you know for state permitting and um even when we're applying for state money and that kind of stuff to have it seems like a good resource if this could go in the the state GIS data.

Yeah, that might be a question for Roy.

Yeah, I mean, typically like the ANR atlas and the Center for Geriographic Information, like wouldn't at times they typically wouldn't take in this like really rich data set and display for communities, but I feel like we can generate a lot of figures, and you could put them on a website so people could look at them, or you all would obviously have access to all the files and the information that we've collected for other uses.

Um it's uh I guess there is a rare time when some flood map floodplay maps that have been generated for a flood mitigation project do find their way into BCGI for other people to look at, but I would say that's probably not the norm.

They usually reside with the community.

Um or like a regional planning commission that the community works with regularly.

Sure.

Yes.

I mean the question sounds awesome.

First of all, um my first question is in direct response to that.

Why why is the state not inviting this information?

It seems as if you pointed out that it would be really helpful.

Yeah.

I mean, I I one of the things is the consistency of the data, like this is very novel and new kind of data.

So blending it with some state data, there'll be subtle differences like we talked about earlier, and the two data sets would would behave a little differently.

So they when you when you deal with it at the state scale, I think they have state standards.

And when we ask the question, okay, what data do we want for Barrie City to capitalize on flood mitigation work?

It's this data set, it's way more detailed, it's a lot smaller scale.

So I think the trick is to kind of we kind of use our experience, and Alex mentioned this a little bit is like how do you blend those data sets if you need to like you know bury them together to kind of create the whole modeling effort.

This feels like a avenue for the future as a point of centralized coordination for the state to start to understand these models and take them in and think about how they could do this in more communities.

But that's the same thing.

Yeah, well, well, that said, um the one the state did apply for a C D B GDR grant.

It's called the River Navigator Grant, and it came in through the Central Vermont Regional Planning Commission.

And one of the tasks is to assemble all the modeling done in the Winooski Basin, of which Stevens Branch is.

So whoever whoever's gonna do that project, the art is gonna be combining old and new data sets and making that all work together.

But it is it isn't something that people know we need to do, and it's a work in progress at the state level as well.

And sometimes you just don't know what you don't know.

Yeah.

So I mean, obviously, like you said earlier, you know, this is cutting edge.

Um, you mentioned that no model is perfect.

This is a lot more perfect than I've ever seen before.

So thank you.

Um, but as I said, sometimes you just don't know what you don't know.

This is a smaller scale, and imagine having to do this throughout the entire watershed.

Um, you know, we but it's starting here, and you know, I'm excited by what we're seeing.

What excites me most is that you can predict what happens if we do certain things.

Now I'll gonna start a war now, but for example, if we remove the Berlin Street Bridge, you can tell us well, we're gonna say it because we govern for 8,000 people, not for a couple hundred.

Um, you know, what happens?

You know, what happens to the water flow?

How much do we reduce the flooding?

Um, it could be you know what happens if we make Nelson Street a dead end and take the culprit out of the Edgewood Brook.

Um, but we'll be able to ask you those questions, um, and you'll be able to give us not perfect answers but fairly accurate answers.

And I think that's going to be a valuable for our work going forward.

So thank you.

I'm I'm looking forward to it.

I'm dirtying out just as badly to you.

Um you mentioned that the brook area is kind of a black box, and this has been something I've been harping on for a while, is it's getting the courier park situation improved.

Um I would love to see uh dollar numbers for doing that next.

That's for our future conversation.

Yeah, okay.

I mean, we need to have an accurate inventory and assessment throughout the city, not just in most areas.

Um, you know, so we need to know what we don't know.

Anything else, council?

Great work, really good work.

I'm I'm excited.

Those data point maps are really cool.

Yeah, there's so many really that was that was awesome.

Yeah, and if people have more questions, I know we squeezed it, but we're happy to entertain more questions as we move forward.

As you complete the modeling, we will have a ton of questions.

That's great.

That's when it's gonna get really fun.

Yeah, thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you very much very much.

You also appreciate it.

Thank you, everyone.

Council will move on to uh item 8C on the agenda.

This is the fiscal year 27 budget review.

How are you?

I didn't know if you want to hear the comments.

Yeah, of course.

Uh my slides are really brief.

Uh, we have some those visiting us to talk about the budget.

Um so just the the reminder of where we sort of left off.

Um the total general fund budget uh stood at uh 15.8 million dollars just about, um, which was uh above last year's approved amount for the expense side was 14.7 million.

Um this represented a 6.66% increase in the amount to be raised by taxes, which was um we have moved down from the the last time we had talked about this in February.

Um and um you talked also earlier, just as a reminder that uh because of the reappraisal this year, it's really tough to talk about a projected tax rate.

It's always tough to talk about it anyway.

This year is particularly tough because of the reappraisals.

So we're really focusing on what does it mean in terms of our budget and how much how much we have to raise the taxes.

That's sort of our best proxy to understand what what it might mean for residents of the city.

Um, and we were looking at uh right now a 7.4% increase in year-to-year expenses, which also was very minor adjustment from the last time we talked about it in in February.

So again, this bottom line that the these numbers represent uh you know what it does represent is funding the council's priorities, which was the bees program um was the main one was retaining critical services like the cemetery mowing, um, and so that it does this does all of that.

It also funds the requests from our partners at the Aldrich uh Library B ADC and the partnership.

Um so it does a lot, and it's it's really close to the range that um had been set by the council when we started this uh process.

Um have sort of three big questions that we left from the last time we talked about the budget in February.

Um one is uh I won't speak much this because we have um representatives of Green Mountain Transit here to speak about this um as well.

But the the budget we have brought to you as a staff reduced the allocation to Green Mountain Transit by 25,900.

Um you can see that from 38,400 to uh 12,500.

So this represents um a small percentage of GMT's total revenues, it's also a larger share, 5% of their total operating assistance for rural services.

Um thing I had mentioned to the council when we were looking at this, and I um and I'm sure the GMT representatives can address this is we saw some of the contributions from other municipalities that were a little surprising to us, and there may be very, very valid, and I mentioned this to the council, it may be very, very valid explanations for that.

We we didn't know them at the time, but for example, I know Waterbury's allocation was quite low compared to what ours is, and it's I think water breaks would still be lower at the 12,500.

But again, that's that's something that can be addressed as we turn over to GMT.

Um we also um assumed 82,000 in revenue from an increase of the rental registry fee.

Um, right now it's at $60 per unit.

We are proposing to increase it to $100 per unit, which is fairly consistent with municipalities that charge uh a similar fee.

Um, so that raises $82,000.

If we do not move in that direction, we have to you know make it up somehow.

It's either uh cutting expenses somewhere or raising revenue somewhere else.

Um, and then one other question that we had uh talked about as an open question was how much fund balance to allocate to help reduce the tax rate.

Um the current budget we had presented you assumed about 100,000 to uh help reduce the tax rate, uh help reduce the amount to be raised by taxes.

Um the balance here is you know maintaining you know maintaining a balance between both affordability for residents and having a rainy day fund.

As a you know, reminder, um, we're very proud of the fact that even though we opened lines of credit just to be safe, we didn't have to really end up borrowing a nickel to cover our flood expenses in 23 and 24, which is because we had a really uh stable fund balance that allowed us to pre to frontload the cost of flood recovery, which is a requirement of PEMA right PEMA reimburses, we have to pay on the front end.

We prepared for the possibility of having to uh borrow money and we were ready to, but we were lucky that we did it.

Um and the reason for that was because we had really stable finances and we had retained fund balance um for things like this.

So one question for the council is how much do we do we use?

Um I actually had a question about I've been thinking outside the box, it's like everything to do.

Um, about the um registrate the rent registration fee.

Could we I was very struck by the comments that the mayor made about how those costs are likely to be passed on to people who are already renters who are already stressed by that.

I'm wondering if we could set up a tiered structure where if landlords agreed to rent their property at some level below market rate, we could offer them a discount on the rental inspection so that we would have the people who are renting at market rate, we pay the full amount, and even you know if we were more committed to renting it at the affordable rate, we could get a little incentive.

We could be incentivizing community good.

Um I I sus I suppose we could.

Um I would um we have to figure out a way to verify that they're charging the rents they're doing and how they're um and how we would you know sort of monitor that um so right now it's as a flat fee, it's it's easy because we just we send out a bill and we get the same amount.

So I think we would have to do some sort of reporting or data tracking to know who's charging what and make sure they're doing that so that they don't get the incentive without without the administrative function would likely cost us 100,000 that was a year.

Yeah, so you know, and it's not just my opinion.

Uh I'd be happy to share an email that I received from the executive director of Capstone who said thank you for bringing that up now because that's exactly what's going to happen.

And this is the executive director of Capstone telling me that these costs are going to get passed on to those who can afford it leased.

As I spoke to folks at City Gall and around town, one of the things that really struck me is the number of people who aren't paying it at all.

They just are not renting uh registering the rental games.

They're not paying.

So I told Janet to think about how we make that.

And I don't want to be punitive towards tenants because that's what I'm trying to look out for.

But on the other hand, I said, well, Shannon, is there any way that we call it a registration fee?

And if you don't register, there's no penalty.

What if you if you don't register, you can't write your unit.

It's not going to punish.

So you know, I mean, it's always shocking to me when people just don't pay their bills and don't think anything of it.

So, you know, again, I'm I'm still a proponent of I'm gonna I'm not opposed to an increase, but I'm a proponent of a reasonable increase.

But this is a great way, you folks have been waiting.

Uh our folks uh partners from uh Green Mountain Transit.

So if you want to segue into them, we're gonna have more of a discussion folks before.

But I'd like to um and again, I mean you want me to kick it off.

Yeah, well, and I'll I can just wrap up on the fund balance piece, which was the sort of the last of the three prongs that um are sort of out there, and our uh Christina's been working with our auditors, they're not done yet, but we we believe the estimated cumulative fund balance will be right around 2.1 million dollars.

This is we've rebuilt this because as FEMA reimbursements come in.

Um, this is basically replenishing the fund balance we had to use to front load the cost, right?

So that's how this fund balance is being built up in which completion date in the audit here or take.

Um they haven't by charter, um by charter, we don't have a choice.

Uh by charter, we can retain 10%.

Is that correct term?

Five percent.

Not in the legislature, but they haven't they're gonna see the pipeline.

So they're gonna approve it.

So by charter, once we know, and we've had this argument before because we you know, I I'm not gonna sit here and say, well, all right, 2.1 million dollars minus uh you know, minus 1.4 million dollars to 600,000.

I I would hedge my bench a little bit because the I trust your work, Christina, and and thanks for sharing.

And Carol, thanks for sharing you know the interim with me.

Um, you know, I had pegged it at like 1.8, and but you know a lot more than I do.

I picked it at 1.8, so I would not be one without the audit in hand to say, okay, then the number has to be 676,609.

I would use a lower number to hedge against a lot of things.

We have um we have public works uh budgets, we have construction budgets that are coming in higher uh than we thought they would.

So we just heard from these folks, we are going to get what I expect will be a fairly robust um laundry list of things that need to be done with the storm system.

So I would not, you know, and as much as I respect and follow the charter, um, that's the oath I took.

Uh I'm also not going to uh find out that that 2.1 is actually 1.9, and we've built 600,000 into a budget that's not sustainable.

Yeah, so if I if so we'll we you know we can talk about that, right?

And I'm not proposing to use 676,000 for property tax reduction.

So I think that, yeah, I our current charter language allows us to retain 5% of the general fund budget as an undesignated fund balance.

So that would amount to about $743,000.

Last year the voters approved the charter change that doubles that to 10%.

So we that that uh our charter changes have a hearing tomorrow in Davos, we expect those to go through.

So we we recommend that we start sort of functioning under that 10% uh uh limit anyway, which council can do anyhow.

I agree, and that's at 1.4 million dollars.

So that leaves roughly a balance of 676, which is undesignated.

Um, you know, we think that you know that gives us some loom to work with on the budget to get that tax rate down to closer to that 5%.

It also uh what we would suggest once we're done with the budget process is that the balance of that goes to the capital improvement fund.

I mean, we talk about all the time the um the accumulated needs that we have to fix grains and the projects we're gonna get from from Roy, etc.

Uh, once these this work is done, that having those resources will be helpful to for us to get those done without having to wait for a grant that may or may not come.

Um so yeah, I think for for our purposes, you know, in terms of big picture, we would suggest is we retain the 1.4 as an undesignated balance, undesignated fund balance as anticipated by the charter changes pending at the legislature.

Um we can reduce the 100,000 dollars in general fund for the uh housing and homelessness liaison position, knowing that we have some options to fund it.

I don't think we should warn a budget without knowing what we're gonna do with that role, uh, whether it be general funded, it doesn't have to be, but we have the resources to do it otherwise.

Um, and then we continue to finalize the budget, and we can use some of that 676 to basically get us to that sweet spot that um hopefully gets to the affordability issues of president.

So those are generally the thoughts for you know at the staff level what what we've been thinking um to help us get to that finish line.

Okay.

Are there any other municipalities that are trying to get to money for homeless liaison besides us or what's your opinion on the legend speak to that at a 50,000 foot level because I I'm in touch with um Representative Wazadak.

Um there are so there's a growing consensus that there'll be a pot of money for municipalities.

We would be able to draw from that money.

So it's something that we think there'll be something for municipalities.

We don't know what that something is yet.

Well, we've got time.

I mean, you know, none of this is going to be decided this evening.

And we and we don't have to.

Um I'm a big one on making sure I have all of the data I need before I have to make a decision.

Um decision I don't have to think about much about is GMT.

I would be a proponent to fund the employee at the level they requested.

Um it's an essential service for a lot of people who live in Mary.

You know, they they need the bus.

And it's to me, it's kind of like the post office.

Post office is on this downward trajectory.

And I'm a guy, I'm I'm old.

Okay, I like checks in an envelope and I take them to the post office.

But more and more, for example, I'm gonna sign up uh with the city to have them just strap my property taxes out of my account.

I don't want to be late.

I can't, I I struggle with post office.

But it occurred to me that the more I do that, and the more we all do that, well, it's a death spiral.

Now they have less revenue.

So, how do we expect them to do better if if everyone's doing everything online?

And that's the way I feel about GMT.

You know, they they've definitely had some struggles, no doubt about it.

And I would be a proponent of fully funding them or funding them level they request, but letting them know we expect better performance, we expect better communication, we expect our residents to be happy with the service.

But if we just don't fund them, um, you know, you defund something and generally it doesn't work well for you.

Yes.

I just I wonder if you'll try looking here from them.

Okay, just grab an extra chair if you don't mind.

Yeah, that would be great.

Thank you.

I guess my first question would be then to sort of take some direct answers on the disparity between communities that contribute to G and T and what the disparities look like.

Great.

Um, so um for the record, Monica White, director of Central Mount Services for Green Mountain Transit.

Christian Meyer, executive director of Central Vermont Regional Planning Commission, the Washington County uh Commissioner to Green Mountain Transit.

And so we have prepared a brief slide deck.

Um, so maybe um the best way to go about it is just do a zip through recognizing everyone.

Um it's late and everyone has very busy agenda now.

Take the lot of people who live there live here, which is really important.

Okay.

You you take the time you need.

Great.

Well, thank you.

I appreciate that, Mr.

Mayor.

And um, and we'll certainly be open to have any any questions and some of the points um brought up, we'll maybe uh hit through those um here in the presentation.

Uh next slide, please.

Um, so I think that the biggest update is that in uh effective July 1st of this year, Washington County Public Transit Services are transferring from Green Mountain Transit to Tri-Valley Transit.

Um, TBT has uh 50 years now of experience providing high quality rural transportation across Addison Orange and North Windsor counties.

Um I think it's really important to underscore rural um that the focus is entirely rural.

Um, right now, in terms of Green Mountain Transit's organizational structure, um, the headquarters is out of Burlington and Chitting County and urban operations.

Um up until this past January, uh GMT also had Franklin Grand Isle counties under their service umbrella.

Um January 1st, FGI, Franklin Grand Isle has transferred to rural community transportation, and then July 1st, we here in Central Vermont will be transferred to TBT, which really is a positive change for this region.

And then July 1st, we here in Central Vermont will be transferred to TBT, which really is a positive change for this region.

Riders should only notice improvements in service along with new logos.

Our current Berlin-based team will continue to operate locally, and we're very much continuing forward to being part of the TBT family serving our Washington County neighbors.

Important to note, Jim Moulton, the executive director of Tri Valley Transit, would have liked to have been here tonight, but he had pre-existing travel plans, so that's why he was not able to come.

And then to underscore again the urban issues that you hear in the news about Brain Mountain Transit and potential service reductions and Clayton Clark GMT's general manager.

Those are urban only, and that's been part of the challenge that GMT has had over the years with operating both urban and rural service, and they're very they're funded differently through the federal level, overseen differently at the state level.

And so it'll be really, really great to go back to our rural routes here in Washington County effective in July.

I don't know if you want to add anything to that question.

No, I mean my role here tonight is really to be here as that third party observer since the state made the decision to transfer services to TBT.

I've been part of the monthly meetings of the Washington County Transfer transition group.

There are myriad details for them to go through before this transition takes place in just a couple months now, but they really are showing a lot of care and diligence on every decision.

And I think we'll want to go a little bit a little bit more to that with uh new positions to coordinate volunteer drivers and community engagement.

Um I mean I further evidence that by the morale of GMT staff looking at this big unknown this big transition is fairly high, which speaks I think uh really well to the work TBT is doing to make sure this is a smooth transition.

Uh thank you.

Um so I'm not gonna read through the missions.

So you know, in this in this kind of transition time, I'm wearing two hats, both as a current GMT employee and a future TBT employee.

But you know, at core the mission of both organizations is to operate successful public transit on behalf of the communities that we serve at both you know safe, reliable, accessible, affordable, really kind of underscoring what we what we do.

Uh next slide, please.

Uh that one.

Uh yeah, that one, thank you.

Um so again, not gonna go through all of this in great detail, um, but we have a very robust public transit program here in central Vermont.

So we have fixed route and commuter service, and the the ones that are highlighted in red here are ones that directly service Barrie City.

So the city commuter route, city mid and city midday, uh, Barrie Hospital Hill, those are you know fixed route that are cyclical, they're published schedules, they you know go to the same stops, the same same route, the same loops.

Um do you keep numbers of only participants, only people?

Yes, and I I have that in maybe the next slide, so um at least for Barry City.

But um, so uh and then in addition to those um fixed route that you that we have the published schedules for, we have we operate demand response service.

So this is a non-fixed route system for transporting folks that um when that requires advanced scheduling.

So people who uh receive Medicaid but do not have transportation options, so non-emergency medical transportation to appointments, um transportation to appointments and access to food, um health care for older and disabled individuals, um recovery and job access for people with substance use disorder.

Um those those that's also a significant portion of our book of business and what we do.

Um we have designated shopping and health shuttles, um including uh three that directly serve Barry City residents, um, the Hannaford Shoppers once a week, Bairytown O D, older and disabled, um, that is every other week, um, and BART, which is the uh bus that goes six days a week to the substance use clinic on Comstack Road in Berlin, transporting folks from Barry City and other areas.

Um, so so it's a really really robust um slate of services that are offered to our community members.

Um with that, zipping to the next slide if we could.

Um so ridership data.

So this so this is all based on fiscal year 25, state fiscal year 25 data, which is the most complete year that we that we have.

Um and we transported um over 188,000 folks via our fixed routes and the microtransit that serves the city of Montpelier over the last fiscal year.

So that's that's a lot of people that we're moving on a daily basis.

And that would be in addition to the tens of thousands of people that we serve with health shopping and health shuttles, demand response routes, etc.

And for Barry City residents or I'm sorry, Barry residents.

So the zip code of 05641, which does include some Barry Town people, so it's really hard to parse out the numbers specifically of Barrie City residents.

But we booked about about 7,000 demand response rides in that last completed state fiscal year.

And then for our fixed route, the buses that you see looping around through the city every day, or well, six days a week Monday through Saturday.

Our two highest ridership local routes provide service to and from Barrie City, totaling nearly a hundred thousand people transported on the city commuter and city midday routes and very hospital hill routes.

So that's a lot of people that were moving in and around to and from Barrie City on an annual basis.

And one thing that I I really want to highlight here, maybe I should have put it at the top, is that so I've been with GMT for two years now, and when I came in, we were experiencing service reductions due to staffing levels, and Barrie City was hit by that.

There were some of the city commuter routes that were not operating as scheduled that we had to just pull them back because we didn't have the bus operators to run those.

So in state fiscal year 25, the those service suspensions were fully restored, and I'm I'm proud to say that we've been operating once in the Blue Moon, we have to cancel a run, like a run due to unforeseen circumstances.

But by and large, our service suspension or our service suspensions have been restored, and by and large, we're able to perform the service levels that our communities would expect.

And so here one of the things that I want to point out is that it was a question about other municipalities and you know, Waterbury was was brought up as one of them.

So the you know the numbers here again, transporting nearly a hundred thousand people on those two routes alone into and out of Barrie City in state fiscal year 25.

For Waterbury, which is served by the Water commuter route and the the Burlington to Montpelier Link service.

For those are the two fixed route services that service Waterbury.

Um the Watergrade commuter transported 4,496 people in that last state fiscal year.

Um the link it's it's harder to say how many people were using you know Waterbury as the their ultimate destination, but um, and for demand response rides booked for Waterberry is about 1100.

So you can kind of see the you know they contribute less, but there's also a far significant more amount of ridership in the in Barry City than in Waterbury.

Um so that's just one example of you know one of the communities that we serve.

We serve all of Washington County and three orange towns, um, towns in Orange County are in our service area, um, but certainly uh Barry City is um between you know it's maybe a toss-up between Barry City and Montpelier in terms of ridership and people service.

Oh gosh, I think our current fleet is about 37.

Oh, we need our electric zero in Washington County.

Um let's see, so that is I think the the highlights that I wanted to share with ridership data.

Um so next slide, please.

Um so I just wanted to take a moment to speak to the you know human services connections because you know I I knew about public transit before I started this job a couple of years ago, but I didn't really understand the the impact that if people do not have transportation, they can't get the services that they need, they can't get health care, they can't get access to groceries, to food, to to friends, to community if if they don't have a car.

Um, and you know, for those of us that are privileged enough to have cars, we can kind of go wherever we want.

Um we also serve those choice riders, right?

People who choose to ride the bus for environmental purposes, for convenience, for that sort of thing, but a really significant portion are the people that that just don't have another option.

And so, you know, one of the things that that we do that we really in the past couple of years since I've been there is focusing on becoming a human service connector and not just a bus company, not just running buses up and down the road, but being integrated with the health and human services community in this area.

I mean, that's my background coming from the human service lens.

So, really, you know, an active participant in in health and human services groups and coalitions and being at the table as uh as a partner in that.

I think it's really important to know that that's an angle that we're taking.

And please just jump right in and just totally monopolizing.

If you can just to the next slide, please.

Thank you.

So this is a lot of detail on this slide, which I'm for interest of time, I'm not going to go through, but volunteer community drivers are a really really important cornerstone of our service delivery.

Um, in order for us to deliver services to the most cost effective way possible, we rely on a dedicated uh network of volunteer drivers, of which eight are Bear City residents.

Um I think Bear City, there might be a couple who are of those who might be town residents, but um very valued volunteers on our team, and you know, we're always recruiting for more community um volunteer drivers, and um it's it's a really great program to you know get back to the community, get uh tax-free reimbursements that don't count against any benefits that people might receive.

So uh just a little plug for that.

Um that next slide, please.

So um, as Christian was was noting, um, so we've been working with Tri-Valley Transit for not quite a year now.

Um the the decision, do you remember when the decision was made?

Maybe the fall.

So yeah, in the fall.

Okay.

Yeah, we'll go earlier than that.

Okay, so uh about last summer, the maybe the conclusion of the last legislative session and um working with Tri-Valley Transit, whose board did a very deliberative um due diligence process to evaluate whether they could they felt that they could step in and successfully operate public transit service here in central Vermont.

Um when they made that determination it you know, in concert with myself and Clayton Clark and other leaders, as well as um VTrans, who is a proponent of this.

Um TBT, I have been extraordinarily impressed with TBT's um mindfulness, I think is how I would describe TBT's approach to kind of coming in and assuming control of public transit here in Washington County.

Um they've you know done you know many things, and we've got a lot of work ahead of us in the next three and a half months.

So if I look exhausted, I am.

Um it's it's a lot of work that's happening right now, but it's also a lot of excitement.

Um, I think it's again going to be a really good thing for Washington County for my staff, for the people that we serve for our communities.

Um, TBT has already made some investments, including leveraging some grant funding so we could hire our first volunteer community driver coordinator.

Um, and she has started full-time in that position in uh I think it was early January and in just the past couple of months.

She's been able to onboard five new volunteers, which is which is huge because those volunteers they um are the most cost-effective way we can deliver service for our demand response system.

Um TBT has also hired a community relations manager um for Washington County specifically.

Um, GMT had cut had a position once upon a time for doing that sort of work, um, but cut it more than a decade ago, and I think we're still feeling the ripple effects from that, what I would say Penny wise and pound foolish decision to cut that position.

Um, and so uh that person actually has started in our office full-time as of yesterday, and really really excited to to have her be boots on the ground to give us more bandwidth to have relations more relationships, deeper relationships with the municipalities that we serve.

Um and so again, both of those two new positions will enable us to provide our services more cost-effectively and to pull down more local match from additional sources.

So while we have solicited local match from our municipal partners, we have not had the bandwidth to really go out and solicit multiple uh uh local match from additional sources such as the businesses that we serve, the this the grocery stores that benefit from the people that we you know shuttle to their door every day to to buy items and and that sort of thing.

Um charitable donations is another.

We'll be um once we're part of TBT, we'll be a nonprofit part of their nonprofit entity and eligible for charitable donations and really um focusing on that and uh TBT will also be establishing a regional operating committee for Washington County next state fiscal year, which will include municipality representation.

So it's not just us coming to you folks hat in hand every year, please give us more money, but that there's that like back and forth engagement.

So that will be a really really great investment in our services here.

Anything I missed on that?

No, I don't want to get to the final slide.

All right.

Thank you.

So funding considerations.

So as uh noted earlier in the meeting, there's a you know, loose proposal or some sort of proposal to potentially drop from our requested funding level of $38,401 to $12,500, which is close to a $26,000 reduction.

Um so Barry City has contributed that $38K and change um for the past over the past 15 fiscal years.

Um and this year we um sought level funding despite increased costs as well as increased ridership for several reasons.

One, because we have not had the bandwidth to um before the community relations manager began the bandwidth to really do like a wholesale evaluation of all of our municipal partners, their um uh fair share contributions compared to the service levels received and that sort of thing.

So that is on the near-term horizon now that we have the bandwidth for that um across the board, and um uh so this but going into when we're putting the funding requests out starting you know at the end of last year, rolling into early this year, that's why we put the the the level funded requests this year, um, which we respectfully request um continuation of that from your community.

Um, and so local match funding really is a critical component to assure the financial sustainability and stability of public transit service.

VTrans requires uh public transit providers to raise 20% of our total operating costs as local match.

Um and to put a finer point on it, um, based on the ridership data that I shared a bit earlier, like overall uh Barrie City presently benefits from well over a million dollars gross of service.

If you put all of the the fixed routes, serve the fixed routes, the demand response services, all of that at a gross level, it's a pretty sweet deal for $38,000 of contribution.

So you know, that being said, one of the things that you know putting out there, we absolutely do not want to um even consider any any service cuts.

We're really looking forward to to growing the ability to serve our communities, but you know, any um reduction to the local match that we have that we're um projecting or requesting um would you know have us look at you know what where would we need to cinch our belts tighter?

And that would be really unfortunate while we're on an upward trajectory.

Um so today.

Yeah, I mean I I think you covered all the details, and I'm sure they have questions, but I just uh quickly say um that this is a hard process.

TBT is coming to it really in good faith, uh, looking at fiscal year 2027.

Um but you know, they need partnerships, strong partnerships with the state with eTransit, of course, uh the municipalities.

So I think that's right.

Right.

So questions?

Yes, yeah, um, I um I really appreciate the idea of trying to get sponsorships or donations from the businesses that are benefiting from your service.

Um, because as I'm sitting toward listening, it strikes me that the communities that probably need the transportation the most, like very city have the least ability to pay for it.

So how can we help to subsidize that ridership with additional funds from people who are for-profit businesses?

You know, we're not a for-profit entity, we are a municipality, and we're just trying to make ends meet for all of our community members.

So I love the idea of like going to Hannah's going to Walmart, going to you know, all those places where the bus is already stopping and saying, hey, can you contribute part of this?

Because you know, Barrie City's throwing in $38,000, they were bringing a lot of their community members to you, and you're benefiting from it directly, and they make money, so hopefully they may be money.

So that's my function.

Thank you.

I agree totally with that.

Um, also, do you have any kind of high chart or term that shows your distribution or allocation of money for risk management of people buses?

Is this show where the money holds?

Um we could certainly we could certainly pull something like that together.

Maybe so first question why did the state decide to move Washington County to TBT for Green Mount Transit?

Do you want to have that?

I can speak a little to it.

So it was it was spurred out of fiscal responsibility.

They did an analysis of all of GMT and it's both this urban and its rural partnerships.

And funding for all transit in Vermont flows through the state of Vermont PTRANs.

So any any economies that can be realized locally means the system as a whole benefits.

And what that study showed was potential savings by transferring Washington County to a different provider from the urban provider, GMT, and the same for uh RCT up in Franklin Grand Isle.

So that was a big driver.

Since that point, I think the state has been very clear that their goal uh certainly is successful transition.

They're not looking to see realize those savings year one.

Uh they want to make sure that uh they're still providing the great service or the best service they can with the money to get in the state.

Okay.

Um so you and I have been working on this for about four years with service reductions.

Um so in one of the slides that said the service reductions for service year service fiscal year 24, the service suspension reductions all store.

Now, are those also the prior service reductions?

And I think it was uh service year 23.

So I know that we had several different layers of cuts from 22 to 24.

So I just kind of want to get a gauge on where we're restoring the cuts or how much of the cuts were actually restored.

It's a good question.

Um this predates Monica a little bit.

Yeah, so part of it was there were runs that weren't being operated as part of the regular service hours.

Um and that has definitely been restored.

The second piece I believe might have been the earliest run of the day out of Barrie.

So 6 a.m.

or so.

Yeah, so I don't know.

What's the earliest run out of uh on on the city commuter or sorry?

Yeah, that's okay.

That's right, that's why I keep this.

Oh, there you go.

So yeah, uh so the earliest run on the city commuter Monday through Friday leaves the Montpelier Transit Center at 6 a.m.

And uh you know, and the kind of the turnaround point is the South End Dollar General at 6 25 a.m.

Okay.

So do you um do you uh profile your riders?

In other words, could you tell me generally who uses your service?

And what I'm really interested in, because I think you know, this is important.

This is an essential service, and I imagine, like I said, the city of Barrie cutting it.

Keep in mind, council, we can fund this, and if we don't like the result in six months, we can stop funding.

It's a line item in a general fund budget.

We have the ability to do that.

But if we don't put the money in the first place, um, I wonder how many people use your service to get to work, and they don't own a vehicle, or they only have one vehicle, but two people have to get to work.

So one of them uses the batch.

I wonder how many of them don't own a vehicle and use it to go grocery shopping because there are not a lot of grocery shopping options in Barry if you're looking to stretch your budget.

Um if I were to ask you, as most businesses do, well, who is your customer on average?

Could you can you tell me that?

So, Mayor, I could I could tell I could say a couple of things.

Do what do we have for um quantitative data as of right now is is not great in terms of Washington County to be able to say we have surveyed our riders and we know that X percent or choice riders that you know commute because they want to, but not because they have to, versus you know, X percent is you know over the age of 60 or disabled, or you know, for whatever other reason they they can't drive or they they don't.

So I do we do not have that right now.

Um one of the things I will say that's really exciting about becoming part of Tri Valley Transit is they do have a good bead on their communities that the the demographics of the riders that they serve.

Um they've already come in to do like do kind of an initial um or not come in, but they worked with us to administer an initial survey.

Um we didn't put a ton of bandwidth in it, but um to surveyed our riders for like our um excuse me, are we going where you want to go?

What are your what's your feedback on our drivers-friendly?

Do you like hours of service what you need?

And um, you know, that survey did solicit some of some of that information, but you know, it's we're so um you know, the focus right now is the transfer that we didn't really put a ton of time into promoting that, but TBT does that every year, and we will be doing that every year to really get to drill down on you know what are the numbers of of who it is that we serve because like I think I know that you know most of the the people that we serve are not the choice riders.

Um it's a bit route dependent.

Some of our roots sort of you know different populations than others, but to be able to have you know, that's that's qualitative.

Like what do we have for quantitative data right now is not as robust as I would like in looking into the future, the expectation is that we will have more of that data.

Well, thank you for the key to answer.

Sure.

Uh, because it you know, it's a parent.

I mean, you've gone through a lot of changes, and you're making the right changes.

Um, you know, as when a representative of GFT sat here six months ago, ten months ago.

It was a while ago.

Um I think it was not since I've been here.

So it wouldn't be.

No, maybe it was a year ago.

Like I said, time flies when you're having fun.

Um, but it was clear that it was an organization problem.

You know, it was an organization in decline, and I could see that.

And I think you're, you know, again, you're you're taking the right steps to correct problems.

And there were a few of them.

So I'm I'm hopeful by what I heard tonight.

I'm hopeful that the council can see their way to uh, I mean, technically this is the manager's budget, but he's smart enough to figure it out.

No, I mean, you know, again, I think that you're an organization.

I I think this would be the wrong time to reduce your funding because you're on now, you're on an upward trajectory.

Um, you know, a year or so ago.

When was it?

I don't know.

Two years ago.

It was probably a year.

It was like two years ago with the yeah.

Yeah, wasn't it two years ago?

But it was clear that it was an organization in decline, and you know, you you were cutting routes and people couldn't get to work at six in the morning, you know, who had to leave at six in the morning couldn't get to work.

Um but you're making you're making corrections.

Your organization on the upswing now.

So I'm absolutely I for one out of seven, I'm absolutely going to support your request.

Yes.

Amy Galford.

Amy, I'm sorry, did you have a question as well?

Yeah, I some of the changes that Green Mountain Transit made were before um it was announced that state employees were going to need to go back to the office at least three days a week if they weren't already, and I happen to be a state employee.

So um, like there used to be before COVID a huge use of that link service, particularly from Burlington to Montpelier.

Um, I mean lots of people who that was their transit.

And for a while, I think the link went all the way to Barry also.

Maybe that was when the VTrans um offices, or maybe it was education at that point, when some state offices open in Barrie.

So I I think the Barrie Park got removed from the link for a while, and then COVID happened and other things, and so there was a lot less ridership.

But recently, in the last few months, there's a lot more state employees commuting, and I've heard just anecdotally of people talking about standing room only on the buses between Burlington and Montpelier.

I'm curious for Barry.

Um, either if there's people coming to VTrans in Barry or state workers who live in Barrie who are going to Montpelier or National Life or Waterbury if there's demand for that.

Because that would be nice to take into account as you're planning stuff for the future.

Um it's it's kind of I think I think that was probably hard on Green Mountain Transit, but also some riders because of that, but then also it didn't get taken to account.

There's kind of these time lags.

Um there was some kind of hearing, it may have even been before COVID, it was a long time ago.

Um I went to that was held up at the hospital, and they were asking about commuter stuff.

And now I talked about how I know a lot of people in Barrie who work like up the national life complex, but there's no direct way to get a bus between those.

Um and it's it's just hard physically, like they don't quite connect.

Um, but that's always been on my wish list of having a transit option between Barrie City and National Life.

Thank you.

Yes.

Um Councilwoman Gus, and she had asked a question, I don't know if we get the answer when about the disparity and the difference of money that the other municipalities have given versus us.

Was that answered?

It was, if I understood correctly, you say that the number you requested was based on ridership from those communities and number of rents in those communities.

So I I think my understanding is that the what's called the what GMT had called the fair share calculations for municipalities was you know, point in time, I want to say over 15 years ago now that based on the ridership at that point and the kind of the distribution of routes and and uh that sort of thing at that point in time for kind of what the fair share was for municipalities at that time.

That was a long time ago.

That needs to be refreshed, and that's part of our work ahead so that we can look at okay, what is the you know, where are the ridership patterns by community um now and then into the future?

So that's how it was generated, you know, back then, and um so I'm not too tough idea.

So will that be addressed?

I would certainly be really interested in that process for the future.

Yes, just really one last more of a statement kind of question.

Um you know, we talk about the members of our community who are suffering from substance use disorder.

Um the bar busy all around and um provides amazing services to some of our most vulnerable and without our financial contribution.

Some of our most vulnerable that you realize it wouldn't be able to get the services that they need.

Um so thank you for the all of you.

Great.

Well, thank you for that.

Would you mind forwarding a copy of your presentation to let's I have it?

Oh, you do have okay, I do have uh bigger copies too if you want to add it.

And um, you know, I I'd love to hear from you again, or or or at least maybe get an update in six months or so.

I think that being okay.

Yes, maybe absolutely like to be back, and thank you for your time and and consideration.

Really I appreciate the opportunity to come and have a conversation with you folks tonight.

Thank you very much.

Okay, we will continue counsel with uh our budget review.

I I gotta be you you kind of blindsided me here, and I I didn't expect to see uh figure in excess of two million dollars.

I thought I was reaching a little bit with uh really with I I was at 1.5, 1.6, and wondering if I should you know pair that back a little bit.

So I actually here do you put that up or is that confident?

So you know, we had a little bit of a break I had of um all I do is work with numbers all day, and I like it.

Uh so I had you know put some numbers together myself, some just discussion points for the council.

I think I I sent them all to you.

Well, have them electronically, uh I didn't print my own, I didn't print my own copy, so I'm gonna have to have uh people put them up for me.

Um so you know, my my first real hot button is paying.

Um, you know, the paving fund.

There was there was a time when our paving fund this was years ago when I believe we had Garrett wouldn't jump in anywhere, girl was 800, 700, 800,000, and this was years ago.

And you know, unfortunately, um over the years that got cut in order to keep the tax rate level, um, and it never got built back up.

You know, we get modestly increased by um nothing, three percent when uh petroleum prices are going up well in excess of that.

So, you know, my first hot button when I was looking at the budget was um we need to found your hundred thousand dollar here.

Thank you very much.

Oh, that was one of the first things.

So that was awesome.

So we started 100,000 to the plus, but I really would like to see uh 200,000 additional in the um in the paving fund.

See us reduce uh increase that by 200,000 not only this year, but if I'm around, I'm gonna advocate for another 200,000 next year.

We need to get that fund up to a million dollars.

Yes.

Very briefly, yeah.

First of all, love it, but my question from the manager would be can we spend that?

Yeah, and I I've talked to the mayor about this.

I we are our our challenge in in terms of turning extra dollars into linear feet of paving is stretch, right?

So we when we pave a street, we have to do uh replacement of structures and repair structures.

So last year when we did a big stretch at Prospect Berlin and Allen uh Glory Street, we were kind of at the limit of what our staff can do in terms of prep.

Now that doesn't mean we can't do more paving.

I just just want to be very clear that uh an additional 200, and I'm I'm I'm guesstimating on the numbers that Brian's on, and he might be able to give up a better estimate, but 200,000 dollars in additional paving may translate to 120,000 of actual new asphalt and 80,000 dollars of profit, right?

So we can find ways to spend it, but I just want to be sure people know that we're basically at the limit of what our views can prepare.

Um if we add more, um, which is a good problem to have, I agree.

Like that's a great problem to have.

Um, it doesn't translate into dollar for dollar the new linear foot of pavement because some of that has to go, we'll have to contract out some of that for our work.

We could we just won't have the we just won't have the hours in our groups.

And we'll talk about that thoroughly in AP because our yeah, we'll kind of say we need to.

Well, because we've got a lot to think about with paying.

Um so um looked at some other things uh in the budget.

Um, I mean, I'll get right to the heart of it as I looked at um, I'm big on projections and I'm I'm not big on edging, and when I looked at, for example, the COSI money, there's five million dollars of cozy money in the city between the cemetery and the general fund, and you know, the budget, you know, if I look at the audited financial statements, it just seemed like there was some room there.

So we can look at that.

I mean, we don't have to dwell on every little point here because looking at it in the context of what our projected fund balance is obviously really changed the um the discussion.

Um, some of the other things that were, you know, again, not trying to be picky, but I looked at the audited, you know, our current our audited financial statements from the previous year, and you know, we had $75,000 in interest that we earned in that particular audited year.

Interest rates haven't declined, our cash balance hasn't declined.

So I felt like you know, maybe we hadn't put enough into that particular revenue uh stream.

So I made some adjustments there again, not trying to get into the weeds, but traffic light maintenance, and and this was me.

This is a totally personal thing, okay.

I apologize for it, but I must have been sitting on Hill Street waiting for that three light to change.

That wouldn't change.

So I'm and I'm looking at South Maine, and I'm like, we got some traffic light problems here.

And so yeah, that was me being in a bad mood.

So you know, again, I apologize for this.

Being a little more serious, uh, I would be willing to go along, I can support a rental registry fee of $70.

Now, that's a 16% increase in that particular fee.

And if you look throughout our budget, there's not a lot of 16% increases, and this one was a pretty large one.

Uh obviously it's going to have a negative effect on the budget.

Uh, that's going to be uh $60,000, you know, not unfavorable to the budget.

Uh I looked at the homeless liaison position, that is a state responsibility.

It absolutely is.

It is a model, you know, when we've talked, when I've talked to Representative Wazis Act, and the way we've presented it at the legislature, is that look, we've done a great job in Barrie City, and we've done a job, we've done such a good job that we would be willing to share.

So if you could, for example, fund that position, we would make uh we would make that position available 40% of the time or two days a week to other municipalities so that we could show them here's how you stand up volunteers, you know, here's how you here's how you kind of build this coalition of people who can help.

And I think the state would probably get a lot more value in that at 100,000.

So I think for us to again, it's early in the process, not that early, but for us to put to simply surrender and say we'll fund it.

I gotta be honest with you, it sends the wrong message as far as I'm concerned.

You know, because this as far as I'm concerned, this is a state responsibility.

Um the junior planner position, uh, you heard us talk about the storm system, you heard it you prospect heights, 143.

We have got a lot of work to do in the city, and if we don't build some capacity into City Hall, we're not gonna get these things done.

And I absolutely believe that.

Um, usually I'm not a big one, I'm not an advocate for adding people, but you know, thank God for Jim.

Because if it wasn't for Jim Levinsky, we wouldn't have gotten this stuff done.

We substitute, that's how we got our DR grants done.

But you know, going forward, when you look at the enormity of prospect heights.

I mean, I've been working with Nicholas for the last two weeks in giving my time, but that's not going to last forever.

Um just the complexity of the funding model uh is something that could keep I don't know, 20 hours a week.

It's a complex funding model that requires a lot of phone calls to ACCD and others.

So I think I I think we've got to build again.

I I just called it the junior planner position.

I don't know what it will be, but I know that we have a lot of work to do in Barrie City over the next two years, and if we don't have the human resources to do it, it's not going to get done.

Um again, this was uh me thinking what pittance 150,000, but uh this is me looking at the fund balance when I projected it and said I think it's gonna be more like 1.5, 1.6, and say, you know, look, we I want to say this as respectfully as possible.

It's really important to maintain the trust of the voters, and if we have a two million dollar surplus, that's their money.

They paid their taxes, that's their money, it's not ours.

Now, it's our job to make prudent decisions, but the charter says you give it back.

Now, I'm not necessarily an advocate for giving it all back, because and I think our voters listen, if we said, Well, look, we have projects, we've got we've we've got some storm systems we have to plan for.

We've got you know, we want to complete project uh prospect heights, we want to grow the grantness.

Um, I think they'd understand if we present it well.

Um, but I think just to avoid the obligation of giving it back by at the last minute someone making a motion and we shoot it over here to capital.

I'm not saying I won't do that.

I'm just saying I really want to think about that, I want to make sure we engage people, because that's how people start distrusting government.

Uh and then um last week was just increasing Green Mountain Transit.

I think I told you all why, you know, I I wanted to do that.

Um I just think they're an organization that is really doing a lot better, and so many people in Barrie, especially, you know, how many people in Stowe you think ride the bus?

Um we need that bus service.

And if we cut it and we push them into a downward trajectory, shame on us.

So I tell us 38,000, not 25.

Well, well, we cut it by the time.

I think we've got the math wrong.

I was doing a full, I was doing the full increase.

I was taking what Nicholas had proposed, and I was doing the effect on the budget.

So here's me driving Nicholas crazy.

Because look, it's just a predictor, okay.

So if we did those things that that I suggested on the previous page, um, you know, what we what I've always whenever, and I and I respect when you're looking at it and saying, well, we're looking at the amount raised by taxes.

The problem is the amount raised by taxes only tells part of the story.

Because if we're successful in Barrie City and we built a new neighborhood, and the grant list went up by five million dollars or ten million dollars, that drives the tax rate down.

That's why, if we want to grow the grant list, you end up like the governor says constantly, more taxpayers, not more taxes.

So if we grow the brand list, so that's why I did this calculation, because it's the calculation that we've done forever, and it's really the only good comparative.

Now, this is gonna go in the number when we do the reappraisal.

It's not going to be accurate, but if we took our current our grant list last year and just increased it by a percent and a half, which reasonable, Carol.

Yeah, I'm on.

So that's okay.

Um, but it's reasonable.

I mean, we can't we can't predict it.

Like I said, you know, in the the little blue uh narrative there, look, some people, their their assessment, if everyone on average goes up 50%, but you go up 40% and your neighbor goes up 60%, your neighbor's taxes are gonna go up more than yours.

Right.

It's it's just a function of the map.

So, you know, all I'm trying to do is say, okay, if we take the numbers that we have now, and that's all we have to work with.

I don't know what the results of the assessment are yet.

I can look at this and say, okay, even if we don't make all the changes that I suggested on the previous page, we're approximating a five percent give or take increase.

And there's no sleight of hand, there's no funny math, it's you know, it's just math using historical data.

So uh anything else you do it?

Uh oh, well, this is all a graph, I gotta grow up.

Well, and again, the graph was just to sort of prove my point that that so you've got you know the tax rate change and you've got the amount raised by taxes.

They don't, as you look at that graph, they they're they correlate pretty well.

I don't know what happened.

Carol, what was that?

What was that?

Did our grant dollars for the state?

Thank you.

Okay.

So that year where you see we, you know, when you look at the amount raised by taxes and what our tax rate ends up being, as you see from the two graphs, it sort of correlates, except for thinking it was that one year where the state gave us a million dollars for flood recovery, and so obviously that that really changed things.

So they're, you know, they actually correlate pretty good.

So give or take, if we make those changes that I suggest.

I mean, I see a path to be around five.

And let me tell you one of the places journey took me.

I used to say the number, and I used to say, okay, it was five percent, and damned if I wasn't gonna get to five percent one way or another.

And I bailed out on that because what I figured out is that we couldn't necessarily we're gonna be we're gonna be over five percent, I think, if we if we do the two hundred and thousand and paving.

So, okay, so I figured, okay, so we could do a hundred.

That would get us to five percent.

That's not the right thing to do.

The right thing to do is to do the 200,000.

You've all driven our roads.

I mean, I know we're gonna have a paving discussion next, but we we have to do something more meaningful than $600,000.

It's not gonna cut it.

My goal of the next couple of years would be to get that fund back to a million dollars or a million two wherever really belongs our cars will thank us.

So anybody you want to react to it.

No, yes, question.

Just a couple of questions on the your proposed uh fund balance surplus.

Um I just want to make sure I understand what you're proposing.

You're proposing uh a portion of that return to buy down taxes and potentially a portion of that to go to what the manager had suggested, which is to have a capital improvement plan, or at least that's the discussion.

Oh, absolutely.

Or yeah, um, you know, no one in this room except for Tess, Carol, maybe Sonia will remember the name Lyman Hansen.

Lyman was big on trying to maintain a level tax rate, and in years where there was a reasonable surplus, Lyman would squirrel a little money away, and you know, so that he could maintain a tax rate that wouldn't, you know, spike up and down.

So, yeah, I'm absolutely a proponent of that, which is why you know, for years in Carroll room these, we live with no fund banks.

We couldn't keep it dying.

We had to give it all back, and then over time we made good decisions, we and the voters trusted us enough to give us five.

And over time we made even more good decisions, and they trusted us enough to give us ten.

Well, that doesn't mean that we necessarily need ten, we could probably get five with nine.

We simply can't retain more than ten.

So I suspect you'll see in terms of where the manager and I would end up.

I think I suspect you you're gonna see more similarities than you would differentiate.

So I'm no, I'm not at all opposed to that.

We've got uh I don't even want to know what that what our storm system immediate maintenance bill is going to do.

Yeah, so yes.

So you have in your 90,000 to restore the junior vendor position.

Um I remember when we were trying to fill out in 22 and 23 until we'd taken it out of the budget.

Um wasn't that an issue where we couldn't pay them enough to commit?

Well, I don't know that it's gonna be to answer your question, counselor.

I don't know that it's going to be necessarily a junior planner position.

Right, it could be a grant writer.

I don't I don't know that we necessarily need a junior planner, but I know we're gonna need, I know we need human capacity, but if you want to expand on that, I think um uh I was thinking along those lines that uh council bearings, you're right that we we struggled to fill it.

Um I think Mayor, you're right too.

That I I think the terminology is maybe needs to be looser.

I wouldn't I wouldn't look at this as contracted services, project management services.

Um we you know, a 90,000 all in for a position translates to roughly Christina sixty thousand dollar salary with 30,000 for the French costs, right?

Roughly um, so 60,000 for a junior planner, we can't we couldn't get them to answer, we couldn't get them to come in the door.

But if we have a contract, it's like a Jim Lominsky type of person, he doesn't need health care, he doesn't need insurance.

He's retired, he's a contractor.

We can pay somebody like Jim without having to pay the benefits, uh we can do a project specific, uh and we can and it can go a lot further.

So I I I like I think I I agree wholeheartedly with the idea about a capacity back in.

Um I think terminology-wise, it might be prudent to instead of tagging into a specific position to tagging it to you know, whatever the right losing is just project management, community development.

Yeah, there you go.

Let's get as vague as we can.

Community development, but but like I said, just something because I've been more in the trenches over the last six months.

I've seen what the you know, at one point the manager had a discussion with me about possibly not replacing his receptions.

And I said, Are you out of your mind?

I said, your life would be miserable.

You'd you'd quit in a week.

You know, some things just cost money.

But you know, we're showing here that you know you you heard this this evening.

I mean, we're we're on the cutting edge of technology in terms of assessing what is happening in our city when the floodwaters come.

A lot of municipalities are sometimes you know, it's um, and especially as I was writing my report, um you realize how much we've done.

And and I'm just terrified that if we start, you know, if we don't put 200,000 more into paving, and and you know, and we're already we're playing catch-up there.

And you know, we saw what happened, we're trying to rebuild the recreation department because we cut that out.

I I don't want to keep making those same mistakes.

I I just think you know, I I can't stress strongly enough to not build some capacity in a city hall would just be a just be a big mistake.

It really would.

Yes.

Um, I agree with most of this.

My biggest concern is taking out the homeless opposition for the simple fact that, and I don't disagree with you that it's a state problem, and that they should be funding it, and at the same time, if they decide not to fund it, you don't have a homeless liaison, and what what do we do with the population of people who need the most attention and the most health?

Well, I think we first of all I think we're still a long way from the finish line in both respects, finalizing our budget, and also what's going on down in Montpelier.

Um, so you know, again, I'm just saying, look, this is my preference.

You know, we just need some help with this, and and we're taking, and again, we've offered what I think is a pretty good program, you know.

That look, we have someone who's really good at what they do, and they could run around and teach others how to do it.

And you'd probably and the state of Vermont would probably end up leveraging this money five times.

It's gonna be a heck of a lot better than the motel program was.

I can tell you that, it'll be a heck of a lot more efficient.

And you know, I I hate to even think Tess, do you want to chime in?

I mean, how what do you think that what do you think this hundred thousand dollars brought in terms of benefit?

200, 250.

Well, I don't know about numbers, but I um when we formed this position, a gentleman.

I'm sorry.

Relaxing here in a nice chair during the cabal.

Yeah, Tess Taylor, homelessness and housing the easy uncle very when we created this position, um it was supposed to be about homelessness.

That's what the state wanted to pay for.

We convinced them that you can't talk about homelessness without talking about housing.

You can't talk about homelessness and housing in Barry City without talking about flood resiliency.

So I feel like I've been really trying very hard to chat to um parse that job in those three things, and um I see myself as an aide to the city manager.

It is like an assistant position in a way because doing the work of trying to find out about um infill studies and working with um our uh Barry Up and doing the work that we did, plus doing the work on homelessness, which um I'm so proud of our community, and though I would love for every place in the state to do things the way we do it, they've got to up their game in the community spirit that we have in Barrie.

So that's where I would probably counsel people the most.

Right, but you've got to have to have the tie high force.

Yes, yeah, yeah.

And that's been my pitch time and time again that we're this is how we're getting it done, and we'll show you how to do it.

Yeah, you know, point point us in point us to a city, point us to a town, yeah.

And we'll explain to you how we do it and how you can do it too.

Yeah, really is building that community capital.

And I know you know, when I look at the numbers when I just look at the average cost, and I and I look at the overnight shelters that we stood up, and I take that cost, and I say, okay, well, what if that was the state of Vermont paying for motel rooms?

What would that cost?

So uh, you know, I mean, I I can justify yeah, I can justify the expenditure every day of the week.

You know, I mean, I I can justify the expenditure every day of the week.

So we'll see.

So can't you give you more?

We're early in the process.

You know, we're not our backs aren't up against the wall yet.

Um get there, don't worry.

Our next meeting is next week.

And then when's our next meeting after that?

Because we've got to finalize.

1721 support.

We all got used to that time off.

We're not coming.

Okay.

Mr.

Mayor, I just this is one thing that I will continue to pound home, is that this budget has responded to things that the community has said that they want by adding back in the bike patrol, by growing the recreation department.

It's four times just to run a basic recreation department, it we've put you know, four times what we were spending on recreation in the current year.

And we need that because these are things that the community has said they want.

So it isn't uh a question of this body or um staff saying, oh, we need more paper clips.

These are in direct response to things that the community has said that they want.

I think that that's important to keep reminding ourselves.

Absolutely.

Okay, council move to item good segue if you don't want to do to the paving plan.

Um things the community wants.

You betcha.

I mean, so a lot to consider here.

Um so as I said, uh, I think I think providing the resources is really important.

And some of this um I sort of developed prior to the hostilities in uh in the Middle East, and and that's very real because that's gonna have.

I mean, obviously, you know, when you talk about landlords, I mean it's having a direct effect on eating oil prices right now.

And uh, of course, everyone was saying it's going to be over quickly.

That's what they said in the Ukraine, that's what we said in Iraq, and that's what we said in Afghanistan.

So I'm not betting on that.

Um so it very likely petroleum prices are going to remain high for at least the foreseeable future.

Oh, have you got that over?

Oh, it's the last page, right?

So, you know, early on, and this goes back a month ago.

Okay, so some of my information may actually be a little a little stale.

Um, it's not that long.

Keep going.

Call it home.

It's the very last one.

Yes.

So is I I I mean, I talk to papers, I talk to contractors, and because it occurred to me that you know we're all sort of woo-hoo because you know, thinking, okay, 800,000 to have for paving.

Um that doesn't always impress contractors.

You know, so 800,000 really doesn't buy you as much paving as you might think it would.

So what I thought about is I said, well, all right, what if we did, you know, just thinking about a lot of things, capacity of DPW.

What if we did a million and a half?

What if we what if we front loaded two years to this year?

We've heard from our citizens, as Carol said, they certainly want better roads.

Um, and as I talked to contractors and said, well, what if we did do something like this?

They said, well, first of all, you're likely going to get attention.

You know, people are actually going to respond to your bid as opposed to, I'm not even writing up a bid for $800,000.

Um, your costs are actually going to go down because your contractors aren't mobilizing and demobilizing, which if you think of paving equipment, getting it there, taking it back, it's very expensive.

Uh, and so what the contractors were telling me is that if you front load it, um, you could actually get a lot more bang for your buck.

So, you know, how do we front load it?

Well, we do have funds available.

We we have temporary funds available.

For example, we could borrow 700,000 with our the 800,000 we appropriate, we could borrow 700,000 from the COSI fund, you know, pay it back with 4% interest if you think about that.

Um if paving prices go up 6% year on year, you're actually saving money.

You know, you're paying 4% interest, but you're avoiding a 6% increase in costs.

Um absolutely what Nicholas was saying, we have limited, we have limited capacity within our DPW program.

We if we were doing 1.5 million dollars worth of paving, we would have to sub out some of the culprit work.

Um Andrew was kind enough to ask uh Brian to look at streets that that are longer and don't require a lot of work, they don't have a lot of structures on them, you know.

So even though we may do a few streets a little bit out of order, um, you know, again, we'd still be able to get more paving done quicker, which is what I think our citizens want.

Um obviously we'd have to, you know, we'd have to take have Brian take a hard look at that.

If 750,000 of that 1.5 million goes to rebuilding structures, well, that's not cost effective.

We can't do that.

And then, like I said earlier, the hostilities in the Middle East, if you know elevated petroleum prices, so is this even the year to do that?

If petroleum prices remain elevated, I mean, you know, eventually I hope there won't be hospital hostilities in the Middle East, the straight up home moves will be open, and you know, the price per barrel will settle back into 70, 60 bucks, but for the foreseeable future, that's not how it is.

And um, you know, the other thing that I thought about is I said, well, you know, maybe front loading our paving really makes a lot of sense because we heard from these folks this evening next year, we're probably gonna be keeping DPW busy rebuilding storm systems and doing storm system maintenance.

So maybe this isn't the craziest idea, because you know, we front load the paving this year and then we take a year off.

Not for everything, we'd still be doing a couple $300,000 worth.

But then we say to DPW, okay, you've got storm system maintenance.

That's our project this summer.

And as my mind spun, as we were talking about all this stuff, I thought about the fund balance, I thought about a lot of things, and I thought about is it time to add another DPW position?

We have a lot of work to do.

And I wonder whether, you know, again, given the fund balance, given the opportunity, I understand there are capital needs, but should we really think seriously about trying to add capacity at DPW?

Because when discussions keep coming back to we don't have capacity for that, we don't have capacity for that.

Then it seems to be that the smartest thing to do is try to build some capacity.

So that's much feel a lot of questions and no answers.

Sorry.

But the front loading, I think, you know, would anyone have any objection if we ask the manager to you know have Brian really pursue?

I mean, is it something you're just like, no way I wouldn't do it?

Because I I I think it's worth at least looking at and you know, and again, the the thing that I keep coming back to is all right, what happens next year when we have our report that says you have these culverts that are undersized, you have these culprits that have failed, and you need to fix them.

Well, how are we going to do that?

If we're if we're paving 800 and a million or 800 and 800, and we say to DPW, you know, how do we do that if we're if they're out rebuilding culverts so we can pay?

You can.

Yes, anyway.

Go first.

Uh I haven't heard anything that I don't like with fundloading.

I think that it seems like it's a cost-effective measure in order to get things done.

Um, I really haven't heard anything that I don't wouldn't vote for at this point.

Well, it's got to make sense.

And I honestly I don't know if it does.

But if we don't say hard, look at the real game changer for me is, and I didn't even know that these folks were coming in this evening, uh, but thank you.

Um the game changer was realizing that you know, we're gonna get this report that says you have a lot of stormwater work to do.

And then what happened?

We're either going to sub the stormwater work or we're gonna sub the paving work.

You can't, you know, you can we can't do both, we don't have that capacity.

Yes.

I think following up on exactly that, that's a question that was in my mind uh for the manager is what is our sort of internal expertise and capacity on doing the stormwater work?

Because I love the idea of doing a deep focus on it in one year.

I would want to sub the work that we that we have to, that's more efficient for us to sub.

Yeah, and Brian's on, and I'll start Brian and you chip in.

Um anything that that sort of I'm guessing we're gonna have to probably do some engineering and contracting on a bunch of it, though, given the complexities of our system.

I I think I would expect the vast majority of this to be contracted with small portions of it being done in house.

Is that generally Brian your take or yeah, I would agree with that too.

I think with the expertise of our crew, it would probably be better to keep our crew prepping for pavement and get a contractor to do more of the storm you know, rebuilding work on the storm drain system.

Um just to you know, if we're gonna do it that way, I think that's probably the more efficient way of use of uh labor and money.

But but also for like the stormwater specific projects, like the stuff that Roy's doing on the hydrology, once we get into culverts and storm drains and all that without the paving piece, even that stuff I think is probably beyond most of the construction experience of our crews, and some of it might need to be maybe also engineered and designed.

I don't that's my sense of when I've when we've talked about some of these projects, is that yeah, I would agree, I would agree with that too, because there's you know, when you get into some of the bigger culverts like the one up on Nelson Street will probably be some type of uh you know, a six-foot concrete box culvert, and you know, have to be set by a crane and then that, and that's probably you know, out of the realm of of our expertise.

I'm sure our guys could do it, but it would be you know if they do that, they don't do anything else.

Right.

So um I would you know, just the uh regular culvert and you know the some of the maybe the side street drainage stuff we could do real easily, but if it's a major you know, length of pipe and that type of stuff, probably the contract would be a better option.

I may follow up on that just shortly.

Uh in hearing the manager describe the need for engineering, uh, and knowing that we have that CDPGR award um that's to sort of be put towards planning some of these things.

I wonder if we're actually not on more like a two-year out timeline for the major stormwater system work, because we're gonna get the report and it's gonna take some time to do the engineering, and if it feels not an engineer, but it feels like it's starting to get a little tight for us to look at it in the um the 27-28.

Well no, what I was talking about is is um, and look, I I just may be wrong.

I living here, there are storm systems uh in length that are functioning, but I know they're functioning at a reduced capacity.

So I'm literally talking about cleaning them.

Like since they're they're half full of sediment and you know, we haven't done, yes, we do that work when something is plugged, yeah, but we've we don't we've never had the data to say these sections are running at half capacity because they're full of sediment.

I'm not thinking we have a back retruct, our guys can do that.

Yeah, so and I suspect when we get that report, there's gonna be a significant number that are not functioning at capacity.

So we're talking more about yeah, so it's not no the project that that Brian was describing.

No, I mean we don't we don't have the equipment to do that.

Yeah, okay.

That makes sense.

Thank you.

Yes.

Um, my question is um about I I know you indicated that there was I'm sure there's some process to how you choose the streets, but everyone thinks their street is the worst.

I mean, really, that's the bottom line.

I was driving here on Boynton Street today, it is the worst.

Um Air Street is bad.

If I drive that in the morning, but then I don't point street on the way to get here, and that is also bad.

Um but I'm I think everybody has this argument.

So my question for you is are there some streets that will require more infrastructures that are thinking things?

And can we get uh an idea of what those streets are so people understand why their street continues to kind of fall off the list?

Yeah, absolutely, and that's a good so I I had this map version of this map in the packet, and I updated it because the I think you know, visually, we've actually done a lot of paving between us um and the state did some paving um Route 62 and North Main Street.

But we you know, the last since 23, we've actually covered quite a bit, and then the blue lines I've added are probably the ones you get most of the complaints about, which are the ones the state's responsible for.

Um the the sort of the teal blue, right?

Uh Main Street, Maple, Washington, right?

Those are the ones that are in in really rough shape that I hear about frequently, and those are the ones that we we've already spent a little bit of money on there, and we just we cannot uh we we cannot really spend afford to spend more.

But the answer is yes, there's you know, we know Air Street's really bad.

Um, the problem with Air Street is it has a Brian multi-million dollar water main replacement um project associated with it.

Is that right?

That's underestimated just under a million.

Just under a million.

So that is one that Brian's working to get some revolving loan fund money for to defray the cost so that we can sort of do that all at once.

So we you know that's really what it is.

The other part is um when Brian TJ and myself sit down to sort of look at this, a lot of it comes down to what are the how much can our crew prepare, what are the you know, the height, what's the hydrant situation?

So right now, and Brian can speak to it in more detail.

One factor we had to look at is on you know, the the distance between hydrants has changed, and some of these were paved, and so now we have to install hydrants sort of at closer intervals, so that increases the workload for a street's crew to prepare a street for paving.

Um so it's really about that's really what it's about.

And what I've you know, what Brian and I have talked about as we've sort of thought about the additional funding, also is not only where can we uh sort of allocate it in a way that makes sense proportionally between the prep work that needs to be done and the amount of linear feet of pavement we can get, but also are there streets and they may be limited where we can do a street overlay, right?

Like if the structures are in good shape, um, is there is there a place where we can just have somebody come and just roll some new pavement on there with minimal prep because that's another good way to spend down money and get you know fresh pavement um out of it.

So yeah, I you know we drive these streets, um, we get you know, uh we get the this this is claims time of year for us, you know.

We're getting the claims from you know from potholes every day today.

I think Jeannie got three, um, and so they're bad, but it really comes down to what what can our crew prepare and what's the the biggest thing for our buck in terms of preparation and linear speed of paving.

Um, and that's where we try to find the right the right mix of streets to bunch together, and we try to keep them close, right?

Last year was great because we focused on Berlin Allen and Prospect, they're all in close proximity.

There's less deployment issues for us, less deployment issues for the contractors.

So those are the factors we try to sort of uh bunch together.

I I appreciate that.

I think the hardest thing is when people realize that their street is really bad, and then some other street is getting is on the list to be paid.

And so like trying to understand that information to the people on Air Street and drive on their street every day, it's a bigger issue, and that's why it's not getting reading.

Yeah, we can have, I mean, we can devote a meeting to what our pain program once we establish it, yeah, what our program is and why.

Yeah, and sometimes look, I'll be very honest.

Sometimes we have to look at people and say, six and one half does and the other.

We could have easily picked yours, but we happen to pick this one.

Um I don't know.

Speaking for a moment to Route 14 and Route 302.

Um, I don't know, Nick, was any weeks go by where you don't talk to Joe Flynn.

No, I talked to him.

We met with the governor on Friday.

Listen, the the subject of Route 14 and Route 302 came up.

Um under the best of circumstances that we've heard is 2028 or oh, that's the best.

And now we chose some money the legislature.

The simple fact of the matter is um the legislature, you know, all of us.

We we all have a hand in it.

Um, but the transportation fund has been underfunded for years.

Now they've got you know structural issues within the transportation fund, declining revenue, increasing costs.

I mean, it's a mess.

And so what we're faced with, and what I want people, our citizens to know, is that okay.

If if you want us to spend 1.5 million dollars, I can do it tomorrow.

We'll pay Route 14, we'll pay Route 302, the million five will be gone, you'll have Route 14 will be smooth, but we won't do anything else.

What and Joe Flynn is an honest, hard working decent man and a good partner to work with.

He you know, he's got his own problems that he's got to deal with.

But what we're faced with when we talk to him is first of all, Mr.

Secretary, this is not a maintenance issue.

These roads have failed.

You know, there's they've just failed.

It's not maintenance.

And secondly, it like I said, if if we spend local dollars paving Route 14 and Route 302, we're not getting your side street, isn't it?

You're bad street point, it's not getting done at all.

So it, you know, I I wish I had a better answer, other than to say I speak with the secretary weekly.

Any meeting I have with the governor, Route 14 and Route 302, come on.

I'm sure they're sick of hearing about it, but it's it's gonna continue.

Yeah.

Yeah.

One one uh when we were looking at this year's plan, one of the things that um we floated to AOT was um the section of South Main Street from the corner here to Ayer Street is one of the worst of among many many bad places.

So we proposed that we would add that to our paving plan, and in exchange, the state would pave from the Alders Library up to Summer Street and all the way over to Maple, which is roughly the same distance when they come in town.

Um we thought that was good because we would get we would take care of a really bad stretch, uh one of the worst little sections there.

Uh, and then we would get out of it at another part of our core downtown, so when the state finally does come in, all of our down our downtown will be will be paid.

But they they say that they have a matching promise for federal funds, so they couldn't entertain that even though the distances and linear feet were roughly the same.

Um, but that's you know, we got it, we want to pave those streets too.

We just can't, we can't do it for free.

Um we get nothing out of it.

So should we tell them about the lady's scenario?

You know, at one point I looked at the Secretary Flynn and they said, what if we loan you the money?

What if the city of Barrie literally loaned you the money?

You're telling me that you know 2028.

Okay, what if we loan you the money today?

You know, come up with the cost, we'll loan you the money, but we'll be harmless for the interest, you pave our roads today, and then in 2028, you give us the money back, interest free.

I mean, we were reaching for anything, you know.

How do we accelerate the pavement road?

So we're getting creative, trust me.

But it's and and we're not, and we're not done.

You know, we're going to keep advocating, like I said, I I respect the heck out of Joe Flynn, but these roads have failed.

They're not, it's not maintenance.

So that's where we're at.

So you can do that.

You can have Brian work that work that up and get something back to the city.

We'll just okay.

Good discussion.

We'll just uh figure out the best path for one.

One uh one small fees.

I think we were joking, but two years ago, we talked about the contest, a voting contest for which roads paved.

I wonder if there's some within the constraints of like you would have to find semi-equal roads, and you'd have to, they wouldn't have to be like the big problems like we just described in the air squeeze of the million dollar, but it it could be I think a really interestingly responsive way to say, as you said, Mayor, some sometimes we make decisions on streets that are simply six and one and a half doesn't have another.

If we found three of those and had people vote, I could do fun.

I mean, it gives the fundraising.

And if you charge people a dollar for a vote, at the end of it.

Just you know these arm wrestling.

George of selling defeats.

Yeah, um just well uh we're we're gonna keep working on it, we're gonna get some paving done.

You know, the good news is is I see I see a real path to getting our annual appropriation upwards of a million dollars.

I see a real solid path forward for that, and you know, and that's probably the best news of all because we went way too many years with it sitting around me.

At one point, you know, I was looking at the historic numbers that you sent me, Carol.

I'm like, they cut it, they cut it.

Yeah, I didn't I had a hand in that, but then it made sense in the moment.

It never got it never, but it never got built back.

And then it got cut even more.

And you know, so again, I have a hand in that, and I am bound and determined to fix it.

Yes.

One last just uh purely future projection.

I realize this will be tricky, but at what point do we catch up?

Do we catch up?

This is a future meeting question.

I'm just I'm posing.

I think it would be interesting to know.

Brian, how many miles of uh in the city, how many miles of streets in the city?

37?

47.

47.

47, thank you.

47 miles of streets in the city, uh, a street on a great day might last 20 years.

Um yeah, some of we were just talking about uh Farwell Street that uh Donell said he's never paved far well.

He's been here for 30 years, and but that street was.

He's been here for 30 years, and but that was it's it's really you know, it's a question of sub-base and traffic, it's a lot of things.

So let's say on average, you gotta you know 47 miles of streets in the city, call it 50, it makes the math easier.

You have to pave if you're going around every 20 years, you gotta pave two and a half miles of streets every year, which it costs to pay two and a half miles, a couple million bucks anyway.

Yeah, I think the state uses about a million a mile for so two and a half million bucks.

So when do we catch up?

When we're at two and a half million bucks, it's it's probably a lower number.

I mean, honestly, I really believe that if we because some streets just last for a long time.

There's not a lot of labor, you know.

Um do go 30 years, so probably if you could get it in the million five area, you'd be but but then again, now look at the state transportation.

Okay, the roads that people said, the roads they're complaining about the most aren't side streets.

They're they're complaining about Wu 14 about Wu 302.

So, and we don't have any control over that.

So I remember when I first died here, Don L was training someone how to plow and was doing Firewall Street, and the young guy asked them, how do I know when I get to Barrie Town?

And Donald said the blade stops bouncing.

There you go.

With that council, if there's nothing else, we'll move on to discussing the changes to the US postmark uh office postmark procedure.

Hi.

Christina, thank you.

Thank you.

Um I put a memo in your packet.

This is uh expanding on the conversation that we had back uh the last time you met on uh February 10th.

Um we talked about the fact that the post office has announced the changes with regards to postmarks that they no longer indicate when a piece of mail is mailed, they now indicate when a piece of mail is processed, and because of that distinction, um it's a postmark is no longer a good indication for us to use that a piece of mail, namely a payment, was made by the deadline, as is laid out in our charter.

The deadlines are laid out in our charter.

Um, and so what I've been talking with staff uh about is um, and we're not the only community that's exploring this.

Callis made this decision at town meeting two weeks ago.

Um, and Barrytown is going to have it on the ballot in May.

Um we don't have to go before the voters.

We it's something the council can do, but other communities are um having the same discussions.

Uh the proposal to uh change from accepting postmarks to um payments must be in hand by the due date.

Um so on the memo, what I did was I I fleshed out a bit about um the the way to to roll it out, um the ways to help uh spread the word, notify um people, uh notifications out with water bills, notifications out with delinquent bills, mailings to all property owners in advance of tax bills, notifications with tax bills, a lot of information out on various forms of social media.

Uh and then the other thing I had mentioned the last time I was here is that we would look to we would think about how to build some kind of a soft landing, some kind of a phase and period of time, which staff will admit will be a pain in the butt, but it will give us an opportunity to phase people in.

And so what I spelled out here was essentially uh a one get out of jail free card for every payer if a payment comes in during that six-month grace period, and it is not received by the deadline, they would get an individual, we would accept it as long as it had at least a postmark that was dated on the due date or before.

We would accept it, and then we would give them individual notification.

Hey, just a heads up.

The process has changed.

This is you know, we're accepting your payment as timely this time, but please know going forward, this is what the process is.

We would encourage people.

I'm so happy you're gonna sign up for direct debit.

We would encourage people to sign up for direct debit.

There's no fee for that.

The nice thing about direct debit, beside the fact that there's no fee is we don't take your money early.

We take it on the due date.

So there's it, you know, it's not like it's no different than you know, paying on the due date.

It's we would take your money on the due date.

The other option, of course, is online payments.

There are fees associated with online payments, but an online ACH payment, e-check payment, the service charge, regardless of how big your tax bill is, is a dollar 75.

So if you use a credit card, there's a higher fee, it's 3%.

But if you're using an e-check, it's $1.75.

So there are, and you can still come into the office.

You can drop it in the drop box up until the due date.

You can mail it two weeks in advance, and it hopefully will get to us in time.

There are other ways to pay the bill.

Um, but this would create uh a line for us to use in processing payments.

Right now, we see a week, 10 days, two weeks delay in getting payments.

That delays us being able to close out a quarterly payment and turn it over to the collections department for the collections department to then issue invoices, and it just builds this slow slide that messes with our accounting, with our ability to um to collect money.

Um we end up having arguments with people about, but I put it in the mail, but it doesn't have a postmark on it that's right.

They, you know, so if everything was just it must be in hand by the due date, then it would put a real bright line in this in the sand.

Like I said, we would roll out the six-month process during which we would do essentially individual notifications to people if they did not get something to us by the due date, so that we hopefully would avoid any problems down the road.

So this is something that that is going to be completely up to the council to decide, but but uh um every staff person who handles build payments has reviewed this um and signed off on it.

So I have a really silly question.

How to ask for a payments work because I don't know how my payment gets made, it just magically it's magic.

It does, it's magic.

Um we the legally you are the person that's responsible for it, and so it says on your tax bill, this is the only tax bill, you're responsible for it, you're responsible for getting a copy to your mortgage company.

In reality, what happens is most mortgage companies contract with an escrow company and they get through us and through this centralized escrow company.

We send them a file on a quarterly basis.

This is what all the properties in the city of Barrie have due, and they cherry pick out their customers, and then they send us an electronic file and deposit, usually about a week in advance of the due dates.

So people who have escrow payments will probably not be impacted because they're BP.

Right, right.

And the um the escrow payments come electronically, they don't come in the form of a check, so they're not in any danger of arriving after a deadline without a without a um uh a postmark on them.

So they all come electronically.

Okay, cool.

Thank you.

I'm just gonna ask the same question.

You know, I'm gonna ask, which is I would still really love to find a way for electronic payments to be made until midnight.

People come home from work, they realize that something got messed up, they can make an electronic payment at 5 p.m.

That's subject to late fees.

The the only argument, and the thing is with our online payment system, we see the exact date and time when a payment is made.

We could make that decision that it's good until midnight.

But what about the person who uses the drop box and drops it at 11 p.m.

and we don't get it until the next morning, and we don't have any proof that they dropped it at midnight.

What about the you know, it's it's hard to certain categories of payments get a little extra time and other categories don't.

I would find that difficult to rationalize.

I guess I just feel like if if they get to the drop box, oh shoot, it's closed, they just sign the drop box saying you can still pay your property tax payment if you do it this way up until midnight.

I I understand that you want it consistent across all of them.

I am smooth localizing a uh if there were more flexibility in the system, it might help folks meet the debt.

That's fine.

Having for 16 years, my mantra to people was we apply the same rules to everybody, and the same laws to everybody, and that really is all we have to go on.

Is that the rules and laws have to be applied equally across the country?

Now, if the council establishes something that that says otherwise, we that will be the law and the rule, and we will apply it accordingly.

But until then, I will give you my opinion.

And no, and I I appreciate both sides of that, but I think you know, it's gotten to the point where the largest of the checks I hand deliver to sheriff's office.

Um the smaller, you know, the smaller ones I'll I mail them a month in advance.

And when I really thought about it, I said, look, the best way to avoid it, you know, I'm paying it by the 15th anyway.

Most of the time a month are okay.

I'll just, you know, and maybe I was insecure about like, well, here's my bank information.

Like, I don't know, Carol's gonna go out argue with it or something.

You know, I mean, that really is the best solution is to push that one and say, let us do the work.

And listen, we may draft the money, you know, it may be on the 15th.

I mean, if somebody got sick, it might be on the 16th.

But whatever, you're not late because you're signed up.

We I'll tell you, we have had numerous people who have yelled at us because we took it in the morning on the due date, and they didn't had planned on putting the money in by the afternoon.

Yeah, I understand that everyone's circumstances are different.

But if we all of a sudden said in the city, now we're gonna keep the post office mark, but we're gonna change the date of the 10th of the, you know, it's not gonna be May 15th anymore, it's gonna be May 10th.

Um you know, you know the property taxes are due on the 15th, and we'll do our best to I mean, is there a way to say we take the money at 5 p.m.?

I mean, could our bank do that?

Or do you when you enter them in, in other words, you said some people would say you took them in the morning?

We yeah, we we the ones that are directly deposited into the bank, we have already data entered them into our tax admin system.

So we have, as a matter of fact, we'll enter 400 checks into our tax admin system on the 15th, but the money's not going to go to the bank till the 16th.

But because we have data entered it, it is considered received.

Gotcha.

To me, the process for so when you um EFT it from someone's account, what's the process?

Is it one literally one at a time?

No, it's a batch.

Oh, okay, I see.

Yeah, yeah.

But someone has to enter we send, yep.

The the um Cara, the the assistant treasurer maintains the uh that there's a spreadsheet.

Um it's you know, it's several hundred long and they don't change except that in August she's got to put the new tax amounts in for the new year.

Um, and then that file gets uploaded to the bank and the bank um with a date, um, and the the bank then initiates the EFT transfer on the the date that we've set.

So and I know because I I'm signed up for it, so I can go to my bank the morning of the 15th and go up there, it's gone.

So your proposal would be to implement this as a what's the drop in date like no more grace period, no more.

Yeah, here we go.

So the the first of July, we would we would do a lot of information between now and and the first of July.

The first of July, any invoice issued after the first of July or the July 1st and after would fall under the new the new rules.

This is because we've just done a billing cycle in June for water and sewer.

So we don't want to hold those people to some new set of rules that they didn't really know about or weren't paying attention to.

So those water and sewer bills would have would automatically fall into the grace period.

Okay.

But any bill issued after the first of July, so if they didn't pay and they went delinquent and they then got a delinquent bill, that would fall under the new deadlines.

With that delinquent notice, hey, these are the new rules.

The information about the change in rule would go out with the June bill, so people knew that starting with the next billing cycle, it would go into effect.

A postcard would go out to all property owners in advance of the first of July.

And then there would be inserts in with the July bill with the tax bills, which probably won't go out until August this year due to the reappraisal.

But an insert would go in with that.

And it would be for six months, so July through December.

But what I'm proposing in here is that it actually goes I can't remember whether I did it through all of January or through the no through the 15th of January, because we've got another water billing cycle in December of 26.

So again, to give each to give water and sewer billing and tax billing to complete billing cycles, we would move it, you know, the last of it would be January 15th of 2027.

So everybody gets two bites at the apple to get things right.

When you said everybody gets one get out of jail free cards, so if the if I pay, if I send my um tax bill in and it's a few days late, and I you know it's it's due on July 15th or whatever it is.

Um and you receive it after that.

The postmark maybe is July 15th, but that doesn't matter anymore.

Right.

And so that's my get out of jail free card.

But then what if I need a same thing with wired right?

Another one for each payment.

Okay.

Now, again, this is a proposal, and if the body decided that uh we want people to get one get out of jail free for taxes and one for water and sewer, that's certainly something we would begrudgingly do.

But I do feel like we should emphasize for those listening along.

There's no actual jail right away for this.

Mr.

Monopoly is gonna be there.

The only reason I ask is because for someone like me, I don't pay my taxes, and the only thing I pay is on the water bill.

And so, you know.

And actually, it it probably does make sense to do um uh one, you know, one for taxes and one for water and sewer, because we about a third, a quarter of our water and sewer customers are buried town residents.

Right now, they are hopefully going to be going through the same process, and we have uh this I've been in conversations with Tina Lunt, their clerk, and I've shared with her what we're talking about, and we would partner on a bunch of publications and outreach and stuff like that because it certainly would be easier to do this community-wide.

So are you communicating when you anticipate they they have to put theirs on the ballot?

Yes.

Um they they'll um they have the same warning deadline we have, which is seven.

Yeah.

Yeah, so they would so they would likely pass that in May, implement it on for the fiscal.

They they were talking about implementing it in the first of January, but I told her that really gets murky because what do you print on your tax bill?

Because your tax bills for the whole year, so you change your procedure in the middle of the year, she went, oh, that's a good point.

So I I don't know for sure that they would follow exactly the same process, but but the hope would be that we would find enough common ground that we could really um you know spread the word jointly.

So counsel, I think we should just get this on the agenda and pull the band-aid off.

Um, there's there's I mean, heck it could be my mom who is gonna be late twice.

I mean, there are gonna be people um who maybe could have used to get out of penalty, but um you know, and that's gonna happen, but but it this isn't you know, it's not really fair for the staff because then the state you know when it when it happens and they get kind of then the staff that they have to get on the phone and that takes time, I didn't get you, you know, and you know, imagine 15 or 20 minutes with every taxpayer.

I didn't get you, you know, and you know, imagine 15 or 20 minutes with every taxpayer.

I mean, it's just so um, you know, it's a look, we all wish that the post office was just functioning like a top um there, you know, my GMT there was, they're struggling, so let's just get this done.

That would be my advice is get it on the agenda for next week.

Yeah, I'm fully in favor that I would just ask um Caroline suggested there might be some merit to one pass to water sooner, one pass performance.

Yes, yeah.

I would just think I would follow the staff's recommendation on that, but I think that is.

Yeah, we'll just give you you can write up the suggested language, and we'll just give you, we'll just give you broad latitude in terms of you know, as far as I'm concerned, when you want to implement it.

Yeah, and if you say bail out at the last minute and say, now I'm gonna do this next year, great, you'll have authority to do it.

I think what's most important is though that it does start with the beginning of a tax year because you know, we print the one tax bill right now on the bottom of the stubs on the bottom of our tax bill, we have information about you know, postmarks and blah blah blah, deadlines and all that kind of stuff.

And you know, I can't begin to imagine printing two stubs with one information and two stubs with better to just have it, you know, almost that particular year.

So I think that would be best.

Okay.

No doubt.

So we'll put it on the agenda again for next week.

Thank you.

Appreciate you.

Thank you.

You just like us.

That was nervous there.

Well, I'm done in Waterbury.

I finished up in Waterbury on Friday, so awesome.

They were they they actually were a lovely community to work with.

Yeah.

Yes.

Well, we're uh we're at uh what is F on the agenda now.

Uh and Andy, thank you for hanging in there with us.

I apologize.

Uh this is to talk about the uh pilot uh program for downstream for 173 South Maine.

Uh read through the pilot agreement, pilot agreement is essentially uh $35,000 tax payment.

And Angie, I'm sorry I I didn't do this electronically, but I'll explain it thoroughly.

Um so what struck me is that there is a uh a strict 2% increase built into you know, built into the pilot in terms of an increase uh annually.

The problem with that, and you know, even at $35,000, that certainly is not going to reflect the fair market value of the property.

Um it may, depending on the formula you use, but in the real world, it is not a 35,000 be about a million carroll, give or take, million million or so.

So, but I don't mind that uh at all because I think that is sort of our contribution as a municipality to affordable housing in our city.

But what I simply wanted to make the council aware of is that this is I understand this agreement, it it goes in perpetuity.

Um and so I wanted the council to understand what the decision that we're really making and where I wanted to pull back on it a little bit.

Um, you know, so in the first few columns, if you take $35,000, which is our starting point, and you increase that by 2% a year by the time you get to the 25th year, uh, and keep in mind 25 is generous because this agreement exists in perpetuity, that 35,000 is grown, it's compounded to 56,000.

Now, if we take the same $35,000 and and look, we'll all readily admit that on average our tax rate increases probably 3, 7, 5.

I mean, it bounces around.

You saw in my earlier, you know, in the earlier graph I had there.

So if you take the same 35,000 and run it out 25 years at 3.75, which is probably more reflective of our what our tax rate increases annually, that's $84,000.

So, you know, your delta in 25 years, there's $28,000 difference.

Um, if you look at that cumulatively over the 25-year period, that's over a quarter of a million dollars.

So what I'm saying to the council is I would propose that the $35,000 go up at the same rate as everyone else's taxes go up.

So if the residential rate goes up 3%, they go up 3%.

It goes up 375.

You know, I just wanted to impress on the council that this is a big decision.

Over 25 years, it's a quarter of a million dollar delta over 25 years, and this is now.

So going forward, if a future city council said um we don't want to increase them all this year, you can vote that.

That's your that's your prerogative.

But once you execute this agreement at 2%, you're stuck with it forever.

So uh Andy, you and I haven't had a chance to speak about this.

I didn't even know it was going to be on the agenda until uh last Thursday, so I apologize.

But council, my strong preference would be to the 35,000 is fine, but to have that 35,000 go up at the same percentage that everyone else's taxes go up in the city.

Again, stressing that five years from now, it could be amended.

A future council could put it at three, they could eliminate it, they can do whatever they want.

But if we execute it as written, we've just stuck our citizens with it for and I don't mean to use that word, but we are we are living with this agreement perpetuity, and that's a long time.

So my term, yes, of course.

That's an epic.

So I I apologize.

I don't know this is uh where you were headed with things.

We thought, and it's been a little while now because it took a while to sort this out.

Um, but I what I'd like to highlight for you and for council is that um I spoke with Carol Hall, and I realized that um the municipal so right now the the hotel of last year, previous year paid around 35, maybe a little bit over 35,000 a year, but it was right around there.

But only 19,000 of that was municipal taxes.

The other portion was school taxes.

And when we apply for the pilot, so when we're granted the pilot um by the state, because we're a nonprofit organization offering uh a charitable purpose um effort.

Um the city is no longer on the hook for the $16,000 in education taxes.

So that $35,000 that we're committing to the city this year is actually a $16,000 increase over what it would have received without the pilot.

Um you and I have talked, and we had decided that this was a bit of a win-win because we had in our budget the $35,000 with the increase year over year.

Um, and so we're able to offer that as the pilot mark.

Um, and that we would stick with a lower escalation because of that.

By knowing you were doing this, I would have run that escalation with the $20,000 uh mark just to see where we ended up in comparison.

Um but we're we're actually trying to do our best to not only make sure that the city affair um doesn't mean anything on the grand list, but to contribute a little bit more because we couldn't.

Gotcha.

But it's still two percent in perpetuity at some point, you know, the two lines are gonna cross.

Wouldn't you be more comfortable with a 10-year pilot that we renegotiate with a 10-year pilot?

Yeah, I mean, I'd be gonna put that back.

Can you help me on this carol?

Because I think there was no background with it.

So the municipal portion of the taxes on that used to be those in the middle.

Oh, I'm sorry, then I missed that.

That's my mistake.

It was resulted in 19,000 in municipal taxes and sixteen thousand in education taxes for the last year we had last year's.

So this should be 35,000 in municipal taxes.

It would be it's not taxes at all.

No, I really so it wouldn't, so actually the amount we collected taxes would remain exactly the same because the amount we collect in taxes is based on the budget as approved by the voters.

This would be an additional thirty-five thousand dollars in pilot money, and it would all go into the general fund as pilot money.

For a 10-year period, Angie, you were saying I'd be happy to come back in 10 years.

We are hoping we will have no need for Angio.

Uh well, I thank you for offering to come back in 10 years.

You won't be seeing me.

Uh so thank you.

No, and and thank you.

That's very gracious of you because that was my concern is any agreement that is in perpetuity, I cringe a little bit because you know, perpetuity is a really long time.

So if if you're if you're saying that this agreement will continue for 10 years and then be revisited by a future council, knowing that we were at 19,000 municipal correct, and now we'll be at 35.

So obviously the general fund, you know, those lines are not going to cross in 10 years.

I can do that, Matt.

So I'm I'm fine with that.

Is council's okay with that?

Uh need a motion to that effect, please.

Just to be clear, would we be motioning for approval with that with the understood change, or do we have to write back next week to ratify?

I would make that motion.

Second.

Moved and seconded.

Any discussion?

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

Please signify by saying aye.

Those opposed.

Angie, I apologize for keeping you so late.

Thank you.

Okay, council.

Upcoming business.

We have four meetings scheduled.

It's going to be all budget all the time.

Uh so unless it's something, does anyone have anything really pressing?

I think we're three in a row.

We're not four.

Well, today, so counting today we're we're four.

Um, so you're paying for your yeah, for your for your few weeks off.

Round table, Mr.

Dear.

Oh man.

I'll pass.

Believe it or not.

Councilor Gilbert.

Oh, me too.

It's not like it.

Councilor Justin.

Uh briefly, um, Pam Wilson of Marriott and I will be speaking to folks as part of these data Vermont's uh flood resiliency project series on Thursday morning to talk about various cities uh flood recovery work and flood resiliency plan.

Um I continue to be very proud of that work that puts very city on the map as we heard tonight.

It's um we're on the cutting edge of a lot of really cool stuff.

Uh so we'll be talking to folks from all of that state about that.

Fantastic.

Council Bird.

Well, I helped with the basketball tournaments last week.

Um all nine days was it was a pack and crazy.

Um next year we'll be hosting the high school wrestling tournament too.

And the VPA and the Vermont Wrestling Association is considering making me on the place every year.

So nice.

Keep your fingers crossed.

Well, we'll have plenty of improvements for you.

Well, it will have the wrestling team in on the seventh end.

Yep.

Um they won the state championship.

The first team to knock off mom Anthony who won it 36 straight years.

Council Swelling.

Um I'm gonna uh Councillor Hill Gardner and I did a Ward 1 meeting right before we went on break, and we had a handful of people, and they asked a lot of good questions, and I just wanted to let you all know that it was really great.

I mean that we did it, and it helped me to actually understand the budget a little bit more.

So and thank you for sending over the slides.

It went really well, and um most of my questions that people ask have been answered, but I wonder if we could do some like people were asking me, do we have a surplus and things like that?

And I was like, oh no, I have to turn that out.

And so those are the kinds of things I think we'll have to make sure we're talking about.

Um I'll probably be zooming in next week.

I'll be out at hotel tomorrow.

Pretty much it.

Fantastic.

Uh so uh let's see, thank you for the counselors who signed my petition.

Uh I will be turning it in this week.

Uh I will be running for another two-year term if the voters will have me.

Um we've got a lot of work to do.

I enjoy the work.

Not uh most of the time, not every single time, but uh I enjoy the work and uh you know I'm like with this presentation earlier this evening.

I'm excited to get some good work done going forward.

So with that, uh we are going to go into executive session.

We're gonna be discussing real estate, and then we're going to be discussing uh talking with clerk about her compensation.

I don't expect there will be any decisions coming out of the executive session.

Motion for findings would be in order.

Thank you.

And second second, moved and seconded.

Any discussion?

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

Please signify by saying aye.

And those opposed, thank you very much.

And a motion to go into executive.

Thank you.

Second.

And seconded.

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

All right.

And those opposed, we are in executive session.

No, that's fine.

Sort of ten.